Event Date: 17 – 18 May 2013

Room B01

Clore Management Centre

Birkbeck, University of London

Torrington Square

London WC1E 7HX

The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities presents:

Spinoza and Nietzsche in Dialogue

A two-day conference

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in 1881: “I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! [T]his most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, and evil.”

This conference brings together scholars from around the world working in differing intellectual traditions to explore the many connections between the thought of Spinoza and Nietzsche. Both are in a range of respects radical thinkers with a highly individual approach to the tradition that preceded them. This event will put Spinoza and Nietzsche in dialogue, and in so doing widen the dialogue among scholars, and in addition bring the discussion to a wide public.

Programme

Friday 17 May 2013

Introduction to the conference by Susan James (Birkbeck).

Moira Gatens and Paul Patton – The Exemplar in Spinoza and Nietzsche

AUDIO HERE

Donald Rutherford – Perfectionism in Spinoza and Nietzsche

AUDIO HERE

Hannah Grosse Wiesmann – Spinoza’s Conatus and Nietzsche’s Will to Power: Self-Preservation vs. Increase of Power?

AUDIO HERE

Saturday 18 May 2013

Martin Saar – Another Radical Enlightenment? Spinoza and Nietzsche on Power and Knowledge

AUDIO HERE

Alexander Douglas and Christoph Schuringa – Spinoza and Nietzsche On Valuing

AUDIO HERE

Round Table Discussion: