Speaker Series: Elijah Millgram (University of Utah)

Elijah Millgram will give a talk as part of our annual Speaker Series. Reception to follow.

Who Was the Author of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?

Why would Nietzsche have written a text that presents itself as the
holy scripture of a nonexistent religion?  Because Nietzsche could
presume familiarity with the Higher Criticism — the secular Bible
scholarship of his time — he would expect Thus Spoke Zarathustra to
be read as making a point about the sort of person who composes a
religion’s canonical texts.  Nietzsche used his parody of a book of
prophesy to pose a problem for his own very ambitious agenda: the task
of ‘philosophers of the future’ is to invent values, but
institutionalizing those values is bound to have perverse
consequences.