John P. Richardson ( Department of Philosophy, New York University )
Time: March 14, 2019, 16:00-18:00
Venue: Lecture Hall, 4th Floor, Yuntong Building
Moderator: Helmut Heit （Tongji University）
Nietzsche, like his character Zarathustra, may seem deeply hostile to religion: he may seem to replace gods with the Übermensch, as a healthier human ideal. His talk about Dionysus may seem merely playful jesting. And he clearly has important grounds for hostility to religion in his philosophical stance: how could his critical honesty ever allow him to believe in these fictions--and how could he think it healthy to see one's values as commanded by a god? Professor Richardson examines these strong reasons against religion, lying in its disadvantages for belief and for will. But he will try to show that Nietzsche finds a crucial benefit to gods in a third domain, that of the affects or feelings, and Nietzsche thinks that he has a serious need for gods to sustain one privileged feeling of crucial importance to him.
