Royal Institute of Philosophy Public Lecture

Nietzsche and the Crisis of Modernity, Professor Ken Gemes

• Wednesday 10 December 2014
• 5:30pm – 7:30pm, MC301
• Millennium City Building, University of Wolverhampton.

Nietzsche diagnoses a particular conflict between our will to truth and our will to meaning which he claims constitutes the central crisis of modernity. The will to truth prevent us from constructing the types of mythological narratives (for instance narratives of divine creation and God’s providential plan) which formerly served to give meaning to existence;  hence the need to find existence meaningful remains unfulfilled.  This leaves us with two possibilities:  dispense with the demand for existential meaning or create new narratives that can somehow either evade or be reconciled with the demands of the will to truth.

Ken Gemes received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1990. He came to Birkbeck in 2000 having taught for ten years at Yale University.  He has written numerous journal articles in general philosophy of science and on Nietzsche, and is the editor (with Simon May) of  Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy and (with John Richardson) of the recent The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche.

Free public lecture, everyone welcome.

For further details contact: Dr Meena Dhanda, tel: 01902 323 503 or email: m.dhanda@wlv.ac.uk