Nietzschean Interpretation: A Field Analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Influence w/ Cadell Last

July 12th, 2022

Friedrich Nietzsche is an existentialist philosopher whose had an outsized impact on 20th and 21st century philosophy. He deconstructed Western metaphysics (e.g. Christian God and social structure), attempted a reconstruction with ideas of the overman, diagnosed the modern/post-modern human condition of being, and finally, offered this all in a novel and unrepeatable style of expression which explodes the coordinates of philosophy itself. His work has influenced the foundations of psychoanalysis, critical social theory, theology, new age spirituality, poetry, literature and art, and even theorists working in areas of speculative cosmology and evolutionary theory. In this presentation philosopher Cadell Last aims to deepen and complexify our understanding of Nietzsche. He first presents some of the most paradigmatic examples of Nietzschean interpretation, analyzing how figures like Freud, Heidegger, Foucault, Girard and Bard have been influenced by, and also attempted to move Nietzsche’s ideas into their present moment. Second, he offers a general field of categories for how we can make sense of the multiplicity of Nietzschean interpretations. This general field of categories, in turn, can be used to expand the space of possible converastions that we can entertain in relation to Nietzschean philosophy for the present moment. Nietzsche is a philosopher who can be thought of as speaking to the types of beings that are now populating the various communities of the liminal web. Is the liminal web ready to listen?

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