Estudos Brasileiros I

André Luis Muniz Garcia (UnB): Decline as transition: Nietzsche’s commitments to modern poetics

Considered by Nietzsche himself to be a watershed in his philosophical production, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is still a little explored work in terms of its commitments to modern art initiatives and trends. Already in the prologue, Nietzsche presented, mixed with rich images and stylistic sophistication, a fundamental reflection on the human being as “transition and decline”: “What is great about the human being is that he is a bridge, never an end: what can be loved about him is that he is a transition [Übergang] and a decline [Untergang]” (Za, Vorrede 4). Although it has been much quoted and commented on by expert research, the theoretical presuppositions of this proposal are almost never taken into account, much less has it been observed that it represented the culmination of a set of ideas that Nietzsche had already outlined in The Birth of Tragedy, but which were in fact experimented with and matured in the two volumes of Human, All Too Human, in Daybreak and The Gay Science. In order to better understand the scope of this reflection, this conference aims to present its decisive moments, focusing on the strong link it maintains with Nietzsche’s interests in the modern expression of artistic initiatives widely practiced in the 19th century.

José Nicolao Julião (UFRRJ): Towards a Nietzschian Interpretation of Reinassance

In general, it may be argued that there are at least three moments of appropriation of the Renaissance in Nietzsche’s work, one for each phase of his intellectual development. In the first phase, we may recognize a censorship attitude, focused on the German term for “renaissance” (Wiedergeburt or Wiedergeboren) which is glimpsed in Wagnerian drama; in the intermediate phase, certain characteristics of the symbolic representation of Renaissance Humanism are recognized as allied to Nietzsche’s own project of constituting authentic thought and elevated types of mankind that, at the time, are associated with the free spirit (der Freigeist); finally, in the last phase, Nietzsche embarks on a radicalization of the Reinassance that might be fruitful for his project of a transvaluation of all values — including, of course, the Christian values — based on the historical case of Ceasare Borgia.

The seminar will be in Portuguese.

Event supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia) of the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science under the project UIDP/00183/2020.