Discipline of Philosophy Speakers Series

Discipline of Philosophy Speakers Series presents: "Nietzsche's critical engagement with Staël” by Dr. Rebecca Bamford (Queens University Belfast)

Time: Tuesday 14^th January 2025 @ 1-2:30 pm (Lunch will be provided)

Location: Bridge Room, Hardiman Building

Abstract: Nietzsche’s remarks about the philosopher Germaine de Staël present a puzzle, which I aim to examine and to resolve in this paper. In several of his published and unpublished works, and especially in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche makes some highly critical remarks about Staël. My aim in this paper is to investigate three interlinked issues: (i) who exactly is the ‘Staël’ featured in this text; (ii) how we are to explain the remarks that are directed towards Staël, and (iii) why Staël is discussed by Nietzsche here at all. I will lay out an account of what Nietzsche claims about Staël in Beyond Good and Evil, and will compare this with Nietzsche's wider references to Staël in others of his writings. I will then consider three potential explanations for Nietzsche's critical engagement with Staël: (1) that Nietzsche’s claims are indicative purely of his misogyny towards the historical figure of Staël (e.g. Diethe 1996); (2) that Nietzsche is highlighting and responding to a specific problem concerning Enlightenment values as a part of his project of translating humanity back into nature (e.g. Lemm 2020); (3) that from an Enlightenment perspective, Nietzsche’s claims about Staël are misogynistic, but his remarks need not be deemed so from a possible perspective in which humanity has been translated back into nature. I will propose that a combination of these first and third potential explanations is the most defensible interpretative approach.