Dirk Robert Johnson to speak at UNCW

UNCW's Evolution Learning Community and Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures presents:

"Nietzsche's “Anti-Darwinism”: The Origins and Development of an Antagonism" by Dr. Dirk Robert Johnson (Hampton Sydney College)

Location: Cameron Hall 105, UNCW (Campus Map)
Date and Time: February 9, 2009 at 3:30 pm

Dr. Johnson's scholarship explores the intellectual interaction between Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche, a late 19th Century German philosopher. Nietzsche's complex relationship to Darwin has been much explored, and readers have placed the two thinkers in conjunction from the very beginning. Nietzsche himself alluded to Darwinian interpretations of his ideas as early as 1888. In Ecce Homo (EH), Nietzsche felt compelled to disparage “scholarly cattle,” who suggested that his Übermensch, or overman, reflected Darwinian sympathies. In recent years, numerous studies have returned to the Nietzsche-Darwin axis, which indicates that they recognize that Nietzsche's connection to Darwin must reflect a significant component of his thought. Dr. Johnson's presentation will argue for the pre-eminence of Darwin for the development and articulation of Nietzsche's philosophy. But unlike current scholarship, its main thrust will be to emphasize the antagonistic character of the relationship and to show how Nietzsche's final critique against Darwin and his followers represents the key to understanding his broader (anti-)Darwinian position.