We were delighted to welcome Sue Prideaux to The Space recently to speak on Friedrich Nietzsche, as part of the school’s academic enrichment lecture programme.
Author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche, a new revisionist biography on the influential philosopher, Prideaux gave a powerful and enlightening talk. I was fascinated to hear of a striking event in Nietzsche’s life, when he dreamed about his brother’s death shortly before his brother died from a seizure. This mystical experience was to haunt Nietzsche throughout his life and I think helps explain his drive to understand and solve the problems of the human condition.
Prideaux also showed the importance of Nietzsche’s aphoristic style in achieving his philosophical goals; as she pointed out, ‘There is no such thing as Nietzscheism,’ because Nietzsche wants us to think for ourselves, not to follow him. Following this enlightening talk, I have been compelled to reopen my copy of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality with fresh eyes, so I might better understand Nietzsche’s thought with his personal and historical context in mind.
Matthew Sebastian, Upper Sixth
