1. Why does Nietzsche call humanity both the "owner" and the "procreator" of knowledge? Where does this place Nietzsche in the tradition we are studying?
2. What does Nietzsche feel is the connection between knowledge and vanity or self-flattery?
3. How is everyday ignorance of biology extended metaphorically by Nietzsche?
4. Where does the contrast between truth and falsity originate?
5. Does adherence to fixed conventions successfully avert fraud? Why or why not?
6. What does Nietzsche mean when he writes, "Only by means of forgetfulness can man ever arrive at imagining that he possesses ‘truth'"?
7. What causes words? Do they refer to their origin?
8. Consider closely Nietzsche's analysis of the referentiality and functionality of ideas. How do reduction, concentration, or elimination fit into Nietzsche's system? What becomes of reference?
9. What is a qualitas occulta? What is the hidden truth of "truth"?
10. Why does Nietzsche praise humanity above the bee? How does dependable systematicity emerge out of the "residuum of a metaphor"?
11. What is the "infinitely protracted echo of an original sound"?
12. Why is awareness of the world secondary to consciousness of self? Why does the first follow from the second according to Nietzsche?
13. How does repetition affect our understanding of reality? How does Nietzsche dispute the reality of science?
14. Why is science appealing to Nietzsche's "man of action"?
15. How does the freed intellect manifest itself?
16. What can the intuitive human achieve? The rational human? Characterize the difference between the two types of humans according to these potentials.
17. Explain Nietzsche's derision of the word "respect" in his description of the principles of philosophical practice.
18. How does philosophical method alter its subject matter?
19. What is the origin of the philosophical rejection of the senses and of the embodied? How does section three of "‘Reason'" expose the hypocrisy of scientific anti-sensuousness?
20. Who is Heraclitus and what did he believe? Supplement your reading of Nietzsche by referring to a dictionary or encyclopaedia of philosophy.
21. What is the difference between the apparent and the true? Why is presence a lie according to this reasoning?
22. Compare section four of "‘Reason'" to Derrida's reading of Plato's Phaedrus and/or to Descartes' Meditations.
23. How do we discern error according to Nietzsche? Why is our method in this regard itself erroneous?
24. How is language responsible for erroneous conceptual fetishes? Trace the stages of Nietzsche's explanation from ego to substance to thing to being.
25. Explain Nietzsche's intention to "facilitate comprehension" while "provok[ing] contradiction" with his four theses.
26. How do each of Nietzsche's four theses change the philosophy of being into a rhetoric of being?
27. In "How the ‘True World' . . ." compare Nietzsche's account of the history of philosophy to that suggested by the course.
28. Does Nietzsche believe in Hegelian progress? What is revealed at the end?
29. What is the moment of the shortest shadow, and why is it special?