Classical Studies Program Presents

“Not to be born is best.” Greek Pessimism revisited or: Was Nietzsche right?

It is a characteristic of contemporary Western culture that we are constantly told that we live in the best of all possible worlds and that we are commanded to be happy. What if our modern obsession with happiness is a tragic delusion? What if we were not born to be happy at all? What if it would be by far the best for each one of us never to have been born? Is there more to life than being happy? The gloomy, paradoxical notion that it would be by far the best for us not to be born played a crucial role in the daring, and explicitly anti-modernist, visions of pre-Platonic Greek culture advanced in the late 19th century by Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche, but has been largely neglected ever since. In this lecture, we will look at the dark view of the world and man’s place in it that emerges from Greek pre-Platonic literature and thought and try to understand why modernity has always struggled to come to terms with it. 

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: RKC 103

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