Pedagogy is naturally teleological– its means, modes and reasons are explained in terms of the ends they aim to achieve. ” A UD education is guided by “transcendent standards of truth and excellence” which are themselves their own object. As of May 29, 2020, the mission statement dedicates its students to a lifelong pursuit of wisdom, truth and virtue.
When pedagogy becomes practice, when theory becomes an actual lesson plan, when a philosophy professor in the person of Socrates lectures before us, what is to be taught? Is it possible to teach virtue? Can the love of Wisdom be inculcated?
Can the student’s real commitment to Truth be tested in a lecture hall? If the Meno is consulted, the question seems to quickly become how we are to know teachers of virtue. UD’s answer seems to be source texts and real familiarity with the western canon.
And so freshmen read Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas. There exists a promise land beyond Phil. and Eth. It is populated by suspect figures. Hume, Kant, Descartes, Kierkegaard and of course Frederick Nietsche. No UD education, it would seem, is complete without the man of the mustache.
Truth, if it is knowable through natural means, remains itself regardless of source. Nietsche was undoubtedly a disturbed man. After his mental breakdown in 1889, he wrote letters signed ‘the crucified one.’
Nietsche is perpetually fashionable it seems. His prose was beautiful and he was a talented critic. Like G. K Chesterton, he was a newspaper man and like Chesterton, his work influenced the academic world and the masses.
The inverse of Chesterton, Nietzche received almost no critical acclaim during his lifetime and outrageous acclaim posthumously. The words “God is dead and we have killed him” are seared into our cultural consciousness.
As fashionable, as crazed and as perhaps unfortunate as he was, Nietzsche was unquestionably brilliant and can offer real insight into the truth of things if his work and criticism are well-sifted.
Nietszche, when afforded his proper place in the canon, well deserves it. Through reflection on and consideration of his work, the telos of the UD student may be fulfilled– wisdom, truth and virtue may utilize this most unlikely educator as conduit for their inculcation.