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Books

Anti-Education by Friedrich Nietzsche

Daniel Telech reviews Nietzsche’s startling opinions on the aims of education.

In 1872, the same year that witnessed the publication of his first book The Birth of Tragedy, a twenty-seven year old Friedrich Nietzsche gave a series of five public lectures on the aims of education at Basel’s city museum. The aspiration of these lectures was to expose some corrosive tendencies he saw in German educational institutions, and more importantly, to chart a new direction worthy of such institutions.

In addition to constituting a valuable source for Nietzsche’s early views on culture, the lectures are notable for their experimental style. Nietzsche’s view is presented largely in the form of a fictionalized autobiographical dialogue that he reports as having overheard while a student. Contributing to the mythic quality of the conversation is its taking place in the woods, where Nietzsche and his friends have ventured for a pilgrimage of self-cultivation.

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