Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; Phone: (408) 924-5378 Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda

Reading: Conard, M.T. (2001). Thus Spake Bart: On Nietzsche and the virtues of being bad. In W. Irwin, M.T. Conard, and A. Skoble's The Simpsons and philosophy: The d'oh of Homer. Chicago: Open Court.

Note: These comments are not designed to "summarize" the reading. Rather, they are available to highlight key ideas that will emerge in our classroom discussion. As always, it's best to read the original text to gain full value from the course.

In his chapter, "Thus Spake Bart," (pp. 59-77), Conard proposes that Bart Simpson may reflect a Nietzschean ideal of morality in contrast to the more typical notion of morality illustrated by the character of Lisa. To argue his point, Conard articulates Nietzsche's distinction between Will and Representation, proposing that all objects in the world (and people, too) merely reflect a primal force called Will. Given a seemingly eternal separation of Will-as-Reality and Things-as-Representation, we confront the horror of incompleteness, a longing that can never be satisfied between things as they are and things as they appear. Living in a world of illusions, we seek the reality that always lies beyond our grasp.

How do we confront this horror? One may celebrate art as it propels us into emotions that nearly bridge the gap between reality and representation. Or we may ignore the awful truth of the world and indulge in fantasy. According to Nietzsche, we follow this second path when we adopt the ways of reason and morality, mind games that help us ignore reality. Ultimately, we may conclude as Nietzsche does that even the distinction between reality and representation is merely a word game, that action speaks louder than words.

An implication of this shift (reflected in Nietzsche's later works) is the assumption that our actions reflect no deeper reality than our freedom to create and recreate ourselves. Thus his famed notion of overman illustrates the celebration of those who "make themselves." In contrast, most people define themselves according to a slave morality in which they transform their subservience to stronger people, their weakness, into some kind of virtue.

Would Nietzsche approve of Bart? Conard concludes that he would not because Bart does not invent himself for his own purposes; he reacts to authority figures around him. Instead, Bart may be termed a nihilist, one who takes pleasure in chaos for the sake of chaos. A broader question remains, though. Would we wish that all people acted as "overmen," inventing themselves without respect for others, for society, for the common good?

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