Friedrich Nietzsche saw the beginning of western philosophy as the birth of a cultural death-wish glorified in the suicide of Socrates. This course looks at Nietzsche’s portrait of Socrates in order to access his perception of ancient Greek philosophy, tragic poetry and culture. In so doing, the course will clarify Nietzsche’s attacks on Christianity and Modernity as sources of the nihilism he believed would promote the death-wish of “Socratism.” The course will also give some consideration to Nietzsche’s confrontation with nihilism in terms of his conceptions of the Will to Power, the Ubermensche, the Revaluation of all Values, the Master Race, and Eternal Recurrence.