first time I listened to this podcast in 2017. Im so so glad its still going. one of my favorite channels on youtube by a landslide. hardly anything gets close to this level of presentation on philosophy, maybe only Michael Sugrue. thanks man.
Quite strange when I realise - not having dived into Nietzsche - I’ve been advocating, fighting & living the Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy all my 58 years… Dialectics were a thing with me before I knew anything about Hegel. Political economy a “given” until I got into historical materialism. All of this a little too inhuman until I realised modernist reductionism as a distraction, and my path towards meta-modernism. And all of this is NOT present in our general education - No surprises as to why. Thanks a lot for sharing! 😊
4 minutes in and I am already loving this episode. I have always avoided Nietzsche because it seemed too...intimidating. But now, at this juncture, I feel confident enough to tackle at least an introduction to his works. Lets do this!
Hot damn! I loved this!! You know its great philosophy when, as you are listening you cant help but draw links to other philisophical systems and see the connections, and yet come to a whole different conclusion! At times I was hearing the sophists in his ideas, and John Stuart Mill, and Hume (of course). I was considering if he thought Thoreau was one of these great figures, or if he kind of idolized Diogenes (not Laertes, but the cynic). Cynicism in general feels connected to this. Ugh! I want to listen again with my notebook handy so thay I can write down all the connections I can think of! So good. Never thought I would enjoy Nietzsche, but here we are!
How intriguing. For the past 4 or 5 lectures, there seems to be a quiet change in the content and tone of these presentations--richer, fuller, more relevant to everyday life. (It's appreciated, BTW.)
Not to mention, the heavy-weight Machismo King of The Machismonauts, based of course, on the famous quote: “I’m the Machismo King… I can do anything.” - Nietzsche
30:10 Absolutely ridiculous! Legislating new values, which Nietzsche only grants to a few "superior" individuals, is the supreme kind of (meh!) "authoritarianism".
Nietzsche contents was what introduced me to your podcast, glad to hear it back again, the other philosophers especially the political one are nothing compared to the existentialists.
I couldn't recommend it more strongly. I would begin with his first published work when he was young. Second to that, I would recommend a biography. Nietzsche as an individual life overcame so many personal tragedies and traumas that reading his work in that context and that knowledge leaves one with a genuine sense of credibility and humility, even awe. Walks like he talks. Nietzsche gained a lot of traction with artists and there are many reasons for that-- Anyway, noneofmybusiness but Nietzsche is Nietzsche and it was an extraordinary life of an exceptional writer.
Neitzsche is, at best , a historian of philosophy. He views the world though his rear-view mirror, and is so enamored of what he sees there, navigates entirely by it. It's as if his front windshield is opaque. His ideas are therefore most useful to those who would benefit by returning to the amoral days when power and rigid hierarchy were in full control. Today, the "strong" person is the rich person. In most cases, their only interest is in preserving and expanding their wealth, already far in excess of what any human being needs. They care little about how their wealth is acquired, much to the detriment of a healthy society. Their investments have led to an increasingly mechanized and digitized society, one in which the essential value of human communication has been greatly diminished. But their wealth gives them power, and according to Nietzsche, that is the supreme value. One quote that you will NOT find in Nietzsche is "power corrupts". Which it does. One quote that you will find is this: "compassion I recognized as more dangerous than any vice' ('Will to Power' : 54)". With quotes like this, rather than being a philosopher, I regard him as a cruel and crazy person, who unfortunately for the world, was also quite articulate.
For Nietzsche, power goes beyond material wealth. He didn't say people should not be compassionate, but that they should not be treated as virtues or things in themselves because thats not how we really view compassion deep down. "Now, the question of nutrition is a very different matter to me; on that the 'salvation of mankind is truly dependent, much more so than on some theological musing. For • For practical purposes we could put it like this: How precisely must you feed yourself to attain your maximum power, a truly enlightened virtue, a virtue free of moral input?"
Dionysus vs idealism. This was the best eye opening lecture, "philosophy with a hammer", on Nietzsche for me. Problems with Socrates/Plato, removing the Dionysus element of life and the creation of a "true world", world of "forms". Rationality erroneously connected with idealism and the abstract good vs evil. Optimism of enlightenment may be naive, geneology of egalitarianism traced back to Socrates. Egalitarianism a system for the weak that leads to more herd mentality, because the weak have to band together against the strong. To aim for only comfort is life denying. What is the morality of the strong? Face the world authentically. "There was only one Christian and he died on the cross."
Well explained as always. Easier to understand how his words can be twisted into ideas that were he to hear what has been done with his work, he'd tear his hair out
Thank you for your work! I know it's a bit out of your usual profile, but would you consider doing an episode on Zapffe sometime? I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on The Last Messiah, or his big work On the Tragic which got it's first English translation just this year.
@markoslavicek well the reason I brought it up was because he mentioned that the Pre-Socratic philosophers didn't believe in that sort of thing and it wasn't until Socrates came around that the idea of a True objective world exists somewhere out there...
The dialectic of "ideal" vs. "real" strikes me as originating more in language then in the physical world. I wonder what Pinker might have to say in the topic... Also, I imagine Neitzch must not have enjoyed music - most symphonic instruments are dialectic in nature, requiring the tension of the string being pulled in two directions for the music to be possible.
“Only ONE true Christian has ever existed: The guy who died on the cross.” Great context to comprehend Jesus’ teaching regarding ‘true religion’, and when James’ constituency wrote ‘it is (only, solely) caring for widows and orphans’.
I haven't seen a thing or concept pop around me as much as I have around Nietzsche.. Like as soon as I started reading his books he's suddenly appearing in the games, videos, and podcasts I encounter. I'm not a superstitious guy in the least but I'm getting real Jung vibes with all this 'synchronicity'.
You’ve already done like 5 or more 👀 WHOLE episodes on Mister Nietzsche and only 1 or 2 measly ones on Schopenhauer. Harrumph! 🤨🧐 “Why”?… I ask. Do at least one on more on Schopenhauer in order to re-balance the cosmic scale please. Thx
At 35:09 : “His point is, we need great people not living in denial of that voice inside of them.” But if Nietzsche didn’t think there was such a thing as an authentic self (also mentioned on this channel when discussing Zizek) what is this voice inside of them? Nietzsche wrote people are a collection of instincts and drives, right? But how to get from that to a voice inside of them saying how to live their lives?
34:54 it is very obvious to anyone who studies the difference between earlier and later Nietzsche that his mind did not, in fact, go in one clean break. While some of his deepest insights came later, so did some of his most sociopathic moments. His sanity was definitely waning well before he succumbed to whatever he ultimately succumbed to.
1) Somehow Nietzsche liked one way more than another - and denied that privilege to anyone else, as they are part of a herd. Well, so what? Perhaps straying away for the sake of it is just the opposite of pragmatic? 2) When I imagine a lion on a savannah, I see quite a bit of comfort and laziness, not necessarily an animal doing workouts just to get more tired and have more muscle volume. 3) And if a society lets someone exercise all the power he may desire or amass, this may well mean little power to share for those weaker. This is what authoritarianism boils down to - oopsie. 4) Or else, why would authoritarianism be "wrong"? Meh, that's herd thinking, right? Obviously, nothing should stop the better of us spread to infinity, riiiiight? A geopolitical catastrophy like WW2 may ultimately be just in the eye of the beholder. Some uber-Nietzscheans may see it as a splendid Dionisian spectacle, cause why not. Even if some fans claim Mr N. would not be among them for some reason. The only merit I see in that baroquish writer is he having pointed out that all those people before may not have seen good and evil as merely concepts and not some form of transcendent being. Good point there. Yet there is no good argument given for blowing this thing the hell up. These concepts have made sense because comfort and harmony is what helps people restore their power levels and live a happier life than a Macbeth figure. That assumption was a good intuition to have. And still is. Let's call it that and just stop mixing mr N with politics, the times are fun enough already.
There is a common misconception that Nietzsche is giving us some 'rules for life' or trying to enforce his world views, values, political ideologies, etc. In fact, as a true perspectivist, he isn't trying to impose anything on anyone, and if there is some way that he prefers over the other, then this is his personal thing. He makes this very clear in Zarathustra and Twilight when he says he's not looking for followers. Above all, Nietzsche analyses and questions what we take for granted instead of coming up with new systems. He is trying to make people _think_ instead of giving them answers on a plate. This is why he often intentionally contradicts himself and doesn't give specific definitions on concepts like Übermensch. In the end, he emphasises that whatever we decide to do with our lives, we should do it for the right reasons, and this means out of strength rather than weakness. Being a sickly man all of his life, he understood the importance of health - not just pshysical but also mental and emotional one - quite well and is one of the very few things he genuinely insisted on. Anything goes but not everything stems from the same source. If a lion decides to chill throughout the day instead of hitting the gym first thing in the morning, then Nietzsche is perfectly fine by that, as long as the lion knows what he's doing, why he's doing it, and that his actions aren't the reflection of some inherited ideologies or cultural expectations.
@@markoslavicek Well, he was basically a columnist writer, not a philosopher, and not a self-help writer. Even if he doesn't literally advise the readers to do such and such, he uses quite a bit of rhetoric to simply ridicule the point of view he thinks is inferior. I guess, calling most of the western tradition a 'slave' way of thinking is quite a clickbait already. And making the concept of what he thinks is 'masterly' pretty vague, to the point of contradicting himself, is another trickster device. (And as for "not looking for followers", well, what a pretentious thing to claim. Not sure if any of the core philosophers ever felt the urge to say such a thing). There are no lions at the gym. Too often people seek power not for the sake of realizing their master potential and making the world a better place. They are simply doing it because there might be a stronger individual out there. Out of fear of the loss of position and an immediate rejection actually, as there are no silver medals out there. So in fact that lion at the gym would most likely not be the lion king. Sure, there also exists striving just for the sake of growth. Yet I wouldn't say it comes with suffering, if not as a way to overcome it and be relaxed in whatever one strives for. The master at the gym figure is quite an attractive self-image to adopt for an actual anxiety-ridden unhappy loser though. This might be the reason why Nietzsche might want the society to change to accommodate to the master ways, even though by definition a Nietzschean master doesn't really need any support from others. A delusional self-proclaimed one might though. And even more than that - he/she might need others to take the blame for his/her own failures.
The 'slave and master' opposition appeared in Hegel of course. Yet the ways in which Hegel and Nietzsche balance these two is pretty different. To me, there's a wee bit too much decor and propaganda in Nietzsche to seriously qualify as a philosophy. At best that's some provocative (and poisonous) food for thought.
I think nietzsche was taking a shortcut in explaining and simplifying the human condition. He simply says that man wants to increase his power. He cannot escape himself. Even when he wants truth. He wants power over truth. He is against the conception that truth itself increases power. He saysan does not know which changes he experiences or which states will increase or decrease his power. The best way to know is to try all states. Imperically that is the best way to find power. He is distrustful of anyone who claims to found the method to increase power
Rather critical of Nietzches self-actualized individuation apart from all societies norms as some exclusive moral elitism, tho Im sure there is already plenty future criticisms that you may already covered or perhaps in future will... But its also ironically funny as well just how many current day Manosphere types heavily invoke Nietzche and proclaim a superficial Existentialism/self-empowerment, if only to reign moral high ground over "other sheeple" (seen in your vid on perhaps Zizek's post-modern ideology of difference) Most ironic then is so many Nietzhche fans would by definition be "slaves" through his own mentality
Every time I m hearing that Nietzsche was against a society that tries to minimise suffering Im thinking wĥat world did he live in? Where or when was this too equal society? Maybe he spend too much time in his head and not the real world? The world has a lot of problems but being too safe, equal or comfortable is not one of these
What set of circumstances represent comfort? What set of circumstances represent tribulation or suffering? You hear stories of people buying million dollar yachts then being miserable when their neighbours bought 10 million dollar ones. And of people choosing to sleep on beds of nails because they are comfortable and good for posture. I watched a youtube video where they showed a wall hanging of the buddhist wheel of existence. In each of the 5 realms there are buddhas. It doesn't really matter where you end up in life if you treat triumph and disaster as both imposters just the same. That's Nirvana. Everyone is different, but everyone can also better themselves and are worthy of respect, but not necessarily deference. Coming up with new ideas is hard, so why not just take up the ideas of great thinkers that resonate? How should 'diamonds in the rough' best be found? Who decides what such criteria should be? That notion also seems to be a product of slave morality to me. Don't go out to find someone to believe in. Believe in yourself! Buddhists don't believe in the Buddha. They just think he had good ideas.
The very last philosopher who should be advising others on how to engage more fully with life is--that's right!--Nietzsche. Best just--like Marcuse or Zizek --to criticize from a healthy distance 😉.
Would a society built on the finding optimal pain and pleasure fit in Nietzsche 's view? By getting too much pain and you are weak and can't survive. Too much of pain and your can't handle it and die. Too little pleasure won't motivate you to do anything. And too much will make you weak because you can't live properly without it. The optimal of both would get people motivated in doing things and get people to grow mentally and physically.And getting school to find out what young people are great at and have them specialize in that instead of being great at many things and given they are taught critical thinking skills to finding solutions to problems and stuff. What does you think about this?
What happens to society in Nietzsche's philosophy, where the goal of life is self-realisation? In many ways, we are now living in Nietzsche's world, or perhaps a parody of his world, with a growing and increasingly meaningless individualism being mirrored by various parodies of the Ubermensch at the political level or in "free" societies by the "actual powerful people behind the scenes", as you put it, Steven. But if everyone is busy self-realising, as we're now all told we should be doing, what happens to the ordinary functions of life where the mediocre majority actually live? Nietzsche, it seems to me, didn't care to think through the implications of his philosophy, and in that sense he was a fundamentally irresponsible thinker. But I guess the ossification of the bourgeoisie in his time made him necessary. His sick society (cf. Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain) would be shaken up in the years to come, as the types of "rare" people to whom he was appealing found their voice in various appalling ways. Anyone who wants to think through the implications he doesn't take the time to care about should go to the essay on Nietzsche in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, and particularly the last few pages. Russell sets up an imagined scene before the Almighty, where first Buddha and then Nietzsche appeal to the supreme being with their vision of how we should live. Russell clearly comes down on the side of Buddha, for both temperamental reasons and also because he was writing the essay in 1943, at the point during the Second World War where it seemed that things were about to turn against the Nazis. Russell saw the world which had come about through the twisted ideologies of his age as being very like the one Nietzsche had tried to will into being from the standpoint of the ossified comforts of the late 19th century. Reading Nietzsche, though his rhetoric is powerful and his critique important, he seems to me to be motivated fundamentally by personal frustration, by resentment, by contempt, ultimately by self-contempt.
So zizek heard nietzsche complaining about projecting christian values onto philosophical works and reaffirmed him by publishing a book called Christian Atheism(? Could a balance between Apollo and Dionysus be the only way a human being can exist?, if we tended too hard into Apollo, reason and certainty, being completely defined, being completely circumscribed by a formula, then we wouldnt really be, we would be basically inert matter, i think its the same struggle between Thanatos and Eros, the freudian death drive of ceasing to act and just going back to being a thing; Dionysus on the other hand being only possibility, complete uncertainty, undefined and therefore non existing in time or space just the potential. I always thought about something similar when pondering about true love, loving someone unconditionally despite any action that person did or any change that person could suffer wouldnt be true love, as one would not be loving that person, since any change in personality could occur but we would still love them unconditionally, meaning we could be loving a completely different person, on the other hand changing our mind at the slightest change (something that will undoubtedly happen considering we are human beings) and then looking for someone else would also be unreasonable, we would simply keep going from a person to another. If change is the only constant thing, then something that exist only in potential wont ever be, circumstances will keep changing and that potential wont ever find its niche, and something thats set on stone would only cease to "be" as it would be the only thing not changing. Considering that as human beings we exist in a middle point between Apollo and Dionysus, wouldnt either strive for moral idealism or just burden ourselves with the realization that existence is all that it is, just be an stylistic option?, if in an era where Apollo is king, where science and reason act as god and determine everything, if we just choose to go straight ahead and ignore everything else we would inevitably crash everything has been determined, all pieces are in place so there is no more puzzle to play with (at least virtually) we tend to approach our own death by over-determination, the death drive, or Thanatos; by getting to a standstill (i guess thats why Mark Fisher talks about time "slowing down" as we all fight for the little puzzle pieces we still have access to). Nietzsche complaining about Socrates doesnt really nail the problem (unless well, you want to actually believe in determinism), striving for a ideal moral truth is not really being rational but being actually irrational , chasing something you will never reach, thats possibility, thats uncertainty, and faith in the unknown that pushes us forward, the idea of the world of forms may be dumb, but only if you take it literally, otherwise is the unreachable, the undefinable, the perfect excuse for a tendency towards Dionysus. Maybe postmodern philosophy has gone too far into the Dionysus side, it deconstructed faster that we could build, it didnt give people the time to ponder the implications of its ideas, let them come to terms with the potential new set of circumstances it created for us, how would most people make sense of something thats too distanced from their conception of reality and the tools, symbols and narratives to incorporate them?, now we over-rely on science to explain everything, with its virtues, but also with its limitations, and the implications of having a mercy-less dictator as goddess reason. The dumb ways people live the idea of the ubermensch may be the perfect example of giving a deconstructed ideal that doesnt correspond with the physical and mental conditions of most people, as being an ubermensch is not something one identifies with but something one could only aspire to be. Could although the ubermensch just be an individual calibration of the dichotomy between Apollo and Dionysus, a man thats constantly being defined by the uncertainty and the unknown, and the intrinsic pain or discomfort it causes yet coming back before madness or insanity sink in, its the penance of the individual in the face of uncertainty, the original sin of existence, expressed in a way that pretends it could exist and work sociologically, not only that it would be naturally and systematically created by reality, a man that tends towards discomfort; but also that the individual balance that this tendency creates (one that defines the subject by the limit of its knowledge or maturity, having on the other side of that limit the complete uncertainty or unknown) would work for the betterment of a cohesive social structure, thinking that the herd mentality is not created systematically by the very physical limitations of our minds and communication. Isnt the ubermensch in this sense just an ideal to strive for thats more or less detached from the immediate reality of things but that pretends to exert its influence as a social and political idea for the organization of societies, just as any other philosophical ideals that Nietzsche criticized?
And well, if Jesus and other strong characters have shone through, that's because strong individuals don't need more support than those weaker than them, right? They have the power and they achieve what they wanted to achieve. So where is a problem?
If morality isn't teachable, what is the job of a parent? Interesting that Nietzsche never was a parent, so did not come slap bang up against the everyday implications of his philosophy. Of course, a Christian's morality is not the same as a humanist's, but it is still a morality, whether based on reason or its opposite. We seek to shape the world we live in, but by definition we are also shaped by it. That does not make us mediocre or weak, just human, all too human.
Well Mr. West, I hate this one. I hate how you've steel-manned Neitzch and made his ideas sane and meaningful. I hate how you've taken away the arch-villain of my religious youth and replaced him with deep questions. Joking aside - I have to think about this for a while.
36:15 this is an oversimplification, of which Mr. This! is most definitely aware and is not doing fallaciously. However, to (even implicitly) suggest that Nietzsche’s work cannot be extrapolated into highly problematic and violent political views is as blatantly wrong as seeing outright authoritarianism in his words.
The best and most comprehensive Nietzsche interpretation I have ever encountered.
Great episode! And yes, more Nietzsche would be nice! :)
first time I listened to this podcast in 2017. Im so so glad its still going. one of my favorite channels on youtube by a landslide. hardly anything gets close to this level of presentation on philosophy, maybe only Michael Sugrue. thanks man.
No one makes me like philosophy more than Steven West, doing Nietzsche.
Thank you! And yes, more Nietzsche.
Best philosophy channel out there!
My Sunday funday just got better! I am grabbing an IPA!
I don't have a magnifying glass, so I'm using my binoculars backwards around the house.
Hi Steven,
Your commentary here got rid of some confusion I've harbored about this stuff with a sense of shame since high school. Thanks
Quite strange when I realise - not having dived into Nietzsche - I’ve been advocating, fighting & living the Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy all my 58 years…
Dialectics were a thing with me before I knew anything about Hegel. Political economy a “given” until I got into historical materialism. All of this a little too inhuman until I realised modernist reductionism as a distraction, and my path towards meta-modernism.
And all of this is NOT present in our general education - No surprises as to why.
Thanks a lot for sharing! 😊
My favorite podcast on the internet!
4 minutes in and I am already loving this episode. I have always avoided Nietzsche because it seemed too...intimidating. But now, at this juncture, I feel confident enough to tackle at least an introduction to his works.
Lets do this!
17:39 (looks around) holy cannoli.....
Hot damn! I loved this!!
You know its great philosophy when, as you are listening you cant help but draw links to other philisophical systems and see the connections, and yet come to a whole different conclusion!
At times I was hearing the sophists in his ideas, and John Stuart Mill, and Hume (of course). I was considering if he thought Thoreau was one of these great figures, or if he kind of idolized Diogenes (not Laertes, but the cynic). Cynicism in general feels connected to this.
Ugh! I want to listen again with my notebook handy so thay I can write down all the connections I can think of! So good. Never thought I would enjoy Nietzsche, but here we are!
How intriguing. For the past 4 or 5 lectures, there seems to be a quiet change in the content and tone of these presentations--richer, fuller, more relevant to everyday life. (It's appreciated, BTW.)
My favourite philosopher, thanks Steven. ( I listen on Spotify)
Yes! More Nietzsche! And thank you for what you do!
Ah Nietzsche, the OG self-help guru…
Not to mention, the heavy-weight Machismo King of The Machismonauts, based of course, on the famous quote:
“I’m the Machismo King… I can do anything.” - Nietzsche
30:10 Absolutely ridiculous! Legislating new values, which Nietzsche only grants to a few "superior" individuals, is the supreme kind of (meh!) "authoritarianism".
Harrison Bergeron... just saying...
This was such a great and eye-opening episode. If we can get more Nietzsche episodes, it would be wonderful!
Nietzsche contents was what introduced me to your podcast, glad to hear it back again, the other philosophers especially the political one are nothing compared to the existentialists.
Very interesting episode. I've always intended reading Nietzsche. This just reinforces that intention. I'd like to hear more.
I couldn't recommend it more strongly.
I would begin with his first published work when he was young.
Second to that, I would recommend a biography.
Nietzsche as an individual life overcame so
many personal tragedies and traumas that reading
his work in that context and that knowledge
leaves one with a genuine sense of credibility and
humility, even awe. Walks like he talks.
Nietzsche gained a lot of traction with artists and there
are many reasons for that--
Anyway, noneofmybusiness but Nietzsche is Nietzsche and
it was an extraordinary life of an exceptional writer.
West has additional videos on Nietzsche in the
Philosophize This catalogue under the videos link
found on the home page.
I love it when the idols ring hollow
Thank you. 💯 agree with this .
Great video. And yes. I’d love to hear more Nietzsche.
great episode stephen , thank you as always
Neitzsche is, at best , a historian of philosophy. He views the world though his rear-view mirror, and is so enamored of what he sees there, navigates entirely by it. It's as if his front windshield is opaque. His ideas are therefore most useful to those who would benefit by returning to the amoral days when power and rigid hierarchy were in full control.
Today, the "strong" person is the rich person. In most cases, their only interest is in preserving and expanding their wealth, already far in excess of what any human being needs. They care little about how their wealth is acquired, much to the detriment of a healthy society. Their investments have led to an increasingly mechanized and digitized society, one in which the essential value of human communication has been greatly diminished. But their wealth gives them power, and according to Nietzsche, that is the supreme value. One quote that you will NOT find in Nietzsche is "power corrupts". Which it does.
One quote that you will find is this: "compassion I recognized as more dangerous than any vice' ('Will to Power' : 54)". With quotes like this, rather than being a philosopher, I regard him as a cruel and crazy person, who unfortunately for the world, was also quite articulate.
For Nietzsche, power goes beyond material wealth. He didn't say people should not be compassionate, but that they should not be treated as virtues or things in themselves because thats not how we really view compassion deep down.
"Now, the question of nutrition is a very different matter
to me; on that the 'salvation of mankind is truly dependent,
much more so than on some theological musing. For
• For practical
purposes we could put it like this: How precisely
must
you feed yourself to attain your maximum power, a truly
enlightened virtue, a virtue free of moral input?"
Dionysus vs idealism. This was the best eye opening lecture, "philosophy with a hammer", on Nietzsche for me.
Problems with Socrates/Plato, removing the Dionysus element of life and the creation of a "true world", world of "forms".
Rationality erroneously connected with idealism and the abstract good vs evil.
Optimism of enlightenment may be naive, geneology of egalitarianism traced back to Socrates.
Egalitarianism a system for the weak that leads to more herd mentality, because the weak have to band together against the strong.
To aim for only comfort is life denying. What is the morality of the strong? Face the world authentically. "There was only one Christian and he died on the cross."
Inspiring! I hope that works both ways.
Well explained as always. Easier to understand how his words can be twisted into ideas that were he to hear what has been done with his work, he'd tear his hair out
Please do more Nietzsche!!
Thank you for your work! I know it's a bit out of your usual profile, but would you consider doing an episode on Zapffe sometime? I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on The Last Messiah, or his big work On the Tragic which got it's first English translation just this year.
Yeah, it was very interesting and if you have some more of this from Nietzche, I'm up for it!
Didn't some of the Pre-Socratic philosophers place a lot of emphasis on the beyond, objective and universal world, such as Parmenides?
Indeed, Eleatics kind of paved the way for Plato's project.
@markoslavicek well the reason I brought it up was because he mentioned that the Pre-Socratic philosophers didn't believe in that sort of thing and it wasn't until Socrates came around that the idea of a True objective world exists somewhere out there...
The dialectic of "ideal" vs. "real" strikes me as originating more in language then in the physical world. I wonder what Pinker might have to say in the topic...
Also, I imagine Neitzch must not have enjoyed music - most symphonic instruments are dialectic in nature, requiring the tension of the string being pulled in two directions for the music to be possible.
It's Nietzsche! And he got a folding chair!
“Only ONE true Christian has ever existed: The guy who died on the cross.” Great context to comprehend Jesus’ teaching regarding ‘true religion’, and when James’ constituency wrote ‘it is (only, solely) caring for widows and orphans’.
I haven't seen a thing or concept pop around me as much as I have around Nietzsche.. Like as soon as I started reading his books he's suddenly appearing in the games, videos, and podcasts I encounter.
I'm not a superstitious guy in the least but I'm getting real Jung vibes with all this 'synchronicity'.
You’ve already done like 5 or more 👀 WHOLE episodes on Mister Nietzsche and only 1 or 2 measly ones on Schopenhauer. Harrumph! 🤨🧐
“Why”?… I ask. Do at least one on more on Schopenhauer in order to re-balance the cosmic scale please. Thx
recently finished gay science and started twilight of the idols. he is serving as a good companion through the day
Nice...
18:50 he suggests this outright in multiple places. The dogwhistle that is his favorite is that of “higher types”
At 35:09 : “His point is, we need great people not living in denial of that voice inside of them.” But if Nietzsche didn’t think there was such a thing as an authentic self (also mentioned on this channel when discussing Zizek) what is this voice inside of them? Nietzsche wrote people are a collection of instincts and drives, right? But how to get from that to a voice inside of them saying how to live their lives?
This is like an undergraduate Philosophy degree in 30 minutes
34:54 it is very obvious to anyone who studies the difference between earlier and later Nietzsche that his mind did not, in fact, go in one clean break. While some of his deepest insights came later, so did some of his most sociopathic moments. His sanity was definitely waning well before he succumbed to whatever he ultimately succumbed to.
Comfort - suffering and related dynamics that you describe here sounds a lot like... dialectics. But Nietzsche was critical of Hegel and dialectics?
1) Somehow Nietzsche liked one way more than another - and denied that privilege to anyone else, as they are part of a herd. Well, so what? Perhaps straying away for the sake of it is just the opposite of pragmatic?
2) When I imagine a lion on a savannah, I see quite a bit of comfort and laziness, not necessarily an animal doing workouts just to get more tired and have more muscle volume.
3) And if a society lets someone exercise all the power he may desire or amass, this may well mean little power to share for those weaker. This is what authoritarianism boils down to - oopsie.
4) Or else, why would authoritarianism be "wrong"? Meh, that's herd thinking, right? Obviously, nothing should stop the better of us spread to infinity, riiiiight?
A geopolitical catastrophy like WW2 may ultimately be just in the eye of the beholder. Some uber-Nietzscheans may see it as a splendid Dionisian spectacle, cause why not. Even if some fans claim Mr N. would not be among them for some reason.
The only merit I see in that baroquish writer is he having pointed out that all those people before may not have seen good and evil as merely concepts and not some form of transcendent being. Good point there.
Yet there is no good argument given for blowing this thing the hell up. These concepts have made sense because comfort and harmony is what helps people restore their power levels and live a happier life than a Macbeth figure.
That assumption was a good intuition to have. And still is. Let's call it that and just stop mixing mr N with politics, the times are fun enough already.
There is a common misconception that Nietzsche is giving us some 'rules for life' or trying to enforce his world views, values, political ideologies, etc. In fact, as a true perspectivist, he isn't trying to impose anything on anyone, and if there is some way that he prefers over the other, then this is his personal thing. He makes this very clear in Zarathustra and Twilight when he says he's not looking for followers. Above all, Nietzsche analyses and questions what we take for granted instead of coming up with new systems. He is trying to make people _think_ instead of giving them answers on a plate. This is why he often intentionally contradicts himself and doesn't give specific definitions on concepts like Übermensch. In the end, he emphasises that whatever we decide to do with our lives, we should do it for the right reasons, and this means out of strength rather than weakness. Being a sickly man all of his life, he understood the importance of health - not just pshysical but also mental and emotional one - quite well and is one of the very few things he genuinely insisted on. Anything goes but not everything stems from the same source. If a lion decides to chill throughout the day instead of hitting the gym first thing in the morning, then Nietzsche is perfectly fine by that, as long as the lion knows what he's doing, why he's doing it, and that his actions aren't the reflection of some inherited ideologies or cultural expectations.
@@markoslavicek Well, he was basically a columnist writer, not a philosopher, and not a self-help writer. Even if he doesn't literally advise the readers to do such and such, he uses quite a bit of rhetoric to simply ridicule the point of view he thinks is inferior.
I guess, calling most of the western tradition a 'slave' way of thinking is quite a clickbait already. And making the concept of what he thinks is 'masterly' pretty vague, to the point of contradicting himself, is another trickster device. (And as for "not looking for followers", well, what a pretentious thing to claim. Not sure if any of the core philosophers ever felt the urge to say such a thing).
There are no lions at the gym. Too often people seek power not for the sake of realizing their master potential and making the world a better place. They are simply doing it because there might be a stronger individual out there. Out of fear of the loss of position and an immediate rejection actually, as there are no silver medals out there. So in fact that lion at the gym would most likely not be the lion king.
Sure, there also exists striving just for the sake of growth. Yet I wouldn't say it comes with suffering, if not as a way to overcome it and be relaxed in whatever one strives for.
The master at the gym figure is quite an attractive self-image to adopt for an actual anxiety-ridden unhappy loser though.
This might be the reason why Nietzsche might want the society to change to accommodate to the master ways, even though by definition a Nietzschean master doesn't really need any support from others. A delusional self-proclaimed one might though. And even more than that - he/she might need others to take the blame for his/her own failures.
The 'slave and master' opposition appeared in Hegel of course. Yet the ways in which Hegel and Nietzsche balance these two is pretty different.
To me, there's a wee bit too much decor and propaganda in Nietzsche to seriously qualify as a philosophy. At best that's some provocative (and poisonous) food for thought.
I think nietzsche was taking a shortcut in explaining and simplifying the human condition. He simply says that man wants to increase his power. He cannot escape himself. Even when he wants truth. He wants power over truth. He is against the conception that truth itself increases power. He saysan does not know which changes he experiences or which states will increase or decrease his power. The best way to know is to try all states. Imperically that is the best way to find power. He is distrustful of anyone who claims to found the method to increase power
This man is an anarchist. ❤
Yeah, Nietzsche thought that everyone should overcome their limitations. I don't remember finding his argument why it should be so.
Rather critical of Nietzches self-actualized individuation apart from all societies norms as some exclusive moral elitism, tho Im sure there is already plenty future criticisms that you may already covered or perhaps in future will...
But its also ironically funny as well just how many current day Manosphere types heavily invoke Nietzche and proclaim a superficial Existentialism/self-empowerment, if only to reign moral high ground over "other sheeple" (seen in your vid on perhaps Zizek's post-modern ideology of difference)
Most ironic then is so many Nietzhche fans would by definition be "slaves" through his own mentality
finally some good fucking food
That’s food having sexual intercourse right.
I’ve tried to imagine it but just get an error message
Every time I m hearing that Nietzsche was against a society that tries to minimise suffering Im thinking wĥat world did he live in? Where or when was this too equal society? Maybe he spend too much time in his head and not the real world? The world has a lot of problems but being too safe, equal or comfortable is not one of these
What set of circumstances represent comfort? What set of circumstances represent tribulation or suffering? You hear stories of people buying million dollar yachts then being miserable when their neighbours bought 10 million dollar ones. And of people choosing to sleep on beds of nails because they are comfortable and good for posture. I watched a youtube video where they showed a wall hanging of the buddhist wheel of existence. In each of the 5 realms there are buddhas. It doesn't really matter where you end up in life if you treat triumph and disaster as both imposters just the same. That's Nirvana. Everyone is different, but everyone can also better themselves and are worthy of respect, but not necessarily deference.
Coming up with new ideas is hard, so why not just take up the ideas of great thinkers that resonate?
How should 'diamonds in the rough' best be found? Who decides what such criteria should be? That notion also seems to be a product of slave morality to me. Don't go out to find someone to believe in. Believe in yourself! Buddhists don't believe in the Buddha. They just think he had good ideas.
The very last philosopher who should be advising others on how to engage more fully with life is--that's right!--Nietzsche. Best just--like Marcuse or Zizek --to criticize from a healthy distance 😉.
Would a society built on the finding optimal pain and pleasure fit in Nietzsche 's view? By getting too much pain and you are weak and can't survive. Too much of pain and your can't handle it and die. Too little pleasure won't motivate you to do anything. And too much will make you weak because you can't live properly without it. The optimal of both would get people motivated in doing things and get people to grow mentally and physically.And getting school to find out what young people are great at and have them specialize in that instead of being great at many things and given they are taught critical thinking skills to finding solutions to problems and stuff. What does you think about this?
What happens to society in Nietzsche's philosophy, where the goal of life is self-realisation? In many ways, we are now living in Nietzsche's world, or perhaps a parody of his world, with a growing and increasingly meaningless individualism being mirrored by various parodies of the Ubermensch at the political level or in "free" societies by the "actual powerful people behind the scenes", as you put it, Steven. But if everyone is busy self-realising, as we're now all told we should be doing, what happens to the ordinary functions of life where the mediocre majority actually live? Nietzsche, it seems to me, didn't care to think through the implications of his philosophy, and in that sense he was a fundamentally irresponsible thinker. But I guess the ossification of the bourgeoisie in his time made him necessary. His sick society (cf. Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain) would be shaken up in the years to come, as the types of "rare" people to whom he was appealing found their voice in various appalling ways. Anyone who wants to think through the implications he doesn't take the time to care about should go to the essay on Nietzsche in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, and particularly the last few pages. Russell sets up an imagined scene before the Almighty, where first Buddha and then Nietzsche appeal to the supreme being with their vision of how we should live. Russell clearly comes down on the side of Buddha, for both temperamental reasons and also because he was writing the essay in 1943, at the point during the Second World War where it seemed that things were about to turn against the Nazis. Russell saw the world which had come about through the twisted ideologies of his age as being very like the one Nietzsche had tried to will into being from the standpoint of the ossified comforts of the late 19th century. Reading Nietzsche, though his rhetoric is powerful and his critique important, he seems to me to be motivated fundamentally by personal frustration, by resentment, by contempt, ultimately by self-contempt.
So zizek heard nietzsche complaining about projecting christian values onto philosophical works and reaffirmed him by publishing a book called Christian Atheism(?
Could a balance between Apollo and Dionysus be the only way a human being can exist?, if we tended too hard into Apollo, reason and certainty, being completely defined, being completely circumscribed by a formula, then we wouldnt really be, we would be basically inert matter, i think its the same struggle between Thanatos and Eros, the freudian death drive of ceasing to act and just going back to being a thing; Dionysus on the other hand being only possibility, complete uncertainty, undefined and therefore non existing in time or space just the potential.
I always thought about something similar when pondering about true love, loving someone unconditionally despite any action that person did or any change that person could suffer wouldnt be true love, as one would not be loving that person, since any change in personality could occur but we would still love them unconditionally, meaning we could be loving a completely different person, on the other hand changing our mind at the slightest change (something that will undoubtedly happen considering we are human beings) and then looking for someone else would also be unreasonable, we would simply keep going from a person to another.
If change is the only constant thing, then something that exist only in potential wont ever be, circumstances will keep changing and that potential wont ever find its niche, and something thats set on stone would only cease to "be" as it would be the only thing not changing.
Considering that as human beings we exist in a middle point between Apollo and Dionysus, wouldnt either strive for moral idealism or just burden ourselves with the realization that existence is all that it is, just be an stylistic option?, if in an era where Apollo is king, where science and reason act as god and determine everything, if we just choose to go straight ahead and ignore everything else we would inevitably crash everything has been determined, all pieces are in place so there is no more puzzle to play with (at least virtually) we tend to approach our own death by over-determination, the death drive, or Thanatos; by getting to a standstill (i guess thats why Mark Fisher talks about time "slowing down" as we all fight for the little puzzle pieces we still have access to).
Nietzsche complaining about Socrates doesnt really nail the problem (unless well, you want to actually believe in determinism), striving for a ideal moral truth is not really being rational but being actually irrational , chasing something you will never reach, thats possibility, thats uncertainty, and faith in the unknown that pushes us forward, the idea of the world of forms may be dumb, but only if you take it literally, otherwise is the unreachable, the undefinable, the perfect excuse for a tendency towards Dionysus.
Maybe postmodern philosophy has gone too far into the Dionysus side, it deconstructed faster that we could build, it didnt give people the time to ponder the implications of its ideas, let them come to terms with the potential new set of circumstances it created for us, how would most people make sense of something thats too distanced from their conception of reality and the tools, symbols and narratives to incorporate them?, now we over-rely on science to explain everything, with its virtues, but also with its limitations, and the implications of having a mercy-less dictator as goddess reason.
The dumb ways people live the idea of the ubermensch may be the perfect example of giving a deconstructed ideal that doesnt correspond with the physical and mental conditions of most people, as being an ubermensch is not something one identifies with but something one could only aspire to be.
Could although the ubermensch just be an individual calibration of the dichotomy between Apollo and Dionysus, a man thats constantly being defined by the uncertainty and the unknown, and the intrinsic pain or discomfort it causes yet coming back before madness or insanity sink in, its the penance of the individual in the face of uncertainty, the original sin of existence, expressed in a way that pretends it could exist and work sociologically, not only that it would be naturally and systematically created by reality, a man that tends towards discomfort; but also that the individual balance that this tendency creates (one that defines the subject by the limit of its knowledge or maturity, having on the other side of that limit the complete uncertainty or unknown) would work for the betterment of a cohesive social structure, thinking that the herd mentality is not created systematically by the very physical limitations of our minds and communication. Isnt the ubermensch in this sense just an ideal to strive for thats more or less detached from the immediate reality of things but that pretends to exert its influence as a social and political idea for the organization of societies, just as any other philosophical ideals that Nietzsche criticized?
And well, if Jesus and other strong characters have shone through, that's because strong individuals don't need more support than those weaker than them, right? They have the power and they achieve what they wanted to achieve.
So where is a problem?
Socrates/plato
If morality isn't teachable, what is the job of a parent? Interesting that Nietzsche never was a parent, so did not come slap bang up against the everyday implications of his philosophy. Of course, a Christian's morality is not the same as a humanist's, but it is still a morality, whether based on reason or its opposite. We seek to shape the world we live in, but by definition we are also shaped by it. That does not make us mediocre or weak, just human, all too human.
The Ubermench sounds pretty weak.
I don't know man. The more I know about this Nietzsche, It feels more like philosophising by an eloquent nincompoop than philosophising by hammer.
"Nietzche hates christianity, with the whole 'god is dead' thing."
Im gonna be real. That is not even close to my interpretation of that concept.
I have a horrible habit of pausing videos to write comments.
Nietzsche, Everyone's favorite proto-fascist.
More like biggest threat to commies
@@narendrasomawat5978 same difference
I dunno, Rousseau has a multipartisan fanbase, youd assume hed be liked more
Well Mr. West, I hate this one. I hate how you've steel-manned Neitzch and made his ideas sane and meaningful. I hate how you've taken away the arch-villain of my religious youth and replaced him with deep questions.
Joking aside - I have to think about this for a while.
36:15 this is an oversimplification, of which Mr. This! is most definitely aware and is not doing fallaciously. However, to (even implicitly) suggest that Nietzsche’s work cannot be extrapolated into highly problematic and violent political views is as blatantly wrong as seeing outright authoritarianism in his words.
25:44 and Napoleon