In 1956, Jung wrote the essay entitled, "Past and Future" in German, but we know it in English as "The Undiscovered Self". Having witnessed the horror of the world wars, and the ongoing apocalyptic danger of the Cold War, Jung attempted to explain why it was that societies sometimes went mad. This is how Europe experienced the outbreak of The Great War: as mass insanity. Why would free people gravitate towards cult-like tyrannies? How could ordinarily moral and reasonable people perpetrate acts of unthinkable violence? And how could our constitutional democracies remain susceptible to these outbursts, if we are so committed to principles such as freedom and human dignity? For Jung, the only answer is self-knowledge, but that is the one thing that modern society is making impossible

Yukio Mishima (born Kimitake Hiraoka, 1925-1970) wrote dozens of stories, including famous works such as Confessions of a Mask, and Patriotism. He was considered for a Nobel Prize in literature about half a dozen times, through he never won it. His works were adapted into films, which received international acclaim. He wrote modern No plays which were performed all over the world, in Europe and America. He is known for his provocative style, his romanticization of death and of warrior culture, and for his political radicalism. Mishima desired to return Japan to a pre-WWII samurai culture, ruled under the absolute authority of a divine emperor – and yet, his writing incorporates influences not only from traditional Japanese literature, but from writers from the west: Rilke, Wilde, Batailles, Klossowski, and, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche. From the time he was 19, when he first picked up a copy of Birth of Tragedy, Mishima had a lifelong fascination with Nietzsche. In this episode, we consider the major philosophical ideas in his combination of confession and criticism, Sun and Steel: the unity of art and action, the corrosive nature of words, and necessity of a 'beautiful death' to truly affirm one's existence.

A summary of Nietzsche's teachings, examined by considering the parallel of Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche with how the modern person could adopt Nietzsche as a similar type of influence. I attempt to distill the central message of Nietzsche's philosophy, and explain how this interpretative framework helps elucidate new angles to many of his important ideas. This episode is my final word on Nietzsche's philosophy, considered in its totality, as the podcast transitions away from our focus on the primary sources in Nietzsche and into interpretations of Nietzsche and Nietzsche-adjacent material. A love letter to the fans and a last hurrah into exegesizing Nietzsche, incorporating topics from throughout the season and with callbacks to the earliest episodes. Celebrating three years of The Nietzsche Podcast as of this month!

Episode art: Maxfield Parish - Jason and His Teacher, Chiron the Centaur

Introduction to the politics of Nietzsche. In this episode, we give an unvarnished look at the aristocratic radicalism that forms up the foundation of Nietzsche's political philosophy. While many interpreters and commenters on Nietzsche have dealt with his radical politics  by ignoring it altogether, by regarding Nietzsche as anti-political, or by interpreting it all away, we will instead begin by taking a hard look at Nietzsche's politics and see if we can come to an understanding of why he held this perspective. As with all things Nietzsche, his political views begin with Hellenic Greece. What we discover, in the course of this examination, is that Nietzsche's political philosophy, antithetical to our modern morality though it may be, is intertwined with his broader philosophical ideas. In this episode, we will cover the concepts of the order of rank, and the pathos of distance - as well as the devilish metaphor that Nietzsche employs in order to describe the aristocratic social order: that of the Sipo Matador vine, a parasite that strangles the trees of the Brazilian rainforest so that it might ascend above the canopies and unfold its flowery crown. 

You asked me anything. I answered most of it. Season Three begins next week!

Nietzsche recapitulates and summarizes his positions, and provides us with a few relatively simple formulas for understanding the interaction of the two art-forces. He hopes for a rebirth of tragic art in Europe. We conclude with my distillation of the main philosophical concepts, the significance of which can be expanded beyond the work.

Here we find the idea of cultures as admixtures of the Apollinian, Dionysian, or Socratic approaches to life. The Socratic is distinguished from the Apollinian, and modern art and culture is assessed as theoretic parasitism on art. 

Socrates, having been introduced in the last chapter we studied in the previous section, appears now to threaten all art, with a worldview described as "the theoretic", which is fundamentally opposed to the tragic. The theoretical worldview is, by nature, optimistic, moralistic, and against all illusion and ignorance. Nietzsche first raises the prospect of "an artistic Socrates", and rails against the New Attic Comedy as a degenerated artform in comparison to Attic Tragedy.

Now we turn to the effect of Euripedes, and Nietzsche’s charge that this tragedian came under the influence of Socrates, and the new form of drama, New Attic Comedy, that followed.

Let’s talk about the evolution of the Attic Tragedy: from solo dithyrambic poet, to dithyrambic chorus, to chorus plus the ritualized portrayal of a masked Dionysus, to an entire tragedy performed on stage behind the “magic wall” of the chorus.

We continue our analysis of Birth of Tragedy, and enter one of the most byzantine sections of the text. Don’t worry, I shall be your Ariadne.

Today we cover the first three sections of Birth of Tragedy. Slow going, I know- but things will begin to move at a faster clip as we continue. In this episode the core concepts of the Apollinian and Dionysian art forces are explained, their relation to one another, and their origin in dreams and intoxication.

In the name of Lord Dionysus, it with great joy and solemnity that we commence this, the first of our Nietzschean bookclubs. This series will see me undertake an in-depth analysis, moving section-by-section, through Nietzsche’s first book: The Birth of Tragedy. In the first episode, we’ll look at Nietzsche’s masterful second preface, written in 1886 and attached to the beginning of the work. This episode will therefore serve as a sort of introduction to the text, contextualizing it within Nietzsche’s own understanding of his early text and how it laid the foundations for many of his later ideas.

In the aphorism, "Journey to Hades" in Human All Too Human Vol 2, Nietzsche lists eight thinkers who helped to shape his thought. Each of these eight is paired with another thinker, a choice which is intentional and intended to reveal something about each pair. These eight are: Epicurus and Montaigne; Goethe and Spinoza; Plato and Rousseau; Pascal and Schopenhauer. In this episode, we will examine each one of these pairs in order to determine what similarities and what differences Nietzsche is attempting to elucidate in counterposing them. In comprehending each of these pairs, we can come to a full understanding of the early development of Nietzsche's thought, and see the way in which he was in dialogue with the ancients. The method of this passage hints at the way in which all of us can orm a relationship to Nietzsche in a similar fashion. Episode art is Johannes Stradanus - Ulysses in Hades

This is the first conversation on the podcast between more than two people. Given that the episodes involving a dialogue are often the least popular compared to the lecture series, perhaps this simply shows that I have not learned my lesson and refuse to appease the audience gods. We discuss several quotations from Nietzsche during the Untimely Meditations period. The topic is culture - Nietzsche's view of culture and how it informs us about our situation today. We strayed into many other topics as well, too many to recount in the description here - including Mormonism, arguing online, insect behavior,  hyper-individualism, and much more. 

The final episode of season two. 

We discuss some of my favorite passages from Nietzsche, concerning the feeling of liberation one has upon finally and fully accepting the Nietzschean affirmative philosophy, and what this means for our future. Nietzsche urges us not to interpret him as giving us a definitive way of life to follow, but furthermore does not wish us to seek for a state of finality, rest, or utopia. The great experience of noontide is the perception that one is truly halfway between animal and that which is super-human, and that transformation into something greater is possible: that we can overcome our previous limitations that we believed once were set in stone. The episode concludes with a thank you to the fans, a teaser of what is to come in the podcast, and a reading of Nietzsche's Aftersong for Beyond Good and Evil, "From High Mountains."

Episode art: Zoroaster Clavis -- Alchemist Who Has Achieved Illumination

A synthesis of all ideas of Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy as we have discussed it this season. Join me as I dare to embark on the challenge of answering, on Nietzsche’s behalf, that age-old question… What is the meaning of life? Episode art: Joseph Werner - Diana of Ephesus as allegory of Nature, c. 1680

This time, I'm answering questions just from patrons. If it sounds cool to you to get to ask me additional Q&A questions in between the public Q&As, you can become a patron. Honestly, I know I say this every time, but every time it's true: this is my favorite question and answer session yet! Got into some very deep and very fun territory. Love it. When this goes up on reddit, I'll ask the public for more questions so we can follow up with another episode, this time with an opportunity for everyone to have their queries answered. 

On our second excursion into Nietzschean science, we’re studying Nietzsche’s two most celebrated figures in science: one from Ancient Greece and another from Enlightenment Europe. In Democritus, Nietzsche sees the zenith of the materialist project in Greek philosophy, opening the way for a mathematical atomist description of the world, carried on by the Pythagoreans. In Boscovich, he finds a continuation of this project, centuries later - to describe the world by one force or law, and account for the problem of motion in a way that rejects Kantian or Newtonian appeals to God, or Spinozistic teleology. What comes out of this inquiry is an understanding that Nietzsche may have construed the will to power as a physical reality from the very beginning. From this perspective, will to power is the answer to the problem of motion; it is the inner, “intelligible character” of matter; it is the qualitative expression of what Boscovich’s unified field theory offers us in quantitative terms. This episode culminates in a look at some of Nietzsche’s more extreme or puzzling statements in his notes where will to power is discussed as a very real physical principle. Pictured in the episode art are Democritus and Boscovich.

In this episode, we revisit the Pre-Platonic lecture series given by Nietzsche at Basel, the notes for which were assembled and translated by Gregory Whitlock. These lectures detail Nietzsche’s views on the first philosophers of Ancient Greece, and how they demonstrated that the spirit of scientific investigation is a manifestation of will to power: to bound the boundless within the understanding of reason, by appeal to as few possible starting principles. Nietzsche believes that the Pre-Platonic philosophers - Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and others - represented the descent from an understanding of the world as controlled by a personified heaven, into something explained by natural forces. The end result is materialism: matter as explained by matter itself and its properties or laws. This is powerful and dangerous as an innovation. Materialism offers the greatest utility, but precedes a slide into nihilism. Many of Nietzsche’s insights in his interpretation were influenced by the philosopher of science, Friedrich Albert Lange. In this episode, we examine the relation of Nietzsche to Lange, their view of the Pre-Platonics, and then analyze each figure individually to see how each fits in to Nietzsche’s narrative of the unfolding of scientific thought in Greece. Rather than a mere historical curiosity, Nietzsche finds the Greeks to express the same driving tendency that underlies science in our own time.

In this episode, I'm reading a chapter of my book, Unconscious  Correspondences. I considered an episode on Cartesian Dualism, but realized I'd already said everything I needed to say, in a chapter in this book. Rather than repurposing the same content into a new form, why  not just read directly from the book? As Nietzsche tended to do  when introducing his own earlier works, I shall do the same. I will  introduce this essay: "Body and Mind: The Life and Meditations of Rene  Descartes - A Polemic" with, "An attempt at self-criticism".

This  essay has its flaws, and belabors the point a bit too stringently at  places. In retrospect, I made some very overgeneralized claims about  academia and modern attitudes towards Descartes that one could easily  challenge. I should also say that these claims derived from personal  experience with my own professors, and the professors of many of my  friends. Descartes was always taught as being "basically a secret  atheist who didn't believe the religious stuff at all and included it  just to please the church." Not only did one of my own professors say  some version of this, I heard this from others, attending different  universities. This always struck me as odd, because the central  premises of his Meditations on First Philosophy are completely derived  from Christian presuppositions, which are simply taken from theology and  put into philosophical language. Thus, I challenged: whether Descartes  was truly a departure from past philosophy (Plato, of course, sets up  figures to raise assertions and Socrates to raise skeptical  objections/doubts); whether Descartes was actually an atheist or a deist  (or whether we could understand him within the assumption he was a  Christian, perhaps a Rosicrucian); whether our own interpretations of  Descartes have to do with our embrace of the "mind as self"  ego-consciousness (thus leading us to be confused and embarrassed by  Descartes' invocation of God as the ultimate certainty). While I wrote  in a way that was somewhat clumsy in my eyes now, and while I may have  spent too much time in a detour talking about the background historical  context in which Descartes emerged, I feel these challenges are raised  in a forceful and meaningful enough way to be useful for people to think  about. https://app.thebookpatch.com/BookStore/unconscious-correspondences/3fe82dc3-d4ac-4d61-81c3-9ce9a7abe483

Much had been made of Nietzsche’s predictions of the coming nihilism. As a result of the death of the Christian God, Europe is bound for a crisis of values, in which nothing can any longer give us a goal beyond ourselves and our own happiness, and people search for this meaning or justification in all sorts of other spheres of human life: morality, reason, history, and utility. Ultimately, however, since we have so thoroughly devalued the physical world of experience, we find no such meaningful answer to the problem of life. That we have devalued life in order to justify life was a masterstroke of Christianity, so long as we had a transcendent authority to look to: a higher sphere to justify the material sphere. But now, we are left only with the burdens, the curse on existence, the “in vain”. As the will cannot aim at nothing, the ultimate consequence is the pursuit of happiness for the greatest number. Rather than this passive, incomplete nihilism, Nietzsche dreams of an active nihilism, and a strength of will to cut through the meaninglessness into a true revaluation. Come explore the meaning, causes and consequences of nihilism with me! Episode art: Gustave Dore - Satan’s Fall to Earth

After the wager is agreed upon between Faust and Mephisto, the two set off to explore the world. Mephisto takes Faust out drinking in Leipzig. Then, Mephisto procures for him a youth potion from one of his earthly servants - a witch - that takes thirty years off of Faust's life, restoring him to perfect youth. Then, while on their travels, Faust meets a young girl named Gretchen, by happenstance, and decides he must have her, forcing Mephisto to help him in this endeavor. Most of the rest of part one then deals with this storyline as it unfolds: the "Gretchen Tragedy", in which an innocent, devout young woman falls in love with a charming, mysterious stranger - only to have her heart broken, her family destroyed, and her life ruined. In his endless quest for new experiences, Faust is willing to take on all pain, all pleasure, all triumph, all calamity. But what about when Faust brings tragedy onto others? And what if it is the very woman he loves who suffers the most because of his actions? While part two of Faust is impossible to summarize, we'll then do our best of covering that material, and then, of course, the masterful final scene of the play, written more than fifty years after the first lines were first put to parchment. Goethe's Faust ultimately reveals to us the story of Faust's entire life, and thus could only be written over the course of a lifetime by Goethe. Join me in exploring this great work of world literature, which seeks to redeem the dissatisfied, wayward aspect within the Enlightened mind.

Goethe is perhaps the most widely-celebrated author of German literature, and Faust is his most famous tale. While the historical Doctor Faustus had always been portrayed as an essentially evil man, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for greater power, Goethe reinterpreted the story into a wager between Faust and Mephistopheles, and set it against the backdrop of a metaphysical wager between God and Satan. Faust, as protagonist, stands not for evil, but for the spirit of ceaseless striving. Having mastered all the faculties of the university, and attained the zenith of knowledge available to mankind, Faust feels his lifelong quest has been for naught. He declares: "...for all our science and art / we can know nothing, it burns my heart". His restless heart sees Faust turning to magic and conjuration in order to break past the boundaries of science, morality, or even common decency - in his neverending quest to pursue knowledge and achievement. This path leads him straight to Mephisto, who offers Faust a deal that he cannot refuse. In part one, we'll discuss the philosophical themes of Faust, and how they influenced the thought of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Then, Goethe's place in literature and a brief summary of his life and work, as well as the background of the work in question, Faust. We'll then examine in detail some of the scenes and monologues from the first scenes of the play: from Heaven's Prologue to the scene in Faust's study where the deal is struck. I'm very excited for this one! Episode art: Philipp Winterwerb - Faust in his Study

The second part of a two-parter we began near the beginning of this season. The completion of our analysis of Ecce Homo. In this episode, we consider Nietzsche's reviews of his own books, and argue that it presents a creative narrative of Nietzsche's life: Nietzsche as a tragic figure. Nietzsche mythologizes himself and the circumstances of his great works, dabbling in exaggerations and lacunae - but nevertheless providing an invaluable interpretation the significance of his entire career, and commentary on the development of his thought. With Nietzsche's comments, we can construe his life's work into an early period, an affirmative period that begins with his middle works and culminates with Zarathustra, and a critical period that characterizes his later work.

"Emerson – Never have I felt so much at home in a book, and in my home, as – I may not praise it… it is too close to me... The author who has been richest in ideas in this century so far, has been an American..." (Nietzsche) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most influential minds in America, as a leading figure in the Transcendentalist movement that emerged during the mid-1800s, a personal friend and strong influence on Thoreau, and a preacher outside of any church or dogma. Emerson believed that what he called "Historical Christianity" had rendered the Christian religion a dead faith. Rather than educating men's spirits as to the meaning of their individual strivings and sufferings, or relating the wisdom of the Bible to their actual lives, preachers merely uttered moral sentiments and taught their flocks by rote. After departing the Harvard Divinity School, Emerson lectured all around America for 25 years. He was part of the Lyceum movement, which aimed to bring such philosophical lectures to general audiences - transmitting philosophy to the people, rather than just those within academia. While Emerson has sometimes been portrayed as an 'easy optimist' with a positive message, he was a man of intense feeling whose life was marred by tragedy. His answer to the suffering of his life was to transmute it into a sincerely personal and individual spirituality, and an understanding of all life as expressions of one divinity: The Over-Soul. 

The link between Emerson and Nietzsche is one that is oft-overlooked, even now. Some have called this a kind of perennial oversight, an absurdly repeating blind spot in approaching Nietzsche. Perhaps this is because the two men have as many differences as they do similarities. And yet, when we look within Nietzsche's journals and letters, and even within his published works, the influence of Emerson is made stunningly clear. Throughout the episode, we examine how concepts such as the personal v/s the impersonal, the use and abuse of history, the celebration and acceptance of all life's circumstances, the use of a monistic principle to explain all life - were all part of Emerson's philosophy as much as Nietzsche's. Both men were, in Emerson's coinage, "children of the fire": the souls who perceive the beauty of the divine fire underlying all life and existence, and give it voice in poetry, philosophy, and song. 

Interview with Robert Richardson D. Richardson: https://youtu.be/ebDLjy3ARQ4 

Mind Like Fire Unbound by Thanissaro Bhikku: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/likefire/1.html 

Richardson's Emerson, The Mind on Fire: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EMWJKY8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1&asin=B01EMWJKY8&revisionId=40826a6b&format=1&depth=1 

Episode art: Joseph Wright of Derby, Vesuvius from Portici, 1774 (composited with a portrait of Emerson)

In a second episode with my wife, Amberly, we talk about another movie. This time it's not a movie about Nietzsche, the man, but a film that I argue approximates some of Nietzsche's ideas about the decline of society, the weakness of modernity, and the need to rediscover the barbarian within us all. That film, of course, is Demolition Man (1993) by Paul Verhoeven, starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, and Sandra Bullock. In the film, the reanimation of a super-criminal from a cryogenic prison sees the law enforcement of a dystopian, future "San Angeles" unable to cope with the threat. Society has been transformed into what Sandra Bullock's character describes as a place of peace, comfort, and understanding. Everything potentially harmful, offensive, or disturbing to the public morality has been made illegal, and basic human drives such as sexuality have either been eliminated or translated into a virtual form. We discuss the relationship of this society to the values of the Last Man, argue over whether it is better to live in a soft, dying society or a hard, barbaric one, and get into the weeds on Star Trek a couple times (trust me, it's all related). I hope you all enjoy it, this was a lot of fun for us.  This is the Trek episode we were talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apple_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)

William Kaiser is a sociologist, a pupil of Peter Berger, a student of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and an autodidact in all things Freud, Nietzsche & Kaufmann. His dissertation on the topic of Wittgenstein was entitled, "A Wittgensteinian Critique of Realism in Social Science Methodology", and to this day, Kaiser maintains his skepticism towards what he characterizes as "naive realism". He expresses the common thread he sees in many philosophers, from Nietzsche, to Rorty, to Wittgenstein himself: rejection of the idea of obtaining some sort of objective knowledge and the re-centering of our philosophical orientation on the human psyche. All these figures cut through abstruse confusions to reach concrete insights about history and the human condition. Central to this project for Wittgenstein (especially Later Wittgenstein, aka "Wittgenstein II", who was Kaiser's focus in his work) is the way in which language shapes human thought. Through this conversation, we discuss the commonality between Nietzsche's ideas and Wittgensteins, on the issues of language, on memory and forgetting, self-identity, and what it means to learn and live an enriching life. We also spend some time discussing Freud and the influence Nietzsche had on the famous Viennese psychoanalyst. 

Today, it's an examination of a single aphorism: Beyond Good & Evil, 295, "The Genius of the Heart":

"...the genius of the heart,
who silences all that is loud and self-satisfied,
teaching it to listen;
who smooths rough souls and lets them taste a new desire -
to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them -..."

In this passage - essentially a prose poem by Nietzsche - he expresses praise for Dionysus, and describes himself as his last initiate and disciple. The poem encapsulates the spiritual message of Nietzsche's mature philosophy: the spiritualization of human feelings, the longing for something greater, and the demand for the absolute love of life.

Episode Art: John Collier - The Priestess of Bacchus (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Another episode on a single passage: The Gay Science, book V, aphorism  354: “The Genius of the Species”. One of the most thought-provoking  passages in Nietzsche’s work, he expounds on his hypothesis that all  consciousness is a product of human sociality, and was only necessary as  a net of communication between human beings. This has dire implications  for Nietzsche’s aspirations to individualism, and makes suspect  everything to him which enters into consciousness. He believes that the  deeper, more profound aspects of human life remain, ultimately,  untranslatable.

Episode art: Alphonse Maria Mucha - La Pater (1899)

In part two, we shift from the friendship - at first strong, and later, a bit troubled - to the break that happened in 1878/9. Nietzsche writes, in his personal correspondence, and in his reflections in Ecce Homo, of the liberating freedom he felt when he left Bayreuth and moved up to the Alps, and how this turning away from Wagner represented a completely new chapter in his life. Indeed, the break corresponds with Nietzsche's departure from academia, and his uprooting of his entire established life, up to that point. Where Wagner was once a trusted friend, mentor, and likely surrogate father-figure for Nietzsche, he begins to write with utter scorn against the old composer. For the first third of the episode, we examine the biographical aspect of the break. For the remainder, we consider Nietzsche's charges in The Case of Wagner, and Nietzsche Contra Wagner - essays written in 1888, a time of retrospection for Nietzsche - that Wagner capitulated to everything that Nietzsche despised, that he was ultimately a world-despairing Christian, and that maybe Wagner's transformation was not even genuine. That he was, at heart, nothing more than an actor. As a man with an immense artistic power, he debased music by using it simply as a means of moving people's feelings, while never truly challenging or subverting German culture. Music became sick - yet another form of mere entertainment, another enhanced, rarefied sense pleasure of the late-stage of a society. Whereas once Nietzsche believed Wagner to be perhaps the opponent of modernity, he now writes of him as modernity personified: the epitome of the decadent artist who loses himself in the crowd.

UPDATE: Yesterday, when the episode went live, it had the wrong audio uploaded and simply contained a repeat of Q&A #1. Sorry everyone. This has been fixed.

Better late than never! I answer fan questions for a third time. I want to start doing this more frequently, so if you have a question you want answered, let me know on reddit, or send a voice message to the podcast on Anchor.

It's finally time to talk about Richard Wagner. After meeting Wagner by happenstance in 1868, Nietzsche began a ten-year friendship with the older man, who was a rising star in the music world, on track to becoming one of the most famous living composers. Nietzsche was himself a fan, and described the chain of events leading to his friendship with Wagner as a kind of "fairytale". Soon, Wagner embarked upon the idea of a music festival that would serve as a cultural spearhead for the movement Wagner wished to create in Germany. The town was settled upon: Bayreuth. Construction began on a new theater house to accommodate the festival. Nietzsche aided Wagner in founding it. The first year was a financial disaster but an artistic success, reverberating throughout Europe. But the young Nietzsche left the festival troubled, reporting in a letter that it was then he decided to retreat into the mountains of Interlaken, where he composed the first third of Human, All Too Human. In this episode, we'll discuss the early friendship between Nietzsche and Wagner, what Nietzsche was looking for, and why he thought he found it in Wagner. We'll draw on quotations from the Untimely Meditations essay, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, as well as Nietzsche's letters. Episode art is a depiction of the Bayreuth Opera House, as of 1895.

"Without music, life would be a mistake." It's commonly known that Nietzsche was a sort of 'musical philosopher' - in fact, it was a feat he aspired to quite openly - but a glance at Nietzsche's thoughts on music reveals that he was so enamored with this form of artistic expression as to have once suggested that music lays at the very heart of reality. Only through music, Nietzsche argues in Birth of Tragedy, can we directly experience the primordial pain and contradiction of reality. Here we will touch on the major points of Nietzsche's engagement with music: his love of Wagner and eventual break from him, the cultural problem he wished to solve, and the perception that music was not just another type of art or entertainment but a geist that could reshape hearts and minds, or even whole societies. Even as his admiration for Schopenhauer and Wagner waned, the love of music - and exaltation of music to the highest importance in his philosophy - remained consistent, even to the bitter end of his life. BONUS SEGMENT: I also set aside a half hour to talk about my experiences returning to the world of underground touring. In the latter part of the episode, I recount the events of my recent outing with my band, Destroyer of Light, on the West Coast of the United States.

Episode art: Francis Coates Jones, "Music"

Yunus Tuncel's Lecture Notes, "Nietzsche, Music and Silent Suffering": https://www.nietzschecircle.com/Silent_Suffering.html

Charlie Huenemann's book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002EL4T2I/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Join me in a discussion of passage 109 of Daybreak: "Self-Control and Moderation and Their Final Motive". In this passage that we've oft referenced but not yet attempted a deep dive of, Nietzsche outlines six ways of dealing with the "vehemence of a drive". As Nietzsche considers the self to be governed by impulses, some of which are competing, we should not expect that we can simply command ourselves with a voluntarily governing ego, or somehow will ourselves into having willpower. He also rejects the Christian abdication of responsibility: i.e., that every person is inherently sinful and shall only find perfection in the next life, and therefore all men must simply yield to the grace of God. For Nietzsche, the picture of the human condition is akin to that of William James: we are bundles of habits, and every little nourishment or denial of a habit either enhances or diminishes it. This is the way that drives make war against one another within the psyche: by drawing in more nourishment for themselves at the expense of the others. The question of self-control then becomes a question of how to consciously bring about the nourishment or diminishment of one's impulses. Today's episode covers the practical question of "giving style to one's character".

Art: Napoleon Crossing the Saint-Bernard Pass, 20 May 1800/Musee de l'Histoire de France

The Twilight of Idols is described by Nietzsche as a work of leisure: a leap sideways, a bit of sunshine, a form of play rather than work. The laboriousness of 'notebook psychology', in which one strains and squints and spies on reality, could not be further from this natural discernment based on what one is given. In this episode, we explore exactly what Nietzsche means by this distinction. Once again, it is tied in with his differentiation between the artistic and the theoretic. Through Twilight of Idols, Nietzsche remarks on psychology and his approach to it, suggests that it is found in literature, and suggests that some men who claim to be psychologists are really just head cases. Join me as we consider these ideas at a leisurely pace. Episode art is Satan Resting on the Mountain by Gustave Dore.

In the second of our examination of the Overman, we'll examine a passage I'd originally planned to look at in respect to the eternal recurrence of the same events: The Convalescent. This chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra deals with both of these grand doctrines of Nietzsche - the Overman and the eternal return - and provides, in some sense, the means for understanding both in relationship to one another. It may seem, from a surface reading of Nietzsche's ideas, that the Overman represents some goal in a literal future, which would seem to contradict with the doctrine that "all returns, eternally" and every life repeats endlessly, contained forever within itself. How can the value in life be cast off into a distant future, while at the same time invested within this life? This is the contradiction Nietzsche faced because it is a contradiction in the very essence of the quest for meaning: we find meaning only in spending our lives in the service of something greater than ourselves, in the very quest to bring forth that "something greater"; and yet, at the same time, the brute fact of mortality and the sole existence of this world and this life as the total reality necessitates that we must be able to find value in our lives as they are, never to see that "something greater" that they may or may not give rise to. We must therefore live in such a way that we recognize becoming, and seek to overcome ourselves, but must also simultaneously find eudaimonia within ourselves as we are. This paradox of finding meaning in an atheistic universe is overcome with the resurrection story of Zarathustra himself, who lies dead for many days before rising again to gain a realization of the secret, underlying harmony of the eternal return and Overman ideals. Join me in making "The Convalescent" a new passion play for we philosophers of the future!  A review of Rohit Sharma's book that covers the major points discussed in the episode, with citations: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/jns/reviews/rohit-sharma-on-the-seventh-solitude.-endless-becoming-and-eternal-return-in-the-poetry-of-friedrich-nietzsche

This is the last great concept of Nietzsche's that we have not yet covered on the podcast. With all of the background context that we've collected over the first season and the first part of this one, I feel we're now ready to confront the pinnacle of Nietzsche's philosophy, the highest ideal, and the most sacred value: the Overman. Contrary to popular belief, the Overman is not a figure that has ever existed within recorded history: Zarathustra says that Caesar, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Goethe, Socrates, Jesus, or whoever else you may have had in mind as a candidate for Overman, were all found to be, in the end, "human, all-too-human". Zarathustra is also, according to his own sermons, not the Overman himself, but merely his prophet (which would seem to rule out Nietzsche himself as an Overman, in spite of what some have claimed). Zarathustra insists: "Never has there yet been an Overman" - the concept is an ideal image that must ever recede into the future, in order to spur us on to greater and greater things. Lest one take this for a biological concept, or a literal race of future super-humans which Nietzsche is prophecying,even here, we must say that the text defies this interpretation: Zarathustra only speaks of the Overman in the singular, individual form, and speaks of its meaning in terms of creating value in our own lives, today. The meaning, apparently, is not in literally bringing forth overmen, but in living our lives in such a way as to "prepare the earth" for the Overman. How do we square the circle of the future-arriving Overman with the non-progressive view of history? How do we understand the Overman in relation to his opposition, the Last Man? What do both represent? Is the Overman an answer to Nietzsche's quest to elevate man? And if so, how? Is it to be taken as a symbol, a metaphor, an allegory, or what? Join me in this long awaited episode when we tackle all of these difficult questions by diving deeply into the text itself. Today we concern ourselves mostly with the first two books of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and especially the prologue. 

The philosopher is a misunderstood figure - perhaps most of all by philosophers themselves. This is Nietzsche’s charge, in his later work: what we imagine drives the philosopher, the “will to truth“, is instead a sublimation of the will to power. The philosopher seeks to experience his power in an abstract realm of the intellect, where he can seek for higher and higher goals. But where does this assessment leave the philosopher? If a pure, disinterested drive to knowledge is not what is behind the goals of philosophy, then can we really credit the philosopher with attempting to render a picture of universal existence? Is it a paradox to say that relativism is universal? Is it still truth-seeking if we question the very activity of truth-seeking? Join me in exploring Nietzsche’s nuanced analysis of the philosophical type.

Who is the artist? Where does art come from? What is the future of art? Doing a comprehensive view of Nietzsche’s take on artists is probably too big a topic for any one episode, so here we will concern ourselves primarily with these questions, the answers to which all involve the idea that the artist is a sort of alchemist of the psyche, who works with the raw material of the soul in order to channel, redirect, heighten or deaden one’s inner feelings. The artist thus emerges from the type of the priest or the saint, who worked with the feelings of guilt and resentment. The artist is the type who emerges from the restrictions of a given religious mindset and dares to work his artistic magic outside of any institution or dogma. Is the artist therefore a benefit to society and culture, and a rebel against the rigidness of religion? For Nietzsche, it’s not that simple, because of the fundamental problem that art deceives. It draws its power from its incompleteness, its willingness to represent reality in accordance with drives or passions instead of facts, and ultimately dwells within the realm of deception. As Nietzsche himself is both an artist and a philosopher, he feels this contradiction therefore within him. Alas, the great philosopher, Nietzsche, is only fool, only poet! Lecture on the scientific contributions of alchemy by Walter F. Rowe: https://youtu.be/L6hTS3ajCBk Episode art: Joseph Wright of Derby - The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus (1771/1795)

Back in season one, we teased the idea of Nietzsche looking for some way to elevate mankind beyond the natural world. While Nietzsche is celebrated for his uncompromising critique of Christian values and otherworldly metaphysics, the advantage of these ideas was that they showed man an ideal which was beyond the cynical view that human beings are simply "clever animals who invented knowledge". Nietzsche floats the idea of the saint, the artist, and the philosopher in the essay, "Schopenhauer as Educator", as figures that showed forward a way beyond nature: a leap into something above mankind.

Perhaps the most complex figure to examine in this formulation is the saint. Those of you who have been listening along since the beginning of the podcast, or who have read The Antichrist, may wonder how it is that Nietzsche ever offered a positive assessment of the life-denying holy men of the world at all. But Nietzsche, in his early writings, expresses an admiration for the power of the saint - the ascetic priest, the sage, the arahant, or whomever we might consider from world-history - as one in whom the "I" has melted away and power over the desires has been obtained. Unfortunately, all great things in the world, it seems, come from prolongued spiritual and physical torture, and the saint is no different. Beneath his power is a dark desire to set himself above the world by refuting the physical in favor of the abstract. Even though the priest offered the ideal to mankind, it was the ideal of nihilism - of seeking after nothingness. Why was this type tolerated among ancient societies at all, Nietzsche wonders? Because of the saint's remarkable power to strike fear into the hearts of men, and his utility for redirecting the destructive drives of the weak and the botched of every society. Join us for the first of several episodes examining these candidates Nietzsche entertained throughout his career for "higher people" - the type who is "too good for this world", the saint.

Andrei Georgescu is a writer, a poet, an artist, and an insightful mind. He has grappled with the complexities of the human physiology for years, out of necessity if for no other reason, and it was because of an essay on the topic of diet that I first ran across Andrei's work. Our discussion centers around this topic, which was a concern shared by Friedrich Nietzsche: how diet affects one's mood, mental state, and overall emotional and physical health; how to fine-tune one's diet to their own needs; how to assess the effect of a given diet. Andrei reflects on how this became a central issue for him, how he felt abandoned by the health system in his quest, and how writing about the many attempts - ancient and modern - to solve the deep questions of "Belly Alchemy". Of course, we could not limit our discussion to just this topic, and ended up discussing other complex systems - such as political and economic systems, another topic that Andrei has written about in his essay on "Romanian Communism and American Capitalism". And, of course, those old questions about the meaning of life always come up. First episode of Andrei's new podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XssA7Ta1DMI Andrei Georgescu's website: https://andreigeorgescu.ca/ On Behance: https://www.behance.net/georgescu

The ugliest man of Athens? Or the most beautiful soul of all? A mere intellectual? Or the finest fencing-master? The central focus of our episode today, in part two of our analysis of Plato's Symposium, is Nietzsche's interpretation of the text. Nietzsche argues that Socrates rounds off the discussion on the attributes of love in his speech, and that the image he gives of the power of love is then demonstrated to be manifested by Socrates himself, in his living character, by the final, drunken speech of Alcibiades. In today's lecture, we will examine the final three speeches of the symposium, including those of Agathon, Socrates, as well as the impromptu, drunken praise of Socrates that Alcibiades gives. Episode art: Marcello Bacciarelli - Alcibiades Being Taught by Socrates (1776-77)

You don't need money, don't take fame Don't need no credit card to ride this train It's strong and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes But it might just save your life That's the power of love Today, we discuss Nietzsche's lieblingsdichtung, or favorite work, from the time of his graduation at Schulpforta: Plato's Symposium. The Symposium is one of the most popular Platonic dialogues, which considers the topic of love, and the nature of the god Eros, who represents love as a metaphysical or divine force. While those who have only a passing familiarity with Nietzsche may be surprised to hear that the pitiless philosopher was enamored with a conversation about the finer points of love and romance, in fact, Plato's Symposium is rich with insights that had a profound impact on Nietzsche. Central to the conversation in the Symposium is the understanding of the power of love - for love, as with all things the Greeks perceived as forces within the psyche that pushed or motivated mankind, is evidence of a divine influence that grips human beings and makes its will upon us felt. In part one, we'll consider the background of the work, why Nietzsche would have read such a work, and the importance of Plato to the classicists at that time. We'll also briefly discuss the social institution of the symposium as a place for competition, or intellectual "sparring" - or else, for the prominent men to outdrink one another. Then, we'll break down the first three speeches of the work: Phaedrus, Pausianus, Eryximachus. Next week we'll consider the final four speeches, and Nietzsche's interpretation of the work.

Was Nietzsche influenced by the Lutheran idea of pietism? Is there a clear parallel between the ideas of Ecclesiastes and the idea of Nietzsche? Did Nietzsche intend a degree of comedy to his work? Are some of his ideas even to be taken as 'tongue-in-cheek', as not entirely serious, as mere thought experiments, as something to be taken with a dash of irony & a wink and maybe even a complementary nod? And can we perhaps dare to suggest that in Nietzsche, the most Anti-Christian of all philosophers, there sits at the center of his ideas a recapitulation to the Biblical idea of providence? Karl & I discuss all of these fascinating questions which he raises, as well as the Roman pagan origins of the concept of providence, and how the great writers of antiquity conceived of virtue and fortune. We consider how our view of ourselves and our own luck can be affected by the underlying worldview we hold. Machiavelli, Seneca, Turchin, and many more of your favorite writers from antiquity and modernity make appearances in the discourse. Amor Fati - let that be my love henceforth!

In part two, we look at eternal return in its full implications - the eternity of all that is low and contemptible in human beings, contrasted with the eternity of all that is great and has great potential in human beings. The depressing fact that mankind's smallness and Christian weakness is written into infinity is what Zarathustra calls his "most abysmal thought". He is also tormented by his own faults, his own human-all-too-human nature, and taunted by the "Spirit of Gravity" - who tells Zarathustra that whatever goes up must come down, and that his own downfall is inevitable, even from the great heights into which he has cast himself... perhaps even especially so. Zarathustra's answer to this is courage and the Nietzschean demand for life-affirmation. After exploring Zarathustra's many visions, and his need to return to solitude in order to "ripen" and prepare himself to preach the terrible doctrine of eternal recurrence, we conclude this in-depth analysis of eternal recurrence with a reading of two sections (or perhaps "verses") of The Drunken Song, which is a cheerful celebration of eternity and of the willingness to take all of life with all its joys and sorrows, set near the very end of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In a nice parallel to season one, after our inaugural episode - which focused on a central idea of Nietzsche's upon which the entire next season is an elaboration - this second episode returns to the mythos of Nietzsche (or in this case Zarathustra) as a "Wanderer",  with the mountains to himself. This episode is about taking the eternal return idea and taking it to higher and more deadly vistas. From the edge of this cliff, looming over the great depths of human experience whilst glimpsing the highest and farthest things, Zarathustra must learn to overcome his nauseau, and dare to still carry out the task of elevating our individual human lives. Nietzsche and Epicureanism (previous of a paper available on Academia.edu): https://www.academia.edu/49101903/Great_Politics_and_the_Unnoticed_Life_Nietzsche_and_Epicurus_on_the_Boundaries_of_Cultivation Episode art: Lena Hades - Gemälde "Zarathustra und Zwerg" + An Oroborous (all courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

A deep dive into one of the most important passages in Twilight of Idols. We’ll explore Nietzsche’s critique of our erroneous habits of thought: mistaking the effect for the cause, false causality, creating imaginary causes, creating a doer of the deed, and free will. We explore Nietzsche’s explanation for how these errors take hold of our thought, the psychological need for these errors, and why they persist. Episode art is The Billiard’s Player by William Bastiaan Tholen

Kevin Rogers is a musician, one of my old friends from the Zen forum & one of the co-hosts of the Knot Zen Podcast.   In  this episode, we talk about Zen found in the corpus of literature  produced during the middle ages in China, and the dialectical shift that  happened when this Chinese movement was brought into Japan by Dogen.  Kevin gives an explanation of Zen, which dovetails into discussions on  the idea of lingering moments, the direct experience of reality, and the  epistemic implications of reality as shaped by our own minds. We  touched upon what the Zen realization is, and whether there are  metaphysical implications to this, as well as to the practice of  meditation, as well the Daoist influence on Zen. The conversation  concludes with some of my own misgivings within the Zen tradition and  why I no longer consider it a defining feature of my intellectual  identity. Kevin and I are both musicians, and we plan to do a  second episode talking about music, or possibly even another episode on  this same topic, depending on the audience reaction. The Knot Zen Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5GzOskDnm3IZIpHBHmUKIZ Kevin's musical group, The Friction String Quartet: https://www.frictionquartet.com/

Welcome to Season Two, my beautiful, free spirits! We ended the last season on a "cliffhanger"... the lead-up to the new mythology forged within the pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Today, we discuss the basis of that new myth. The eternal return, also known as the eternal recurrence, is one of the most famous ideas of Nietzsche, but one of the most difficult to comprehend. How could this philosopher who made it his business to attack every provisional truth, point out the perspectival nature of our world-picture, and dare to suggest that we abolish the metaphysical world beyond... make the proclamation that our lives, exactly as we live them, are eternal? There are many interpretations of this doctrine - ranging from the classification of eternal return as a thought experiment, all the way into mystical territory - but one thing is made crystal clear by Nietzsche's own words: he held that it was the hardest challenge one could put before themselves, akin to facing the greatest stress, or fighting the toughest opponent. Embracing eternal return means the ultimate revaluation of life and the natural world as imminently good and worthwhile. Those who are unable to do so will find this doctrine crippling, or so Nietzsche predicts. Thus, he puts this mysterious teaching into his work in the form of fables and in the teachings of his prophet, Zarathustra. Nietzsche founds his answer to the "problem of life" - that is to say, the problem of the value of a human life, within a mortal, human existence finding some kind of transcendental value - upon the basis of this central idea, of the eternal return. Forgive the couple of times my voice cracked, for I have a bit of a cold. Episode art: George Bellows - Stag at Sharkey's (1909)

Season two is coming soon! This is the last episode in the interim - or what we might call the afterbirth of season one (if we wanted to be a little gross with our metaphors) - and I'm very excited to begin with some of the gargantuan topics of our next series of episodes. Truly, the episodes to follow are on the ideas that stand like magnificent, granite pillars, upholding the beautiful frescoes of Nietzsche's grand ideas. 

This is the second time I’m answering questions from the audience. This was a patron Q&A that the small group of people who donate to the show got some time ago, so all the questions are from patrons. Nevertheless, I thought all of you might enjoy it. I retread a little ground from the first season, and cover some questions about issues I’ve delve more deeply into during season two. Please join me next week for the inaugural episode of season two!