The Nietzsche Podcast5 Jul 2022

45: Descent Into Materialism (Friedrich Albert Lange & The Pre-Platonics)

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.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(278)

145: The Religion of Self-Redemption (Nietzsche vs Buddhism, pt. 1)

Welcome back to The Nietzsche Podcast, Season Seven! We're beginning with a two-part episode concerning Nietzsche's view of Buddhism. This episode, we will consider some of the basic teachings of Budd...

18 Aug 1h 53min

Q&A #16

Season seven begins soon! For now, enjoy a selection of fascinating questions.

11 Aug 2h 51min

The Gay Science #25 (V.372-393)

We've finally arrived at the conclusion of The Gay Science. The theme of these final sections is perspectivism - we have opened up a "new infinite", penetrating beyond narrow, limited views of the wor...

4 Aug 1h 51min

The Gay Science #24 (V.364-371)

We incomprehensible ones - how our thought branches in every direction, how willing we are to shed our bark, to grow, to change! In this episode, we discuss, among many other sections, important passa...

28 Jul 1h 37min

The Gay Science #23 (V.356-363)

In this chapter of our readthrough, we confront "the problem of the actor". Nietzsche predicts that things shall become ever more "artistic" in Europe, as the actor's talent self-falsification becomes...

21 Jul 2h 21min

The Gay Science #22 (V.348-355)

The grand experiment continues with a series of naturalistic explanations for the origins of ideas or modes of life. The scholar's intellectual habits are inherited "in blood and instinct"; Spinoza's ...

14 Jul 1h 54min

The Gay Science #21 (V.343-347)

"You tremble, carcass?" After a long hiatus, we shall now fearlessly embark upon book V of The Gay Science, added to the text in 1887. In this final division of the text, we'll see Nietzsche's attempt...

7 Jul 2h 5min