29: Too Good For This World (I: The Saint)

Much of the second half of the Natural History of Morals is a meditation on the common morality as one of prudence, stupidity, and fear. In one word: timidity. Nietzsche draws upon ideas he’s explored in Human all too Human, Daybreak & The Gay Science: man as animal/natural being, morality as a means of dealing with vehement drives, and the wicked person as being just as indispensable as the moral person. Episode art: John Maler Collier - Fire

8 Aug 20231h 52min

A question and answer session just from the patrons, though I figured the public would enjoy some of the topics covered. Enjoy!

1 Aug 20231h 42min

Finally getting into part five, The Natural History of Morals. We’re more than halfway through the text, and Nietzsche applies his psychological method to morality. Episode art is Satan overlooking Paradise by Gustave Dore.

25 Juli 20231h 59min

A whirlwind tour through the epigrams and interludes of Beyond Good & Evil. A relatively free spirited and brief segment of our analysis before we dive into some of the denser divisions of the work - albeit with a bit easier time in terms of the intellectual labor, given that the major premises of Nietzsche's project have already been outlined in the first half of the work. This part is placed as a 'bridge' between BGE's first and second half, and serves as an example of how one applies Nietzsche's approach to psychology, and his anti-metaphysics. Episode art: Miranda by John William Waterhouse

18 Juli 20231h 46min

Apologies on the late upload! There were technical difficulties that have since been resolved. We’re back on track and next week’s release will be on Tuesday again. The ascetic values of the saint are premised on self-denial. It was this self-denial that caused the saint to become a great mystery, who stood in judgment of the powerful people of the world. They suspected that the saint knew something they didn’t, as this miraculous being who transformed from evil to good. Good became synonymous with the otherworldly and the unsensual, and this image became most powerful in the hands of the extraordinary person who has turned out a failure in life. The person with great creative potential who is taken over by the power of self-denial becomes the most dangerous among the ascetics, and over centuries of this religious neurosis dominating the European mind, the result has been the modern man.

12 Juli 20232h 10min

Nietzsche finishes sketching his vision of a philosophy of the future. True free spiritedness represents a fundamental commitment to hardness and independence of spirit. This makes the philosopher opposite the scholar in terms of his virtues. This total individuality necessitates that there are some truths that are inexpressible or peculiar to the point that they cannot be shared: they must be ”masked”. We finish by looking at the first two sections of part three, “What is Religious”. We consider how N’s method so far brings him to regard religion as another field of study regarding the human soul (its knowledge and conscience), and how this section is an application of his psychological method. He considers what is meant by the religious pathology as part of his ongoing critique of Christianity. Episode art: Henri Lievens - The Wild Hunt of Odin

4 Juli 20231h 46min

WARNING: It seems my microphone was not fully plugged in during this exchange, and the computer defaulted to the internal microphone... which is, well, garbage. So, my audio quality sounds pretty dreadful here, but it's at least listenable, and there's no way we were re-doing this entire conversation. As mentioned towards the end, however, I may do a regular series episode concerning Burnham's Machiavellians at a later time, if there is further interest in the topic.My friend Karl Nord and I discuss James Burnham, one of the intellectual forebears of modern conservative thought in the United States. Remarkably, upon a closer look into his life, we find that Burnham is an iconoclast who could have been called a socialist, a nationalist, a conservative, a Trotskyist, a neoliberal, a centrist or a social democrat at various times in his life - and yet, he repudiates and attacks all of these ideologies at various times as well. This is a thinker who once thought a communist revolution was inevitable for America, who wrote briefs for the CIA, who supported McCarthy, and who shaped the worldview of generations of conservatives. In the end, the only label that suits him is "Machiavellian", which is fittingly the title of one of his books, which we take a cursory look at during this episode.

30 Juni 20231h 38min

In this section, Nietzsche describes the truth-seeker as an exception among the rule, and emphasizes the difference between esoteric and exoteric knowledge. Nietzsche explores differences in tempo of thinking between individuals and cultures, which he sources to physiological realities. This portion of the text also concerns Nietzsche’s natural history of morality in three stages (pre-, moral, post-) and an experimental portrait of the world as will to power. Does this mean God is refuted and the devil is not? On the contrary, friends, on the contrary! And who forces you to speak with the vulgar? Episode art is John William Waterhouse - The Magic Circle.

27 Juni 20232h 12min