Untimely Reflections #34: Gnostic Informant

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

7 Juni 20221h 30min

"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)

31 Maj 20221h 36min

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)

24 Maj 202256min

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.

20 Maj 20221h 22min

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)

17 Maj 20221h 21min

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)

10 Maj 20221h 17min

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.

3 Maj 20221h 27min

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.

29 Apr 20221h 4min