Untimely Reflections #34: Gnostic Informant

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.

26 Apr 20221h 24min

"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

20 Apr 20221h 24min

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

12 Apr 20221h 11min

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

5 Apr 20221h 16min

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.

29 Mars 20221h 21min

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.

22 Mars 20221h 16min

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)

15 Mars 20221h 19min

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.

8 Mars 20221h 14min