"Time is a flat circle." This famous quote from the series immediately calls to mind Nietzsche's Eternal Return, but it's an unusual connection to say the least, because it isn't clear that we have a "Nietzschean" plot in True Detective, nor are any of the characters of the show Nietzschean. So, what then is the philosophical content of the show? In this video, I analyze Rust, Marty & the beliefs of the cult of the Yellow King.
The Rectification of Names is a Confucian reinterpretation of the function of language. Confucius is usually portrayed as a stuffy moralist, but there is an intriguing notion implicit in his use of language that borders on the postmodern. Confucius does not merely give definitions of things, but seizes for the philosopher the power to redefine names according to a moral end. Michael Puett, The Path (Talks at Google): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfnSTr6-1g4Hans Georg Moeller's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@carefreewandering
Under the sign of the Vicious Circle, Nietzsche attempts to inaugurate a conspiracy. But how can this view of the Eternal Return - as part of his project of the revaluation - square with the "high tonality of the soul" in which it was first revealed? Pierre Klossowski argues, convincingly, that the Eternal Return makes all meaning and goal into an absurdity, offering a picture of a world in which nothing can be completed, and everything that is accomplished must be re-accomplished. Nietzsche's later use of the Eternal Return in order to fight gregarious values and win a victory on the side of the healthy impulses can only be a conscious deception. Following the "prejudices of his sentiments", Nietzsche forgets the inherent goallessness demanded by the Return, and seizes upon the powerful sign of the vicious circle, to pursue a great and arbitrary goal.
Welcome to season 6! Part I of III. In this first episode, we'll lay the groundwork for Klossowski's critical reading of Nietzsche, beginning with the material from the first two chapters. Klossowski applies Nietzsche's own methodology to Nietzsche's works, and reads his philosophy as a sign-language of impulses. The valetudinary states that dominated Nietzsche's life are reinterpreted in a radical way, with Klossowski's assertion that Nietzsche oftentimes saw thought as a source of suffering, and sided with the "attacks" of his body against the conscious, rational agent.
If you would like to have your own questions answered on The Nietzsche Podcast, no matter how unusual, niche, or rambling, then join the Patreon and participate in our regular Q&As that happen about twice per season. Season six starts next week!
The conclusion of the main books of The Gay Science! We'll cover some of the best aphorisms so far: the greatest weight, the dying Socrates, long live physics, and many more. Thus begins Zarathustra's down-going.
Episode art: Nicholas Roerich - Zarathustra (1931)
More aphorisms concerning drives, the way that impulses appropriate thought for their own ends, "moral pluralism", means of finding happiness, pleasure and pain as means rather than ends, and experimentation as method.
Episode art: The Two Crowns (1900) by Frank Dicksee
Continuing with our readthrough of The Gay Science, book number IV.
Embark, philosophers! Nietzsche hopes for the discovery of many new suns - many new suns - by the philosophical explorers of future ages. For what is needful is that man may learn to be satisfied with himself.
Episode art: Fresh Breeze of Sandy Hook, 1860 by William Bradford
PF Jung's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PFJung
If politics is in some sense determined by our psychological temperament, then from an evolutionary standpoint, perhaps there is social value to both the left and right wing perspectives. And yet, centrism remains a dirty word in online discourse, connoting a type of establishment position that favors the status quo. Pf Jung joins me to discuss his philosophy of "radical enlightened centrism", which opposes the status quo while drawing on ideas from both fringes.
Also, a correction: at one point in the conversation I claim that Australia has a mandatory civil service, but this is actually incorrect. I got this confused because of a conversation I recalled between myself, an Australian and a German, in which we talked about mandatory civil service (which Germany has) and mandatory voting (which Australia has), but Australia does not have mandatory civil service.
Continuing with The Gay Science, and beginning with book IV, "Sanctus Januarius". Here, we encounter some of the most famous aphorisms: For the New Year, Preparatory Men ("Live Dangerously!") and Excelsior. Exciting times!
Episode art: View of Genoa under the Snow - Eugenio Olivari (1882-1917)
The conclusion of our two-parter on Erich Heller, and the conclusion to season five! We discuss Nietzsche's friendship with Jacob Burckhardt, and how Burckhardt's view of history can inform our understanding of Nietzsche's divergence from him. We also consider Goethe's four ages of intellectual culture, and Nietzsche's echo of Goethe in his history of European nihilism, and how he comes to differ from Goethe, Schopenhauer and all his influences in his proclamations about history, in which the Overman shall transcend the cyclical, unchanging stagnation of human history by changing the nature of man himself. Finally, we consider what the hazard of modern poetry means for us in the present day, what each figure's answer to this divorce between symbol & real means, whether they succeeded or not, and what we can learn from them.
Something happened to the human mind around the birth of modernity: the divorce of reality and the symbol. Once unified in eucharist, the symbolic and the real are now separate spheres of the human mind, and while it initially seemed that art and science might benefit by this separation, in the long run, both have ended up poorer thereby. In this episode, the two-part finale of season five, we will discuss Luther & Zwingli, and their dispute about the holy communion; Goethe & Schiller and their argument about the difference between the idea and the experience; and Goethe's avoidance of tragedy and what this says about the "hazard of modern poetry".
Additional episode will release tomorrow. Erich Heller two-parter starts next week for the season finale!
An exploration of the chapter on Homer's Odyssey and on De Sade's Juliette. How enlightenment and the rationality of domination is contained in the Odyssey, and how the self-undoing of enlightenment morality is contained in Juliette.
Foundations of Critical Theory, and an exploration of the chapters, "The Concept of Enlightenment", "The Culture Industry". We analyze how myth and enlightenment both contain one another, and why enlightenment negates itself. We explore what this means in concrete terms by examining the culture industry and how the apparent democratization of culture leads to its dissolution. Part one of two.
Don't worry, we're still doing Dialectic of Enlightenment next week, but my tour schedule and personal demands on my time (I'm moving) prevented me from finishing a full episode before departing for another week. Thankfully, I had this reading guide finished and decided to release it now. Back next week with a full length episode. Cheers!
Nietzsche's inaugural lecture at Basel, given in 1869, provides an insight into the young Nietzsche's mind. Surprisingly, even here we find the groundwork laid for his later philosophical project. Nietzsche takes on the issue, rather esoteric and focused on the internal debates of classical philology, of whether or not Homer really existed, and what this means the discipline of philology if he did not exist.
I met up with Tony of 1Dime to discuss the neoliberal moment in American culture. We discuss what neoliberalism means, why there is a general discontent with it, the advantages of neoliberalism, and the potential of a vision for a future beyond neoliberalism as it inevitably comes to an end. We also psychologically analyze the left and the right from the Nietzschean standpoint, consider how many of the alternatives are magical thinking, and finally discuss the history of revolutionary movements and how they always have to draw upon the past.
Finally, we reach the conclusion of our exploration of Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche. This time we consider another lecture on will to power, from Volume II of Heidegger's collected lectures on Nietzsche, in which will to power is considered instead as a framework for knowledge, and the principle of a new valuation.
