The Death of the Free Spirit

Today we'll study the words of a saint, a pope, a madman, the ugliest man, and Zarathustra himself - in order to find out what they all have to tell us about one of the most momentous events in world history, but one which is not yet perceived or understood by the great many. This event is the Death of God, one of Nietzsche's most important ideas and one which lays the groundwork for understanding his thought, and where he saw himself in the context of Western Philosophy. While it is often the case that great attention is given to the infamous passage entitled, "The Madman" - and we'll spend a good amount of time on this passage in this very episode - this particular story is only the first step into the many implication's of God's death. And, of course, we will not be able to get through the episode without addressing ourselves to the elephant in the room, one Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, who has suggested that the Death of God was a sorrowful event for Nietzsche. On the contrary, Nietzsche celebrated the myriad possibilities laid open for humanity, for all the dangers that this entailed, such as the civilizational descent into nihilism.  This episode's art is Diogenes by Dutch painter Jan Victors (1619 – 1679)