Untimely Reflections #8: Hans-Georg Moeller (Carefree Wandering) - Profilicity & Erscheinung

Carefree Wandering is my favorite Youtube channel that currently produces philosophical content, making Hans-Georg Moeller a very special guest on the Nietzsche Podcast. Our conversation involved many of the topics of his videos, which I of course wanted to ask him about. But overall, I think we presented a relatively coherent procession of ideas. We discuss Professor Moeller's background in Chinese philosophy, and the similarities between Heraclitus and some of the Daoist philosophers. As both Hegel and Nietzsche were influenced by Heraclitus, we can see a similar thread running through the ideas of both. Moeller credits this to Nietzsche writing in the wake of the Hegelian turn in philosophy, towards the emancipation of appearances. In German, the word erscheinung (appearance) has a more ambivalent meaning than its equivalent in English, because the German word includes the connotation of "shining". In the approach of Heraclitus, Hegel, and Nietzsche, it is through appearance that the world "comes into being". The latter half of the discussion involves the concept of Profilicity, which Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D'Ambrosio developed in their book, "You and Your Profile: Identity after Authenticity". The central idea is that there have been three ways throughout history that people have created identities for themselves: sincerity, authenticity, and profilicity, which is a relatively new innovation. Rather than forging an identity through being "authentic, true selves", people now forge identities by curating a public profile. You can find the book here from Columbia University Press (or on Amazon): https://cup.columbia.edu/book/you-and-your-profile/9780231196017 Carefree Wandering youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnEuIogVV2Mv6Q1a3nHIRsQ (There was some minor glitching, probably a combination of my connection not behaving, but it's minimal. I'm improving things all the time, figuring out how to cut down on this is just the next hurdle to get over.)