118 Nietzsche Now! With Glenn Wallis

Jun 18, 2024

In this engaging discussion, Glenn Wallis, an author and scholar focused on Nietzsche, explores the relevance of Nietzsche's philosophies in today's contentious landscape. He emphasizes their applicability to democracy, identity, and culture, challenging herd mentality and advocating for self-creation. Wallis highlights the importance of dangerous thought and living authentically, drawing parallels between Nietzschean ideas and mindfulness practices. He also critiques hyperreality in consumer capitalism, urging a courageous approach to philosophical inquiry and the cultivation of higher virtues for a better future.

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INSIGHT

Freedom Lies Outside The Herd

Nietzsche sees freedom as limited but real, located in areas where we can create and self-fashion despite biological and cultural embedment.
His project seeks conditions for individuals to disentangle from herd forces and help create life-giving culture.

INSIGHT

The Herd Is Both Shelter And Prison

Nietzsche treats the herd ambivalently: it protects and provides meaning yet constricts and enforces conformity.
Exiting the herd is necessary for higher human development but remains dangerous and difficult.

ADVICE

Embrace The Price Of Dangerous Living

Accept that living courageously requires paying a social price and risking loss of status, job, or comfort.
Practice virtues like honesty and speaking out even when they provoke backlash and danger.

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Nietzsche Now! Now? Really, you might ask. Isn’t he dead already? The Great Immoralist on the vital issues of our time. Hmm, how is that you might ask. Find out in this conversation with Glenn Wallis, returning guest and author of Nietzsche Now! We discuss the role Nietzsche might play today in helping all of us exit the culture war bubble and start to think again. For regular listeners, don’t worry, we do touch on Buddhism too!

The Press Release does much of the work in explaining the appeal of this book.

‘For readers both acquainted with and new to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche NOW! (Warbler Press, 2024) frames and explains Nietzsche’s thinking on topics of immediate contemporary concern and relevance. Wallis unpacks Nietzsche’s complex philosophy with a deft, empathetic, and brilliantly subtle analysis of the views of the Great Immoralist on democracy, identity, civilization, consciousness, religion, and other momentous topics.

Throughout, Wallis includes ample extracts from Nietzsche himself. Rather than skirting what is controversial or editing for easy consumption, Wallis invites readers to exercise a courageous curiosity that yields a rich, nuanced understanding of Nietzsche. He takes readers on a sometimes counterintuitive, always revelatory journey to grasp the relevance of Nietzsche for our contentious times.

“Clearly written, relevant accounts are rare in the world of Nietzsche scholarship. Nietzsche NOW! is immensely readable. Our ‘now’ is as pessimistic as Nietzsche’s ‘now’ but Wallis guides us, through Nietzsche's writings, towards coping with the same problems Nietzsche tackled, including truth, democracy, morality, and identity. The same problems but not the same. All now wear modern dress. Wallis’s deep knowledge of Buddhism feeds into the transfigurative nature of the Übermensch, the radical figure who realizes the possibility for personal and social change, the figure whom we can all—why not?—strive to become.”

—Sue Prideaux

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