The Nietzsche Podcast

The word “Epicurean” is a wonderful example of the linguistic phenomenon of a word coming to signify the opposite of its original meaning. Epicurean philosophy is hedonistic in that it holds pleasure to be the highest good, but Epicurus drew completely different conclusions than that of blind pleasure-seeking. In truth, Epicurus views the most important task of life to be the removal of pain or distress, and concludes in the ideal of an austere, simple, hidden life: the life in “The Garden”. Nietzsche made numerous interesting remarks about Epicurus throughout his literary canon. After studying the basic outline of his life and ideas through Diogenes Laertius, we’ll read some of Nietzsche’s interpretations and critiques of Epicurus. Even though Epicurus can be seen as a forerunner to utilitarianism, in him Nietzsche finds a great man and a precursor: a man who loved life, dealt with the world in real terms, and who “created the heroic-idyllic way to philosophize”.

“My cure for Platonism has always been Thucydides.” Nietzsche saw in the first historian of Ancient Greece the will to adhere to realism, and to learn the lessons of the “harsh teacher” of war. Where he sees cowardice in Plato, Nietzsche sees courage in Thucydides, as well as the “practical justice” of allowing all the parties a fair representation of their viewpoint. Thucydides, for Nietzsche, is the epitome of the Sophist tradition, which he contrasts with the moralism of Socrates and Plato. In this episode, we discuss The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides’ great contribution to world literature and history.

Here we examine Nietzsche's political philosophy by considering one of his antipodes. Plato’s Republic is one of the most important works of classical philosophy, and also one of the most infamous. In this episode we examine a series of questions concerning Plato: is the Republic a work of ethical philosophy only, or must we read political implications in it?; is it a utopian work?; is Plato responsible, as Popper charges, for the horrors of the 20th century?; finally, what was Nietzsche’s response to the politics of Plato? While the episode involves an introductory discussion of the major ideas of the work, our focus is primarily on the issues that would have interested Nietzsche and which would concern us in studying the politics of antiquity.

Nietzsche graduated Schulpforta with a dissertation on the topic of Theognis of Megara. Theognis was a Greek aristocrat from a Dorian city-state, famous for his poetry which survives only in fragments. For millennia, he was regarded as a gnomic poet, whose works were intended to impart moral lessons. In his study of Theognis, Nietzsche combats this view, and argues instead that Theognis was only perceived as a moralist in the post-Socratic zeitgeist. What Nietzsche finds instead is a passionate man who wrote poetry at all seasons and occasions of life, and who spoke for an aristocratic ethos that was collapsing during the democratic revolutions of Greece. In this essay, among the earliest works of Nietzsche, we find the beginnings of his own identification with the old social order of Greece, and even his implicit criticisms thereof. Episode art - Statue of Janus, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Having discussed the ancient foundations of the religion that governed the minds of the Hellenes and the Romans, we now discuss how life in the city developed. The social order and the laws governing the cities were rooted in religious beliefs that were so old that they were now already modified and subsumed within other, newer beliefs. Since the belief is the foundation of the social order, Coulanges asserts that it was the transformation of the religious beliefs that began to demand the changes which would occur in the cities. As the beliefs continued to be modified, a series of revolutions rippled through the Ancient Greek world. Centuries later, the same happened in Italy. First, the aristocracies revolted against the kings. Then, the people against the aristocracies - often installing tyrants (dictatorships which were supported by force and bribery). The struggle between oligarchies, tyrannies, and democracies then continued for hundreds of years, and the ancient writers began to see these forms of government as in a cycle of revolution against one another. However, the transformation of the social life brought with it new developments which in turn perpetuated the changes: the rise of Greek philosophy, the imperialism of the Roman empire and the spreading of its beliefs and temples to many lands and peoples, and finally the emergence of Christianity, which proclaimed the universal equality of man, one god over all the peoples of the world, and no secret or private worships. The social order could not survive this complete revaluation of values, and it disappeared in the centuries that followed. While Coulanges and Nietzsche did not comment on one another's work at all - in spite of being contemporaries - they both shed light on the insights of the other. Here we have a historical analysis which is in line with Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality, and his account of the Christian revolt  against the pagan, Greek master morality. Coulanges, rather than present the case in terms of moral philosophy, examines the underlying religious beliefs as primary.

If you've been listening for a year or more, you know that Halloween is a very special holiday for me. To be honest, finding "spooky" Nietzsche content was a bit difficult last year, such that I probably covered just about everything you could say about Nietzsche's thoughts on ghosts, witches, the fear of the dark, or why we celebrate scary or morose holidays such as Halloween. So, this year, for our Halloween special, I decided to take a detour to an author who came along shortly after Friedrich Nietzsche, and addressed many of the same themes that concerned Nietzsche: H.P. Lovecraft. In celebration of the spookiest time of year, Mynaa & I discuss the philosophical meaning behind H.P. Lovecraft's fiction and the cosmic  horror that underlies his work, and the connections we see to Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Zappfe. Like Nietzsche, Lovecraft perceived the end of the our metaphysical and moral faith, murdered by a rising scientific materialism that left no room for concepts like the salvation of mankind or the centrality of the earth in the grand scale of the cosmos. Mankind instead confronted an increasingly meaningless world - a world which Lovecraft depicted in fantastical terms: in which human beings who were largely impotent in the story were torn asunder by entities who are entirely indifferent towards them. After the discussion, I included some readings of Lovecraft's stories. I picked "The Tree" because it is underrated, a perfectly paced campfire-story-type tale, and one set in Ancient Greece! Then, "From Beyond", a story that encapsulates the Lovecraftian angst about the progress of scientific knowledge.  I figured this could be a fun departure from the normal scholarly rigor to get into the spirit of the season. Happy Halloween!

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889) provides us with the most in-depth account of the ancient religion upon which the city-states of Greece and Rome were founded. While the Hellenes later believed in concepts such as reincarnation, the division of body and soul, and gods that ruled over whole empires, Coulanges asserts that in their earliest days - hundreds or thousands of years before the periods for which we have written documentation - the Indo-Europeans believed that the dead continued to live on in the same body, underground. These dead ancestors became gods in the imaginations of the early Hellenes, bound to the land and the object of a secret worship carried out only by their descendants. Alongside these peculiar beliefs was the practice of keeping a sacred hearthfire in the center of the home - the home being the temple of the domestic religion. This fire was regarded as a literal god, real and living, who blessed the household so long as they kept the fire burning and pure, and would curse them if they did otherwise. Coulanges builds his case by following the clues remaining from the days of this worship - such as strange contradictions in the holy books, and rituals and hymns which did not reflect the beliefs but pointed to something more ancient. It is from these beliefs - alien and incomprehensible to us today - that the social order of the city was formed, and the laws that governed the cities written. Thus, we paradoxically find that the ancients were both completely foreign to us - and yet even we today preserve odd relics of this old belief. While Coulanges' seminal work, The Ancient City, is nowhere found in Nietzsche's library, and thus it is likely that Nietzsche never read it, it is indispensable for understanding the perspective of the ancient Hellenes. Since we're going to be covering a great deal of Hellenic thought in the coming episodes, we're going to preface all of it with a crash course in the development of their religious beliefs - for, as Coulanges argues, it is according to these beliefs that the political reality was shaped. Episode art: Dedication of a new Vestal Virgin, by Alessandro Marchesini (1663–1738), courtesy of Creative Commons

Introduction to the politics of Nietzsche. In this episode, we give an unvarnished look at the aristocratic radicalism that forms up the foundation of Nietzsche's political philosophy. While many interpreters and commenters on Nietzsche have dealt with his radical politics  by ignoring it altogether, by regarding Nietzsche as anti-political, or by interpreting it all away, we will instead begin by taking a hard look at Nietzsche's politics and see if we can come to an understanding of why he held this perspective. As with all things Nietzsche, his political views begin with Hellenic Greece. What we discover, in the course of this examination, is that Nietzsche's political philosophy, antithetical to our modern morality though it may be, is intertwined with his broader philosophical ideas. In this episode, we will cover the concepts of the order of rank, and the pathos of distance - as well as the devilish metaphor that Nietzsche employs in order to describe the aristocratic social order: that of the Sipo Matador vine, a parasite that strangles the trees of the Brazilian rainforest so that it might ascend above the canopies and unfold its flowery crown.

You asked me anything. I answered most of it. Season Three begins next week!

Nietzsche recapitulates and summarizes his positions, and provides us with a few relatively simple formulas for understanding the interaction of the two art-forces. He hopes for a rebirth of tragic art in Europe. We conclude with my distillation of the main philosophical concepts, the significance of which can be expanded beyond the work.