The Nietzsche Podcast

In Rousseau, we find the mirror image of Nietzsche’s politics. While both have been called romantics, we find enough nuance to consider both something beyond this - and yet, Rousseau & Nietzsche agree in finding problematic the supposed “progress” of the modern world, and both turn their gaze back to the time before civilization to contrast with modern life. But where Nietzsche sees a war of all against all, Rousseau sees a state of natural happiness. Rather than a “going back” to this natural utopia, as Rousseau’s philosophy is sometimes described, instead Rousseau’s project is an indictment of the injustice of civilization and the goal of remedying this injustice. For Rousseau, man can only be made free once again if society is brought into accord with the general will - the underlying will of the populace at large. In this, harmony between the individual and society is achieved, and true democracy realized. There is hardly any figure who receives more scorn from Nietzsche than Rousseau, but because Rousseau is eerily similar to Nietzsche in many respects, learning the basics of his politics is essential to understanding Nietzsche. Join us while we cover Nietzsche’s opposite in political philosophy.

Join the Christmas Special episode with guests Andrei Georgescu, Karl Nord, Mynaa Miesnowaan, and Quinn Williams as they present their meditations on giving and Nietzsche's philosophy. Topics include the Buddha's magic milkshake, the Franco-Prussian War, and It's a Wonderful Life. The episode also features a Christmas story about Nietzsche with the Wagners and the reading of fan mail.

Machiavelli, a pivotal figure in political philosophy known for his influential work 'The Prince,' shares fascinating insights into his thoughts on power during a turbulent political era. He illustrates the delicate balance between fear and love in leadership and critiques traditional notions of legitimacy. The discussion delves into Cesare Borgia's rise and fall, exploring his strategies and their alignment with Nietzsche's philosophy. Machiavelli’s lessons remain crucial for understanding modern governance and political ambition.

Introduction to Machiavelli’s political philosophy. We will consider Machiavelli’s legacy, and the enduring debate as to the significance of Machiavelli’s work. Is he strictly an amoralist, concerned with political power as solely a “force” to be considered in the scientific sense, or does he have a political project of his own that must inform our interpretation of him? To answer these questions, we will take the unorthodox step of beginning with his Discourses on Livy. As always, there is some truth to both these approaches, as Machiavelli holds republics above monarchies, and seeks for the means of achieving a state with liberty for its citizens. But he attains his greatness in political theory insofar as his own political concerns are always approached within a sober, realistic theory of power. In the Discourses, Machiavelli comments on the history of the Roman Republic, in his view the greatest state ever to have existed, since it endured the longest while allowing its citizens the most liberty. For Friedrich Nietzsche, heavily influenced by Machiavelli, the important lessons to be learned from him are his realism, his attention to longevity, his critique of the church and of the Christian religion, and the need for the ruler to profess and foster the religion of the people even if he does not believe it himself. In Machiavelli, Nietzsche finds a political theory so laudable that he would suggest in his noted that “pure Machiavellianism” is transcendent and superhuman - a path to elevating humanity.

Watch our livestream tomorrow (12/7/22), at 9:00 PM central time, on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@StudioERecording Show flyer: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClzsytPMNrg/ Today we summarize the ways in which Nietzsche's politics was influenced by the Ancient Greeks. Nietzsche derives from the Sophists, such as Thucydides, his preference for realism over idealism in geopolitics, and the "practical justice" of examining every viewpoint on its own terms, and according to what would serve the advantage or disadvantage to that perspective. From Epicurus, he derives the "anti-politics" of praising withdrawal from the world, and the intellectual or philosophical class acting based on a pathos of distance in which they remove themselves from mass politics and from quotidian concerns. Finally, he inherits from figures such as Theognis a desire to way a cultural battle against democratic or egalitarian values. Rather than becoming political in terms of practical political action in his own time, Nietzsche sets his sights to the long-term, beyond any one regime, country, or people, and attempts to provide a timeless argument for hierarchy and aristocracy. This is "Nietzsche's Contest" in the philosophical arena: the war for his ideals, which he feels to be the most powerful, most life-enhancing, and thus most deserving in the political sphere, to triumph over the zeitgeist of democratic moralism. Our main sources today are the fragment, "The Greek State", and the essay, "Homer's Contest". This will serve as a kind of recap and conclusion to our focus on the Greeks, bringing an end to this antiquarian section of the season. Next week will serve as a bridge into the political concerns of the Enlightenment, by examining the ways in which one author of Enlightenment Europe, dear to Nietzsche, was influenced greatly by the political history of Rome.  Episode art is Johann Köler - Hercules Removes Cerberus from the Gates of Hell, 1855. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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.