The Nietzsche Podcast

Was Nietzsche influenced by the Lutheran idea of pietism? Is there a clear parallel between the ideas of Ecclesiastes and the idea of Nietzsche? Did Nietzsche intend a degree of comedy to his work? Are some of his ideas even to be taken as 'tongue-in-cheek', as not entirely serious, as mere thought experiments, as something to be taken with a dash of irony & a wink and maybe even a complementary nod? And can we perhaps dare to suggest that in Nietzsche, the most Anti-Christian of all philosophers, there sits at the center of his ideas a recapitulation to the Biblical idea of providence? Karl & I discuss all of these fascinating questions which he raises, as well as the Roman pagan origins of the concept of providence, and how the great writers of antiquity conceived of virtue and fortune. We consider how our view of ourselves and our own luck can be affected by the underlying worldview we hold. Machiavelli, Seneca, Turchin, and many more of your favorite writers from antiquity and modernity make appearances in the discourse. Amor Fati - let that be my love henceforth!

In part two, we look at eternal return in its full implications - the eternity of all that is low and contemptible in human beings, contrasted with the eternity of all that is great and has great potential in human beings. The depressing fact that mankind's smallness and Christian weakness is written into infinity is what Zarathustra calls his "most abysmal thought". He is also tormented by his own faults, his own human-all-too-human nature, and taunted by the "Spirit of Gravity" - who tells Zarathustra that whatever goes up must come down, and that his own downfall is inevitable, even from the great heights into which he has cast himself... perhaps even especially so. Zarathustra's answer to this is courage and the Nietzschean demand for life-affirmation. After exploring Zarathustra's many visions, and his need to return to solitude in order to "ripen" and prepare himself to preach the terrible doctrine of eternal recurrence, we conclude this in-depth analysis of eternal recurrence with a reading of two sections (or perhaps "verses") of The Drunken Song, which is a cheerful celebration of eternity and of the willingness to take all of life with all its joys and sorrows, set near the very end of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In a nice parallel to season one, after our inaugural episode - which focused on a central idea of Nietzsche's upon which the entire next season is an elaboration - this second episode returns to the mythos of Nietzsche (or in this case Zarathustra) as a "Wanderer",  with the mountains to himself. This episode is about taking the eternal return idea and taking it to higher and more deadly vistas. From the edge of this cliff, looming over the great depths of human experience whilst glimpsing the highest and farthest things, Zarathustra must learn to overcome his nauseau, and dare to still carry out the task of elevating our individual human lives. Nietzsche and Epicureanism (previous of a paper available on Academia.edu): https://www.academia.edu/49101903/Great_Politics_and_the_Unnoticed_Life_Nietzsche_and_Epicurus_on_the_Boundaries_of_Cultivation Episode art: Lena Hades - Gemälde "Zarathustra und Zwerg" + An Oroborous (all courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Kevin Rogers, musician and co-host of the Knot Zen Podcast, joins the host to talk about Zen, its origins in China and its impact in Japan. They discuss the idea of lingering moments, direct experience of reality, metaphysical implications of Zen realization, and the influence of Daoism. The conversation also includes the host's personal misgivings with Zen and the potential for future episodes on music

Welcome to Season Two, my beautiful, free spirits! We ended the last season on a "cliffhanger"... the lead-up to the new mythology forged within the pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Today, we discuss the basis of that new myth. The eternal return, also known as the eternal recurrence, is one of the most famous ideas of Nietzsche, but one of the most difficult to comprehend. How could this philosopher who made it his business to attack every provisional truth, point out the perspectival nature of our world-picture, and dare to suggest that we abolish the metaphysical world beyond... make the proclamation that our lives, exactly as we live them, are eternal? There are many interpretations of this doctrine - ranging from the classification of eternal return as a thought experiment, all the way into mystical territory - but one thing is made crystal clear by Nietzsche's own words: he held that it was the hardest challenge one could put before themselves, akin to facing the greatest stress, or fighting the toughest opponent. Embracing eternal return means the ultimate revaluation of life and the natural world as imminently good and worthwhile. Those who are unable to do so will find this doctrine crippling, or so Nietzsche predicts. Thus, he puts this mysterious teaching into his work in the form of fables and in the teachings of his prophet, Zarathustra. Nietzsche founds his answer to the "problem of life" - that is to say, the problem of the value of a human life, within a mortal, human existence finding some kind of transcendental value - upon the basis of this central idea, of the eternal return. Forgive the couple of times my voice cracked, for I have a bit of a cold. Episode art: George Bellows - Stag at Sharkey's (1909)

Season two is coming soon! This is the last episode in the interim - or what we might call the afterbirth of season one (if we wanted to be a little gross with our metaphors) - and I'm very excited to begin with some of the gargantuan topics of our next series of episodes. Truly, the episodes to follow are on the ideas that stand like magnificent, granite pillars, upholding the beautiful frescoes of Nietzsche's grand ideas.  This is the second time I’m answering questions from the audience. This was a patron Q&A that the small group of people who donate to the show got some time ago, so all the questions are from patrons. Nevertheless, I thought all of you might enjoy it. I retread a little ground from the first season, and cover some questions about issues I’ve delve more deeply into during season two. Please join me next week for the inaugural episode of season two!

By popular demand, I’ve finally had a conversation with an antinatalist. Gabriel and I discussed the arguments for antinatalism, the pessimistic assessment of life on which those arguments are based, and the difference between continuing life versus bringing it forth. I threw Gabriel some curveballs about transhumanism and suicide machines towards the end of the talk, and furthermore we brought in a few references to Twilight Zone and Black Mirror. Contrary to the stereotypical depiction of an antinatalist, I found my guest this week to be a pleasant conversation partner and overall a delightful guest. I’m not convinced of the truth of antinatalism, but the conversation was far more interesting than I’d anticipated. Hope you all enjoy it, and that this episode of Untimely Reflections makes your life just a little bit more worthwhile in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Cheers!

On a cold, rainy afternoon this past November, Mynaa Miesnowan and I met up at a little bar in Austin, Texas called Sagebrush. I'm a lifelong South Austinite and Sagebrush is a newer bar that exists within a very, very old building, that was a country & western dancehall back in the 1960's. The modern decor reminds of a Texas bar in a Rodriguez or Tarantino film, with a backlit landscape of a starry desert lining the walls. Mynaa and I grabbed a beer and made our way around back, even though everything was damp. We walked around and talked for awhile, beneath the gradiants of white and gray dimly hovering above the neighborhood that seemed at once sleepy and busy - as the bar had only just opened and there was literally no one else there, owing to the rain & the Thanksgiving holiday, but the traffic was picking up outside as everyone rushed to get home. Eventually, we dried off some chairs and began recording a podcast. Although we met up only for a brief time, it was great that we got to have this conversation. It was so neat to meet someone that I met through the podcast, in person this time. We talked about the direction of our society & culture, and the separation of our cultural ideas from any kind of physical or biological reality, which happens to be Nietzsche's definition of decadence. We wondered whether Schopenhauer's dad really committed suicide, and whether Nietzsche sincerely believed in Christianity as a youth. We considered what it means to pass through many convictions, and talked about my own history with libertarian thought. We compared the current direction of society to both 1984 & Brave New World. We both wore our love of Nietzsche on our sleeve and mostly just let the conversation go wherever it took us. By far the least rigorous episode of the entire podcast, and one of my favorites.

We can pinpoint the end of an era in Nietzsche’s philosophy precisely at Book IV of the Gay Science. This is where Nietzsche marks off a new chapter in his life. He begins the book with the aphorism, "For the New Year", and there is a celebration of the month of January, as the beginning of the year – a celebration of newness, of rejuvenation. In a letter to Franz Overbeck, on September 9th, of that year, still in 1882, he wrote: "If you have read 'Sanctus Januarius', you will have noticed that I have already come to a turning point. Everything lies new before me, and it will not be long before I am able to see the frightening face of my life’s future task." In this episode, the final show of season one, we examine this self-described turning point in Nietzsche's life & work, as a means of understanding Nietzsche's desire to eternally justify and elevate human life. While we have touched on this theme throughout the season, I think the best way to shift our focus from his moral project to his "life-problem" is to examine the period in his life where he felt he'd hit a breakthrough in confronting this task. It's been a crazy six months; thank you to all of our listeners! Disputing the Lou Salome marriage proposal story: https://paradoxoftheday.com/friedrich-nietzsche-and-lou-von-salome-the-myth-of-marriage-proposals/ My own essay, "Disputing the Three Periods of Nietzsche's Writing", where I criticize the whole idea of Zarathustra being a "turning point" (it's worth noting that the sense in which Nietzsche means it's a turning point, relevant to this episode, I think is perfectly valid, but I just thought I'd include it here): https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comments/fefq8k/disputing_the_three_periods_of_nietzsches_writing/ INCIPIT TRAGOEDIA

In the second part of our deep dive into The Antichrist, we tear into the meat of the text: the scathing, uncompromising attack of Christianity. Unlike most critics of the Christian religion, Nietzsche devotes very little time to the refutation of the arguments for Christianity's truth, or the supposed evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Instead, Nietzsche is laser-focused on the effect of the Christian doctrine of pity, and its character as a totally life-denying force. Jesus, for Nietzsche, is the ultimate life-denying figure: the apotheosis of pity. Through his torture and death at teh hands of the Romans, which he does not resist, he became a mimetic example for the spread of this moral contagion. "Resist not evil" is, in Nietzsche's argument, the entire key to the doctrine of the gospels, and the explanation Jesus' profound difference from other gods - even from the God of the Old Testament. Because he was so extraordinary, even the later Christians never measured up to Jesus' complete defiance of the natural world. "An instinctual hatred of reality" is how Nietzsche describes Jesus. Rather than a "hero", Jesus does not fight, resist, or oppose. He lives in the immanent knowledge of his salvation. "The kingdom of heaven is within you". The later message that was spread was a corruption of this way of life only ever attained to by Jesus. The effect that this religion of pity had on the hearts of the cruel, European barbarians, meanwhile, was to harness their cruelty and turn it inward. With the rejection of all value in the external world, only the internal has meaning. With no external fights, the only fight of any importance becomes the fight against one's own sin. This fight endlessly multiplies the suffering of the world and makes it ever more questionable and worthy of denial: the follower of Christ yearns for some release to this tension, some relief from the endless suffering he lives within. As bleak as all of this sounds, contained in this message, Nietzsche's own "gospel" as it were, or good news, is that if pity is only added on to life, ersatz - that means it is possible that it can be removed. Through this revaluation, maybe we can finally be free of the weakness that has crippled the once strong and beautiful psyche of humanity.

The Antichrist (1888) is one of the last books Nietzsche wrote before losing his sanity the next year. It serves as the culmination of a decade or more of Nietzsche's thoughts on morality, Christianity, and the need for a revaluation of values. This project - of finding or defining a new set of values by which man could live - was something about which Nietzsche was deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, some sort of moral direction is required for ascending life. It is essential that the philosophers of the future find some means of pushing their way through the stage of relativism, or "active nihilism". But such a project would be to ignore the contingency of all our moral beliefs; worse yet, by outlining a new values-structure, Nietzsche will have to think and work systematically. But Nietzsche's thinking is by its nature anti-systematic. As a result, numerous contradictions come to the forefront in his philosophical outlook, not all of which are neatly resolved. However, what we find as key to understanding the work is the opposition we discussed in the previous episode: of Dionysus v/s The Crucified One. The opposition is between the Dionysian morality of which gives a rough sketch, based on life, overcoming and will to power, and the Christian morality which is defined negatively and as the decline of all of these things. He uses this opposition to illuminate the true nature of the Christian religion and to argue for the values that he finds to be badly needed by the modern man. In the course of this moral revaluation, Nietzsche gives a theory of decadence: how empires behave during their decline and collapse. His various considerations lead him to the conclusion that all of the most cherished productions of our society, our highest values, our human ideals, art, philosophy, music, education, and our whole morality - are products of decadence, and thus of weakness. He thus calls into question the value of abstract thinking, and indeed the value of our faculty for conscious thought. Hilary Putnam on Quine and Ontology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhHIVEN839s