The Nietzsche Podcast

Today, we’re going to delve for the first time into one of Nietzsche’s influences. Heraclitus is known for his sayings such as “Everything flows”, and “One cannot step into the same river twice.” Heraclitus lived during a time before philosophy was well-defined as a discipline, and before there were well-known philosophical schools in Greece. Nietzsche had his own fascinating theories about the philosophers who lived before Plato, and we cannot understand his inspiration from Heraclitus without understanding how he perceived the Pre-Platonics: as archetypal philosophers, who dared to uniquely define their own style of philosophical thought. This was the greatness of the figures Nietzsche called, somewhat controversially, the Pre-Platonics. They were the first Greek philosophers, at a time before philosophy, science and religion had split. Rather than seeing them as outdated or unimportant, Nietzsche sees a fascinating narrative about the rise of materialism and scientific thought, and in Heraclitus - perhaps the very model for Nietzsche’s own philosophical quest.

A mysterious illness. A headstone for Karl Ludwig. An enigmatic inscription. In today's episode, we pose the question of why Nietzsche would memorialize his dead father, a Lutheran pastor, with a verse from Corinthians. This unusual event in Nietzsche's life intersects with both his lifelong ailment and his most ambitious philosophical ideas. In order to answer this question, we'll go on the podcast's first deep dive into Nietzsche's personal life - particularly his early life, his romantic period, and his ill-fated friendships with Richard Wagner, Paul Ree, and Lou Salome. This episode was partially inspired by an essay by Charlie Huennemann, a professor who has published many books worth checking out, including one on Nietzsche. You can find his blog here: https://huenemanniac.com/ Other sources utilized in the episode: Leonard Sax, What was the cause of Nietzsche’s dementia? (pdf link: www.leonardsax.com/Nietzsche.pdf) Hemelsoet D1, Hemelsoet K, Devreese D., The neurological illness of Nietzsche (Abstract): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18575181 Information on CADASIL: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/cerebral-autosomal-dominant-arteriopathy-with-subcortical-infarcts-and-leukoencephalopathy

Today we'll study the words of a saint, a pope, a madman, the ugliest man, and Zarathustra himself - in order to find out what they all have to tell us about one of the most momentous events in world history, but one which is not yet perceived or understood by the great many. This event is the Death of God, one of Nietzsche's most important ideas and one which lays the groundwork for understanding his thought, and where he saw himself in the context of Western Philosophy. While it is often the case that great attention is given to the infamous passage entitled, "The Madman" - and we'll spend a good amount of time on this passage in this very episode - this particular story is only the first step into the many implication's of God's death. And, of course, we will not be able to get through the episode without addressing ourselves to the elephant in the room, one Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, who has suggested that the Death of God was a sorrowful event for Nietzsche. On the contrary, Nietzsche celebrated the myriad possibilities laid open for humanity, for all the dangers that this entailed, such as the civilizational descent into nihilism.  This episode's art is Diogenes by Dutch painter Jan Victors (1619 – 1679)

In this episode, we discuss the character of The Wanderer. The Wanderer appeared in multiple Nietzsche works, mainly during the period from Human, All Too Human, through The Gay Science. Evidently Nietzsche identified himself with this character. The wandering that Nietzsche did throughout Europe, and while hiking the Alps, paralleled the metaphor of 'philosophical wandering' in Nietzsche's work. We'll also discuss a potential inspiration for Nietzsche, in the motif of "wanderers" in German culture. The significance of philosophical wandering as Nietzsche's approach to philosophy is that Nietzsche's project ends up looking very different from that of most other philosophers. Episode art is Caspar David Friedrich's Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer.

Welcome to The Nietzsche Podcast! In this first episode, we introduce Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), through the passage, "How the True World Finally Became a Fable", from his book, The Twilight of Idols. In this passage, Nietzsche sketches the history of a particular error in Western philosophy: the error of metaphysics. Nietzsche establishes himself as an anti-metaphysical philosopher, who is against all doctrines of a "True World" that lies beyond our own. In this episode, we touch upon the ideas and historical context of Plato, Descartes, Kant, Schopenhauer, and others. INCIPT ZARATHUSTRA!