The Nietzsche Podcast

The alchemists claimed that they explained "the obscure by the more obscure, the unknown by the more unknown", and accordingly, the secrets of the alchemical work have remained largely a mystery to the public consciousness. While most think of alchemy as charlatanism, the promise to "turn lead into gold", this is far from the truth, and fails to grapple with the immense scienti...

Very pleased to finally be joined by Gregory Sadler on the podcast! Greg is one of the more popular teachers of philosophy in the modern age, and given his recent courses on Stoicism, we decided to make that the focus. I hope you all enjoy our conversation: about philosophy as a guide to life, Stoicism versus Epicureanism, distortions of Stoicism and Nietzsche, whether philosophy is self-help, and...

Among the 19th century forerunners of existentialism are Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard. While there is much that divides these two thinkers - one is atheist and the other a Christian, one seeks faith in Fate and the other in God - there are some curious similarities between these two great minds. Kierkegaard is a Christian against Christianity, critiquing the easy optimism or sordid re...

Cioran is notorious as the depressive philosopher par excellence. While figures such as Schopenhauer, Ligotti and Benatar have advanced logical arguments for their pessimistic outlook, Cioran's work is completely missing any such justification for his depressive feeling for life. Instead, his work is a lyrical outpouring of his inner life. In this episode we're taking a look at his first and most...

This is a revision and re-recording of Episode 04 of the podcast, "Love Never Faileth". I felt that it wasn't my best work in terms of execution, but one of the best episode concepts. As a New Year's special, enjoy this redux of a classic episode. Some parts have been added, some have been removed, and overall I think the lecture flows better and better gets across the ideas I'd originally hoped t...

Is this an anti-Christian screed? Far from it. Today we take a deep dive into one of Nietzsche's core concepts from the Antichrist: the reversal of our understanding of the terms "soul" and "spirit". While many Christians do not even give much thought to the difference between these terms, this was, historically, a key distinction. Nietzsche's great subversion is in critiquing the spirit as a fals...

Finishing book 2 of TGS! This coming Tuesday, a Wandering Above a Sea of Fog episode, then a break for a week. Episode art: Priestess at Delphi by John Collier

Continuing with The Gay Science readthrough! More sections on art, the eternal war between prose and poetry, the Apollinian and Dionysian, and more. Episode art: The Human Condition by Rene Magritte.

Patrons: "Have you ever said Yes to a single joy?" Salts: "Yes"

"Many lies tell the poets" - Homer. Nietzschean exploration of art, of truth and appearance in the artistic world, the way that madness, art and ritual relate, and the translation of artistic expression into different cultural contexts. Join me for this continuation of our The Gay Science readthrough!

In this episode, Mynaa and I discuss The Repairer of Reputations, the first story in Robert Chambers' collection, The King in Yellow. Concepts in Chambers work contributed to the creation of the 'weird fiction' genre, and remain influential on media today - including the King in Yellow, the notion of a book that can drive you mad, and names such as Carcossa and the Hyades. We've delved into the to...

Samhain is fast approaching, and this week we're going to have two spooky episodes of the podcast. This episode will be a philosophical exploration of the significance of Arthur Machen's weird fiction/horror novella, "The Great God Pan". While I'd originally planned this for the second leg of the season, we're interrupting The Gay Science readthrough for the sake of the holiday, and because this s...

Welcome back to The Gay Science! In this episode we commence with book II, which begins with an exploration of perspectivism and the pitfalls of scientific realism, and quickly moves into ruminations on women and relationships. It's no one's favorite part of Nietzsche, but in this talk we'll clean all of the philosophical meat off of the bone, because Nietzsche actually has some genuinely valuable...

Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History is a loveletter to Greek tragedy, that begins with a dedication from Nietzsche and Plato. Central to the story is the concept of the Dionysian, and the attempt of the main characters to experience the Dionysian. Richard Papen's fatal flaw is his "morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs". His undying quest for a beautiful aesthetic life leads him to be...

The Bacchae is a parennially popular Greek tragedy that portrays the coming of Dionysus to Greece. The Dionysian strikes Hellas like a wave of madness, and the play is full of miracles, illusions and other violations of the natural order. Often interpreted as a play about the conflict between religious experience and established dogma, or between the old order and the new, The Bacchae continues to...

Michel Foucault is one of the most influential philosophical thinkers of the 20th century. He remains a controversial figure, but undoubtedly he had a profound impact on the way we think about mental health and mental illness up to the present day. In this episode, we take a deep dive into his work, Madness & Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, based on his dissertation....

Aeschylus' Oresteia is the only extant trilogy of Greek drama. Alongside the Parthenon, the Oresteia is considered one of the two greatest 'monuments' to the Golden Age of Athens. In this trilogy - The Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides - Aeschylus dramatizes a rite of passage from savagery to civilization. Over the course of the narrative, the ancient law of blood is o...

Welcome to the ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE of The Nietzsche Podcast. Today we're examining the speech of Peter Sloterdijk, given on the centennial of Nietzsche's death, and transcribed into the essay entitled, "Nietzsche Apostle". Sloterdijk puts forward the theory that languages are fundamentally an instrument of 'group narcissism' by which the group recognizes one another and...

In 1956, Jung wrote the essay entitled, "Past and Future" in German, but we know it in English as "The Undiscovered Self". Having witnessed the horror of the world wars, and the ongoing apocalyptic danger of the Cold War, Jung attempted to explain why it was that societies sometimes went mad. This is how Europe experienced the outbreak of The Great War: as mass insanity. Why wo...

Yukio Mishima (born Kimitake Hiraoka, 1925-1970) wrote dozens of stories, including famous works such as Confessions of a Mask, and Patriotism. He was considered for a Nobel Prize in literature about half a dozen times, through he never won it. His works were adapted into films, which received international acclaim. He wrote modern No plays which were performed all over the world, in Europe and Am...

Welcome to season five of The Nietzsche Podcast! First of all, a warm thank you to all of my listeners and patrons who have helped to make this show such a phenomenal success. For our first episode in this new collection of episodes, we're diving headfirst into the Oedipus plays of Sophocles: Oedipus Rex & Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles triumphed with the best tragedy at the Dionysia more t...

Concluding with our readthrough of book I of The Gay Science! We'll return with book II in a short while. In the meantime, we're going back to regular episodes of the podcast in the immediate future, covering a variety of topics. Cheers!

Join me for the next installment of our readthrough of The Gay Science. Here, we cover a number of aphorisms concerning: fame and its effect on friendship; the dying words of Roman emperors; the hidden significance of all historical events; the desacrelizing effects of market forces upon society; and the value in knowing the supposed motives of human behavior, if the professed motives happen to be...

In this episode, we discuss the way in which selfishness is the root of all selfless morality, how corruption produces greatness, why the ascetic is driven by ambition, and the age old question, "What is Life?"

Join me this week, for a discussion of significant aphorisms from The Gay Science, including Consciousness, Evil, and The Feeling of Power.