The Nietzsche Podcast

We continue our analysis of Birth of Tragedy, and enter one of the most byzantine sections of the text. Don’t worry, I shall be your Ariadne.

Today we cover the first three sections of Birth of Tragedy. Slow going, I know- but things will begin to move at a faster clip as we continue. In this episode the core concepts of the Apollinian and Dionysian art forces are explained, their relation to one another, and their origin in dreams and intoxication.

In the name of Lord Dionysus, it with great joy and solemnity that we commence this, the first of our Nietzschean bookclubs. This series will see me undertake an in-depth analysis, moving section-by-section, through Nietzsche’s first book: The Birth of Tragedy. In the first episode, we’ll look at Nietzsche’s masterful second preface, written in 1886 and attached to the beginning of the work. This...

This is the first conversation on the podcast between more than two people. Given that the episodes involving a dialogue are often the least popular compared to the lecture series, perhaps this simply shows that I have not learned my lesson and refuse to appease the audience gods. We discuss several quotations from Nietzsche during the Untimely Meditations period. The topic is culture - Nietzsche'...

The final episode of season two.  We discuss some of my favorite passages from Nietzsche, concerning the feeling of liberation one has upon finally and fully accepting the Nietzschean affirmative philosophy, and what this means for our future. Nietzsche urges us not to interpret him as giving us a definitive way of life to follow, but furthermore does not wish us to seek for a state of finali...

A synthesis of all ideas of Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy as we have discussed it this season. Join me as I dare to embark on the challenge of answering, on Nietzsche’s behalf, that age-old question… What is the meaning of life? Episode art: Joseph Werner - Diana of Ephesus as allegory of Nature, c. 1680

This time, I'm answering questions just from patrons. If it sounds cool to you to get to ask me additional Q&A questions in between the public Q&As, you can become a patron. Honestly, I know I say this every time, but every time it's true: this is my favorite question and answer session yet! Got into some very deep and very fun territory. Love it. When this goes up on reddit, I'll ask the public f...

On our second excursion into Nietzschean science, we’re studying Nietzsche’s two most celebrated figures in science: one from Ancient Greece and another from Enlightenment Europe. In Democritus, Nietzsche sees the zenith of the materialist project in Greek philosophy, opening the way for a mathematical atomist description of the world, carried on by the Pythagoreans. In Boscovich, he finds a conti...

In this episode, we revisit the Pre-Platonic lecture series given by Nietzsche at Basel, the notes for which were assembled and translated by Gregory Whitlock. These lectures detail Nietzsche’s views on the first philosophers of Ancient Greece, and how they demonstrated that the spirit of scientific investigation is a manifestation of will to power: to bound the boundless within the understanding...

In this episode, I'm reading a chapter of my book, Unconscious  Correspondences. I considered an episode on Cartesian Dualism, but realized I'd already said everything I needed to say, in a chapter in this book. Rather than repurposing the same content into a new form, why  not just read directly from the book? As Nietzsche tended to do  when introducing his own earlier wo...

Much had been made of Nietzsche’s predictions of the coming nihilism. As a result of the death of the Christian God, Europe is bound for a crisis of values, in which nothing can any longer give us a goal beyond ourselves and our own happiness, and people search for this meaning or justification in all sorts of other spheres of human life: morality, reason, history, and utility. Ultimately, however...

After the wager is agreed upon between Faust and Mephisto, the two set off to explore the world. Mephisto takes Faust out drinking in Leipzig. Then, Mephisto procures for him a youth potion from one of his earthly servants - a witch - that takes thirty years off of Faust's life, restoring him to perfect youth. Then, while on their travels, Faust meets a young girl named Gretchen, by happenstance,...

Goethe is perhaps the most widely-celebrated author of German literature, and Faust is his most famous tale. While the historical Doctor Faustus had always been portrayed as an essentially evil man, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for greater power, Goethe reinterpreted the story into a wager between Faust and Mephistopheles, and set it against the backdrop of a metaphysical wager betwe...

"Emerson – Never have I felt so much at home in a book, and in my home, as – I may not praise it… it is too close to me... The author who has been richest in ideas in this century so far, has been an American..." (Nietzsche)  Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most influential minds in America, as a leading figure in the Transcendentalist movement that emerged during the mid-1800s, a personal...

In a second episode with my wife, Amberly, we talk about another movie. This time it's not a movie about Nietzsche, the man, but a film that I argue approximates some of Nietzsche's ideas about the decline of society, the weakness of modernity, and the need to rediscover the barbarian within us all. That film, of course, is Demolition Man (1993) by Paul Verhoeven, starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesl...

William Kaiser is a sociologist, a pupil of Peter Berger, a student of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and an autodidact in all things Freud, Nietzsche & Kaufmann. His dissertation on the topic of Wittgenstein was entitled, "A Wittgensteinian Critique of Realism in Social Science Methodology", and to this day, Kaiser maintains his skepticism towards what he characterizes as "naive realism". He exp...

Today, it's an examination of a single aphorism: Beyond Good & Evil, 295, "The Genius of the Heart": "...the genius of the heart, who silences all that is loud and self-satisfied, teaching it to listen; who smooths rough souls and lets them taste a new desire - to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them -..." In this passage - essentially a prose poem by Nietzsche -...

Another episode on a single passage: The Gay Science, book V, aphorism  354: “The Genius of the Species”. One of the most thought-provoking  passages in Nietzsche’s work, he expounds on his hypothesis that all  consciousness is a product of human sociality, and was only necessary as  a net of communication between human beings. This has dire implications  for Nietzsche’s a...

In part two, we shift from the friendship - at first strong, and later, a bit troubled - to the break that happened in 1878/9. Nietzsche writes, in his personal correspondence, and in his reflections in Ecce Homo, of the liberating freedom he felt when he left Bayreuth and moved up to the Alps, and how this turning away from Wagner represented a completely new chapter in his life. Indeed, the brea...

UPDATE: Yesterday, when the episode went live, it had the wrong audio uploaded and simply contained a repeat of Q&A #1. Sorry everyone. This has been fixed. Better late than never! I answer fan questions for a third time. I want to start doing this more frequently, so if you have a question you want answered, let me know on reddit, or send a voice message to the podcast on Anchor.

It's finally time to talk about Richard Wagner. After meeting Wagner by happenstance in 1868, Nietzsche began a ten-year friendship with the older man, who was a rising star in the music world, on track to becoming one of the most famous living composers. Nietzsche was himself a fan, and described the chain of events leading to his friendship with Wagner as a kind of "fairytale". Soon, Wagner emba...

"Without music, life would be a mistake." It's commonly known that Nietzsche was a sort of 'musical philosopher' - in fact, it was a feat he aspired to quite openly - but a glance at Nietzsche's thoughts on music reveals that he was so enamored with this form of artistic expression as to have once suggested that music lays at the very heart of reality. Only through music, Nietzsche argues in Birth...

Join me in a discussion of passage 109 of Daybreak: "Self-Control and Moderation and Their Final Motive". In this passage that we've oft referenced but not yet attempted a deep dive of, Nietzsche outlines six ways of dealing with the "vehemence of a drive". As Nietzsche considers the self to be governed by impulses, some of which are competing, we should not expect that we can simply command ourse...

In the second of our examination of the Overman, we'll examine a passage I'd originally planned to look at in respect to the eternal recurrence of the same events: The Convalescent. This chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra deals with both of these grand doctrines of Nietzsche - the Overman and the eternal return - and provides, in some sense, the means for understanding both in relationship to one a...

This is the last great concept of Nietzsche's that we have not yet covered on the podcast. With all of the background context that we've collected over the first season and the first part of this one, I feel we're now ready to confront the pinnacle of Nietzsche's philosophy, the highest ideal, and the most sacred value: the Overman. Contrary to popular belief, the Overman is not a figure that has...