Q&A #13

[MUSIC] This is the Nietzsche podcast. [MUSIC] All right, welcome everyone to another Q&A episode. This is, I don't even know which one this is, which number, but that's good. We've done quite a few of these and hopefully we will do quite a few more. So let's get right into it. We're going to start with a question from Dan. He says, "Hello, Keegan. Thank you for your insightful read-throughs and analyses of Nietzsche's works. They've been incredibly helpful for understanding his ideas. I have two questions. In the gay science book one, you discuss Nietzsche's view that bad people, quote-unquote, drive human progress through suffering. If the goal is to evolve the human psyche biologically, what might the ethics of such an evolved future society look like? Would humanity need a new struggle beyond itself?" Well, thank you Dan, and I'll read your next question once I answer it. I'll answer this one first and it actually contains quite a few questions. The first thing I would say is that it's not necessarily that bad people drive human progress through suffering. I mean, that could be the case, I guess, but because suffering is really one way to think about it and Nietzsche's work is as a form of energy or something like that. But another thing that I might say about, quote-unquote, bad people, the criminal, the barbarians at the gates, the ambitious political figure who tears up the rules and all of these things. It may not necessarily be that they're causing suffering, but that they're creating a tension. In Nietzsche's broader philosophy, conflict, war, tension, these are or can be productive things. We normally think of these as, we might say, essentially destructive, and certainly they are, war is certainly destructive. But following Heraclitus, that war is the father of all and the king of all, that strife is justice. I think Nietzsche takes this very seriously, and this even goes down to the cellular level it involves physics, he sees forces competing, contesting forces in the struggle of the tension between them. As creative, you might say, in the sense of generating power for an electrical grid. You're usually, you're pushing against something that wants to be inert, has its own inertia, getting it to turn. You could say it's a competition between, say, the weight of the wind turbines of the blades in a windmill, and the wind power is what creates the energy or something like that. But I mean more realistically, or we'll say more concretely in the political and ethical realm. It's the test of your political system, your constitution. It's the exceptions that allow you to see the ways in which that constitution might have flaws or see the ways in which you can't really know how strong or how unifying or how good your constitution is for preserving the polity until it's tested. You might say a military needs to be tested. If a military hasn't gone into battle for a long, long, long, long time, they're not going to be taken very seriously as a military, they need to be constantly battle tested. And I mean this is true with physical fitness, you can't just let your body atrophy and not expose yourself to having to physically strain your muscles to lift, to run, to do all these things. I mean, it's literally the tension you're bringing to your muscles that makes them stronger. So I mean, it's not necessarily the suffering. The suffering is an epiphenomenon that itself could indeed drive human progress. You might say in some cases. But really, let's say again, an epiphenomenon that really the conflict is the thing that's important. And there are just so many examples of this. I mean, we all like to think of an ideal system as being one in which it's peace, right? It's harmony. There's no challenges. There's no contests. There's no tension. But the great irony is that this doesn't, in reality, that leads to atrophy, it leads to stagnation, it leads to corruption. It leads to, you know, in a political context, a military that's unready for conflict, it's untested, so on and so forth. And so then to get onto your questions, if the goal is to evolve the human psyche biologically, what might the ethics of such an evolved future society look like? On the one hand, we might say that the goal is to get us to see, the goal of Nietzsche's perspective is to get us to see that the dynamism, the change, evolution itself, is necessary for life, that life is either ascending or it's descending, there is no standing still, that it is a continual renewal, a continual return of conflict. And this will always be the case, so if you try and hide from it, it's only going to weaken you. So in some sense, it's not necessarily as important to envision some sort of ideal future human society that's more evolved, because when we reach that point, that will not be a final endpoint either, there will have to be, if we are to continue being living beings and we're not going to just die out, that will only be one further step in human evolution, it will keep going and going and going. So would humanity need a new struggle beyond itself, or you could say humanity always needs a new struggle beyond itself? Now I mean you did mention the human psyche, we're evolving the human psyche biologically. And Nietzsche does make some concrete claims about what that would represent. He says, for example, for mankind to be delivered from revenge. He says that's a bridge to his highest hopes. And that's a very strange thing to consider, because much of Nietzsche's concern with resentment is that it is a state of mind created by the forestalling of revenge, by being unable to take revenge. So clearly Nietzsche isn't saying that we need to, for stalled, we need to get rid of revenge just to go back to Resultamah, he's saying, what if we didn't need to be reactive whatsoever? What if we didn't need, what if we didn't feel the desire to take revenge, what if we didn't experience these traces that made us relive past slights and need to pay them back, something like that? That would be one example of a psychological transformation, and what would a society like that look like, where there's no vindictiveness at all? There's no concept of retributive punishment or something like that. It's just solely affirmative and creative. It's almost impossible to imagine such a polity existing in a way that isn't like a sort of hippy new age community or something like that, which is certainly not what Nietzsche's talking about. I think he is talking about something on the grand scale and, you know, a new iteration of the human species that is beyond these things without necessarily having to, well, like you can assume revenge without a chewing conflict, that might be one way to put it. You know, this is a lot of the reason why Nietzsche looks to the ancient Greeks. He's looking for a morality that can christen the enemy, not morally condemn the enemy, recognize the need for tension and the enemy without, you know, at the same time saying, well, we're going to be pacifists, we're going to be Buddhists, we're going to be apostolic Christians or something like that. That's certainly not what he's going for. So that would be one example. And there are, you know, it really, I would say, look to the pathologies, particularly the reactive pathologies that Nietzsche calls out throughout his career, guilt, bad conscience, the aesthetic ideal and try to imagine a humanity without these things. And it is almost impossible, which is why it's something that would be far, far off into the distant future. And then we might imagine that that new iteration of the human race would have something, would have new things that it would have to overcome. So let's move on. My second question is, did you study philosophy in school? I'm considering studying it, studying it at a community college, which may not be prestigious, but it feels like a good start. You know, I did go to school. I did not complete my college degree, but I did take some philosophy classes. Yes. And, you know, I had a good experience. I'm not going to say that there's no reason to do it. I think you will get far more out of philosophy with self-directed reading, sitting down with the books and really diving in and trying to enter into a dialogue or into a real relationship with the author that you're reading. Really try and see the world through their eyes, bring to your own mind the questions that arise, the tensions with your own point of view, go at your own pace. And then, you know, that way you get to read stuff that you're actually interested in, there's nothing better for learning than actually studying something that actually interests you. And the problem with school, you see, it's not really a problem in industry, in institutions, academic institutions, all sorts of things. We need people who are able to study things and learn things that don't directly interest them. But philosophy, I mean, does anyone need philosophy, as I often say, I think it's a kind of luxury. And so, study in school, I think, is really good for like one big thing. It'll expose you to a lot of different philosophers that you then might, you might not have otherwise looked into, and it might spur you on to investigate them further. And the other thing is that you might, how would I put this? If you have a good professor, they might give you a nice sort of bird's eye view of the history of philosophy and kind of help you see it from that perspective, the total picture, which is almost impossible, like to get a full, like nuanced in-depth perspective and the whole history of philosophy without reading all of it yourself, which is also almost impossible. Because the life, a human life is such a short thing, but at least giving you a road map, that's really what it is. So there are very valuable things for studying philosophy in school. If you're studying in a community college, I mean, is that, are you eventually trying to transfer and is philosophy going to be your degree plan? Because I certainly wouldn't recommend that, unless you want to go into academia and like get a doctorate. And, you know, that's a, you know, hey, live dangerously, but I know I've known many PhDs over the years, and they all say the same thing, don't do it. But, you know, like, I guess aside from that, like if you want to teach, if you want to be part of academia, then it might be a good idea to study philosophy. And almost every other case, it's not a good idea. So if that's just, you want to take some classes as part of a greater degree plan, or if you're just going to community college to do it as a way to personally enrich yourself, I mean, great. I just wouldn't really recommend that as an academic path. So thank you, Dan. That is my humble advice to you. Next, we have, well, he gives one, he has one username, but he signs his name as Nellej. So I'm going to refer to him as Nellej. So he says, hey, they're a big handsome. Thank you. When I was in college, most of my professors seemed exceedingly dismissive of Nietzsche. Most of the philosophy and religious studies departments were pretty stuffy, self-important intellectual types that seemed to grasp the mathematical side of philosophy, but didn't seem in my opinion to understand the artistic side of it. Excuse the metaphorical language, but I don't know how else to put it. I think that maybe they just read Nietzsche, like very straight and literal in the humor and poetry, maybe just went over their heads. I don't know. I'm a fucking idiot, but I feel like the philosophy department at my school is filled with folks like Nelle to grasp Tyson. Very smart, but with major blind spots and dismissive attitudes toward anything involving metaphor into artistic language. My middle-head roommate gave me a copy of the Antichrist and the art of happiness on our first day of recording school when I was 17, and I was kind of shocked when I got into the religious studies program, philosophy program at IU, and everyone just treated Nietzsche like it was for punk-ass kids. I definitely understand that the guy's dead thing hits very hard for a shit-ass kid, especially when they're raised in strict religious homes, but his way of thinking doesn't really click until you've put some time in on this weird ass world we're spending on. I guess I'm just curious on your take, why do people either dismiss my dude or Jordan Peterson him? I disagree with a lot of Nietzsche's ideas for lack of a better word, but his thought process and writing are so interesting. See a philosopher for artists primarily, do non-creatives miss something? Sorry, I don't have Nietzsche's gift for brevity, thanks for keeping me company at work, and inspiring my music. Oh, Nellej, he sent me a track. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, no, this is okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just say before I answer your questions. I mean, this is like a very common thing, and as you seem to understand, I mean, it's not with how good reason that they might be dismissive of Nietzsche because of the way in which he is, like it is true, there's a certain archetype of a teenager who gets really smitten with Nietzsche, and usually they don't have any broader philosophical interest, and they they're not good readers. Almost no one is at that age when you're a teenager or something. It can lead to an arrogant attitude and thinking, I think Nietzsche should make you more intellectually humble in many ways, and yet it makes people oftentimes when they're younger, very arrogant. So it's somewhat understandable, and yeah, that whole mathematical side of philosophy, I mean, you say it's like metaphorical, but that's literally true. I mean, if you go to an analytic philosophy course, they're gonna probably teach you how to formulaize your philosophical syllogisms and such. They think very syllogistically, and a syllogism can be turned into an equation, and it is very mathematical, and that whole thing was all the rage for quite a while. The people who think like that, yeah, they don't really get the poetic or artistic side of Nietzsche. So your specific question is, is he a philosopher for artists primarily, do non-creatives miss something? I mean Nietzsche himself says this. He says he's trying to be a Socrates who practices music and artistic Socrates, his gay sciences, the unification of science. It's like taking sort of like rational empirical inquiry, but conducting it without this sort of like heavy-graven attitude, or not-grave attitude to experiment joyously. And really, he brings in, as I've mentioned, the attitude of experiment into his philosophy, not just in the form of these sort of dry-as-dust thought experiments. The trolley problems, the classic one, we're going to try and test your moral theories of utilitarianism or whatever it might be by seeing how you'd respond to this situation that has never occurred before, and probably will never occur in real life, although now that it's such a part of the public consciousness, like somebody should make a movie about like a saw-type serial killer who makes people do trolley problems, that would be quite amusing. So yeah, I mean, I think, oh, and then human, all too human, he talks about the chemistry of concepts and feelings. Sort of again, this idea of unifying art and science, or philosophy and science, basically the rational realm and the passionate realm, the thought and emotional realms, trying to sort of comprehend both and how they relate to each other. I mean, really, he's trying to turn to grasp it like psychology, but even psychology in the modern sense is not really what Nietzsche's doing necessarily because who does he say are the best psychologists? They're novelists, right? They're creative types. He says he can learn more from reading Stundahl or Dostoevsky than he can from, you know, about like learn more about human nature and things like that, from reading them than from, say, reading Kant or Hegel. So I think a lot of Nietzsche's search for, you know, this new yet undiscovered discipline of psychology that he thinks could be the the route to the fundamental problems is really understanding the relationship between thought and feeling. And we might say there's a softest element as well, the unification of style and substance of form and content. And, you know, seeing, we might see this in Nietzsche's broader philosophical work the way he sees every feeling as rooted in a drive and every drive as suffused with mentation even in some sort of rudimentary form. So all of these things are unified in Nietzsche. And yeah, I mean, you might just say that a lot of the people who are getting into philosophy so that they can do logic grams and break down propositions into these formulae are not necessarily reading for the literary merit. And that's one of the things about Nietzsche is like, he's a great writer. Whatever anyone might say about him, whatever stereotype they might have about Nietzsche's readers, he is just an amazing writer. He's probably, I mean, it's probably not surprising to hear me say this, but it is a bold claim. I think he's the best writer in all of philosophy. I don't think there's another philosophical writer who is as good as Nietzsche, whose every sentence is as just intricate and layered and well thought out and produces the same literary experience of reading him that you're, I've often described it as like going on a quest, going on a journey in the same way of like a plot arc or a narrative arc or something like that. It's very unique to Nietzsche. Well, it's not unique. There are other writers, but I just, I think he's the best. I think he's the best at this. And so I don't know. I mean, if, yeah, you're just looking at this analytic content of Nietzsche's philosophy, you're going to find all these contradictions, you're going to find all these ways in which, you know, he starts out arguing apparently one thing and then river, or like baseless claims that he makes, again, experimental claims where he begins by saying, suppose this is the case, what if this is the case, suppose some day or night, a demon or to come to you, right? Some of his most famous passages, the madman passage. It's a dramatized, the madman passage is a work of literature. It's a scene. It's a character talking, right? So Nietzsche, no, like the most famous idea that Nietzsche puts forward, they're not in like premise A, premise B, conclusion derived. That's not what he's doing. And so if that's the way someone's brain works, then they don't care about the literature. Yeah, they're just not going to get it. And I guess, yeah, so non-creatives miss something. But even if people aren't like writers themselves or artists themselves, I would push back against maybe that, that he's not necessarily a philosopher just for artists primarily. But people who don't have any appreciation for beauty or literature or passion or, you know, all the other most important aspects of human life aside from cold rationality, yeah, they might not get it. Nietzsche might not be the philosopher for them. They might be better off reading Kant or whatever. All right, thank you, Nilej. Let's go on to the next question. James, he asks, what did Nietzsche mean by great politics? Sometimes translated as grand politics. Thank you for that question, James. That's a very easy one. So great politics is the politics of values, I would say. Insofar as it doesn't have to do with policy prescriptions, doesn't have to do with a concrete political program or economics or theories and social studies or any of these things. I mean, it could involve all of that to greater and lesser degrees, but really great politics involves the struggle between values. And so it's actually a realm that encompasses politics, morality and religion because oftentimes religions are ways of transmitting value judgments. Actually, I'd say all the time they are, but I guess religions don't always enter into the political realm, so to speak, or there's a lot of elements of religion that don't necessarily have to do with morality. There are parts of it that involve religion and aesthetic spirituality. It's very removed from the world and so on and so forth. It's sort of like daily habits and rituals and prohibitions and these things, but really the values underlying a religion and Nietzsche spends a great time attempting to expose to uncover the values beneath Christianity and show how those values, how Christianity acted as a transmission system, a mimetic transmission system for the morals that were driving it from the beginning in his opinion. That shapes the political reality of Europe. And you could see how the religions of various world civilizations have shaped their politics. And then in the 20th century, you see these like atheistic sort of mass ideologies arise, like fascism, communism. I mean, arguably secular democracy is one of them. We just don't tend to see it in ideological terms because it's the oxygen we breathe, it's the water we swim in. And liberal democracy won. It was successful over the other two were failed experiments or something like that. So we just sort of take the values under liberal democracy as unchallenged. But I mean, many have argued previous commentary just brought up Jordan Peterson. And this is something I think he's right about. You know, Soviet communism kind of takes the form of a new religion in a really important sense as did fascism. And so even a religious regimes, they sort of, they come into power on the heels or in the wake of these mass movements that are driven by like new valuations, new moral values. And I guess one of the main things about grand politics is that it doesn't concern any one of these policies. It's as a transnational politics. And it's not just geopolitics in the current moment. It's politics that's transgenerational. And you know, takes place over centuries and millennia. How long did it take for Christianity to rise up and take hold in the Old Roman Empire? How long did it take for Europe to become Christianized? How long after the Holy Roman Empire did? You know, and then you can see the political struggles. I mean, massive political follow-up from the Protestant Reformation was Luther trying to create the conditions for the counter-reformation and these massive internal warfare. I mean, like as a result of Luther nailing his 99 theses to the door of the cathedral within a few generations you have like sectarian violence in other countries in France where Catholics and Protestants are murdering each other left and right and forming armies and militias and there's stochastic violence and terrorism and all of these things. Was that his intention? No, but it's because he was a revaluation, right? Or you could argue he's kind of like the opposite of a revaluation. He's sort of like a reactionary figure like returning to the medieval values, reacting against the Renaissance revaluation that's kind of how Nietzsche would see it. But these are the terms in which you have to look at the great politics, the Renaissance, the Reformation. These events that don't take place in one country, it's not like about tax policy in Italy or church, politics in Germany, it's like a very really deep struggle about the values of the civilization that then have downstream effects for centuries and arguably still having downstream effects. The French Revolution would be another such event. There's that famous quote that's often I think falsely attributed to Mao. It might have been attributed to a Chinese communist revolutionary about the French Revolution. Or I think maybe the inaccurate, the apocryphal thing about the quote is that he might have been referring to, like not the 1700s French Revolution, but the one, but like a more recent event. It's not really important because it's a great quote where the question is, was the French Revolution positive development or a negative development? And he said it's too soon to say. And we could say that about so many things that you really need the eye of a millennia, thousands of years, to truly comprehend the downstream consequences of a revaluation. I mean, Nietzsche would say we're still living in the shadow of Plato's revaluation. And so that's how I would describe grand politics. That's what Nietzsche is concerned with is the struggle between values, which does not take place. You might say that there are individual events, there are sort of little ruptures and you know, like it could come out in a battle between policy. I mean, like with the front, that was the French sort of the war between the nobles and the king, the result being a centralized monarchy, a far more centralized monarchy than it had ever existed. That was presumably at the beginning over tax policy, but was it really over tax policy? I would argue no. There was something much, much deeper going on there. And so oftentimes it might appear like these issues of petty politics, small politics are actually very important, but in fact, there are always, uh, Tertian talks about the grinding of fault lines, plates, tectonic plates, pressing against each other for, you know, geological time scales far, far beyond anything human beings can comprehend. And then the earthquake happens. And that's not the earthquake might seem to be a spontaneous event that might seem to be a cause, right, of the things that are happening. It's actually an effect of a long, long, long, long process. I think often this is the case with petty politics, partisan politics, they're sort of the rupture or the eruption or the, the earthquake, you know, whenever there's like a big political event on that level, it's the result of a long, long period of value conflict oftentimes. And so that's really, really what Nietzsche is describing. All right, so let's go to Derek A. I'm having trouble reconciling Nietzsche's love for Greek tragedy and his dislike of comedy. Nietzsche and Thusbooks are at Thostor writes how his enemy is the spirit of gravity, that heavy outlook on life. Why then does he not like comedy, which takes a lighthearted look at things? It seems to me that Greek tragedy is a more heavy and overly serious art form. Nietzsche said it says if Jesus had lived longer, he perhaps would have learned to laugh. Isn't Jesus a tragic figure? Great, great question, Derek. So, I mean, it's worth noting that that tragedy is the origin of the Greek drama. It long predates comedy. And it wasn't as if initially we had this divide between the sad tragic play and the lighthearted comedic play. The Greek tragedy comes out of religious ritual. It comes out of the Dionysia. And Dionysus was the original tragic figure, the original tragic hero. And so we have to understand tragedy is something with these religious roots that there's an existential question that's being addressed by tragedy. And just to cut to the chase, I mean, tragedy is supposed to be a reflection of real life, that this is what life is like. That life is suffering, right? Again, that's a very vulgar way of putting it. It's not saying that there's no joy in life. Nietzsche certainly would not agree with that. He certainly would not say that life is suffering in the Schopenharian sense, even though he is a bit more Schopenharian during his, is the phase when he writes the birth of tragedy. But he makes it clear in the second preface that he upends to that work, that the point is to then to look with sober eyes at what life is like. You're going to get old and die. You're going to lose people that you love. Unjust things will happen to you. Noble people who have committed no sin will be destroyed. You'll be betrayed. All of these things. Tragedy is a sober representation of all of that. That nevertheless blesses life as good. And the mystery, the religious mystery that was at the origin of the Dionysia, is a sort of cyclical kind of mystery. Most of the early Greek mystery cults had this character. They looked at life like the cycles of nature and of the seasons. These were the mysteries. This was involved with the mysteries that were revealed to people. And so there's something about life that always ends tragically and yet it recompenses a new. One of the things Nietzsche says about the primordial pain and contradiction revealed by the Dionysian tragedy is that life itself begins with pain and so far as the pangs of childbirth. That we are brought into this world as, you know, the one bearing us is bearing great suffering. And then we grow up and then we're inevitably going to meet with suffering and these injustices in all of these things. And yet the drama continues, right? What does it take to allow for the drama of human life to continue? To look at it soberly and nevertheless call it beautiful and say, yes, I affirm all of this. That's what Nietzsche is really saying. And his issue with comedy, which is a later art form, the new addict comedy, is that it trivializes human life. That it doesn't look at the whole picture. It doesn't take a sober look at human affairs. Rather than larger than life characters who are sort of archetypal of the existential struggles of human existence. And he says, the ordinary people start to figure it and they're like slaves and chamberlains and, you know, just unremarkable people. And that the famous line is that it confines humanity with an unlimited sphere of solvable problems. Everything will work out in the end. I mean, that might be true on again, the trivial level. It might all work out in the end and like an individual paper. But does it all work out in the end in terms of like life? Well, no, you always die mortality, right? So it doesn't all work out in the end. There's pain, there's suffering, somewhere at the end of it for you. And so that's his problem is that comedy trivializes. It doesn't, it's no longer that religious art form that's confronting the existential problem of human kind. It's just making light of it. It's not taking it seriously. And I guess Nietzsche would say like, to then laugh to then affirm after the tragic view is actually a very profound thing to affirm life in light of the tragic view. But to just laugh at life after trivializing it, not really looking at the tragic view of life, just looking away from it, that he doesn't really seem to have much respect for. Now, that being said, there are some caveats I'd like to raise. Each of it doesn't really dislike comedy in general. In fact, in the gay science, the passageory says that I'm going to attempt a comedic solution. He sort of, it's his most pro comedy work. And he's, he actually openly, at the beginning, talks about reconceiving of existence as a comedy rather than a tragedy, which is very strange in light of how Nietzsche normally looks at things. But I think he's looking at life as a more profound comedy, not the sort of trivializing. You know, this is the other thing is that historically speaking, tragedy in comedy, tragedy was always for the upper class as the aristocrats, because it emerges as like the solemn, religious ritual, right? Or if not solemn, profound. It's a really important and sacred thing. And comedy emerges kind of poking fun at all of the things that went on in tragedy. And it was always enjoyed by the lower classes because what they needed, what the lower classes need is some salve. They need some balm for their hard lives. They need to unwind, right? Whereas the aristocrats are more contemplative and they have all these privileges. They don't want for anything. And so they, they might need tragedy as a neurosis of the healthy, whereas like the common people need comedy. And so it's always been, that's always been the associations between the two. But I guess, you know, again, to bring up the gay science, it's not as if Nietzsche thinks comedy is essentially this way. Comedy essentially must be a lower class phenomenon or a trivializing phenomenon. I think he can, I think we might see the gay science, or as you mentioned indeed, thus books Arthustra is a attempt at a comedic solution for life. It's not, I don't think Nietzsche's married to, we have to only love tragedy or something like that. He often, I mean, and be on good evil, he references Molière, which is a comedic play. He will take inspiration from comedies. And, you know, also, it's worth pointing out, you know, where people say Nietzsche hated comedy, hated the new added comedy. I think if you, if you, if you showed Nietzsche some art work from today, the average art quote unquote, that passes for art today, he would say the new added comedy is far superior to that. So it's all relative, right? So, you know, if Jesus had lived a longer, he would have perhaps learned to laugh, isn't Jesus a tragic figure. Yeah, arguably actually the Gospels are, like, actually modeled on a Greek tragedy. Like, that's one of the arguments for the Neil Platonist origins of Christianity is that the whole Gospels story is really like a Greek tragedy, like they, they almost pilfered that art form to tell the Gospels story, which is a very fascinating idea. And Jesus, the way he comports himself, it doesn't it remind us of the tragic hero in the role of an examander or of an exagris or who else who's another tragic figure, like Pythagoras, right? People who never smiled or laughed or anything. Jesus never laughs in the entire gospel, and Socrates never cries in any of his dialogues. So there you have it, Athens and Jerusalem, right? But, you know, again, I think really Nietzsche's statement there about Jesus is, in so far as he thinks Jesus is basically a figure who sees the unreality of the phenomenal world this sort of total hyper Platonism, the kingdom of heaven is the only real thing, God's the only real thing. The spiritual world is the only real thing. And so what Nietzsche says, I believe, is that Nietzsche had he lived longer, not only would he've learned to laugh, he would have repudiated his own teachings. So I think his learning to laugh would have come with actually an embrace of the phenomenal world in all of its tragedy, because the thing is, I mean, we might think of Dante's The Divine Comedy, right? Which is very different from the Jesus story. But I bring it up here because the Christian story is a comedy. It's not a tragedy. In the end, the good guys went. Everything sat right. All the good people get eternal bliss. All the bad people get punished. Everything's in its right place. This world, which is tragic and sin cursed, it's a false world. It's gone. God burns it away. Everything is right. Everything's okay, right? It's going to be okay, kind of the central Christian message, right? And so if Jesus were to learn to laugh and repudiate his own teachings, I mean, what would that tell you? He's learning to laugh in the context of this impermanent, phenomenal world, the very world that he denies on account of this like totalizing spirituality. So that would be how I would deal with it. I don't think he'd just totally anti-comedy. It's a little more complicated than that, but I think the thing he's looking for in tragedy is a sober confrontation with the reality of life, not attempting to trivialize it. And if you think about most popular forms of comedy, do they deal with like the real struggles that people go through, the real existential struggles? No, not really. It's something about making a joke of everything that can be seen as a kind of cowardice, a flight from reality. Now on the other hand, I can see that there's kind of a contradiction there in Nietzsche's thought insofar as he kind of thinks. You shouldn't be fixating on all the time, on all the suffering of the world, right? That bringing to mind like a lot of the power of Christianity is sort of like that Jordan Peterson argument of like, hey, you're going to confront tragedy in your life, so you need to live in such a way that you're prepared for it. I think Nietzsche kind of doesn't really agree with that. He doesn't think we need to be constantly living our lives with the eye to like the worst thing that can happen, because that kind of saps the joy, the carefree naive, forgetful joy of just living in the moment. But is that reducible to like comedy? I don't think necessarily. I think a lot of the great joys I've had in my life weren't comedic moments at all. And furthermore, again, it's useful to remember that it's a neurosis of the healthy. It was precisely because the Greeks did not have a pessimistic worldview normally that they were able to indulge in tragedy as a kind of luxury as a kind of indulgence. So that's how I would look at it. Let's go to the next question. This one is from John Hansen. Hello, Keegan. I hope you have heard this before. I'm up to gay science number 11, and you are at peak performance. It is a delight to listen much appreciated. Thank you. Question is Nietzsche a believer in becoming over being? I ask because from your work, I always understood Nietzsche through becoming. On your advice, I read Delus, and he seemed to see the same, that I am struggling through a tough translation of untimely meditations by Ludovici, and in the Schopenhauer section stumble on the comedy of becoming not once, but twice, and I'm not even finishing finished the section, is Nietzsche being dismissive of becoming? Well, I would say he's a believer in becoming. I mean, Heidegger would actually be probably a better person to read on that. If you can find, you can probably find online some from some one of these websites, some PDFs of Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche. And even though I don't agree with his metaphysical interpretation, or maybe go listen to the episodes I did on it, he does really fixate on that one note where Nietzsche says, "To stand becoming what the character of being is the highest activity of the world's power." And, you know, I guess on some level, I would say, don't get too trapped in words here, right? What that means, in my view, is the same thing that Heraclitus means in Nietzsche's interpretation of Heraclitus that the cloth of being is becoming, like the one, the R.K., the one principle of all reality, of all being what is it? That's the main question of pre-socratic philosophy. The one, what is the one? Well, for Heraclitus, the one is the logos. What is the logos? It's the law. What's the law? Well, we can see in his writing, it's change, it's relativity, it's flux. And so how does the one, what is the one then? Well, without that change, that flux, that relativity, the one does not appear at all. So being isn't something like behind phenomena. Being is the phenomena itself, we might say, but not the phenomena imagined as a kind of unity, but the process that change the flux in which these phenomena appear. Now, regarding, it seems like your question really is, like, how does this jai with Schopenhauer as educator in the untimely meditations? I mean, the first thing I would say, this is an early essay by Nietzsche. It's written during his university days, after birth of tragedy, but before human all to human. And Nietzsche is rapidly changing during this period. I mean, even by the end of those four essays, when he gets to Richard Wagner in Biroit, he's already, like, as he's writing it, kind of changing his views and second guessing himself. Now, there's really important stuff in the Schopenhauer as educator essay, but the comedy of becoming line, I went ahead and looked it up. And he says, that's in the section on the saint, right? So remember the artists that they've lost for in the saint. These three figures that are the first truly human men, nature makes her one leap in creating them. And so he says, "Finally, nature needs the saint, and him the ego has melted away, and the suffering of his life is practically no longer felt as individual, but as the spring of the deepest sympathy and intimacy with all living creatures." He sees the wonderful transformation scene that the comedy of becoming, quote-unquote, never reaches the attainment at length of the high state of man, after which all nature is striving, that she may be delivered from herself." End quote. So is that Nietzsche saying that becoming is a comedy? I mean, for one, even if it is, what does that mean? I mean, it might be Nietzsche saying that in the grand scheme of things, becoming is not tragic, because even the tragic aspects, we might say merely arise and pass away. And the whole affirmation of a tragic life that I just addressed in a previous question, it is worth noting that in the ring of return, the circuit of the eternal return, it's very hard to say that life is either tragic or comic, and that in and of itself is a kind of liberation, right? That you might say, if comedy is simply the art form that portrays things working out in the end, working out for the best, then being neither tragic nor comic is working out for the best, right? Because it ultimately just is what it is. And that's a kind of liberation in and of itself, but I don't want to get too doused with you here or anything. The important point is that it's not clear to me in this passage that Nietzsche's talking about the comedy of becoming a something he's positing. He's saying, this is how the saint experiences the world. So, I mean, look at all the aspects here. The ego has melted away, suffering of his life is no longer felt as individual, but it feels intimacy with all living creatures. It's much easier, I think, to get with considering like a Buddhist saint, like an Arahant, right? The interdependence of all things, my suffering is suffering of all suffering is mind, blah, blah, blah. You know, so is Nietzsche saying, we need a Melta Ari goes away. We need to feel our suffering and the deepest sympathy and intimacy with all living creatures. No, clearly not. He's pointing that this out, this was one way, he's pointing to this, the saint figure as one way of transcending the previous limitations or the animal nature, the base nature, the common nature of humanity. That humanity wasn't even properly humanity. We were just, you know, what distinguished us other than being just animals that have knowledge. And that's one of the themes in this essay that that's not really, it's not really enough to distinguish us. That, in fact, there's something about the archetype of the saint that represents self-overcoming. That is something Nietzsche would agree with for his whole career. But, so yeah, I would just caution you, maybe don't take everything in the untimely meditations as like definitive for Nietzsche's positions or expect it not to contradict with what he says later. You can't even expect that with his mature work, so contradict himself even there. But especially here, he's growing and developing and changing. And also, you have to look in context, he's not talking about the comedy of becoming just as such, as that's how he sees it, he's saying that's how the saint sees it. So that would be my answer here. He's not being dismissive of over of becoming. He's showing the the saints, ego dissolution and oneness with all things and seeing the totality of becoming as a comedy as a form of self-overcoming, actually, which is actually a form of becoming itself. Okay, let's go next to a question from Decibus. He says, "Hi, boss man. I think we're all aware of the most common misconceptions about Nietzsche propagated by those, not especially familiar with his work by now." However, what are, in your opinion, some common misconceptions about Nietzsche regularly purported by those with even an intermediate-adept understanding of his works? Perhaps there are even some lauded experts on Nietzsche who you think at least on one specific topic, just get things totally backwards. Thanks. You know, it's very difficult to answer this. I am going to answer it, but I mean, I guess the first thing I would say is very hard for me to claim authority as the soul expert on Nietzsche. Like, let me give you the orthodox understanding because I'm currently putting together a video where I go over like 50 major interpreters of Nietzsche's work, and it really was eye-opening for me to sort of look at all of them and train, like, classify them, how they categorize Nietzsche on various issues, and just come into the understanding Nietzsche has been interpreted in like every way that you can possibly imagine. That being said, the most common things people misunderstand is will to power as just people seek power that when they're trying to do something, they're actually in the vulgar sense trying to people interpret Nietzsche's will to power in maybe a perhaps a Freudian way. You know, that when you're going out and trying to succeed at your job and you buy the new suit or any number of things, it actually it's sex driving the whole thing, and that people assume that Nietzsche's talking about power in a very vulgar sense that they just want to put themselves above someone else or other people. It went in fact like the whole notion that how powerful you are is based on the perception of your power by others or like getting the best of someone else is very reactive, like Delus would say that that's like the slaves conception of power or something like that, and that sort of ties in with like the master morality being seen, broadly speaking, is something that Nietzsche wishes to reinstate. Now don't misunderstand this, he's certainly very much opposed to the slave morality, and he's certainly laudatory towards the master morality. But it's very useful to look at that Beyond Good Neville passage. I said a lot of this in my video, my short form video on the master in slave morality from a few months ago, that look at the passage in Beyond Good Neville where he talks about sort of the premoral age, the moral age and the extra moral age. Nietzsche is aimed at something in the future, he doesn't want a romantic return. I also said Nietzsche's five knows that that video, he makes it explicit, I'm not interested in a romantic return. So again with the caveat that I'm not the orthodox interpreter of all things Nietzsche, it's very obvious to me that the master in slave morality is a critique by bringing that contrast to our modern values, patterned by millennia of Christianity, and now taking on these new secular forms, which in many ways are worse than Christianity was. Again, because it's just sort of the oxygen we breathe, the water we swim in, we don't perceive it, the master morality shows everything that's sort of ugly and sick about those views, about that conception of morality, and provides us with perhaps the impetus for overcoming that. So I think that's another very popular misconception. And then what else? Maybe this doesn't quite get to your point because it might be more of a beginner mistake, but something that I used to see all the time, and I still see quite a lot as this idea of Nietzsche as a nihilist, especially like 10 years ago, this was really, really common. And then now with the Jordan-Peter signification of Nietzsche, we've seen this kind of opposite mistake where he correctly perceives that Nietzsche is in a struggle with nihilism. And yet he takes this like Dostoevsky Jung view that the resulting position is to sort of, that Nietzsche is just used to show us the value of the existing morals and that it's all sort of, you know, that the consequence of Nietzsche's beliefs is to get us to understand what was so awesome about the Christian morality in the first place, which is certainly not what he's doing. And I think a branch just hit my roof, so if you heard a sound in the background, that's probably what that was, but that's a bit of a windy day here. So yeah, I think many of the most confusing things about Nietzsche are perhaps those areas where Nietzsche himself is a bit paradoxical, a bit oxymoronic with the way that he thinks or that he at different times seems to come to different positions. I mean, so for example, the whole the whole issue of nihilism, I mean, Nietzsche himself says, and I believe one of his last years of writing, I've been a thoroughgoing nihilist myself until recently. So, you know, Nietzsche's own experience with nihilism and how, whether or not he himself as a nihilist is something that he would say, I never thought I was a nihilist, but because one doesn't realize that if goallessness as such is itself a goal, they may not realize that they're serving nihilistic ends, but what I need is a yes and no, a straight line of goal. And he's sort of, that's where the revaluation becomes more important. And Klozowski really draws this out that there's sort of two really seriously contradictory periods of Nietzsche's thought. We might say, end of the gay science, Zarathustra, the eternal return Nietzsche, the Nietzsche who writes that passage in Zarathustra where he lays down at noon and says that this moment, the world is perfect, sort of like there's nothing to be done. We're simply in the hands of fate or something like that, and the only thing is to affirm or will your fate. You don't have to, there's no sort of special task that's needed. Well, the later revaluation Nietzsche's sort of attention with that of saying, no, we do need a revaluation. There is something to be done. There is a task for the philosopher, the legislation of a morality. And we'll of course get into this with more detail in the Klozowski episodes. But I think he's right. I think he is drawing out like a real contradiction there. And I think maybe this is what perhaps sets somebody who really gets Nietzsche apart from someone who doesn't is being able to contextualize the different things that Nietzsche says at different times with one another. Understanding the through lines and so far as they exist and understanding where there are genuine contradictions or when Nietzsche changes his mind or where he changes the nature of his project or where he's just working on a fundamentally different project at different times. And oftentimes it might seem as though people are just drawing, cherry picking different quotes from different periods of Nietzsche's work and just sort of saying Nietzsche said this and then he said that and he's there quoting something from 1873 one minute and 1888 the next and not understanding that these are like almost two different people. Nietzsche himself would have said they're two different people. Is that line in 1885 where he says somebody said they were looking for the hair doctor Friedrich Nietzsche of Basel and he said the devil take him. What does that character have to do with me? So old professor Nietzsche is not even the same person as the author, the audacious author of Zarathustra. And another thing I might say is like people don't often understand the polysomy of Nietzsche's work or the multiple uses of the same terms in different contexts and times. So you know there's that famous Jordan Peterson adage that Nietzsche says truth ought to serve life. Now is that true in a sense that Nietzsche says that at least as truth might be the kind of error that's indispensable for life. But Nietzsche isn't proposing a new evaluative standard where something is true to the degree that it is life promoting. In fact he very much brings forward the idea that there might be truths that we might it might be a truer truth to see past those errors that are indispensable for life. But that might be the kind of truth that is harmful to life in the highest degree. That truth you know is the kind of error that is indispensable for life. So that's one way of looking at truth. But then there might also be the truth that is that it's found only in assuing those errors or something like that. Or if not assuing them in a practical sense because it might be that they're indispensable in a practical sense, assuing them as sort of like believing them in an absolute or objective sense that in seeing them as not objective, as perspective, maybe even perspective to the whole human race, right. All human beings might see things the same way. That doesn't mean it's true thereby. So that that statement in and of itself, right, there might be errors that are indispensable to the entire human race, but they might nevertheless be false. How could Nietzsche make such a claim of truth as what serves life? In fact, error serves life and truth might be something that only a few people can really tolerate might still be useful. But you know, what he's actually doing is sort of divorcing the good from the true in the platonic sense. Whereas Jordan Peterson seems to be wanting to like say that Nietzsche was like unifying them again that Nietzsche's just like a platenist or something like that. And I mean, I don't know. I know this is really complicated and kind of gets us into the weeds. But I mean, this is kind of precisely what I'm saying. People will make these really, it really took takes like in the first episode I did on Nietzsche and truth, took me like an hour to get across all of the nuances of how Nietzsche sees truth. That's how long it would take to really get it across. It's not something that you can throw out like a blase kind of, you know, pithy witticism to encapsulate it. And I remember Jordan Peterson's debate with Sam Harris where he was sort of trying to imply that like the the atomic bomb because it's such a destructive development of human technology that perhaps that's not the real truth or something like that, which Sam Harris rightly regarded as stupid to say something like that because it's precisely what Nietzsche would not say. He would not say that. It's a complete misunderstanding of his view that truth is the kind of error that may be indispensable for us. And then, you know, as far as like the misconceptions about Nietzsche's life, I mean, these still abound. You hear them all the time. I think the worm is starting to turn a bit on that, but I still hear regularly Nietzsche hug the horse. He had syphilis. His philosophy drove him mad. He had no friends. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So, and that note that's purported by I've, I'm not going to name any names, but I've even interviewed some experts where I've then seen claims like that in their broader work that like, oh, well, it's said that he hugged a horse as he collapsed. And so it's like, I don't know, maybe we need to just get past the basic errors at this point. And, you know, hope for the best when it comes to the intermediate adept errors that you can still make, because a lot of those, I think it's going to be very hard for me to weigh in on those like definitively because there are different interpretations, as I've mentioned. And it can get really complicated. And I think the key thing is being able to constulate Nietzsche's ideas, put them in context of his career, understand the different uses of different terms, understand the experimental nature of his philosophy where he might be doing different projects at different times, and all of these things. And then you have a couple of additional questions here. So you ask, you will often remark how you don't want to get involved in the culture or slop and how you try to stay out of it. However, it seems to me that a Nietzschean perspective is what's totally lacking in this discourse, if you can call it that. The right accused the left of glorifying oppression and pity and using this as a bludgeon and service of the collective and announce if we can only return to a central Christian tradition that we could escape, or then we could escape this dengrading of our once great Western civilization. But failed to understand that so-called woke culture is in a sense Christianity perfected at its most pure, and so cannot be sprayed away from crab like as Nietzsche would put it. Do you not think yours or other Nietzschean perspectives would be useful on this topic? Do you think people are just too ideologically consumed to even possess the tools to deconstruct what that means? Or do you just have more of an eye for the grand politics over more petty politics? And then your last question is, have you seen unsolicited advice, Joe Fully's content? If so, have you considered having him on the podcast? And by the time this comes out, I mean, I've just appeared on Joe Fully's show, maybe he will come on mine in the future. So go check out that episode. So that answers your question there. I like Joe a lot. We had a great conversation. So the culture, or slump, or a thing, a Nietzschean perspective is lacking. Do you think Nietzschean perspectives would be useful on this topic? I mean, well, useful for what? Like, to what point in purpose? Do you really think the culture war arguments ever go anywhere? I mean, mostly people are just kind of expressing a psychological temperament. Also, I would say the specific issue you bring up, I actually have heard other people say it's actually usually like dissident right wingers who bring this up. Like Curtis Yarvin recently got into it with Christopher Rufo over this very issue. Chris Rufo is more like American traditionalism in Christianity is good. And that's the basis of conservatism and so on, whereas Yarvin was saying yeah, the American revolution was like a left wing thing, historically in context. That's the result of woe. He also wrote that article I've mentioned in a past episode about woe politics coming from Christianity being like a form of hyper Calvinism or something like that. So, I mean, at least on that topic, it's not totally lacking. You can find commentators who will make such points. You know, and there are left Nietzscheans as well who will make such points. But I guess I would just ask what would be the point? What would be the purpose of doing that? Because I don't really see, I guess that's, do you just have more an eye for a grand politics over our mere petty politics? I guess that would be part of it. I don't even think it really even rises to the level of petty politics to be honest with you. It's like a form of non-politics almost. And what I mean by that is if we take politics to be sort of the way I would see it is like competing interests, not necessarily people might say what do you mean, interest groups and lobbyists and packs, maybe, but like constituencies that have like real concerns and they could be material or they could be cultural. But what politics involves is those groups who have competing interests engaging and struggle in the context of the law in the context of war by democracy, war by appealing to public opinion and all of these things in order like past laws achieve some sort of reconciliation that both parties can agree to or can live with without having violence. In a way, again, politics like many things in life as war by other means, it's part of why I don't fully disagree with like Carl Schmitt. He has some interesting ideas, but like I kind of, I think the way people understand his friend enemy distinction is somewhat wrong headed because he talks about like essentially the word that you would use for an enemy would be like in the ancient Roman context, a hostess. So like, and that's where you get the word like hostile from, so like fun fact kind of a tangent, but it just came to mind, you know, Roman generals often sort of have they'd be named after the people they like defeated, skip you africanus. It's not called that because he's africans because he defeated Carthage, who's like the african geopolitical power in the Mediterranean at that time. And so, Tellus Astilius is one of the Roman kings. He defeated the hostile foreign tribes, right? He made war successfully and defeated people who were classified as hostess, right? And that, a hostess is someone that they're not a citizen and that you can't engage in politics with, right? Because if politics is war by other means, then it's not war. It's precisely politics begins precisely where war ends where you say, I'm not going to go to war with you. We're going to find a resolution that even if one of the sides doesn't like it, we're not going to fight over this. That's what characterizes politics, whether it's democracy or Republican, even a monarchy, really. I mean, the mark of a great monarch is being able to like sort of unify disparate factions and maintain the unity of a polity, even when there are these disparate interests that might want to normally fight one another. So, you know, that's real politics. The latest, you know, the reason why people talk about culture or slop is that it's like, it's meaningless things that people get angry about that often have nothing to do with the political realm. It doesn't have to do with passing laws or competing interest groups. It has to do with like two broad groups with differing psychological temperaments who are triggered just to use the vulgar language by the things the other ones do and then they go online and they get angry about it. And it just doesn't affect anything. Now, to the extent it does affect things, I guess you could say, the culture war feeds into creating political coalitions that eventually might produce democratic candidates that win. I mean, you could see Trump's selection in 2016 is like a right-wing backlash against the culture war that had been waged by the left or something like that. But I would argue that that's only partially true. That none of that culture war would have been appealing to the right-wing, for example, at the districts that flipped toward Trump that allowed him to win in that first election in the Rust Belt were deindustrialized districts. There were counties where factories had been sent overseas or they'd adopted industrial robots or they'd outsourced labor and you'd also had this opioid addiction problem. You know, just all the like rural America is like falling apart. Trump gave that American carnage speech, right? American dream is dead. It's dying. Look at our society. Our infrastructure is falling apart. The jobs have all gone away. There's no like rule of law so on and so forth. Did that culture war thing play into it? Yeah, but would that have been seized upon by these interest groups in the electorate? We might say like the disaffected blue collar worker, something like that. The groups that really allowed Trump to push them over the edge to allow them to win. Would any of that have really happened? Would populism really be appealing unless if you didn't have this economic destruction or like precariousness is really the feeling. I think a lot of people feel it's not so much the the absolute state economically but the feeling that you're falling or that you could potentially fall at any time that you're that each generation is sort of getting a worse deal than the previous generation. I tend to see this stuff through the lens of Peter Turchin and like the political stress index and I'm about to do a video about that very soon. I'm not sure when it'll come out but I'm working on it right now. The right-wing populism typically appeals to like culture war backlash. Left-wing populism when it arises typically appeals to like economic populism and these types of things. It was able to take that form because there was no outlet for an economic populism on the left wing. It wasn't possible. It still largely is not possible. And I guess the broader question is like are you going to convince anyone? Like it seems like oftentimes what really is going on with like these culture war arguments is that they're just further radicalizing each other. It's not a real debate. They're saying things that anger's the other side and then the other side says things that anger them and they just like are in this vicious cycle of polarization. Which by the way is precisely what you should expect to see during a de-centricative period in which the political stress index is ratcheting up. And it is a vicious cycle that's going to continue to produce that result. That's just what it is. You can't really, I don't think you can intercede with some like logical argument. Certainly not with a Nietzschean argument. That's the first question I answered. Most people aren't going to comprehend and it's not even really strictly logical. It's just sort of a it's like a more artistic perspective in many ways and a very idiosyncratic perspective. So I don't really know what I could like offer. I'm not I'm not interested in it. Primarily because I think it's largely meaningless. I don't think that dialogue is going to intercede just to halt that process. I think they're they're locked in a struggle with one another over these cultural signifiers over which sort of values that they're expressing or signaling to one another. And they like they love to like become the devil that the other one fears. So you know that they see what makes the other side angry and then they actively try to make them angrier. And then how do you think people respond to that? Really, you know. And again, these are psychological types. The guy who's like really into masculine virtues and projecting that. That's like something within his deep within his psychology that is not going to be argued away. And similarly with someone who has very, you know, the social justice activist is all about compassion and kindness. Refugees welcome or whatever. You think you're going to like make a logical argument against that? I mean that that we're talking about people's association with their identity. And oftentimes the culture where signifiers are a big part of how people shape an identity today. And so I just don't I don't think it goes anywhere. I think again, I mean, to put it very bluntly, it's epiphenomenon. It's an effect of the heightening political stress index and people more hyper identifying with their tribe and their psychological type, further actively radicalizing the other one against them because it's really the only that's the pattern that happens is the political stress index ratchets up. And, you know, these internal the unity of the society is disintegrating. So the internal conflicts are going to continue to arise. And I don't really think there's anything for me to do about that. And, you know, I think also that the form that this always takes in this discourse is either preaching to the choir or again radicalizing your enemies. People hate watching or people just watching and enjoying that they're hearing someone validate the way that they already felt beforehand. Very little dialogue is actually going on. And I know that it does happen, people change their views, but I would just say there must be something going on within them. Their experiences, right? Their class position, their things that have happened to them, their family members, and their people around them and their views. And the views and their social milieu or their occupation, like all of these things are going to factor into how people see the world and very, very little of it has to do with I heard a YouTube video and that changed my views. The vast majority of this is people just watching stuff, make some feel good, it entertains them because somebody is repeating back to them what they already believe and want to hear. So I have no interest in it because I think it's all a meaningless waste of time. But thank you for the question. Robert Sullivan asks, "Would you feel that the current phenomenon of some billionaires seeking a scientific path to physical immortality to be in line with Nietzsche's prediction of nihilism or rising after the fading of belief in an afterlife? Would you say that the effort to achieve materialistic physical immortality is as nihilistic as the desire for other worldly immortality? Is it anti-life to be wanting to avoid the evolutionary necessity of death? Is this just another example of raging modern nihilism?" Well, thank you for the question, Robert. I think there's something to what you're saying, practically speaking, it doesn't have to be like we live a lot longer now than people used to and we were hunter-gatherers. So is that life denying? I'm not necessarily convinced that it is, especially if you were able to increase the quality of life later in life. It could certainly not be that. What does that guy's name? Brian Johnson, who is my new religion, don't die. We're going to completely cheat death and live forever. I mean, I would say it's actually one of the oldest stories in the book, by the way. I don't think it's a particularly new phenomenon. I mean, how many stories are there about the quest for immortality and myths and the holy grail in all of these things? Now that being said, is there something to this idea that now we live in a secular age, people don't believe in the afterlife, so we have to live forever on this earth? Yeah, I think that's true. I think it is. Alan Bloom, I think, made that case in closing of the American mind where he said that our society is totally based on self-preservation. And so saving lives in the medical industry and extending life and health and fitness become like really of central importance because it is like a compensation for the fact that people can't believe in an afterlife anymore. So they're looking for it somewhere else. They're looking for physical immortality. Now it's that anti-life. I mean, I'm always very hesitant with questions like this because I'm not saying you're doing this, but it all sometimes feels like we're just taking like Nietzsche's designations and using it to form like a new moral language. That's life denying and therefore it's wrong. When in reality, I mean like extending human life and perhaps making people physically healthy for longer, it's very hard to say that that's anti-life. And so far as the goal is to escape from death, it's a promethean thing. You can definitely see it that way to try and steal the fire from the gods and say we're going to actually defeat death. I mean, is the problem with Christianity and other worldism that they promise immortality or the fact that it's a lie? That's I guess the real question. I don't really know the answer to that. You could argue the problem is that it's just not true and people are just deceiving themselves. And therefore by deceiving themselves in that way, they're impoverishing their own lives by spending all their time praying and going to confession and perhaps living like they didn't port royal or living like a Buddhist monk or something like that, denying themselves things that they don't need to deny themselves. I can't go and do this thing that's really fulfilling and would be like a great project or a great quest in my life because I have to raise a family and I have to have a job. So that would be an argument that actually, if you could achieve physical immortality, I mean, it wouldn't might not be life denying at all. I mean, it might be a very promethean project, but it could also be coming from that same thing of your soul goal is self-preservation and keeping yourself the same way you are now. And you know, it could be a very last man type of project. And you know, I think a lot of the way that people react to this is part of the culture war to refer to the previous question because they just don't like billionaires. And you know, any kind of project some billionaires doing like this, people are like, derisive about it and dismissive about it. And I'm not particularly pro-billionaire myself as many of you may have gathered. I'm just not particularly, I'm not animated by either position. I don't like to worship other human beings and I don't like to define myself by opposing others. I'm very self-oriented and that's why Nietzsche appeals to me a great deal. And I have to say, like if somebody said I could add 40 years to your life, I'd take that deal. I mean, why not? You know, 40 more years of doing what I love. Why would be life denying about that? But you know, maybe the key question here, here's something maybe I feel like I've just sort of raised questions. I haven't really answered it because I don't know the answer. I guess Zarathustra's famous quote, right? Many want to be liberated from a yoke, but they want to be, they want to attain freedom from, but they have no concept of freedom for, they don't know what their freedom will be for, they only want to be free from their yoke from their limitations. And so it's, that's really the question. I mean, there's a great, there's a deleted scene in Prometheus. It's actually, I think, one of the only times in cinema where they've had a character speak Proto-Indo-European. So they wake up one of the engineers and he speaks in this language, so implying that it's actually an alien language that was given to human beings, because in Prometheus, the whole notion is that we, earth was ceded by aliens. And there's a character who asks, can you tell me the secret to immortality I want to live forever? And the answer of this engineer in Proto-Indo-European is, what has this man done that he deserves more life? What do you, you know, what do you need those extra years for? I could conceive that you could use them in a very beneficial, productive way. And I'm sure most billionaires have an inflated opinion of themselves and think that they're the ones who need to live for hundreds or thousands of years in order to accomplish all these things. As we know, from history, most elite classes and super rich people just end up becoming a bunch of hedonistic, Slovenly, I mean, just stagnant, corrupt, you know, detached aristocracies that just parasitize and don't produce anything great. And I don't mean that that as such. I mean, the longer that you're in a position, like the more generations that a family has of luxury, of comfort, of being separated from any kind of conflict, they degenerate. That's just how things go. So I don't think it would work out that way. I think that's like a delusional narcissistic fantasy that many billionaires have. But that's not to say that, like if you had like the greatest scientific mind around, might it be better to extend their life? This is actually an interesting question, too, because you have to think the intergenerational project of human knowledge. One of the main limitations on that project is the fact that people die. What do I mean by that? Well, it's not that the knowledge can't be passed on. But like, let's say, a really advanced physicist, the bet one of the best physicists in the world, top 10 brilliant physicists in the world. In order for that person to pass their knowledge on, you have to have like a new crop of students to come in. And what do they have to learn for it? You can't skip right to the advanced physics. They have to learn the basic physics first. Before you even know which one of them is going to be the genius that could carry on his work if that person dies, you have to spend years and years, decades just teaching them what we already know. And then they can start innovating and doing new things, very few of them well, but some well, right? So if you have somebody who's already there who's already doing all this like amazing work in theoretical physics, giving them another half century or something, if you were able to achieve that might be actually really useful for progressing human knowledge. So again, it all depends. It all depends. And I think that's why I'm very hesitant to make a value of judgment on this. So let's move on to Judith. She says, "Just want to say thanks for your wonderful podcast. It's so much light in my comprehension of Nietzsche's ideas. Not being a political theory or ideology, but a firework with loud bangs and beautiful colors, disappearing again, just like life if you live it to the fullest from my perspective anyway." Judith. Thank you, Judith. I really appreciate that. Obviously, I don't have much to say because there's just a statement, but thank you very much for taking the time to write that. All right, next we have a question from Michael H, who says, "If I can slip a question in last minute, what do you think of the possibility of non-recentment based morality?" Of course, we are familiar with Nietzsche's critique of slave morality that it is based in Rosentema and Life Denial, and his revaluation of all values would involve radical reshaping of moral values in line with paving the way for the overman. But I think his perspectiveism opens up the possibility of valid perspectives, which he would not agree with, which are even antithetical to his philosophy. Could one construct a post-Nichian slave morality, which is not based in resentment and immune to his critiques? Imagine you could make such a morality more Nietzschean, quote-unquote, "by making it more of a virtue ethics-based and increasing power of the individual, maybe through network effects, reciprocity, etc." It could also be less Nietzschean, let's say, minimizing suffering like effective altruism. If that morality avoids feelings of resentment, guilt, and so on, does it evade Nietzsche's critiques? It seems like Nietzsche would have a couple options of how to respond. One, this is actually impossible. Slave morality always involves resentment. Two, the morality would still end up denying life somehow and obstructing the project of revaluation. Three, nothing to say about it. It's just not Nietzsche's perspective and unrelated to his projects, similar to how he doesn't even blame those who blame. Maybe he's not even concerned with those who construct slave morality, so that's just what those whose sympathies are with the herd are going to do. Thanks, and join your episodes on the gay science currently. They've really helped me understand it on a deeper level of a good one, Michael. Thank you, Michael H. I've gotten this question before. I don't know if I've gotten it in like a Q&A, but it seems to be a common thought that people have. I guess the first thing I would say is that I think Nietzsche would respond with the first option, that it's impossible because slave morality always involves resentment, because in a way that's how he defines it. You're talking about someone whose sympathies are with the herd, which is not exactly the same thing as a resentment-based morality. I guess Nietzsche could say that perhaps it is if it's like a piti-ing sentiment, piti for the herd, piti for all who suffer, that's essentially sort of a Christian idea, sort of creating this abstract of mankind and representing the suffering of mankind yourself and taking that suffering on onto yourself and having compassion for them and so on and so on and so forth. But I would say that you could be concerned with the herd. I think maybe this is stepping away from Nietzsche a little bit. I think he's very hard-lined against the herd because of the fact that Christianity, again, is so ingrained into the way we think that he has to take the stance, and if he were to moderate his stance, it wouldn't be as powerful. There's already a million advocates for the herd morality, so if Nietzsche moderated his stance, would that really be worthwhile? The stance will be moderated anyway because we already have that morality and grain to us, so he's just going to stand as an advocate for the exception. But strictly speaking, he does say that slave morality begins with resentment, but that's really the key thing about it is that it's other directed. It's based on fear of the other. It's based on the reaction to what happens to you acts of, you know, sadism or oppression that happened to you and then, you know, being unable to fight back against them in this builds up resentment, and that creates the slave morality, which can only really be understood through Christianity because it's or like priestly religions, otherworldly religions in general, because it only makes sense if we understand it as this imaginary revenge. But I could conceive of, you know, like it's very hard to say that a king doesn't care about the herd or something like that, or like the leader of some sort of nationalist project, or you know, a monarch over, you know, a nation with storied traditions, you know, Nietzsche would probably say, well, they're just using them as raw material. They're just instruments of their will, but I don't think that that's necessarily how they saw it. Like, I guess what I'm saying is like, you could be concerned with the herd because you might want to have like a stable, unified country and not necessarily be like, it's not necessarily because you're just like, oh, I have pity for all who suffer, right? It might not be because you're trying to like, we need to take revenge against the ones who have attacked us or so on and so forth. And I think, you know, given what Nietzsche says, you've been reading along with the gay science walk through, Nietzsche says, but he hopes for many new sons to be discovered. He hopes for many different new justifications for life upon the moral earth. So I think it is entirely possible that we could imagine new ways of thinking about things that might not be in line with Nietzsche's perspective. I think that's precisely right. So like the third option that you give there, that Nietzsche might say, well, it's just not my perspective, it's unrelated to my project, but I hope that many new justifications for life are found. But I think you would take issue with saying non-recentment based slave morality. I think you would say slave morality is defined by resentment. That's sort of a contradiction in terms. What you might be getting at or grasping for is sort of like a morality that takes account for the collective and the herd for the species in general that nevertheless is not based on this imaginary revenge towards the oppressor and all of these things that define the slave morality. I mean, I think that's certainly possible. And I think Nietzsche, if you pressed him on it in conversation, might have said that it's possible. I just think again that he didn't really feel the need to give such a position because I think that's how a lot of people conceive of like the social life anyway, by the way, right? Like most people, when they have concern for the collective at large or the herd at large, however we want to call it, they're not really thinking of it. Like I'm being driven by other directed resentful feelings, they're really thinking of it. Like well, it's just rational to have a system that takes care of all of its members or something like that. So Nietzsche, I don't think really felt the need to like say like, well, this is certainly possible because I think what he's trying to do is expose these psychological underpinnings that are in his opinion actually driving it. So could there actually be, I mean, there are those passages in Zarathustra where he says that the greatest, the soul with the the deep, the most profound soul have accrued the most parasites. The one with the longest ladder will go deepest down. The one who like that, we could imagine a society attaining such a height, a consciousness of its power that says, what are my parasites to me? May they live in prosper? I'm strong enough for that. So you know, we could imagine and he says that this is the beautiful name that this virtue has given itself as mercy. So we could imagine like a king thinking that like, okay, we have all these superfluous people who are eating off the public dull or something fine. Who cares? Yeah, we're strong enough. We're rich enough. We have enough abundance where we can feed everyone. Great. What's wrong with that? You know, that doesn't mean that the king in that situation is driven by resentment or something like that. I don't know if I'm really giving you like a really good answer, but I think the way that I would look at this is not as I think I would look at it this way. If you're trying to create some new ethical system or a new way of looking at life in which you're sort of incorporating many of Nietzsche's insights, but you want to be in favor of the collective or the herd, it's not necessary to try and reshape Nietzsche into that or come to some understanding that you think Nietzsche would agree with. Because what Nietzsche is doing is he's taking a radical position for the purpose of establishing a contrast and showing us this dichotomy. I would say, yeah, incorporate Nietzsche into your philosophy. It's not really important to say like, well, how would he respond to it? Because yeah, if it involves concern for the herd in general, Nietzsche's not going to care, right? Or he's going to, he would have a million arguments against that and they're all over his work. So I think a lot of times, you know, people are looking for a way to use Nietzsche, but then they realize they're going against his values and I would just say, perhaps you shouldn't care about that. Maybe you should take the third option of saying, that's just Nietzsche's perspective and it's unrelated to my project, right? Or to the extent that I incorporate Nietzsche, it's to use his insights descriptively, even if I'm aimed at slightly different values. And like, what's wrong with that? That's Nietzsche did tell you to find your own way. I mean, why, you know, it is Nietzsche's a ferocious voice to answer to oftentimes. And once you've sort of seen his critiques of things like the slave morality, it's very hard to like go back and it's very hard to adopt a concern for the collective without thinking, without examining and doing some introspection and saying, am I falling victim to many of these pathologies that Nietzsche warned about? So, you know, I think incorporate Nietzsche, you know, don't let Nietzsche dominate your whole outlook just because he's Nietzsche and he's a brilliant writer. Like, use Nietzsche for your own ends. That's really what he wanted you to do. And if your experiment fails, if it's something that leads to a dead end, I mean, so much the better. Why not? Try it out. And I think as a final note, you could make the argument, I don't know if I buy it, but you could make the argument that like Marxism, material analysis of history is not necessarily based on like Christian resentment. You know, it's based on the idea that the proletarians had both the interest and the power to affect the next revolution. The bourgeois revolution was like progress, and then the proletarian revolution will be a new next step in progress. And we'll eventually reach this society that is egalitarian and communal and all of these things, but that, you know, the Marxist promise was always sort of that this will be like, this will allow humanity to like experience new degrees of freedom and creativity and productivity and all of these things. And, you know, again, do you buy that? I don't necessarily buy it, but even in like in the really strict material analysis that comes out of Marxism, I'm not sure that it's really a Christian morality at the bottom of it. Because, you know, if you're imagining a revenge, you're not really taking a revenge. And is it really risontama if you're actually hauling out the guillotine and doing class war? It's kind of hard to argue that it's just, it's just risontama, you know, maybe, but it might be recognizing your interest and going to war with your enemies and taking them down, right? It's wrong with that from the Nietzschean perspective. Now, of course, we all know his comments on socialism, what he felt was wrong with it. And I don't think we need to go into that. You've, we've heard all of this on the podcast already, but yeah, I would just say, I see what you're getting at. I don't think I think Nietzsche allows for that. He within his work, he allows for the possibility that there might be other perspectives besides his own that are useful and valid, maybe even life-affirming to their possessor. But once you start trying to come up with like a slave morality without resentment or these things, I think you are kind of like trying to take Nietzschean and like flip him on his head or something. And it's way more useful to just sort of like, I've incorporated Nietzsche as one voice among many philosophical voices that kind of shapes my worldview. He's particularly powerful voice, but not everything has to be referred back to Nietzsche, if that makes sense. I don't know. I hope I'm making sense here. All right, thank you very much, Michael H. Let's move on to Maldora. Have you considered covering sexual persona by Camille Paglia? I've never read her. I'm kind of aware of who she is. I think I've seen some of her appearances. I guess I'll look into it. I mean, you're not really requesting that I do. You're just asking if I consider covering it and I have not because I haven't read it and I don't know what's in it. So let me know in the comments, everyone. Should I cover sexual persona by Camille Paglia? And also like, what is the, what's like the connection to Nietzsche that you see or like, not that they're necessarily has to be one, but if there is one, I'd be particularly interested in knowing about it. All right. Next, we have Joshua and themic Lullaby. He says, two plus weird questions. One, do you think a plausible interpretation could be made of both the world's power as force is contesting combined with the eternal return, which each can be seen in a certain sense as a double transvaluation in time in the case of the eternal return and space in the case of the will to power. I know Nietzsche would probably say conventional contiant space is some sort of grammar fiction, but it was a thought I had of this double transvaluation while talking with a friend about Nietzsche once when trying to this of how the eternal might be a typo in here, how the eternal return of the will to power might connect on the spot. Okay. So it's a double transvaluation of what time in space time being the case of return or turn space in the case of will to power. Huh. I don't know if transvaluation is necessarily the correct term or at least the one I would use because I usually use valuation. I guess you could say their judgments about time in space. So in that sense, like in the sense that value is involved with all truth claims, but I tend to view both the eternal return and the will to power as how would I put this. I tend to view the will to power as more of a descriptive judgment, whereas the eternal return is really where I see the most like prescript development in Nietzsche's thought in so far as bringing it before your mind that possibility of the eternal return could change you make you other than you are. Or as he says in the greatest way, perhaps it could crush you. So you seem to be looking at it as like a re-evaluation of what time means and what space means. It's a very delusion sort of take, by the way, because the, what does it say, forces contesting combined with the eternal return. Like the idea of forces contesting as will to power and that being like a new idea of space that makes sense within like the bosque vichian force point particles idea of like action at a distance. The fact that space isn't the same thing as substance. It's again force or events. It's a more Heraclitian notion of things and processes rather than substances. And so I could see that. It's very hard for me to conceive of like I'm not a physicist or anything like what that would actually mean for our theories of space. And then of course, eternal return is like a new Nietzschean structure of time rather than just like a thought experiment about life. Yeah, I mean, this is very delusion in a way. But I don't know if I have much intelligent to say about it other than I mean if you're saying a re-evaluation just in the sense of re-evaluating what we think of those things like new judgments about it, I just tend to use re-evaluation and know more of a moral sense or more in the sense of values in so far as relating to goals or desires or notions of what is good and bad or good and evil, frankly. That's typically how I use the term re-evaluation. But yeah, you could say it's like a translation in terms of the judgments we make about reality, I guess? Yeah, sure. You can take them both in that sense. I guess I would need a little bit more elaboration on your exactly on your theory. Like, what exactly are you saying about time and space concretely? And so maybe leave that in a comment, Joshua. Let's get on to your second question. You say, you talk in some of your podcasts of the Overman as a goal, but doesn't Nietzsche also critique teleology as well as at least some notions of goal. Is this attention in Nietzsche's work or am I misunderstanding? Whereas perhaps the Overman, a way of structurally reconceiving of how goals teleology even works, if that makes any sense. So like the Overman is not just a goal, but the way of having a goal that is not nihilistic or deadening it in the way, or sorry, deadening in the way ascetic goals might be because there is some fundamentally different approach. If there is such a different approach, what would you say it is? Okay, thank you for those questions. And I would say that, you know, that that second possibility you raise that the Overman is a way of structurally reconceiving of how goals or teleology works. Yeah, in so far as goals have often been seen, like they fall in victim to this notion that happiness can be achieved in stasis or not happiness per say, but we might say fulfillment or we might say that there's some sort of state that can be reached, right, that would represent a good state of affairs on earth. And then all you would have to do is to maintain it or something like that. Whereas life itself, as we've discussed in this very Q&A, is always moving. It always has to be ascending or descending or whatever the case may be. There is no stagnant life. There is no stasis. That's really the thing. So there isn't ever a goal that's reached and then the goals are done. That's sort of been how every idealistic way of looking at society has thought about things. So I guess to some extent it is a restructuring, but I wouldn't say it's a teleology. I mean, I think Nietzsche is very aware that he, I don't think he's saying that there's some sort of inner purpose to human existence of which the Overman is the manifestation and conceptual terms. Because again, nature is a squanderer and an experimenter herself. So it might be the case that the end teleology for the human race, like if you were to say from a God's eye view where the human race ends up, the goal that we're speeding towards, quote unquote, that we actually go towards as perhaps the extinction of the human race due to whatever reason. So you know, there's no guarantee that humanity actually proceeds on to some other better phase of its existence. We could very well the last man could be our quote unquote, teleology. Nietzsche is very aware that he's imposing he's legislating a goal for mankind. He does think to be, I guess in line with life, right, and health and so on and so forth. It's just very different from a sort of like the way Hagle would see sort of like freedom as the revealed goal of humankind or something like that. And like to compare Nietzsche to that is like, you know, the will to power is revealed in the Overman as a Overcomes mankind or something like this. I think he's very much aware, again, especially if we go back to the opening books of the gay science, that all of these stories that we have told ourselves about what advances the species are not they're not actually needed so to speak for nature. They are needed for us in so far as we can't we can't do without these stories. It seems we can't do without some narrative as to what the purpose of human life is, what the purpose of existence is. And yet none of them are actually peering into the thing in itself and to the objective truth. Nietzsche and that's like a really important point. I mean, I I always get the sense that people think it might be a cop-up say, well, Nietzsche is not saying this as like an absolute or objective true statement, but illegitimately does think about these things very, very differently. From the philosopher who thinks that logic could perhaps reveal the goal or the teleology of the human race, Nietzsche is very self-aware that he's attempting to legislate one. Even if he thinks that he's gained some insight into humanity through his philosophy, through his project of creating a new psychology. Nevertheless, he has his moments where he says, you know, it's unlikely that you could do anything to harm the species. Whatever could have harmed the species has probably gone extinct thousands of years ago. That all of these stories, even the Christian story was in its way a seduction to life. It's, you know, Nietzsche attempting to get us to use for humanity to legislate through our consciousness what mankind should become to look at ourselves as a species and think what we should, what are we bringing forth with our actions, not just an eye to like, I'm fulfilling my hedonic needs now or my survival needs, or we're trying to tinker around the edges of society to create like a working system that endures a little bit longer, or we're trying to cure cancer, you know, Brian Johnson, I'm going to live forever or whatever. We have to think in that grand scale, probably I guess on the scale of grand politics in which it merges into sort of like biopolitics. What is the human race becoming? What are we doing for humanity by instantiating this system or creating this invention or whatever? We should ask those kinds of questions and that they, again, the divine didn't give man our good evil. We created it. We took it. We esteemed and measured things. Once you have that notion of where valuing and good evil and goal and teleology comes from, it's really not, it's not fundamentally the same thing as a Christian teleology or a Hegelian teleology or any of these things. So that would be the way I would answer it. He's very aware. Humanity gives the goal to itself and we now have the opportunity to give the goal to ourselves consciously whereas we perhaps this was a more unconscious process in past generations. And so I, Nietzsche, I'm going to intercede with the way that the goal that I want to fix onto the animal man. But that doesn't mean that others aren't possible. It doesn't mean that it's an objective truth and indeed, again, Nietzsche has his moments of saying, you know, sort of all of these different ways of justifying life have clearly advanced the species in some way. So, you know, it's another one of those questions again with Nietzsche interpretation where he says different things at different times. He can be able to self-contradictory, but that's how I would deal with it. I don't, I do think it is a kind of goal or teleology. I do think it is a restructuring of how it works, but it's also, you know, Nietzsche is aware. This comes from man. It's not something, it's not an objective truth revealed in the world or something like that. Let's go to this question by Uzair Muhammad who asks, not sure if you've covered this before, what's your process for creating an episode? What about for planning out a season? Love your podcast, by the way. My process for creating an episode is I typically am working off of a primary source. I tried to use as few secondary sources as possible. And I mean, it's a little bit different when it's just a concept from Nietzsche. A lot of the early episodes what I was doing was combing through all of Nietzsche's works and finding all of the different places where you would mention a certain concept or like things I would remember of, oh, I should bring this into the episode and that quote in. And then it's really just a matter of once you know the concepts you want to talk about and you pull all the quotes that you want to talk about, and I would just sort of write around those of like, okay, so how do I introduce, you know, it's very similar to essay writing. How do I introduce this concept? So you have your introduction and then you sort of find as you begin writing and trying to arrange where all your poll quotes are going to go. I don't know. A lot of this is kind of artistic, it's inspiration, it's you get a natural feel for how the episode's going to develop. I sort of oftentimes, you'll notice I covered books sort of out of order, we're all decided. It's going to be a lot easier to establish this one idea before another, just based on my like intuition of what the common sense of someone is going to be or what the audience is intuitions are going to be. And so I'll say, but you know, even though the author talks about this idea later in the text, that really nicely encapsulates like the project of the book. So I'm going to talk about that first, right? You make all of these determinations and then of course I'll have think about how I want to conclude the episode. It's kind of how it goes. You start in the middle with the ideas you want to talk about and as I compile notes and as I write out sort of what I want to talk about with each quote, the structure kind of flushes out itself in a way. Now later, you know, when I'm working off of a book and I'm going to kind of try and give an overview, it's like a book review in a way, like a gleaning the philosophical ideas that I think are important from say Kierkegaard or Sharon or something like that. That involves like, so I read the book once and then I go through and I read it again and I begin making my notes as I'm doing a second reading. Sometimes I'll jot down like a quick note in a first reading or a page number or something I have to remember, but mostly the note taking process begins on the second reading. And then I can sometimes like close off skis book. Some of those chapters I read like five or six times because I knew it was going to be really important to get this right into and that it was not the easiest material. And so as I'm compiling the notes on the book, again, it's like you accrue all of this material and then it's sort of like looking at like, I don't know what like a sculptor has all the clay and then you sort of look at anywhere. Where's the structure? And it's kind of an artistic decision of how you want the podcast to flow. Like I know all of the ideas and the quotes I want to talk about. It's just a matter once I have all of that and I have it in note form of then structuring it, putting it together in such a way that it flows and it should be like a narrative in a way or like dramatic, not literally, but I think you guys know what I mean. Where the introduction should sort of raise questions, it should sort of intrigue and bring you in. And then as we talk about all the ideas, I have to structure them in such a way that it makes sense. It's logical. And you'll find things. The reason why sometimes I do cover books a little bit out of order, I jump back and forth is because you'll find things in later chapters that are like when you're talking about a certain core concept in the book, you're like, this would be better if it was at the beginning when I'm trying to think of like a good example of this, but I can't really at the moment. Sometimes actually like Kierkegaard's fear and trembling, I mostly talked about, you know, just Kierkegaard's background and then most of what I talked about was mainly from just a couple sections and it was mostly in the chronological order that he talks about it mostly. Sometimes the author makes it easy for you. They lay out their work very logically. The most difficult ones have been like talking about, you know, fictional works or Greek tragedies, right? Because then you kind of, it's a fine line between giving people too much exposition of what you're talking about because really that's only there so you can do the philosophical analysis. So, but I have learned that it's like a lot of people like my storytelling as well. So, you know, you don't want to over and dolege, you don't want to just be recounting the play if I'm talking about the Orre style or whatever. It is a means to an end of discussing philosophical ideas contained in it, but you have to get it across. You have to assume, I always assume the audience has no prior engagement with the podcast at all with each episode. Now, I will frequently make references to past episodes if I've talked about something before or I'll say if you're familiar with the podcast, you probably know this, but I like to give brief overviews, you know, of certain concepts. If it's a concept I've covered before, and it's going to be really important, the episode's not about that, like if I'm talking about, you know, something from each other that's not directly about will to power, and then it's nevertheless important that the audience knows about will to power, then I will give a little like refresher, right? But that's sort of the, that's my style of like, I don't want to assume the audience knows things that they don't. So, I guess those are just my general guidelines is like, I, I begin from the text at all times. I begin from reading, taking notes, and as that happens, I already start to see, okay, this is going to be a major theme. This is going to be a major idea I have to talk about. That's a quote I'm going to have to read because it's really powerful. You kind of create the middle first, create an introduction, conclusion, figure out hot flows. Don't assume the audience knows anything. I'm not here to impress people with how much I fucking know. I'm here to try and make the text as clear and as, as accessible as possible. And then for laying out a season, that's a bit looser. It's more that, because, you know, the first, the first season was kind of like introductory. I wanted to cover many of the major ideas, but I saved the affirmative philosophy. A lot of the really difficult stuff from Zarathos Drifor season two. And that's where I talked about some of the more, yeah, I would say season one is kind of like introduction, metaphysics, metaphysics and morality. Season two is like affirmative philosophy, philosophy of religion, these things, revaluation of values, stuff like that. Three was politics. Four is kind of like forgetting psychology, various things. Five was we're going to get a little more looser and we're going to talk about, we're going to draw more freely from whoever we want to talk about, right? And that's kind of where I'm at with season six. I feel like it's fair game to talk about whatever I want to talk about. And mostly at this point, the way I'm structuring a season is, whoever I've been asked to talk about, what, what is the audience really want to hear? What are some of the things that I haven't covered yet that I've always wanted to? So, you know, I'm going to be doing an episode untrue detective this season, because I feel like I've earned the goodwill to be able to talk pop culture as regards Nietzsche. If it was the beginning of the podcast, I wouldn't be doing stuff like that, but so it's a little more open ended. I just kind of like, I've determined a lot of what I wouldn't go into cover like Klozowski and Baty and some other figures based on being asked about them repeatedly. And or just books that I've read that I, you know, I've acquired quite a few books over the years, interpreting Nietzsche, referencing Nietzsche. And so I'm finally getting to cover a lot of those. So I don't know, it's a bit, I basically, I do plan out the season of what the episodes are going to be, but it's more, a lot of that is more logistical. It's less, it's less like an anarchistic thing. It's more like, okay, what can I realistically read and get done? How do I interspers the more difficult material I'm covering with something a little lighter so my brain can have a bit of a break and I can sort of catch up with where I need to be. So yeah, I don't know, I hope this all makes sense and I hope this is all helpful. Okay, we just have a couple more questions here. One from Plintigaph. They ask, "Hi, Keegan, I'm curious if you're aware of Ludwig Klugges and his relation to Nietzsche's thought. Much of his work is unfortunately not yet translated into English, but Paul Bishop had a great introduction called Ludwig Klugges and the philosophy of life, a vitalist toolkit. It seems that Klugges takes the problem of science to be the conclusion that consciousness itself, what he calls spirit, is basically life denying and what he calls soul, which he takes to mean something like the immediacy of life. It's being attacked by said spirit. Klugges also has his own critique of Nietzsche that is rather interesting, namely Nietzsche's celebration of will, which he saw as another form of spirit and thus life denying, interested to hear your thoughts, love the work you're doing. So I have not read Ludwig Klugges. My friend, Quinn, his name is Ergryph and Hyatt, his username on Reddit and in Discord. I'm sure if any of the patrons listening to this have joined the Discord, probably interacted with him at some point, he's doing a great exegesis of Nietzsche's time at Adam Theory at the moment, which just blows my mind, and I've learned so much from him and he raves about Ludwig Klugges and I just haven't gotten there yet. So it's very hard for me to comment on it. I will say the things you say do seem commensurate with Nietzsche. It's funny because if you listen to the Christmas special, the Antichristmas special, I talk about those words soul and spirit and how they're traditionally understood in the Christian scripture versus the way Nietzsche reimagines them and he would kind of agree with Klugges here. I mean, actually he would certainly agree. It's basically how Nietzsche uses the terms. His critique of Nietzsche, that's Nietzsche's celebration of the will, which he saw as another form of spirit. I mean, what I would say to that is that Nietzsche himself says to those who know there is no will. The will is merely a word behind which a popular prejudice lurks. So he's well aware that will isn't like, I'm wondering if Klugges read will to power some sort of like life force or a long vital or something like that. Like it's a spiritual force. I don't know. If he just means that we desire to use our consciousness to like change the world or something like that, change the world around it, change ourselves. We desire to impose a rational regime upon ourselves in order to, you know, like we might think of the Stoics or something like that. I would say we're always doing this. And I don't know if that's necessarily something that begins with the problem of science. Well, I mean, I guess you say here consciousness itself is basically life denying. I mean, yeah, but maybe to spin this in a different way, why do we have consciousness then if it's essentially life denying? I mean, you could say that one of the functions of consciousness, perhaps, by representing other possibilities than the current circumstances we're in, is a useful function of the organism to help overcome problems like that. As Klozowski says, we generate these phantasms, these images in our impulses. And that consciousness itself is sort of like a synthesis of weaving together the drives as Nietzsche sees it. And so these phantasms, right, they're, that's what beckons you forward or drives you away. That's the image in your mind of the predator or the oasis or the ideal mating partner or, you know, in modern terms, your phantasm you have of, this is the house I'm going to have once I get the good job. This is the prestige I have once I accomplish this that or the other. That's, oh, I'm imagining what it would be like to be in prison. That's why I shouldn't go commit that crime, et cetera, et cetera, right. We all have these sort of phantasms which are motivating and they help us navigate the world. And that would mean it is denial of reality in a sense. It's also why I think art is sort of one of the lines of my book, because that art is at the forefront of our war on reality. That art is an attempt to, it's like this attempt to create other worlds besides this one, create other selves in a way, other lives. And, you know, is that all, is that all life denying? I'm not, I'm not exactly sure. That's just sort of me playing devil's advocate in a way. I think that Nietzsche would actually, if you read much of what he says in the Antichrist, right, that's pure spirit is pure stupidity if you moved all the spirit from, or if you tried to create something that was only spirit, there would be nothing left over of what the body is, the being is. And there are times when he approaches this like purely almost anti-consciousness orientation. And again, we're going to get into this a lot with the Klozovsky episodes. I'm excited for, like, I think Plente Gaff, when you hear those episodes, it'll perhaps make certain things clear to you and probably raise some more questions too. But, um, so yeah, in a lot of ways, Nietzsche would agree with Klogas. I don't know if I would go that far, I guess, is what I'm saying, is to be conscious of this, just being purely life denying. And I would need to know more about about his critique of Nietzsche's celebration of will to know what I think of it. And I all need to read Klogas, or I guess, what did you say? Paul Bishop wrote the work. See, that's really hard for me to get introduced to a thinker through a secondary source. It's very hard for me to trust secondary sources because of all the mischief that's been done in the name of Nietzsche and the fact that there are a million interpretations of Nietzsche. Many of them in good faith, they're just, they all disagree, right? And so it's sort of like, it's very difficult to trust someone as a secondary source when you don't have access to the primary source. So yeah, I'm not rolling it out. Again, I should ask when again, because I was asking about Klogas, did he say anything about Nietzsche? And he said, well, none of that's been translated, but surely if he's read Klogas, he must know some of the things he wrote. I mean, there must be some, maybe he read that book. I don't know. So I guess we'll find, we'll find out. I'll find out from him where I should go to like learn more about Klogas, because it's always been a blind spot for me, but I know that there's going to be something really cool there if I get, if I dive into that. All right, last question from Adam Borosci. Hey, is the band coming to the Midwest anytime soon? Come through Indie. It sucks, but there be metal heads here. So my band has been through Indianapolis. Actually not this band. My previous band, a story of light, it's been through Indianapolis many, many times. We often played at Black Circle Brewery. Way back in the day, we used to play at, I don't remember their name, but they changed it to fifth quarter. And we played at Indie's rock boxes. I don't remember. There's like another bar there. And then we played at another, the people who owned fifth quarter moved to another bar. I've spent quite a bit of time in Indianapolis. I could tell you some stories about Indianapolis, man, actually. So the first time I met Black Tusk was in Indianapolis, RIP Jonathan Ethon. What else? I had a really interesting turn of events happen to me. The last time I was at Black Circle Brewery, when we were on tour with Temptress, and it was like, our host for the night asked us to meet him at this bar. And it was like, by this old graveyard, it was a really weird vibe. And then a bunch of things happened I probably shouldn't talk about. But I went, my walked out into that graveyard and, because everyone is going inside of the bar and it's like, I don't want to go to another bar. I don't really don't care. I wasn't feeling it. But it was just the first weird thing that happened that night. So I'm going in this old graveyard, pitch black, and all the gravestones are like, some of them are like knocked over. There was like a fallen tree branch in there. It hadn't been maintained. It was an old graveyard. And it was literally like gravestones were crumbling, some had fallen down. I mean, it looked, it was just, I was thinking as I was walking through through this place, that this would just be the perfect sight of a horror movie. And then right then, when I'm thinking this, a dog or a wolf, I think it was a dog. Howls in the distance. And it was like, it was like the kind of howl that you sample for an establishing shot of Dracula's castle or something. It was a perfect horrifying wolf howl. And I was just like, oh my god, I need, I need to just go back and go in the bar. It was like, I got that weird vibe out there. But anyway, enough personal anecdotes from me. So let's continue with your question. Oh, so we are planning it toward the Midwest. We were going to go to Indianapolis. I couldn't get an email back from anyone that often happens in trying to book shows. People are busy. I'm trying to book for a new band. That's not my old band that was well established. I mean, new, Selmerson's been around for three years now. But you know, it's a hard game out there booking. You have to do it six months in advance. And we ended up basically saying it was getting down to the point where it was getting a little dangerous, right, where I was just like, I, I'm not trusting that I'm going to find an indie show. I should explore other options. And so instead, we ended up booking a show Chicago and then Grand Rapids and then Ipsilanti, Michigan. So unfortunately, we're not coming through indie, truly sucks. Maybe one day, if you know any promoters in the area or clubs or you know any of these people personally, let them know to look out for us or put them in touch with me where I can message them directly. Please, because it really is like a lot of the time. There's actually the guy who's written our, our reviews on metal archives, metal encyclopedia. That guy lives in Indianapolis. I'm 99% sure. And I think he does the booking at Black Circle. And he gave us great reviews. And he never, the booking, if he does indeed run the booking, he never responded. So it's not because they don't like us. It's just that, you know, it's happened several times to me where it's like I've run into people where I'm like, Hey, I tried to reach out for you for a show. They're like, Oh, I didn't see it. And it's just that's what happens man in this industry. Um, so anyway, let me continue the question. Starminy was really fucking good, by the way. Thank you. There were a couple of really stand-up parts. And I believe the second tune and the solo comes up and it's a real clean tone jazzy kind of deal. Really dug that and your singer reminds me a bit of Mike Patton, which I like. The whole album got better with each song major props. Have you considered doing a Nietzsche pilgrimage hit the places he stayed and worked? I've had the thoughts since college, be a fun way to try or a fun way to work on an album, just record in some of his old haunts. Like folks have done with Crowley's house, but more interesting for my interests. Oh, you mean Bulless skin, huh? Yeah. Uh, I've had this thought recently about how freestyle hip hop ciphers are kind of similar to the way you describe Dionysian dramas. People smoking and drinking, reciting improvised poetry, connecting the vulgar to the other worldly, especially with more artistic rappers like Doom or Black Thought. I don't know. I'm curious if you see that or if I'm entirely tripping. Last thing is there a source, will the power, etc. that documents Nietzsche short-lived military service in any detail. Copman touches on it, but I'd be interested in some more detailed accounts. Uh, I don't know IDK. Why? What is the why? But I would, he says, um, okay, so a couple of things here, um, Nietzsche Pilgrimage. You know, I've actually done that to some extent, not to like go record or play music. Well, I guess so, yeah, like so, I visited his, uh, his room where he taught in Basel, uh, when vacationing there with my wife in Switzerland. And then with the band, when we went through, um, Turin, Italy, I went to where Nietzsche's apartment is and I went to the Piazza Carlo Alberto where he collapsed. And that was, that was a great experience. I actually talk about that in my book a little bit. I've never been to the Ingeden, um, or like that area of the of Switzerland. That would be like the part of Switzerland that's closer to Italy. And I, I've spent a lot in a lot of time in Northern Italy. And I've spent a lot of time in Switzerland, but not in that southern Switzerland to usually have spent time around Basel or like Imantal or my, my picture, the, the picture that I use in the, um, of myself on my like YouTube channel and my ex-handle and everything is me at Mount Pilatus, overlooking Lake Lucerne. So, uh, I've done a little bit of that. Uh, I think it would be cool. I was just, I've just been reading John Cag's hiking with Nietzsche. That's going to be the topic of an episode next season. He talks about going to stay in Sils Maria where Nietzsche stayed. And that all sounds very cool. It definitely made me think that would be a cool idea. Don't think you can really record there because it's a little quiet in or whatever. But, um, yeah, I mean, that could be cool. I've, I've always wanted to go record in a castle or something, Pink Floyd style. So that's the kind of thing you do when you're a musician with like unlimited resources. And the other thing too is like sound recording is really more about, like these days, it's not really where you have to like do it all in one go or and you're like removed doing it. Like you can kind of retract things more easily now that we have pro tools and all these things. So it's not really quite the same kind of game as Pink Floyd, you know, where, I mean, I guess if you want everything to have the same acoustic quality or whatever, but when a lot of the times you're just going through, you know, uh, the bass player is going direct, the acoustics are really important for drums. So if you get all that done, you know, um, then you have to find a place where you can set up a drum set. I don't think we could do that in Nietzsche's room in Sills Maria. But I've definitely thought about destination recording. It's cool. It's just, it's so much more economical to do it like kind of like get your main tracks down in like an initial session and, you know, there's so many good local studios here in Austin that are relatively speaking pretty cheap. When you include the travel costs, we even looked about doing a studio in San Antonio, which is an hour away. Then you think about saying, do we want to drive an hour and back every day? Now we would just get an Airbnb or whatever. And just renting that for like five days, that immediately like way drives up your cost of the recording, right? And we're kind of trying to do like, we're kind of trying to not spend our own money on this. We're trying to spend the money we make in the band to perpetuate the band. And so it just doesn't make sense at this point. If we ever make a gold record, yeah, you can bet I'm going to go be recording in destination recordings. You know, maybe then regarding hip hop freestyle hip hop ciphers. I actually don't know what that is. I mean, I can kind of get what it is from the way you described it. People smoking, drinking, reciting and provides poetry. Is that just what it is? Like that's just kind of like a hip hop symposium you go in and just party and everyone does their their rhymes, their beats. I don't know. That sounds cool. It's not it's not really my my scene so much. You know, like some hip hop. I like doom actually. I haven't heard of black thought, but I like doom to the doom. What is it? The one he did with a Sunday, like I think it was just like sampling Sunday. That one's pretty cool. And one of my best friends for like 15 years loves him of doom. And so he turned me on to a lot of his stuff. But yeah, and then is there a source of documents Nietzsche sort lived military service? So mostly I have I don't know if I can give you like one definitive source. I've read about that in a bunch of secondary sources over the years. He talks about it somewhat in his letters and his correspondence. You can find a lot of letters. Nietzsche's letters on the Nietzsche channel also super produced book. I am dynamite has a lot of letters. I think she discusses his military career there. Yeah, I don't know if I can remember off the top of my head what source documents it. But you have to remember so Nietzsche's military service. He had like mandatory military service that was sort of like basic training so that you can be called up if they need conscripts. That was where Nietzsche fell off the horse. He wasn't like in battle. Apparently he was, according to him at least, his commanding officer thought he was an excellent writer and an excellent soldier. But I don't know if it really related to his his sickliness his ill constitution or whatever, but that accident where he fell off did exacerbate a lot of his problems. And that was why when the Frank oppression war broke out he couldn't actually go fight. It wouldn't let him. That's why he had to be a medical orderly. Which is a hard job. It really is treating the wounded and in a high pressure environment. And a lot of people see that as like Nietzsche had a, you know, got off with light service or something. Oh, he didn't really fight. He was just a nurse or medical orderly. It's like being a battlefield nurse is a pretty big deal. And then that was also a brief, you know, he spent I think a number of weeks at the front and then contracted multiple diseases and had to be sent home. So both of his stints in the military were pretty short affairs. And it's interesting because Nietzsche was so opposed to the Frank oppression war, but he had felt this like almost patriotic duty to volunteer, be a part of it. Even though he, you know, he was living in Switzerland at the time, I think he could have. And yeah, he had to basically request to do it because of his previous injury while in training. So he had to really want to get involved. And given that it was a war he opposed. And then all of the later things, he would say the very vicious attacks on Prussianism and the whole, the whole Prussian Empire, the second Reich, he seemed to be very in the German culture in general. It's always been, for all the enigmas or mysteries in Nietzsche's life, that's always been a particularly interesting one to me. And actually, I already referenced a Christmas episode, but one of the Christmas specials that I did, geez, two years ago, three years ago, I don't remember exactly which one I spoke about. I think it was three years ago. I mean, it was the first Christmas special I spoke about Nietzsche with the Wagner's. He visited them on Christmas right after the Frank oppression war. And I kind of explored that question a bit in that Christmas special. So maybe that's something to look into. But yeah, I wish I could give you a source. If I find one, I will, I'll leave it in a comment or something if it one comes to mind. But anyway, thank you, everyone. This has been great. It's been good questions. And if you're listening to this, when this episode gets a general release, always remember, you can go become a patron yourself and get to ask me a question that I will ramble on about for 10 to 15 minutes and hopefully give you a satisfactory answer. And you know, this is something we do pretty regularly. It's not like quite monthly, but because I want to give people time to like think of good questions and ask good questions. And I find if I do them too rapidly, people don't have enough questions really. But yeah, it's a regular thing. And as we grow the Patreon more, more people will have more questions. So it'll sort of force me to do more and more of these episodes. But I really like them. It's a more kind of relaxed format. It's conversational, even though it's still just me recording and doing a microphone alone, but you know, it feels more interactive. And I appreciate all of you. Thank you very much to all of the patrons. Thank you to everyone who asked a question. And this has been great. It's yeah. All right, everyone. See you next time. Signing off.