The REAL PHILOSOPHY of NIETZSCHE: Self-Overcoming, Will to Power, and Freedom
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
- In this episode of the Philosophy Hour of Literary Tales, we explore the largely misunderstood philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's philosophy is based on self-overcoming and struggle, that life is struggle and the meaning of existence is constant struggle to become power and freedom. We also deconstruct the false readings of Nietzsche's anti-Christianity to understand what he actually thought about Christianity and why he assailed it. In summarizing Nietzsche, we also deal with his criticism of liberalism and socialism and communism.
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Paul Krause is the editor-in-chief of VoegelinView. He is a writer, classicist, and historian. He has written on the arts, culture, classics, literature, philosophy, religion, and history for numerous publications in the English-speaking world. He is the author of Finding Arcadia (2023), The Odyssey of Love (2021), and the Politics of Plato (2020); he has also contributed to The College Lecture Today (2019) and Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters (2022).
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An excellent lecture! Thank you. I have been Anti-Nietzsche, for the past 35 years. You have succeeded at getting me to open my mind, and rethink my view / interpretation of him. Great job!
Well, I'm by no means a Nietzschean and have profound disagreements with him and his many (mis)interpretations of basic philosophy (well-known in contemporary academia). Nevertheless, that doesn't prevent me from teaching him or dialoguing with him (he is a forerunner of postmodernism and offering a critique of modernity). Yet he is routinely misrepresented himself by many who clearly misunderstand him or have ulterior motives. My undergrad professor who taught him, himself a scholar of Nietzsche, mused on the ironies of him: few figures have been so wrong in their presentation and interpretation of philosophy (Nietzsche was really more a "historian of philosophy" than an actual philosopher) yet have such a profound importance in history of philosophy. Everyone should engage with Nietzsche because he really is that important as a transitional figure and getting his basic premise (self-overcoming) is how to start!
Excellent summary. So tragic to see the masses of "last men" living for comfort, simplicity, pleasure... when deep down, we all know it is struggle that defines every meaningful episode of our lives, both collective and individually ... struggle with suffering, weakness, cowardice, loss, defeat, trauma ... but ultimately being anti-fragile, and discovering the will to power and striving to what can be identified as of value. To give up on working out the right and wrong, the good and bad is to be the catatonic worm. Nietzsche offers us a way out but it is a painful and hard one. It appears it is not for the many but the few.
Paul on a side note - I would recommend you attempt to add links at the end of each of your presentations to your other vids on those thinkers that build on these points. For example, Satre. That will help people to watch more of the videos on your very valuable channel. This allows a viewer to follow the genealogy of ideas across thinkers.
Well done, what you are producing is truly inspiring and excellent evidence of the good that social media platforms can be put to. All the best!
I appreciate that! After all, everything on my channel is meant for the public. (I do have various lecture videos on Sartre.) Not only gets to have an undergrad and grad school education in philosophy and theology, especially not at Yale, so this is a way of giving back to everyone also on the adventure inside and outside the classroom.
Who is more 'anti-fragile' than those with the most privation, who is more 'fragile' than those with the least privation.
Outstanding and wonderful presentation of all the misconceptions yet surrounding Nietzsche (although not as grave as decades ago) as an important yet complicated thinker. I recently learned Martin Luther was a major part of the German history of anti-semite sentiment. Of course the Nazis warped Nietzsche terribly, and the impression lingered for a long time (immediately after WWII in Hitchcock's movie Rope it's stated essentially that the murderers are only following a Nieztschean line of Uberman thinking). This, combined with Heidegger's direct support of the Nazis, are reasons why German philosophy was tacitly excised from the Western philosophical canon at Universities in the late 20th century. Of course, I often found Nietzsche (in my lay reading) a bit like the bible; one could find the fist in one section and the dove in another, so a bit of the confusion lay in his moods as well.
But as you point out in a way, the dogmatic is the nihilistic; any supposed truth is a limitation on the evolution of knowledge and the process of 'self-overcoming'. And yes, the evolutionary science and the growing 19th century awareness of unconscious impulses are in-line with the struggling, grappling paths to selfhood. It's always in the movement, never about 'getting' to perfection, and each generation as well begins anew.
Personally, thinking about life and philosophy and so forth is so much more simple when one extracts oneself from our blindingly individualistic framework. Life is about the continuity of life, continuity of species, of which each of us is but a small dot in an everlasting ellipsis. Each a link in the everlasting chain of struggle and, therein, advancement.
Absolutely brilliant Paul. You've done an amazing job. You've identified all the life sustaining and life promoting attributes in Friedrich Nietzsche and have delivered them to the public who may be confused. You do a tremendous amount for humanity because it is this type of resilience and thought that enables humanity progress
... looking forward to this one, saving it for a quiet moment 👍
25:32 Sounds like Nietzsche was more Hegelian than he knew? Hegel’s end of history was not an end-Nietzsche read him wrong. Our perpetual failures to arrive at an end point, to know it all, etc., is “the end” (absolute knowledge) in the sense of a revelation of contradiction inherent to life. Hegel recognized the generative nature of the lack/gap internal to everything-the primordial force of splitting/negation that animates Becoming.
Hegel, _Lectures on Philosophy of Religion:_ “it is in the finite consciousness that the process of knowing spirit’s essence takes place and that the divine self-consciousness thus arises. Out of the foaming ferment of finitude, spirit rises up fragrantly."
It is now widely accepted that Nietzsche, though rebelling against Hegel, was still very much part of the post-Hegelian tradition. Virtually all German (and modern) philosophy is, even among those who ended up very far from Hegel's conclusions.
Fantastic , as usual Paul :) :) 😊
Excellent summary as always, but Nietzsche missed one thing - love is a struggle that doesn't feel like a struggle, doesn't feel like pain and gain. Do not fight for things you do not love, and no one can love an idea. Superman is only an idea. Love real people, together we are the Superman, together we feel peace and contentment during the struggle for power to overcome our lower, always shadowing selves. Life is not in me or you but in us, so adding to this Fichte and Schelling we got the complete philosophy of life.
"For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there..." Mt 18:20
by the way, just watched the Bela Tarr/Laszlo Krasznahorkai film The Turin Horse, let's say 'inspired by' the account of Nietzsche's psychic demise witnessing the brutalizing of the animal. The movie does feature a horse as one of the 3 main protagonists. FYI
So you recommend it?
@@PaulJosephKrause I recommend Werckmeister Harmonies as my fav Bela Tarr movie (also a 'philosophical movie', let's say). If that and his style impresses you, then The Turin Horse.
@James-ll3jb
No, I mean “human progress” or “humanities progress”, because for humanity to progress they need to hold life affirming, resilient and life sustaining principles.
sorry I've taken so long to respond I've been traveling for work.
I really appreciate your response which is obviously well considered and thoughtful however I don't agree with most of it. Even if Friedrich Nietzsche espoused some nihilistic elements his overall philosophy was, unequivocally, life affirming and life promoting which is antithetical to nihilism.
Kant is far more nihilistic.
Do you have training in the area philosophy? it seems that you are very well versed.
Is this not a somewhat reductive analysis of Nietzsche, it seems to justify or reinforce/ map onto the existing power structures (then & now).
Well Nietzsche absolutely was a racist and I don’t say this to criticise his writings, I’m simply being honest. In his books he regularly refers to “the strong Northern European races…the hyperboreans.”
Is that a problem?
Touché
Nietzsche had the "smallest ears." Guess what he is referring to...