Hear highlights from two supporter-only discussions: Allan Bloom on Nietzsche/Freud/etc. and Leo Strauss vs. Richard Rorty on liberal education and democracy.
The Panpsycast Christmas Special
Mark joins the folks at the Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast for a two-part holiday special on everyone’s favorite yuletide character, Friedrich Nietzsche!
Episode 178: Nietzsche as Social Critic: “Twilight of the Idols” (Part Two)
Continuing on Nietzsche’s 1888 book. Is there any ground from which we could judge life as a whole to be good or bad? Is N. more about saying “yes” to life or saying “no” to all the numerous things that piss him off? We also talk Becoming, whether producing great art is more important than being nice to everyone, and whether Nietzsche is ultimately someone we’d want to hang around.
End song: “Oblivion” by Tyler Hislop, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #24.
isten to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition
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Episode 178: Nietzsche as Social Critic: “Twilight of the Idols” (Part One)
On Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1888 book summarizing his thought and critiquing the founding myths of his society. He defends “spiritualized” instinct and frenzied creativity, but also Napoleon and war. We try to figure out what kind of social critic he’d be today. Would we actually like him?
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Episode 178: Nietzsche as Social Critic: “Twilight of the Idols” (Citizen Edition)
On Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1888 book summarizing his thought and critiquing the founding myths of his society. He defends “spiritualized” instinct and frenzied creativity, but also Napoleon and war. We try to figure out what kind of social critic he’d be today. Would we actually like him?
End song: “Oblivion” by Tyler Hislop, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #24.
Academic Suffering and Mere Curiosity
What is the “lust of the mind” and how does it fit in with the modern university?
Louis C.K., Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche on How to Suffer and Be Happy
Why does happiness so often present itself as a problem?
The Walk to Kallipolis
A philosophical dialogue on the nature of art.
Playing God: The Rise of the Actor and the Decline of Tragic Art
In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that, through his protégé Euripides, Socrates had injected into Greek tragedy the seed of questioning doubt that brought an end to the religious animus of drama, the fire that fueled its creation and sustained it. Thus, cold reason killed tragedy. Although he would later modify this view, it remains a powerful and influential polemic in the history of aesthetics.
What Do Existentialists Think about Love?
Given the existentialist emphasis on concrete personal experience, freedom, authenticity, responsibility, awareness of death, and personal determination of values, it is not surprising that existentialist philosophers should also consider the question of romantic love.
Truth and Authenticity in Michael Haneke’s Caché
The films of Austrian director Michael Haneke seem to start out “normally” and then slowly descend into an abyss—but what if that abyss is in fact living authentically? Could we see Haneke’s award-winning Caché (2005) as an exemplification of Sartrean existentialism? And what are some other philosophical influences in his work?
Not School April: Dennett and Germans and Aristotle
Come get involved in the coming month with a Not School group, or propose your own!
Is “Hungernachdeutschphilosophie” a made up word? Maybe, but it works.
Not School This March: Hobbes, Nietzsche, Dennett, Plato, Hegel
Something for the Ubermensch in all of us: Hobbes, Nietszche, Dennett, some Intro to Philosophy readings starting with Plato, and don’t forget the Aftershow on Hegel! Get in on Not School’s offerings for March!
Diving with Melville
Philosophical artists and artistic philosophers, however they diverge respecting doctrinal matters, often bond beneath the surface in striving to render an ideal image of the sage. Plato, Melville, and Nietzsche were like this, each of them expressing his conception of wisdom through the mask of creative philosophy. Nietzsche insisted that “Every profound spirit needs a mask.” His own uncanny literary persona was his mask, as Socrates was Plato’s, and Ishmael Melville’s. Not Ahab, but the narrator Ishmael is the authentically Nietzschean Yes-sayer of Moby-Dick. Ahab is vanquished by the God he hates, but Ishmael survives the catastrophe to become the man who narrates Ahab’s dark fate with such sparkling insight and wit.
Moby-Dick as Philosophy: Plato – Melville – Nietzsche
An extended excerpt from Mark Anderson’s book—a study of Plato, Melville, and Nietzsche, framed as a philosophical commentary on Moby-Dick.
Philosophy of History Part XIV: Friedrich Nietzsche: History as Art
“History, in so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power.” –Friedrich Nietzsche
Don’t Know Much About History (but Should We?)
Can too much historical awareness be something that hinders rather than helps us? Nietzsche argued as much. Does his case hold up as our historical memory recedes?
Ep 119 Aftershow: Nietzsche (Featuring Greg Sadler)
Seth Paskin and Danny Lobell were joined by Dr. Gregory B. Sadler, David Buchanan, Erik Weissengruber, Tom Kirdas, Ken Presting, and Bill Coe. Recorded July 26, 2015.
Dance Lessons with Nietzsche
What, exactly, is a Nietzsche book? His works defy easy placement. Whatever they are, they’re filled to the brim with dancing—dancing Dionysian revelers, dancing satyrs, dancing ladies and men and children of all stripe and color.
Topic for #120: Guest Eva Brann on Will (and Aquinas, Augustine, Heidegger, etc.)
Eva Brann (from our Heraclitus episode) returns to talk with us about her 2014 book, Un-Willing: An Inquiry into the Rise of Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It, which gives an intellectual history of the notion of will and diagnoses a the current pernicious effect of the concept in our philosophy and culture.