In 1996, Samuel Huntington presented a theory of “clashes” occurring between different civilizational blocks. Huntington traced the mindsets of different people to solid religious sources. However, what if the difference between civilizational blocks is that some have read Nietzsche and others haven’t?
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.
How Plato’s “Phaedrus” Influenced Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”
This beautiful novella draws heavily from Plato’s conception of love, but to what extent?
Not School This February
It’s February! Time to check out the Citizens’ Forum and Not School proposals.
Is Morality Ethical?
“Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural.” (Nietzsche) Nietzsche and Spinoza both challenged the validity of morality based on transcendent or universal values. They both argued that moral restrictions are based on weakness: Nietzsche via enslavement by harboring vengeance or “resentment” against life ( Genealogy of Morals), Spinoza via enslavement to passive affections. In both, the transcendent moral division between Good and Continue Reading …
Dec. Not School: Sartre, Joyce, Nietzsche, Theater, Natural Law
For this post, I give you some theme music by a very talented musician named Sumner McKane. I chose this nice little tune not for the music itself (deserving though it may be), but for its title: “The Winter I Got Louder than Bombs and Standing on a Beach.” I’m going to assume this title reveals that Sumner has memories Continue Reading …
The Existentialist Self in the World: Doubt, Being and Caring
If from continental philosophy you throw out transcendental phenomenology and older idealist trappings–transcendental subjects and so on–you are left with a system which still has two components: the world and the self. It was the relationship between these two that took hold as the major problem for 20th C. continental philosophy. The upshot of the first phase of the “analysis of the Continue Reading …
Nietzsche the Hydra
[Editor’s Note: Thanks to Randall Miron for this post. Randall’s a long-time audio editor of ours and has been helping edit blog posts here recently as well.] In his short book Nietzsche, subtitled “Nietzsche’s Voices,” Ronald Hayman argues that, “Like Kierkegaard, who made copious use of pseudonyms and personae, Nietzsche was exploring his ambivalence.” This theme is touched on at Continue Reading …
November Not School Groups
Here are the Not School group activities for the month of November for PEL Citizens. Intro Readings in Philosophy: Finally! We have a Nietzsche discussion in Not School. They will be reading the On the Genealogy of Morals. Join up and reduce to sour grapes all of your precious finger wagging. See Hillary Szydlowski’s plug here. Philosophy of Mind: We Continue Reading …
Is Philosophy Better Than Art?
If you believe Plato, then the answer is “yes”. If all of philosophy is a footnote to Plato, then the artists have been subordinated to the philosophers for about 25 centuries. According to Plato’s Republic, especially the last section, the artists present a danger to society and to your soul. Two of my favorite thinkers disagree with Plato and Socrates Continue Reading …
A Brief Guide to Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense”
A Brief Guide to Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in the Extra- Moral Sense For our episode on Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense, I’ve created a guide that you’ll find here. Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction: Introduction Nietzsche’s question in On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense is how a drive for truth could ever have Continue Reading …
Nietzsche and the “Death of God.”
In connection with Episode 61, I submit the following discussion by The Big Ideas podcast concerning Nietsche’s famous but often misunderstood claim that “God is dead.” The several participants in the discussion each address Nietzsche’s pronouncement from different angles. Giles Fraser argues that the “God is dead” revelation is that humanity can only become free if it rejects the idea Continue Reading …
Badiou: Wittgenstein and Nietzsche as Anti-Philosophy
Listening to the guys and Philosophy Bro on the last episode, I want to interject that actually I see Wittgenstein as a bridge between analytic and continental philosophy for reasons beyond his being Austrian. What he brackets out and why is crucial to his project, which does become “anti-philosophical” in a broad sense. Anti-philosophy is defined by both Alain Badiou Continue Reading …
Foucault Was No Relativist
[Editor’s Note: We’re pleased to have some more blog input here from Getty, the guest from our Hume/Smith episode, who wrote his undergrad thesis on Foucault and was in line to be a guest on this one himself. You can blame me for the image, which I found here.] Was Foucault a relativist about truth? Truth-relativism is the doctrine that Continue Reading …
In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens
Watch on YouTube. Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday after a punishing bout with cancer, and I’d like to take the liberty of inserting a brief memoriam. I do this in a philosophy blog partially because PEL recently discussed one of his books. But mostly I do it because I would hate to think anyone remembers Hitchens as nothing more than a “New Continue Reading …
Walter Kaufmann Lectures on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre
Via openculture.com, check out these lectures by Walter Kaufmann, who did most of the good Nietzsche translations you’d pick up nowadays and was the teacher of Frithjof Bergmann whose name I drop a lot on the show (who was in turn teacher of Robert Solomon). -Mark Linsenmayer
What’s at stake in the Heidegger/Nazism debate?
So I have been established, or established myself, as the Heidegger ‘guy’ on this blog/podcast. Why? I read a bunch of his stuff in grad school, studied with one of his students (at the time a professor) in Germany, and wrote my Master’s thesis on “Ereignis”. Wes just sent me a link to this review at The Time Higher Education Continue Reading …
Christian Realism and Holy War
“Christian Realism” — even Christians ought to struggle with David Brook’s latest invention. How delightful to juxtapose other-worldliness and practicality! But to really understand it, replace “Christian” with “love” and “Realism” with “War.” Meaning, “I love war, but I wage it only out of love.” It’s almost a self-parodying confirmation of Nietzsche’s critique of the human capacity for turning aggression into Continue Reading …
Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?
Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?).
End song: “The Greatest F’in Song in the World,” from 1998’s Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio.
We go through Nietzsche’s convoluted and historically improbable stories about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Why does he diss Christianity? Is he an anti-semite? Was he a lazy, arrogant bastard? What does he actually recommend that we do?
Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?
Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?).