The Nietzsche Podcast

In 1956, Jung wrote the essay entitled, "Past and Future" in German, but we know it in English as "The Undiscovered Self". Having witnessed the horror of the world wars, and the ongoing apocalyptic danger of the Cold War, Jung attempted to explain why it was that societies sometimes went mad. This is how Europe experienced the outbreak of The Great War: as mass insanity. Why would free people gravitate towards cult-like tyrannies? How could ordinarily moral and reasonable people perpetrate acts of unthinkable violence? And how could our constitutional democracies remain susceptible to these outbursts, if we are so committed to principles such as freedom and human dignity? For Jung, the only answer is self-knowledge, but that is the one thing that modern society is making impossible

Yukio Mishima (born Kimitake Hiraoka, 1925-1970) wrote dozens of stories, including famous works such as Confessions of a Mask, and Patriotism. He was considered for a Nobel Prize in literature about half a dozen times, through he never won it. His works were adapted into films, which received international acclaim. He wrote modern No plays which were performed all over the world, in Europe and America. He is known for his provocative style, his romanticization of death and of warrior culture, and for his political radicalism. Mishima desired to return Japan to a pre-WWII samurai culture, ruled under the absolute authority of a divine emperor – and yet, his writing incorporates influences not only from traditional Japanese literature, but from writers from the west: Rilke, Wilde, Batailles, Klossowski, and, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche. From the time he was 19, when he first picked up a copy of Birth of Tragedy, Mishima had a lifelong fascination with Nietzsche. In this episode, we consider the major philosophical ideas in his combination of confession and criticism, Sun and Steel: the unity of art and action, the corrosive nature of words, and necessity of a 'beautiful death' to truly affirm one's existence.

Welcome to season five of The Nietzsche Podcast! First of all, a warm thank you to all of my listeners and patrons who have helped to make this show such a phenomenal success. For our first episode in this new collection of episodes, we're diving headfirst into the Oedipus plays of Sophocles: Oedipus Rex & Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles triumphed with the best tragedy at the Dionysia more than any other playwright, and Aristotle named Oedipus Rex the model tragedy. We will fully explore the tragic downfall of Oedipus, his redemptive last days at Colonus, and Friedrich Nietzsche's interpretation of the significance of Oedipus in Birth of Tragedy. Episode Art: Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust, Oedipus at Colonus (1788), Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Concluding with our readthrough of book I of The Gay Science! We'll return with book II in a short while. In the meantime, we're going back to regular episodes of the podcast in the immediate future, covering a variety of topics. Cheers!

Join me for the next installment of our readthrough of The Gay Science. Here, we cover a number of aphorisms concerning: fame and its effect on friendship; the dying words of Roman emperors; the hidden significance of all historical events; the desacrelizing effects of market forces upon society; and the value in knowing the supposed motives of human behavior, if the professed motives happen to be 'false'.

In this episode, we discuss the way in which selfishness is the root of all selfless morality, how corruption produces greatness, why the ascetic is driven by ambition, and the age old question, "What is Life?"

Join me this week, for a discussion of significant aphorisms from The Gay Science, including Consciousness, Evil, and The Feeling of Power.

We begin our walkthrough + analysis of The Gay Science today, starting with some brief remarks on the background context of the work, a loose examination of the preface, and an intense exegesis of the first nine aphorisms. Excited to dive into this one with all of you1

Answering questions from Patrons for our tenth Q&A episode! Thank you everyone, first episode analyzing The Gay Science next week.

Updates on my life, the new direction for the podcast, revealing the next book that we’re analyzing, and general thoughts on the spirit of the show, what binds the community together, and self celebration about the release of my book.

A summary of Nietzsche's teachings, examined by considering the parallel of Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche with how the modern person could adopt Nietzsche as a similar type of influence. I attempt to distill the central message of Nietzsche's philosophy, and explain how this interpretative framework helps elucidate new angles to many of his important ideas. This episode is my final word on Nietzsche's philosophy, considered in its totality, as the podcast transitions away from our focus on the primary sources in Nietzsche and into interpretations of Nietzsche and Nietzsche-adjacent material. A love letter to the fans and a last hurrah into exegesizing Nietzsche, incorporating topics from throughout the season and with callbacks to the earliest episodes. Celebrating three years of The Nietzsche Podcast as of this month! Episode art: Maxfield Parish - Jason and His Teacher, Chiron the Centaur

In the aphorism, "Journey to Hades" in Human All Too Human Vol 2, Nietzsche lists eight thinkers who helped to shape his thought. Each of these eight is paired with another thinker, a choice which is intentional and intended to reveal something about each pair. These eight are: Epicurus and Montaigne; Goethe and Spinoza; Plato and Rousseau; Pascal and Schopenhauer. In this episode, we will examine each one of these pairs in order to determine what similarities and what differences Nietzsche is attempting to elucidate in counterposing them. In comprehending each of these pairs, we can come to a full understanding of the early development of Nietzsche's thought, and see the way in which he was in dialogue with the ancients. The method of this passage hints at the way in which all of us can orm a relationship to Nietzsche in a similar fashion. Episode art is Johannes Stradanus - Ulysses in Hades

The second part of a two-parter we began near the beginning of this season. The completion of our analysis of Ecce Homo. In this episode, we consider Nietzsche's reviews of his own books, and argue that it presents a creative narrative of Nietzsche's life: Nietzsche as a tragic figure. Nietzsche mythologizes himself and the circumstances of his great works, dabbling in exaggerations and lacunae - but nevertheless providing an invaluable interpretation the significance of his entire career, and commentary on the development of his thought. With Nietzsche's comments, we can construe his life's work into an early period, an affirmative period that begins with his middle works and culminates with Zarathustra, and a critical period that characterizes his later work.

The Twilight of Idols is described by Nietzsche as a work of leisure: a leap sideways, a bit of sunshine, a form of play rather than work. The laboriousness of 'notebook psychology', in which one strains and squints and spies on reality, could not be further from this natural discernment based on what one is given. In this episode, we explore exactly what Nietzsche means by this distinction. Once again, it is tied in with his differentiation between the artistic and the theoretic. Through Twilight of Idols, Nietzsche remarks on psychology and his approach to it, suggests that it is found in literature, and suggests that some men who claim to be psychologists are really just head cases. Join me as we consider these ideas at a leisurely pace. Episode art is Satan Resting on the Mountain by Gustave Dore.

A deep dive into one of the most important passages in Twilight of Idols. We’ll explore Nietzsche’s critique of our erroneous habits of thought: mistaking the effect for the cause, false causality, creating imaginary causes, creating a doer of the deed, and free will. We explore Nietzsche’s explanation for how these errors take hold of our thought, the psychological need for these errors, and why they persist. Episode art is The Billiard’s Player by William Bastiaan Tholen

The ninth time that I’ve done this.

My friend Quinn and I discuss whether Deleuze is an accurate interpreter of Nietzsche. What are the faults of Deleuze's interpretation, and what are its merits? We discuss the eternal return, the anti-Hegelian attitude of Deleuze, ressentiment and bad conscience, and the Deleuzian understanding of will to power. More broadly, we discuss what it is that makes an interpretation correct, and how there are different mindsets behind the left and right interpretations of Nietzsche.

Carl Jung contributed to psychoanalysis in an important way, but that contribution to the field is inseparable from his engagement with Nietzsche. Jung derived a wealth of insights from Nietzsche’s work, and his psychological state that deteriorated into madness. Jung’s central hypothesis is that Nietzsche was possessed by an archetype. Such archetypal inflation was the result of a deep imbalance within Nietzsche’s psyche, springing from his rejection of the spiritual.

Carl Gustave Jung was a student of Freud, but broke from his mentor in a dramatic way. Jung acquired the reputation of being a mystic, and put forward ideas that pushed the boundaries of psychoanalysis. This is a crash course in Jung’s most important ideas: projection, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. In this episode, we go in-depth on the major archetypes that Jung describes. These are subpersonalities that exist in every human unconsciousness, which will manifest insensibly in one’s desires, and find themselves projected by the subject into the external world.

Weltgeist x The Nietzsche Podcast. A long-awaited conversation. We discuss: the aesthetics of Schopenhauer v/s Nietzsche, the Schopenhauerian influence on Wagner's music, The Pale Blue Dot, the Eros as discussed in Plato's Symposium, philosophy and art as luxuries of civilization, and what Nietzsche describes as the asceticism of the scientific worldview.