The Meaning of LIFE, According to NIETZSCHE

Summary

In this engaging and thorough breakdown, the speaker delves into Nietzsche's conception of life, highlighting its embodiment, impermanence, and philosophical underpinnings. Through the exploration of key texts and ideas from Nietzsche's work, such as "zarathustra," "Will To Power," and his criticism of metaphysical permanence, we uncover the essence of Nietzsche's worldview. The discussion also touches on Nietzsche's views on morality, self-overcoming, and his critique of religious and metaphysical thought. Ultimately, it challenges listeners to rethink life's meaning, emphasizing the importance of embodying one's existence and finding strength in self-knowledge and will.

Highlights

• Nietzsche argues for a focus on physical, embodied experience over spiritual abstractions! 💪
• His critique of permanence suggests life's constant state of becoming! 🌿
• Will To Power is central to understanding life's driving force for Nietzsche! ⚡
• The Overman represents an ideal beyond traditional Christian morality! 🌟
• Nietzsche's philosophy encourages embracing life's chaos and imperfections! 🎭

Key Takeaways

• Nietzsche's philosophy highlights the body's importance over abstract spirit! 🧠
• Life's impermanence is central to understanding Nietzsche's ideas! ⏳
• Nietzsche challenges traditional views on spirituality and morality! 🚫
• Key Nietzschean concepts include Will to Power, Eternal Return, and Overman! 🌀
• Self-overcoming is crucial in Nietzsche's vision of a fulfilled life! 🚀

Overview

In exploring Nietzsche's thoughts on life, the focus is notably placed on the physical over the spiritual. Nietzsche dismisses the abstract notion of spirit, framing our existence in terms of embodied experience. This perspective invites a profound shift from traditional views, emphasizing our physiological being as the root of life. It's a compelling argument for understanding life's fleeting nature and for grounding oneself in physical reality.

Nietzsche further critiques the notion of metaphysical permanence, challenging listeners to embrace life's impermanence. Concepts such as Will To Power and Eternal Return underline his philosophy, portraying life as a continuous cycle of becoming rather than a quest for spiritual or eternal permanence. This outlook encourages a dynamic engagement with life's inherent chaos and a rejection of static ideals and dogmas.

Embracing self-overcoming, Nietzsche presents a vision of life focused on personal growth and authenticity. Through the lens of the Overman, he encourages the pursuit of greatness beyond conventional morality, advocating for the creation and destruction inherent in self-improvement. Nietzsche's approach to life fosters a robust acceptance of one's instincts and desires, urging us to evolve continuously and to confront challenges with a courageous spirit.

The Meaning of LIFE, According to NIETZSCHE Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 quotes since I have come to know the body  better zarathustra said to one of his disciples   the spirit is to me only quasi-spirit and  all that is permanent is also a mere parable   I have heard you say that once before  the disciple replied and at that time   you added but the poets lie too much why  did you say that the poets lie too much   why said zarathustra you ask why I'm not one  of those whom one may ask about their why
• 00:30 - 01:00 is my experience but of yesterday it was long ago  that I experienced the reasons for my opinions   would I not have to be a barrel of memory if  I wanted to carry my reasons around with me   it is already too much for me to remember  my own opinions and many a bird flies away   and now and then I also find a stray in my dovecot  that is strange to me and trembles when I place
• 01:00 - 01:30 my hand on it but what was it that zarathustra  once said to you that the poets lie too much   but zarathustra II is a poet do you now believe  that he spoke truth here why do you believe that   the disciple answered I believe in zarathustra  but zarathustra shook his head and smiled   Faith does not make me blessed he said  especially not faith in me end quote
• 01:30 - 02:00 that's from zarathistra part 2 chapter 12 on poets  and uh while it's ostensibly about poets and their   trustworthiness I think that the scene contains  so much uh so many gems for helping us to sum up   the central thrust of Nietzsche's affirmative  philosophy his spiritual philosophy as I have
• 02:00 - 02:30 called it which is anti-spirit and we'll talk  briefly about what that means the idea of Geist   and German which contains both the concept of Mind  and Spirit or means something approximate to both   um that had been invoked in both a philosophical  and religious context and in spirit we have   something which is a conception of the immaterial  spirit is not subject to the laws of physics it   doesn't arise and pass away like matter it's  not something destructible from the time of the
• 02:30 - 03:00 ancient Greeks philosophers and Priests alike  have made reference to an indestructible being   either a primordial Unity from which we steal our  existence as in the concept of the indefinite the   aperon written of by anaximander or else The  fedantist View that all the world is of the   same substance as the Brahman the godhead  and that this entire reality occurs behind   a Veil of Maya which means illusion and  that therefore there exists in fact only
• 03:00 - 03:30 the one and our separateness from it is  simply our own ignorance our own delusion   and we can recognize the same thought about  being throughout the history of both eastern   and western philosophy since nothing seems to last  in physical reality then why not take the Buddhist   View at the end of the day that all phenomenon we  perceive in physical reality are basically empty
• 03:30 - 04:00 and that to the extent that anything exists  it only exists at best as a representation   it's only within our perception that definite  boundaries or a sense of duration can exist   now in the West in contrast to that Buddhist view  we have not been content to rest at that position   that things are all empty and impermanent  we've we've instead sought for that permanent   indestructible being and since the Advent of  Christendom or even of monotheism generally
• 04:00 - 04:30 this has always been associated  with God this uh permanence of being   and within ourselves we project  the same concept of being   our identity is secured in Christian thought  because we have an immortal soul which is created   in the image of that same permanent indestructible  being and remember God is a spirit in Christianity   um our souls are also spiritual and not  material and so that we've created this
• 04:30 - 05:00 whole spiritual realm in which there is  permanence in which there can be permanence   the physical form the body does not have the same  degree of reality as Spirit within the this type   of worldview because the body is impermanent we've  made permanence in this view the standard of being   and therefore we now say Spirit alone is and thus  at the end of get as Faust and the final lines of
• 05:00 - 05:30 the play the chorus mysticus sings As Faust  descends to Heaven quote what is destructible   is but a parable what fails  ineluctably the undeclarable end quote   which means all that has happened in the past  no longer exists only what's happening in the   present is real all that exists within this world  of arising and passing away therefore is at best
• 05:30 - 06:00 only a parable because what's real is eternal  what has permanence is what has true substance   and so we might say you can kind of look at the  whole story of all these destructible things   this Narrative of uh you know whatever  it might be the classic hero cycle or   the story of your own life right but in the  end that story is the only thing that's real   um it's a very deep set of lines that has  contextual meaning specific to the fast play
• 06:00 - 06:30 insofar as the chorus is announcing that all the  things that were said and done in the course of   Faust's story form a parable um but in in that in  some sense that's those stories very clever way of   um of saying what can't be said that all  is fleeting and yet the story of all is   permanent that the archetype the ideal uh  exists timelessly and so the story of Our
• 06:30 - 07:00 Lives you know it isn't written until the end  when it becomes history that's when it attains   meaning just as Faust's story can't really be  understood until it is enclosed by the conclusion   and um you know the undertone of all this it's  clear as in the context of the story because it   takes place against the backdrop of Faust being  reborn into his new Immortal perfect body into   eternity Faust becomes being in the story  and uh so as in the chorus indicates this
• 07:00 - 07:30 is a mystery it can't fully be um encapsulated  into words that's why we have the story right   the meaning is Illustrated in the parable where  it was translated into action rather than words   um and so it's a very uh it's a very deep and  beautiful uh idea but the Fatal flaw as we've   discussed it uh literally the Fatal flaw as  we've discussed it throughout the podcast   is that by the time that definite ending  happens in our own lives our lives are over
• 07:30 - 08:00 it's a another way of restating Nietzsche's  criticism of the world of spirit that insofar   as it is a means of justifying life and making  a parable it promises Redemption only in death   and so zarathistra directly in these lines  rebukes the chorus mysticus at the beginning   at the beginning of the passage and he says on  the contrary that what is permanent is but a
• 08:00 - 08:30 parable that rather these assertions of something  which transcend the conditions of impermanence and   temporality that we see in the physical world only  exist in our minds uh mere abstractions spirit is   only quasi-spirit what he means by that remark  true enough Geist means mind and that Spirit   surely exists within this world of the mind  but as such an abstraction right right uh it's   uh nominally real but it's not physically real  and so that's the real essence of our being is
• 08:30 - 09:00 physical physiological and that it therefore our  being is subject to temporality and impermanence   um and then rather than believing in these  Parables of God or Brahman in order to imagine   that we can have something by which to Anchor  ourselves and our existence instead zarthustra   says he's come to understand the body better we  have to come to understand ourselves as bodies
• 09:00 - 09:30 that life is necessarily embodied it's physical  and um you know because it's necessarily embodied   it's individual and subjective it comes with this  certain perspective right um and by imagining on   the other side of that coin that the root of life  and its foundation is found in something spiritual   you know uh meaning abstract permanent  absolute that's what we mean by spiritual
• 09:30 - 10:00 uh by doing that we've harmed life we've Frozen it  um I know of a close friend who he's got sort of a   oh he describes him as a weird family member who  uh he says his hobby is to freeze and photograph   wasps I was like what apparently you can sort  of like uh freeze them I don't know what they   use but it like slows them down and then you can  basically take them and photograph them uh but
• 10:00 - 10:30 you know it's like that's uh that's what I think  that's a great mental image for what Nietzsche   might uh criticize all of our metaphysics of  spirit and what it does to our conception of life   um so zarthestra further down in the passage  uh he says quote all gods are poets Parables   poets prevarications verily it always lifts us  higher specifically to the realm of the clouds
• 10:30 - 11:00 upon these we place our Motley bastards  and call them gods and over men end quote   so he's it's funny because so he's we're talking  about the realm of the clouds of the obvious   philosophical referent you'd think would  be like Cloud Cuckoo Land um they're very   obvious implications about your head being in the  clouds and what zarthister employs to talk about
• 11:00 - 11:30 um or rather to invert the way we think about the  realm of spirit in relation to the physical as a   spirit giving rise to the physical or at least  the way people tended to think about it in his   own time of thinking instead implicitly in that  quote I just read of the physical being the thing   that gives rise to the spiritual that the abstract  the conceptual life has a physiological origin   and he employs not only the idea of God he also  uses his own idea of the over man or he's you know
• 11:30 - 12:00 we call them gods and over men it's not obviously  Nietzsche's own idea of the over man but um he's   established the concept of the over man throughout  the text as his you know new uh ideal for mankind   that is beyond Christianity that is uh in line  with the sort of dionysian view of humanity and   what life is and but here he recognizes  um all these ideals are stories and fibs
• 12:00 - 12:30 and in all ideals what actually happens is that  those of us here and now who are depending on   what terms you want to use and how religious  your own interpretations of Human Action are uh   might be you know we're all variously Unholy and  Wayward and lustful and murderous and vindictive   you know all these things you could say about  the human race and then we're the ones who come   up with the image of what Holiness looks  like you know us modern day people who are
• 12:30 - 13:00 um imperfect and selfish and with are cobbled  together Cosmopolitan moralities and religious   beliefs and then we presume to say what the over  man would look like when we do that we inevitably   construct such an image out of our own values  and our own virtues or lack thereof and so how   will those of us who are sick and have always  been sick produce an image of what is healthy
• 13:00 - 13:30 now going back to earlier in the dialogue um  the response from the disciple when he hears   zarathustra say that permanence is but a parable  so you remember zarathus for saying this before   but before he remembers zarathustra included  but the poets lie too much as a sort of caveat   but zarathustra's answer to this  is to clarify that he's also a poet   and that he can't therefore be trusted  in saying that the poets lie too much
• 13:30 - 14:00 um and the reason why he would say poets lie too  much um you know so it's funny because that's   sort of a it's a self-referential self-destroying  statement right but throughout Nietzsche's work   um what he has to say about  artists are the artistic process um he says there's an essential incompleteness  to Art and an essential will to deception that
• 14:00 - 14:30 exists in art um and many authors throughout  the years have levied charges like this   but uh Nietzsche on the other hand  includes himself in the lot of the   accused and and he struggles over it uh  sometimes especially in his poetry and so   when zarath Esther says The Poets lie too much  he also must include himself amongst the poets   and so what is the caveat to zarathustra's  refutation of impermanence here and his rebuttal
• 14:30 - 15:00 to Gerta why does zarathustra take care to remind  us that he lies too much when he when he gives   us this rebuttal and perhaps it is because this  view of life that zarath Esther presents is also   a poetic gloss on reality that would be a surface  level reading that life is becoming is another lie   in other places which we'll look at today  describes life in terms of Will To Power
• 15:00 - 15:30 which is apparently a consistent enduring  principle wouldn't that be a kind of permanence   or perhaps we could consider the eternalization  of Our Lives within the con text of the   Eternal recurrence which would mean if we  take it seriously that everything physical   is actually permanent right it's permanent in its  sort of fluid ever Dynamic state right but the
• 15:30 - 16:00 parable of your life the story of your life always  plays out the same way in like the superposition   is the same we might say and so the whole idea  of permanence as but a parable would itself be   incorrect it would be zerothistra  would be the lying poet in saying that   uh from that perspective if we take the eternal  return very literally and so there are endless   ways to interpret this and rather than give us  a canonical interpretation sarathastra instead
• 16:00 - 16:30 seemingly goes off in a non-sequitur from the  main point which ends up being the topic of   the chapter I mean when asked to explain himself  he explains why he can't really explain himself   and so we started out talking about life as  an embodied existence not the permanence of   spirit but now the passage is about  sarath ester's own untrustworthiness   and I think it's digressions like these and  thus books are a Thruster that can throw off
• 16:30 - 17:00 some readers but is it a non-sequitur I mean is  there some connecting tissue for this passage   on closer examinations earthhsters explain  explanation that he gives of why he can't   be trusted is because his thoughts the abstract  Productions of his intellect are merely memories   the experiences of yesterday to zarathustra who he  is is the body and its impulses which is it's not
• 17:00 - 17:30 dependent on memory in any sense most of the self  is subconscious it strings the conscious intellect   along our thoughts are like a superficial surface  and skin a conscious gloss on reality the reality   that's first and foremost physical and driven by  physical need physical desire physical instincts   and this even applies to our philosophizing as  Nietzsche argues and Beyond Good and Evil that the   philosopher is merely giving a voice to whoever  whatever um has he put it moral or immoral aims
• 17:30 - 18:00 are deep within him uh he says the philosopher  is giving a confession he's telling us who he   is revealing his deepest instincts of thought and  so zarathustra Compares his own thoughts to birds   his conscious mind is just like a little Roost  for a bunch of thoughtbirds to come and make   their nests and some of which are not even his  you know he says that sometimes he finds foreign
• 18:00 - 18:30 thoughts in his mind that have flown in from  somewhere else and they don't really belong to him   they tremble as he places his hand on them  so carrying around his reasons for things he   said and did is something zarathustra dismisses  because our conscious reasons for doing things   are not themselves the truth he doesn't  want to become a barrel full of reasons   because reasons bring us no closer to that  that raw physical truth and thus we might
• 18:30 - 19:00 recall Nietzsche's statement in Daybreak that the  Consciousness is a commentary on an unknown text   and what Nietzsche has done here in this new  conception of the body is that he's given us   a holy mystery throughout his work he attempts  to Humble the conscious mind before the body
• 19:00 - 19:30 humble reason before the importance of passion  and thus the ultimate spiritualization of the body   is to make the physical body akin to  the way that we have conceived of spirit   in such a way as to give power to Spirit and  our conception of it and so in Nietzsche's   philosophy the body is the Lord issuing  Commandments to the conscious mind
• 19:30 - 20:00 you know that's your the conscious mind uh  in its relationship to the body uh you know   the people who have difficulties in Life or  fail failings of the will we might compare   them to a uh a defiant Center who's you know  ego Consciousness is compelling him to defy   the uh dictates the natural order of the issue  from his Lord which is should be his body right
• 20:00 - 20:30 and the body is a mystery to us just as no  one knows the mind of God none of us may know   the true nature of our own inner life where the  deepest drives and impulses within us come from   Nietzsche insists on unconscious origins of all  our motives and even our philosophical ideas   and so our attempt to have control over the world  through our own self-conscious rationality has to
• 20:30 - 21:00 yield to a love of fate and in this formulation  uh I think it's important I did not say faith   uh even though I could see one reaching for such a  term but the reason I didn't is because Nietzsche   has this perhaps unusual way of presenting  his ideas which may be relatively rare within
• 21:00 - 21:30 philosophy he tells us that we shouldn't really  believe him and that sarathustra is not a reliable   source and that therefore it's not appropriate for  you to follow Nietzsche who is only human All Too   Human and that having faith in his religion is not  a Sacrament but a kind of sin assuming that I mean   we even permit the idea of sin but I mean have  you ever heard of religion like that you know a   lot of religions will claim the specific point  of their uniqueness right hear it all the time
• 21:30 - 22:00 um you know I've heard uh Christians say the  uniqueness of their religion is that their God   lives in lived and died in human form right became  he he lived the through the suffering and the uh   the mortality that we all live with right um so  what's the uniqueness in Nietzsche's religion   I I would say faith which is so fundamental to  every religious tradition that the word faith
• 22:00 - 22:30 is itself a synonym for a religious tradition in  the sense we talk about people of many different   faiths right but Nietzsche uh or zarathustra  rejects faith and it would even be hard to   call that a sin the way I did earlier um I mean  every religion tends to have a concept of sin to   whatever they might call it but sarthustra's  reaction to someone's misplaced faith in him   is not chastisement or even forgiveness  but uh just he laughs and shakes his head
• 22:30 - 23:00 you know the way a parent might laugh at  their child you know it's like a making a   simple innocent mistake or something like that  it's not it's a good-hearted laugh it's not   um at least that's the read I get off the passage  so just to put what we're talking about in context   here we're coming to the end of the season of  the podcast and I want to to give a summary of   Nietzsche's revaluation and particularly his  affirmative philosophy as we have explored it
• 23:00 - 23:30 which means describing this new form of  spirituality or anti-spirituality and   saying what it means in Practical terms  to begin following the value of life   and furthermore to hopefully give a sort  of synthesis to all the major ideas we've   covered this season the over man the  eternal return Will To Power Amor Fati
• 23:30 - 24:00 what does life look like to us when all these  philosophical pieces are fitted into place and   when life is understood from this New Foundation  of um you know the body as the root of it all   and nevertheless in that affirmative philosophy  we have to do this with an awareness of this   particular tendency in Nietzsche that to tell us  not to follow him and to find our own way and to
• 24:00 - 24:30 remember that he could be lying to us and that in  fact The Poets always lie so we must include this   element within the summary of what the meaning  of life is for Nietzsche because this affects   how we might integrate Nietzsche into our life  because the answer cannot be well now we have this   blueprint these do-it-yourself instructions step  one step two step three for how to become what   one is right none of these Concepts or figures  such as the Overman or the spirit of gravity
• 24:30 - 25:00 have any more actual reality to them than God or  the devil did right and ultimately there can never   be an orthodox presentation of the nietzschean  message now I believe that one can in spite of   that create a coherent and accurate presentation  of nietzschean affirmative philosophy and that   we can say definitively what it is Nietzsche  asserted what he criticized what he admired
• 25:00 - 25:30 what he rejected as evidenced by what he writes  in his own books the postmodern position is   really not my own like I think there are more  accurate interpretations of nature than others   um even though all interpretations are physic are  are uh fictional excuse me uh quite the opposite   of physical you know I and I think I can hold both  of those propositions and I would say to Nietzsche   himself who sometimes wrote Things implying that  the interpretation of a work is all there is
• 25:30 - 26:00 that nature is indeed correct that the poets  like Nietzsche lie too much and I don't believe   him on that particular point um but when we  go beyond the philosophical or theoretical   and into the Practical into the specifics um  zarthostress preachments not to follow him   and to discover your own path become very very  relevant and there's some sense in which any   useful life advice will always be contextual  and relative any code of virtue or behavior
• 26:00 - 26:30 when extended to be completely General will simply  become another form of universal morality of an   ought imposed on existence and  therefore a judgment passed on existence   and so Niche and life philosophy always  must avoid this and so these limitations   they don't make the challenge of describing  Nietzsche's affirmative philosophy impossible I
• 26:30 - 27:00 mean quite the contrary they set the boundaries  of what such a thing might look like and so we   have to we have to refine the question and ask is  there any way to do this without falling victim   to dogmatism or to violating the  spirit of Nietzsche's philosophy   and it's a pressing question to me because  it's demanded uh that we derive some   practical application in order to say that  Nietzsche's philosophy has mattered at all
• 27:00 - 27:30 and in order to integrate his philosophy into  our lives um and so what is his answer to the   life problem if we can't make that answer real  in our own lives then is it really an answer   and so it's a bit of a different question  than we normally ask on the podcast   and I I should say um what we normally do on this  podcast is philology really I mean there's some
• 27:30 - 28:00 philosophizing and involved but mostly what  I'm doing here is less akin to what Nietzsche   did when he was writing his books up in sales  Maria and more like what Nietzsche was doing   when he was studying the Greek philosophers of  Basel although probably nowhere near the skill   level of either Nietzsche but uh you know it's  philology we're studying the history of ideas um and so but I I don't want to just try and  catalog Nietzsche's ideas and the ideas of his
• 28:00 - 28:30 influences I want to sincerely engage with figures  from the past I want to learn what it is that they   thought and felt and I want to know the context  of their lives as a background for their thought   and I don't want to do this in order to judge them  or affix a label either moral or a qualitative   judgment I mean sometimes that still happens  because we're human we judge all the time   uh and so you know that's man is the measure of  all things right that's what it means to be a
• 28:30 - 29:00 mensch in German the etymological root suggests  man is a measurer so naturally we make judgments   and oftentimes we feel it's our prerogative to  judge philosophers and other figures from history   as to whether their ideas are worthy of  us or sometimes what we want to do is take   our own ideas from today and simply project  them onto past figures in order to to claim   someone you know Jesus was a socialist or  Jesus was a Libertarian that sort of thing
• 29:00 - 29:30 um but here I think we can learn a great  deal from Nietzsche's own example of how   he treated the Greek philosophers  when he himself was a philologist   and a sincere practice of philologians involves  a sort of oath not to project yourself under past   figures and not to judge past figures relative  to your time or interpret them anachronistically   um or you know judge them in accord with events  that haven't happened yet or standards they didn't
• 29:30 - 30:00 hold or facts they didn't know about to really get  to know someone and get into their head it's not   when you try to figure out what you yourself think  of of a figure from history like be it Nietzsche   or heraclitus or Emerson schopenhauer or geta  or Plato but instead when we try to figure out   what would all of those people think of me and I  think that's how you really enter into a dialogue
• 30:00 - 30:30 with artists and thinkers from history um because  we're always going to put our own judgment on them   so what you really need is two-way communication  right so figure out what they would be telling you   about your life and then you can pass your  judgments and have your assessment anyway   I feel we we've done that with  Nietzsche throughout this podcast   uh but as we've already considered Nietzsche  is so aware of this danger of dogmatism   being attached to his own ideas that he can't  present it as specific Universal moral advice
• 30:30 - 31:00 as I've said we're going to try and infer  some general principles from his statements   but in the final analysis Nietzsche presents  his ideas in such a way that there is no   Universal Doctrine or way of life and it's not  just because Nietzsche doesn't want disciples   but because he would argue there is no Universal  way of life for human beings and that all of us   in the end must find our own way whether you  want to believe that that's something you have
• 31:00 - 31:30 to do or not it's simply the reality and what's  good for one person it's not necessarily good   for another and we all have our lies and fables  within our conscious gloss of thought which may be   appropriate for us but not for others so everyone  has to become what he or she is on their own terms   um and people are always looking to abdicate  our own authority and our own responsibility   for our will and defer to some Authority which  is beyond ourselves and Nietzsche quite simply
• 31:30 - 32:00 will not let us do that with him and his ideas and  that's the last thing he wants rather he wants to   put you in a position such that your will and the  nature of your own character and instincts can   be made clearer to yourself such that you're in a  better position to realize your greatest potential   um and there doesn't need to be free will in  this process it's simply a fact that with more   awareness of yourself you gain more knowledge  uh you gain relevant knowledge over your own
• 32:00 - 32:30 life and never has the acquisition of  new knowledge limited one's options   it may reveal to you that an option you  thought you had didn't really exist but   that doesn't really take anything away since it  was never really there to begin with so that it's   an increase in one's power right uh we might  say since limiting out the options that would   bring harm to yourself is not a decrease in your  power and we fully think that proposition through
• 32:30 - 33:00 and so an honest awareness of ourselves and our  own nature because of the mystery of our own   subconscious and instinctual life it can very  well be a lifelong quest for self-knowledge   this isn't something you know you might think okay  I'm gonna make the nature of myself and my drives   clearer to myself how do I do that what's the  three-step process right it's a lifelong process   and since we've all started it we have  to carry it through to the end now
• 33:00 - 33:30 Nietzsche writes in the preface to genealogy of  morality quote we are strangers to ourselves we   men of knowledge end quote the the knowledge  of ourselves the thing we find farthest away   especially those of us who like to think  in these explicit abstract conceptual ways   this world of thought this world of the mind  of Geist it's the farthest thing away from the   physical reality of the body though and the  Deep impulses that really drive us because   the intellect the imagination has become so  free as to become increasingly untethered in
• 33:30 - 34:00 its Productions from any physical limitations  and the more objective and Abstract we   become in our thought the less we're able to  intuitively understand ourselves as subjects um and so that is the great quandary  set before us men of knowledge   um in any case it's not possible as I've said  to give a canonical view of the nietzschean
• 34:00 - 34:30 life right or a canonical set of nietzschean  Virtues or a definitive vision of what the   Overman would be like um I think it is  on the other hand quite possible to say   in general terms what Nietzsche thinks  life is and what he thinks the good life is   we could address ourselves to that way of  looking at the question of the meaning of life   um and so actually I mean we really could break  down this most frequently Asked of existential
• 34:30 - 35:00 questions into its constituent parts and answer  the question as Nietzsche or zerathustra might   answer it answer each question and keeping in mind  that this is more of an art than a science here   as we kind of go over how I think each of these  questions might be answered but here are four   aspects actually that I think will cover most of  what people are asking about when they inquire
• 35:00 - 35:30 about the so-called meaning of life so first one  may ask what is life second what is the good life   Third how to facilitate the good life  and finally how to confront death so let us address ourselves to the first question   I'll give the nietzschian foundation  for answering it what is life
• 35:30 - 36:00 we approach that question with resistance to  metaphysics that is to say a repudiation of the   traditional belief that we must begin with a set  of first principles or employ our reason in order   to transcend the limitations of our senses instead  we start from the immediate sense perception   that doesn't mean we're dogmatic about what it is  these senses indicate or what the quote unquote   true nature of the world really is it's simply  that those questions must be tabled because
• 36:00 - 36:30 this true world so long as it's conceived of  is this mind independent reality a reality   which exists in some objective form outside of  and independent of any human perception of it   has been recognized to be a useless concept it's a  misleading bypass instead we simply take the world   as revealed to us by the senses as the real world  good enough secondly when we apply our reason we
• 36:30 - 37:00 see that the world behaves according to patterns  and laws which can be apprehended by the senses   and this doesn't mean that these patterns  are Universal or mind independent   because we've done away with those Notions already  as a sort of first principle see I just said it so   I'm like laying out first principles and the first  principle is to do away with first principles   all right moving on the second principle you  see how it's like uh it almost impossible to
• 37:00 - 37:30 um I talk about this in a coherent way but I  think what he's saying still makes sense actually   um so really the what we're getting at  here is that it seems the behavior of   matter can be explained via the properties  of matter that we don't we don't find an   indication of some power beyond the world  without which the world can't be explained   rather we perceive that the power which is  driving the world is within the world itself   in past ages figures such as Spinoza believe  that there was an imminent quality of the
• 37:30 - 38:00 Divine in all things which animated the  world and this notion was carried on to   like some of the most important scientific figures  such as Newton who believed that motion had to   be explained by an appeal to God and we find  when we look back in western civilization all   the way to the time of the pre-platonics we have  empedocles who posits a first cause which started   all the processes we perceive in reality with  the atheistic schopenhauer Nietzsche found the
• 38:00 - 38:30 ingredient he needed to overcome this equality  within the world within life within the things   of existence which is not itself created by  something outside the world schopenhauer's   system was atheistic and yet he believed that  the world and the most fundamental level was Will   and when we look inward in schopenhauer's writing  he says you look inward you get in touch with the
• 38:30 - 39:00 deepest reality of our being we perceive that what  we are as will then that's the inner intelligible   character of Life the will for schopenhauer is in  all things all phenomena are a manifestation of it   it's completely undivided and only appears to be  that way to to be divided in all these different   forms due to our representations of it but it's  uh what does he say it's not increased when new   things are born or decreased when something dies  it exists equally in all things and it always has   been and always will be because it's not subject  to time time is simply another representation
• 39:00 - 39:30 uh when individuals arise the will doesn't  increase they pass away it doesn't diminish   that's show up an hour's View and so Nietzsche  was materialistic insofar as he believes that   the world's Behavior the motion of it you know  the world the patterns the laws we discussed   are not explained by anything outside of the  world and yet like schopenhauer Nietzsche   believes there is an inner content to phenomena  an intelligible character to them he also calls
• 39:30 - 40:00 it will but while schopenhauer believed that  the fundamental form of the will was ontological   meaning it's a true character of being which  exists independently of the world of phenomena   um and furthermore schopenhauer believes it  manifests as self-preservation because it's a will   towards continued existence and towards duration  Nietzsche believes instead in a boscovitchian
• 40:00 - 40:30 world which is a world of Multiplicity and the  basis of all those Wills is the will to power   what this means is not a will to duration  but a will to expand to conquer to dominate   to make itself felt to make its impact felt  to overcome and to create Beyond oneself   we might say to attempt to give rise to  something better for whatever that might mean
• 40:30 - 41:00 in perhaps not the same ontological sense of  schopenhauer Nietzsche nevertheless thinks that   these various drives are all really the same thing  that they we might say a better way to put it as   they can all be explained by the same principle of  Will To Power and he does at certain times even go   as far to ask us to sort of dare to undertake the  thought experiment of considering that in terms of
• 41:00 - 41:30 our subjective experience the only intelligible  character of the world is Will To Power   now if this is the world's inner character it's  intelligible in her character Will To Power   some of us might immediately recognize that  there's at least an apparent contradiction   how can Nietzsche reject metaphysics but  posit a true character of the world which   is beyond the senses in some sense right  when we look around do we see Will To Power
• 41:30 - 42:00 with the senses and if not wouldn't it be an  abstract thing but Nietzsche believes there   is an observable basis to Will To Power  which we can perceive with our senses   and like heraclitus he would say that wilted  power is not an ontological reality behind   things but something which is revealed in the  behavior of all the things that we perceive   um and so you know for example on the level  of physics Will To Power as boscovich's
• 42:00 - 42:30 unified field Theory a single equation which  describes how every Force every pattern every   law in reality as we perceive them manifests  according to the distance at which it acts   all things are Force points that push and strive  for and against one another and he explains both   attraction and repulsion with the same equation  on the level of biology Will To Power is not
• 42:30 - 43:00 so much a drive for preservation as we've said  but the drives for nourishment and procreation   Nietzsche argues that nature is a great squanderer  that it can be wasteful arbitrary and so on the   individual of the species is never preserved I  mean quite the opposite really none of them are   preserved but the species survives if nourishment  and reproduction continue and so that is the uh   that is the pattern that we perceive right that's  the the parable right and so this is a drive to
• 43:00 - 43:30 exist yes but part of Nietzsche's point is that  it's not really descriptive to say that something   merely strives to exist because um that that  doesn't explain adamant matter at all of life why   we engage in action or motion uh it's a criticism  he levels at schopenhauer that we already exist   now and if the will driving life is simply a will  for us to continue existing then we're driven to   do a thing we're already doing we're striving to  attain something we already have um it doesn't
• 43:30 - 44:00 tell us anything about the actual character of  existence creates this strange Circle that things   exist for the sake of continuing to exist so why  then would life generate itself generate new forms   why would forms arise that move themselves  about and consume things and make offspring   Nietzsche's counter description is that life  is engaged in this process of striving to
• 44:00 - 44:30 find nourishment which means consume and extract  energy from other forms within the ecosystem and   to reproduce the process by which the organism  creates Beyond itself he says that organisms   don't seek to preserve themselves but to discharge  their strength that life is a positive phenomenon   not positive in the sense of good necessarily but  essentially generating self-generating doing so by   giving rise to things in a long active process  of differentiation as all things strive to be
• 44:30 - 45:00 different to be distinctive to express power in  their own particular way and thus Nietzsche would   say in our understanding of genetic mutation for  example and its role in evolution on the macro   scale you know the process of speciation we have  a phenomenon that's described by Will To Power   on the level of human  psychology or human sociality
• 45:00 - 45:30 Will To Power is an explanatory  principle for Human Action also   I mean in one sense power or potency is a  prerequisite for acting at all and in terms   of examining human motivations we find the desire  to become powerful and to feel powerful and to   manifest power at the root of all of them  Nietzsche argues for example that there's   no truly selfless act because all selfless  acts emerge from a foundation of selfishness
• 45:30 - 46:00 in fact selfishness and selflessness are not  opposites at all but gradations of the same thing   that our motivations can be coarse or refined  such that both the philanthropist and the car   thief are both expressing their Will To Power  or to put it another way our identity can be   complex and individual or rigid and inherited  like the difference between us Children of the
• 46:00 - 46:30 age you know of uh of authenticity of discovering  our true selves um and someone placed in into a   role in Chinese Society by which he gains his  identity by family and class um and so we can   see how in various circumstances or different  cultural contexts different types of motivations   or different types of identities or means of  gaining one could be your means of advancing
• 46:30 - 47:00 um but they all we see a Will To Power as  a fundamental principle in all of these   and finally uh I mean just on the  moral level or The Meta moral level   Nietzsche argues all moralities that have  ever been created involve an element of self   overcoming shy of the basist Hedonism in which  one abandons discipline and restraint altogether   and lives purely according to one's impulses  any system of right and wrong requires that
• 47:00 - 47:30 one overcomes impulses instincts feelings either  abstaining altogether withholding from indulging   or doing so only in like a proper context  all morality is the attempt for the self to   challenge itself to challenge its own weaknesses  and shortcomings and become something greater   and so all of these are aspects of human life  and what life is is Will To Power from every
• 47:30 - 48:00 single one of those perspectives for Nietzsche  as something that he sees revealed empirically   in the world and it's it will to power is the  intelligible content which is generalizable   across all of these perspectives and Nietzsche  believes this again not because it's something we   find when we look deep within ourselves which is  what Mike schopenhauer's means trying to get over   the uh phenomena numina chasm uh you know although  I would argue that Nietzsche probably does believe
• 48:00 - 48:30 that if we did that honestly we would discover  will to power but that's not his reasoning for   for seeing it everywhere in the world right but  it's because it's manifest in all these observable   um phenomena and thus whatever the world might be  independent of the human mind we can say without   a doubt that the world for us the world as we  experience it is Will To Power Will To Power
• 48:30 - 49:00 is the simplest most fundamental statement  of what the world is like without an appeal   to anything outside of it being necessary  and without invoking a Divine personality   or an intelligence or purpose to life this  view life has no Transcendent value that is   to say a value imposed upon it from a world  that is above it and it has no purpose nature   says unless the circuit of Eternal recurrence  itself is a purpose and it has no intelligence
• 49:00 - 49:30 except insofar as we're a part of it and we're  intelligent but it seems that our intelligence   comes out of a blind unintelligent World in which  intelligence is not the rule but the exception   so now we'll look at a couple of Nietzsche  passages on life uh the first is his rebuke   to the stoics stoicism represents an attempt to  master one's passions so that one's not carried
• 49:30 - 50:00 away by their emotions and one doesn't  attach to one's current circumstances   um you know a common practice might be to  visualize what tragedies can and will befall you   um and so the stoic lives in the knowledge of  nature of what nature is really like all its   forms are fleeting and impermanent including  us and this is all uh just to give context I'm   not really reading this because of Nietzsche's  attack on the stoics but rather because of what
• 50:00 - 50:30 he says about life and nature in this section and  so this is section 9 of Beyond Good and Evil quote   according to Nature you want to live oh you Noble  stoics what deceptive words these are imagine   a being like nature wasteful beyond measure  indifferent beyond measure without purposes and   consideration without mercy and Justice fertile  and desolate and uncertain at the same time
• 50:30 - 51:00 imagine indifference itself as a power how  could you live according to this indifference   is that not precisely wanting to be other  than this nature is not living estimating   preferring being unjust being limited  wanting to be different and supposing   you're imperative live according to Nature meant  at bottom as much as live according to life
• 51:00 - 51:30 how could you not do that why make a principle  of what you yourselves are and must be end quote so very wonderful passage um what's funny about  it is uh and and what's funny about Nietzsche's   criticism of the stoics is that I think these  charges could be levied at him to some extent   um I mean if Nietzsche is to have a life-affirming  philosophy right is he not guilty of also
• 51:30 - 52:00 extolling us to live according to life but I  would argue um being wife of affirming does not   mean that Nietzsche is affirming a certain path of  life as more natural or closer to life than others   rather with Nietzsche's insight one could  choose to accept the fundamental nature   of what life is or not one could  be grateful for being alive or not
• 52:00 - 52:30 um but whether you are of one temperament or  the other has nothing to do with Nietzsche right   um and I think Nietzsche has a real  point that many philosophers and many   ideologies and religions throughout  time have ultimately been anti-life   um and so I would because I think that is a  meaningful thing to talk about what is anti-life   I would reject the argument that it's like a  meaningless distinction there are real examples of
• 52:30 - 53:00 people who have said no to life right schopenhauer  Christianity Buddhism and so on um Nietzsche's I   mean and you know if of course if you phrase it  to a Christian like are you anti-life virtually no   Christian's gonna say yes to that but if you ask  them in more specific terms like is your you know   is your like what is your life here worth compared  to what your uh whether your soul is saved you
• 53:00 - 53:30 go to heaven worth I mean they'll all tell you  that that the latter is way more important right um and so I I think Nietzsche's definition  of these ideologies as anti-life uh and   distinguishing them from what a life-affirming  philosophy would be is actually descriptive   um whether we would agree that it he successfully  applied creates a philosophy of life or not right   but on the other hand um so Nietzsche here he's  making a principle of Will To Power and if Will
• 53:30 - 54:00 To Power is life why make a principle of what we  ourselves are and must be and perhaps the only   answer here is that Nietzsche is simply raising  this truth into our Consciousness and I don't   think he imagines that he can in any fundamental  way change the driving force of reality and   all human life and then again by expanding our  knowledge and our understanding we gain a greater   more complete perspective and if it happens to  follow from this that you make changes to your
• 54:00 - 54:30 life your way of life then so much the better but  just as zarathustra doesn't want us to follow him   um and wants to remind us that the poets lie too  much I think we can be safe in saying Nietzsche   um well he doesn't ever lay out a a list of  like these are the proper ways to manifest   your Will To Power right that's sort of  what I'm getting at now he does show ways   that are he points out a examples where manif  where will to power is turned against itself
• 54:30 - 55:00 and so that's sort of you know it's like if you  if you care about life you should probably avoid   the ways in which your life is going to be  um self-defeating or self-undermining right   um but uh we'll discuss this more you know as  we go on um but so from this this description   of what life is indifferent desolate and abundant  at the same time arbitrary and cruel in a sense
• 55:00 - 55:30 um so suppose we agree with that definition and  supposing this perception of what life is has been   raised into our consciousness the world would now  appear differently and our own way of life could   be brought under a more critical eye we might  have grounds to make new judgments and assessments   um and that's very important because what  comes out in this passage is living as
• 55:30 - 56:00 judging evaluating something I made reference  to earlier but as Nietzsche says in this quote   life is quote estimating preferring being unjust  being limited wanting to be different end quote   life is not a primarily self-preservative Force  it's a generating Force what life is is not the   passing on of the same genes that isn't really the  essence of life it would be the essence of life
• 56:00 - 56:30 would be again mutation endlessly individuating  forms becoming more complex more rarified more   specialized more speciated and notice this  process is fundamentally just as innocent as   it is arbitrary and unjust these preferences  these judgments aren't founded in reason   um you know they're just expressions of the  drives within the organisms reaching out   into the world reacting physiologically  when something gives pain or pleasure
• 56:30 - 57:00 or when something appears ugly or beautiful um and so for example whether you find someone  else attractive or not beautiful or not it's   not in any way the product of a rational  syllogism or a well-considered argument or   a moral imperative and when I you know to  speak for myself when I look at the most   important things in my life I find almost none  of them derived from these things right life's   judgments are spontaneous non-rational preferences  it's Direct valuation on an intuitive level
• 57:00 - 57:30 uh let's look at another passage describing  what life is I probably the most important one   from the spokes orthostra this is an excerpt from  on self-overcoming which is a chapter from the   second part of the novel again zarathistra speaks  to us on the essence of living and he recounts   things that he has heard in an encounter with  the character of life itself life personified
• 57:30 - 58:00 and as the context for the passage  zerthustra prefaces all this by saying   that he's telling us this story so we  understand his words on Good and Evil   so we cannot understand zerothistra's morality and  his condemnation of good versus evil type moral   systems until we understand what he believes  about life and living and so the passage quote
• 58:00 - 58:30 wherever I found the living there I heard also  the speech on obedience whatever lives obeys   and this is the second point he who  cannot obey himself is commanded   that is the nature of the living this however is  the third point that I heard that commanding is   harder than obeying and not only because he who  commands must carry the burden of all who obey
• 58:30 - 59:00 and because this burden May easily crush  him an experiment in Hazard appeared to   me to be in all commanding and whenever  the living commands it hazards itself   indeed even when it commands itself it must  still pay for its commanding it must become the   judge Avenger and the victim of its own law end  quote and so remember morality is self-overcoming
• 59:00 - 59:30 the inner character of morality is  Will To Power like everything else   uh what is morality it is and the language of this  passage issuing commands to oneself completely   absent from this vision is anything like freedom  of the will or the libertarian application of uh   you know some quality of reason to govern Human  Action rather it's simply a question of whether   one has the strength to command oneself and if  not then one shall be commanded his drives rather
• 59:30 - 60:00 than the other way around there's no detaunt  no equilibrium the choice is to command or be   commanded and in a way in a way they both sort  of imply uh one another um but uh yeah the idea   is that it's always better to be Commander too is  short-sighted all life is an experiment in most
• 60:00 - 60:30 experiments fail right so to dare to allow your  judgments your non-rational arbitrary preferences   that your will is aimed at to reshape your  world and to even bind others Wills to your own um or just on the more basic level  to take command of your own life   and reshape it into an artistic pattern  right giving style as nietzsa says these   are dangerous experiments and most people  throughout history do not do this experiment
• 60:30 - 61:00 most people throughout time live their life in  accord with the inherited conventional pattern   and yet there's this driving will beneath us  all and always this tendency for some number   of us to burst forward attempting to be different  and to Define ourselves individually and you know   like but how many Aquatic Life forms suffocated  above the water until some muted some of them   mutated into forms that could endure like more  and more exposure to the oxygen atmosphere right
• 61:00 - 61:30 so advancement requires vast sacrifices and as  this passage indicates we always have to we always   have to pay for it in some way it's a reality  of life um but the passage gets tougher still   quotes where I found the living  there I found Will To Power   and even in the will of those who  serve I found the will to be master
• 61:30 - 62:00 that the weaker should serve the stronger to  that it is persuaded by its own will which   would be Master over what is weak or still this  is the one pleasure it does not want to renounce   and as the smaller yields to the greater that it  may have pleasure and power over the smallest thus   even the greatest still yields and for the sake  of power risks life that is the yielding of the
• 62:00 - 62:30 greater it is Hazard and danger and casting  dice for death and where men make sacrifices   and serve and cast Amorous glances there too is  the will to be master along stealthy paths the   weaker Steels into the castle and into the very  heart of the more powerful and there steals power   and life confided the secret to me behold it  said I am that which must always overcome itself
• 62:30 - 63:00 indeed you call it a will to procreate  or a drive to an end to something higher   farther more manifold but all this is one and one  Secret rather would I perish then forswear this   and verily where there is perishing and a falling  of leaves behold their life sacrifices itself
• 63:00 - 63:30 for power that I must be a struggle and to  be coming and an end and an opposition to   ends alas whoever guesses what is my will should  also guess on what crooked paths it must proceed   whatever I create and however much I  love it soon I must oppose it and my love   thus my will wills it and you too lover of  knowledge are only a path and a footprint
• 63:30 - 64:00 of my will my Will To Power walks also on the  heels of your will to truth indeed the truth   was not hit by him who shot at it with the word  of will to existence that will does not exist   for what does not exist cannot will but what is  in existence how could that still want existence
• 64:00 - 64:30 only where there is life is there also will not  will to life but thus I teach you will to power   there is much that life esteems  more highly than life itself   but out of the esteeming itself  speaks Will To Power end quote so we have the repudiation at the end  there of schopenhauer's idea of the
• 64:30 - 65:00 will to exist or the will to live we have the  idea that life is that which overcomes itself   and that life sacrifices itself for power and that  this is the fundamental nature of Will's power   meaning life itself is Will To Power is  self-overcoming self life is judging praising   being different as we if we were to draw in  from the other path passage and the basis
• 65:00 - 65:30 of all of this is physiological preference  and as such the nature of life is valuing   another way of saying that is how he brings it  out at the end here saying that to lives to esteem   if we are to be the measure of things which all  life must be for itself and for its own kind then   we must self-legislate that good just as the  hawk must determine its own good and the lamb   must determine its own good right but we humans  it's a little different because we perhaps value
• 65:30 - 66:00 more powerfully and more subtly than any other  being ever has and that's why our Will To Power   precedes un crooked paths even those in a position  of servitude have their ways of gaining power over   the Masters we can find the expressions of Will To  Power in the most subtle ways whether in charity   and patronage or in subterfusion infidelity all  manner of human behaviors and tendencies present
• 66:00 - 66:30 themselves in our cognition as wholly separate  from this fundamental character of life we hide it   behind ideas like the search for the truth but the  high estimation of Truth just like the estimations   we make of any phenomena speak to the fact that  steaming itself is our nature judging valuing   measuring is nature it is a prerequisite for  any such evaluation and within this fundamental   activity we see the essence of Worlds of power the  willingness to impose our standards upon reality
• 66:30 - 67:00 and then manifest those standards with force  and when we zoom out so to speak and consider   the total picture of life Life as a whole is  always doing this meaning that life is constantly   judging which forms or biological patterns  are worthy of esteem and which ones are not   insofar as this war of all against all takes  place continually across generations of life
• 67:00 - 67:30 forms all eating each other and competing for  the feeding ground and the right to reproduce   so with this perhaps uh somewhat  troubling picture of what life is   and who we are as living beings is there such a  thing as the good life Nietzsche would obviously   say yes and although his conception of it  changes a little bit throughout his career   in his early days he believes that  life can be aesthetically Justified
• 67:30 - 68:00 this is as he writes in uh birth of tragedy  and this has a sense to it if life is basically   arbitrary estimations on the direct perceptual  level why can't the good life Simply Be The   Beautiful Life if we're living according to  brute preference why not aesthetic preference   um this particular form of aesthetic  preference Nietzsche advocates is what   we might call the tragic perspective on life  this is the perspective cultivated artistically
• 68:00 - 68:30 through a dramatic tragedy in ancient Greece of a  cheerful fatalism in the face of one's destruction   we can better understand this view  by what Nietzsche opposes it to   he opposes this view to what he calls the  theoretic approach which begins with Socrates   and birth of tragedy he writes of the  cultural divide between theoretic and   the tragic the theoretical life is a life lived  according to reason according to the view that
• 68:30 - 69:00 human problems can be solved by reason in a  lasting way and human life and Society can be   improved by reason it is fundamentally a form  of optimism and the best representative for it   is Socrates because he offers the strongest  and most noteworthy case for this worldview   an important point in all this is  that socrates's view is for Nietzsche   ultimately an aesthetic view Socrates is at bottom  driven by an irrational estimation of the truth
• 69:00 - 69:30 that's uh Nietzsche's fundamental criticism of him  and I think the various Paths of ideas or thoughts   that one could follow just from the explosive  quality of that initial statement you know that   initial accusation in niche's career it contains  all the seeds of Nietzsche's later philosophy   but in any case so he presents Socrates and birth  of tragedy as totally unartistic but he clarifies   in his later preface to the work that socrates's  irony is that very thing that he irrationally
• 69:30 - 70:00 valued the truth about all things and that this is  in itself an expression of socrates's underlying   nature his arbitrary demand for life his demand  that all reality be bound under one universal   principle of reason and that all illusions of  superstition and Prejudice be banned because   under this Socratic aesthetic those things are  ugly and so it's all socrates's aesthetic judgment
• 70:00 - 70:30 any questions was that oh great ironist was  that perhaps your irony now Nietzsche's opposing   aesthetic Outlook is one which is pessimistic and  again Nietzsche believes he's a rather positive   representative of the Outlook Because he believes  himself to be a pessimist of strength and thus the   tragic worldview is the affirmation of all of the  character of life that we just discussed with the   full realization that this entails the Embrace of  one's own downfall we do not accept any optimistic
• 70:30 - 71:00 or morally redeeming narratives about life and  embrace wholeheartedly that entropy always wins   life is short the Good Die Young bad things happen  to good people pride comes before the fall history   is a series of cycles of a rise followed by a fall  just like all organisms are born and then they die   but one does not count any of these  honestly ascertained aspects of
• 71:00 - 71:30 human life as charges against it the  tragic aesthetic instead is defined by   emphasizing the beauty inherent to the  fundamentally entropic nature of life story seen   in total of a tragic figure is somehow beautiful  to us and Nietzsche believes that this experience   occurs when we engage with the tragic because we  are confronting the terrifying reality of life
• 71:30 - 72:00 in such a manner that it does not immediately  destroy us right and so we feel that we are   through the experience of tragic art  overcoming the terrifying nature of   the World by encountering it and surviving it by  that token to use a heretical word in this context   transcending it and turning it into art  the experience of uh beauty or the sublime now Nietzsche didn't stick with this answer as  to what the good life is because this answer
• 72:00 - 72:30 I mean like any other answer to the question  of what the good life is his perspectable to   really answer the question in general terms  we have to make it into a meta question   what later Nietzsche eventually concludes in  a mindset more of that type in the metal world   uh what he later concludes it's related to  his understanding of what every attempt at
• 72:30 - 73:00 creating the good life has been  and that is the will to power   that the will to power is expressed in  the socratic quest to know the truth in   order to practice virtue as much as Will To  Power is expressed in the Christian ethos to   love thy enemy and resist not evil or the  Buddhist ethos to renounce selfish craving   all are forms of self overcoming and all our  attempts to impose a judgment on the world
• 73:00 - 73:30 Nietzsche then inquires about the direction in  which this transformation proceeds or how these   judgments on the world eventually manifest in  human life and the reason why he does this is   because in seeing that element of Will To Power  and all of these answers and how each one is   sort of from a different perspective right but  it's always manifesting this world's power thing
• 73:30 - 74:00 um I think he's able to see that his  own attempt to impose an aesthetic   judgment on the world was actually  not a newer Innovative thing at all   or Innovative notion um that it's simply  what every religion has been trying to do   and that the real question that we should  be asking is why is it that all of these   Aesthetics that already exist do not work for  us anymore that might be one way to put it
• 74:00 - 74:30 so what is it that these various moralities and  religions have given rise to and in a strong sense   Nietzsche is very empirical here all the various  manifestations of the world's power have these   fundamental characteristics that we've described  but not all its manifestations are created equal   accordingly some ways of life are stronger  and some are weaker or we might say healthier   or sicker or to put it in the language we used  earlier some are ascending Paths of life meaning   that these are expressions of strength which give  rise to more strength but some are descending
• 74:30 - 75:00 which represents a degeneration into weaker and  weaker forms so it's still a manifestation of your   strength but it's a manifestation of your strength  that get doesn't give rise to more strength but to   um but to weakness and so um it's the difference  between a positive feedback loop and a negative   feedback loop and so the good life is the  positive feedback loop that is the healthy
• 75:00 - 75:30 life in the sense of this the life-affirming  life right and we should remind ourselves at   this point that while this statement does have a  very figurative Dimension to it it also has a very   um literal dimension because the root of this  all is still what physiological our judgments and   preferences occur at that physiological level and  so one strength to order their drives according   to such a life ascending manifestation of will  that's determined at the physiological level
• 75:30 - 76:00 if we're going to take seriously the idea that  human beings are bodies that what we are is what   we appear to be by all observation in the world of  direct perception than where physical beings and   our psychic life in the sense of the psychological  right as well as our social life and their our   moral life all of this sort of flows out of the  headwaters of our own nature of the conditions   that produced us aspects of our temperament um  but another way to look at it would be like maybe
• 76:00 - 76:30 how much physical Vitality we have or we  might say how much Vitality do we have left   and so Nietzsche believes that weak or  self-undermining moral values for example   are at bottom the product of  a weary degenerating person   and that this is true in some sense of them  physiologically as well as psychologically
• 76:30 - 77:00 and so that's the root of everything we  are so we look at it in the physical sense   um I mean on the other hand though it's  entirely possible for someone who's young   and otherwise physiologically healthy to have  a weary or degenerative view of life and life   is not a frozen thing again it's not being  so we can't inquire as to whether someone's   way of life is apparently healthy uh in the  here and now and then have done with it right
• 77:00 - 77:30 we are viewing people as human becomings  rather than human beings as a dynamic process   which is ever unfolding and never really  standing still and so like with everything   we can't really say whether life is  healthy until we know what it led to   what did it give rise to right and so we always  have to remember in pursuing the good life   um the important thing is what we spend our  lives uh what are we what direction are we
• 77:30 - 78:00 moving in what are we bringing forth if we try  to hold on to our life or hold on to it the way   it is now from a Devotion to the self-preservative  Instinct will will always fail in that task right   when it's all over you'll be gone anyway and and  uh all that's going to be left is whatever it is   you've given rise to it's not really an option  but so what is the good life to Nature we're   still sort of answering this question and with all  of that all this piece isn't a place we could say
• 78:00 - 78:30 this is where the concept of the younger man comes  into play It's the good life is in so many words   to live in such a way that you bring forth the  over man and this simply means to live in such   a way that your life is aimed at bringing forth  something greater than you are it means to live   your life and longing for something beyond your  current Horizons and it means being willing to   make sacrifices which emphasizes a lot to spend  yourself and your life and spend Your vitality
• 78:30 - 79:00 and in this the over man is the promise of  the Redemption of mankind from all its faults   it's a dare I say it faith and the  ascendance of Life winning out over   the degeneration of life it's faith  in the positive feedback loop of life um and so can we say in general terms what that  good life looks like I mean well we see it in
• 79:00 - 79:30 zarathus just prologue and the tightrope Walker  the jester I mean the literal word translation   means rope dancer um there it's roughly equivalent  to what we would mean by a tight rope Walker but   you have the word dancer there in in German and  so uh you know that's very important because in   Nietzsche dancing has such a metaphor for you  know the expression of the deepest happiness   of the you know anyway uh so the Rope dancer  the sort of clownish character this gesture
• 79:30 - 80:00 lives his life in practice of a dangerous  craft and he dies while performing his craft   and um zarathustra you know uh Praises him in in  some sense it's Nietzsche's exaltation to us to   live dangerously build your temples on the slopes  of Mount Vesuvius so fully commit to your great   passions in life and be honest about what it is  that drives you which is something that may take
• 80:00 - 80:30 you years to explore and come to any understanding  of and many great and dangerous experiments   to see of what happens when you let  certain drives Take the Wheel so to speak   um so let's look at some examples of good  lives which I think might be instructive um   Nietzsche would suggest we look to if we want an  example of the good life and the nietzsian sense
• 80:30 - 81:00 should look to figures such as Getta a true  Renaissance Man I mean he wrote beautifully   in every style of literature expanded  the possibilities for the German language   um had this vast catalog of poems and guerta  stands as a soul torn between classical Aesthetics   and the fiery passion of Romanticism or we could  consider a non-artist a completely non-theoretical   man a man praised by the aforementioned in fact as  much as by Hegel and many of the intellectuals of
• 81:00 - 81:30 his time Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon emerges from  the chaos and the excess of the French Revolution   in order to produce a new French Empire and in  the process he constructs the modern French state   and he is by the Numbers the most effective  military commander of all time but to this very   day and by a mile and so just as good to reshaped  the German artistic landscape in his own image
• 81:30 - 82:00 Napoleon reshaped the French political landscape  in his own image these were men who dared to   command to follow the dictates of their will  and impose their judgments and that was a risk a   hazard as Napoleon says when Fortune is done with  him quote she will break me like a glass end quote   but you know most won't measure up to these  examples many will fail some like Caesar will
• 82:00 - 82:30 succeed but in their moment of Triumph when  their Victory is barely drawn a breath they   meet their downfall but in the image of such  people whether we find it attainable or not   we may find the inspiration to  attempt to emulate The Good Life in Twilight of idols the section  skirmishes of an untimely man   number 48 we find this passage  which references Napoleon
• 82:30 - 83:00 and speaks of him in the language of being  this ideal for what ascending life looks like   Nietzsche makes reference to the idea of a  return to Nature and I think there he's primarily   rebutting the rason ideals concerning what such a  thing would entail uh quote progress in my sense   I too speak of Return To Nature although it  is really not a going back but a going up
• 83:00 - 83:30 an Ascent to the high free even  terrible nature and naturalness   where great tasks are something  one plays with one may play with   to put it metaphorically Napoleon was a piece  of Return To Nature as I understand the phrase   for example and Rebus tacticus even more as  military men know in matters of strategy end quote
• 83:30 - 84:00 so he references their Napoleon's extraordinary  record as a tactician and the fact that he was   a very he was a man who acted it seemed on an  instinct right uh so Nietzsche often speaks of   great and terrible individuals right and there are  many ways in which we could take that description   but at bottom I think the important thing he's  getting at the essentially innocent nature of all
• 84:00 - 84:30 of our drives innocent because they're natural  innocent in the way that it's innocent when   a hawk eats a little field mouse right the  high free terrible naturalness he speaks of   as a human being who's recaptured this sense  of innocence and thus is free to follow the   commands of his own will because he's freed from  imposing guilt or imposing moral condemnation upon   those drives and so yes such a person might  end up doing what we would call evil things
• 84:30 - 85:00 but that's by no means the focus of  what Nietzsche is talking about here   um you know Napoleon's not great because of like  a body count right that would be a rather morbid   um the point of living the good life is not to  do evil things I mean it's the moralists will   try and scare us by making us uh you know  think that that's what any sort of belief   in life in the world outside of a Transcendent or  Divine Telos that's what that means but Nietzsche
• 85:00 - 85:30 Nietzsche is just simply demanding of  himself that he'd be honest with us here   and admit that a return to innocent human nature  in fact means getting in touch with a part of   ourselves which is passionate domineering  and at times violent and unreasonable   in the very next section of Twilight of Idols  Nietzsche gives us his assessment of Gita this
• 85:30 - 86:00 is section 49 quote get her not a German event but  a European one a magnificent attempt to overcome   the 18th century by a return to Nature by an  Ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance   kind of self-overcoming on the part of that  century he bore its strongest instincts within   himself the sensibility the idolatry of nature  the anti-historic the idealistic the unreal and
• 86:00 - 86:30 revolutionary the latter merely being a form  of the unreal he sought help from history   Natural Science Antiquity and also Spinoza but  above all from practical activity he surrounded   himself with limited Horizons he did not retire  from life but put himself into the midst of it   he was not faint-hearted but took as much as  possible upon himself over himself into himself
• 86:30 - 87:00 what he wanted was totality he fought the mutual  extraneousness of Reason senses feeling and will   preached with the most abhorrent  scholasticism by Kant the antipode of ghetta   he disciplined himself to  wholeness he created himself   in the middle of an age with an unreal  Outlook ghetto was a convinced realist   he said yes to everything that was related to him  in this respect and he had no greater experience
• 87:00 - 87:30 than that inzrealism most real being called  Napoleon Goethe conceived a human being who would   be strong Highly Educated skillful in all bodily  matters self-controlled reverent toward himself   and who might dare to afford the whole range  and wealth of being natural being strong enough   for such freedom the man of Tolerance not from  weakness but from strength because he knows how to
• 87:30 - 88:00 use his to his Advantage even that from which the  average nature would perish the Man For Whom there   is no longer anything that is forbidden unless  it be weakness whether called Vice or virtue   such a spirit who has become free stands amid  the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism   in the Fate that only the particular is loathsome  and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole   he does not negate anymore such a faith  however is the highest of all possible faiths
• 88:00 - 88:30 I have baptized it with the  name of Dionysus end quote and so very clear terms  Nietzsche calls Gerta dianesian   but in a very specific meaning of the  dionysian which we've talked about   so in comparing and contrasting you know  the profiles of Napoleon and Gerta surely   both are candidates for what Nietzsche would  call The Good Life and we have a more or less
• 88:30 - 89:00 adequate picture of what it entails naturalness  straightforwardness and a trusting fatalism um and of course you know the fact that both  create something great beyond themselves which is   an imposition of their creative will and reality  but the fatalism aspect you know in other places   Nietzsche critical criticized um excuse me uh  criticized a fatalistic attitude in the sense
• 89:00 - 89:30 of being oppressed or like abound fatalism what he  disparagingly calls Muhammad in fatalism but this   trusting fatalism that he describes is different  it's trusting in life trusting in necessity   um feeling that everything is redeemed in  the whole right um that in the whole picture   um life is more beautiful than it is ugly  we might say and um you know in the full   awareness of the danger Napoleon brought upon  himself but you know without a care for it
• 89:30 - 90:00 he pursues this ambitious course in life  that's a perfect example of trusting fatalism um and the fruits of such a natural healthy life  are Freedom gratitude a sense of cheerfulness   but notice it's not uh when we're talking  about a life that's free and natural   remember when Nietzsche describes Gerta as a  return to Nature he's already said what that   means and that there's this inherently it's like  his conception of what that means is a nature that
• 90:00 - 90:30 is inherently sort of uh violent and dangerous but  those who most profoundly mantle that role in life   become something that's almost more  than human more like a cataclysmic event   shock wave that rocks an entire continent a force  that reshapes an entire culture launches an entire   artistic movement and so in this context perhaps  we might look at the third question what what
• 90:30 - 91:00 facilitates the good life this is in effect  a question of Nietzsche and virtues and again   while we may consider these examples uh we must  understand that the passages that I'm going to   read in this respect don't refer to any absolute  claim of morality or Universal application for   all the reasons we've already talked about um you  know everyone has their own way their own virtues   to cultivate and so on Nietzsche says that your  most precious virtues will be known to you alone
• 91:00 - 91:30 and you will not even have a name for them right  because the most personal things are the things   which can't be shared by the universal word  Concepts that we communicate with via language   um but Nietzsche nevertheless offers us a few  uh suggestions about the cultivation of a good   life and so there are a few reliable pieces of  wisdom he has for those of us who wish to live a
• 91:30 - 92:00 healthy life uh this isn't Beyond Good and Evil  284. I'll quote here in an Abridged form quote   to live with tremendous and proud composure  always Beyond to have and not to have one's   effects one's pro and con at will to condescend  to them for a few hours to seat oneself on them   as a horse often as on an ass for one must know  how to make use of their stupidity as much as
• 92:00 - 92:30 of their fire and to choose for company  that impish and cheerful Vice courtesy   and to remain master of one's four Virtues  Of Courage Insight sympathy and solitude   for Solitude is a virtue for us as a Sublime  bent and urge for cleanliness which guesses   how all contact between man and man in  society involves inevitable uncleanliness
• 92:30 - 93:00 all Community makes men somehow somewhere sometime  common end quote so for virtues here first courage   this is required for the good life because courage  is required for any Command Decision right an act   of will we might say um because as we said during  the act in one's own will on one's own judgments   is dangerous and we have insight which means  not acting based on superficial qualities or
• 93:00 - 93:30 Surface level observations that would just see  you misled and would be counterproductive these   virtues are very uh virtuous stick in the old  sense of the word right in terms of efficiency   sympathy is an odd one for Nietzsche one might  think especially because He follows it up with   Solitude which he justifies by saying that all  participation in society makes us unclean and   he means I think intellectually morally  emotionally unclean right we're getting
• 93:30 - 94:00 uh communicated all these uh sort of sick  herd values into our heads more in society   um but this reveals I think that we have two  sort of couplets within the four which are   sort of counterbalancing you know you need to  be courageous which means suspending judgment   and acting uh or like suspending deliberation  and acting it's a better way to put it and yet   one also needs Insight which means not acting  blindly or based on short-term interests that
• 94:00 - 94:30 are in the long term sense unhealthy right so  sort of a counterbalance to the capacity for   Action that you need in Courage uh Insight is the  capacity for reflection in some sense and then uh   you know we also need a sense of sympathy a  sincere heartfelt emotional connection to other   human beings that's natural uh for human beings  as much as anything else we've been talking about
• 94:30 - 95:00 um it's natural between members of a family or  with people we love and it it's required that we   that it exists to some extent in order to function  in society it's the basis of all things like you   know courtesy and respect and charity many of  these socially beneficial behaviors and attitudes   that are required for civilization as a  project to continue and yet if we truly   want greatness in our lives Solitude is  required one has to be able to leave the
• 95:00 - 95:30 endless all-pervasive influence of  the thoughts of others this chorus   of Judge judging voices all around us that  render our own individual judgments moot   or our experimental judgments forbidden right  declare them immoral harmful dangerous and so   the judgmental voice of the majority exists  with us at all times in the form of conscience   and it's more strongly felt the more often we're  exposed to the judgments of others and that makes
• 95:30 - 96:00 us all common as he says somehow some way it  imparts some of the same thoughts or the same   types of thoughts and so for someone to live the  good life and to bring forth something greater   something stronger something healthier they  have to be able to move outside of the current   cultural moral software one has to  cultivate the ability to think their   own thoughts because that's the only way to  go beyond the current values which that's the
• 96:00 - 96:30 possibility of the great individual who  reshapes said values creates new things   Anita has another set of four virtues in a  different place in the book Daybreak or the dawn   this is section 556 it's similar but it's  not exactly the same uh list of Virtues   but we can see a similar reasoning here so  this is a different list as it appears quote   the good four honest with ourselves and whoever  else is our friend courageous with the Enemy
• 96:30 - 97:00 magnanimous with the vanquished courteous always  thus the four cardinal virtues want us end quote   so courage is included in both out of these two  lists of four the total seven cardinal nietzsian   virtues would be courage Insight sympathy  Solitude courtesy magnanimity and honesty
• 97:00 - 97:30 and I hope everyone can hear when I say the  phrase card Cardinal niche in virtues that my   tongue is in my cheek here nevertheless that's  as good a list of Virtues as any religions ever   produced and maybe better than any religion has  produced in far insofar as uh we have solitude   as a virtue it's a masterful idea and  a unique contribution of Nietzsche   uh Kaufman points out in a footnote to  the good four passage that Plato also
• 97:30 - 98:00 has for cardinal virtues which are wisdom  courage Temperance and justice um so that's   interesting courage appears in both Nietzsche's  lists and in Plato's there's some additional   overlap and that you know wisdom and insight  probably could be roughly considered analogous   um temperance kind of similar to magnanimity to  some degree but it's interesting the way in which   they contradict one another because Justice is  absent from Nietzsche's list and in fact something
• 98:00 - 98:30 like justice would generally be considered a vice  for Nietzsche zarathistra says in the passage on   the tarantulas that if you know for the culture  Warrior who's totally concerned with Justice the   thing that actually stands behind that word is the  desire for Revenge says the Bridge To His Highest   Hope For Humanity and a rainbow after long storms  is that mankind shall be delivered from Revenge
• 98:30 - 99:00 as if he's redeeming man from a sin we  might say to belabor the point right   so look to the cheerful trusting fatalism that  Nietzsche mentioned earlier in describing guerta   and which could also be applied to Napoleon  why such a fatalistic Embrace of necessity   because in this world as Will To Power we  find nothing of guilt or moral responsibility   and so if we're dutiful to the virtue of  insight we consider our in our feelings
• 99:00 - 99:30 and actions involving others that everyone we  encounter is entirely innocent of any wrongdoing   all we encounter is simply manifestations of  the will to power pushing and pulling against   us or attracting and repulsing us and the person  who does you harm is no more immoral than when   a hurricane does you harm or when a mad dog bites  you or when you you know when you open the cabinet   and a jar of something falls and hits you on the  head you don't Factor morality into those things
• 99:30 - 100:00 you might still get angry you might be physically  harmed or even emotionally uh you know aggrieved   by it but when all is said and done The Virtuous  person maintains the degree of equanimity with the   knowledge that all that's happened is absolutely  necessary it would happen the same way every time that's I mean to put it in another way it's a  means of maintaining a sort of mental or emotional   cleanliness because the most dangerous thing for  the spirit the most corrupting influence possible
• 100:00 - 100:30 is the influence of resentment that's the feeling  one gets when one wishes to take revenge to pay   back harm that one that one has experienced right  but you cannot do so right that's when resentment   arises is when you want to respond or pay  someone kind but you don't have the power   this is driven by Will To Power as much as  anything else but this is a negative feedback
• 100:30 - 101:00 loop type of pattern because this feeling it  turns one's will in a counterproductive Direction   it's corrosive to the soul the individual suffers  greatly from it and resentment's not aimed at   creating anything or at bringing anything forth  It's solely aimed at destroying it's externally   directed and it's negative in its orientation and  so a life lived in service to resentment is very
• 101:00 - 101:30 useful in providing one of many counter examples  for us to what the good life might be and or a   counter example of how to facilitate the good life  the good life is the opposite of a resentful life   now just to clear or a caveat when we're  talking about Justice there's another kind   of Justice which Nietzsche argues in human  all to human originated amongst the noble   classes of society the warrior aristocracies  of old would strike agreements with one another
• 101:30 - 102:00 based on the perception of relatively equal  strength between two parties that's how they   establish the concept of Rights of certain  respect or certain things do to all parties   the basis of justice and such a perspective it's  the real it's based on the reality that if there   were a conflict between the party's Mutual injury  or death might occur and so all parties must be   treated fairly their rights must be respected  but it's out of that fundamental Power Balance
• 102:00 - 102:30 furthermore if one amongst these parties is  slighted one does actually possess the ability   to repay the slight and if one is given a gift one  incurs an obligation to repay that gift because   um you know would be expected that you also would  have that ability it's the whole gift-giving   culture among the nobility that we see uh across  the world particularly in China for example
• 102:30 - 103:00 the same happens if for example somebody of this  type of noble mindset is shown Mercy out of Good   Will Mutual Goodwill they ought to return the  favor with leniency in the future right this   is the Justice of the warrior Aristocrats of  antiquity balancing the scales between multiple   parties who respect one another's rights out of a  mutual respect for each other's power and so when
• 103:00 - 103:30 that when we contrast Justice and the way Plato's  talking about it uh against Nietzsche's virtues Justice is not a niche in virtue because  what justice has come to mean has become   so foreign from that original concept  of justice that what it now signifies   is almost entirely synonymous with the  Revenge seeking of a grieved people um in fact Justice as a virtue to Nietzsche  if he were to include that it would resemble
• 103:30 - 104:00 something more like the willingness to back  up your words with your deeds and the power   to rebalance the scales when they're unbalanced  um fairness in a mutual agreement among equals   and thus we see a healthy Justice portrayed as the  product of an aristocracy and an unhealthy Justice   portrayed as the product of the weak and that  this is a key to decoding many of the puzzles of   nietzscheon virtue ethics we might call it that  that it's not power that corrupts but weakness
• 104:00 - 104:30 that it's the weak person lacking in  power who will use any means to get it   who will become resentful and destructive one  therefore should distrust the weak and should   also avoid allowing oneself to become weak at all  costs if for no other reason that a weak person's   fate is to be corrupted by resentment as they  constantly find themselves imposed upon but the
• 104:30 - 105:00 power of others but unable to assert themselves  or to retaliate or to make their power felt accepting the essential inequality of Life  the Injustice of life which is all implied   by what we've been talking about accepting all  of these uncomfortable realities is perhaps what   we might call another virtue of Nietzsche is  that he didn't explicitly list perhaps what we   could call hardness it's in one of zarathustra's  Parables that we get the simple Maxim become hard
• 105:00 - 105:30 um and this means become tough and it does mean  physically but also psychologically intellectually   um I mean that this would include the ability  to entertain painful dangerous or uncomfortable   ideas and perhaps the most uncomfortable for  us now uh looking at all this would be the   inevitable difference between human beings and  the implications of ascending and descending
• 105:30 - 106:00 life for society the implications of the nature  of life as contained in commanding and obeying   um that all human life has involved what  we would call according to our moral system   today immorality and exploitation and that  if you're prospering and flourishing today   your success is built on the  same kind of exploitation
• 106:00 - 106:30 the kind of toughness we're talking about involves  cutting off those false Paths of mentation   which allow you to deal with that brute reality  in a dishonest way such as by imposing moral guilt   upon yourself or upon all Society or by becoming  resentful or by entertaining utopian ideals that   violate Human Nature these are no longer open to  us and this conception of Nietzsche and virtue   for obvious reasons affirming life in this way  is not possible for everyone as we've said and so
• 106:30 - 107:00 Nietzsche's ultimate challenge is accepting life  to the point of asking for the same life to recur   eternally that said in Nietzsche's unpublished  notes to be a challenge that will enliven the   strong but break and paralyze the world weary it's  not a universal life philosophy and the good life   can't be reached by everyone although All Things  Considered it's not a particularly shocking Claim   about the good life now is it I mean going all the  way back to the Greek philosophers who gave us the
• 107:00 - 107:30 concept there's always been the fair warning  that virtue is not the province of all people   quite the opposite in fact I mean in some deep  way if virtue was possessed by all people it   would cease to become virtue a virtue is  at bottom equality it's a power and aspect   an ability that someone or something has and  like all things it's physiological in the most   fundamental sense and therefore not everyone can  possess the same ones and human beings differ so
• 107:30 - 108:00 much and their inclinations and even within the  range of possibilities that you might possess   there's no guarantee for Nietzsche that any course  of action or set of intentions will bring you to   the good life it's just not the property of the  common person but in his affirmative philosophy   we see how he even affirms the the act of  aspiring to it right of of playing the dice
• 108:00 - 108:30 game for death and taking the risk for it even in  full knowledge that you probably won't attain it   that and in this way he brings his meta answer  to the question in line with his own aesthetic   um attempt to justify life that he's always sort  of that perspective he's always been coming from   of see the Beauty and the tragedy right and  so it's a self-overcoming starts with that
• 108:30 - 109:00 feeling he talks about his orthostra of a great  contempt great dissatisfaction with oneself   and the willingness to endure  real dangers and real suffering   um because that's what's needed to get out of  wretched self-complacency and just like the dancer   on the tightrope this in itself is laudable  for Nietzsche even if you fall off the Rope and so let's talk about falling off the Rope the  final question I raised uh the final aspect we
• 109:00 - 109:30 broke the question of the meaning of life into  was the question of how we confront death and   Nietzsche gives us a pretty straightforward answer  and Beyond Good and Evil 96 quote one should   part from life as Odysseus parted from nausicaa  blessing it rather than in love with it end quote
• 109:30 - 110:00 now some have suggested that Odysseus may actually  have been in love with nausicaa even if this was   unrequited love I mean nasik is a beautiful  young woman Odysseus meets on his travels while   Shipwrecked and she's so beautiful that Odysseus  compares her to a goddess and uh you know the the   two of them seem to have feelings for one another  but when the time comes from Odysseus did apart   he leaves her out of necessity right and so that's  what Nietzsche is talking about I mean he presents
• 110:00 - 110:30 his ideal attitude is of celebrating and  being grateful being grateful for having been   graced without encounter by Beauty right but  not becoming despondent and melancholic by   having depart from this experience but doing so  uh voluntarily um and with uh you know ease and   so this expresses an attitude that is totally  commensurate with people who in some ways their
• 110:30 - 111:00 attitude is an antipode of Nietzsche but we  might consider the taoism of laoza or zhuanza   the image of the figure who loves  life but does not cling to life   because true love of Life involves a knowledge of  life's transformative and impermanent nature and   so the sage in his wisdom in taoism doesn't cling  to any particular forms or manifestations of life   Nietzsche puts this in perhaps a stronger way  in which he brings out a dichotomy between two
• 111:00 - 111:30 ways that we could think about death one way or  really ways we could think about mortality right   so one way in which death is viewed in an  unhealthy Manner and then he talks about   another way in which we regard death in a healthy  or life ascending manner quotes the certain   Prospect of death could sweeten every life with a  precious and fragrant drop of levity and now you
• 111:30 - 112:00 strange Apothecary Souls have turned it into an  ill-tasting Drop of Poison that makes the whole   of Life repulsive quote so the inevitability  of death that we perceive in our mortality   could either hang over our heads at all hours  like the Sword of Damocles letting this thought   intrude on us at all times and therefore look  ruin all the happiness and joy and fulfillment
• 112:00 - 112:30 we might be able to have or we may why can't we  see it in more light-hearted terms as a natural   um something which we take in good humor which  allows us to keep our life in perspective and   all the events of life and perspective um to see  The Comedy of the misplaced importance we have   like the trivia Trivium of our lives right um  you could see death as the into the play that
• 112:30 - 113:00 reveals our life's meaning to us that might  be like another way we could look at it right   um the Insight that a Perpetual existence would  actually be rather torturous that could be another   um like way we could look at it but some limit  to life some framing some finitude creates the   horizons within which we can actually have  a distinct different individual existence   and that it's like through  these limitations that we have
• 113:00 - 113:30 a narrative making our subjective experience  possible this is all found with infinitude   and um I mean however we want to look at it  once we accept that life really needs to have   some finitude at that point is life long is life  short I mean who can say and I stay in some time   life can't last forever in order for it to be  life so let's let the inevitable end serve as that
• 113:30 - 114:00 motivation to sweeten every moment let  it be a drop of Honey on everything right   there was a sorry to go Eastern again but I just  thought of this there's a zen master who wrote a   poem I'll give sort of the uh the paraphrasing  translation from Zen flesh's and Bones it's   like uh quote this day will never come again  each moment is like a precious gem end quote   the attitude given in this poem it the kind  of attitude that colors our whole life and the
• 114:00 - 114:30 whole of our experience when we reflect on the  finitude of life with this nietzschean Outlook   and he's simply saying um you know maybe this  is one way in which we should call to mind the   contingency of all interpretations and just  consider that the dreary and pessimistic view   of uh life and its finitude is not by any means  the obvious default perspective and that we have
• 114:30 - 115:00 examples of people like Odysseus or the Taoist  sages as I just brought up who people who are   able to bless life without um without clinging  to it right and that perhaps the and for someone   like myself the knowledge of death and the  finitude of life is a very motivating thing we're going to look at a final Nietzsche quote  today and it provides the best that I think most
• 115:00 - 115:30 Innovative response to the troubling awareness of  our own mortality and that is don't think about it   that's funny because you know the philosophical  types we always think we have to have some sort   of answer to everything right a philosophical  position on every issue and mortality   you know our own death it's one of those things  that the intellect can't answer you can't think   your way out of death comes to everyone and no  one knows what happens and even if we accept
• 115:30 - 116:00 the materialist account that Consciousness  simply ends we can't conceive of not being   beyond our experience no matter what it is  and it must remain beyond our experience   and we so we just cannot comprehend it and  it's coming to everyone and so naturally   become very fixated on this and disturbed by it   and like come to believe that before you face  that moment the moment of death the dissolution
• 116:00 - 116:30 of Consciousness or passing on to the other world  or whatever you might think happens that they have   to you know quote unquote figure it all out first  right we have to do something before we meet death   to be ready for it that will make a difference  whether we've made our peace with it or not   but in reality I think we all know deep down  that it doesn't really matter what level of   an intellectual progress we've made in  grappling with or understanding death
• 116:30 - 117:00 um because you you're not going to get there  um you're not going to understand it because   it's beyond you and it's going to come  when it comes and there's no guarantee   you'll get your time to work it all out  before it does I mean we don't have the   the privilege of Jorge Luis Borges his character  in the story the uh the the secret Miracle he's a   uh playwright who's about to be shot and  he begs God for the time to finish his   play and time freezes and the playwright's  able to mentally think out everything and
• 117:00 - 117:30 um you know like he finishes his whole play  he finishes all his great his magnum opus in   the moment before the bullet hits his brain a  moment that lasts he allows it to last for like   like hundreds of years if I recall correctly  so um you know unless you find yourself in the   Twilight Zone or in a magical realist short  story that isn't usually how it all works   so this is one of my favorite um Nietzsche  passages he argues against our philosophical
• 117:30 - 118:00 inclinations and as elitists as Nietzsche can be  and we've discussed a lot of that in this episode   he has his moments where he can take a step  back to admire or pay his respect to the   average person and in this aphorism Nietzsche  for my read of it seems to be people watching   I get that impression that that's what he's  doing when he had the idea for the aphorism   and this is from the gay science  book for Section 278 quote
• 118:00 - 118:30 the thought of death living in the midst  of this jumble of little Lanes needs and   voices gives me a Melancholy happiness  how much enjoyment impatience and desire   how much thirsty life and drunkenness  of Life comes to light every moment   and yet silence will soon descend on all  these noisy living life-thirsty people   how his shadow stands even now behind  everyone as his dark fellow Traveler
• 118:30 - 119:00 it is always like the last moment before  the departure of an immigrant ship   people have more to say to each other than ever  the hour is late and the ocean and its desolate   silence are waiting impatiently behind all of  this noise so Covetous and certain of their prey   and all and every one of them suppose that  heretofore was little or nothing while the   near future is everything and that is the  reason for all of this haste this clamor   this outshouting and overreaching each other  everyone wants to be the first in this future
• 119:00 - 119:30 and yet death and deathly silence alone are  certain and common to all in this future   how strange it is that this sole certainty  and common element makes almost no impression   on people and that nothing is further from  their minds than the feeling that they form   a Brotherhood of death it makes me happy that men  do not want at all to think the thought of death
• 119:30 - 120:00 I should like very much to do something  that would make the thought of life   even a hundred times more appealing to them  quote so as a final word my personal advice   to agree with Nietzsche is don't spoil  your high moments thinking about the end   this ties in into Nietzsche's critique of  pity which we've only briefly touched on
• 120:00 - 120:30 here but about how fixating on cruelty happening  elsewhere suffering happening to other people   it only serves to infect us with that suffering  we've been enculturated to think that what goes   up must come down to always keep in mind  that we'll be laid low and into dust one day   and because of this it that feeds right  into the feeling that we feel we still have
• 120:30 - 121:00 to worry about having the correct thing  in our hearts by the time we Face death   and the extent to which we have that feeling still  is the extent to which we are still Christian   the thought of death is a heavy weighty thought  it might be important to pick up that weight   and lift it from time to time especially for the  hyperboreans out there but we can't let it become   a heavyweight a burden right and so to the extent  that the common man is relatively speaking freed
• 121:00 - 121:30 from the heavy existential concerns that plague  philosophers Nietzsche says he's better off for it   and we should never forget that our concern with  such things as a handicap something deleterious to   life the meaning of life is not found by saddling  ourselves with burdens or by making things Grave   and serious the thought of death is useful so  long as it can enrich our lives sweeten Our Lives
• 121:30 - 122:00 make us appreciate that our moments are precious  gems but while we are living those moments the   point is to become absorbed and engaged in  the here and now to live in such a way that   you fall in love with life and ideally a  kind of mature love like that of laozza or   Odysseus or better yet that you live with such  Vigor and Zeal that you leave behind a stamp   upon the world like Gerta or Napoleon to live with  the kind of creative innocent sincerity described
• 122:00 - 122:30 by Nietzsche and the most cheerful and most  elevated moments in his work to live in such a   way that when you come to the end of your life you  know that you would gladly do it all over again   the attitude that we should have when facing death  is as Nietzsche describes quoting from the Greeks
• 122:30 - 123:00 someone who says was that life well then once more if you enjoyed the Nietzsche podcast or found it  helpful you can visit us and support the show at   patreon.com untimely Reflections the link is in  the description or just share the show with any   of your friends that you think might enjoy it  or on social media thank you for your support foreign