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In this episode, Mynaa and I discuss The Repairer of Reputations, the first story in Robert Chambers' collection, The King in Yellow. Concepts in Chambers work contributed to the creation of the 'weird fiction' genre, and remain influential on media today - including the King in Yellow, the notion of a book that can drive you mad, and names such as Carcossa and the Hyades. We've delved into the topic of madness quite thoroughly on the podcast recently, so it only seemed fitting to continue the discussion through to the Halloween episode. Our topics include a broader discussion of madness and society, the unreliable narration of the protagonist, how his delusional fantasies reflect his political madness, the "lethal chamber" and its meaning, and much more. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
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Samhain is fast approaching, and this week we're going to have two spooky episodes of the podcast. This episode will be a philosophical exploration of the significance of Arthur Machen's weird fiction/horror novella, "The Great God Pan". While I'd originally planned this for the second leg of the season, we're interrupting The Gay Science readthrough for the sake of the holiday, and because this story brings together many of the elements that we've discussed so far this season, namely: madness, the horror of science, the gulf between appearance and reality, and the Dionysian reaching out from ages past to disturb the modern world. Join me for a romp through the woods with our new friends Helen, and The Great God Pan!
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Welcome back to The Gay Science! In this episode we commence with book II, which begins with an exploration of perspectivism and the pitfalls of scientific realism, and quickly moves into ruminations on women and relationships. It's no one's favorite part of Nietzsche, but in this talk we'll clean all of the philosophical meat off of the bone, because Nietzsche actually has some genuinely valuable insights in these sections. Cheers!
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Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History is a loveletter to Greek tragedy, that begins with a dedication from Nietzsche and Plato. Central to the story is the concept of the Dionysian, and the attempt of the main characters to experience the Dionysian. Richard Papen's fatal flaw is his "morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs". His undying quest for a beautiful aesthetic life leads him to become part of an elite clique of students at Hampden College in Vermont. All six of them are under the sway of a charismatic and mysterious professor named Julian Morrow. After his friends accidentally kill someone while attempting a modern-day bacchanalia, Richard finds himself drawn into their crime, as he does everything he can to help them cover it up. This year becomes the defining event of Richard's life, and the story is his retelling of this 'secret history' of how he became what he is. We will examine the novel's use of truth and appearance, and how the Dionysian in this story serves as a "pure fire of being" which burns away the false appearances of the characters in order to unify their appearance and essence, and force each person's nature to draw its final consequences.
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The Bacchae is a parennially popular Greek tragedy that portrays the coming of Dionysus to Greece. The Dionysian strikes Hellas like a wave of madness, and the play is full of miracles, illusions and other violations of the natural order. Often interpreted as a play about the conflict between religious experience and established dogma, or between the old order and the new, The Bacchae continues to fascinate because of the many layers of meaning that belie any easy analysis. We'll briefly discuss Nietzsche's opinion of Euripedes, and the ways in which Euripedes innovated the tragic form. Then we'll dive into the text and analyze the themes of the play.
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Michel Foucault is one of the most influential philosophical thinkers of the 20th century. He remains a controversial figure, but undoubtedly he had a profound impact on the way we think about mental health and mental illness up to the present day. In this episode, we take a deep dive into his work, Madness & Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, based on his dissertation. In this work, Foucault charts a history of how madness was perceived and experienced in the western world, exploring the changes in understanding of insanity from the Middles Ages, to the Renaissance, to the Classical period (17th & 18th centuries), to the 19th century creation of the mental asylum, and finally to the foundation of psychoanalysis.
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Aeschylus' Oresteia is the only extant trilogy of Greek drama. Alongside the Parthenon, the Oresteia is considered one of the two greatest 'monuments' to the Golden Age of Athens. In this trilogy - The Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides - Aeschylus dramatizes a rite of passage from savagery to civilization. Over the course of the narrative, the ancient law of blood is overcome by a new civic law, sanctioned by the gods. The word "justice" (Dikê) is used more often in the Oresteia than in any other Greek tragedy. Through these verses, we witness a struggle from the hazy, mysterious world of archaic Greece, governed by gods who behaved capriciously and unpredictably, into the clarity of civic life, in which human beings are empowered to make the contextual decisions of governance.
Michael D. Davis, lectures on Philosophy of Tragedy: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiyEzRZtxXGU_Q5-jFqhIHJYbsahnQBNd&si=7o-LZMjQfX5Mb657
Episode art: John Singer Sergeant - Orestes Pursued by the Furies
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Welcome to the ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE of The Nietzsche Podcast. Today we're examining the speech of Peter Sloterdijk, given on the centennial of Nietzsche's death, and transcribed into the essay entitled, "Nietzsche Apostle". Sloterdijk puts forward the theory that languages are fundamentally an instrument of 'group narcissism' by which the group recognizes one another and celebrates themselves. However, with the Reversal effected by St. Paul, the function of language becomes self-lowering rather than self-celebrating. Nietzsche's radical use of language is to reclaim the prideful and self-celebratory use of language, and provide us with a 'Fifth Gospel'.
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In 1956, Jung wrote the essay entitled, "Past and Future" in German, but we know it in English as "The Undiscovered Self". Having witnessed the horror of the world wars, and the ongoing apocalyptic danger of the Cold War, Jung attempted to explain why it was that societies sometimes went mad. This is how Europe experienced the outbreak of The Great War: as mass insanity. Why would free people gravitate towards cult-like tyrannies? How could ordinarily moral and reasonable people perpetrate acts of unthinkable violence? And how could our constitutional democracies remain susceptible to these outbursts, if we are so committed to principles such as freedom and human dignity? For Jung, the only answer is self-knowledge, but that is the one thing that modern society is making impossible
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Yukio Mishima (born Kimitake Hiraoka, 1925-1970) wrote dozens of stories, including famous works such as Confessions of a Mask, and Patriotism. He was considered for a Nobel Prize in literature about half a dozen times, through he never won it. His works were adapted into films, which received international acclaim. He wrote modern No plays which were performed all over the world, in Europe and America. He is known for his provocative style, his romanticization of death and of warrior culture, and for his political radicalism. Mishima desired to return Japan to a pre-WWII samurai culture, ruled under the absolute authority of a divine emperor – and yet, his writing incorporates influences not only from traditional Japanese literature, but from writers from the west: Rilke, Wilde, Batailles, Klossowski, and, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche. From the time he was 19, when he first picked up a copy of Birth of Tragedy, Mishima had a lifelong fascination with Nietzsche. In this episode, we consider the major philosophical ideas in his combination of confession and criticism, Sun and Steel: the unity of art and action, the corrosive nature of words, and necessity of a 'beautiful death' to truly affirm one's existence.
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Welcome to season five of The Nietzsche Podcast! First of all, a warm thank you to all of my listeners and patrons who have helped to make this show such a phenomenal success. For our first episode in this new collection of episodes, we're diving headfirst into the Oedipus plays of Sophocles: Oedipus Rex & Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles triumphed with the best tragedy at the Dionysia more than any other playwright, and Aristotle named Oedipus Rex the model tragedy. We will fully explore the tragic downfall of Oedipus, his redemptive last days at Colonus, and Friedrich Nietzsche's interpretation of the significance of Oedipus in Birth of Tragedy.
Episode Art: Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust, Oedipus at Colonus (1788), Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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Concluding with our readthrough of book I of The Gay Science! We'll return with book II in a short while. In the meantime, we're going back to regular episodes of the podcast in the immediate future, covering a variety of topics. Cheers!
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Join me for the next installment of our readthrough of The Gay Science. Here, we cover a number of aphorisms concerning: fame and its effect on friendship; the dying words of Roman emperors; the hidden significance of all historical events; the desacrelizing effects of market forces upon society; and the value in knowing the supposed motives of human behavior, if the professed motives happen to be 'false'.
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In this episode, we discuss the way in which selfishness is the root of all selfless morality, how corruption produces greatness, why the ascetic is driven by ambition, and the age old question, "What is Life?"
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Join me this week, for a discussion of significant aphorisms from The Gay Science, including Consciousness, Evil, and The Feeling of Power.
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We begin our walkthrough + analysis of The Gay Science today, starting with some brief remarks on the background context of the work, a loose examination of the preface, and an intense exegesis of the first nine aphorisms. Excited to dive into this one with all of you1
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Answering questions from Patrons for our tenth Q&A episode! Thank you everyone, first episode analyzing The Gay Science next week.
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Updates on my life, the new direction for the podcast, revealing the next book that we’re analyzing, and general thoughts on the spirit of the show, what binds the community together, and self celebration about the release of my book.
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A summary of Nietzsche's teachings, examined by considering the parallel of Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche with how the modern person could adopt Nietzsche as a similar type of influence. I attempt to distill the central message of Nietzsche's philosophy, and explain how this interpretative framework helps elucidate new angles to many of his important ideas. This episode is my final word on Nietzsche's philosophy, considered in its totality, as the podcast transitions away from our focus on the primary sources in Nietzsche and into interpretations of Nietzsche and Nietzsche-adjacent material. A love letter to the fans and a last hurrah into exegesizing Nietzsche, incorporating topics from throughout the season and with callbacks to the earliest episodes. Celebrating three years of The Nietzsche Podcast as of this month!
Episode art: Maxfield Parish - Jason and His Teacher, Chiron the Centaur
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In the aphorism, "Journey to Hades" in Human All Too Human Vol 2, Nietzsche lists eight thinkers who helped to shape his thought. Each of these eight is paired with another thinker, a choice which is intentional and intended to reveal something about each pair. These eight are: Epicurus and Montaigne; Goethe and Spinoza; Plato and Rousseau; Pascal and Schopenhauer. In this episode, we will examine each one of these pairs in order to determine what similarities and what differences Nietzsche is attempting to elucidate in counterposing them. In comprehending each of these pairs, we can come to a full understanding of the early development of Nietzsche's thought, and see the way in which he was in dialogue with the ancients. The method of this passage hints at the way in which all of us can orm a relationship to Nietzsche in a similar fashion. Episode art is Johannes Stradanus - Ulysses in Hades
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