WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:12.000 [ Music ] 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:14.740 This is KZSU Stanford. 00:00:14.740 --> 00:00:18.640 Welcome to entitled opinions. 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:23.740 My name is Robert Harrison, and we're coming to you 00:00:23.740 --> 00:00:25.040 from the Stanford campus. 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:46.540 [ Music ] 00:00:46.540 --> 00:00:52.640 Frederick Nietzsche and Echae-Omo, "I am to express it in the form of a riddle, 00:00:52.840 --> 00:00:58.440 already dead as my father, while as my mother, I am still living and becoming old. 00:00:58.440 --> 00:01:03.840 This dual descent, as it were, from both the highest and lowest rung of life, 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:07.240 at the same time a decadent and a beginning. 00:01:07.240 --> 00:01:12.740 This, if anything, explains that neutrality, that freedom from all partiality 00:01:12.740 --> 00:01:17.140 and relation to the problem of life, that perhaps distinguishes me." 00:01:17.740 --> 00:01:23.340 That perhaps distinguishes me? Come now, Freddie. 00:01:23.340 --> 00:01:25.640 Modesty doesn't sit well with you. 00:01:25.640 --> 00:01:32.040 After all, you're the one who claimed future history would be divided into BZ and AZ 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:35.140 before Zara-Thustra and after Zara-Thustra. 00:01:35.140 --> 00:01:39.540 You're the one who declared, "I am no man, I am dynamite." 00:01:39.540 --> 00:01:42.240 [ Music ] 00:01:42.240 --> 00:01:43.440 Now that's more like it. 00:01:43.440 --> 00:02:05.440 [ Music ] 00:02:05.940 --> 00:02:14.440 [ Music ] 00:02:14.440 --> 00:02:16.240 That's the Nietzsche we love. 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:21.440 The one who exploded all prior foundations in order to create new ones. 00:02:21.440 --> 00:02:24.440 The transvaluator of all values. 00:02:24.440 --> 00:02:30.040 Listen to him retrace the history of an error in his twilight of the idols, 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:35.840 as it passes through six stages, each of which unfolds the course of plate-nism 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:39.340 until its final overturning by Nietzsche himself. 00:02:39.340 --> 00:02:45.540 "The true world we have abolished, what world has remained? 00:02:45.540 --> 00:02:52.640 The apparent one perhaps? But no. With the true world, we have also abolished the apparent one. 00:02:52.640 --> 00:03:00.940 Noon, moment of the briefest shadow, end of the longest error, high point of humanity, 00:03:00.940 --> 00:03:05.940 Incipit Zara-Thustra. 00:03:05.940 --> 00:03:10.940 The phrase "incipit Zara-Thustra" refers to a principle of initiation. 00:03:10.940 --> 00:03:17.440 It is a typically Nietzsche and principle whereby ends and endpoints are converted into new beginnings, 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:22.940 metamorphosed into a child to recall Zara-Thustra's famous allegory. 00:03:22.940 --> 00:03:26.940 But let's raise the overwhelming question, shall we? 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:36.940 Does Nietzsche really take a step beyond the end of metaphysics, call it nihilism, or does he finalize that end? 00:03:36.940 --> 00:03:45.440 If you follow Heidegger, Nietzsche was the last metaphysician of the West, not the most recent, the last. 00:03:45.440 --> 00:03:50.440 His thinking marks the culmination, not the overcoming of nihilism, 00:03:50.440 --> 00:03:57.440 where Nietzsche projects a new beginning, Heidegger sees a paradoxical consummation of the end. 00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:02.440 Jacques Derrida by contrast found in Nietzsche's style of writing, 00:04:02.440 --> 00:04:08.440 "In de mache de fronci s'more u de tons grésial emposibl." 00:04:08.440 --> 00:04:14.440 A crossing over or an impossible transgression of metaphysics. 00:04:14.440 --> 00:04:20.940 And is typically coquette mode, "Derrida speaks of Nietzsche's pa or doula," 00:04:20.940 --> 00:04:28.440 which can be understood either as the step beyond or as the not beyond. 00:04:28.440 --> 00:04:33.440 No comment, "Guad de passe." 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:40.440 When France overbecc arrived in Turin on January 9, 1889, a few days after Nietzsche's mental collapse, 00:04:40.440 --> 00:04:46.940 he found Nietzsche crouched in the corner of a sofa, reading the proofs of Nietzsche-Kontravogner. 00:04:46.940 --> 00:04:58.440 As far as we know, he may have been reading the epilogue, where Nietzsche writes, "As for my long sickness, I owe it a higher health. 00:04:58.440 --> 00:05:08.440 Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit, as the teacher of great suspicion, which turns every u into an x, 00:05:08.440 --> 00:05:15.440 a real genuine x, that is, the letter before the penultimate one." 00:05:15.440 --> 00:05:23.440 In Nietzsche's alphabet of the ultimate, suffering turns every u into an x, the letter before the penultimate one, 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:30.440 the ultimate letter is z, of course, but we know that Zarathustra figures as a beginning beyond the end. 00:05:30.440 --> 00:05:34.440 The ultimate, in other words, overcomes the end. 00:05:34.440 --> 00:05:40.440 Between the u and the z lies the turning point, that is to say the x. 00:05:40.440 --> 00:05:44.440 The Nietzsche and x is a crossing of many crosses. 00:05:44.440 --> 00:05:50.440 In the passage quoted earlier, it alludes to the crucifixion of personal suffering. 00:05:50.440 --> 00:05:55.440 However, the x also defines the relationship of Nietzsche and Wagner. 00:05:55.440 --> 00:06:01.440 In Echeo Monetre talks about sending a copy of human all-to-human to Wagner, 00:06:01.440 --> 00:06:11.440 "By a miraculously meaningful coincidence, I received at the same time a beautiful copy of the text of Parcival. 00:06:11.440 --> 00:06:22.440 This crossing of the two books, I felt as if I heard an ominous sound as if two swords had crossed." 00:06:22.440 --> 00:06:32.440 In Nietzsche, Konnter of Wagner, Nietzsche remarks that Wagner "suddenly sank down helpless before the Christian cross." 00:06:32.440 --> 00:06:47.440 What did Parcival mean, he asks, "In the end, a self-abnegation, a self-crossing out on the part of an artist who had previously aimed at the very opposite of this." 00:06:47.440 --> 00:06:52.440 We have to wonder whether the same could be said of Nietzsche at the moment of his mental collapse, 00:06:52.440 --> 00:06:58.440 whether in the alphabet of the ultimate Nietzsche, in fact, remain nailed on the cross of the x. 00:06:58.440 --> 00:07:04.440 This would explain why he signed many of his last mad letters, the crucified, 00:07:04.440 --> 00:07:12.440 and why the title of his last, if not ultimate book, Echeo Monetre, identifies its author with Christ. 00:07:12.440 --> 00:07:28.440 Is the Z of Zarathustra a veritable innkipit, a new beginning beyond the end, or does Nietzsche's thinking end up circling eternally around the mystery of the crucifixion, even as it moves beyond the logic of plate-nism? 00:07:28.440 --> 00:07:33.440 This is one of the questions I will be raising with my guest today, Andrew Mitchell. 00:07:33.440 --> 00:07:37.440 Professor Mitchell is well-known to many of the listeners in entitled opinions. 00:07:37.440 --> 00:07:47.440 Thanks to two memorable shows I did with him in the years past on the philosopher Martin Heidegger, Andrew, it's a real pleasure to have you back on the show and welcome back to California. 00:07:47.440 --> 00:07:55.440 The last time you were on entitled opinions was two years ago, you were on your way to Emory University to become an assistant professor of philosophy. 00:07:55.440 --> 00:07:58.440 How are things working out for you over there so far? 00:07:58.440 --> 00:08:03.440 Thanks for having me back, Robert. It's an honor to be back on this show. I've been listening since I've been gone. 00:08:03.440 --> 00:08:15.440 I've converted a number of people into new listeners as well. Emory's been great, everyone's very supportive, they like what I do, and I feel like it's a great place for me to be and thrive. 00:08:15.440 --> 00:08:17.440 It couldn't be better, really. 00:08:17.440 --> 00:08:22.440 Well, it could be better if you were here at Stanford with us, I have to reiterate that. 00:08:22.440 --> 00:08:31.440 Not for the moment, I think you're at the right place at the right time, and maybe one day back here. 00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:35.440 I raised some questions here. 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:52.440 Very general regarding Nietzsche's career as a thinker, his breakdown, and the role that the ex understood in a variety of different modes might play in his alphabet of the ultimate, as it were. 00:08:52.440 --> 00:09:04.440 All of this in allusion to his phrase, "Incubit sera throughstra," which is, of course, an allusion to the book, "The Spoke Sera Throughstra." 00:09:04.440 --> 00:09:14.440 We know from Echae Omo that Nietzsche really believed that that book was one of the most fundamental events. 00:09:14.440 --> 00:09:22.440 His other writings, he refers to it throughout, and it always comes up as a pivotal moment in his thinking. 00:09:22.440 --> 00:09:26.440 The crux of his thought, to follow your idea of an ex. 00:09:26.440 --> 00:09:41.440 So, here's the question I'd like to start with. One is that many people find "Zero Throughstra," an alienating book of philosophy, because it doesn't speak the ordinary prose, a treatise-like prose. 00:09:41.440 --> 00:09:49.440 It is a full of parables, it has this character, legendary mythological, I don't know how you would characterize them. 00:09:49.440 --> 00:09:54.440 It's portentious, it's prophetic, it's all sorts of things, lyrical at the same time. 00:09:54.440 --> 00:10:02.440 Some people find it preachy. Very preachy. I don't think one can deny that it's preachy. 00:10:02.440 --> 00:10:10.440 Do you go along with Nietzsche in believing that it's his major work? 00:10:10.440 --> 00:10:18.440 I do. I do. The relationship between that and the book before gay science, I think, 00:10:18.440 --> 00:10:24.440 either of those would be the major work, and they cover the same ground more or less. 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:39.440 But, insofar as "Zero Throughstra" has this amazing style, this off-putting style to many, who seek in it philosophical treatise of sorts, or on the other side, who look for a novel in it with a coherent plot 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:55.440 or an engaging plot. There's no car chases. There's just chapter after chapter of "Zero Throughstra," speaking to or about a variety of sick people. 00:10:55.440 --> 00:11:03.440 It's a diagnostic of society. I read it myself almost as a DSM of problems of the soul. 00:11:03.440 --> 00:11:12.440 Sickness is illnesses of the soul, maladies of the soul, you see the representatives, the living representatives of them, and they are addressed by "Zero Throughstra." 00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:18.440 That's the style of it. It's a hybrid of philosophy and literature. That's what makes it a great book. 00:11:18.440 --> 00:11:28.440 The ideas aren't simply presented in abstract. They're embodied in characters, and those characters are the physical manifestation of those ideas. 00:11:28.440 --> 00:11:34.440 That's one of the key points of the book I would think, that this issue of embodiment. 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:40.440 And the book itself begins with this epigram or subtitle, the book for all and none. 00:11:40.440 --> 00:11:45.440 And I think that's also very important for approaching the book. 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:51.440 I mean, it's prima facie paradoxical to say it's for all and for none. 00:11:51.440 --> 00:11:58.440 But I think it's meant to speak to all of us, "Quah, human." And so far as we're human, this book is for us. 00:11:58.440 --> 00:12:09.440 But as none of us are the uber-mensch or the overman, if you will, and we should speak about that definitely. It's for none. 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:14.440 Yeah, we will speak about various doctrines that are contained articulated in the book. 00:12:14.440 --> 00:12:27.440 I would say that the literary genre through which it comes to us puts those doctrines sometimes in doubt about whether they're intended in the way that many readers have intended. 00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:31.440 You refer to the subtitle about a book for everyone and no one. 00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:42.440 This in a certain way is a prelude to Xerathrus Tras, self-presentation at the beginning of the book, where he has been living in solitude for the last 10 years. 00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:52.440 And he decides to get come down from his mountain where he has been a no one, vis-a-vis the human society below. 00:12:52.440 --> 00:12:58.440 And he descends into the marketplace, which is the place of everyone if he like. 00:12:58.440 --> 00:13:02.440 And there he begins his preaching to all these people that you were referring to. 00:13:02.440 --> 00:13:07.440 And of course it could be that he's preaching to everyone, but no one really understands that. 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:11.440 And it's very interesting as well that in the mountains he lives in a cave too. 00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:19.440 So we have this whole reversal of Platonism operative where he leaves a cave as the philosopher and Plato's Republic leaves the cave. 00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:24.440 But in the Republic they leave the cave to find truth and the true light of the sun. 00:13:24.440 --> 00:13:28.440 Here he leaves the cave to go to, as you say, the marketplace. 00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:35.440 And part of the import of that is Xerathrus Tras can't live alone. 00:13:35.440 --> 00:13:40.440 I mean, I think there's a serious critique of the idea of self-sufficiency. 00:13:40.440 --> 00:13:41.440 He has to give, right? 00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:48.440 And so he sees the sun, the sun is always giving and donating this energy, and he wants to be like the sun. 00:13:48.440 --> 00:13:53.440 He needs someone to receive his gift, to receive his teaching. 00:13:53.440 --> 00:14:02.440 And the whole book, to me, is also articulating a logic of reception, giving and receiving. 00:14:02.440 --> 00:14:05.440 You can't just give if there's no receiver. 00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:11.440 And so the whole, the plot of the book is him trying to find someone to receive his teaching. 00:14:11.440 --> 00:14:21.440 When he's going down into the marketplace, he actually doesn't, there's a little encounter that he has in the forest with a hermit or a saint in calls him. 00:14:21.440 --> 00:14:30.440 And if a saint tries to discourage him from going, he says, "Is Xerathrus, or you lived in your solitude as in a sea, a last, would you now climb ashore?" 00:14:30.440 --> 00:14:33.440 And Xerathrus Tras answers, "I love man." 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:39.440 And the saint says, "Man is for me to imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me." 00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:44.440 And there, as you said, Xerathrus Tras did I speak of love? I bring men a gift. 00:14:44.440 --> 00:14:57.440 And then the saint becomes emphatic and says, "Do not go to man, stay in the forest, go rather even to the animals. Why do you not want to be as I am, a bear among bears, a bird among birds?" 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:09.440 The answer is that he has a gift for man, but is it not also the case Andrew that at the end of Xerathrus Tras he actually returns to his cave on the mountain top. 00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:15.440 And has almost despair of the recipients that you're talking about all the amount of men. 00:15:15.440 --> 00:15:19.440 And he really communes ultimately with his animals more than anyone else. 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:23.440 Yeah, I think that's right. He returns to the cave a couple of times in the book. 00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:29.440 That passage when he meets the hermit is also very interesting because the hermit says, "Stay up here in the mountains." 00:15:29.440 --> 00:15:34.440 As though that's a viable option for living a true life. 00:15:34.440 --> 00:15:40.440 And Xerathrus Tras says, "What has he not heard? God is dead. God is dead and this man is not heard." 00:15:40.440 --> 00:15:50.440 And so I take the hermit's position that you can live alone as an idea that depends on the existence of a God. 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:55.440 But now that God is dead, that option is off the table. There's no independent life. 00:15:55.440 --> 00:16:02.440 There's only this social project that we have here with each other in a human community. 00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:09.440 And so the whole book, the books, Aatutur, is written in the wake of the death of God. 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:13.440 Yeah, that's kind of depressing though. I understand what you're saying. 00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:23.440 The hermit can live alone because he is not in a state of loneliness because he has his God there to commune with. 00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:25.440 And with the death of God. 00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:29.440 But he also says, "Why don't you be a bear among bears?" 00:16:29.440 --> 00:16:37.440 There is, I would like maybe as too early in our show to throw out this interpretation. 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:45.440 But if the human community and the human project is all that's left in the wake of the death of God, then we're in a sorry state indeed. 00:16:45.440 --> 00:16:53.440 That there has to be maybe perhaps some option for the future of a new kind of relationship to the earth and its species and animals. 00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:54.440 Yeah. 00:16:54.440 --> 00:16:58.440 A new kind of communion with the vegetable and animal world. 00:16:58.440 --> 00:17:01.440 And that's the function of the uber-mentch in the book. 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:02.440 Nice. 00:17:02.440 --> 00:17:10.440 So why don't we talk about that? The uber-mentch is this, in fact the first thing Zara Throustre does when he goes down into the marketplace is that he gathers these people around him. 00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:21.440 He tells this story of, well, he sees, when there's this guy, tight road walker, he wanted to recall it. 00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:26.440 And the tight road walker comes out, people gather around. 00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:29.440 The whole atmosphere of the book is this strange carnival. 00:17:29.440 --> 00:17:32.440 It's where carnival meets religion. 00:17:32.440 --> 00:17:40.440 It's very thick symbolic, but without any identifiable signified at times. 00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:44.440 I admire people who decode the book and can give an index. 00:17:44.440 --> 00:17:48.440 Each figure represents someone and he needs his life or something. 00:17:48.440 --> 00:17:52.440 But I prefer the mystery of it to remain. 00:17:52.440 --> 00:17:55.440 I think it evokes symbols. 00:17:55.440 --> 00:18:01.440 The symbols are evocative, but of no particular, easily unequivocal solution. 00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:04.440 So this tight road walker is, in a sense, one of these. 00:18:04.440 --> 00:18:07.440 He comes out, the people are gathered around for an entertainment. 00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:13.440 And then a dwarf springs out from behind him, runs up, jumps over him. 00:18:13.440 --> 00:18:19.440 And in jumping over the tight road walker, he's tasled and falls to his death. 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:22.440 It's not the best end to a performance, I suppose. 00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:23.440 Not with the crowd expected. 00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:25.440 I think they jeered him maybe or something. 00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:32.440 But Zarathustra goes to him and says, because you lived a life of danger, I will bury you myself. 00:18:32.440 --> 00:18:41.440 And so he takes him to perform this ritual for him because of his advocacy of danger. 00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:44.440 Even in this comical contact. 00:18:44.440 --> 00:18:51.440 But doesn't he also use the tight road walker as the occasion to enunciate the idea of the uber-mensch? 00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:52.440 Yeah, man. 00:18:52.440 --> 00:18:54.440 That man is a crossing over. 00:18:54.440 --> 00:18:55.440 He's to be overcome. 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:56.440 Yeah. 00:18:56.440 --> 00:18:58.440 Oh man, is something to be overcome now? 00:18:58.440 --> 00:18:59.440 Yeah. 00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:00.440 Yeah, he's a crossing. 00:19:00.440 --> 00:19:02.440 But they don't listen to, I mean, they don't hear him. 00:19:02.440 --> 00:19:10.440 So what, the overman, how do you understand the overman, especially with respect to the things that I was mentioning in the lead-in about? 00:19:10.440 --> 00:19:15.440 I think that's the first time that I've been able to come to an end and getting beyond the end, going over, overcoming. 00:19:15.440 --> 00:19:30.440 Well, I think of it, I maybe have a peculiar interpretation of it, that the first half of the book, books one and two basically, are this kind of diagnosis of, as I said, the maladies of the soul. 00:19:30.440 --> 00:19:38.440 And the uber-mensch is functions as a therapeutic manner to cure these problems. 00:19:38.440 --> 00:19:45.440 So, Zarathustra meets this motley cast of characters who each suffers in some way. 00:19:45.440 --> 00:19:55.440 It's, he meets people who are suffering and who are reacting against that suffering with various philosophies, despisers of the body, 00:19:55.440 --> 00:19:57.440 uh, features of death. 00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:03.440 All of these people are in, in short, frustrated. 00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:07.440 They've put their hopes the whole, in general, if we can speak about them in general. 00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:13.440 They've put their hopes in things that either they couldn't achieve that were impossible for them. 00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:18.440 They've been deluded, they've misplaced their desires, and they're frustrated. 00:20:18.440 --> 00:20:23.440 That frustration turns inward, involutes, poisons them. 00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:35.440 And out of the vile and frustration of their inability, they give birth to these philosophies, Christianity, for example, 00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:41.440 that preach another world where they would be saved or redeemed. 00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:46.440 People whose life is failure, they've misplaced their desires in things. 00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:49.440 They thought that objects could satisfy them. 00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:52.440 Or, so, there's two sides to it. 00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:57.440 They've, they've either placed their desires in something they can never have, 00:20:57.440 --> 00:20:59.440 or in something they can have. 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:02.440 And when they get what they wanted, there's no satisfaction in that. 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:08.440 They find, you know, as everyone does, that life is more than these possessions. 00:21:08.440 --> 00:21:10.440 And so, they're dissatisfied too. 00:21:10.440 --> 00:21:15.440 And that makes them think that life played a trick on them, and they have to attack life. 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:25.440 So, all of these people he meet, he meets, have in various ways turned against life, because they feel it's double-crossed them. 00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:29.440 Because of where they've located their treasure, their desire. 00:21:29.440 --> 00:21:34.440 And to them, Nietzsche, Zarathustra, offers the uber-ment. 00:21:34.440 --> 00:21:40.440 You've misplaced your longing, your desire on something you can achieve, or you can't achieve. 00:21:40.440 --> 00:21:48.440 You need to break out of that whole cycle of thinking about desire in this way, and welcome the uber-ment. 00:21:48.440 --> 00:21:53.440 The uber-ment becomes this sink for all of their vile, all of their hopes. 00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:58.440 They can dump them on the uber-ment, and the uber-ment can receive them. 00:21:58.440 --> 00:22:04.440 In the book he calls the uber-mentch a sea in which you can drown. 00:22:04.440 --> 00:22:11.440 These people are so cravin', so eaten up with their own bile that they think there's no hope. 00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:16.440 And he presents the uber-mentch as something to which they can direct all of that, cleanse themselves, 00:22:16.440 --> 00:22:22.440 by putting all their energy, libidinal energy, desire, longing on this figure of the uber-mentch. 00:22:22.440 --> 00:22:33.440 But on the figure, or does he call on them to strive to become the uber-mentch in the sense of to overcome all these afflictions that they suffer from? 00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:41.440 They do that by changing, this might be worth articulating, changing the register of their desires. 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:49.440 It's no longer about a being, a being that they can't have, or a being that they can't have. 00:22:49.440 --> 00:22:51.440 It's about becoming. 00:22:51.440 --> 00:22:55.440 And the uber-mentch is this infinite task that can't be achieved. 00:22:55.440 --> 00:23:04.440 And so all of the frustrations arise from achievement, either actually achieving, or not at all achieving, impossibility of achievement. 00:23:04.440 --> 00:23:08.440 The uber-mentch offers a different order, not achievement, but becoming. 00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:16.440 And that is the transition to see that the goal is, in a sense, goallessness, or that we've been caught up in goals too much. 00:23:16.440 --> 00:23:22.440 And that's a world of static being, and we need to embrace instead this world of becoming. 00:23:22.440 --> 00:23:25.440 And that is the figure of the uber-mentch. 00:23:25.440 --> 00:23:37.440 So there's no way that you're subscribing to any notion that the uber-mentch is, will be an eventual point of arrival with some kind of super-race, or the kind of privilege, 00:23:37.440 --> 00:23:44.440 aristocracy among human beings, and that it's the super-man in the old sense that was understood. 00:23:44.440 --> 00:23:47.440 Especially by the Nazis who read Nietzsche, you know. 00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:48.440 Right. 00:23:48.440 --> 00:23:52.440 The uber-mentch is not achievable. 00:23:52.440 --> 00:23:56.440 No one can be it, but that doesn't mean there are not uber-mentch. 00:23:56.440 --> 00:23:58.440 There's no over-ment. 00:23:58.440 --> 00:24:04.440 You can only become the uber-mentch, and you can continually become the uber-mentch. 00:24:04.440 --> 00:24:06.440 But you can never be the uber-mentch. 00:24:06.440 --> 00:24:12.440 So, no, there are, in the strict sense of is being, there are no over-ment. 00:24:12.440 --> 00:24:17.440 But we can all, well, maybe all of us, become over-ment. 00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:19.440 And that's as good as you can do. 00:24:19.440 --> 00:24:22.440 So this issue arises in talking about serotuster himself. 00:24:22.440 --> 00:24:25.440 People ask, is there a toaster of the uber-mentch? 00:24:25.440 --> 00:24:26.440 Is he not? 00:24:26.440 --> 00:24:29.440 Most people say no, he's only the teacher of the uber-mentch. 00:24:29.440 --> 00:24:31.440 And he specifies he has two teachings. 00:24:31.440 --> 00:24:32.440 They're a toaster. 00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:35.440 He teaches the uber-mentch, and he teaches eternal recurrence. 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:38.440 We should talk later about how those really. 00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:42.440 And so, because he's just the teacher, he can't be the figure. 00:24:42.440 --> 00:24:44.440 But I think no one can actually be it. 00:24:44.440 --> 00:24:48.440 Being the teacher of it is a way of becoming the uber-mentch. 00:24:48.440 --> 00:24:52.440 And so, to me, he is, and scare quotes, the over-ment. 00:24:52.440 --> 00:24:53.440 Yeah. 00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:58.440 Well, what he says explicitly when he's referring to the gift that he brings to humankind 00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:01.440 from the mountains is the message of the over-man. 00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:06.440 And he says, quoting, "The over-man is the meaning of the earth." 00:25:06.440 --> 00:25:07.440 Yeah. 00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:13.440 And that your will say, "The over-man shall be the meaning of the earth." 00:25:13.440 --> 00:25:17.440 And that's where he uses the tight rope walker as the figure. 00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:22.440 When he says, "At man is a rope tied between beast and over-man. 00:25:22.440 --> 00:25:24.440 Man is a bridge and not an end." 00:25:24.440 --> 00:25:27.440 And then, of course, the people mock him and so forth. 00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:33.440 So, that idea that man is suspended on this rope between a past and a future, 00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:38.440 I think leads right into the idea of the eternal return, which as you rightly say, 00:25:38.440 --> 00:25:44.440 I agree with you that it's the second main thing that deserves to resince a communicate to human life. 00:25:44.440 --> 00:25:47.440 Maybe we should talk about meaning of the earth before that movie. 00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:48.440 Why don't we? 00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:49.440 Yeah. 00:25:49.440 --> 00:25:50.440 Yeah. 00:25:50.440 --> 00:25:56.440 I think this is where I would touch on gay science as well. 00:25:56.440 --> 00:26:04.440 But the preface to that book describes Nietzsche writing it after a stage of convalescence, 00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:09.440 which is a key issue in the zerithustra. 00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:13.440 And there he is overcoming a sickness. 00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:21.440 But as we hear of this sickness, he overcame it by being exposed to the winds of his recuperation, 00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:24.440 letting the wind in, cleaning the air, new air, 00:26:24.440 --> 00:26:26.440 instead of the bad air. 00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:33.440 The illness he suffered from was precisely the closure of the metaphysical subject, 00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:35.440 of the Cartesian subject. 00:26:35.440 --> 00:26:39.440 Metaphysics is ill, is the illness for Nietzsche. 00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:46.440 Sickness is metaphysics, believing that you're a self-contained subject in ego. 00:26:46.440 --> 00:26:55.440 And coincident with that, seeing yourself as just the thinking side of the ego, 00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:58.440 the ego as mind, distinct from body. 00:26:58.440 --> 00:27:08.440 So with this advocacy of the ego in metaphysics and with the thought of that ego as utterly distinct from the body as pure intellect, 00:27:08.440 --> 00:27:12.440 we have become utterly sick. 00:27:12.440 --> 00:27:21.440 That illness, to overcome that illness, is to burst open the bounds of that subject, 00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:27.440 and to re-embrace the body, to re-embrace life, nature. 00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:36.440 And in so doing, to overcome the artificial separation we've put in place between mind and body, 00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:44.440 which makes each of them as pure as possible, and in so doing sets them antagonistically opposed to one another. 00:27:44.440 --> 00:27:48.440 The body becomes a brute animality. 00:27:48.440 --> 00:27:55.440 And so to restore the two together is to reinvigorate both of them, 00:27:55.440 --> 00:28:01.440 put blood into the mind and to give meaning to the body. 00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:08.440 In so doing, this transformed understanding of the self as no longer directed by mind-body dualism, 00:28:08.440 --> 00:28:11.440 that is the life that needs to advocate in their toaster. 00:28:11.440 --> 00:28:15.440 And I think that is the way we give meaning to the earth. 00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:25.440 To become the meaning of the earth is to no longer see the earth, the material, the body, as completely devoid of meaning in a separation from mind. 00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:34.440 Yeah, I'm all with that. However, I continue to bump up against this scandal on, 00:28:34.440 --> 00:28:44.440 and I think Nietzsche also did, which is that the body is not merely this thing that metaphysics has excluded from citizenship in the ego, 00:28:44.440 --> 00:28:50.440 but the body is also the place of deformity, decay, death, and suffering. 00:28:50.440 --> 00:28:55.440 And many of these people that are through string counters, these sick people that you're referring to, 00:28:55.440 --> 00:29:04.440 many of them are cripples, they have handicaps, and they are poor destitute, 00:29:04.440 --> 00:29:07.440 and it's in their bodies that they are suffering the most. 00:29:07.440 --> 00:29:16.440 And their revulsion against life is not so much, that they're enclosed within Cartesian egos. 00:29:16.440 --> 00:29:23.440 And their revulsion against life is that the body is the locus of their most intense suffering, 00:29:23.440 --> 00:29:34.440 and they're not able to say yes to life despite its suffering in the way that the overman presumably can say yes to life under those conditions. 00:29:34.440 --> 00:29:41.440 Yeah. Well, their abstraction of themselves from the body, and he meets the whole cast of characters, 00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:50.440 the abstraction of themselves from their body still leaves them with a body, and that body decays, that body goes unexercised, yeah. 00:29:50.440 --> 00:30:04.440 And so what you have in Nietzsche is this advocacy of, well, this understanding of the body as, well, our bodies determine our thoughts in some way. 00:30:04.440 --> 00:30:14.440 I mean, this is, if we take Nietzsche seriously, then we have to approach this kind of almost physiognomy in his thinking, this extreme biologism of a sort. 00:30:14.440 --> 00:30:20.440 Yeah, this physiologism anyway, where diet shapes how you think, right? 00:30:20.440 --> 00:30:28.440 There's these scandalous passages that are considered racist, where, you know, the Indians have a certain kind of thought way of thinking, 00:30:28.440 --> 00:30:33.440 because they eat so much rice, he says, and we think that's outlandish, ridiculous, racist blah blah blah. 00:30:33.440 --> 00:30:49.440 But if you understand the body, the way Nietzsche does, you have to take these claims seriously, or at least see what is serious in them, that the body in the mind are no longer detached from one another, and there is going to be this kind of influence. 00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:50.440 Right. 00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:53.440 So he is thinking of a new body. 00:30:53.440 --> 00:31:01.440 Yeah, that's what the overman, that might be probably one of the best ways to conceive of it, is if not a new body, 00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:04.440 a new senses, a new way of being in the body. 00:31:04.440 --> 00:31:05.440 Yeah, absolutely. 00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:16.440 And this comes up in the preface to gay science as well, or part of the convalescence, the recuperation from this illness of metaphysics, is a restoration of sense. 00:31:16.440 --> 00:31:22.440 He talks about becoming ticklish, because now the senses are stimulated, they can feel again. 00:31:22.440 --> 00:31:33.440 They don't feel brute animal senses, they feel meaningful sense of the earth, they re-animated. 00:31:33.440 --> 00:31:42.440 And he calls not only for these new senses, and the ticklishness of our sense organs suddenly, but also for new organs. 00:31:42.440 --> 00:31:51.440 There's passages in the Wilts of Power where you find him calling for us developing new organs, and also for a refinement of the sense organs that we have. 00:31:51.440 --> 00:31:57.440 That's part of the new body, a new way of inhabiting the body, and a new way of relating to a new world as well. 00:31:57.440 --> 00:31:59.440 Right. 00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:17.440 So you were mentioning earlier about these people who have a sickness, a life sickness, who are looking for redemption, either by the possession of things, which doesn't really address the source of their malays, or through a transcendent other worldly God. 00:32:17.440 --> 00:32:24.440 And redemption is a crucial concept for Nietzsche, especially in Zarathustra. 00:32:24.440 --> 00:32:31.440 He has a chapter on redemption in Zarathustra, which is later in the book, in fact it's right in the very middle of the book appropriately. 00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:38.440 So because he's at that moment that we find Zarathustra on a bridge, which is another tightrope, as it were. 00:32:38.440 --> 00:32:43.440 And he's surrounded by cripples, blind men, hunchbacks, and beggars. 00:32:43.440 --> 00:32:49.440 And a hunchback asks him what redemption he can offer them for their suffering and deformities. 00:32:49.440 --> 00:32:57.440 And Zarathustra has an idea of redemption, but it has nothing to do with recompense, because the hunchback wants a recompense. 00:32:57.440 --> 00:32:58.440 Right. 00:32:58.440 --> 00:33:07.440 But Zarathustra instead he turns to his disciples and says, "Verily, my friends, I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of men." 00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:13.440 This is beautiful because it refers to what you're talking about, maybe even New Organs. 00:33:13.440 --> 00:33:25.440 If present human kind, if present mankind is only fragments and limbs of a whole man, then the overman would be presumably a new sort of body of the human. 00:33:25.440 --> 00:33:29.440 But for the moment it's just fragments and limbs. 00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:37.440 And the present and the past on earth are last, my friends. That is what I find most un-endurable. 00:33:37.440 --> 00:33:43.440 And I should not know how to live where I not also a seer of that which must come. 00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:44.440 Yeah. 00:33:44.440 --> 00:33:47.440 So now we get to this crux that you were referring to earlier. 00:33:47.440 --> 00:33:54.440 If Zarathustra can only live because he can see into a better future, a glorious body of some sort. 00:33:54.440 --> 00:34:03.440 But if when he looks backwards at what human history has been, he is filled with revulsion himself and he does not know how to endure it. 00:34:03.440 --> 00:34:10.440 And this is a sickness of the will too because he will go on saying on that very same bridge, 00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:22.440 to redeem those who lived in the past and to recreate all it was into a "thus I will" did, that alone should I call redemption. 00:34:22.440 --> 00:34:28.440 But this is almost impossible to do for a human being. Why? Because willing liberates. 00:34:28.440 --> 00:34:33.440 But what is it that puts even the liberator himself in fetters? 00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:39.440 It was. That is the name of the will's gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy. 00:34:39.440 --> 00:34:45.440 Powerless against what has been done, he is an angry spectator of all that is past. 00:34:45.440 --> 00:34:51.440 The will cannot will backwards and that he cannot break time and times covetousness, 00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:57.440 that is will's loneliest melancholy. This indeed and this alone is what revenge is. 00:34:57.440 --> 00:35:01.440 The will's revulsion against time and times it was. 00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:08.440 Yeah. Before talking about the eternal return doctrine in there, let's talk about the aspect of revenge that's brought up. 00:35:08.440 --> 00:35:19.440 I think the two of the main illnesses, the two main illnesses in Zarathustra seems to me, are pity on the one hand and revenge. 00:35:19.440 --> 00:35:28.440 These are the ills that so many suffer from and that determine the way they think, the way they are in the world. 00:35:28.440 --> 00:35:35.440 I see these as both perversions or distortions of giving and receiving. 00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:42.440 Revenge is in gratitude. Something has been given to you. Something has happened to you. 00:35:42.440 --> 00:35:49.340 You have this life and event has happened and you resent it rather than welcome it rather than accept it rather than 00:35:49.340 --> 00:35:58.340 negotiate with it rather than embrace it in an act of a more fatty or something of this sort rather than incorporate it into your character and stylize it. 00:35:58.340 --> 00:36:07.340 You reject it and broil against it and wish for some sort of cancellation of it for some sort of payback. 00:36:07.340 --> 00:36:16.340 It's in gratitude. It's a failure to properly receive and pity for its part is a failure to properly give. 00:36:16.340 --> 00:36:28.340 If someone is suffering and as he often says in Nietzsche, you step in with your pity and take away the singularity of their suffering from them. 00:36:28.340 --> 00:36:33.340 Suffering builds character for Nietzsche as we know. It's the only way to build character. 00:36:33.340 --> 00:36:41.340 It opens up levels of feeling within you that can at the same time receive joy more thoroughly as well. 00:36:41.340 --> 00:36:51.340 So to give up suffering is to give up depth of character, depth of character that can embrace life and feel its delight. 00:36:51.340 --> 00:37:00.340 So to step into someone and say, "Oh, I understand your suffering blah blah blah" is to take the uniqueness of it away from them on the one hand. 00:37:00.340 --> 00:37:10.340 And on the other, it's also as he says to get off your own path. You have something you need to be doing and it's so much nicer to put that work aside and comfort someone and pity them. 00:37:10.340 --> 00:37:20.340 And to feel your own superiority over them in that act of pitying to praise yourself for how good a friend you are by helping them out and to take the uniqueness of it from them. 00:37:20.340 --> 00:37:26.340 So you think you're given and you're really taking. So pity is a failure to give properly. 00:37:26.340 --> 00:37:29.340 Revenge is a failure to receive properly. 00:37:29.340 --> 00:37:32.340 That's what I would put it nicely said. 00:37:32.340 --> 00:37:40.340 So clearly this notion of overcoming revenge which is the will's revulsion against time and times it was. 00:37:40.340 --> 00:37:43.340 How can the will will backwards? 00:37:43.340 --> 00:37:56.340 Well, the only way Nietzsche thought the will could find a way to will backwards is through willing what the it was forwards again in the mode of repetition. 00:37:56.340 --> 00:38:00.340 Is this how you understand the doctrine of the eternal return? 00:38:00.340 --> 00:38:04.340 Maybe the eternal return of the same. 00:38:04.340 --> 00:38:09.340 Well, everything that has been will be repeated eternally. Can you say yes to that? 00:38:09.340 --> 00:38:10.340 Yeah. 00:38:10.340 --> 00:38:13.340 Yeah, I take it in a slightly different direction though. 00:38:13.340 --> 00:38:17.340 I want to hear more of your view on this. 00:38:17.340 --> 00:38:21.340 Everything will return. Everything will recur. 00:38:21.340 --> 00:38:25.340 I take that to be a way of thinking, 00:38:25.340 --> 00:38:33.340 particularly beings things around us. They exist like an apple, not simply here present here. 00:38:33.340 --> 00:38:40.340 They're not simply present here. They're also somewhere in the future as well. 00:38:40.340 --> 00:38:45.340 The same apple is often the future and then often the future again further. 00:38:45.340 --> 00:38:50.340 And the same apple was here in the past as we go through all of these cycles. 00:38:50.340 --> 00:39:00.340 But it's the same apple. I take this idea of recurrence to be a way of destabilizing the present. 00:39:00.340 --> 00:39:05.340 The present is no longer self sufficient. It's no longer sufficient to itself. 00:39:05.340 --> 00:39:10.340 The apple doesn't simply here. It's not just what's here. There's more to it. 00:39:10.340 --> 00:39:15.340 What the apple is is also the apple often the future, the apple often in the past. 00:39:15.340 --> 00:39:26.340 This present, if we think of it as a discrete moment in time, doesn't encapsulate, doesn't accommodate the apple or any particular thing. 00:39:26.340 --> 00:39:31.340 All things are stretched beyond themselves into a future, into a past. 00:39:31.340 --> 00:39:37.340 Such that the present is not equatable with their existence. 00:39:37.340 --> 00:39:39.340 There's more to them than that. 00:39:39.340 --> 00:39:45.340 They themselves are opened up into this world. 00:39:45.340 --> 00:39:48.340 Their thoughostra's animals say it to him. 00:39:48.340 --> 00:39:53.340 O Zarathustra, to those who think as we do, all things themselves are dancing. 00:39:53.340 --> 00:39:57.340 That's the idea of the eternal recurrence to me. 00:39:57.340 --> 00:40:00.340 That the things themselves dance. They're untethered. 00:40:00.340 --> 00:40:04.340 They're no longer grounded in a substantialist metaphysics. 00:40:04.340 --> 00:40:12.340 They're lightens. They're allowed to dance to play with this gravity, to be detached from an encapsulated and closed present. 00:40:12.340 --> 00:40:15.340 And the eternal recurrence is a way of articulating that. 00:40:15.340 --> 00:40:17.340 That all things are not simply what they are. 00:40:17.340 --> 00:40:21.340 The present isn't everything. They're not closed off in their present being. 00:40:21.340 --> 00:40:24.340 They're rather opened and dancing to us. 00:40:24.340 --> 00:40:30.340 And it's only the uber-mensch who is himself herself outside of themselves. 00:40:30.340 --> 00:40:37.340 And also a figure of becoming who can interact with this world of becoming things. 00:40:37.340 --> 00:40:44.340 I think the crux is to understand becoming in Nietzsche and to do so requires breaking with the thinking of being. 00:40:44.340 --> 00:40:48.340 Yeah, that's very high to Gary and very persuasive. 00:40:48.340 --> 00:40:52.340 I would like it to correspond to what I think- 00:40:52.340 --> 00:40:54.340 Yes, I want to hear it. 00:40:54.340 --> 00:41:04.340 The only problem I have with that, Andrew, is that the text, when Zara Throustor articulates the theory of the eternal return, 00:41:04.340 --> 00:41:10.340 there's so much insistence on this point of present, this absolute punctual present. 00:41:10.340 --> 00:41:13.340 Here at the gateway, the gateway is not a point. 00:41:13.340 --> 00:41:15.340 A gateway is not a point. 00:41:15.340 --> 00:41:19.340 Well, he says at this point all of the past stretches out to infinity. 00:41:19.340 --> 00:41:24.340 We're right here at this punctual moment. 00:41:24.340 --> 00:41:30.340 And he seems to want to isolate that moment of presence and deprived of distension. 00:41:30.340 --> 00:41:33.340 I mean, it does have distension in the past and future, but it. 00:41:33.340 --> 00:41:36.340 And then let's look at what he says. 00:41:36.340 --> 00:41:40.340 And this slow spider tells the dwarf, which crawls in the moonlight. 00:41:40.340 --> 00:41:42.340 And this moonlight itself. 00:41:42.340 --> 00:41:47.340 And I and you in the gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things must not all of us have been there before the 00:41:47.340 --> 00:41:57.340 and return and walk in that other lane out there before us in this long dreadful lane must we not eternally return. 00:41:57.340 --> 00:42:02.340 So he seems to be proposing eternal return in a literal sense. 00:42:02.340 --> 00:42:11.340 But of course, here's where I have- here's where I find that the riddle, because he calls this a riddle, almost undermines the hypothesis. 00:42:11.340 --> 00:42:20.340 Thus I spoke and more and more softly for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts. 00:42:20.340 --> 00:42:24.340 Then suddenly I heard a dog howl nearby. 00:42:24.340 --> 00:42:28.340 Had I ever heard a dog howl like this? 00:42:28.340 --> 00:42:29.340 Yeah. 00:42:29.340 --> 00:42:30.340 My thoughts raised back? 00:42:30.340 --> 00:42:31.340 Yes. 00:42:31.340 --> 00:42:36.340 When I was a child in the most distant childhood, then I heard a dog howl like this. 00:42:36.340 --> 00:42:39.340 Okay, we're in the realm of repetition I heard it before. 00:42:39.340 --> 00:42:45.340 And I saw him too bristling his head up trembling in the stillest midnight when even dogs believe in ghosts. 00:42:45.340 --> 00:42:47.340 And I took pity. 00:42:47.340 --> 00:42:51.340 For just then the full moon silent as death passed over the house. 00:42:51.340 --> 00:42:54.340 And that was why the dog was terrified. 00:42:54.340 --> 00:42:56.340 And I took pity again. 00:42:56.340 --> 00:43:03.340 And then he goes on to say that at that moment among the wild cliffs I stood suddenly alone, 00:43:03.340 --> 00:43:05.340 bleak in the bleakest moonlight. 00:43:05.340 --> 00:43:07.340 But they're lay a man. 00:43:07.340 --> 00:43:12.340 And there the dog jumping bristling whining now he saw me coming and he howled again. 00:43:12.340 --> 00:43:16.340 He cried, "Have I ever heard a dog cry like this for help?" 00:43:16.340 --> 00:43:21.340 And verily what I saw I had never seen the like. 00:43:21.340 --> 00:43:23.340 We'll get back to that phrase. 00:43:23.340 --> 00:43:28.340 What he sees is a young shepherd writhing gagging in spasms, his face distorted, 00:43:28.340 --> 00:43:31.340 and a heavy black snake hung out of his mouth. 00:43:31.340 --> 00:43:35.340 Had I ever seen so much nausea and pale dread on one face, 00:43:35.340 --> 00:43:42.340 he seemed to have been asleep when the snake crawled into his throat and there bit itself fast. 00:43:42.340 --> 00:43:45.340 My hand tore at the snake and tore in vain. 00:43:45.340 --> 00:43:47.340 It did not tear the snake out of his throat. 00:43:47.340 --> 00:43:49.340 Then it cried out of me, bite. 00:43:49.340 --> 00:43:51.340 Bite its head off it bite. 00:43:51.340 --> 00:43:55.340 Thus it cried out of me my dread, my hatred, my nausea, my pity. 00:43:55.340 --> 00:43:59.340 All that is good and wicked in me cried out with a single cry. 00:43:59.340 --> 00:44:02.340 You bold ones who surround me. 00:44:02.340 --> 00:44:03.340 You searchers and researchers. 00:44:03.340 --> 00:44:05.340 He means you and me now. 00:44:05.340 --> 00:44:12.340 Guess me this riddle that I saw then interpret me the vision of the loneliness for it was a vision and a foreseeing. 00:44:12.340 --> 00:44:16.340 We'll keep the shepherd by shepherd. 00:44:16.340 --> 00:44:21.340 However, bit as my cry counseled him, he bit with a good bite. 00:44:21.340 --> 00:44:24.340 Far away he spewed the head of the snake and he jumped up. 00:44:24.340 --> 00:44:30.340 No longer shepherd, no longer human, one changed, radiant laughing. 00:44:30.340 --> 00:44:34.340 Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed. 00:44:34.340 --> 00:44:36.340 Two points I would do. 00:44:36.340 --> 00:44:40.340 My favorite passage, one of my favorite passages. 00:44:40.340 --> 00:44:49.340 In German the phrase for the eternal recurrence of the same is the eternal recurrence of the cliche. 00:44:49.340 --> 00:44:53.340 Which means like it's the eternal return of the like. 00:44:53.340 --> 00:44:58.340 When he says ask himself, "Have I ever heard a dog howl like this?" 00:44:58.340 --> 00:45:02.340 Or have I ever seen a shepherd doing like this? 00:45:02.340 --> 00:45:06.340 He says, "Verily what I saw I had never seen the like." 00:45:06.340 --> 00:45:09.340 What does that mean in the context of the eternal return of the like? 00:45:09.340 --> 00:45:13.340 If it is a true eternal return, he must have seen this eternally. 00:45:13.340 --> 00:45:15.340 The likeness of it eternally. 00:45:15.340 --> 00:45:20.340 And then at the end when he says no longer shepherd, no longer human, one changed radiant laughing. 00:45:20.340 --> 00:45:24.340 Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed. 00:45:24.340 --> 00:45:26.340 That means there is no eternal return. 00:45:26.340 --> 00:45:30.340 There is a newness there which is beyond this nausea. 00:45:30.340 --> 00:45:47.340 Yeah, and I would say, "Well the version I'm arguing for, I think we're both arguing against in a sense a very simple reading of it as either literal recurrence or also as a psychological injunction." 00:45:47.340 --> 00:45:50.340 It functions in multiple ways. 00:45:50.340 --> 00:45:51.340 There's no doubt about it. 00:45:51.340 --> 00:45:55.340 Nietzsche has different formulations of it that he provides in various works of his 00:45:55.340 --> 00:46:02.340 way where it means, "Well look at your life, do you want to do the same thing a million times if not why are you doing it now?" 00:46:02.340 --> 00:46:06.340 That's okay, that's existential, but it's a little banal to me. 00:46:06.340 --> 00:46:10.340 I'm sure someone could articulate it more effectively, but I just find that boring. 00:46:10.340 --> 00:46:19.340 What I find much richer though is seeing it as a way of understanding particular beings, as no longer being but as becoming. 00:46:19.340 --> 00:46:25.340 It's a way of articulating a thinking of becoming where things aren't even static. 00:46:25.340 --> 00:46:31.340 They're not static and fixed, but they're always slipping past themselves, behind themselves. 00:46:31.340 --> 00:46:36.340 They're interacting with other things with us. 00:46:36.340 --> 00:46:37.340 They have resonances. 00:46:37.340 --> 00:46:40.340 They can evoke other moments, other events. 00:46:40.340 --> 00:46:43.340 This is how I understand the dancing of things. 00:46:43.340 --> 00:46:50.340 He can hear this dog how, and it can remind him of another dog how. 00:46:50.340 --> 00:47:02.340 I want to understand that as a consequence of the blurred boundaries of one particular event that it's able to then because of that entrance into becoming resonate with other events. 00:47:02.340 --> 00:47:09.340 I'd like to say that where we're thinking as a discreet and closed being, we couldn't compare it in the same way. 00:47:09.340 --> 00:47:14.340 We could only map it and find it to be identical or not. 00:47:14.340 --> 00:47:22.340 That would somehow be, would miss the evocative character of it, precisely how it exceeds itself. 00:47:22.340 --> 00:47:24.340 What do you make of the snake? 00:47:24.340 --> 00:47:27.340 What is the snake that was crawled into the man's mouth? 00:47:27.340 --> 00:47:32.340 Because the snake is on the one hand, the snake figures many times in zero through. 00:47:32.340 --> 00:47:38.340 It's also what the eagle has the snake and the snake is a figure of the eternal return because the egg is not. 00:47:38.340 --> 00:47:43.340 It's the wraptron, while the eagle goes and cycles. 00:47:43.340 --> 00:47:49.340 It bites its own tail and it's the figure of this perfect circle. 00:47:49.340 --> 00:47:52.340 Why is it a snake? 00:47:52.340 --> 00:48:00.340 What is the liberation that takes place when the head of the snake is bitten off? 00:48:00.340 --> 00:48:07.340 It's a shepherd choking on a giant snake. 00:48:07.340 --> 00:48:12.340 This is the thought of eternal recurrence that Nietzsche wants to think. 00:48:12.340 --> 00:48:19.340 The snake has bitten him and he can't get the snake to bite its own tail. 00:48:19.340 --> 00:48:23.340 I think that's how this imagery is functioning in the text. 00:48:23.340 --> 00:48:31.340 It's also the poison, the bile that's eating us up inside that we need to spew out. 00:48:31.340 --> 00:48:32.340 We're choking on it. 00:48:32.340 --> 00:48:39.340 We're suffocating in our resentment and bile and the shepherd has a higher task than that. 00:48:39.340 --> 00:48:43.340 The shepherd bites the head off, spews it out, and is transformed. 00:48:43.340 --> 00:48:49.340 With this new body, I would say, the transfiguration is the entrance into this new body and then there's this laughter. 00:48:49.340 --> 00:48:50.340 That is never heard. 00:48:50.340 --> 00:48:55.340 I think laughter is a key component in Nietzsche in Sir Duster as well. 00:48:55.340 --> 00:48:59.340 It's not as unambiguous as it's often considered. 00:48:59.340 --> 00:49:03.340 Laughter is not simply all laughter is not the same in the book. 00:49:03.340 --> 00:49:10.340 There's a sardonic, malicious laughter that we read and we can join in on sometimes. 00:49:10.340 --> 00:49:14.340 There's this childish, free, innocent laughter. 00:49:14.340 --> 00:49:26.340 I think the point that someone like Derrida makes in reading Joyce talking about laughter is that the laughter is almost ambiguous. 00:49:26.340 --> 00:49:29.340 You can't discern that times which laughter it is. 00:49:29.340 --> 00:49:38.340 Is it the laughter, a freeing laughter, a pure expression of joy in life or is it the sardonic malicious laughter? 00:49:38.340 --> 00:49:43.340 When you read sartooth, there are so many times the laughter is characterized as malicious. 00:49:43.340 --> 00:49:49.340 I laughed a malicious laugh and you think, "What? Why is he laughing maliciously or throughout the book?" 00:49:49.340 --> 00:49:58.340 There's these strange couplings of emotions, laughter and hatred, malice that don't quite go together so easily. 00:49:58.340 --> 00:50:06.340 It's easy to breeze over it in reading, but if you get paused to think the laughter isn't always the same. 00:50:06.340 --> 00:50:13.340 But that doesn't go back to the singularity point of not having seen a site like this before. 00:50:13.340 --> 00:50:27.340 Well, at the very least there's something deeply paradoxical about invoking the singularity of an event in the context of the doctrine of the eternal return of the same. 00:50:27.340 --> 00:50:36.340 If the overman is the meaning of the earth or if it's the will who says the overman shall be the meaning of the earth. 00:50:36.340 --> 00:50:47.340 And if the overman is somehow the person who can say yes to the concept of the eternal return, then we better understand what this yes is saying yes to. 00:50:47.340 --> 00:50:56.340 And I think one way of how about a crazy interpretation that I propose to you of the eternal return. 00:50:56.340 --> 00:51:03.340 But basically, if the eternal return is the idea that is going to liberate the will from its fetters. 00:51:03.340 --> 00:51:17.340 And if the will is suffering from the fact that it basically cannot will backwards, then it has to find a way to will backwards, but not in this mechanical, willing to pass forward. 00:51:17.340 --> 00:51:29.340 I agree with you. How about the will finding a way to will the origins of things eternally or into the future. 00:51:29.340 --> 00:51:46.340 And by the origins of things I mean in an axamander sense of that from which out from which things emerge into the world, namely some kind of matrix of things and especially of species. 00:51:46.340 --> 00:52:01.340 And that therefore the the overman would be saying yes to the origins of that which have of the species of the earth in their origination. 00:52:01.340 --> 00:52:15.340 And that therefore there would be some kind of affirmation of again, I go back to the animal and not just the merely human because it would seem that rather than transcending on a kind of evolutionary concept. 00:52:15.340 --> 00:52:26.340 of going from our origins in the beast because he says the overman is somewhere between the man is at a bridge somewhere between the beast and the overman. 00:52:26.340 --> 00:52:41.340 But to will the eternal return is to in a certain sense will the beast into the future, but not the beast understood in the degraded mode of just the animal deprived of its own spirit, fruit and animality. 00:52:41.340 --> 00:53:10.340 But a new kind of animality that would not be the privileged domain of the human. So it would not just be the human that has the new body and the new limbs, but that we through that new body we would understand even the animals and even the plant life in a completely new meaning of the earth way that would that would redeem the earth from its degradation in this. 00:53:10.340 --> 00:53:22.340 In this other way of thinking. Yeah, I agree completely and I think my version of the eternal recurrence which I'll admit is maybe a little violent not too violent. 00:53:22.340 --> 00:53:33.340 Shows things as dancing and by dancing again, I mean they're expanded beyond their boundaries, they're entering into this matrix that you're talking about. 00:53:33.340 --> 00:53:57.340 I see the eternal recurrence as a way of thinking becoming becoming as not simply thought transitionally in time, but also transitionally in space that something is not discreetly present, but seeping past itself into this engagement with matrix with with others that you're talking about. 00:53:57.340 --> 00:54:14.340 And that makes each of these things a relational entity. It's in a particular place in a particular context and insofar as it occupies that particular place that particular context at that particular time and is a contributing member to that context by being outside of itself. 00:54:14.340 --> 00:54:26.340 It is singular. It's unique. Each of these things only by being moments of becoming only only understood through becoming can we understand these things as unique. 00:54:26.340 --> 00:54:36.340 So in my interpretation of the eternal recurrence, which is a thinking of becoming, it makes perfect sense that he would see things that he never saw before hear things he never heard before. 00:54:36.340 --> 00:54:53.340 Let's also note that it's a seeing and a hearing that requires a transformed organ. So let's say that that embracing becoming is a transformation of the body, transformation of the organs, that transformation allows you to see and hear singularities. 00:54:53.340 --> 00:55:06.340 That you have never encountered before, paradoxically enough eternal recurrence of the similar, what's called following you the same is an embrace of singularity. 00:55:06.340 --> 00:55:07.340 Right. 00:55:07.340 --> 00:55:16.340 That in that sense it would rejoin real kid in the Dweeno Elegies where he says once and once only all things come around. 00:55:16.340 --> 00:55:26.340 So I always thought that there's some deep kinship between real kids of affirmation that everything is once and once only. 00:55:26.340 --> 00:55:36.340 It puts as much pressure on the moment of becoming as does any myth of the eternal recurrence. 00:55:36.340 --> 00:55:48.340 It's more emphasized as more the reverberations of a particular moment I think than real kids like a breaking glass or something as Nietzsche has this shadowing forward of things. 00:55:48.340 --> 00:55:56.340 And I'll say one other thing about this idea of the earth. I think the meaning of the earth is, or to think the earth we have to think differently. 00:55:56.340 --> 00:56:05.340 In these abstract concepts as well, the whole nature of what is a concept or how do we think has to change as well. 00:56:05.340 --> 00:56:13.340 It has to, we have to think becoming and to think the earth requires sort of messy concepts. 00:56:13.340 --> 00:56:17.340 There's no concepts are too often thought as abstractions. 00:56:17.340 --> 00:56:23.340 Nietzsche says in truth and lies in an extra moral sense that there are metaphors of metaphors. 00:56:23.340 --> 00:56:29.340 The original sensation gets distorted into words, words get abstracted into concepts, etc. 00:56:29.340 --> 00:56:36.340 And to think the earth, to understand the meaning of the earth means changing the way we think as well and to think becoming. 00:56:36.340 --> 00:56:42.340 So that the boundaries of our concepts begin to blur as well. 00:56:42.340 --> 00:56:57.340 Well, there's certainly that notion of blurring which I like because then it would also entail some reconceived notion of what it is not only to be human, but also what it means to be an animal. 00:56:57.340 --> 00:57:12.340 And to maybe relate to animals in a way that would be unprecedented vis-a-vis our long history of subjugation and a certain sense of abuse. 00:57:12.340 --> 00:57:26.340 I don't think it's by accident that Nietzsche's mental collapse was precipitated by him seeing a horse being flogged in the streets of Turin. 00:57:26.340 --> 00:57:39.340 And he went and embraced the horse and really collapsed with his arms around the suffering animal. 00:57:39.340 --> 00:57:48.340 And you could say, "Well, he either succumbed to this moment of Christian pity in the bad sense that you were referring to earlier, but I don't think that's at all what happened. 00:57:48.340 --> 00:58:13.340 I think that he is seeing that in this animal there is a potential for a mode of being that is the horsemen and human beings in general are not doing justice to this kind of new kind of malady that it's prefigured in his in zerothesis relationship to his own animals. 00:58:13.340 --> 00:58:22.340 Well, they're the ones who tell him so many things, especially this line that I love so much that all things are dancing that comes from his animals. 00:58:22.340 --> 00:58:32.340 And some people take that as an excuse to then dismiss these lines as a mockery or a parody of their throughstress own thought. 00:58:32.340 --> 00:58:43.340 But I find like you to the contrary that the animals speak the truth and the animals, well, let's first note, they're talking animals. 00:58:43.340 --> 00:58:46.340 That's a little strange to begin with. 00:58:46.340 --> 00:58:53.340 Eagles and what lions, all these figures, these animals in the book don't normally talk. 00:58:53.340 --> 00:58:58.340 And so here you have the animal body with intellect. 00:58:58.340 --> 00:59:08.340 So there's a re embrace of the two sides in these animals and that is what he's calling for now on the part of the human as well. 00:59:08.340 --> 00:59:17.340 I would say that the human re embrace their animal side as these animals have embraced their intellectual side intelligence side. 00:59:17.340 --> 00:59:24.340 The book itself ends quite strangely with their throughstress being surrounded by by doves. 00:59:24.340 --> 00:59:29.340 It's almost like Garcia Marcus or something with all these doves that come floating around him. 00:59:29.340 --> 00:59:33.340 He's surrounded by him. He can't see as his eyes closed, I believe. 00:59:33.340 --> 00:59:38.340 And he puts his hands down and suddenly he has his hands in the thick main of a lion. 00:59:38.340 --> 00:59:45.340 And there's this lion snuggling up with him as well and he's just surrounded by all these all these animals. 00:59:45.340 --> 00:59:59.340 Yeah, and I began by talking about the alphabet of the ultimate and the difference between the last and the final or the ultimate. 00:59:59.340 --> 01:00:04.340 And it's true that another aspect of zeroes that we haven't had time to talk about. 01:00:04.340 --> 01:00:12.340 We'll do on another occasion as this whole thing about the last man or these last men who are contemporary bourgeois, western things. 01:00:12.340 --> 01:00:18.340 And the overman is the man who comes after the last man. 01:00:18.340 --> 01:00:24.340 But in order to bring our hour to a conclusion, Andrew, what would you say? 01:00:24.340 --> 01:00:28.340 It's been over a hundred years since he wrote Sarah throughstress. 01:00:28.340 --> 01:00:32.340 Almost, I guess we're just about a hundred years. 01:00:32.340 --> 01:00:38.340 And do you think we're still in the regime of the last man? 01:00:38.340 --> 01:00:41.340 Would Nietzsche have thought that we're in the regime of the last man still today? 01:00:41.340 --> 01:00:46.340 Yeah, well, we'll never be out of it. I mean, it's impossible to escape it. 01:00:46.340 --> 01:00:50.340 The last man is utter complacency with the conditions as they are. 01:00:50.340 --> 01:00:53.340 All the last men want to do is have an untroubled sleep. 01:00:53.340 --> 01:01:05.340 And so whatever narcotic, whatever lie, has to be embraced to let the last man sleep untroubled will be adopted and defended at all costs. 01:01:05.340 --> 01:01:16.340 The last man is bourgeois society, is complacency, is existance as preservation. 01:01:16.340 --> 01:01:27.340 It's a total acceptance and satisfaction with your place in life and the attempt to preserve that and defend that at all costs. 01:01:27.340 --> 01:01:37.340 Which also thinks that Darwin advocates preservation of the species as his guiding idea in thinking of nature and Nietzsche finds that repugnant. 01:01:37.340 --> 01:01:45.340 Because preservation, the goal of the last man, Darwin's whole trajectory is death for him. 01:01:45.340 --> 01:01:50.340 Life instead is not preservation, but growth, overstepping, transgression. 01:01:50.340 --> 01:01:53.340 All of these have to be encouraged, risk-taking. 01:01:53.340 --> 01:01:56.340 This is what it means to take a risk. It's too grow. 01:01:56.340 --> 01:02:03.340 If you don't challenge yourself, if you don't live dangerously, then you don't experiment, you don't encounter anything new. 01:02:03.340 --> 01:02:06.340 And not all experiments can be a success. 01:02:06.340 --> 01:02:08.340 If they were, they wouldn't be experiments. 01:02:08.340 --> 01:02:16.340 Experiment means failure and living with failure and incorporating failure, not having to win all the time. 01:02:16.340 --> 01:02:20.340 And that's what the last man fears most. 01:02:20.340 --> 01:02:21.340 Failure change. 01:02:21.340 --> 01:02:23.340 Anything that will disrupt the satisfaction. 01:02:23.340 --> 01:02:25.340 They're happy with what they have. 01:02:25.340 --> 01:02:26.340 That's death. 01:02:26.340 --> 01:02:27.340 They're dying. 01:02:27.340 --> 01:02:30.340 Well, let's hope that's not the end of the story. 01:02:30.340 --> 01:02:31.340 For all of us. 01:02:31.340 --> 01:02:33.340 We can be overmen. 01:02:33.340 --> 01:02:35.340 Thanks a lot, Andrew, for coming on. 01:02:35.340 --> 01:02:41.340 We've been speaking with Professor Andrew Mitchell from the University of Emory about Frederick Nietzsche. 01:02:41.340 --> 01:02:43.340 I'm Robert Harrison for entitled opinions. 01:02:43.340 --> 01:02:44.340 Please tune in next week. 01:02:44.340 --> 01:02:46.340 We'll be with you again. 01:02:46.340 --> 01:02:47.340 Bye-bye. 01:02:47.340 --> 01:02:49.340 [Music] 01:02:49.340 --> 01:02:54.340 ♪ (upbeat music) 01:02:54.340 --> 01:02:59.340 ♪ ♪ 01:02:59.340 --> 01:03:04.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:04.340 --> 01:03:09.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:09.340 --> 01:03:14.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:14.340 --> 01:03:19.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:19.340 --> 01:03:24.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:24.340 --> 01:03:29.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:29.340 --> 01:03:34.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:34.340 --> 01:03:39.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:39.340 --> 01:03:44.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:44.340 --> 01:03:49.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:49.340 --> 01:03:54.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:54.340 --> 01:03:59.340 ♪ ♪ 01:03:59.340 --> 01:04:04.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:04.340 --> 01:04:09.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:09.340 --> 01:04:14.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:14.340 --> 01:04:19.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:19.340 --> 01:04:24.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:24.340 --> 01:04:29.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:29.340 --> 01:04:34.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:34.340 --> 01:04:39.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:39.340 --> 01:04:44.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:44.340 --> 01:04:49.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:49.340 --> 01:04:54.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:54.340 --> 01:04:59.340 ♪ ♪ 01:04:59.340 --> 01:05:04.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:04.340 --> 01:05:09.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:09.340 --> 01:05:14.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:14.340 --> 01:05:19.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:19.340 --> 01:05:24.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:24.340 --> 01:05:29.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:29.340 --> 01:05:34.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:34.340 --> 01:05:39.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:39.340 --> 01:05:44.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:44.340 --> 01:05:49.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:49.340 --> 01:05:54.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:54.340 --> 01:05:59.340 ♪ ♪ 01:05:59.340 --> 01:06:04.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:04.340 --> 01:06:09.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:09.340 --> 01:06:14.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:14.340 --> 01:06:19.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:19.340 --> 01:06:24.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:24.340 --> 01:06:29.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:29.340 --> 01:06:34.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:34.340 --> 01:06:39.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:39.340 --> 01:06:44.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:44.340 --> 01:06:49.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:49.340 --> 01:06:54.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:54.340 --> 01:06:59.340 ♪ ♪ 01:06:59.340 --> 01:07:04.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:04.340 --> 01:07:09.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:09.340 --> 01:07:14.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:14.340 --> 01:07:19.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:19.340 --> 01:07:23.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:23.340 --> 01:07:29.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:29.340 --> 01:07:34.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:34.340 --> 01:07:39.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:39.340 --> 01:07:44.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:44.340 --> 01:07:49.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:49.340 --> 01:07:54.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:54.340 --> 01:07:59.340 ♪ ♪ 01:07:59.340 --> 01:08:04.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:04.340 --> 01:08:09.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:09.340 --> 01:08:14.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:14.340 --> 01:08:19.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:19.340 --> 01:08:24.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:24.340 --> 01:08:29.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:29.340 --> 01:08:34.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:34.340 --> 01:08:39.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:39.340 --> 01:08:44.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:44.340 --> 01:08:49.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:49.340 --> 01:08:54.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:54.340 --> 01:08:59.340 ♪ ♪ 01:08:59.340 --> 01:09:04.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:04.340 --> 01:09:09.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:09.340 --> 01:09:14.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:14.340 --> 01:09:19.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:19.340 --> 01:09:24.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:24.340 --> 01:09:29.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:29.340 --> 01:09:34.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:34.340 --> 01:09:39.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:39.340 --> 01:09:44.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:44.340 --> 01:09:49.340 ♪ ♪ 01:09:49.340 --> 01:09:53.480 [Music]