RadixJournal - Bowden! - 2 - The Uses and Abuses of Nietzsche

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Vanguard, a podcast of radical traditionalism.

00:00:24.480 Here's your host, Richard Spencer.

00:00:28.380 Hello, everyone.

00:00:30.000 It's a pleasure to welcome back to the program, Jonathan Bowden.

00:00:34.880 Jonathan is a Renaissance man in our movement.

00:00:38.840 He is a political and cultural commentator, a novelist, a painter, and an orator.

00:00:45.520 And if you'd like to find out more about Jonathan, you can visit his personal website,

00:00:50.620 which is jonathanbowden.co.uk.

00:00:56.580 So, Jonathan, welcome back.

00:00:58.080 Yes, hello. Nice to be back.

00:01:01.320 Well, I hope you had a joyful Yuletide and Christmas and New Year's holiday.

00:01:08.760 Yes, it was good, but you can't but not want to pick up the reins again.

00:01:13.760 Oh, that's true.

00:01:15.720 That's true.

00:01:16.780 Well, today we're going to talk about a thinker of immense importance for our movement and the world,

00:01:24.540 and that is Friedrich Nietzsche.

00:01:27.680 In the allotted amount of time, there's no possible way to cover all of the ground of Nietzsche's thought.

00:01:34.800 However, I thought a good place to start for our purposes would be with the contemporary consciousness of Nietzsche.

00:01:45.360 That is, what do people think of him today, educated people, maybe even average people,

00:01:51.240 and how is that idea of him false and so on and so forth.

00:01:55.140 But I think that's a good place to start, and then we could maybe go a little deeper later on in the interview

00:02:00.340 and get at the core of Nietzsche's thought and spirit.

00:02:03.700 But just to set everything up, it's worth mentioning that Nietzsche is certainly a famous and infamous,

00:02:13.840 greatly admired, also kind of notorious philosopher.

00:02:17.040 He's also one of the precious few philosophers that an average American would have heard of,

00:02:24.780 and I think it's probably the same in the U.K. and maybe a little bit different on the continent.

00:02:30.140 But they've probably heard of Plato and Aristotle, maybe Descartes, but they've also heard of Nietzsche,

00:02:37.220 and they know him mostly through his maxim of God is dead, which, of course, might inspire some and infuriate others.

00:02:49.380 But also, there's an interesting point that Jonathan actually mentioned off-air,

00:02:53.980 and that is that he's one of the only philosophers whom one could call a radical traditionalist

00:03:03.200 or an archaeo-futurist or someone connected to the new right,

00:03:08.420 who is actually taught and indeed embraced in the leftist academy.

00:03:15.200 So people like Spangler or, for an example, Lothrop Stoddard or some of these interesting figures

00:03:24.020 whose spirits are certainly akin to Nietzsche's are dismissed or ignored or ridiculed, so on and so forth.

00:03:33.320 However, Nietzsche is someone who is embraced by the leftist academics

00:03:39.280 as a kind of brother of Foucault and Descartes and so on and so forth.

00:03:45.380 So after I've set the table there, Jonathan, why don't you talk just a little bit about Nietzsche today?

00:03:53.600 What does he mean for the average person?

00:03:57.400 What does he mean for an educated person who's gone through a Nietzsche course at his university?

00:04:05.060 Yes, I think those are two very radically different things.

00:04:10.620 I think, to turn it around slightly and begin with the educated echelon first,

00:04:17.000 there's a Nietzsche that survives today, which is in some ways a misreading of his actual text,

00:04:22.900 although because his own texts are so multiple and binary, piled upon binary rhythm,

00:04:28.840 that you have a sort of concatenation of viewpoints and philosophical tendencies,

00:04:35.100 which makes it very difficult to grasp him and to present him in a whole or holistic manner.

00:04:42.060 But nevertheless, there is a left-wing Nietzsche which is around today,

00:04:45.820 and this celebrates his tearing down, the fact that he tore down the curtain of Christianity,

00:04:50.960 that he's not a metaphysical traditionalist at the level of pure philosophy in certain respects.

00:05:00.320 The way into a left-wing interpretation of Nietzsche, as in Deleuze and Guattari's book,

00:05:05.820 Nietzsche, which is a sort of hymn to a left-wing version, a left-wing shadow version of him,

00:05:11.420 is to concentrate on epistemology, which is thinking about thinking.

00:05:15.920 Because you could argue that Nietzsche's a radical subjectivist at one level,

00:05:21.760 and also that he doesn't believe that there are totally objective standards,

00:05:26.600 cosmic standards outside time, history, place, and circumstance.

00:05:32.160 This renders him a relativist by some accounts,

00:05:35.880 and he can then be used to engage in exercises of moral relativism,

00:05:41.020 particularly in relation to traditional religiosity.

00:05:43.700 All of this, in Deleuze and Guattari's version, is filtered into discourse against Christianity.

00:05:51.580 That's one of their primary goals.

00:05:53.860 It's almost as if Christianity hasn't been kicked enough. 0.98

00:05:57.460 But of course, in North America, Christianity is very powerful in a way that is not the case in Europe.

00:06:06.680 It's certainly not in Western Europe.

00:06:08.220 In Western and Northern Europe, it's a bit sacrilegious in a strange sort of way.

00:06:13.060 It's a bit like kicking a corpse.

00:06:14.760 It's regarded as unfair or sort of slightly sort of kicking a man when he's down on the ground in a field game.

00:06:23.660 And in Western Europe, there is this view of Nietzsche that he's one of the great destructive philosophers,

00:06:32.000 that he bulldozes an enormous amount of prior,

00:06:34.500 by which they mean traditional or archaic or hierarchical or conservative ground.

00:06:40.840 And this prepares the way for a new sunny upland and a new beginning post-Christianity. 0.97

00:06:47.420 And so this is one of the many ways in which he's interpreted now.

00:06:51.280 He's seen also in the light of contemporary literary theory,

00:06:54.980 which is very fashionable in the Western Academy and has been for the last 40 years.

00:06:59.320 There is a theory called post-structuralism and the later version of the same thing called deconstruction,

00:07:06.080 whereby manuscripts and texts are taken apart in a new sort of new left scholasticism,

00:07:12.840 drawing on quite a lot of the thinking of the Middle Ages about language in a strange sort of way.

00:07:17.120 And the text is then considered to be independent of its own author and to be a thing in its own right

00:07:24.540 and to be studied in a deep way, which brings to forth all of its manifold contradictions

00:07:29.480 to such a degree that no one can affirm anything.

00:07:32.800 And this is related to Nietzsche's force-filled way of writing,

00:07:37.880 whereby one point will lead to another, which often overturns it,

00:07:41.440 and then he flips back upon himself.

00:07:43.260 And although there are constant returning themes,

00:07:47.720 it's sometimes difficult for some people to grasp what he's actually trying to say,

00:07:52.320 because his method is always one of attack rather than defence,

00:07:55.980 attack being the best form of defence, if you like.

00:07:58.620 So there is this left-wing interpretation of Nietzsche,

00:08:01.120 which has gained quite a lot of ground and has provided a shield to many critics in the centre and on the left.

00:08:07.980 He would point to Nietzsche's unswerving political incorrectness in all sorts of areas.

00:08:13.880 His hostility to feminism, his hostility to human equality,

00:08:18.940 his advocacy of human inequality of quite a radical type,

00:08:23.040 the suspicion that he entertains certain racial or national views which are sublimated.

00:08:30.240 In other words, he's not a German nationalist, but he's a European one, and so on,

00:08:34.560 which never quite leaves the liberal zeitgeist and always means there's a smell around him of some sort or another.

00:08:40.800 His hostility to democracy, which is one of the most scandalous aspects of his thought,

00:08:46.700 and which is largely overlooked.

00:08:49.000 It's just he's considered to be a creature of his time.

00:08:51.740 The aristocratic attitudes of the late 19th century were anti-democratic,

00:08:55.580 and he's parceled up historically in that way.

00:08:58.480 That's because people who wish to preserve him for other reasons overlook tendencies in his thought,

00:09:04.200 which they wouldn't overlook otherwise.

00:09:06.220 So, first of all, there's this left and centre-left interpretation of him,

00:09:10.360 which is a reinterpretation.

00:09:12.500 It's a form of cultural revisionism, actually,

00:09:14.900 although none of the people involved in it ever say so.

00:09:17.500 Now, I might just add real quickly that there certainly is a kernel of truth or a basis for this interpretation

00:09:25.420 in the sense that Nietzsche did want to deconstruct, if you will, the worldview and the epistemology

00:09:33.680 and a lot of prior thinking.

00:09:37.020 And he would say things like there's no one objective standard.

00:09:40.520 It's always perspectives around an object and so on and so forth.

00:09:44.600 So, obviously, there is a basis for that,

00:09:47.440 but I guess they want to hold on to that aspect of him that you can find in maybe some works,

00:09:55.760 in the genealogy of morals and maybe even earlier works,

00:09:58.060 but then they want to totally disregard the radical, aristocratic nature of his thought.

00:10:06.160 That's right.

00:10:07.820 It's a la carte.

00:10:09.000 It's a smorgasbord where you take the bits you like and object or silence.

00:10:13.040 Or refuse to comment on the bits that you detest or don't otherwise care for.

00:10:19.680 I think that interpretation only goes so far, though,

00:10:24.060 because although he tore down for half his career up until about, like, Zarathustra,

00:10:30.220 most of his philosophical writing is aphorol, destructive.

00:10:33.820 After that, he constructs.

00:10:37.220 He's very unusual in that he's a very constructive philosopher once you get past the wreckage

00:10:41.920 of what he considered to be late 19th century civilization and its antecedents.

00:10:47.500 So then you have the constructive nature where he basically puts a whole new Western philosophy

00:10:51.860 or ideology or semi-metaphysic in place, which is his own teachings, really.

00:10:58.960 His own quasi-Bible, thus spake Zarathustra, which is a sort of combination of the Psalms

00:11:05.560 and the 1611 authorized version of the Bible.

00:11:08.140 The King James Bible totally reworked in his own language and in his own meta-ethic

00:11:13.960 and using his own style, but is meant in some ways to be a sort of heretical holy book,

00:11:19.540 whereby the new philosophy, the philosophy of the Superman and of the future will be laid out.

00:11:25.420 And with that, there are sort of other, Corolli's other runners,

00:11:29.700 like on the genealogy of morals, which, although it appears to be a speculative

00:11:34.300 and relativist work up to a point, is really a desire to return to the morality of the ancient world,

00:11:40.500 to return to the morality of the pre-Christian world, 0.99

00:11:43.800 and a sort of aristocratic attitude or logos that was contemporaneous with that.

00:11:49.320 So he constructs as much as he destroys, which is rather unusual,

00:11:53.580 because most contemporary philosophy only pulls down or pulls apart

00:11:58.680 prior to the prospect of just reconfiguring it as a part of that gesture.

00:12:02.980 But it doesn't really construct anything.

00:12:05.060 There are a few great constructions in philosophy today.

00:12:07.780 In fact, there are hardly any. Structuralism is just analysing through various means what exists.

00:12:14.580 It's rather a passive version of what the contemporary media says it does,

00:12:18.300 which is just to reflect society rather than the 60s idea that there was any intention to change it.

00:12:24.040 That's tendentious in the case of the media.

00:12:26.740 But in Nietzsche's case, there's a total new philosophy which is pushed out and made to do service.

00:12:32.760 And on the whole, that's dealt with in a slightly embarrassed silence

00:12:37.660 by all of his left-wing post-structural and deconstructionist champions.

00:12:42.420 They leave that on one side.

00:12:44.360 I think as to the common man's view of Nietzsche,

00:12:47.260 he's thought of as the great philosopher of atheism and of 20th century existentialism,

00:12:53.440 whereby a man is cast in an anxious guise, waiting for death,

00:12:58.120 and not knowing whether there are any ultimate truths or not.

00:13:01.180 I think in relation to the sort of common person who's heard some intellectual talk but no more,

00:13:07.780 possibly through the higher end of the television and radio type of media

00:13:11.960 and a few things that they partook, if not at college, then at high school

00:13:16.900 or the equivalent in Western Europe,

00:13:20.120 they would look upon Nietzsche as somebody who was the great coping stone of 19th century doubt

00:13:27.580 and scepticism about prior religious truths and possibly came up with some alternative truths of his own.

00:13:34.540 But in some ways, they would consider him to be an existential philosopher,

00:13:38.420 which is very much how he was packaged in the 1950s and 60s,

00:13:41.900 when prior to post-structuralism and deconstruction,

00:13:44.840 existentialism, which is one of the intellectual vogue of the last century,

00:13:48.600 and which is not a purely Marxian vogue at all, actually.

00:13:52.020 It contains strong elements of it, which are religious in origin,

00:13:56.000 looked in Nietzsche as one of its founding gods, you know,

00:14:00.340 from its founding anti-gods.

00:14:01.860 And it's the sort of, the person who's slightly skim-read an Albert Camus novel,

00:14:08.420 the person who's vaguely aware of the currents that run into intellectual atheism,

00:14:15.020 I think those are the ways in which he's perceived in a common way,

00:14:20.220 and also in a stereotypical way,

00:14:22.780 as a philosopher who's some way linked up with German National Socialism or Nazism,

00:14:28.340 and as somehow, in a complicated way, a philosopher who goes with that,

00:14:34.060 and yet at the same time repudiates it one and the other,

00:14:37.260 so he retains a certain negative demonic cachet by virtue of the affiliation,

00:14:42.620 and yet at the same time isn't regarded by elite opinion

00:14:46.520 as in any sense a philosopher of National Socialism.

00:14:50.380 So I think that melange, a sort of sinister figure,

00:14:55.900 who yet is the surviving one of the triumvirate, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche,

00:15:02.780 these three big thinkers who come out of the 19th century,

00:15:06.580 early 20th century in Freud's case, as well,

00:15:10.900 and yet Nietzsche's the only one left standing.

00:15:14.760 That's quite true.

00:15:17.220 Let's actually put a little pressure on what you were talking about before

00:15:21.320 in terms of Nietzsche's construction of a new philosophy,

00:15:25.520 and I want to talk specifically about morality.

00:15:29.380 And I think this also touches on another important point that you brought up,

00:15:34.000 which is that you can find plenty of lines in Nietzsche

00:15:39.060 in which he repudiates German nationalism. 0.99

00:15:41.200 He thinks it's stupid and for beer drinkers and so on and so forth, 0.99

00:15:45.320 but then there's no, anyone who's read him, 0.99

00:15:49.320 who's really experienced him and not just an interpretation of him,

00:15:52.700 knows that there is this almost demonic or radical traditionalist,

00:15:57.420 right-wing in a crude manner spirit to Nietzsche.

00:16:02.760 Aristocratic radicalism is one of the terms that I like.

00:16:06.600 And maybe you could talk a little bit about that in terms of morality,

00:16:12.420 because in the genealogy of morality,

00:16:14.540 which the genealogy of morals, on the genealogy of morals,

00:16:18.100 one of his, certainly his best works.

00:16:20.080 And I remember reading it for the first time when I was a young person.

00:16:24.120 I was probably around 20 years old.

00:16:26.100 And his differentiation between the ancient world's good and bad

00:16:31.340 and the Christian world's good and evil, to use a colloquial phrase, 0.96

00:16:39.480 it kind of blew my mind.

00:16:40.920 It really made me reconsider a lot of some of the most basic precepts

00:16:48.120 of my own worldview.

00:16:50.860 And maybe you could talk a little bit about that,

00:16:52.280 because I think it brings all these threads together

00:16:56.180 in terms of someone who is both deconstructive,

00:16:59.920 someone who's willing to pull the rug out

00:17:02.540 from under the post-Christian worldview of his time,

00:17:06.880 but then also someone who's trying to revive

00:17:10.240 and reinvent an older morality.

00:17:15.700 Yes, that's right.

00:17:17.960 I think probably in terms of morals and ethics,

00:17:21.320 that part of philosophy that deals with them.

00:17:24.340 He's one of the most revolutionary thinkers

00:17:26.320 of the last two, three, four, 500 years.

00:17:28.960 And in some respects, his views on morality

00:17:31.900 have not been totally taken on board,

00:17:34.040 because they can't be in a liberal, democratic, humanist,

00:17:37.340 and egalitarian age.

00:17:39.180 His views on morality are regarded as interesting,

00:17:41.800 academically, in inverted commas.

00:17:43.940 But that's because they must be kept,

00:17:45.800 rather like a germ or some sort of antibody,

00:17:48.980 locked up in the laboratory.

00:17:51.260 Normally, he's an anti-humanist,

00:17:53.740 and he's an inverse Christian,

00:17:57.120 and he's a pagan with a small p, maybe,

00:18:00.100 of a very extreme sort.

00:18:02.680 And he wishes to return in a starlized way

00:18:06.100 via the renaissance of the Borgias

00:18:08.680 to the morality of what he perceives

00:18:11.660 as the aristocracy or the ruling classes

00:18:14.520 of the ancient world.

00:18:15.960 And he wishes to miss out completely

00:18:18.120 the morality that Christianity put in place, 0.97

00:18:20.980 and which is considered,

00:18:21.980 even by many people who've repudiated Christianity,

00:18:24.720 to be the basis for human morality.

00:18:27.420 In the course of doing that,

00:18:28.660 he repudiates a significant proportion,

00:18:31.640 but not all, of Jewish morality,

00:18:33.900 humanist and not-so-humanist at all,

00:18:36.740 and also Islamic morality as well.

00:18:39.080 So, in a way,

00:18:41.000 the three great moral sort of lexicons

00:18:45.520 of the Abramaical tradition

00:18:47.820 are repudiated in one full swoop,

00:18:51.360 and you have a return

00:18:52.720 to, put very crudely,

00:18:55.540 to go back to the idea of the commoners

00:18:57.240 against the more elite reader,

00:18:59.240 a mighty's right philosophy.

00:19:01.020 But that's a very crude way of looking at it,

00:19:03.080 because the mighty's right doctrine

00:19:04.580 as epitomized by social Darwinian texts

00:19:07.540 like Ragnar Redbeard's of that name and so on,

00:19:10.320 is the lowest level of moral reality

00:19:13.100 as far as Nietzsche's concerned,

00:19:15.100 that of sheer domination

00:19:16.340 and what has been called by some

00:19:18.400 the morality of the Doss House,

00:19:19.820 of each against all,

00:19:21.360 and morality is the laughter of the strongest man.

00:19:24.020 That, in a crude sense,

00:19:25.800 certainly in a crude anti-Nietzschean

00:19:27.920 left-wing sense,

00:19:29.460 is what Nietzsche's moral discourse amounts to.

00:19:32.080 But that's the lowest form of morality

00:19:34.340 as he advocates it,

00:19:36.100 but also as he believes it exists biologically

00:19:38.320 and in nature.

00:19:39.780 What happens is that more advanced forms

00:19:41.940 like human beings sublimate these things

00:19:44.560 and they self-over-become them,

00:19:46.960 so that what is crude and violent and sterile

00:19:49.720 and sort of semi-criminal,

00:19:51.820 as it could be configured at one level,

00:19:54.320 is cast adrift

00:19:55.420 and becomes something more noble

00:19:57.320 as it's hierarchicalized and spiritualized

00:20:00.320 and as it's taken up

00:20:01.840 from its more crudely lethal

00:20:04.580 and sort of each-against-all

00:20:07.820 and Hobbesian sort of points of departure.

00:20:10.860 Now, when he considers an aristocratic morality,

00:20:15.840 he does so against almost all the currents

00:20:18.120 that were then bubbling away

00:20:19.460 at the end of the 19th century

00:20:20.780 and would become dominant and hegemonic

00:20:23.300 in the 20th century.

00:20:24.380 And yet, he survived having done this

00:20:27.400 because usually somebody is condemned

00:20:29.300 by their morality.

00:20:31.460 And I think it's because he did,

00:20:33.540 he cast his morality

00:20:34.840 not in terms of a return to barbarism,

00:20:38.680 but in a return to the ancient world

00:20:40.820 which contained a barbaric sliver

00:20:43.020 far greater than the modern

00:20:45.140 or the medieval one.

00:20:46.920 The paradox is, of course,

00:20:48.160 much early modern life,

00:20:49.840 much modern life,

00:20:50.840 and all of medieval life

00:20:52.300 would run exactly along

00:20:54.000 Nietzschean lines of moral constraints

00:20:56.660 or the absence of such constraints.

00:20:59.340 It's a Christian myth, of course, 1.00

00:21:01.440 that the Christian centuries

00:21:02.640 are in accordance with Christian morality.

00:21:05.460 As all deeply moral Christians know,

00:21:08.220 Christian morality is so hard to live, 0.99

00:21:10.480 it's almost an impossible standard

00:21:12.400 to which humans have to aspire

00:21:15.280 and only one man could ever reach it

00:21:18.060 and he wasn't a man anyway

00:21:19.360 in the course of that theology.

00:21:22.380 So Nietzsche's morals

00:21:24.140 are probably the most revolutionary part

00:21:27.100 of his entire discourse.

00:21:29.720 I think what's happened

00:21:31.940 is that because he's perceived

00:21:33.320 as a relativist in some ways,

00:21:35.640 you can adopt a relativistic standpoint

00:21:37.540 about his morals

00:21:38.660 and say, oh, well, that's his view

00:21:41.320 and he's got these aristocratic

00:21:43.180 and particularist attitudes

00:21:44.520 and he wants to go back

00:21:46.560 and he doesn't understand the progress

00:21:48.400 that we've made in the moral area

00:21:50.240 and you can therefore take his epistemology

00:21:53.240 and you can take his critique of modernity

00:21:55.800 and you can take his critique of decadence

00:21:58.560 and you can take his critique of German nationalism

00:22:01.420 and you can take his lauding of Wagner

00:22:05.480 and his extreme critique of Wagnerism

00:22:07.700 and you can take all the bits that you want

00:22:10.120 and relativize the morality out

00:22:12.500 but morally, his view is hierarchical

00:22:16.060 rather than either or.

00:22:19.040 Jewish, Christian and Islamic moralities

00:22:21.340 tend to be either or, 0.96

00:22:22.680 good or evil or a synonym for evil

00:22:26.460 whereas his morality is hierarchical.

00:22:29.560 It depends what's being done to somebody

00:22:32.020 and why it's being done

00:22:33.780 and it depends on who they are

00:22:35.820 and it depends upon the levering of suffering

00:22:39.240 which is engendered

00:22:40.480 and it depends whether they were born

00:22:42.320 for a higher level of suffering or not

00:22:44.520 because life isn't equal

00:22:46.160 and suffering is a part of life.

00:22:48.440 You can't have a birth of a child

00:22:49.820 without intense suffering on the mother's behalf

00:22:52.020 and therefore his attitude towards morality

00:22:54.360 is partly less pre-configured,

00:22:58.940 less a priori,

00:22:59.900 less sentimental,

00:23:01.400 less humane,

00:23:02.380 more aesthetic.

00:23:03.860 It's an aesthetic morality

00:23:05.300 as much as anything else

00:23:06.780 and that's deeply shocking.

00:23:09.420 It's still even deeply shocking today.

00:23:12.400 There's also elements of it

00:23:14.140 which confound conservatism as perceived

00:23:17.880 and go outside of conservatism.

00:23:20.200 I'm thinking particularly of the chapter

00:23:22.340 about the pale criminal

00:23:23.800 in Vespae Zarathustra

00:23:25.660 when Nietzsche says

00:23:27.120 the criminal in the dark

00:23:28.440 who looks pale and aesthetic

00:23:29.800 and who is a fanatic 0.97

00:23:31.080 and in some ways a moral retard 0.98

00:23:33.260 and about who everyone adopts

00:23:35.840 a moralising attitude. 1.00

00:23:38.100 He should very possibly be hanged 1.00

00:23:42.580 or done away with 1.00

00:23:43.700 or whatever the form of execution

00:23:46.540 would have been in the gym

00:23:47.780 and in his time.

00:23:49.140 But at the same time,

00:23:51.040 don't make such a moral fuss about it.

00:23:53.640 Don't compute that he's a different species to you,

00:23:57.320 that he's a desperate individual

00:23:58.980 who committed a desperate act

00:24:00.300 in a particular time

00:24:01.480 that had its own form

00:24:02.980 of vainglorious courage

00:24:04.560 but which is antisocial

00:24:06.000 to the degree it can't be tolerated

00:24:07.900 if humans are to live together.

00:24:09.600 So that comes quite close

00:24:13.080 to a relativistic excuse

00:24:16.640 for certain fines of vicious criminality

00:24:18.780 that you often hear on the new left

00:24:20.980 more on the new right.

00:24:23.840 And at the same time,

00:24:24.680 it immediately snaps back

00:24:25.960 into the fact that

00:24:26.860 by carrying out those actions,

00:24:31.520 the individual has opened himself up

00:24:33.600 to a ferocious retribution

00:24:35.960 by the state

00:24:36.680 and its authoritarian power.

00:24:38.880 And he sees nothing wrong with that

00:24:40.360 because that's how things have always been.

00:24:43.280 Right.

00:24:43.500 You know,

00:24:43.740 there are two important points

00:24:45.480 that come to mind.

00:24:46.820 The first one is that

00:24:48.100 there's a continuity

00:24:49.740 with what you're saying

00:24:51.020 with Nietzsche's first book

00:24:52.860 from 1872,

00:24:54.760 The Birth of Tragedy,

00:24:55.780 and that is the dialectic

00:24:57.600 he establishes

00:24:58.500 between the Dionysian

00:25:00.200 and the Apollonian worldview.

00:25:02.600 And in many ways,

00:25:03.760 the Dionysian is,

00:25:05.540 could be thought of

00:25:06.200 as drunkenness in some sense,

00:25:08.080 but it's pure frenzy

00:25:09.920 and it's maybe even

00:25:11.080 the darkest possible concept of life,

00:25:14.560 of, you know,

00:25:14.920 life is not,

00:25:15.680 it's better that you were not born.

00:25:17.340 Life is suffering

00:25:18.940 and, you know,

00:25:20.280 unadulterated emotion

00:25:21.780 and so on and so forth.

00:25:23.160 Maybe even sexual frenzy 0.85

00:25:24.660 can be added in there. 0.62

00:25:25.900 And then there's

00:25:26.400 the Apollonian worldview,

00:25:27.840 which is one

00:25:29.320 which he associates

00:25:30.220 with sculpture

00:25:30.820 and that is the,

00:25:33.500 you know,

00:25:33.900 it certainly involves

00:25:34.640 things like the state

00:25:35.560 and the artist,

00:25:36.180 but it's a way

00:25:37.480 to give life

00:25:38.720 an order

00:25:39.900 and a meaning.

00:25:42.120 And, you know,

00:25:42.680 and I think, you know,

00:25:43.500 to go back to your,

00:25:44.560 to his image

00:25:45.560 of the criminal,

00:25:47.180 I think they both work together

00:25:49.720 in the sense that,

00:25:50.880 you know,

00:25:52.280 even the great artist

00:25:54.200 who is, you know,

00:25:55.920 admired

00:25:56.680 and does life-affirming

00:25:58.920 and works of art

00:26:00.900 like that,

00:26:01.440 he has to have

00:26:02.240 a little bit of that

00:26:03.180 frenzy underneath it

00:26:05.700 that he can contain

00:26:06.940 and maybe even channel

00:26:09.060 into more productive aspects.

00:26:11.600 But he's not fundamentally

00:26:13.180 different than

00:26:14.220 the cruder criminal

00:26:16.140 who's kind of,

00:26:17.640 you know,

00:26:18.480 who lacks that Apollonian

00:26:20.340 component to his soul

00:26:22.680 to channel

00:26:24.080 those dark forces.

00:26:25.100 Yes, that's quite true.

00:26:27.840 And he doesn't see

00:26:29.220 life compartmentalised

00:26:31.640 in that sense.

00:26:32.820 He sees binary

00:26:33.760 and other than binary

00:26:35.340 oppositions in life

00:26:36.560 which go together.

00:26:38.120 Right.

00:26:38.340 Because, of course,

00:26:38.940 he does correlate

00:26:40.420 to Freud and Marx

00:26:41.740 in certain respects.

00:26:43.340 Not many,

00:26:44.360 but one of them

00:26:45.140 is the resolution

00:26:46.700 of the tension

00:26:47.620 between opposites.

00:26:48.840 Mm-hmm.

00:26:49.140 For him, opposites

00:26:50.060 are necessary

00:26:50.780 or things which are

00:26:52.200 in partial opposition

00:26:53.140 to each other

00:26:53.840 synthesised and fused

00:26:55.260 together to give

00:26:56.080 new forms of meaning

00:26:57.140 and to open up

00:26:58.460 the prospect of a reversal,

00:27:00.960 a reversal which will be

00:27:02.280 a transvaluation

00:27:02.940 of all values

00:27:04.100 and which will be

00:27:05.520 moral, aesthetic,

00:27:07.500 legal, civic,

00:27:09.320 political,

00:27:10.600 structural,

00:27:11.880 linguistic,

00:27:12.960 musical,

00:27:14.380 and all sorts

00:27:15.060 of other things.

00:27:15.860 And in the sort of dualism

00:27:20.140 between the classical urge,

00:27:23.000 the urge to classicise,

00:27:24.680 the Apollonian urge

00:27:25.860 from the birth of tragedy,

00:27:27.700 and the Dionysian urge,

00:27:29.600 which is the undercurrent

00:27:30.740 of tragedy

00:27:31.320 in all forms of life,

00:27:32.920 other things can be cut,

00:27:34.860 whether they're crude,

00:27:36.000 like the gibbering

00:27:36.740 of a criminal in the dock

00:27:37.940 and the plaintiff excuses

00:27:39.560 of his barrister,

00:27:40.840 or whether they're

00:27:41.560 much more exalted,

00:27:42.660 the man who lies

00:27:43.780 on his back

00:27:44.980 to paint

00:27:45.900 in the lead

00:27:46.720 that's dripping down

00:27:47.560 on him

00:27:47.900 the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

00:27:49.540 The one and the other

00:27:50.780 are connected

00:27:51.580 because there has to be

00:27:53.040 a fire in the belly

00:27:54.020 to do something

00:27:55.300 like the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

00:27:57.740 And although it's hardly

00:27:58.880 dared to be associated

00:28:02.820 with something

00:28:03.560 like criminality,

00:28:04.980 there is a semblance

00:28:06.980 of uniformity

00:28:07.980 in the passions

00:28:08.740 out of which

00:28:09.780 all of these things stem.

00:28:11.660 It's the level

00:28:12.260 of sublimation,

00:28:13.060 it's the level

00:28:13.620 to which things

00:28:14.220 are hierarchicalised,

00:28:15.720 it's the level

00:28:16.180 to which they're

00:28:16.700 taken away

00:28:17.620 from the sort

00:28:18.720 of sulfurous origins

00:28:20.700 that they all share.

00:28:22.180 That's the key point.

00:28:23.660 This is why morality

00:28:24.620 is a matter of distancing.

00:28:26.680 It's a matter

00:28:27.440 of the pathos

00:28:28.160 of difference

00:28:28.700 between one form

00:28:29.640 and another,

00:28:30.520 between one action

00:28:31.360 and another,

00:28:32.280 between one man

00:28:33.100 and another.

00:28:34.220 And morality

00:28:35.160 is therefore discriminatory.

00:28:37.960 In the present parlance,

00:28:39.640 there's nothing worse

00:28:40.440 than discrimination.

00:28:41.240 That's true.

00:28:42.900 Because discrimination

00:28:43.540 is the basis

00:28:44.860 of all equal moral worth.

00:28:47.160 Where it is used,

00:28:48.100 discrimination

00:28:48.420 is the basis

00:28:49.200 of morality

00:28:49.860 because everything

00:28:51.200 that one chooses

00:28:52.000 from a sort of

00:28:53.780 clean item of food

00:28:54.960 to a sort of

00:28:55.600 dirty item of food

00:28:56.620 that one wishes

00:28:57.100 not to cut

00:28:57.760 with one's knife and fork,

00:28:59.460 everything is a matter

00:29:00.480 of discrimination.

00:29:02.000 And that goes

00:29:02.760 for individuals,

00:29:03.860 for cities,

00:29:04.500 for cultures,

00:29:05.680 and for all

00:29:06.360 of the contemporary

00:29:06.960 discriminations,

00:29:07.900 which you now

00:29:08.780 have to sign forms

00:29:09.740 if you want a job

00:29:10.540 in the Western world

00:29:11.460 to say that you

00:29:12.360 won't engage in.

00:29:13.560 Yes.

00:29:14.620 And which the employer

00:29:15.740 sort of goes along

00:29:17.100 with and so forth.

00:29:18.920 Now,

00:29:20.140 those are minor forms

00:29:21.400 of discrimination

00:29:21.900 in a way,

00:29:22.640 but he would regard

00:29:23.400 them all as a taxonomy

00:29:24.600 of the aristocratic,

00:29:26.340 but the eye

00:29:26.960 that immediately

00:29:28.480 hierarchicalizes

00:29:30.200 everything into

00:29:30.940 different orders

00:29:31.680 of meaning

00:29:32.360 depending where they are

00:29:34.000 in a particular hierarchy.

00:29:35.180 And the eye that judges

00:29:36.500 where things are

00:29:37.200 in a hierarchy

00:29:37.840 will change

00:29:38.800 from individual

00:29:39.520 to individual

00:29:40.540 of an august type.

00:29:42.660 Maybe their ranking

00:29:43.840 will be rather

00:29:44.840 prior ordained

00:29:45.700 to a degree,

00:29:47.000 but there is a degree

00:29:47.900 to which the ranking

00:29:49.180 is not completely

00:29:50.100 superimposed.

00:29:51.740 So certain standards

00:29:52.740 that certain people

00:29:53.460 may think are very high

00:29:54.620 may be judged less so

00:29:56.040 by another august spirit.

00:29:58.040 That's the danger

00:29:58.780 that you take

00:29:59.700 with a rather

00:30:00.700 individualistic,

00:30:01.860 cantankerous,

00:30:03.160 and aristocratic morality.

00:30:04.580 But not everything

00:30:05.920 will work out

00:30:06.740 to be the smoothest

00:30:07.780 possible run

00:30:08.980 in all possible worlds.

00:30:11.340 But who wants

00:30:12.360 a life like that?

00:30:13.400 This is his view.

00:30:14.680 It's rather like

00:30:15.560 the end of

00:30:16.180 Brave New World

00:30:17.000 by the dystopian

00:30:19.060 satire on the

00:30:19.800 welfare state

00:30:20.540 by Aldous Huxley

00:30:21.440 when the savage

00:30:22.820 is polled

00:30:23.360 by one of the controllers.

00:30:24.840 You basically want

00:30:25.840 the right to be unhappy

00:30:26.740 or you want the right

00:30:28.120 to unfold tragedy

00:30:30.160 as part of life's plenitude.

00:30:32.820 And that's the case,

00:30:33.960 you see.

00:30:34.480 You can't have...

00:30:36.300 If life is to resemble

00:30:37.160 more of a Greek tragedy 0.53

00:30:38.320 than an episode

00:30:39.500 of The Simpsons,

00:30:41.100 then you have to allow

00:30:43.200 for all sorts of things

00:30:44.220 which are knotty

00:30:45.040 and gnarled

00:30:46.360 and irresolvable

00:30:47.680 and not capable

00:30:49.580 of moralization.

00:30:51.620 This is one of his key points.

00:30:53.640 One of the key points

00:30:54.540 about liberal humanist discourse

00:30:56.220 and Christian morals.

00:30:57.540 And he would consider,

00:30:59.860 as I dare say we would

00:31:01.120 in many ways,

00:31:02.480 that Christian morality

00:31:03.420 and secular liberal humanist morality

00:31:05.340 are very close.

00:31:06.340 Yes.

00:31:06.720 The one is a secularization 0.90

00:31:08.000 of the other

00:31:08.600 to a large degree.

00:31:10.160 that he would consider

00:31:11.800 their type of morals

00:31:13.160 to be universalizing

00:31:17.200 and platitudinous

00:31:19.820 and also capable

00:31:21.760 of far too wide a remit

00:31:23.460 and extent

00:31:24.160 because this morality

00:31:25.860 essentially judges

00:31:27.000 everything morally

00:31:28.000 from perspective

00:31:29.440 of is anyone harmed

00:31:30.980 or is the rubric

00:31:33.860 of egalitarianism

00:31:34.940 run through properly

00:31:36.040 and efficaciously.

00:31:36.940 political correctness

00:31:38.300 is just a shorthand

00:31:39.480 to corral the instincts

00:31:41.340 to make sure

00:31:42.460 that those standards

00:31:43.260 are re-observed.

00:31:44.820 But he would,

00:31:45.580 he's very much against

00:31:46.520 the moralization

00:31:47.440 of much of morality.

00:31:50.160 Morality is a very specific thing

00:31:51.820 that accords

00:31:52.820 with certain honor codes

00:31:54.240 and certain standards

00:31:55.620 of behavior

00:31:56.320 and he doesn't believe

00:31:58.060 in a blanket morality,

00:31:59.880 moral unction

00:32:00.620 and a blanket moral response

00:32:02.640 to life.

00:32:03.460 In some ways,

00:32:04.000 his response to life

00:32:05.040 is not moral

00:32:06.240 in the accepted sense.

00:32:09.180 It's a morality

00:32:10.020 which is aesthetic

00:32:12.340 and nuanced

00:32:13.960 and hierarchical

00:32:15.840 and poetic

00:32:17.160 but it is not really

00:32:19.320 a moral view of life

00:32:21.740 that regards every statement

00:32:23.480 from an abstract moral position.

00:32:26.140 That's why

00:32:26.820 he would have contempt

00:32:28.040 for people being judged

00:32:29.300 by their occasional remarks,

00:32:31.380 particularly if they were

00:32:32.200 quote-unquote outrageous

00:32:33.600 because he always likes

00:32:35.260 making outrageous

00:32:36.140 throw away the marks

00:32:37.680 because they're part

00:32:38.620 of one's individuality,

00:32:39.900 you see?

00:32:40.760 I agree.

00:32:41.740 I think it's worth

00:32:42.640 putting a little more pressure

00:32:44.460 on this point

00:32:45.200 and that is that

00:32:46.240 the secular humanist

00:32:49.040 or post-modernist

00:32:50.520 academics

00:32:52.320 and moral thinkers

00:32:54.960 and so on and so forth

00:32:55.780 are,

00:32:56.700 from a Nietzschean standpoint,

00:32:57.840 still in the Judeo-Christian 0.97

00:33:00.500 wake,

00:33:01.700 so to speak,

00:33:02.920 in the sense that

00:33:03.960 even if they

00:33:05.480 don't believe

00:33:06.280 in God themselves,

00:33:07.860 even if they embrace

00:33:09.060 all sorts of

00:33:10.280 sexual deviations

00:33:12.300 and so on and so forth,

00:33:14.400 they still do have

00:33:16.300 that similar

00:33:16.840 moral worldview

00:33:17.900 that wants to judge

00:33:19.660 everyone as equal

00:33:20.860 before some kind of

00:33:22.980 abstract morality

00:33:24.580 that in some ways

00:33:26.840 sees the

00:33:28.040 violence of greatness

00:33:30.680 or the pathos

00:33:31.640 of distance

00:33:32.180 as something

00:33:32.960 that's terrible

00:33:34.140 and needs to be

00:33:35.540 brought back

00:33:37.860 into inequality

00:33:38.700 and so on and so forth.

00:33:39.800 So in some ways,

00:33:41.400 despite the fact

00:33:42.940 that,

00:33:43.780 say,

00:33:44.280 the contemporary

00:33:44.840 American elite

00:33:45.840 have totally

00:33:47.160 abandoned

00:33:48.060 the, say,

00:33:49.900 medieval Christian

00:33:50.700 heritage

00:33:51.120 and things like that,

00:33:52.940 they're still,

00:33:53.940 thinking in that way

00:33:55.920 from a Nietzschean

00:33:57.020 perspective.

00:33:58.680 Yes, they are.

00:33:59.740 And they're sort of,

00:34:01.500 possibly because

00:34:02.360 they dump the religion 0.96

00:34:03.300 in their own hearts,

00:34:04.760 they're thinking

00:34:06.680 in a more radical way

00:34:08.140 because Christianity,

00:34:09.800 of course,

00:34:10.120 because Christianity

00:34:10.760 has a transcendent element

00:34:12.140 which is genuinely

00:34:14.180 religious

00:34:14.740 and which therefore

00:34:16.500 creates a pathos

00:34:17.460 of difference

00:34:18.020 between forms.

00:34:19.620 This enables

00:34:20.340 many Christians

00:34:21.040 to be,

00:34:21.580 without knowing it

00:34:22.420 particularly,

00:34:23.020 partly right-wing

00:34:25.280 by default

00:34:26.040 and therefore

00:34:27.880 many Christians

00:34:29.300 aren't that Christian 0.97

00:34:30.420 in their morals

00:34:31.320 in a strange sort of way.

00:34:32.960 Their morals

00:34:33.400 are often much harsher,

00:34:35.540 by which I don't mean

00:34:36.560 just puritanical.

00:34:38.240 Their morals

00:34:38.880 are much more realistic

00:34:39.900 than the religion

00:34:41.080 would give you

00:34:42.120 a tendency to think

00:34:43.460 would be likely.

00:34:45.000 Whereas when you

00:34:45.960 get rid of the religion, 1.00

00:34:47.100 you get rid of that

00:34:47.880 hieratic,

00:34:49.040 that steeple-chasing

00:34:50.400 or exalted element

00:34:51.940 and you close down

00:34:54.640 the discourse

00:34:55.320 pretty much

00:34:56.120 to its morals

00:34:57.020 and what is like

00:34:58.920 is the moral unction,

00:35:00.500 which of course

00:35:00.920 many Christians themselves

00:35:01.900 have been aware of.

00:35:02.840 There was a Methodist

00:35:04.060 and a socialist

00:35:04.900 soapbox orator

00:35:06.480 here in the middle

00:35:07.140 of the 20th century

00:35:07.900 called Lord Soper

00:35:08.920 who was quite,

00:35:09.940 he's forgotten now,

00:35:10.680 but he was notorious

00:35:11.300 during his life

00:35:12.320 and he once said

00:35:13.980 that the part of Christianity

00:35:14.920 he was loyal to

00:35:15.780 was the New Testament.

00:35:16.860 He didn't like

00:35:17.540 the Old Testament

00:35:18.240 and he wasn't making

00:35:19.700 some remarks

00:35:20.440 about Judaism

00:35:21.200 as a faith.

00:35:22.280 What he didn't like

00:35:23.060 about the Old Testament

00:35:24.000 is that the Old Testament

00:35:25.400 was too brutish,

00:35:26.960 too pagan 0.86

00:35:27.560 in terms of a specific

00:35:29.080 people and its rights,

00:35:30.940 too violent,

00:35:32.340 too unredeemed

00:35:33.180 by the compassion

00:35:34.100 that the New Testament

00:35:35.000 would bring to it.

00:35:36.320 And of course

00:35:36.800 Christianity works 0.71

00:35:37.760 because it's

00:35:38.280 a dialectical discourse

00:35:39.660 because the humanism

00:35:41.700 seen in divine terms

00:35:43.700 and the charity

00:35:44.860 of the New Testament

00:35:45.840 balances the patriarchal

00:35:47.600 fury of the Old

00:35:48.580 and together

00:35:49.540 they form a oneness.

00:35:51.200 If Christianity 0.97

00:35:51.660 had no harsh sides

00:35:52.820 at all

00:35:53.400 it would never

00:35:55.180 have got anywhere

00:35:55.800 and would have collapsed

00:35:56.820 because it would have been

00:35:59.820 too monodimensional

00:36:01.320 to construct a faith.

00:36:03.260 All faiths have this.

00:36:04.860 Judaism is essentially 1.00

00:36:05.940 just a faith

00:36:06.660 for one specific people

00:36:08.080 and a few individual

00:36:09.340 converts

00:36:10.020 but it doesn't seek

00:36:11.020 conversion as a maxim

00:36:12.140 and Islam

00:36:13.320 which seeks the maximum

00:36:14.600 conversion of all

00:36:15.600 even beyond Christianity 0.81

00:36:16.860 to a degree

00:36:17.680 retains the pagan dimension.

00:36:20.120 So when you get rid

00:36:20.980 of religion

00:36:21.420 you don't get rid

00:36:22.320 of many of these complexities

00:36:23.600 you just allied them

00:36:25.140 into another form.

00:36:26.540 There's an added complexity

00:36:27.360 in the United States

00:36:28.380 because the elite

00:36:29.520 still gives

00:36:30.560 ritualistic obeisance

00:36:32.100 to forms of normative

00:36:33.460 Christianity

00:36:34.000 as we discussed

00:36:35.860 last time.

00:36:36.840 the elite

00:36:38.680 in the United States

00:36:39.520 worships in a Christian way

00:36:41.160 which the elite

00:36:42.180 in Western Europe

00:36:42.920 does not

00:36:43.440 or does not

00:36:43.860 feel the need to.

00:36:45.200 But you're right

00:36:46.560 in thinking

00:36:47.120 as I would

00:36:47.840 that that is largely

00:36:48.860 synthetic now

00:36:50.900 and it's got to the point

00:36:52.160 where

00:36:52.580 it's only because

00:36:53.900 of popular pressure

00:36:54.900 and a form of conformism

00:36:56.640 that they go along

00:36:57.920 with this social Christianity 0.99

00:36:59.140 which they've long

00:37:00.440 since ceased

00:37:01.100 to believe in.

00:37:02.340 But in relation

00:37:04.200 to Nietzsche's morals

00:37:05.240 Nietzsche's morals

00:37:06.240 are a total reputation

00:37:07.580 of sort of

00:37:10.020 radical Christianity

00:37:11.120 something like

00:37:12.300 Quakerism in the middle 0.96

00:37:13.460 as Christianity

00:37:14.020 begins to leave

00:37:14.880 off of itself

00:37:15.700 and secular humanist norms.

00:37:17.980 It's a sort of

00:37:18.920 it's a reversal

00:37:20.340 of all of those

00:37:21.600 and that's why

00:37:22.860 left-wingers

00:37:23.640 who dislike Nietzsche

00:37:24.580 will retreat

00:37:25.160 into saying

00:37:25.840 he's a fascist

00:37:27.300 and he's an anti-humanist 1.00

00:37:28.840 and he's somebody

00:37:29.940 who advocates

00:37:31.180 the brutality of strength

00:37:32.980 and he's somebody

00:37:34.120 who's got no time

00:37:35.040 for the weak at all

00:37:36.100 and think that the weak

00:37:37.300 enjoy and have no rights

00:37:38.800 when of course he does

00:37:40.120 he thinks the weak

00:37:40.840 have the right

00:37:41.280 to be dominated.

00:37:44.080 Yes I completely agree.

00:37:45.720 Just to add

00:37:46.620 one quick thing

00:37:48.000 on top of that

00:37:48.980 in terms of the

00:37:49.980 loss of the

00:37:51.240 religiosity of Christianity

00:37:52.720 and it's

00:37:53.540 almost

00:37:54.080 it's

00:37:55.460 dissolution

00:37:56.820 and to just

00:37:57.360 abstract morality

00:37:58.180 it's

00:37:59.680 worth saying

00:38:00.820 that someone

00:38:01.140 like Charles Martel

00:38:02.160 his idea

00:38:02.920 of the Christendom

00:38:03.840 that he was defending

00:38:04.700 was a very

00:38:06.220 particularist

00:38:07.840 kind of thing

00:38:08.540 he was defending

00:38:09.280 his people

00:38:10.040 his way of life

00:38:11.100 Europe

00:38:12.760 as a whole

00:38:13.480 and once

00:38:14.780 we've lost

00:38:15.800 those things

00:38:16.600 either through

00:38:17.720 you know

00:38:18.320 the post-modern

00:38:19.540 consumerist world

00:38:20.760 or through

00:38:21.380 political correctness

00:38:22.320 that Christianity 0.95

00:38:24.100 becomes something

00:38:25.220 altogether different

00:38:26.340 and something

00:38:26.700 that might even

00:38:27.380 might even

00:38:28.020 be kind of

00:38:28.440 anti-civilizational

00:38:29.440 at some level

00:38:30.100 but without

00:38:31.740 without going

00:38:32.260 further into that

00:38:32.960 I'd like to

00:38:34.060 bring our

00:38:35.440 conversation

00:38:36.240 to a close

00:38:37.120 in a somewhat

00:38:38.340 more speculative

00:38:39.060 fashion

00:38:39.600 and that is

00:38:40.980 to talk

00:38:41.500 a little bit

00:38:42.720 about

00:38:43.260 Nietzsche's

00:38:44.140 political philosophy

00:38:45.260 even though he

00:38:46.000 he never

00:38:46.940 codified that

00:38:49.360 in the way

00:38:50.100 that he did

00:38:50.520 his moral philosophy

00:38:51.420 and epistemology

00:38:52.560 and let me

00:38:54.720 just throw out

00:38:55.700 a couple

00:38:56.620 of ideas

00:38:57.440 here that

00:38:58.100 have always

00:38:58.680 struck me

00:38:59.080 interesting

00:38:59.460 as I mentioned

00:39:00.660 early in our

00:39:01.260 conversation

00:39:01.820 and as you

00:39:02.560 mentioned too

00:39:03.060 Nietzsche

00:39:03.700 had a kind

00:39:04.840 of contempt

00:39:05.660 for German

00:39:06.400 nationalism

00:39:07.080 and anti-Semitism

00:39:08.380 he thought

00:39:09.180 it was

00:39:09.440 provincial 1.00

00:39:10.440 and stupid 1.00

00:39:11.940 and worthy 1.00

00:39:13.140 only of beer

00:39:13.920 drinkers

00:39:14.480 but he was

00:39:16.100 hardly some

00:39:16.760 citizen of the

00:39:17.420 world

00:39:17.800 or a libertarian

00:39:19.900 or anything

00:39:20.320 like that

00:39:20.900 he had this

00:39:22.580 concept

00:39:23.160 of a

00:39:24.200 European

00:39:24.840 empire

00:39:25.580 arising

00:39:27.320 in the future

00:39:28.060 and certainly

00:39:28.860 if you look

00:39:29.440 at his later

00:39:30.100 works

00:39:30.520 like

00:39:30.820 Ecce Homo

00:39:31.580 his autobiography

00:39:33.300 he sees

00:39:35.260 this

00:39:35.660 his political

00:39:36.260 philosophy

00:39:36.780 as arising

00:39:38.320 in some

00:39:38.980 kind of

00:39:39.340 apocalyptic

00:39:40.200 explosion

00:39:41.700 of hurricanes

00:39:43.100 and earthquakes

00:39:44.380 and tornadoes

00:39:45.260 I mean he

00:39:45.540 uses all

00:39:46.080 all of those

00:39:47.080 words

00:39:47.520 and you

00:39:48.860 can see

00:39:49.260 even something

00:39:49.700 like the

00:39:49.980 will to

00:39:50.260 power

00:39:50.700 he'll

00:39:51.300 speculate

00:39:51.860 about

00:39:52.560 major

00:39:53.440 eugenics 0.78

00:39:54.120 projects

00:39:54.680 and

00:39:55.500 he

00:39:56.340 talks

00:39:56.940 about

00:39:57.120 some

00:39:58.180 letters

00:39:58.560 I like

00:39:59.060 the idea

00:39:59.600 that Europe

00:40:00.140 is rearming

00:40:00.880 there's going

00:40:01.440 to be a

00:40:01.820 cataclysm

00:40:02.500 so maybe

00:40:04.060 Jonathan

00:40:04.480 I think

00:40:04.900 all of

00:40:05.240 these ideas

00:40:05.740 are quite

00:40:06.580 exciting

00:40:07.220 just talk

00:40:09.620 a little

00:40:09.940 bit about

00:40:10.580 what you

00:40:11.040 think

00:40:11.440 Nietzsche

00:40:12.000 what his

00:40:13.400 political

00:40:14.060 vision

00:40:14.720 or meta

00:40:15.480 political

00:40:15.840 vision

00:40:16.380 was

00:40:16.840 for the

00:40:17.860 future

00:40:18.240 this idea

00:40:18.840 of Europe

00:40:19.360 and also

00:40:20.320 this idea

00:40:21.140 of a

00:40:22.540 Christian

00:40:23.380 European

00:40:23.880 civilization

00:40:24.820 self-destructing

00:40:27.220 and almost

00:40:28.560 destroying

00:40:29.100 itself

00:40:29.520 which is of

00:40:29.960 course a

00:40:30.220 quite prophetic

00:40:30.900 thought

00:40:31.360 on his part

00:40:32.960 so talk a little

00:40:33.880 bit about that

00:40:34.500 of Nietzsche's

00:40:35.260 meta-politics

00:40:36.520 yes I think

00:40:38.360 it's important

00:40:38.800 to stress

00:40:39.200 it's a

00:40:39.480 meta-politics

00:40:40.360 because as

00:40:40.800 you say

00:40:41.240 he never

00:40:42.060 adambrated

00:40:42.640 clearly a

00:40:43.320 political

00:40:43.680 stance

00:40:44.380 or clearly

00:40:45.280 a political

00:40:45.740 profile

00:40:46.420 most

00:40:47.660 philosophers

00:40:48.140 do sketch

00:40:48.900 in a

00:40:49.260 political

00:40:49.680 philosophy

00:40:50.300 even if

00:40:51.360 they disregard

00:40:51.880 it

00:40:52.380 or even

00:40:53.000 if they

00:40:53.240 regard

00:40:53.480 it as

00:40:53.700 a minor

00:40:54.060 part

00:40:54.360 of

00:40:54.480 their

00:40:54.640 vision

00:40:55.040 you can

00:40:55.900 regard

00:40:56.260 Heidegger's

00:40:56.880 involvement

00:40:57.340 in a

00:40:57.740 very

00:40:57.940 controversial

00:40:58.480 type

00:40:58.840 of

00:40:59.000 politics

00:40:59.400 only

00:40:59.920 for a

00:41:00.300 brief

00:41:00.520 moment

00:41:00.980 as part

00:41:01.880 and parcel

00:41:02.340 of that

00:41:02.800 but although

00:41:03.700 he didn't

00:41:04.120 sketch out

00:41:04.660 a narrowly

00:41:05.400 drawn

00:41:05.700 politics

00:41:06.500 meta-politically

00:41:08.200 Nietzsche's

00:41:08.700 ideas in

00:41:09.160 many ways

00:41:09.680 are quite

00:41:10.100 clear

00:41:10.600 there's a

00:41:11.940 famous chapter

00:41:12.660 on Nietzsche

00:41:13.280 in Bertrand

00:41:13.920 Russell's

00:41:14.440 history of

00:41:14.840 western

00:41:15.040 philosophy

00:41:15.520 in which

00:41:16.920 Bertrand

00:41:17.880 Russell

00:41:18.240 who disliked

00:41:19.500 Nietzsche

00:41:19.720 intensely

00:41:20.300 looked up

00:41:21.680 and could

00:41:23.360 hear the

00:41:23.780 German aircraft

00:41:24.600 overhead

00:41:25.060 because it

00:41:25.600 was during

00:41:25.980 the blitz

00:41:26.620 and said

00:41:28.000 Nietzsche's

00:41:28.520 children are 0.98

00:41:29.100 bombing me

00:41:29.720 even as I

00:41:30.460 write these

00:41:30.900 paragraphs

00:41:31.280 about him

00:41:32.100 and there's

00:41:34.080 a degree to

00:41:34.600 which

00:41:35.020 although

00:41:36.360 Russell later

00:41:38.020 apologised for

00:41:38.820 the crudity

00:41:39.440 and the

00:41:39.760 propagandistic

00:41:40.660 worth of

00:41:41.460 that chapter

00:41:42.100 there's

00:41:42.900 that

00:41:43.160 meta-political

00:41:43.860 element of

00:41:44.360 truth there

00:41:45.000 even in

00:41:46.220 its falsehood

00:41:46.920 it's true

00:41:47.360 and false

00:41:47.940 at one

00:41:48.240 and the

00:41:48.460 same time

00:41:49.100 indeed

00:41:49.600 many of

00:41:49.960 the things

00:41:50.260 one can

00:41:50.540 say about

00:41:50.980 Nietzsche's

00:41:51.400 politics

00:41:51.820 and political

00:41:52.540 stance

00:41:53.160 meta-politically

00:41:54.180 derived

00:41:54.840 is true 0.89

00:41:55.880 and false

00:41:56.320 simultaneously

00:41:56.980 it's like

00:41:58.020 there was a

00:41:58.340 famous pamphlet

00:41:59.140 about him

00:41:59.760 in the first

00:42:00.620 world war

00:42:01.300 by a

00:42:02.220 classist

00:42:02.820 I think

00:42:03.280 Barker

00:42:03.940 of Oxford

00:42:04.700 University

00:42:05.400 he talked

00:42:06.560 about Nietzsche

00:42:07.160 being the

00:42:07.540 great philosopher

00:42:08.160 of the

00:42:08.560 German Reich

00:42:09.360 and the

00:42:10.220 German

00:42:10.500 authoritarian

00:42:11.180 militarism

00:42:11.920 and

00:42:12.140 Kaiserdom

00:42:12.780 and Prussianism

00:42:13.980 by which

00:42:14.700 of course

00:42:15.020 he meant

00:42:15.300 the forces

00:42:15.740 of the

00:42:16.280 second

00:42:17.000 imperial

00:42:17.600 Germany

00:42:18.160 that Britain

00:42:19.000 was then

00:42:19.400 waging war

00:42:20.100 with with

00:42:20.560 France

00:42:20.960 and so on

00:42:21.740 so there's

00:42:23.520 always been

00:42:23.960 this misinterpretation

00:42:25.320 at a

00:42:25.960 callow level

00:42:26.860 that Nietzsche

00:42:27.980 is a

00:42:28.420 fundamentally

00:42:28.960 Germanic

00:42:29.660 thinker

00:42:30.340 who represents

00:42:31.600 if you like

00:42:32.220 Germandom

00:42:33.180 and a

00:42:33.920 German

00:42:34.260 nationalist

00:42:35.260 desire for

00:42:36.160 dominion

00:42:36.760 when

00:42:37.700 the spirit

00:42:39.300 of Nietzsche

00:42:39.780 probably does

00:42:40.540 represent that

00:42:41.360 but the

00:42:42.020 textual facts

00:42:42.960 do not

00:42:43.720 and

00:42:44.760 Nietzsche

00:42:45.400 was in

00:42:45.940 rebellion

00:42:46.400 against

00:42:47.200 the centre

00:42:48.680 right and

00:42:49.120 right conformist

00:42:50.100 attitudes of

00:42:50.820 his era

00:42:51.340 as particularly

00:42:52.500 epitomized in

00:42:53.540 his own

00:42:53.880 family by his

00:42:54.720 brother-in-law

00:42:55.340 Forster

00:42:55.900 who he

00:42:57.220 regarded as 0.95

00:42:57.840 a blockhead 0.92

00:42:58.520 or a 0.98

00:42:58.900 dummkopf

00:42:59.480 and he

00:43:00.480 had all

00:43:01.060 of the

00:43:01.320 views

00:43:01.940 that

00:43:02.760 Nietzsche

00:43:03.220 Nietzsche's

00:43:04.520 liberal

00:43:04.800 supporters

00:43:05.380 enabled

00:43:05.880 Nietzsche to

00:43:06.380 escape from

00:43:06.980 in the middle

00:43:07.360 of the

00:43:07.600 20th century

00:43:08.380 because without

00:43:09.660 the Walter

00:43:10.180 Kaufman's of

00:43:10.880 this world

00:43:11.420 and without

00:43:11.820 their revisionist

00:43:12.760 cultural job

00:43:13.920 on Nietzsche

00:43:14.520 Nietzsche might

00:43:15.700 have gone down

00:43:16.320 the memory

00:43:16.760 hole

00:43:17.140 right

00:43:17.840 that's

00:43:19.040 a lot of

00:43:20.320 liberal thinkers

00:43:21.080 who admired

00:43:21.900 Nietzsche for

00:43:22.660 different reasons

00:43:24.080 of their own

00:43:24.840 either because

00:43:25.700 they weren't

00:43:26.200 Christians

00:43:26.760 or because

00:43:27.840 they had

00:43:28.320 pagan attitudes

00:43:29.100 or because

00:43:30.300 they just

00:43:30.720 liked dissident

00:43:31.420 nonconformity

00:43:32.260 for its own

00:43:32.860 sake

00:43:33.400 or because

00:43:34.380 they realized

00:43:34.940 he was a

00:43:35.340 complicated

00:43:35.660 thinker who

00:43:36.500 shouldn't be

00:43:36.920 politically

00:43:37.300 introduced

00:43:37.980 whatever the

00:43:39.080 reasons

00:43:39.500 people like

00:43:40.660 R.J.

00:43:41.240 Hollendale

00:43:41.780 who did

00:43:42.200 many of the

00:43:42.740 translations of

00:43:43.500 Nietzsche in

00:43:43.960 the middle of

00:43:44.280 the 20th century

00:43:45.020 in the British

00:43:45.880 Isles

00:43:46.380 and Kaufman in

00:43:47.500 the United

00:43:47.800 States who did

00:43:48.580 likewise

00:43:49.120 were important

00:43:50.460 for preventing

00:43:51.420 him from going

00:43:52.140 down the memory

00:43:52.700 hole

00:43:53.020 just because

00:43:53.860 he's a great

00:43:54.320 philosopher

00:43:54.740 there's no

00:43:55.600 reason that

00:43:56.160 that couldn't

00:43:56.660 have happened

00:43:57.120 it could have

00:43:57.620 happened very

00:43:58.180 very easily

00:43:58.860 where his

00:44:00.580 views were

00:44:01.060 conflated in a

00:44:01.940 complicated way

00:44:02.840 with those of

00:44:03.720 his brother-in-law

00:44:04.520 and he would

00:44:05.240 have been

00:44:05.520 thought as

00:44:06.040 just a

00:44:06.400 German

00:44:06.680 nationalist

00:44:07.140 with everything

00:44:08.140 in Nietzsche

00:44:09.680 one comes up

00:44:11.160 against

00:44:11.660 sublimation

00:44:13.140 you come up

00:44:14.060 against

00:44:14.440 exteriorization

00:44:15.560 the car

00:44:16.140 thing beyond

00:44:17.100 itself

00:44:17.620 to create

00:44:18.540 larger and

00:44:19.200 larger lines

00:44:19.940 of force

00:44:20.540 so he's

00:44:21.560 not a

00:44:21.900 German

00:44:22.140 nationalist

00:44:22.620 or a

00:44:23.300 nation-state

00:44:23.880 nationalist

00:44:24.280 but he's

00:44:25.040 a European

00:44:25.480 nationalist

00:44:26.140 and he's

00:44:27.320 a western

00:44:27.680 nationalist

00:44:28.240 and he's

00:44:29.340 a civic

00:44:29.740 nationalist

00:44:30.260 of western

00:44:30.820 culture

00:44:31.360 so what

00:44:33.020 would be

00:44:33.920 national

00:44:34.380 in another

00:44:34.860 person

00:44:35.480 is

00:44:36.160 transliterated

00:44:37.680 into something

00:44:39.080 broader and

00:44:40.380 bolder and

00:44:41.040 in some ways

00:44:41.820 more august

00:44:42.660 in some ways

00:44:43.680 more religious

00:44:44.320 given his

00:44:45.660 sort of

00:44:46.100 obviously

00:44:48.140 religiosity

00:44:48.940 of temperament

00:44:49.900 at least

00:44:50.580 at one

00:44:50.940 level

00:44:51.320 it's the

00:44:52.780 same with

00:44:53.180 the vexed

00:44:53.980 issue of

00:44:54.520 what is

00:44:55.160 called

00:44:55.500 anti-semitism

00:44:56.340 and what

00:44:56.680 is not

00:44:57.200 from a

00:44:58.000 literal

00:44:58.280 perspective

00:44:59.040 Nietzsche

00:44:59.740 is the

00:45:00.060 least

00:45:00.300 anti-semitic

00:45:01.040 of thinkers

00:45:01.580 particularly

00:45:02.360 in the

00:45:02.660 Germany

00:45:03.000 of his

00:45:04.120 era

00:45:04.440 again he

00:45:05.680 reacted very

00:45:06.360 badly

00:45:06.720 against his

00:45:07.260 brother-in-law's

00:45:08.480 volkish

00:45:09.180 anti-semitism

00:45:10.260 of that era

00:45:10.980 and yet of

00:45:11.940 course the

00:45:12.440 extremity of

00:45:13.360 Nietzsche's

00:45:13.740 anti-Christianity

00:45:14.840 the radicalism

00:45:16.760 with which he

00:45:17.260 belabours

00:45:18.240 the Christian

00:45:18.860 religion

00:45:19.340 the degree

00:45:20.400 to which he

00:45:20.840 holds itself

00:45:21.680 in contradistinction

00:45:22.640 to a European

00:45:24.240 ethic of man

00:45:25.220 or a European 0.91

00:45:26.400 aesthetic of man

00:45:27.740 there's driven

00:45:28.940 rise to some

00:45:29.800 thinkers

00:45:30.200 who see that

00:45:31.680 his anti-Christianity

00:45:33.020 is a form

00:45:34.920 of anti-semitism

00:45:35.960 because although

00:45:37.080 he never

00:45:37.800 curses the Jews 1.00

00:45:40.000 for creating 1.00

00:45:40.560 the circumstances

00:45:41.280 out of which

00:45:41.820 Christianity arose

00:45:43.000 there is a

00:45:43.980 degree to which

00:45:44.900 he considers

00:45:45.880 Christianity 0.98

00:45:46.420 to be poisonous 0.99

00:45:47.500 in relation

00:45:48.640 to the European

00:45:49.360 inheritance

00:45:50.020 so put rather

00:45:51.740 tendentiously

00:45:52.540 what in a

00:45:53.680 cruder or more

00:45:54.440 basic character

00:45:55.480 might have been

00:45:56.780 German

00:45:57.200 volkishness

00:45:58.020 and anti-semitism

00:45:59.260 in him

00:46:00.180 is civilizational

00:46:01.640 Europeanness 0.73

00:46:02.760 and anti-Christianity

00:46:03.980 so it's almost

00:46:06.740 as if

00:46:07.280 he won't be

00:46:08.620 hidebound

00:46:09.620 by the forces

00:46:10.700 of lesser men

00:46:11.660 he's rather

00:46:12.620 a similar

00:46:13.100 figure to

00:46:13.600 Ernst

00:46:13.880 younger

00:46:14.200 later in

00:46:14.740 the 20th

00:46:15.240 century

00:46:15.680 and although

00:46:16.700 he's complicit

00:46:17.500 with all sorts

00:46:18.160 of things

00:46:18.640 he was never

00:46:19.480 entirely of

00:46:20.380 them

00:46:20.720 and therefore

00:46:21.800 he remained

00:46:22.420 apart

00:46:23.000 aloof

00:46:23.560 and alone

00:46:24.260 and there's

00:46:25.120 this sort of

00:46:25.640 lonely

00:46:26.140 demigod

00:46:26.840 trajectory

00:46:27.440 outside of

00:46:28.680 things

00:46:29.120 to come back

00:46:30.480 to the idea

00:46:31.220 of a cataclysm

00:46:33.580 and things

00:46:34.060 changing

00:46:34.640 certainly he was

00:46:35.960 aware of all

00:46:36.760 of the nationalistic

00:46:37.440 tensions in

00:46:38.220 Europe

00:46:38.520 building from

00:46:39.580 the defeat of

00:46:40.220 France at Sedan

00:46:41.140 in the Franco-Prussian

00:46:41.900 War

00:46:42.240 which he of course

00:46:43.160 took part in

00:46:43.860 as a medical

00:46:44.340 orderly

00:46:44.980 as an ambulance

00:46:46.340 driver

00:46:46.860 he was well aware

00:46:49.600 that a combustion

00:46:50.400 was coming

00:46:51.200 and he could sense

00:46:52.400 the energies

00:46:52.880 that would lead up

00:46:53.700 to the first world

00:46:54.440 war

00:46:54.840 this great outpouring

00:46:56.280 of force

00:46:56.920 between the European

00:46:57.760 peoples

00:46:58.360 as they battled

00:46:59.460 in alliance

00:47:00.040 with each other

00:47:00.640 for supremacy

00:47:01.360 he could also

00:47:02.860 probably

00:47:03.440 understand

00:47:04.980 some of the

00:47:05.660 tremors

00:47:06.080 which would

00:47:07.080 shape the world

00:47:07.780 in relation

00:47:08.220 to what

00:47:08.780 later would

00:47:10.140 be the

00:47:10.700 Bolshevik

00:47:11.060 revolution

00:47:11.560 and attendant

00:47:12.600 revolutions

00:47:13.260 certainly he saw

00:47:14.940 that

00:47:15.800 he never quite

00:47:18.280 said it

00:47:18.920 but you can

00:47:19.340 imagine if he'd

00:47:20.080 lived a bit

00:47:20.580 longer

00:47:20.980 he would have

00:47:21.580 realised that

00:47:22.220 one of the

00:47:22.640 masks that

00:47:23.280 Caesarism would

00:47:24.220 wear in the

00:47:25.240 20th century

00:47:25.960 would be a

00:47:26.520 mass mask

00:47:27.480 whereby the

00:47:28.800 masses would be 0.88

00:47:29.480 enslaved all over

00:47:30.520 again by an

00:47:31.880 ideology such as

00:47:32.880 communism that said

00:47:33.760 it was seeking

00:47:34.280 nothing but their

00:47:34.960 liberation

00:47:35.500 because his

00:47:37.140 view of life

00:47:37.860 was paradoxical

00:47:38.860 and he loved

00:47:40.340 paradox which is

00:47:41.820 the essence of

00:47:42.400 tragedy and he

00:47:44.180 saw life in

00:47:44.880 tragic terms

00:47:46.020 or in tragic

00:47:47.140 hues and

00:47:48.420 therefore a

00:47:50.040 Nietzschean

00:47:50.380 analysis of the

00:47:51.220 entire prognosis

00:47:52.140 of communism

00:47:52.880 whereby you have

00:47:54.600 in the 1870s a

00:47:56.180 purely idealistic

00:47:57.100 ideology which by

00:47:59.060 1917-18 has

00:48:01.020 taken over one

00:48:01.840 of the foundational

00:48:03.100 European states

00:48:04.240 and created a

00:48:05.460 charnel house

00:48:06.220 which will later

00:48:07.240 become a slave

00:48:08.060 labour society

00:48:09.060 which will then

00:48:10.280 ossify and harden

00:48:11.480 until liberals

00:48:12.680 within that system

00:48:14.020 take it over at the

00:48:14.940 end and dissolve it

00:48:16.240 peacefully from within

00:48:17.360 something that was

00:48:18.380 not discernible

00:48:19.400 earlier on by any

00:48:21.100 means and now it's

00:48:22.260 collapsed into

00:48:22.800 history and you

00:48:23.900 wonder even though

00:48:24.800 it's only 20 years

00:48:25.620 back if it was ever

00:48:26.720 there that's one

00:48:28.120 area about which he

00:48:29.000 couldn't comment

00:48:29.660 because of course it

00:48:30.660 lay after his death

00:48:31.800 but it's part and

00:48:33.080 parcel of these

00:48:33.720 cataclysms that he

00:48:34.740 senses is coming

00:48:35.700 he's not definitive

00:48:37.420 in relation to a

00:48:38.520 new caesarism the

00:48:39.460 way spengler is at

00:48:40.580 the end of the

00:48:41.120 time of the west

00:48:41.920 when spengler says

00:48:43.200 although we're

00:48:43.600 living in an

00:48:44.080 era of decline

00:48:45.000 there will be

00:48:46.260 revanches there

00:48:47.640 will be attempts

00:48:48.440 at a counter

00:48:49.580 intuitive thrust

00:48:50.620 against the

00:48:51.120 prospect of decline

00:48:52.100 of which caesarisms

00:48:53.780 in europe will be

00:48:54.620 won but he

00:48:56.480 certainly thought

00:48:57.200 that the masses

00:48:58.160 can't leave a

00:48:58.940 civilization which

00:48:59.800 means they have to

00:49:00.520 be led

00:49:01.020 you either dupe

00:49:02.260 them by saying

00:49:03.060 that you lead

00:49:03.680 them on behalf

00:49:04.260 of their own

00:49:04.800 ideology in other

00:49:06.160 words you're doing

00:49:06.760 it from the

00:49:07.200 interest of the

00:49:07.780 masses and you're

00:49:08.980 doing it in the

00:49:09.520 name of their

00:49:10.140 safety quality of

00:49:11.460 worth and purpose

00:49:12.320 or you do it

00:49:14.220 with something

00:49:14.760 harsher and

00:49:15.520 essentially

00:49:16.000 stentorian and

00:49:17.620 more old world

00:49:18.640 and against the

00:49:19.580 interest of the

00:49:20.140 masses

00:49:20.500 some people of

00:49:23.080 course would think

00:49:23.840 that his mental

00:49:24.460 illness that was

00:49:25.120 catching up with

00:49:25.760 him towards the

00:49:26.280 end of his life

00:49:26.940 particularly in

00:49:27.580 texts like

00:49:28.640 Eke Homo 0.84

00:49:29.240 when there's

00:49:30.020 much talk of

00:49:30.580 philosophizing with

00:49:31.400 a hammer and

00:49:32.280 that sort of

00:49:32.820 thing and in

00:49:33.580 certain sections

00:49:34.180 of will to

00:49:34.660 power are

00:49:35.800 catching up with

00:49:36.540 him in his

00:49:37.000 talk of

00:49:37.440 cataclysms and

00:49:38.640 bursting dams and

00:49:40.620 psychonic frenzies and

00:49:41.820 such like but

00:49:43.220 there's a degree to

00:49:44.100 which I think

00:49:45.740 these are emotional

00:49:47.040 rhapsodies which are

00:49:48.000 musical in a way

00:49:49.160 and just as his

00:49:50.280 first book was

00:49:51.060 heavily impregnated

00:49:52.260 with Wagner's

00:49:53.000 presence and was

00:49:54.340 heavily to do with

00:49:55.640 music

00:49:56.240 music was a key

00:49:58.960 art form for

00:49:59.800 Nietzsche because

00:50:01.000 you can lose

00:50:02.160 yourself in music

00:50:03.040 and become

00:50:03.580 something else

00:50:04.400 the idea of

00:50:05.640 enclosure that

00:50:07.620 somebody who

00:50:08.060 listens to

00:50:08.500 Beethoven becomes

00:50:09.520 if only for a

00:50:10.800 couple of moments

00:50:11.780 Beethoven or

00:50:13.120 analogies to the

00:50:13.880 spirit of

00:50:14.340 Beethoven and

00:50:15.940 somebody who

00:50:16.680 intoxicates

00:50:17.300 themselves with

00:50:17.940 Europe's future

00:50:18.740 can in language

00:50:19.980 become part of

00:50:21.120 that very forward

00:50:22.840 progression into the

00:50:23.980 future which

00:50:25.780 none of us can

00:50:26.420 entirely chart but

00:50:27.920 which we all have

00:50:28.680 a glimpse of

00:50:29.420 I think in

00:50:30.580 relation to the

00:50:31.340 current state of

00:50:32.900 present modernity

00:50:34.460 the fact that he

00:50:35.560 survived the fact

00:50:36.500 that Freud and

00:50:37.120 Marx have

00:50:37.600 weared far less

00:50:38.680 well is a

00:50:40.620 notable and

00:50:41.200 interesting point

00:50:42.020 for the future

00:50:42.780 I also think that

00:50:44.580 any right that's

00:50:46.040 got a future

00:50:46.760 will have to

00:50:48.040 partly base itself

00:50:49.100 around Nietzsche's

00:50:49.960 thinking as I

00:50:51.180 have always done

00:50:52.000 this is very

00:50:53.880 difficult

00:50:54.320 electorally

00:50:54.920 because there's

00:50:55.400 so much of a

00:50:56.040 charge left in

00:50:56.900 Christianity

00:50:57.360 so much of a

00:50:58.520 condenser cell

00:50:59.460 battery you know

00:51:00.820 with a big charge

00:51:01.740 on it left there

00:51:03.100 in terms of

00:51:03.860 practical politics

00:51:04.780 particularly in a

00:51:05.440 society like the

00:51:06.180 United States

00:51:06.940 but I think the

00:51:08.060 sad truth is

00:51:09.060 that for an

00:51:09.940 elite

00:51:10.420 Nietzsche's way

00:51:13.920 without antagonizing

00:51:15.060 Christianity too

00:51:16.000 much by a bit of

00:51:17.880 sleight of hand

00:51:18.740 texts like

00:51:19.900 Antichrist can be

00:51:20.840 put down towards

00:51:21.620 the bottom of

00:51:22.140 the pile and

00:51:23.300 texts like

00:51:24.100 Thus Spake

00:51:24.740 Zarathustra can

00:51:25.520 be put on top

00:51:26.480 so a few games

00:51:27.840 may have to be

00:51:28.520 played just as

00:51:29.660 left wing

00:51:29.980 interpretations of

00:51:31.400 Nietzsche,

00:51:31.960 Labai,

00:51:32.400 Deleuze,

00:51:32.820 Gattari and

00:51:33.300 others are also

00:51:34.280 playing their own

00:51:35.060 games may have

00:51:37.180 to be done

00:51:37.940 but I do think

00:51:39.380 that a new

00:51:41.860 right that calls

00:51:42.640 itself such will

00:51:43.540 have to base

00:51:44.140 itself around the

00:51:45.500 greatest thinker of

00:51:46.720 the non-left

00:51:47.720 that can be found

00:51:49.200 who is visible

00:51:50.380 who is

00:51:51.660 determined to

00:51:53.880 exist in this

00:51:54.740 current time on

00:51:55.840 his own terms

00:51:56.700 as well as

00:51:58.020 that of his

00:51:58.440 more shallow

00:51:59.020 conspirators and

00:52:00.180 detractors and

00:52:01.500 also the very

00:52:02.660 fact that he is

00:52:03.600 there and is

00:52:04.900 admired and is

00:52:06.260 partly revered by

00:52:07.640 all sorts of

00:52:08.200 people who have

00:52:08.760 no time for a

00:52:09.560 proportion of his

00:52:10.200 views.

00:52:11.140 We haven't even

00:52:11.560 discussed his

00:52:12.360 views about

00:52:12.860 feminism for 0.99

00:52:13.560 example which is

00:52:14.860 so out of sync with

00:52:15.840 this current

00:52:16.320 era as to be

00:52:17.660 almost sort of

00:52:18.500 obsolete forms of

00:52:21.540 19th century

00:52:22.300 prestige because he

00:52:24.100 wouldn't have even

00:52:24.560 given women the 0.75

00:52:25.240 vote.

00:52:25.980 He wouldn't have

00:52:26.720 even tolerated

00:52:27.540 female involvement

00:52:28.460 in practical

00:52:29.120 politics and

00:52:32.020 there's a great

00:52:32.940 silence about his

00:52:33.980 attitudes on all

00:52:34.760 of those fronts.

00:52:36.380 So the very fact

00:52:37.900 that in the

00:52:39.340 Reclaim the Night

00:52:40.220 campuses of North

00:52:41.280 America, you

00:52:43.380 know, one of the

00:52:43.880 most quote-unquote

00:52:45.100 sexist philosophers

00:52:46.100 of all time can

00:52:47.280 be worshipped as

00:52:48.940 a bit of a

00:52:49.320 demigod is

00:52:50.300 itself an

00:52:50.920 interesting

00:52:51.360 conundrum.

00:52:53.740 It also shows

00:52:54.820 you how far

00:52:55.640 people can go to

00:52:56.700 avoid things about

00:52:57.740 somebody that they

00:52:58.900 otherwise admire.

00:53:00.580 Yes, I think

00:53:01.100 that's true.

00:53:01.860 You know, to

00:53:02.240 bring this

00:53:03.220 conversation to a

00:53:04.380 close, I think

00:53:05.240 to sum up what

00:53:06.660 you're saying in

00:53:07.340 this past passage

00:53:09.140 is that Nietzsche's

00:53:10.340 day hasn't come

00:53:12.200 yet, that he is

00:53:13.320 not reducible to

00:53:14.740 German nationalism.

00:53:16.800 And in a way, in

00:53:17.760 his kind of

00:53:18.500 European nationalism

00:53:19.940 or his concept

00:53:22.020 of European

00:53:22.500 empire, he is

00:53:24.540 very much with

00:53:25.820 us on the

00:53:27.280 avant-garde of

00:53:28.400 right-wing

00:53:29.080 thinking today.

00:53:30.120 I think, you

00:53:31.380 know, if there

00:53:31.800 is a vanguard in

00:53:34.200 our movement, I

00:53:35.540 think it's saying

00:53:36.300 if you think of

00:53:37.200 someone like

00:53:37.620 Guillaume

00:53:37.900 Fay and

00:53:38.500 others, we're

00:53:40.800 saying that the

00:53:42.080 provincial nationalism

00:53:44.020 can have its

00:53:44.700 problems.

00:53:45.140 And in our

00:53:46.400 current geopolitical

00:53:47.700 situation, a

00:53:49.100 concept of

00:53:50.080 Europe and

00:53:50.760 European nationalism

00:53:51.820 is the one that

00:53:53.500 is most relevant

00:53:54.480 and is the one

00:53:55.380 that can defeat

00:53:56.920 our enemies.

00:53:58.340 So hopefully,

00:53:59.640 Nietzsche's day

00:54:00.220 will come.

00:54:01.920 But, Jonathan,

00:54:02.860 I'd certainly like

00:54:04.120 to have probably

00:54:05.240 another hundred

00:54:06.520 conversations with

00:54:08.080 you about

00:54:08.600 Nietzsche and

00:54:09.760 other topics, but

00:54:10.680 I think we should

00:54:11.540 put a bookmark in

00:54:14.500 this conversation

00:54:15.280 for the time

00:54:16.740 being.

00:54:17.140 I think we

00:54:17.460 ended up at a

00:54:18.220 very interesting

00:54:18.740 place.

00:54:19.740 But thank you

00:54:20.400 for your time and

00:54:21.660 your insight on

00:54:22.540 Nietzsche, and I'd

00:54:23.240 love to have you

00:54:24.120 back again on the

00:54:25.120 program soon.

00:54:27.160 Yes, thanks very

00:54:28.280 much.

00:54:28.780 I'll be welcome

00:54:29.980 to the end of

00:54:30.780 this week.

00:54:31.060 Thanks again.

00:54:31.600 Thank you.

00:54:38.120 Thank you.

00:54:38.760 Transcription by CastingWords

RadixJournal - January 14, 2018

Bowden! - 2 - The Uses and Abuses of Nietzsche

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