The Art of Manliness - #480： Hiking With Nietzsche

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast frederick nietzsche

00:00:18.960 is one of the most polarizing and misunderstood of modern philosophers dismissed by some and

00:00:23.580 misinterpreted by others the real philosophy of nietzsche in fact holds some incredibly

00:00:26.860 life-affirming truths for everyone regardless of belief or age i guess they have spent much of

00:00:31.260 both his personal and professional life tracking down those insights at the age of 19 and then

00:00:35.300 again at the age of 37 he traveled to the swiss town where nietzsche wrote his famous work thus

00:00:39.380 spoke zarathustra and learned something different on each trip from the mustachioed philosopher about

00:00:43.340 living a life of meaning and significance his name is john kig and he's professor of philosophy and

00:00:47.860 the author of hiking with nietzsche on becoming who you are in this compelling conversation john

00:00:52.520 discusses what he learned about life hiking the same mountain nietzsche hike including the role

00:00:56.400 that walking itself played in nietzsche's approach to thinking we begin with the biggest

00:00:59.880 misconception about the philosopher including what he really meant when he said god is dead

00:01:03.620 john then walks us through nietzsche's idea of the will to power how this impulse should be balanced

00:01:07.520 with the more fati the love of fate in order to achieve nietzsche's ideal of becoming who you are

00:01:12.260 and the different things his philosophy can mean to a young man and to one approaching middle age

00:01:16.560 after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash kig that's k-a-a-g 0.92

00:01:22.160 aom.is slash k-a-a-g 1.00

00:01:24.820 all right john kegg welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so you are a philosopher what

00:01:40.980 kind of philosophy do you specialize in so my background is in american philosophy and 19th

00:01:47.040 century european philosophy two types of philosophy that actually american pragmatism especially says that

00:01:53.380 philosophy should be judged on the basis of its practical consequences in other words how philosophy

00:01:59.440 can matter to individuals and their communities how basically philosophy can make a difference in life

00:02:05.920 okay so that's like uh william james was a pragmatist that's right yeah so it's and basically there was

00:02:12.900 this sense in the second half of the 19th century that philosophy risked jeopardizing its own relevance

00:02:20.440 basically by retreating to the ivory tower and that it needed to basically touch down again in the

00:02:26.420 world well okay so you wrote a book about the pragmatist american philosophy which is great but

00:02:31.180 you got a new book out called hiking with nietzsche now nietzsche is an interesting character because he was

00:02:36.460 kind of doing something similar to the transcendentalist the pragmatist trying to make philosophy

00:02:41.500 alive right but before we get to your relationship with nietzsche let's talk about this guy because i think a lot

00:02:48.660 he's a very controversial figure he's misunderstood what do you think are the biggest misconceptions

00:02:53.360 about frederick nietzsche yeah no that's a great question i'm glad that you asked so i mean nietzsche

00:02:58.320 is probably the gateway for many many mostly 19 year old men into philosophy and that was the case for me

00:03:07.320 he's also the most misunderstood philosopher of the 19th and 20th century maybe of all all of

00:03:13.800 philosophy so i mean when we think about nietzsche we we think about the bumper sticker slogans god is

00:03:19.880 dead and also what what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and i think that one of the misapprehensions

00:03:27.580 or the misunderstandings of nietzsche is that when he says god is dead he's rejoicing over this fact

00:03:35.200 he's not in fact he sees the fact that we can no longer believe in traditional forms of meaning so

00:03:42.120 religious political familial he thinks that during the 19th century those forms of meaning have kind

00:03:49.780 of gone down the toilet and that's what he means when he says god is dead he's not rejoicing what

00:03:55.260 what he's saying is in the absence of these forms of traditional meaning making what are we going to do

00:04:01.060 with our lives and he actually sees it as a crisis so he might be an atheist in a certain way but he's

00:04:07.580 not he's certainly not a rejoicing atheist the second sort of misunderstanding is that nietzsche was

00:04:13.660 an anti-semite or is the darling of the alt-right nietzsche was not an anti-semite his sister elizabeth was

00:04:21.760 and that's how he became acquainted so intimately with the nazi party in the 1930s and 1940s and then

00:04:29.360 in our collective memory today but that wasn't the case in nietzsche's day in fact he talks about

00:04:34.500 nationalism and anti-semitism as a type of bovine nationalism type of cowish nationalism which he was

00:04:42.180 not a fan of so i think those are the two main sort of misunderstandings but unfortunately that's the

00:04:48.120 way that many of us understand nietzsche today yeah i think you know he was a friend with wagner

00:04:53.200 the guy who wrote music and he was an anti-semite nietzsche that's kind of one of the reasons why he ended

00:04:58.860 his friendship with him right right so i mean one of the the primary reason that nietzsche ended his

00:05:04.120 friendship with wagner is that nietzsche had a very close relationship with a man by the name of paul ray

00:05:10.720 and paul ray was a jew and wagner spread a very nasty rumor about nietzsche he said that nietzsche's

00:05:19.280 difficulty with his eyes could be attributed to masturbation and his masturbation could be attributed 0.97

00:05:24.820 to his fear of women and that his fear of women could be traced to a homosexuality that he was 0.96

00:05:30.720 sharing with paul ray and that was a rumor that basically nietzsche never forgave and that that

00:05:36.520 ended their relationship yeah i probably wouldn't forgive people spreading false rumors about you

00:05:40.920 either so i mean what kind of philosophy was nietzsche doing because it's different from say plato

00:05:46.660 or aristotle or more analytic philosophers you read a stuff and it's like sometimes very bizarre these

00:05:52.760 aphorisms it's very bold speaking about you know zarasutra and things like that so what was

00:05:58.820 how would you describe nietzsche's philosophy sure i mean it's very that's it's a hard question so i think

00:06:05.500 nietzsche is trying to create a philosophy that can give us a sense of meaning in the absence of

00:06:11.660 the traditions that i mentioned earlier so what he would like us to do is to understand that the death

00:06:18.560 of god actually allows us to live and living is not just an issue of reason it's an issue of passion

00:06:25.560 it's an issue of art and so that that belief then comes through in his philosophy and his philosophy

00:06:32.160 ralph waldo emerson says one day philosophy will be done by poets nietzsche envisions that or is trying

00:06:39.380 to embody that so when we think about the form of nietzsche's philosophy we see poetry we see aphorism

00:06:46.340 we see songs drama and what nietzsche is hoping is that we actually see it as a philosophy of life

00:06:53.860 he says that the the point of life is to make our lives like pieces of art and he tried to embody

00:07:01.100 that in his writing so it doesn't come across as a straight argument or as a rational discourse

00:07:05.700 because he says that and nietzsche suspects that human beings don't just live by rational discourse

00:07:13.000 alone they live by gut instinct and they live by aesthetic or artistic experience and so by forming

00:07:21.240 a philosophy that is as you say unconventional he's going he's trying to tap into those you know those

00:07:27.460 ways of understanding yeah that irrational part he uses the god dionyses right as sort of that that

00:07:33.060 represents that irrational part of humanity that's right i mean and so nietzsche envisions

00:07:38.600 a culture that balances the dionysian and the apollonian the apollonian being this call to order

00:07:44.900 and the dionysian being this sort of darker instinctual impulse and he says that the best 1.00

00:07:51.020 cultures are those that can have a balance between the two and if we think and and have a balance between

00:07:56.520 the two in the same experience that's what he thinks so is so unique about greek tragedy for example

00:08:02.660 so you mentioned ralph waldo emerson there as i've read nietzsche i've found similarities between like

00:08:08.740 what he was doing what the transcendentalists were doing what do you think were the similarities there

00:08:12.900 yeah so i mean nietzsche is reading emerson through the 1860s and he says that emerson is his good

00:08:19.640 friend because of his deep what nietzsche calls skeptics the word that gives us skeptical in other words

00:08:26.520 emerson's doubt about conventional forms of morality is doubt about conventional or traditional ways of

00:08:35.240 being and i think that that's a similarity i also think there's a similarity with emerson's sort of

00:08:41.900 drive toward individualism and self-reliance which we see in nietzsche so if you think about nietzsche's

00:08:49.500 understanding of the will to power the idea that we are most alive when we exercise our wills

00:08:55.620 in sort of creative or meaningful ways this was in emerson as well and so that's another aspect

00:09:03.320 i also think that nietzsche nietzsche's notion he describes it as the amor fati the love of fate

00:09:11.360 and i think that we see this in emerson as well and we can talk about the love of fate a little later

00:09:16.560 too i'm sure we will sure you just mentioned will the power i mean that's one of the books that i feel

00:09:20.860 like people associate the reason why people associate nietzsche with nazism because that was

00:09:25.340 like the book that you know all the the soldiers uh nazi american carried around but like people

00:09:31.620 when they hear will the power they often think well he's talking about political power it sounds

00:09:35.980 like they're you just talked about nietzsche wasn't really talking about political power or just

00:09:39.940 dominance he was talking more some like a personal type of power um yeah i mean nietzsche is

00:09:47.640 asking us to uh he says this to us and i'm going to be just very as frank as i can about it sure he says

00:09:55.460 the young soul should look back on his life or her life and ask ask themselves what have you really

00:10:05.240 loved up to this point and the will to power is one way of answering that question like what we find

00:10:14.240 about our lives that are you know are the best parts of our lives are times when we're exercising

00:10:20.660 the will to power this creative force and you're right it is individual and not necessarily nationalistic

00:10:29.100 or imperialistic there is another way of answering that question what have you loved up till now but i

00:10:36.920 think that the will to power is one is the traditional way that we understand nietzsche as answering that

00:10:41.480 question so what we love is moments in which we feel like our volition is exercised in you know

00:10:48.240 active ways or in ways that we have authorship over and nietzsche was very much attuned to the fact

00:10:55.200 that human beings do feel good when they feel powerful right i think he's yeah he said something

00:11:00.160 like joy is the feeling of power increasing something along that line yeah and and he's also coming out of

00:11:07.500 this darwinian legacy darwin publishes the origin of species in 18 or 1859 and nietzsche is reading

00:11:15.440 this and trying to figure out what a naturalized morality would look like in other words what would

00:11:21.320 morality look like if we just think about humans as just another form of animal and that doesn't mean

00:11:28.200 that he's reducing us to animals rather he's he's saying what are our natures actually like and where do we

00:11:35.160 find joy where do we find it well one place we find it is power so you mentioned the beginning that

00:11:42.380 oftentimes nietzsche is the the gateway to philosophy for 19 year old young men and you're one of those

00:11:48.540 young men you started reading and writing about him when you're 19 years old as a college student

00:11:53.180 what drew you to nietzsche as a young man sure i mean my my background is fairly conservative i grew up in

00:11:59.960 the middle of pennsylvania central pennsylvania and if you've ever been there you probably know that like

00:12:04.660 central pennsylvania is not a place where people think you know it's not not not a bastion of

00:12:10.880 philosophy my mother a fairly conservative woman never envisioned her son becoming a philosophy

00:12:19.240 professor i grew up in a sort of strict calvinist religious setting and which is not unlike

00:12:26.380 frederick nietzsche he grew up a strict lutheran and when i read nietzsche's antichrist a book that was

00:12:34.120 published at the end of his life it says one must have the courage to ask forbidden questions

00:12:40.100 and i was hooked because those forbidden questions were questions like is there a god do i have faith

00:12:48.420 what does it mean to be a man those are questions that nietzsche invites us to ask and he doesn't give

00:12:55.100 us answers but rather he just says go ahead you know take the risk and so i was hooked thankfully i

00:13:01.780 bumped into a very good professor two of them dan conway and doug anderson who um encouraged me to

00:13:08.060 write a thesis on emerson and nietzsche on the concepts of genius insanity and what's known as

00:13:14.660 the ascetic ideal not the aesthetic but the ascetic ideal asceticism being the idea of self-deprivation

00:13:21.940 or self-control and anyway they they were the ones who uh said to me after my junior year they handed me

00:13:28.720 uh an envelope and in that envelope was three thousand dollars and they said you know what

00:13:33.320 you've never been out of outside of central pennsylvania you should go to switzerland you

00:13:37.100 should go quote hike with nietzsche that's how the journey sort of began so you went on this hike you

00:13:42.020 went to switzerland to dig deeper into nietzsche let's talk about switzerland what role did switzerland

00:13:48.140 play in nietzsche's life particularly this town like it's basil or basil well basel was the town where

00:13:53.260 nietzsche became the youngest tenured professor in philology the study of languages basel actually

00:14:00.840 was a place that he escaped into the mountains and then in 1880 and then from 1881 to 1886

00:14:08.400 he spent his summers in a very small town called sills maria on the italian border

00:14:14.740 and he stayed at a boarding house which is now a museum and my professors doug and dan had

00:14:23.980 contacted the museum and had arranged for me to stay there on this first 19 year old journey

00:14:29.400 and i stayed there for nine weeks and hiked the trails that nietzsche had hiked it was also the

00:14:35.180 place where nietzsche he basically escaped the sort of conventions of academic philosophy from basel

00:14:41.300 and began to write books that at the time seemed unconventional to the point of craziness but

00:14:49.380 really transformed contemporary philosophy so books like thus folks are athustra beyond good and evil

00:14:56.200 these books uh were penned not not in an office but in in the hills outside of sills maria so you

00:15:03.580 mentioned that nietzsche went there to hike he was a walker like he even wrote about walking what did

00:15:09.740 what did nietzsche say about walking yeah he said he said many things one of which was the only

00:15:16.540 thoughts worth having are the ones that you have on your feet i judge a thought on its ability to

00:15:22.860 walk in other words to carry its own weight and nietzsche when when he first got there and many on many

00:15:30.960 occasions through his early stay in sills maria would hike seriously he had a favorite mountain

00:15:36.880 mount corvatch or piz corvatch but through his later life this walking became more of a way of

00:15:43.140 you know it was more strolling rather than hiking because his health was so bad and he would take

00:15:49.460 companions many of whom were women and many of whom or a couple of whom were jewish another sort of 0.74

00:15:56.560 misconception about nietzsche is that he's a misogynist straight misogynist that he that he hates women

00:16:02.240 and that he's an anti-semite well in the in the hills around sills maria he spent a lot of time

00:16:07.580 with a feminist and with a jewish woman i mean he comes out of this long line of philosophers that

00:16:14.200 you know thought on their feet so aristotle aristotle had a school of thought known as the

00:16:19.980 peripatetics and the walkers russo said that his study was in fact his walking trail and then there's

00:16:27.160 i mean he was like this epic walker there's kant too and your wife i think is an expert in kant

00:16:33.380 that guy like people would like supposedly would people would set their clocks to his walking

00:16:37.580 schedule yeah that's right and i mean i've often poo-pooed so emmanuel kant lived in konigsberg a part

00:16:44.060 of prussia and people would joke around in konigsberg that you could see the sort of philosopher stroll

00:16:51.860 the same time every day and i always thought that this was you know and nietzsche thought that this

00:16:57.620 was a reflection of a constipated mind that you would never like you would just do the same thing

00:17:02.540 over and over again but the more i get into adult adulthood i think maybe this is the best that some

00:17:08.220 of us can do like i went like we're not going to the alps a lot of us are not going to the alps

00:17:13.520 right maybe we should just go for a little walk like kant and kant i think has i mean carol has helped

00:17:19.280 me see this that kant has the idea of what he calls a purposeless purpose on his walks he thinks

00:17:27.560 that we should embody a purposeless purpose when we're trying to experience art or beauty or the

00:17:34.620 sublime because usually our life is filled with these purposes that you know we raise children or we

00:17:41.500 you know have a house or we buy stuff those are real purposes what's what's rare about

00:17:48.320 const walks is they give him just a little space to have a purposeless purpose and i think that that's

00:17:54.340 something useful in our sort of rat race of a life we're gonna take a quick break for your word from

00:17:59.240 our sponsors and now back to the show i mean i'm curious have you what do you think it is about

00:18:06.460 walking in your own experience right we're gonna get phenomenological here sure yeah uh your own

00:18:11.160 experience with walking why do you think it it lends itself well to philosophy or thinking through

00:18:16.220 ideas that's great i mean one thing is that walking is the most primary way of orienting

00:18:22.560 ourselves in the world so i mean when you walk through a woods or when you walk through a city

00:18:29.640 your feet are doing something for you in other words they're they're allowing you to explore the

00:18:37.640 world and we usually don't even think about it but when you go on a real walk you realize you're

00:18:42.660 exploring the world which is in fact what i think philosophy is meant to do as well so that's one

00:18:48.300 aspect the other aspect is when you walk you get to get away in other words we have so many habitual

00:18:54.380 or mundane moments aren't in our life philosophy or rather walking allows us to escape if for only a

00:19:02.920 little while like we make fun of you know pedestrian is a word that we usually use to describe the most

00:19:09.360 boring aspects of life but maybe we should be pedestrians like in other words maybe we should 0.99

00:19:15.400 just walk a little bit more get out of our get out of our you know in the house ruts so i think that's

00:19:23.060 another aspect no i like that yeah there's that latin phrase solvitar abulando like it is solved by

00:19:28.280 walking you know sometimes like you got a problem you just go for a walk and you might not get the answer

00:19:33.320 there but usually i do because you just your brain is sort of resting and then insights come

00:19:38.820 right that's right and i i mean it doesn't have to be something i for a long time i thought that

00:19:43.100 walking and hiking had to be this sort of heroic exercise of masculine power and as i've gotten gone

00:19:51.120 gray slowly gone gray i realized that this is a sort of futile pursuit like you are it you can push

00:19:59.220 yourself and i guess there is some sort of benefit to that but i think the real difficulty is to come

00:20:05.040 to terms with the ways that you can't always exert yourself right so also on that first trip to

00:20:12.980 switzerland when you're hiking word nietzsche height you're also doing some like extreme forms of fasting

00:20:19.340 what was going on what were you hoping to do with that yeah this is a moment in the book where i'm like

00:20:25.900 am i gonna write this am i really gonna write this and i did so when i was 19 i was writing about

00:20:33.760 the ascetic ideal the ascetic ideal is the idea that we have the power to deprive ourselves

00:20:40.540 of things and in fact that this is a form of self-control fasting is like a perfect example of

00:20:49.640 ascetic practice nietzsche has a criticism of the ascetic ideal when it's placed in the context of

00:20:55.420 christianity if you think about the priest or the one who fasts um in christianity they're they're

00:21:01.500 typically thinking that they're going to fast in order to well go to heaven or in order to be you

00:21:08.400 know sainted or something nietzsche doesn't believe that and he thinks that that story is actually pretty

00:21:13.520 destructive but what i noticed about nietzsche's life is that he was not he did not have an unvaxxed

00:21:20.160 relationship with food it was difficult for him to eat he had stomach problems so when i went to

00:21:27.340 switzerland i wanted to play around well at first i was playing around with it but it turns out that

00:21:32.880 fasting is pretty addictive and we we talk about men typically as fasting and women as having anorexia 0.70

00:21:41.540 but i think that's a pretty stupid distinction i i mean straight up i just hadn't had a pretty 0.89

00:21:48.180 serious eating disorder which i think many wrestlers and many swimmers which i was one 0.89

00:21:53.100 end up with and i came back and came back from switzerland and have been struggling with an eating

00:21:59.180 disorder the rest of my life wow so you mentioned uh you know he nietzsche wasn't a fan of the aesthetic

00:22:04.700 ideal within the context of christianity but he he did see value like what did what value did he see

00:22:10.940 in it then if he didn't think it will you don't do it to sanctify yourself yeah i mean this idea of

00:22:17.240 what doesn't kill you makes you stronger i think that nietzsche was suggesting that we come to

00:22:23.820 understand our limits through forms of very extreme practice and this is the exercising of the will to

00:22:31.620 power oftentimes if you think about endurance athletes or if you think about extreme sports or if you

00:22:39.480 think about forms of fasting they're all efforts to get a hold of yourself to sort of see your limits

00:22:46.140 and to author something of your life to sort of um to own up to part of your life if you i mean i'm

00:22:55.280 also a sort of long distance runner and when you're running long distances anything for me anything over

00:23:01.540 10 miles i want to stop like there's a part of me that wants to stop and just continuing to go

00:23:08.620 is an exercising of the you know is an exercise of the will and nietzsche thought that we come to

00:23:15.700 know ourselves through those sort of moments so that sort of is a quick answer to your question

00:23:21.680 yeah and also while you're there it sounds like you were having some mental health issue i mean there

00:23:26.960 was a moment you're on the cliff and you stare down over a cliff and you're thinking what if i could

00:23:31.100 jump i think everyone's done that at some point where you're driving oncoming traffic like if i just

00:23:35.520 swerved but do you think something else was going on where do you think you were kind of descending

00:23:39.280 into the abyss yeah with while you were hiking with nietzsche i mean when nietzsche says to you

00:23:44.740 you must have the strength to ask forbidden questions he's also saying like the most forbidden question is

00:23:50.400 the question of why why bother doing anything why bother getting up in the morning why and when he

00:23:56.960 strips i mean when he strips traditional answers away from you that why can be very scary so for example

00:24:04.480 if my minister or if my rabbi or if my mother or father are no longer the guiding forces of my life

00:24:12.900 then what is i mean camus who sort of inherits the existential mantle from nietzsche camus writing in the

00:24:20.160 the the 1940s says there is but one serious philosophical question and that is suicide

00:24:26.940 he doesn't mean to bum you out he's just saying to you what's the point of life is life worth living

00:24:33.680 and i think coming up with really good answers to that question is difficult or at least it was for me

00:24:38.780 sometimes it still is no yeah i think everyone has that has had those moments that where they're

00:24:43.600 like laying in bed at night and you're like what what am i doing yeah what what am i doing like

00:24:49.240 it's just like what what the heck am i doing and i think that nietzsche allows you to voice those

00:24:54.680 concerns which is good but it can also be very disturbing now you might ask yourself why is it good

00:25:00.500 i think thoreau is better on this he says i don't want to get to the end of my life and discover that i

00:25:06.600 haven't lived and i think that that the scariest part of death is getting to the end and discovering that

00:25:12.920 you haven't lived and one of the hardest parts is to get to the end and then look back and think oh

00:25:19.420 my god what was i doing with all of my time i didn't have that much of it man did i squander it

00:25:25.340 and i think nietzsche wakes us up when he asks us to ask forbidden questions he's trying to wake us up

00:25:31.400 to help us avoid that uh you know that end of life right well another thing he came up with sort of a

00:25:37.340 thought experiment to get you thinking about that is eternal return yeah yeah that's right and so

00:25:42.460 he says to you he says imagine that in your loneliest of lonelies

00:25:48.280 a demon comes to you and says that this moment this very moment and all things you will have to

00:25:57.580 live over not once not twice but an infinite number of times and then he asks the demon asks

00:26:04.880 would this idea crush you or would it elevate your soul and most of the time i think it crushes us

00:26:13.460 the idea that i'd have to redo this moment again exactly the same way an infinite number of times

00:26:19.900 is terrifying think about all the time you're stuck in traffic or all the time that you're

00:26:25.540 you know in a bad relationship you'd have to live that over infinitely so nietzsche is asking us to own up

00:26:33.040 to life with a type of radical responsibility in other words can you live your life as william

00:26:41.160 butler yates says and do it all again live and play it again like play it again sam and i think

00:26:46.780 that that's a challenge that many of us would do well to sort of face up to and then you also talk

00:26:51.760 about you mentioned earlier more fati like there's a love of fate that kind of walks hand in hand with

00:26:56.620 that idea as well yeah so i mean for for a long period of time i thought the only way to answer

00:27:03.120 the eternal return to answer this demon is to exercise your power to exercise the will to power

00:27:09.040 but i realized especially on the second trip to switzerland and at the age of 37 i realized that life

00:27:16.980 adult life really doesn't consist in exercising your will to power or at least not primarily it it um

00:27:25.420 consists quite a bit in the times when your will to power fails you or you exercise the will to power

00:27:33.180 in disastrous or really embarrassing or heinous ways and the question then is how are you going to

00:27:40.720 embrace the eternal return and admit to yourself that you are deeply fallible that your life is deeply

00:27:47.960 fallible and i think nietzsche is coming to the end of his life and discovering something he says

00:27:53.380 we must embrace the amor fati the love of fate the love of fate says that we are to love not just bear

00:28:01.300 but love the things that we find most despicable embarrassing or heinous about ourselves like maybe

00:28:09.640 the whole maybe the hardest part about the eternal return is is the things that we do to ourselves and

00:28:16.060 do to others that we're not proud of and coming to terms and owning up to those things is i think

00:28:22.400 part and parcel of the amor fati and i think it's a really pretty mature way of thinking about adult

00:28:27.300 life right yeah i mean it's not like you're not being fatalistic or nihilistic it's like well no i

00:28:32.060 can't do anything like you have will to power you can exercise it but there's some parts there's nothing

00:28:36.680 you can do about it so don't don't beat yourself up too hard about it i mean there's this moment at

00:28:42.540 the end of nietzsche's life where he where he says i must look back on my sickest years with the with

00:28:48.840 deep gratitude they have allowed me to become who i am namely a philosopher but the idea that we would

00:28:55.800 be able to look back on the sort of the hardest years of our life and to say this too like i would

00:29:02.060 have that you know repeat infinitely that's the time i mean that strength is not straightforwardly

00:29:09.460 the will to power it's something a little different but if you've been born into a family

00:29:13.960 that that sometimes you'd think to yourself like man this was not of my choosing or into circumstances

00:29:20.860 that were not of your choosing maybe we have to exercise the amor fati not the not the will to

00:29:26.800 power well maybe this those two concepts combined in that idea that nietzsche uh you know he quoted

00:29:32.980 pindar you know you got to become who you are isn't that sort of like a combination synthesis of

00:29:38.240 you know will the power and amor fati i think i think so so i mean if you think about

00:29:43.640 the idea of becoming who you are it sounds pretty paradoxical because you already are who you are

00:29:51.300 in one way or if you become somebody else then what has happened to the person that you once were

00:29:59.100 it's it's kind of this cone-like riddle but i think what nietzsche is suggesting is that we have to

00:30:06.500 think about ourselves as the process of becoming in other words being somebody is not becoming the

00:30:13.500 person that you always wanted to become always wanted to be like the you does not exist out there

00:30:21.080 somewhere for all time and you discover it and then you become it for all time that's not how human

00:30:27.140 beings live or die we just change or we're transfigured and to figure out a way where we're both

00:30:34.620 the authors of our lives but also willing to own up to whatever happens those are the two aspects

00:30:41.540 the will to power and the amor fati i think that that's nietzsche's point with become who you are

00:30:47.600 yeah we like that it becoming like that's when nietzsche was talking about he says i am dynamite i am

00:30:52.320 dynamis i am change i'm always becoming right and so and this idea usually we just we think about

00:30:59.880 dynamite its roots being in the greek power it's not i don't think that that's quite right i think

00:31:07.240 he meant to to become who you are he says you must not have the slightest idea of who you are

00:31:14.120 which is strange in other words you you have to let yourself go is many times who we are in life

00:31:23.820 is we're clinging to the self we're clinging to the ideas about what we think we should become

00:31:30.600 or what we think we are and nietzsche says let it go see what else will happen see what change will

00:31:36.500 occur and i think that that's that's a pretty useful thought for those of us who are edging

00:31:41.260 you know 40 or 50 right well so you mentioned you went back to switzerland as a 37 year old man you

00:31:48.660 this time you brought along your wife and your young daughter what were you hoping to learn by

00:31:53.800 going hiking with nietzsche again as in midlife honestly no i mean honestly i i think i look back

00:32:01.280 on the decision to go again and my partner carol still says to me she goes you know like that was

00:32:08.200 the smartest and dumbest thing we have ever done and she's right and because i think what i wanted to

00:32:15.600 see when i initially went back was if i could sort of live as intensely as i did when i was 19 could i

00:32:21.820 still climb the same mountains could we still and the the answer is an unequivocal no like you can't do

00:32:29.180 that especially when you have a wife and child and so what what i tried to come to terms with is

00:32:36.300 growing up in other words i had to take the gondola to the top of the mountain with with becca and

00:32:43.220 carol instead of hiking up by myself and instead of being angry or resigned to this fact the challenge

00:32:52.160 is to own up to it to see if you can love it even the frustration of it so i didn't know what i was

00:33:01.360 going to find but what i found was honestly an appreciation for the amor fati which i didn't have

00:33:06.920 as a 19 year old right and you were becoming who you are which is now at this point you're middle-aged

00:33:11.760 guy with a wife and a kid yeah that's right and and honestly the the point of in in part of part of

00:33:19.300 this is to give an interpretation of nietzsche that allows one or allows a reader to see nietzsche's

00:33:26.060 brilliance in leading us into middle age usually he's regarded as the quintessential juvenile philosopher

00:33:32.660 19 year olds are drawn to him but you're supposed to get out of it when you turn 25 or 30 but i think

00:33:39.100 nietzsche provides resources for us to really think through our lives as we move toward death

00:33:44.940 and i think that that's what the book is about so no yeah i think i'm 36 i'm approaching middle age

00:33:54.080 and you notice yeah opportunities start closing down right there's some things you can no longer do

00:33:59.680 because of simply just time or you're you have responsibilities and for a lot of people that

00:34:06.220 can be they have that sort of moments like oh my gosh they have midlife crisis they do these crazy

00:34:10.060 things but nietzsche would say no you know chill out yes things are closing in your opportunities are

00:34:16.580 going down maybe a bit but you still have a bit you have you have the choice to to love it and to

00:34:21.200 embrace it but also there's still wiggle room within that those parameters yeah that's right i mean

00:34:25.980 that wiggle room is especially important so i mean nietzsche talks a big game about being a he's

00:34:32.700 calls himself a hyperborean or rather he says a hyperborean are like these mythical creatures that

00:34:39.020 live up at the top of mountain like frost covered you know ice covered mountains nietzsche was never this

00:34:45.080 person ever he was generally pretty sickly especially when he's writing these words and it's a hope that

00:34:54.200 you have a little bit of wiggle room to be the hyperborean in your mundane life in other words 0.99

00:35:00.060 see if you can wiggle yourself free even within the sort of habitualness of your life

00:35:07.620 and i think that that's a really interesting sort of you know value added to reading nietzsche as a 40

00:35:16.020 year old i'm i'm just on the brink of 40 is like we've talked about nietzsche's ubermensch this classic

00:35:21.640 overman this ideal of individual freedom and it's very appealing to a 19 year old or to a 21 year old

00:35:29.900 and what is interesting is that it just it it fits so well with their natural like with their

00:35:37.380 natural sense of vigor maybe the ubermensch is better is more is more useful to those of us who

00:35:43.960 have forgotten their free impulses in other words who have hit 40 or 50 maybe the ubermensch is a

00:35:51.360 lingering promise that we can be otherwise than we currently are and i think that that's what nietzsche

00:35:56.480 gives us that's an interesting point yeah when you're 21 like it's not really hard to strive but

00:36:01.700 when you're 50 it becomes harder but so it's there you're like oh i can still do that there's that

00:36:07.120 possibility right exactly and i think we forget about the mad possibilities of life as we get older

00:36:12.820 but we have to remember that the mad and that the mad possibilities of life don't necessarily involve

00:36:18.920 the same types of actions as they did when you were 19 the mad possibilities could be okay my daughter

00:36:25.180 my daughter has to you know my daughter has a snow day in this polar vortex right and i can be pissed 1.00

00:36:32.620 off about that and think oh geez i'm not going to get work done or i can go out and do something

00:36:38.360 beautiful with her it is up to me and those are little that's that's the wiggle room i'm talking about

00:36:45.680 it do you want to dig yourself an igloo with your daughter or do you want to be pissed off all day 0.73

00:36:51.040 that you have to you know that you're not getting the work done that you think you need to do

00:36:54.980 no i love it so yeah look for those wiggle rooms throughout life that's the thing i think a lot

00:36:58.440 of times people look at nietzsche and you got you think you have to do something grandiose and giant

00:37:01.820 and big because he talked like that he talked a big game but like if you look at his life

00:37:05.700 i mean he wrote some philosophy some books that like you know have changed the way we think but

00:37:10.800 he kind of i mean he was he read a lot he walked he slept i mean he didn't do too much but he still

00:37:16.760 had that idea that was there that he strived for no he's deeply human like he's deeply human at the

00:37:22.520 same time he's striving after something deep and transcendent and i think that that's what we need

00:37:27.560 to remember because uh oftentimes life is so mundane and like it's so boring and nietzsche says we are

00:37:38.060 wasting our lives if we just are satisfied with this but you don't necessarily need to go i learned

00:37:45.020 that you don't need to go to the alps in order to break out of that and i don't think that i'm

00:37:50.700 going to be going to the alps again right you can just build an igloo with your daughter yeah honestly 0.81

00:37:56.160 i mean it sounds stupid but it's it's it is true i think well john this has been a great conversation

00:38:01.820 where can people go to learn more about the book in your work well the publisher is friar strauss and 0.83

00:38:07.400 drew but honestly i think a lot of the pieces that i've written in the new york times and in the

00:38:12.580 los angeles review of books lately have resonated with these questions the book is out in the uk

00:38:18.520 next month and i think that i'm going to be posting a number of interviews through the bbc

00:38:24.060 and abc in the next couple months but i really do appreciate the chance to talk to you thanks so

00:38:29.580 much it's been a pleasure thanks again my guest there is john kegg he's the author of the book

00:38:33.660 hiking with nietzsche i'm becoming who you are it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:38:37.500 everywhere you can also find out more information about his work at his website john kegg.com that's

00:38:41.820 john kegg that's k-a-a-g.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash kegg where you can find

00:38:48.180 links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of

00:38:59.760 the aom podcast check out our website artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast

00:39:03.880 archives got over 400 and almost 500 podcast episodes there also thousands of wealth research

00:39:09.280 thorough articles just about anything personal finance barbell training social skills you name

00:39:13.820 it we've got it if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give

00:39:17.220 us a review on itunes or stitcher it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you

00:39:21.120 please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out

00:39:24.540 of it as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay

00:39:27.980 encouraging you to not only listen to the aom podcast but put what you've learned into action

00:39:32.260 you

The Art of Manliness - February 06, 2019

#480： Hiking With Nietzsche

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript