Episode 188: Conceptual Mummies (Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes. Me?

[00:00:18] I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say goodnight to the bad guy. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, the evolutionary psychologist Jeffrey Miller tweeted out that empathy for cheap virtue signaling is how civilization fails.

[00:01:28] You're someone who feels empathy for virtue signal. Do you hate civilization? Are you trying to bring it down? Yeah, I hate civilization man. I'm all in favor of going back to fucking living in caves with little loincloths and what does that even mean destroying civilization?

[00:01:46] I'll tell you something. If he puts cheap virtue signaling in the words, then sure, it's like saying- Sure, it brings down civilization? No, no, no. Sure, it's a bad thing. But the hyperbole of bringing down civilizations is just like, is that really necessary?

[00:02:05] I have a feeling that he might be reacting to some of the things we're about to talk about. No, I can tell you what he's reacting about. It actually, so it started, it was in a thread about like climate change people and people

[00:02:21] who say they're so concerned about climate change. He was saying ask them if they're more worried about this aspect of it or that aspect of it, which I had never heard of the implication being they won't know because they don't know shit about climate change.

[00:02:35] They just know that they're supposed to be really worried about it as a threat to the world. So I actually kind of agree with, I think people's confidence that they can speak very strongly about climate change and what we need to do doesn't reflect their knowledge of really

[00:02:59] anything. It's like third hand knowledge based on other people they might know who have read the real scientific literature on it, who are familiar with it. So he pointed that out and he was being kind of a dick about it, but I actually sort of

[00:03:15] agree with where he was coming from then. But then as somebody said maybe being snide about it isn't the best idea, you could just try to be a little nicer about it. And then this is when he tweeted that.

[00:03:30] And it's just such a ridiculous, it's one of the most ridiculous tweets that I see on my timeline. It's the downfall, the downfall of civilization. So to speak to the climate change thing, like 99.9% of my knowledge is like that.

[00:03:48] It's like somebody who, I've not talked to even the experts, but somebody who knows an expert or something like that. It gets to me, it's like there's some level of epistemological faith I have that I should be worried. Jeffrey Miller's knowledge of climate change is the same, right?

[00:04:07] Like I doubt he's read the primary literature. No, right. But that's consistent. So then like be silent. But you are fairly silent about climate change. You're not going, I think his problem with is with the people who make it a big issue

[00:04:21] while still also not really knowing anything about it. I mean, I will agree that cheap virtue signaling is one of the most annoying things I see on Twitter. I follow and I won't name names, but he not only has he said that he's tired of all

[00:04:41] of the virtue signaling on Twitter instead of like going out and doing the right thing. He's like, he said that in one tweet. And then not long after he tweeted out, turns out I'm looking for a new job

[00:04:53] and I'd like to work for underrepresented minority or a woman. Can anybody point me in the right direction? Oh my God. It's like just look for a fucking job, dude. No, it is really annoying. And I think, you know, you and I probably find it annoying.

[00:05:11] But for some people, it makes them lose their mind. Like it really does. They, you know, the same thing with like gender studies and some of those kinds of kids on campus being sanctimonious. Like some people just can't handle it.

[00:05:26] And they, it turns otherwise smart people into people who say that civilization fails because of cheap, you know, as someone pointed out on the thread, like what's the evidence of that? Like if those people don't have evidence about climate change, the historical

[00:05:42] like fall of civilizations is tied to empathy, not even just virtue signals. Oh, right. It's empathy for virtue signals. Empathy for virtue signals. Yeah. No, I well, obviously, I don't mean I feel like it's, it's, it feels that it's true. Grease.

[00:06:06] Maybe he should spend more time in the hot tub with climate change grad students. Yes. Oh, nice transition. Thank you. So we should say what we're going to talk about today first and then that we're going to talk about Nietzsche complaining like Jeffrey Miller about the Greeks.

[00:06:25] I have not done how I would describe what Nietzsche is doing. But yes, he is also in a snarky, contemptuous mood in the piece that we read, Twilight of the Idols. So we'll talk about that in the second second before I introduce this.

[00:06:39] I just say right now that I feel like a busy body talking about this and we've railed against moral busy bodies. But fuck it. I have to talk about it anyway. This is a news story that that just hit at least my Twitter timeline

[00:06:53] that George Mason University psych professor sued George Mason University because he felt that a title nine ruling against him was unfair and then it got dismissed. But but here's here's the the things that that he did.

[00:07:11] So he filed suit and it was dismissed, but he claimed that he was biased. There was bias against him for being a man because the complaints that he received were from, I believe, four graduate students and they were about him just being inappropriate.

[00:07:28] So one of the things that he did, which I want to talk to you about, whether did you have the gut reaction that this was inappropriate or not? One of the things he did was in teaching a class about sexuality

[00:07:40] as an example of exhibitionism, he gave a personal anecdote of getting sucked off at a party and the. And the woman saying that she wanted other people to watch. Apparently some students didn't like that he used a personal example of getting sucked off in a far.

[00:07:57] I feel like he was bragging for sure he was. And then the idea that that was just, you know, part of the clay. How else are you going to teach if you can't tell your class about the claim was because like, dude, I'm just using relevant examples.

[00:08:15] I mean, thank God he's not teaching a class on serial killers. And it wasn't him. She the it was her that was the example. Yeah. Yeah. She was the example of whatever it was he was trying to illustrate.

[00:08:28] And you know, he just happened to be the one getting a blowjob at the party. And he had acquiesced because, you know, this was her disorder, not his. Right. And then what's the other one? He also attended a strip club with graduate students and got a lap dance.

[00:08:47] That one doesn't seem. I mean, if they all wanted to go to a strip club, like, you know, you get a lap dance at a strip. OK, so here. So that's the second incident. And there was a third one that he had a party at his home

[00:08:59] and the graduate students ended up in the hot tub discussing lots of stuff. And then while he was in the hot tub with the other students, he gave another anecdote about some sexual exescapade. And I don't remember what Europe was.

[00:09:16] Yeah, I don't think they give the details of that one. Look, like the giving details about about your sexual life to your graduate students in a hot tub, his claim was, look, if it were a pool, you wouldn't be bitching, which I guess I mean,

[00:09:32] I don't know if that's true. I mean, I don't think you would end up in a pool, like, intimately discussing your sexual life. Like, I don't think like, you know, there's nothing wrong with having been being in a hot tub with grad students.

[00:09:45] I think that he's missing the point that that there was some sort of attitude that he had toward talking about his sex life in a way that made people uncomfortable. So it turns out, you know, he's he's tenured. He's actually really highly cited.

[00:10:00] You know, he's done a lot of work on on well being and on sexuality. He's like probably my age, maybe younger and has like a good Gillian publications and has been cited like way more than I'll ever be cited. He has tenure. He didn't lose his job.

[00:10:17] What he got was a stern talking to and he didn't get a raise. And I believe he was sanctioned to not like he's not allowed to have female, maybe female grad students. Not forever, right? But just not forever. Just for a couple of years. Yeah.

[00:10:36] And he seems genuinely flabbergasted by this. Like, you know, I don't know the guy like he had a he had a like a tweet storm saying like, don't don't judge me too soon. Like, you'll see this is this is unreasonable.

[00:10:51] But what what really shocks me is that anybody would defend, let alone countersue things like telling your students that kind of shit, like, I mean, and I'm wanting to say inappropriate shit, like, like quite a bit.

[00:11:06] But like, well, I think the key is he made them feel uncomfortable. Right? Like I think there's a reason why those sanctions were brought against them and complaints were made. There probably is a way to I don't know about in the class

[00:11:22] talking about a blowjob you got in that. That's just not appropriate. Like someone said, just just pretend it was someone else. Yeah. You know, just. But like, if you were, if you weren't this kind of person and people just knew

[00:11:35] you and knew you had a good heart and you didn't have designs on the students or in a way that would be like forceful or uncomfortable. Well, like I think you could probably do the hot tub thing, right?

[00:11:47] And maybe even the strip club thing depended as long as it was the students that asked him to do it rather than him asking the students to do it. Right. I mean, I think you're right. I think that that there is probably, you know, still a chance

[00:12:02] that a lone incident could get you in trouble, even if you are a person of good character. But I agree with you that that's not what what's happening here. Like they're they're painting a portrait of somebody who is frequently making people uncomfortable and doesn't even realize it.

[00:12:21] I don't know. It's hard to make really confident judgments. You know the guy, right? You've met him. I've met I've met him, you know, and it but it is so that I I don't I don't want to prematurely judge him.

[00:12:34] I it sounds though like he was like what sorry, what I'm trying to say is I don't know what the punishment should be, right, for making people uncomfortable in the way that he did. But what what strikes me is that he doesn't seem to understand

[00:12:51] that that's what he was doing, right? He's just like arguing the point. And it's like, well, fuck, dude. It's like I honestly, Tamler, I genuinely believe there are things that I have said that have made people uncomfortable. And like on this podcast, you made me uncomfortable

[00:13:09] all the time, so you're squirming in your chair all the time. I don't, you know, I want to know. I want to know and I'm trying. But all I know is that if somebody told me that

[00:13:21] I would be like, fuck, dude, I'm sorry, you know, like I really and like just accept whatever the school set. Yeah, I don't know. It's just is not but he's making it into a free speech thing now. And Jeffrey Miller speaking of, you know, tweeted to him like

[00:13:36] get help from fire dot org because this is an issue of free speech. And it's like, is it is it? Yeah, as a legal issue, I don't know. It doesn't sound like an issue of free speech that you're that you

[00:13:50] it's constitutionally protected for you to talk about your blowjob. You got at a party, right? Apparently I got it wrong. He was he was giving her head, which is I mean, I guess there's no reason why that's maybe that's better. I don't know. But still, I don't know.

[00:14:10] Like so as a as a constitutional legal issue, I don't know. And apparently that's what the lawsuit was about. So I guess not. But as a as a principle, like as somebody, I consider myself for free speech.

[00:14:23] But like I also but that doesn't mean you talk about like eating a girl out at a party in front of your class. Like was it it was a grad students or undergrads? That's a good question. I think it was grad students. Two of the women.

[00:14:42] Personal description of students. I think it was grad students. But yeah, I mean, it's a it's a Louie. It might be a Louie CK kind of thing where this is just the kind of stuff that he likes. He knows it's edgy.

[00:14:57] He knows it's I mean, we can relate to that that line that you walk where you're being provocative and you're being inappropriate. And some people walk it better than others. Yeah, I you know, I have a couple of friends and these are like our good

[00:15:13] friends in academia and I I really worry about them because they are creepy. I've seen them be creepy, right? And I'm not again look like you're no way done. Right. But but like routinely and I've seen the faces of women who

[00:15:34] they're being creepy to and they don't seem to be able to read those cues. It's like a weird like spectrum disorder just for sex stuff. You know, yeah. And then he has a Koch Foundation like Grant again. That's what I was going to say. It's related.

[00:15:50] I wonder if he was like almost pressured into filing this suit. Oh, I didn't think about it because my first thought was it shouldn't matter that he has a Koch grant. But I don't know. Well, you know, like I think there is this kind of rallying cry

[00:16:05] for some of these people like if he was initially sort of inclined to just be like this sucks, but fuck it. All right. I'll just take the sanctions and then like got with people who were really appalled and offended on his behalf

[00:16:20] and urged him to do this because it just seems like like dredging up the lawsuit was just a counterproductive in every way. Like now they're trying to they're trying to do more. Well, you know, apparently he tried to file suit as a John Doe

[00:16:37] so that the attention wouldn't come in. The judge said no, you have to use your name. But in using his name, then it became sort of a matter of record. And now they don't they're trying to make him not be able to teach undergrads.

[00:16:51] Right? Oh, I don't know. I didn't see that. That's what I thought I saw that the one thing is he does seem like he was a very popular good teacher. So that makes me think maybe most of the time he got away with this kind of stuff.

[00:17:07] And so maybe the the shock on his behalf is I've been doing this for years and it seemed like people enjoyed it. What what changed? You know, this yeah, this is something that I've also seen in some professors.

[00:17:21] There was one per professor in particular who is very popular at my institution a few years ago who was creepy and he made a lot of women uncomfortable and he ended up having to retire before he wanted to because of the complaints.

[00:17:36] But there were a lot, a lot of people, including young women who loved him and weren't bothered at all by any of that. And so they came to his defense. And it's I don't think they're wrong, but I don't think the uncomfortable people are wrong either.

[00:17:50] It's just it gets complicated. But I can see not getting the feedback right. If what you get are positive letters from female undergrad saying like, I really enjoyed your class, you know, like I can see being surprised at somebody filing a complaint.

[00:18:06] You know that the there's going to be people who get mad at us for this discussion that we're giving too much to the coddled generation where we're allowing them to like dictate the lives of professors who are just trying to make their classes entertaining and educational.

[00:18:25] And I don't know, like maybe you especially because you've been single. I don't know if we can talk about this, but you you have until recently been single for a big long period of time as you've been a professor and you are who you are.

[00:18:39] Then people know on this podcast and you know, there hasn't been complaints about you. I mean, this one time, dude, I was looking at girls pussy and she wanted everybody to watch. Yeah, this is that squirming thing. I'm going to file. Can I file some sort of complaint?

[00:18:56] Who do I file? Is there a podcasting board or something? Oh, man, I mean, I. So here's the thing like to the to the accusation of coddling for one. I'm actually trying to go out of my way to give.

[00:19:12] Cashed in here, some benefit of the doubt, at least in terms of his own knowledge of what he was doing. You know, there are a lot of female academics who I know who say this is nothing

[00:19:22] in my generation like guys were pulling out their dicks and and you know, like we we had to deal with it and I made it an academic. So like I'm not going to like how are you complaining about him bringing up some sexual experience? Like fair, fair enough.

[00:19:37] But but like shit was worse back then, right? Like presumably like I think things are getting better by not making people uncomfortable. Like I don't think the claim is that they didn't make people uncomfortable back then. I think it was just that there's a selection bias.

[00:19:52] The people who weren't that bothered by it made it all the way through. Yeah, no, but I think the idea is more that the people who are most inclined to be offended are now governing the rules. And so, you know, the rest of the people,

[00:20:10] the vast majority of whom like know how to handle this stuff, I just not allowed to have any fun anymore. So like you see this, here's where I would agree with that point of view. There are people who say you should never have functions with alcohol

[00:20:26] at an at an event, you know, with grad students and professors because some people don't drink and drinking makes them uncomfortable. Plus that makes people more likely to be sexually inappropriate and say racially, sexually inappropriate things.

[00:20:41] And so so you just shouldn't have alcohol at a party with in a professional. Has has your department done anything like that? No, no. I was like, you would be you would be on the job market if you could drink it. Yeah, yeah. No.

[00:20:57] And and so and, you know, like our honors college is also a fairly big drinking. But it's definitely gone down a little bit since the old days where it was more back in LAO. But but but like, you know, there are people who make those kinds of complaints.

[00:21:12] And there I agree with the side that says while all of that is true, I don't think we need to make the rules so that even one person doesn't feel as comfortable as they would if, you know, we banned this or that

[00:21:25] or this kind of speech or that or alcohol or whatever. Right. I mean, it's quite possible that there are some people who are super irrational about taking offence. Like I buy that. I think, though, the judgment does still have to take into account maybe the people who are

[00:21:47] at the far end of the spectrum of reasonable offence taking. You know, like I don't mind targeting the culture for that. I mean, you know, like, yes, shit's less fun, but also people fucking did cocaine in the bathroom in the 70s

[00:22:04] all the time, it's less fun than it is then. And probably we shouldn't, you know, that's a bad example. We should be doing more cocaine in the back. But I get your general point. My department has issued a decree, no cocaine in the bathroom at public events.

[00:22:18] It's really that's the way the like free speech crowd can get to me. Giving examples of alcohol being banned at like academic events. Like I'll turn into more like one of those people who just makes it their personal crusade to, you know, reverse the hypersensitivity.

[00:22:36] Yeah, don't take my alcohol. Bill Cosby was wrongfully accused. Oh, man. Well, I the one thing I hope that comes out of this is that like people, I don't want people to be afraid, but just be sense, like be a little more sensitive than this. I don't know.

[00:22:58] Be more sensitive. So that's what our podcast is now. Be more sensitive. Be more empathic to the virtue signalling that I'm trying to provide right now in order, in order to protect myself against the backlash. Yeah, no, Jeffrey Miller is not going to like. God bless Jeff Miller.

[00:23:17] We can just we can agree to disagree. But do you remember we talked about him on the early on? Yeah. And I don't like I've never I've wanted to never like because we were pretty harsh. Well, it was pretty fucking bad. Like why? Yeah.

[00:23:32] Why would you do that? It was an experiment. Remember, he said it was an experiment like to see how people reacted to inappropriate experiments to see what happens when you take like a bunch of ambient and then go on Twitter. All right.

[00:23:52] Well, hopefully we still have our jobs because, you know, they're cutting back. They're cutting back. We've both gotten emails from our institutions giving asking for advice for how to save money. And I feel like somebody could easily say fire David. Yeah, I hope that's not what I mean.

[00:24:13] Unfortunately, that wouldn't save them that much money. So all right, we'll be right back to talk about Nietzsche. We're sponsored this week by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is a returning sponsor, and that's something that we're actually

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[00:28:38] That's a good way to help get the word out. Even though we've been here for eight years, there are still people who don't know about us if that's unbelievable. Like Obama should be like emailing us after he did it.

[00:28:55] End of the year top podcast list, especially after our interest segment today. Yeah, right. You know that he was in some hot tubs with some grad students. It was a different time. It was a different time. Yeah. Yes. So thank all of you.

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[00:31:55] some more if people want to hear them, but you can go to should put a link to it's actually on my YouTube page where you can see live stream with Paul and with UL and just Tamler and I.

[00:32:10] I don't know how fun they are out of liveness, but but people are watching them. So go check them out. Yeah, that was fun. It was fun to do it with Paul. Actually, we we brought up Nietzsche at one point when we were talking about

[00:32:25] writing styles and it was he was saying that he doesn't have any time for like Wittgenstein and his aphoristic kind of obscure, more obscure style. And I was saying that when people do it, well, it's it can really work.

[00:32:39] And I think Nietzsche is one of those people who does it well. On that note, let us begin this discussion because we're going to have a little bit of an agree to disagree moments here, I think. I think we might have an argument.

[00:32:53] This could be a fight, people. And neither of us really know. I think Dave has a suspicion about how I what I think of this text. But I don't really know what Dave thinks about it. And we haven't talked about it at all yet.

[00:33:07] So but let me just give a quick introduction. So Twilight of the Idols, we're talking about the the first five chapters after the arrows and epigrams section of the text, which is just really short, kind of almost disconnected sayings.

[00:33:25] This is where like what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. That saying you can find it there. You can find dear to my heart. I distrust all systematizers and stay out of their way. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.

[00:33:41] I think that should be my Twitter profile. That is that is circled in red on my PDF of this because it explains a lot. But the chapters that we agreed to read are the first five after that in the text.

[00:34:01] Twilight of the Idols, it's one of his later works. I guess it's the last one in his what they call his scholars called the middle period before he went off the deep end a bit. And it's written in that famous aphoristic style short numbered sections.

[00:34:18] It's their hyperbolic, full of ambition and passion and insults and provocation and questions without answers. But I think unlike some of his other books, like, you know, the spokes there are a struth through stuff. What the fuck? A thruster, they're a thruster and the gay science.

[00:34:41] I think you sound like a Spaniard having a stroke. His these chapters have a kind of unity or a kind of at least coherence, I think. Now he takes shots at a lot of things. They range far and wide. Socrates, Plato, dialectic reasoning, reason in general.

[00:35:05] Right. Like the I feel like the Greeks is his big, you know, in a disc track, that's two out of three verses. The Greeks, right? But also the distinction between the real and the apparent, I guess he attributes that to Plato.

[00:35:16] But then also Christianity and moralism since Plato, Kant. A real shot there. Shots fired. Utilitarianism a little bit, not as much as in some other works. The belief in free will, the belief in a kind of unified self and a lot more.

[00:35:34] But I think there's a common thread that ties together all of these things that Nietzsche shows so much contempt for. I think he sees them all as as a dishonest form of escapism, like a failure to embrace what's real, what's spontaneous, what's vital.

[00:35:53] Right. For Nietzsche, these things, all of them show a failure to embrace life and to embrace ourselves and our like our deepest selves for what we really are. And he thinks that Christianity, Plato, moralism, Kant, they're kind of blasphemy because they degrade life and the senses and the

[00:36:15] emotions and the body and not only do they degrade those things, but they're dishonest about why they're doing it. So Socrates, which he starts out with, Nietzsche says has a kind of illness. He was sick of life and his relentless use of that dialectic

[00:36:30] in that you find in all the dialogues, that was an expression for Nietzsche of his ugliness and also his fatigue and hostility towards the real world. And the Christian moralists, they want to rule, they want to tame or eliminate the drives and instincts that like the drives

[00:36:46] are our instincts, our spontaneous not motives. Because one thing I want to talk about is the difference between drives and motives. But whatever the things are that the moralists want to tame or eliminate, for Nietzsche are the most vital part of human life.

[00:37:01] And he says that only healthy, the only healthy morality is ruled by those instincts. So you know what? Tell the chicks in your class about the blow job. Well, not the blow job you got in the club.

[00:37:13] The time you ate a girl's pussy in a club in front of everybody. He should have like, I don't know if that would hold in court, but like. But anyway, we'll get into all of this and more. But so here's a couple of questions for you.

[00:37:28] Was this your first time seriously reading Nietzsche? And were you able to get past his potshots at your boy, Emmanuel? No, this I had read in college, I think his book on Beyond Good and Evil, but I didn't remember it. So it's been a long time.

[00:37:47] I hadn't exposed myself to this wonderful set of aphorisms. So I was able to get beyond the potshots at Kant. I was a little offended at his use of Socrates' physical appearance to like, he's just so blatantly says Socrates was ugly and we know that bad

[00:38:10] people tend to be ugly. Well, but he has this thing. I mean, I agree. It doesn't. It I could see how it would make you uncomfortable. You hypersensitive people. But I think it's in line with his view that our physiology is what really

[00:38:25] is the cause of everything, essentially. That's a weird. Yeah. That's a really weird undertone throughout the whole thing that I think we should talk about because at first I was like, what the fuck is he talking about? His physiology, you know, like, but.

[00:38:38] But OK, so like, I'll tell you what I was feeling in a in a desire to embrace Nietzsche's call to to pay attention to our instincts and emotions. These were mine. I read the epigrams and arrows section and I was fucking like I

[00:39:01] almost just texted you and said, like, like, no, we're not going to do this. This is I was I told you that I didn't say to read that. Well, I read the intro and the epigrams. I'm not going to say I'm a completist of sorts.

[00:39:15] And and I was like, what the fuck? I was like mad at you. I was like, what like this shit doesn't make any sense. Like, like there's one there's one aphorism where he's like where he talks about the truth of dentists or I'm like, this is just rambling.

[00:39:33] Like I had read in the intro that this was right before he kind of lost it. And I was like, no, this is as he lost it. Like this was here's one. This is him losing.

[00:39:42] Can a donkey be tragic to perish beneath a load one can either carry nor cast off the ease of the philosopher? How little it takes to make us happy. The sound of a bagpipe. I was like, wait, bagpipes made him happy. And I'm reading it and I'm like,

[00:40:02] this sounds like the ramblings of an angry like incel guy that you found after he shot everyone up, you know, like I just didn't get it. So so OK, what happens when you read like what I suggested that we read? Then as I'm reading it,

[00:40:21] we start off with the problem of Socrates and he's talking about how ugly Socrates is and I'm like, he's not redeeming himself. Like I'm like, you know, in fact, I stopped at this point. I think I read I finished the Socrates section.

[00:40:34] And I was like, this is just dumb, like his anti-rationality and Socrates being sick because he doesn't like life. I'm still not you're not on on on his side. I'm not on board. And then I'll be honest, like I started reading the reason in philosophy section.

[00:40:53] That's a great chapter. It's it's great. And he defends us a sort of realism. And when he actually is outlining why or outlining is a wrong word because nowhere near that orderly. But when he's talking about this weird desire to divide reality into this

[00:41:13] and some other unseen second reality, the apparent and the real parent. Right. Like what would call the numinal or the world of forms. I started getting on board because I was like, yeah, that that is a weird move. And he is right. It's a move that Plato made.

[00:41:30] It's a move that Komp made. And he accuses Kant of being a sneaky Christian, which I think he was. I think he's right. And he says this world and this life is what it is. And if you're saying that we shouldn't trust our senses, you're basically saying,

[00:41:46] you know, we shouldn't trust science. We shouldn't trust the very the only thing that we have. And that's where I started to get on board. And honestly, I think he started to get better.

[00:41:58] But it might just be that I like I started to open myself up a little bit more. And I don't agree with everything he says later. I think he's weird. He's weird in a way that Freud was weird in some ways.

[00:42:11] He has like a very odd, like when he talks about maybe this this happiness that Christians or maybe they're just confusing it with good digestion. Well, I mean, like I think they're similar, right? They both have this idea that a lot of the beliefs that we have,

[00:42:27] what we take to be our motivations are not actually our motivations. They go back to something that is in some ways you would think is completely disconnected from it for Freud, it's more your past and how you were treated by

[00:42:42] your mother and all those kinds of sexual urges that you that you had as a kid. You know, I'm not what we're going to talk about Freud soon, I think. But for Nietzsche, it is it's even more like part of your just biology, part of your physiology.

[00:42:57] Essentially, he thinks a lot of philosophy and morality and religion is just an expression of how you are physically. You know, he wants to bring, I think, your, you know, your belief system, your values in line with try to recognize where

[00:43:16] these values are coming from and stop deceiving yourself. He hates the dishonest, what he calls the dishonesty of these people who think that they're finding some higher truth or some higher morality. But but in fact, it's just an expression of either revenge, resentment or

[00:43:34] a fatigue or hostility to life in general. Right. Really quickly, broadly, just to finish my broad take on this, which is that I got more on his side about a lot of this stuff, I still, as you might expect,

[00:43:51] I still think he's wrong about what reason is and how it ought to guide us. But I I don't hold it against him because if reason is the thing, the thing that he is arguing against the way that he presents it, you know, this thing that leads to

[00:44:12] Continism or Platonic realism or whatever, then OK, then I get it. I just don't think that's like that he's mounting a really good argument against reason in the way that I would use it or in the way analytic philosophers would use it. But well, I think so.

[00:44:28] That's actually a good bridge into his problem with Socrates, who I don't think was doing it in the way, you know, Conte was or some of the idealists were that he criticizes later. One thing just to follow up on your thought.

[00:44:46] I mean, his moral psychology reminds me a lot of the kind of moral psychology that John Height re-initiated in the early 2000s. The reason being a post hoc justification in his view for emotions or intuitions and here for something even deeper and maybe less accessible to us.

[00:45:10] But I mean, I think that is that's a running theme throughout is that this reasoning is laughably and almost and transparently after the fact. And it's just it drives him crazy that people aren't recognizing that.

[00:45:27] Right. So maybe you could talk a little bit about then his his what I find to be an odd dislike of the Socratic method because just the method of trying, you know, trying to reason through ideas. He seems to have real disdain for it in a way that

[00:45:49] like I said, like I said, I get it if it leads to Plotonic. I said realism before I meant idealism. I get it if it leads to that. But I don't get it in the in that low level, like let's talk together and

[00:46:00] figure out what we mean by justice kind of way. Yeah. So let's yeah, let's talk about that. I think the Socrates one is a little surprising because, you know, in some ways they're fairly they're fairly similar in terms of what they take their goal to be.

[00:46:16] Socrates was trying to shock people out of their comfortable beliefs in the way that I think Nietzsche is also trying to do. He was Nietzsche is trying to be, you know, a gadfly in the way that Socrates was.

[00:46:30] And so it is it's a little shocking to see him come out and attack Socrates with such disdain right at the beginning. But it's something about this dialectic giving reasons for things. He says so here's a quote before Socrates dialectical manners were rejected in good

[00:46:49] society, they were taken to be bad manners. They were a compromising exposure, respectable things like respectable people just don't carry their reasons around on their sleeves like that showing your whole hand is improper. Whatever has to get itself proved in advance isn't worth much.

[00:47:07] Wherever authority is still considered good form so that one does not have to give reasons but commands the dialectician is a sort of clown. People laugh at him, they don't take him seriously. And then he says he kind of does this

[00:47:18] diagnosis of him as using reason as self-defense, you know, like because he was he was poor and he was ugly. He was he says he has a dialectician. He has a merciless instrument at hand. One can play the tyrant in it when compromises by conquering.

[00:47:36] The lot dialectician lays on his opponent the burden of proving that he is not an idiot. He infuriates and at the same time he paralyze the dialectician disempowers the intellect of his opponent. What is dialectic just a form of revenge in Socrates?

[00:47:50] That's a great I like I like the way he just ends that. So this is one thing that I that surprised me was the part of this where he says earlier to quote again, he says Socrates was rabble.

[00:48:05] We know we can still see for ourselves how ugly he was. And then when he talks about that right before that quote that you just started, he says, primarily a noble taste is there by defeated with dialectic. The rabble rises to the top.

[00:48:18] And it's a weird sort of classism that I didn't I didn't get. I didn't get. But you know, and here's where he throws one at the Jews. This is why the Jews were dialecticians. Right. Yes.

[00:48:28] And I take it what he means there is that people who were low power. Yes. Low members of society were able to rise to the top through this trick. Yes. Right. And I think like with the Jews and like with Socrates, he has a kind of respect

[00:48:44] that they are able to do it. You know, like even with Socrates, he's like, but they got him to take him seriously. How did he do that? You know, like I think there is a, I don't know, grudging form sort of respect.

[00:48:57] But I think that, you know, he really doesn't think that everything needs to be justified because he values spontaneity and these kind of instincts and unconscious drives so much that when you start to subject everything to a kind of critical scrutiny, you're deadening it.

[00:49:15] You're taking your just taking the life out of it. And I think that's his problem, even with the kind of reason that you would say is is OK, because it's not trying to lead to some other world of forms

[00:49:28] or some numinal world or anything like that, or trying to ground morality in some implausible way. It's just demanding reasons for everything, for how you use a word, for how, you know, for your job. I don't think he thinks life should be scrutinized in that way that because

[00:49:46] it gets in the way of what we, the things that are most vital about it. That's my reading of this, I think. Right. There is this this strand of thinking where like William Blake, for instance, sort of championed Lucifer in this way.

[00:50:05] Like he took Milton's Lucifer and made the Lucifer represent the energy and vitality of life. And he was very much didn't believe that we should be suppressing our urges, our natural inclinations. And he thought that the source of all energy of life were these things in a way

[00:50:27] that I think is very consistent with what Nietzsche is saying. And this is where, you know, I guess Freud read Nietzsche, even though he's Freud says that Nietzsche didn't influence him. But it's hard not to see a very similar idea in Freud where things that

[00:50:40] all of our energy, every motivation, every instinct, every every desire to do anything comes from the dynamic unconscious. And the dynamic unconscious is the seat of energy, and that's primarily sexual energy, sexual in a very broad way. So there is this strand, I think, in

[00:51:03] you know, in the 1800s of this pushing against it. And I get what he's saying like if you had, you know, if you had to decide like you remember that famous Darwin were the anecdote where he made a list of whether he should marry this person or not.

[00:51:21] Right. He's making a list of pros and cons. And I think this is where Nietzsche or Blake or Freud would say, well, dude, like there is where you're killing the whole point of love. Right. The whole point of romantic love.

[00:51:34] So if you let everything be questioned by your reasoning, you're going to miss out on at the very least. And this is where I would agree with him. Like at a minimum, what you're missing out on is stuff that would

[00:51:45] make you happy and philosophy and religion haven't really. They've been in the business of saying they're going to make you happy and actually making you miserable for the sake of a different world. Yes, exactly. They attack this world.

[00:52:02] They're always trying to make you ashamed of your emotions and your drives and your desires and your appetites, either trying to eliminate them or make you atone for them or feel guilt for them. And then dualism does that too.

[00:52:16] Like the dualism of Christianity, the dualism of Plato and Descartes. Yeah. Right. That can lead to a real, real like this body isn't the thing that we should be listening to. Right. We should be paying attention to the health of our soul or whatever it is.

[00:52:33] Yeah. And that's the thing that he hates. And he also so I think he hates it on two levels. He hates it from a value level. He thinks it is like you are ruining the whole point of life. You know, the vitality of your experience. You're deflating it.

[00:52:47] But then also, you know, when someone like Darwin makes a list and he thinks, well, this is I'm doing this because like I want to make sure this is a prudent decision and that's why no, that's not why he's doing it.

[00:52:58] According to Nietzsche, I think he's doing it because he's a depressed guy. He's got this like deep depression and that depression paralyzes him and makes him unable to make a decision. And so he does he writes this list. That's there's just an expression of that.

[00:53:12] Even though he thinks it's the other way, like I'm going to make this list so that I know if I'll be happy with the woman. I'm laughing because I pulled up I'm pulled up the list. He's like, if not Mary travel Europe. It's like, yes, very, very true.

[00:53:30] If Mary means limited field duty to work for money. Yeah, but totally like the cause and effect part of Nietzsche would very much say that Darwin was suffering from what I don't know the word, but a listlessness. And that's what's causing him to make a boring list.

[00:53:53] Right, exactly. That could be good. That could be right. You could be writing aphorisms right now. The listlessness causes the list. Yeah. And then his criticism of philosophers in the reason section. So first he says they think they're honoring a thing if they dehistoricize it,

[00:54:15] if they see it subspecies or 90, if they take it out of its historical context, take it out of anything like that's concrete. They think they're honoring it, but actually they're just killing it. I have a big question mark in the first paragraph

[00:54:30] of the section because he says he says that they they're Egyptianist. Says they have a good job and I was going to text you and be like, you know, I'm just waiting for you to accuse me of Egyptianism.

[00:54:43] I don't know what it means yet, but but I feel like it's a cool word. I don't know what it means either, but I feel like you definitely have an egyptianism, maybe it just means this, everything that philosophers have

[00:54:55] handled, you know, for thousands of years has been conceptual mummies. Nothing really gave their hands alive. Right. You are taking you are taking away the body, you're in your, you know, like think about what mummification is. It's removing the vital organs.

[00:55:11] It is making something that used to be alive, plucking it from that, right? It can't decompose in the earth. It is in this box wrapped and it's abstracted, right? Like it's abstracted. It's the, you know, it's forced into some

[00:55:28] simt system and, you know, but once to force it into the system, you have to take it out of its original context and its particularity. I mean, this is where I just totally I'm just nodding my head. Yep. Yeah. This is where you're just jerking off

[00:55:42] and like your kindle or whatever just has all over. So I want to read this paragraph and see what exactly. Now they all believe desperately even in what is, but since they can't get it into their clutches, they look for reasons why it's being withheld for them.

[00:55:57] There has to be an illusion, a deception at work, what that prevents us from perceiving what is, where's the deceiver? We've got the deceiver, they cry happily. It's sensation, these senses which are so immoral anyway, deceive us about the true world. Moral, free yourself from the senses,

[00:56:13] deceit from becoming, from history, from the lie. History is nothing but belief in the senses, belief in the lie. Morals say no to everything that lends credence to the senses. To all the rest of humanity. All that is just the masses. Be a philosopher, be a mummy.

[00:56:28] Portray monototheism with a grave diggers pantomime and above all away with the body. This pathetic, eday feaks of the senses afflicted with every logical error there is. Refute it even impossible, although it has the nerve to behave as if it were real.

[00:56:42] I mean, I think there's just a lot to that. There's a, I get a little piece of joy when we've underlined the same thing. I just want to give a little, a little acknowledgement to the cleverness of monotone otheism instead of monotheism. Yes, that's great.

[00:57:01] I assume that's a translator like translating a different pun, but I don't know. Oh, yeah, I don't know. I'm sure it's beautiful in its original Germans or our German listeners can tell us. Yeah, no, this is the point where I was kind of on board earlier.

[00:57:18] He says they kill and stuff, whatever they worship, these gentlemen who idolize concepts, that's the twilight of the idols. Right. When you were reading that, I was thinking, you know, this is the same bullshit about simulations. We're in a simulation. We have to doubt our senses.

[00:57:34] And I think he's right to say like, where did that step come from? Like, what is that step? Why are you going there? There's no evidence that there is something beyond our senses. Just almost by definition. Right. There's yeah. Like, there's no way to acquire knowledge of anything.

[00:57:50] Right. Yeah. Immediate experience is the thing that we're and he gets pretty philosophical. Like he thinks it's incoherent what they're suggesting that we can just step outside our perspective and make judgments, either value judgments or judgments about truth, true reality without.

[00:58:08] And we don't realize that the very concepts that we are using to make those judgments are part of our immediate, like they're built into our immediate experience. Like that's where did we get them from in the first place?

[00:58:22] I have to read this part in section three of that chapter. And what fine tools of observation we have in our senses. This knows, for instance, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with admiration and gratitude is, in fact, the most delicate instrument at our disposal.

[00:58:36] It can register minimal differences in motion, which even the spectroscope fails to register. The extent to which we possess science today is precisely the extent to which we have decided to accept the testimony of the senses and learn to sharpen them,

[00:58:50] arm them and think them through to their end. So there's the kind of reason that he's not taking a pot shot at. He's saying if you start with the senses and the knowledge that the senses

[00:59:03] are going to bring you, you can at that point use reason to think things through to their end. And that's what becomes a formal science. I do think, though, he would take an attitude towards science that maybe you would disagree with.

[00:59:18] Like I think he would reject a kind of realism that science is going to give us the true reality. I think he would think of science still as as the tools of people working within a particular perspective.

[00:59:32] And you can't step outside of that and get to the real world. Even the kind of science that is starting from the senses, it sometimes has aspirations to correct for the distortions that our senses bring and also just things our senses can't perceive.

[00:59:51] Yeah, if that's what he's saying, I guess I would disagree. It is a bit unclear because in the right above what I read, he does say the apparent world is the only world. He's just said that the testimony of our senses give us the apparent world.

[01:00:08] And guess what? The apparent world is the world. Right, there's nothing else. And I think to the extent that science at least tries to describe the apparent world, then it's not it's not airing. Like he might they might be flawed in the way that they acquire the information.

[01:00:26] But that's the only way they could acquire information. Yes, I just think that like if you think science is giving you the real and like the apparent is our tools for getting there. But and so you're obviously going to need observations to collect data

[01:00:41] and perform experiments and stuff. But but if you think that is giving you the reality that transcends, that's beyond like our experience of it, that's where I think he would jump off board. You know, this is his perspectivalism.

[01:00:57] He really doesn't think and he also doesn't think we should aspire to that. Like the world itself is so like, you know, in the Nietzschean romantic style, it's it's so wondrous and so full of uncertainty that we should embrace

[01:01:12] and not try to contain in some box and find, you know, every law for. So I read this this paragraph about the nose where he says the extent to which we possess science today is precisely the extent to which we've decided to accept the testimony of the senses.

[01:01:27] I read that as a form of realism, a realism that just says the things that we can actually sense are the only real thing. And guess what? We have access to those.

[01:01:39] I'm I don't know the rest of his works, but I don't see him saying what you're saying. But he's just flirting with some form of realism, a very limited one that's not. I think that this is it's under defined what he really believes here.

[01:01:54] I think that we're both reading our desires into his his. But I think that at least you're right about that might make sense of his mockery of democratists is Adam. One thing for sure is that he's not at all doing metaphysics, is not interested in that game.

[01:02:16] He wants to talk about reality and he wants to talk about life. Well, I want to talk about the democratic thing because there's it ends with a very puzzling passage. Where where is the section five of that of the reason chapter?

[01:02:31] He says, in fact, nothing up to now has been more naively persuasive than the error of being as it was form formulated by the le addicts, for instance, like parmenides after all, it has on its side every word, every sentence we speak.

[01:02:45] Even the opponents of the le addicts fell prey to the seduction of their concept of being and this happened to democratists, among others. When he invented his Adam reason in language, oh, what a tricky old woman she is.

[01:02:58] I'm afraid we're not rid of God because we still believe in grammar. It's that we were not rid of God because we still believe in grammar to the extent that science thinks it can transcend language and not be shaped

[01:03:11] inevitably by our language and have a kind of contingency that's built into that's just built into the fact that it comes from our language. That aspiration of science, I think he wouldn't be on board with. But every other aspiration, which is just making sense of what we experience,

[01:03:29] I think he's he's he applauds, especially since it's also not philosophy. Yeah, I admit, I don't I don't know. I wasn't sure what he was saying here. I read it as just yet another like this thing of reason in the Socratic sense and not about talking about.

[01:03:46] So he was referring to democratist, qua philosopher, not qua scientist, but maybe definitely don't. Your interpretation actually seems totally plausible to me about it. I just I'm just saying I don't I was like perplexed at the end of that one.

[01:04:03] I took it as a kind of that late vittgenstein like the language like ultimately these are all language games like in the end. It's hard because this is the kind of philosophy where he's saying a lot. And one of the things that I found myself

[01:04:21] trying to resist is the belief that just because he said something doesn't mean there's a deep meaning to it, because he doesn't delve. Right? It's like you could make anything sound deep. You could just say a bunch of stuff like, you know,

[01:04:36] this the world is on the back of a turtle and like by that, I mean that, you know, it's you could interpret the shit out of that. And when he just says reason and language over to tricky old woman,

[01:04:45] she is I was also tempted to the vittgenstein in view. But I don't know what he like what he really thought. Well, we should talk about the form of it and to what extent you think that is

[01:04:55] essential or actually like an obstacle to really getting at the philosophical substance of what he's saying. That's I taught this in a grad seminar in a class on philosophical genres. And one of the things that we were exploring is to what extent is this

[01:05:12] philosophy like you can't separate it from the form in which it's presented. And I think with Nietzsche, he's one of the best cases for that. Nietzsche and Plato of just the form being so essential to the philosophy.

[01:05:27] And if you tried to write this as a like journal article, it just it wouldn't work, you know, but I also would get desk would get desperate. Number one. Yeah, for sure. But also like even if for some way you could publish it,

[01:05:43] it just if you did it in that form, that there's something about what he's up to here, I think that requires this kind of hyperbolic and at times disconnected and times just puzzling like I so I it's what you said, right?

[01:05:58] You don't want to just attribute something deep when just because he's writing in a more obscure style sometimes. At the same time, there is something we know this with like reading Boer heads, for example, there is something really empowering to the reader when you don't

[01:06:15] give them in everything and you let the reader do some work, you know? And so like it's it's that balance that is tricky in the best of the worst ones, it's it's it's it's not worth the effort.

[01:06:29] But for the best people, it's worth the effort and it's there's something I don't know, like it's something deeply philosophical about engaging with the text that way. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, with caution, right?

[01:06:41] So I think I think part of that that attitude that I had about being where he comes from first reading those epigrams and arrows where individual sentences that may or may not be speaking to something deep. Right. They put me at at sort of a defensive way.

[01:07:02] Although some of them are funny, he says evil people don't have songs. How is it that Russians have songs? I'm like, I don't know what that means. Some of them are just jokes, right? They're probably like inside jokes that maybe you would get.

[01:07:16] He says humanity does not strive for happiness. Only the English do. Yeah. I think that's a pot shot at utilitarians. That's, you know, their superficial conception of happiness. He has a couple of shots at them just to put a bow on our true world versus a parent

[01:07:33] world. I want to read the fourth proposition. He gives these propositions at the end of the reason chapter. And the fourth one I thought was really interesting. You alluded to it dividing the world into a true and apparent world,

[01:07:46] whether in the style of Christianity or in the style of Kant, a sneaky Christian to the end is merely a move inspired by Decadence, a symptom of declining life. The fact that the artist prizes appearance over reality is no objection to this

[01:08:02] proposition for appearance here means reality once again, but in the form of a selection and emphasis, a correction. Tragic artists are not pessimists. In fact, they say yes to everything questionable and terrible itself. They are Dionysian.

[01:08:17] What do you make of, you know, the tragic artists and the artist that is being championed at the end of the chapter on reason? I like it. It's an insight, I think that artists, artists are stuck in reality, that that's what they're doing.

[01:08:35] And that's a good thing that they're doing. And that appearance is just reality. Does it collapse the distinction between art and philosophy or art in science? I think it's very in tune with our approach to this stuff, right? Where he is saying, you know what?

[01:08:56] There is insight about reality and about life that comes from artists. And in fact, they have a particular kind of insight that not everybody has because there when an artist looks at something, it always strikes me as so amazing when a painter sees that

[01:09:16] like what their eye is seeing is not like a perfect square, right? There's perspective. So their use of perspective is they are they are using their eyes in a different way. They're not seeing a perfect rectangle when a door is open.

[01:09:28] They're seeing the slanted thing that it really is because they have to duplicate it on a canvas. And I think that that's both a literal and a figurative thing that artists do. I take it to mean that the artist is grounded and there's insight into reality

[01:09:46] that comes from their heart. Yeah, I guess the question, though, is if the artist is the hero here, then is philosophy and science a species of art for Nietzsche? That's a good question. You know, talk about the form of the he. I would say he thinks so.

[01:10:08] I think that what he thinks he's doing is is artistic. And because it's artistic, what he's trying to do is move us to feel some things that he says is true. He's not taking his time to syllogistically defend his ideas.

[01:10:24] This is why it's so easy to do poll quotes from from Nietzsche, right? There's a ton here that you could use just out of context. But the intro was saying this, the intro to this volume that you sent me.

[01:10:38] They were saying you could take a lot of what he says out of context, but it's not even clear what context there is within this. Right. Right. There's no clear, you know, it's it's not like, oh, he didn't he didn't mean that.

[01:10:55] Yeah, I like the intro and the way they talked about this. So in the introduction, Tracy. Tracy Lord, no. Tracy something. It's a guy I looked up, I looked him up. He gives kind of a re description, like a paraphrase of what you know, hold on.

[01:11:19] You know, Tracy Lords is a porn star. I do. OK. It's not Tracy Lords. It's Tracy something else. He gives like a paraphrase of the philosophical ideas that Nietzsche is expressing and then goes back and says, but one may complain like this isn't Nietzsche.

[01:11:36] You're turning him into a dry analytic philosopher. Soon you'll be telling me whether or not his arguments are correct, asking how we know what he tells us is to be true. And he says there's something important in that response. It's not like reading academic philosophy.

[01:11:51] There's something else that he's going for. He is trying to move us. He's not trying to just persuade us of a certain belief. He is trying to move us in a certain way.

[01:12:04] And one of the questions I maybe I want to end with is what does he want? Like what does he want us to do? How does he want people to live? There's a lot of how we shouldn't live,

[01:12:16] but there's less and there's a few lines like honoring the instincts. You know, that's the one natural good morality is one that would honor the instincts. But I don't know what that means exactly. Yeah, I want to talk about that too, because it sounds cool.

[01:12:31] The other thing I was going to say, by the way, Tracy Strong. Tracy Strong. Yeah, from Southampton. It's unclear what his positive claim about morality is. And what I found myself thinking is like he could use a little bit of analysis

[01:12:44] here to tell us what he means by embracing instinct because for him, morality in the way that he uses the word is Christianity and, you know, like Neoplatonic Christianity and then platonic idealism and anything that wants you to be virtuous for the sake of a

[01:13:06] different reality. But I take it he's still anti like murder and rape, right? Like there's a morality that exists, but I don't I don't know. It's very individualistic in the sense that it doesn't seem to involve other people. You know what I mean?

[01:13:24] That's right. Yeah, that's that's right. This is you know, this is why it reads like the ramblings of a loner kind of. Yeah, which he was. Although I think he was a very lonely person.

[01:13:34] And I think this is as he would probably admit and partially an expression of that. Like it's also not done to an extent. It hasn't done Nietzsche favors in my book that the kind of people who quote Nietzsche are like the kind of people who quote An Rand.

[01:13:55] So I was trying to remove myself of that, but it still does read like you're right. That's a good insight that it's very individualistic. He doesn't talk the whole time he talks about morality. He never talks about how we should treat other people.

[01:14:09] Yeah, no, that's right for him. Morality is just a denial of the passions. It is something about I got this also from reading the sections of the gay science that we read, there's something about suffering and accepting it and not

[01:14:22] resisting it or trying to trying to design, use your science to try to like eliminate it, but to accept your both your suffering and your happiness as part of one package of being alive that and then embracing your drives and your

[01:14:41] instincts. But it's when you try to actually flush out what that would mean. Of course, there's the embracing of, you know, like if you if the eternal recurrence idea, if you were to live this same concrete life over and over again, say yes to that. Right. Right.

[01:14:58] You don't need another world. You don't need the promise of another world to tell you. You don't need anything more than what you have, like in the reality of what you have not. Hey, where does where does Nietzsche talk about the eternal

[01:15:11] recurrence? He first brings it up in the gay science and then it it's most famously and thus spoke as Zara Struth. Zara Thustra. Why am I having problems with that? You didn't used to hate yourself until Christianity told you that you're a piece

[01:15:29] of shit. That's a point that I like. But again, it's like, does he mean that you should be able to grab the pussies? Like, does he mean that you should be able to do whatever you want if you're driven by an impulse that's untainted by reason?

[01:15:44] No, I don't think so because he also and I don't think this comes across as much here, but there is a kind of self control that he also there's a kind of self control that allows you to transcend those impulses.

[01:16:00] Like I think he would think that that's a kind of base impulse and you don't deny it or punish yourself for it, but you also don't necessarily act on it. So and but it's a really tricky balance that I don't totally get.

[01:16:14] And I may be other Nietzsche people could help us out with with that. You know, who's a big Nietzsche fan is Nob. Yeah, I'm sure. And I think like the kind of and height too. Like I think that the moral psychology here is is really wise.

[01:16:29] And it's, you know, no, of course, right? Like morality is just built into our everyday concepts, even things that we would think are totally disconnected from morality. Like that's the whole Josh Knob idea. Our morality, I don't know if nob thinks nob doesn't think it's a sick morality,

[01:16:47] but it bleeds into our concepts like intention or whatever that we wouldn't think morality would affect, but it does. Huh. Interesting. I never thought about that way. I mean, I do agree with you that it's very Nietzschean. This whole resurgence of moral psychology in the 2000s does

[01:17:06] seem very influenced by these ideas in a way that I actually reacted against it first in my dislike of John Heit's original rational dog paper. But yeah, you can see the genealogy, so to speak. So I don't know.

[01:17:23] All I know is he doesn't provide us with enough information in this text to know what he means about more what we ought to do or not. This seems like a straightforward embrace what you are as a human. Don't don't be led astray by this delusional

[01:17:41] worship of the idols, let let those idols let the sunset on those those conceptualized. One thing we haven't talked about is some really interesting stuff on the self. And like he really does think, you know, he has an almost Buddhist conception,

[01:17:56] I think, of the there is a case that I thought was brilliant, an example where he's talking about causation. So he doesn't believe he thinks that it's an error to think that there is a self,

[01:18:10] that there is a consciousness and that this this is in any way causally. He's like an epiphenomenalist or a parallelist or something. He just he doesn't believe that that what we think is consciousness is doing

[01:18:22] any work and he gives this example of a dream which I found very compelling where he says, you imagine that there's a distant cannon shot in your dream. Now, I've experienced this where a sound will work itself into the narrative of my

[01:18:39] dream, but that sound is from outside. But it's true that sometimes it really seems as if that sound was part of the narrative in a way that it couldn't possibly have been because it happened. And then my mind constructed a narrative around the dream.

[01:18:57] But it's like I saw someone walk up to the door and pound it. And that's when the cannon shot worked its way in. So he's saying, that's the illusion that makes us think that we have causal power over the world. It was a really cool way of describing.

[01:19:12] And this idea that we have this character that gives us motives and that that's why we act or that's why we have a mental state, like we feel something. And he says, like that that's the wrong way of thinking about it. It's like you have that mental state,

[01:19:29] you know, you're agitated or you're depressed or you're or you're exuberant. And he says, like you won't even notice that you won't even acknowledge that you're in that state unless you can find some sort of motive or some sort

[01:19:43] of explanation for why you feel like that it's a sinful desire or it's or it's what are the examples he uses? Evil spirits, evil spirits or whatever. But in fact, like those are the thing and we try and then we construct explanations

[01:20:02] for them afterwards and he thinks like he doesn't he doesn't like. He thinks that's like explaining them away. You know, it's this is actually a really nice. So the four great errors, I really liked this. This is as close as he gets to doing

[01:20:18] what I think is straight up analytical philosophy, analytical philosophy, because he nicely weaves in this error of thinking there's a self into his views on free will, then into his views on punishment and guilt. And weaves it right back to his disdain for Christian morality and says,

[01:20:38] all of this shit, this belief that we are causing anything is just so that people can hold you accountable and punish you. Once that got placed, that once that took root, then those people had the power over us.

[01:20:53] Right? He says human beings were thought to be free so that they could be ruled so that they could be punished so that they could become guilty. Consequently, every action had to be thought of as willed.

[01:21:04] The origin of every action had to be thought to lie in consciousness. And thus the most fundamental act of counterfeiting in psychological matters was itself made into the principle of psychology. I thought that that turn, that that grouping together of the arguments was kind of beautiful.

[01:21:21] Yeah. And it's and it's very much in line with his whole genealogical approach to Christian morality, like how did how did that come about? And with this, it's how did this this belief in the self

[01:21:34] and a cause of Sui, that kind of this ability to self cause ourselves? It starts with the punishment, like they they're punishing you. Now we have to figure out a way, a reason for that. Why are they doing that?

[01:21:48] Well, it's because you are responsible, you are free, you had this you and only you chose to act in a certain way to sin to commit a crime. And so it starts with an error. He thinks it's just incoherent, this idea of this self that causes things

[01:22:06] and then also gives, as he says, the psychological explanation of the error that ties also into his criticism of morality. It's great. So I will say, I don't I don't buy that this is the origin

[01:22:21] of our sense of free will, like at least not the not the sort of Marxist that people in power wanted to punish us. Therefore we believed in free will. It could be an error, but I, you know, in the psychological way.

[01:22:33] But but I don't know about the sociological claim. I think that that's hyperbolic to an extent. I think it's an example of one of the reasons why we would construct this idea. But, you know, if you look at the history of it as I did to some extent

[01:22:51] in my Relative Justice book, the idea of this self that causes things really does take off with Christianity and is more dominant in the West. That has been where Christian morality was the dominant force. So like, I think there might be something to that.

[01:23:13] There might be a kind of error theory that you could construct out of this. Yeah, there's got a fucking blank on the book, but a lot of our listeners have asked us to talk about it.

[01:23:24] It's by a psychiatrist who believes that the very concept of mens rea and insanity was something that was brought about by the church's desire to be able to exonerate certain people like when when a member of the royal family

[01:23:42] committed suicide, it was thought that that, you know, committing suicide was a terrible sin and you wouldn't make it into heaven. But of course there's some pressure not to tell the royal family that their kids not going to make it into heaven.

[01:23:55] So they said, oh no, they were temporarily insane. They couldn't make the decision. So then there's this distinction between, you know, when you are acting freely and intentionally and when you're not in that can form the basis of the law. We can make exceptions when we need to.

[01:24:11] That might be very motivated. I mean, it has to be right because we act as if it's this distinction, almost like a scientific distinction between someone who's insane and somebody who's not, but obviously it's not like that.

[01:24:23] And so where you put that line has to be influenced by all these factors. Now, whether it's like people in a room decide, like it's not like it's some conspiracy, I don't think. I think these things even for Nietzsche, like they emerged almost organically

[01:24:40] and are themselves the result of this other kind of sickness. But I also think that he also thinks it's like a product of language to some extent. The fact that we have this subject just describing an action you did, you say I went to the bathroom.

[01:24:58] It sounds like there is a you, an essential you. And so I think, you know, he believes that our language is also tricking us into attributing to ourselves some sort of Cartesian subject.

[01:25:12] Yeah, by the way, the book that I was referring to is The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Sass, which is a very good book. Yeah, I agree with you and there's another. So he says we favor this type of cause.

[01:25:27] The fact that something already familiar, I'm quoting here, the fact that something already familiar, something we've experienced, something inscribed in memory is posited as the cause is the first consequence of this requirement. So he says we single out that kind of explanation, the causal self explanation.

[01:25:43] So what do you think about his view on free will? I mean, I think he's very much like he finds libertarian free will to be incoherent. He has that passage and beyond good and evil, that freedom of the will is this kind of rape and perversion of logic

[01:26:00] that tries to pull yourself with Baron Munchausen's audacity out of the swamps of nothingness, this cause of suey. Now I don't like I don't see why we have to think that that incoherent notion is free will. Like I don't think free will is this concept, reified concept.

[01:26:18] Like I think we can call free will what we want. And but in terms of the substance, like what he thinks we don't have, I don't unless you're a libertarian, I think you totally agree with him. Yeah, I do.

[01:26:32] What the part of the incoherence of libertarian free will I'm totally on board for. And this, you know, people often ask me what I believe about free will. And it's as we both know, like it's a very difficult to say. Well, I believe

[01:26:47] not in libertarian free will, but in this sort of constrained way in which we describe some things as free and therefore some things ought to be punished. That's the part that I really was not sure whether you would be on board with

[01:27:03] because he seems to think that the lack of libertarian free will completely exonerates us from punishment or that that very notion of guilt and punishment has to be from this libertarian notion. And I think you and I don't believe that. No, we don't.

[01:27:21] But I don't know if he does either. I think he just wants people to be honest about why they're if they're punishing somebody, be honest about what it is that's going on here and don't pretend

[01:27:33] they deserve it in some absolute sense that is tied to the fact that they self caused their behavior. So I don't think he would be against resentment or I mean, he has other problems with resentment. I think he thinks it's something you should mostly transcend.

[01:27:51] But but I think he feels like the reactive attitudes are OK and punishment under circumstances is OK. But don't trick yourself into thinking that this is some sort of justice, like absolute justice that's being done. Yeah, I want to quote this last sentence, but I'll quote.

[01:28:09] I'll start earlier because it's beautiful. Today, when we have started in the opposite direction, when we immoralists are trying with all our strength to get the concepts of guilt and punishment back out of the world, Josh Green, and to purge psychology, history, nature,

[01:28:25] social institutions and sanctions of these concepts, there is in our eyes no opposition more radical than that of the theologians who with the concept of the moral order of the world go on infecting the innocence of becoming with punishment and guilt. Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman.

[01:28:43] That last sentence is a great line. There are a lot of great lines. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's writing songs. He's not writing treaties. He's writing songs like I get why they're I get why the intro talks about music so much.

[01:28:58] Yeah. And it really in that way needs like a careful reading. And we haven't even read this whole text. I'm glad you read the epigrams and arrows, even if it did make you angry at first. I want to say that one other thing about the self.

[01:29:14] So I said it's like almost Buddhist conception and it also reminds me of Hume. He really has this idea on on the one hand that like when you actually look for that self that's inside of you, like you can't find it. There's nothing there.

[01:29:29] But at the same time, there's also this thread where I think he thinks that we can, you know, through our work, through just living, we can create ourselves in some sense. Like through our works, almost like a work of art, like living is a work of art.

[01:29:46] And there's this philosopher Alexander Nehamas who has he has a very influential reading of Nietzsche and his style, which is that that's what Nietzsche takes himself to be doing is creating through his works, creating himself, building, but with the materials of what's just real and apparent, he's building

[01:30:09] a self through his works. But it's not this stable, essential self. It's that, you know, it's not like something that Christians would tie to the soul or anything like that. It's something that is that just evolves as as as you continue living.

[01:30:26] You know, then he says there is nothing that could rule, measure, compare, judge or be our being for that would mean ruling, measuring, comparing and judging the whole. But there is nothing outside the whole that nobody has made responsible anymore

[01:30:39] and know that no way of being may be traced back to a cause of prima that the world is not a unity either a sensorium or a spirit. And this is only this is the great liberation in this way. Only the innocence of becoming is restored.

[01:30:54] And I think I don't see what you said in the text. Right. Like, like he destroys the self, but he doesn't build anything other than this work. Like if you take the work to be this thing that we are reading is what he's doing.

[01:31:13] And it reminds me of this sort of like emanationism, this emanates from something. It's not him doing, willing, causing. It's just him becoming and it coming out of him. Like the way an artist can say, like artists often say, I don't know, this should just came to me.

[01:31:34] There is little room for a self there. Yeah, but let me. So there is a section in the gay science that I want to read to you that's on this exact thing. So I just need to get it up.

[01:31:48] This is two ninety of the aphorism number two ninety in the case. So he's this called one thing is to give style to one's character a great and rare art. It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature

[01:32:05] and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. Here are a large mass of second nature has been added. There are a piece of original nature has been removed both times through long

[01:32:21] practice and daily work at it here, the ugly that could not be removed is concealed there. It has been reinterpreted and made sublime in the end when the work is finished, it becomes evident how the constraint of a single taste governed and formed

[01:32:33] everything large and small, whether this taste was good or bad is less important than one might suppose if only it was a single taste. So it goes on in this thing. But at the end for one thing is need needful that a human being should

[01:32:46] attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry and art only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continuously ready for revenge.

[01:32:59] And we others will be his victims if only by having to endure his ugly site for the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy. You know, now I'm obviously not a Nietzsche scholar.

[01:33:12] I find like I find this what we read and what we're talking about is a weird romanticism. Totally. And like just on a quick Google search, I see that plenty of people have talked about Nietzsche and his engagement with

[01:33:27] romanticism, so his rejection of all this reason and his impulse toward the artistic. Yeah, like the use of brought up William Blake earlier, right? Like it's that kind of that strain and it's a reaction against the kind of hyper realism of the Enlightenment.

[01:33:45] And I think he's much later than those romantics. He's like 60 or 70 years later, but I think it's in reaction to to a different kind of like mechanized, overly systematic view of the world through the improvements of science and the utilitarianism becoming. But yeah, absolutely.

[01:34:05] But it is this idea that this is something that you can do. You can build yourself to the point where you are happy with yourself and you can embrace yourself and you're not trying to hide from what you are or who you are, but you can shape you.

[01:34:21] You there is this kind of creation that he's talking about shaping maybe not creation, but a shaping that he thinks is important. Well, and in not, you know, and in simply not denying right in sort of accepting that you are what you are, you know,

[01:34:36] he thinks that this is liberating and that what you, you know, you brought up being happy. There is a there's a weird way that I at least for me, I didn't realize like Nietzsche to me seemed like a pessimist, almost like an existentialist in my mind.

[01:34:53] Here he's like, no, this is what happiness is. Like stop being miserable. Be happy. There's a weird call to being happy. But in this section, that little aphorism that I read, like where he says, for one thing is needful that a human being should attain satisfaction with

[01:35:10] himself and he gives different ways of doing it, like depending on whether you're a strong or domineering nature or weak nature, but either way, or a top or a bottom. Exactly. Either way, you can attain that satisfaction and, you know,

[01:35:27] you can give style to your character in a way that will make you happy with who you are. So it's not just something that you it's not just accepting that you're not responsible. That's not enough.

[01:35:39] It there is a kind of there's a kind of action that that you have to take, you need to take. It's needful. It's it's weird. Like here is where my like, you know, analytic philosophy hat comes on and it's like it's happy to accuse him of some

[01:35:53] sort of contradiction because what you read in what the section I was reading where he says, we are not the consequence of a special intention, a will, a goal. We are not being used in an attempt to reach an ideal of humanity

[01:36:05] or an ideal of happiness or an ideal of morality. It is absurd to want to divert our essence towards some goal. So to say that it's absurd to divert your essence towards a goal is seems to me to contradict what you just read.

[01:36:18] I agree. There is there is attention, but he does he certainly doesn't think that each person should try to attain the same thing like when you start to build yourself, you start with a bunch of drives and a temperament and a physiology.

[01:36:36] And you have to work with that not towards a goal that is concrete or something that you would learn from a book or something that you would learn from a work of the Bible or something like that. But just with your materials,

[01:36:51] you can shape yourself to a point that you become happy with the product, with the final product and then it's crucial that you can do that. And I think the first step is just recognizing that you're not responsible for your drives and your instincts and your, you know,

[01:37:07] that's step one. But once you've realized that, there's other things that you can do. You're right to point to Buddhism as as, you know, this is this is some this is a tension that some people are happy with. It's a tension that I'm not happy with,

[01:37:22] but that some people simply accept as as what it means to be what we are. That there is no self, but that doesn't mean that you can't attain some some, you know, important goal. So I like I'm fine with that.

[01:37:35] But, you know, that's it is what it is, as they say. What he wants to do is what it's definitely not is like, you know, how to be a happy and successful person, like because it's going to be different

[01:37:45] for every person, you know, he's very much of a particularist about this thing. And he doesn't think that there's one thing that will work for everybody. I think he'd be very against like the Laurie Santos school of like,

[01:38:00] you know, here's some tips to make yourself happier and more relaxed. And he did. He did seem to need to get laid. Yeah, I think that's the like Freud. I don't know if he doesn't talk about Nietzsche. It seems like he could have a field day with him.

[01:38:17] It's funny, like Freud, from what I know, he definitely read Nietzsche, but I don't know. I'm sure he said stuff about him in all his letters. Can I read an aphorism to end this? Yes. How much there once was for conscience to chew on?

[01:38:33] What good teeth it had. And today, what's it missing? A dentist's question. Right. That's the dentist. That's the I found it. I don't know what that means. I know there are some there are good ones.

[01:38:49] I mean, we do Nietzsche again and I think we maybe should because there's a lot of great stuff. I'd love to talk more about the form of it because I do think there's something deeply, there's something deep about how the form and the content or the

[01:39:02] substance, philosophical substance are related. You know, one of the things I talked about a lot in the class is this is not something you can do now, you know? Right, right. I mean, it's very much would be laughed at. I mean, you could self publish something, you know?

[01:39:25] I mean, right. And most people it would deserve to be laughed at who tried it. But I guess the idea is just this experimentation with form, you know, he really just got his own distinctive style of writing that was really a

[01:39:40] reflection of his beliefs, his ideas, who he was. And our form is really not it's not trying to do that. It would look down on it, I think. And so it's not even just this just writing aphoristically, but just writing in a different kind of form.

[01:39:59] I think, you know, like if he didn't do this, we wouldn't get these ideas. And they certainly wouldn't be as vivid, you know, as. Yeah, there's, you know, I again don't know a lot about really about all of the especially non analytic philosophy out there.

[01:40:17] But it seems to me that there is no longer a this halfway point for literature and philosophy. So you're either a philosopher or you're writing fiction that might be deep or not. It might be philosophically deep, but you're not writing this. You're not writing philosophy as literature.

[01:40:39] And I don't know, continental philosophers might still do this. You know, I probably wouldn't read it. Yeah, this is very Western, what we're talking about, like analytic and like English speaking countries, like, you know, but that's totally true.

[01:40:51] And even like you don't have to go back to Nietzsche. You just go to Camus and Sartre and they wrote novels and plays. And that was part of their philosophy. I mean, it was they were novels, but they were expressions of their philosophy and often really interesting ones.

[01:41:10] So OK, this really has me excited to do civilization. It's this contents, by the way. Maybe you could actually come up very soon. So yeah, good discussion. I hope you guys enjoyed it and the Nietzsche fans out there probably mad at us.

[01:41:24] But yeah, but if the Nietzsche fans are mad at us, at least let me say this. I went in not liking Nietzsche and I came out liking a little bit more. So there. Yeah, good. All right, we'll join us next time on Very Bad Wizard.