Episode 262: Supposing Truth is a Woman (Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil")

[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.

[00:00:17] Sure we all feel alive now, but how do we know it's not all, you know, just an illusion? The Great Enmas has spoken! Pay no attention to that man! I'm a very good man, with no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain!

[00:01:03] You're a very bad man! I'm a very good man, just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, supposing truth is a woman. What then? It comes and it goes? I don't know. I don't know a good punchline.

[00:01:27] Is this from Nietzsche? Yeah, from what we were supposed to read today, for today actually. That's a bad sign. No, there was a lot. It's the first line of Beyond Good and Evil. I guess it is from the preface in your defense.

[00:01:45] What do you think he means by that? You never know with Nietzsche. I actually spent a little bit too much time trying to understand what Nietzsche's relationship to women was. And the answer turns out to be a little complicated.

[00:01:58] So either he was a virgin or he died of syphilis from visiting too many prostitutes. And either way, it doesn't bode well for him using them as a metaphor for truth. There is an interesting line that I came across, which is from part three, which we didn't read,

[00:02:13] where he says about a woman, but she does not want truth. What is truth to woman? From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant and hostile to women than truth. But he actually means a set of compliment. He goes, her art is the lie.

[00:02:29] And that's why we love them. Like, her art is the lie and giving me syphilis, I guess. It's not bitter at all. Actually, yeah, you're right. I didn't read the preface. No, I'll do that during the break. This is why we have breaks.

[00:02:53] This is off to a good start. You would think that one of us just came back today from a trip, but maybe not that person. That's true. Temmler's a trooper. To be on an airplane on the same day as we record Very Bad Wizards is a feat.

[00:03:11] I don't like to use the word hero. Well, I was thinking it. I'm glad you said it. Somebody had to. Before we dive into good and evil, at least the first two parts, beyond good and evil by Nietzsche,

[00:03:27] we're first going to talk about a theory that gives me hope, Temmler. I was thinking, you put this in our Slack and I could only... I put it in there to mock it. And then as I read it, I was like, what if this is true?

[00:03:42] So, I don't know how I came across this because it actually turns out to be about a book that was written in 2010. But it's a new blog post titled, Quantum Theory Proves That Consciousness Moves to Another Universe After Death. I like proves.

[00:04:06] There's no room for pussyfooting when it comes to truths like these. I thought you just scroll message boards about dying isn't the end or something like that. My subreddit? Yeah, your subreddit that you go to. My subreddit isn't final.

[00:04:31] No, I don't remember how I came across a tweet, but it's a stunningly well-written blog post about this theory. This theory by a guy named Robert Lanza. So, apparently this guy is a real scientist, but he wrote a book that of course links quantum theory to consciousness,

[00:04:52] to theories of multiple universes. And he basically argues that when you die, you don't cease to exist. Your consciousness just sort of like spider-verses over into a neighboring universe somehow. Which isn't as, I don't know, it's not as optimistic as I may have thought.

[00:05:11] Why? You want to come back in this universe now? What if you end up in one of those shitty universes? You're like a Jewish mother, you'll never be happy. Yes, I'm glad I didn't die forever, but I wanted to go back in the other universe.

[00:05:29] I want to give you a flavor for this theory. This is from the blog post, not from the book, which we didn't read, obviously. The theory implies that the death of consciousness simply does not exist. It only exists as a thought because people identify themselves with their bodies.

[00:05:46] They believe that the body is going to perish sooner or later, thinking their consciousness will disappear too. But if the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies. But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals...

[00:06:01] This is how you know this is a book that was written like 20 years ago. Also cable and satellite are two different things. Then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle. I guess this guy's like it's actually a brand of idealism.

[00:06:17] I was reading a little bit about this guy and his theory, and he basically says, since quantum stuff requires observers and consciousness is what has to do the observation, all of which I think is a fundamental misunderstanding, then ideas have to come before the material world.

[00:06:41] So consciousness must exist before the material world. So I looked this up, dude, and this is what's crazy. This book written in 2010 has thousands of Amazon positive reviews. It's gotten all kinds of press coverage. It's kooky, and I think it's very wrong, but people love this shit.

[00:07:09] They really, really want to believe it. For reasons that you can probably understand better than I can, I also think like a lot of these things there are certain... I don't know, like this line, again, I haven't read the book either.

[00:07:25] I didn't know of its existence until pretty much you just said that. But this idea that the death of consciousness only exists as a thought because people identify themselves with their bodies, that's a very Buddhist idea that we identify ourselves with our physical bodies and also our thoughts.

[00:07:48] But actually consciousness is prior to all of that, and the real you is timeless, without boundaries. So it taps into enough of these old spiritual, and I think sometimes wise and definitely provocative, fascinating spiritual traditions. I don't know if it does it with any rigor. Maybe it does.

[00:08:15] We wouldn't know based on this blog post. But this idea that it's the identifying that makes us think that the consciousness will be extinguished after the body dies. It's like a real tradition. Okay, let me read a little bit more.

[00:08:35] So this builds on... There are theories of consciousness like Roger Penrose's that think that the brain creates consciousness, but we're looking at the wrong level when we look at neurons, brain cells. We need to look at these microtubules because there's quantum shit going on in there.

[00:08:53] So this again from the blog post, it says, consciousness or at least proto-consciousness is theorized by them to be a fundamental property of the universe present even at the first moment of the universe during the Big Bang.

[00:09:04] In one such scheme, proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity. Our souls are in fact constructed from the very fabric of the universe and may have existed since the beginning of time.

[00:09:17] Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time. Do you get that? Well, it reminded me of our conversation of panpsychism and to show you what attention this has gotten, I came across a BBC program where they discussed it.

[00:09:39] BBC, I think? And they had just discussed panpsychism the week before. But it has that same flavor of like, well, if that's what you mean, then I don't really think I survive any of that. Right. You want Dave, like ego Dave to survive.

[00:09:58] And ego Dave, like none of these theories, you know, whether they're Buddhist or any kind of like afterlife thing, recognizably has that. That's right. The only important parts of me are like totally contingent. Like shit like, you know, I like Deadwood and Borges.

[00:10:17] I like cookie dough ice cream. Like that's the kind of me that I want to exist. Not just like as some part of consciousness that I played a part of and wrongly identified myself with a small sliver of, you know? I agree.

[00:10:31] Like I don't look to these things for that, but then I don't have the need for it that you do. You don't have it. Well, you know, I've ordered the book. I'm going to see if I can, if I can will myself to believe it by the end.

[00:10:47] But you were saying right before we started recording that this has some parallels to Nietzsche who are about to discuss, like what do you mean by that? Well, so a couple of things, one, just idealism. I like Nietzsche's attack on idealism, but two,

[00:11:02] the whole like tricking yourself into believing an idea that's like, that you like, right? Which Nietzsche is very rails against. But also opens the door for, you know, truth as something that's a lot more fungible. And, you know,

[00:11:23] like I got out of just those two parts that we read a kind of almost pragmatist vibe. Like I think Nietzsche would find this ridiculous and kind of pathetic, this, this kind of view, or at least the description that we got of the view. Right.

[00:11:38] But I think the idea of a fleshed out philosophy or worldview that works for you and that invigorates you and challenges you, you know, he might like that aspect of. That's why it's hard to pin down what exactly Nietzsche believes.

[00:11:57] Cause like at, at, at the same time, you're like, oh, maybe he's open to some of these non-traditional ideas. And then you get the sense that he's like, he would mock them at the same time. Like it's so totally unclear.

[00:12:09] And we can talk about whether that's a virtue or a flaw of his writings. I have some thoughts on that. I bet you do too. I suspect. In, in, in, in this, I think the issue is, you know,

[00:12:26] you're trying to make it sound way more scientific than it is, at least in, in, in what we, in what we read, you know, the idea that like the Hubble space telescope tells us that there are multiple universes. That's just not true. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:46] The, the, either the blog post is really jumping through some of the arguments, but like I read some, some reviews of the, of the book and like, you know, respectable physicists are like, like this guy's a biologist and, and,

[00:12:57] and he's, he's talking, he's talking about some, some stuff that's, I think out of his league. Here's the quote actually. And I was, I stand corrected. It's the Planck space telescope. He says, the fact that our universe is not alone is supported by data received from the

[00:13:14] Planck space telescope using the data scientists have created the most accurate map of the microwave background, the so-called cosmic relic background radiation, which has remained since the inception of our universe. They also found that the universe has a lot of dark recesses represented by

[00:13:34] some holes and extensive gaps. Is that dark matter that they're referring to? I think, I think so. Like the microwave background radiation is supposed to have been like the smooth, like the remnants of the big bang, the radiation that's supposed to have smoothed out throughout the universe.

[00:13:49] But I guess it's kind of lumpy. And so like, But what he says then is because of theoretical physicist, Laura Miracini, How often from North Carolina, from the North Carolina university. What is this? ChatGPT must have written this. Like that early, like an early chat GPT.

[00:14:12] And holes and gaps are a result of attacks on us by neighboring, attacks on us. What is, what are you putting in our Slack? The blog is called science natures. So it has to be, I thought it was like from science or nature or something.

[00:14:29] Like it was their blog and I was like, that's smart search engine optimization. That's unbelievable. From the North. Like it's the Ohio state, the North Carolina university. The North Carolina university. Like right there. This is like, okay, like this is how you catch a student like doing this.

[00:14:58] Or it's just like a Google translate of like a blog post. I do think this is a view. Like I'm glad you looked at the book and this isn't just fully invented. I think this is actually,

[00:15:10] I think this is a bad summary of the chapters of the book. Like, you know, like every, every little subsection is actually, they're reconstructing the argument. It is funny that like physics is a simultaneously held up as the most objective, like the thing that all sciences aspire to.

[00:15:29] They all have physics envy and it's the fricking wackiest where there's all these multiple like incommensurable and sometimes completely out there ways of interpreting reality, which again is a Nietzschean kind of idea. Yup. Yup. Yup. I mean, but you know, one of them is right, but you're right.

[00:15:50] They seem incommensurable. You know, like Roger Penrose is a great example of, but I think a lot of the physicists, I don't know, maybe it's something that like happens when your brain contemplates the infinite, like for your whole career or something like that.

[00:16:05] But you end up landing at a place which is, you know, very speculative, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Or they go full God. Like they go full God. Yeah. Right. Like, yeah. Full God. You shouldn't have gone full God. You should never go full God.

[00:16:20] That was your problem. You went full God. Are you going to like toward the end of your career, are you going to become a full theist and like go back to free will? I'm trending in that direction right now. I mean really. The only question,

[00:16:36] like the only thing to put on like one of these gambling websites is like what you're, which God you're going to pick. Yeah. Are you going to go back to your Jewy roots or like are you going to like sell out? The angry old Testament God.

[00:16:51] Are you going to start spelling G underline D when you write? Or are you going to like go full Buddhists? I mean that's boring, but probably that one. Yeah. I suspect you're going to bring in some like Hindu stuff too. Oh definitely. Yeah.

[00:17:07] I'm just learning about some of that stuff right now and that stuff seems kind of awesome. I trust that you won't go Jesus. You won't go full Jesus. I don't think so. You've persecuted my people for too long for me to embrace.

[00:17:22] Like there might be some mystics though. And if I go back to my- He's an incarnation. Like you might believe Jesus is an incarnation of like Vishnu. Yeah, exactly. They're both like incarnations of the same like soul spirit.

[00:17:36] It's the funny thing is that like this is not my background at all. So like I'm just learning about this stuff. You already know it. You could be like my Mr. What's the guy from the Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi. I'll tell you what.

[00:17:51] I will one day write a blog post where I describe Tamler Summers from the Houston University. How did I not? Because I did read this. Or at least I read- No, I know. That's why. Why do you think I had started doing more research this afternoon?

[00:18:13] I was like this blog post maybe doesn't even stand up to our mockery. What is this blog post like? It's from blogger.com. I don't know. Blog.sciencenatures.com. It really is like it's just a fully AI created blog probably. It's like the byline is by admin.

[00:18:35] Yeah, I mean there's a number. Webmaster. Yeah, remember webmasters? This is how it's going to be because I've just flown in. I had to wake up at like five in the morning.

[00:18:50] I know we would have been like it was either this or record when I had a fever. Record when you had a fever or there was just like a massive construction happening. We're doing our best. All right, what more do we have to say about this?

[00:19:07] I would like to learn more. Like you say, I am more open these days to at least for the fun of it just seeing what these theories have to say. And as an interpretation of reality. The book is very well reviewed on Amazon. This is why people listen.

[00:19:29] We will tell you whether a review is well reviewed on Amazon or maybe tepidly reviewed. Count on us to bring you the breaking reviews. All right, all right. We'll be right back to talk about Nietzsche and beyond good and evil. Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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[00:26:20] Please consider supporting us if you have it in your heart to do so in any of the ways that I just mentioned. We appreciate them all. Thank you. All right, let's talk about Beyond Good and Evil, or at least the first two parts of it.

[00:26:35] This is Nietzsche's book published in 1886, right after Thus Spake Zarathustra. Threw-stra. Say it in the German. It's easier that way. I don't think I've ever correctly pronounced that in my whole life. Just say Zoroaster.

[00:26:59] So yeah, we're only going to be discussing parts one and two because that's all that we've read in preparation for this. David took that even more literally, didn't even read the preface. He didn't say.

[00:27:13] Part one is called On the Prejudices of Philosophers. Part two is called The Free Spirit. Look, I hope we come back to other parts of this book as well because I do think the book is meant to be read and kind of taken in as a whole.

[00:27:32] But there's a ton of interesting stuff in just these first two parts. And so I'm not going to try to summarize. Like, I don't even know how one would do that.

[00:27:39] But I want to say one thing about what it's like to read this now compared to when I first read it, which is actually pre-grad school. This was, you know, I was one of these people in my 20s that read Nietzsche because I wanted to read some philosophy.

[00:27:56] And there's certain aspects of it that's a very different experience. So these two parts contain some of Nietzsche's most celebrated, just like iconic drive-bys. On a bunch of famous philosophers like Plato and the Stoics and Kant and Hegel. And also like accepted, commonly accepted philosophical positions.

[00:28:21] More importantly, I think free will, the idea of objectivity, morality, the value of truth in general, conceptual analysis. I mean, oh my God, there is some like off-the-top rope, superfly Jimmy Snuka just takedowns of conceptual analysis in this that I just love and I could quote forever.

[00:28:43] And then also the critiques of that kind of scientific, that really optimistic, mechanistic naturalism of the French Enlightenment. And I think what's interesting is depending on where you are in your own philosophical evolution, you're almost certainly going to cheer on some of the critiques.

[00:29:05] You're going to like object to others of them. You may object vociferously to some of them. But I guess what I found striking was how much of this I just ignored because I was in my like Dennett Dawkins like pinker phase that I'm embarrassed.

[00:29:21] But, you know, I definitely went through it and I just wasn't even listening. I don't remember Nietzsche's critiques of those views and like the immaturity of those kinds of views.

[00:29:35] So to give one example now as I've as everybody who listens regularly knows, I started out as a free will, moral responsibility skeptic. And there's a quote from part one section or section verse chapter 21.

[00:29:53] I don't know that a lot of free will skeptics use like Galen Strossen uses this all the time to emphasize the position and it's that the cause of sui which is like this idea of self causation is the best self contradiction that has been conceived so far.

[00:30:10] It is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense.

[00:30:22] The desire for freedom of the will and the superlative metaphysical sense which still holds sway unfortunately in the minds of the half educated.

[00:30:32] The desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions, oneself and absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this cause of sui with more than Munchausen's audacity to pull oneself up into existence by the hair out of the swamps of nothingness.

[00:30:54] So just like all time great takedown of libertarian free will, you know, not an argument exactly but just it makes you feel silly if you subscribe to it. Free will in general, moral responsibility like Sam Harris would be proud of that and I was.

[00:31:13] Like I loved that shit. I am sure I've quoted it in at least like over under two and a half published things where I've quoted that, right? But what I didn't remember or have any like conception of was like what comes after that, right?

[00:31:29] Like so he says supposing someone were to see through the boorish simplicity of this celebrated concept of free will and put it out of his head altogether.

[00:31:39] I beg of him to carry his quote unquote enlightenment a step further and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of free will. I mean unfree will which amounts to a misuse of cause and effect.

[00:31:54] One should not reify cause and effect as the natural sciences do and whoever like them now naturalizes in his thinking according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until affects its end.

[00:32:10] In general if I have observed correctly the unfreedom of the will is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints but always in a profoundly personal manner. Some will not give up their responsibility, their beliefs in themselves, their personal right to their merits at any price.

[00:32:27] Others on the contrary do not wish to be answerable for anything or blame for anything and owing to an inward self-content seek to lay the blames for themselves somewhere else. The latter when they write books are in habit of today taking the side of criminals.

[00:32:44] I think this is what so why Nietzsche's still celebrated in spite of people having kind of often dismissive attitudes towards the view.

[00:32:56] It's like there's so much here that you can agree with and then the other stuff you can maybe just ignore or dismiss as kind of rhetorical flourishes or I don't know.

[00:33:07] Yeah so but like I loved you know the takedown of free will in the soul but when I read it this time it was like the critique of just a kind of basic scientism you know the clumsy materialism of the age.

[00:33:24] The same kind of thing that Dostoevsky's underground man is railing against like that's as as lively a critique in Nietzsche as anything that I was loving him for before. I don't know what do you think? How did you have no idea we haven't talked about this at all.

[00:33:43] How did you respond to the underground? I had the exact same thought about the underground man.

[00:33:48] My feelings as you might imagine are complicated because it's not that I disagree with anything you said like there is this like I had exactly that passage on highlighted that you just read because knowing Nietzsche for his attacks on free will like I just like I had never thought that he then followed it up with like an attack on like essentially like hard determinism.

[00:34:13] Yeah.

[00:34:15] And there is just so much that Nietzsche says and there's so much interesting that he says that polemical style like my problems with Nietzsche will always I think be the thing that you like about him it's just come as no surprise to long-time listeners of us which is that in saying so much you really can find what you want.

[00:34:37] It's almost like scripture where you can proof text your way through any argument. And so but like I don't want to be that negative about it because I think there's plenty of substantively to discuss, but I and I don't feel like that negatively about it.

[00:34:58] I just do there are specific things that really irk me and and I I'll say most broadly like I had read some Nietzsche before in college but never had really gone back to it. And I really wanted to see if you got this feeling.

[00:35:12] He is like the original edge Lord as you described the drive-by style of critique and like the saying shit to sound kind of edgy, especially when he talks about like your weak morality that cares about other people's suffering like is ignoring the fact that like life is made of suffering, you know, and like this the will to power that it's felt provocative in a way.

[00:35:38] That cheap. Yeah, like internet trolley if you were alive today kind of, you know, but the very best, you know, like I agree. I you definitely pick that up and I think maybe especially when he's talking about morality, you know conventional morality.

[00:36:02] I guess this idea of wanting to relieve other people's suffering as a moral goal and his contempt of that.

[00:36:10] I do think that's born of his belief that you get at the end of part two that suffering really is like crucial to an advanced and mature life and like invigorating life.

[00:36:26] And I think part of that as he himself notes is that he was someone that like was suffered physically in all sorts of different ways, you know, like a very yeah, it's a very anti fragile idea.

[00:36:39] The kinds of systems that are resistant to that kind of attack like are the ones that will will flourish in the end. Right, exactly. Yeah, it the famous cliche about Nietzsche. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yeah, exactly. I think is it's not wrong.

[00:36:56] That second section toward the end, especially when he's talking about like the new breed of philosophers who aren't afraid to dabble in like dangerous truths and like who won't let themselves be swayed by like the weaknesses of like a desire for to defend ideas simply because they're moral.

[00:37:11] It read very like IDW to me. Oh, I don't get that at all. Okay, I'll defend my position more with some passages later, but go ahead. Where he talks about this.

[00:37:26] So in all the countries of Europe and in America, too, there is something now that abuses this name, the free spirit, a very narrow imprisoned chained kind of spirit, clumsy good fellows whom one should not deny either courage or respectable decency and suffering itself.

[00:37:42] They take for something that must be abolished. The opposite men understand that hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart hiding in life stoicism, the art of experiment and devilry of every kind that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical and man.

[00:38:03] Everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents serves as the enhancement of the species man as much as the opposite does. And he goes on in this vein. And what it reminded me of is the Orson Welles speech in the third man.

[00:38:19] Don't be so gloomy after all. It's not that awful. What the fellow said mentally for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance in Switzerland. They had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace.

[00:38:38] And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly. It's like greatness comes through suffering. And I think he really believed that and applied it also to himself. You know, that's not IDW.

[00:39:01] They don't think that you need to suffer in this kind of more magnificent or grandiose kind of way in order to be great. They just think you shouldn't be babies when people say something racist to you. Yeah, I mean it's not that dissimilar though.

[00:39:19] The idea that like for instance when he says a new order of philosophers is appearing. I shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger. Could we call him the intellectual dark one? As far as I understand them. The thought criminals, Glenn. The thought criminals.

[00:39:36] As far as they allow themselves to be understood for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle. These philosophers of the future might rightly perhaps also wrongly claim to be designated as quote unquote tempters.

[00:39:49] This name itself is after all only an attempt or if it be preferred a temptation. That's not like Barry Weiss. That's cringe. That's very that's the very thought criminal cringey.

[00:40:00] I agree that it might be cringe, but I don't think it's cringe in the same way that the University of Austin or like it's a level. It's I don't know. It has a depth that whatever the cringiness of it. It has a depth that they don't have.

[00:40:20] They just don't want you to get mad when somebody does a microaggression. They want to be able to study race science. They want to study. I mean, this is not this is not fully fair, but I did find myself thinking what if someone were writing this stuff today?

[00:40:37] I think it does depend on whether you really believe that Nietzsche was embracing that like that fully embracing that suffering. But but it has this flair for the dramatic.

[00:40:47] I think one of the things that I like about and this is me and I'm projecting but one of the things that this time around seems especially relevant to me is the Nietzschean attack on a kind of smug complacent.

[00:41:02] I don't know scientism, but also liberalism surely liberalism, right? I do not. But an attack on that not a deflect. They consider themselves the champions of classical liberal. This actually this is why I find that to be such an inapt analogy because they're the champions of classical liberalism.

[00:41:25] And this is an attack on the very complacency of that view. And also when it comes to science, and I think those two things can be related to some degree. In fact, like he lumps them together, I think, in enlightenment, science, enlightenment morality. But like, I don't know.

[00:41:45] I picture as his target, his modern target. I picture Dan Gilbert. Dan Gilbert? Why Dan Gilbert? I don't know. Have you ever read anything with Dan Gilbert? I have. Yeah. Like some happiness book that he wrote. Yeah. Speaking of catching strays.

[00:42:07] It also I think, you know, you were talking about the Freud parallels. And I think it is a it might be an example of that which he admits, which is, you know, we every philosophy is an expression of some sort of personal yearning. Right.

[00:42:29] And like the deepest kind of desire for what you want to be. And maybe this is what he wants, you know. Yeah. This is his way of projecting onto the world his own even insecurities.

[00:42:43] He would be fine, I think, with somebody at least trying to make sense of that interpretation of him. He says, right, like it's all masks. We all need to wear masks. This might be his mask.

[00:42:58] I think he kind of in part two, he throws into question how much of this stuff and I get that you might find this frustrating if you were a reader of Nietzsche.

[00:43:08] How much of the stuff is he consciously saying for effect and to provoke and how much of this stuff does he really believe? You know. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to know. There is a there is a way in which you're absolutely right.

[00:43:23] Firmly in like they would hate the thought of being associated with somebody who might think that truth isn't the ultimate goal. Yeah. I'm more point like it's the edge Lord, Lord part that I'm going to point to. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:43:42] So can we talk a little bit about his his drive bys on these philosophers and specifically Kant?

[00:43:49] Because if you read, if you maybe you didn't have this, but like as I was reading the first section, I was like, well, I need to know all of Western philosophy to understand what he's so mad about.

[00:44:00] And as much as we joke about me being a Kantian, I was like, so what what exactly was he so mad about with Kant? But I think I got it. So what one of the things he specifically attacks is Kant's notion of synthetic a priori truths.

[00:44:15] And and so he hates that Kant, I think, correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:44:21] He believes that Kant was arrogant enough to think that the mind and the mental categories of like our our conceptions of space and time and causality, like Kant thought that our minds provided us with access to truth about the universe.

[00:44:40] That wasn't just logical or necessary, like a priori necessary. Truth. Not true by definition. Not true by definition. Yeah, but that's but that we could access truth because our minds were just like so that we're just so made as such as to understand notions of space and time.

[00:45:00] So we could discover new things through the philosophy, through philosophy. Right. Yeah. And he thinks that this is absurd, like as a claim, like that it's circular. And I actually totally agree with him. Like, I think there's no way that Kant was right about that.

[00:45:16] Right. Like Kant's metaphysics about this stuff is just crazy. His epistemology about it is crazy. Like it's all. I actually that's my favorite. Just the categories. And yeah, I think he accuses Kant of he needs to make sense of the world rationally.

[00:45:36] But he's smart enough to get that we interpret the world through our own subjective experience and through our senses. And so how am I supposed to understand the objective truth about the world if I am always essentially seeing and all humans are seeing it through this prism?

[00:45:58] And so he makes a way of trying to bridge the gap. Although we can't access the numina, we can arrive at these objective truths through these categories that are essentially tied to the fact that we're human and rational.

[00:46:15] And he you know, that's like I think Nietzsche is accusing him of just not taking the train till the end of the last stop. Like actually take that kind of idealism and that understanding of ineliminably subjective lens that we have to try to interpret the universe.

[00:46:36] Just like actually do that and don't try to kind of come up with this compromise where we're still no, we're still getting truth and objective reality. But through these categories which are essentially subjective.

[00:46:52] Right. And was his problem, does he think that Kant really was trying to get to like he wanted to get to the categorical imperative and he wanted like a moral view of the universe?

[00:47:06] Like and that's why like does he think he's just like cause with cause with street? Well, no, I think it's like the kind of post hoc rationalizing and I think it's maybe separate.

[00:47:19] Like he the thing that Josh Green always quotes that the secret joke of his soul was he takes the common prejudices of ordinary man. I'm paraphrasing and explain and justifies them in language that the common man would never understand. I think like he thinks that's true in morality.

[00:47:40] And so you want it to come up with some justification for the categorical imperative. He has that whole side of him. But I think this is more I want to understand objective truth, including non moral truth. But I've been awoken from my dogmatic slumbers by David Hume.

[00:48:01] And so I have to figure out a way of bridging the gap between my own subjectivity, which Hume, I guess, brought his attention to. And the fact that we philosophers can have access to the truth. Like Nietzsche's ideas, like his attacks on notions of causality are very Humean.

[00:48:27] But I don't think like he read Hume or was building it on Hume. Yeah, as far as I know, actually, I don't know if he ever discussed it. Like I briefly looked it up and it says like he never mentioned Hume at all in his writing.

[00:48:41] When he tries to take down notions of causality, well, all the other things, like it's very Humean in flavor. So here's what I think is relevant to this discussion as a whole, which I also noted. And this isn't just true of Kant.

[00:48:57] I think it's true of all the philosophies that he attacks. It's just trying to come up with a systematic justification for what you want to believe. Yeah, he goes hard on the Stoics. Yes, exactly. That's a perfect. So this is what he says first.

[00:49:11] He says, gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been, namely the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.

[00:49:23] Also that the moral or immoral intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant is grown. What's interesting is I don't think he necessarily means that just as a takedown.

[00:49:35] Like some of the great impetuses for these philosophies have been that there are personal confession. And if the person is great, then there's going to be some greatness in the philosophy.

[00:49:50] It's not going to be true, but it will be in the sense that philosophers might pretend they will be, but it could still be great. But then the example he uses, as you alluded to, is the Stoics. He says, according to nature you want to live.

[00:50:07] Oh, you know the Stoics. What deceptive words they are. Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time. Imagine indifference itself as a power.

[00:50:25] In truth, the matter is altogether different. While you pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers. Your pride wants to impose your morality, your ideal on nature, even on nature, and incorporate them in her.

[00:50:45] You demand that she should be nature according to the Stoic, and you would like all existence to exist only after your own image. For the immense eternal glorification and generalization of Stoicism. It's this idea, I think, that animates philosophy according to Nietzsche.

[00:51:03] We project our what we want onto the quote-unquote objective world or nature, and the Stoics being the best example of them. They imagine nature as this rational and moral operation because that's just Stoicism. So it's very John Haidt, like post hoc kind of philosophizing. Yeah. Okay. Two things.

[00:51:31] One, like from the little we read of the Stoics, it seemed to me more like the Stoics were just trying to make sense of how to live with suffering, and less like they were coming up with a systematized view of the universe.

[00:51:47] But maybe I just didn't read those stories first. They definitely do. Like Marcus Aurelius. It's weird because it's also a little aphoristic in Marcus Aurelius in that it's not all presented systematically. But it is this idea of the rational universe operating according.

[00:52:04] You would like that part of Stoicism. Yeah. You know, Josh Knob is a big fan of Nietzsche, right? In what you just described as Nietzsche's position on sort of giving this sort of naturalistic view of why philosophers come up with the ideas that they do,

[00:52:21] that they think that they're arriving at truth, but really they're just projecting their desires. Or in a very sort of Freudian view, like desires they might not even be aware that they have, like their unconscious desires. Their drives.

[00:52:35] Yeah, their drives. I do think that this is at the heart of experimental philosophy. So much of experimental philosophy is trying to understand why people have intuitions that they have and like why philosophers might believe what they believe.

[00:52:51] Like I feel like even though it's never explicit, and it's certainly not the way that the whole endeavor is characterized by experimental philosophers,

[00:53:01] I have a feeling that they're kind of like, you know, people who believe in libertarian free will do because they kind of want to believe in a moral order.

[00:53:12] And people who believe in determinism kind of want to exonerate criminals and like that's really why they believe with it. Yeah, maybe. Again, I don't like lumping Nietzsche with... Sorry, Josh Knob is a very ardent Nietzschean.

[00:53:30] No, I'm aware. And so is Josh. Like I think a lot of the people in that vein are. Anybody who kind of focuses on a lot of post hoc nature of reasoning will immediately be attracted to Nietzsche.

[00:53:47] But what I do think that Nietzsche does that maybe they don't do, at least to the same extent, is recognize that that's also true of their own philosophies and consciously like present their philosophy.

[00:54:07] I think in a way that openly acknowledges the source of it or at least tries to reckon with what is actually driving them. And I think experimental philosophers like the IDW, they think ultimately they're just getting at the truth.

[00:54:26] And maybe it's kind of fun to say to certain people, oh, they can't handle the truth and that's why they believe what they believe. But ultimately they just want to figure out like, why do we, you know, like, why do we moralize intention?

[00:54:42] But I'm just saying that aspect of what Nietzsche said seems to have influenced experimental philosophers. I'm not saying Nietzsche and experimental philosophers are like have the same view of the world.

[00:54:52] But I think this new philosopher that we get a glimpse of at the end of part two is at least aware of what he's doing to an extent that even like the John Haidt, the people who work on cognitive biases and motivated reasoning and all that, like aren't, they're not fully incorporating this view in a way that I think at least Nietzsche imagines.

[00:55:22] Himself to be doing. I think he would find that to be just like number crunching. He would find that to be.

[00:55:29] I think so. I think that you sometimes impute upon these philosophers, the views that you hold, like Nietzsche definitely has this flavor of like, well, physicists are arrogant.

[00:55:40] But I don't think that he has very well fleshed out views of like whether or not say chemistry was arriving at like something that's reliable. Like, like, I feel like you, you see what you want to see in some of these philosophers.

[00:55:56] Like, I mean, Nietzsche would say that you do. I'm sure he would. I'm sure he wants to be that. Like, that was kind of the point of what I was saying when I led off in the opening.

[00:56:07] Like, of course, you're going to find the things that you're most attracted to at the moment, depending on where you are in the evolution.

[00:56:18] But I actually think this is deeper than that in the sense that this is about like Nietzsche's whole approach to philosophical investigation, you know, philosophical in the broad sense, which includes maybe scientific investigation. And I think he has like a more aesthetic approach to it than they do.

[00:56:38] And I think he pretty much says that explicitly in his attacks on truth and his attacks on the notion of objectivity. Unlike, I think, as you would admit, most scientists, he's not trying to find that one true theory. He wants a whole world of possibilities.

[00:56:58] He doesn't celebrate closing down the possibilities of how to interpret the world because I don't think he thinks that's possible. I don't think he thinks it's like we can do that. I don't think I'm imputing me into this.

[00:57:11] Like, I think this is clearly Nietzsche, you know, what people now call his perspectivalism and the aesthetic way that that's colored. Like, I think that's kind of undeniable. I mean, maybe I might be wrong.

[00:57:25] From what we read, though, he's clearly attacking philosophy and metaphysics and notions of like our imposing notions of causality, for instance, on the world. I just don't think that he is really mounting an attack on science.

[00:57:43] Like, I think it's still kind of obscure what he might believe about the task of science and whether it might be successful. So, like, he might have a notion about imperfect models and pragmatism. Like, he could very well have that.

[00:57:58] Like, he could say, like, oh, yeah, like we are making progress. We're learning more about the natural world because in what we read, like, he very much seems to believe things about nature.

[00:58:08] Like, he believes there is a harsh truth about nature, that nature is indifferent, that nature is about suffering. He is very, like, opposed to defining things circularly.

[00:58:19] Like, he wants, like, he attacks that in a way, like when he uses the soporific power of opium, like as an example of, like, the folly of thinking in such a flawed way. Like, he is not just dilly-dallying.

[00:58:33] Like, he thinks that he is saying something true, which is why, like, if he's not, then, like, that's the part that really irks me where it's like you can't have it both ways. Like, you just can't.

[00:58:47] And I'm not making, like, a facile critique of postmodernism, like are their claims true? Like, I'm really, like, pointing to Nietzsche's own attitude about, like, what he thinks of as, like, wake up from the harsh reality that your thinking is biased. That has to stand on some ground.

[00:59:03] Does it, though? That's the question, right? If it doesn't, I don't think he's saying anything. So does it have to stand on objective ground? Like, when you say he thinks what he's saying is true, like, I think in one sense, yeah, of course.

[00:59:18] Almost, well, not by definition because I think sometimes he might say things for a fact and sometimes he might say things because he genuinely believes it in the depths of his soul.

[00:59:28] But I think he's saying, like, this isn't something that we're going to get at in the way that scientists think we're going to get at it. That's just not how the world is.

[00:59:39] And, yes, he says I know you're going to be hasting to say that's true of your own thought and interpreting your own thought too. And he just says absolutely, all the better. It's not internal incoherence, as you said you weren't accusing him of.

[00:59:55] But I do think it's substantive, even if it's not claiming to have transcended the problems that these other philosophies have and now is in some sort of objective standpoint that can regard them as misguided in all these kind of foolish ways.

[01:00:16] I don't think he's doing that either, I guess.

[01:00:20] Yeah, well, it's unclear to me what he's doing because there is a, I think, an unfair way that he might be arguing, which is to attack the views of any philosopher who wants to lay claim on a truth, hint at why they're wrong, which by its very nature has to be like a claim on truth.

[01:00:45] And then weasel away from any claims that he's making anything like, well, say like what you're saying, systematicity. Like it doesn't need to be systematic. Like it could be just a whole bunch of like ad hoc true statements or whatever.

[01:00:59] There's a large gap between just saying that some things might be like a harsh truth, like Kant, you are self-deluded.

[01:01:06] To think, for instance, like his takedown of like, well, how can the sense organs be the cause of the world when aren't the sense organs part of the world themselves? Like he has some beliefs in the natural world.

[01:01:21] I just don't think he's making the kind of attack on science that's whole cloth what you think he's making. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you once again by Nord VPN, one of my favorite sponsors and one of my favorite Internet services.

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[01:03:40] Our thanks to NordVPN for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. So, OK, here's the quote that I was searching for that I found in my notes. He says, forgive me as an old philologist who cannot, a philologist is someone who interprets old texts,

[01:03:57] who cannot desist from the malice of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation. But, quote, nature's conformity to law of which you physicists talk so proudly as though why it exists only according to your interpretation and bad philology.

[01:04:13] It is no matter of fact, no text, but rather a naively humanitarian emendation and a perversion of meaning with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern soul. He says, like, supposing this is also an interpretation, you'll be eager enough to make this objection.

[01:04:32] Well, so much the better. This is what I think he views as what he's doing. And even what science is doing is an interpretation in the same way that we were talking about interpretations of artworks last time. There are better and worse interpretations.

[01:04:48] There are interpretations that are fruitful, interpretations that you feel like give you insight and make you understand yourself better. But there's no one true interpretation.

[01:05:00] Science is going to do its thing and there's going to be some good stuff in that and there's going to be some, you know, pathetically bad stuff in that and some smug complacent stuff in that.

[01:05:12] But, like, I think he views just the universe as this thing to be constantly interpreted and reinterpreted. And not as something that you can, through the scientific method, arrive at some kind of objective truth about.

[01:05:31] True in the pragmatist sense, maybe, because I'm getting huge pragmatist vibes from him. But not true in the way that at least some, many, and including you, scientists think or understand what it is that they're doing.

[01:05:48] Yeah, I mean, if so, then I just believe he is incoherent and inconsistent. Like, I feel like there is just... What's inconsistent about that? I never get this.

[01:05:57] Because, so the distinction to me is, and you always, I think, try to lump together the claim that anything can be true in any real sense. And then like the attitude of systematicity thinking that we can know everything. That's not what I'm doing.

[01:06:14] Okay, but take the systematicity part out of it. Right? Fine. We just want to know whether light really travels at 186,000 miles per hour or whatever.

[01:06:23] If he's really saying like, oh, you silly person to think that that could be true, you might mean, well, either that is just not like the universe doesn't have truth like that.

[01:06:34] Or the human mind is such that it can't, right? Like an epistemological claim that we can't know what that is. But I do think that he then goes on to make lots of claims that aren't like in this, like again, like not in this trivial way true.

[01:06:48] Like I think, I guess what I'm saying is it's easy to take down everybody else's ideas about how they think the world works.

[01:06:56] And never really propose a positive view about how he thinks the world works, except for constantly insert like what I think to be like actual claims about how the world works. I think you have a blind spot when it comes to pragmatism. They are not, not making claims.

[01:07:14] And this is the thing, like you think I have a blind spot of conflating systematicity and the search for just objective truth.

[01:07:23] I think you don't get that you can think that arriving at objective truth is impossible and still make claims that you believe in, that you stand behind and that you are willing to defend. And I think Nietzsche, like that's the line that he's trying to cross.

[01:07:45] So just to take the analogy of interpretation, which is definitely something I think that you can find in Nietzsche. This idea that the universe is like a text and you have to, and you can come up with better and worse interpretations.

[01:07:59] Interpretations that lead to personal flourishing and invigorating way of approaching life. And also ones that are plausible or implausible. And the same way that you can come up with interpretations of, you know, 2001. When we talk about 2001, we don't say this is the one true interpretation.

[01:08:24] But we definitely like some better than others. We think some are more plausible than others and we think some are just a more fruitful way of approaching the text, appreciating the text. And I think that's what he thinks.

[01:08:40] And it's not that we just don't know the real interpretation. It's not an epistemological problem. There is no one interpretation of 2001 that is true and it's just that we're struggling piecemeal gradually to find it.

[01:08:56] That's just like, that's not the appropriate way to regard a work of art, which you agree with. And all I'm saying is that that's how I think Nietzsche is regarding the universe, or at least that analogy holds pretty well.

[01:09:11] I think that's an ultra charitable interpretation of what Nietzsche is doing. Because imagine writing, you know, 30 pages of polemics against people who have interpreted 2001 before and saying how wrong they are. Because number one, they have said this is the true interpretation.

[01:09:30] And number two, because their interpretations are bad. Like what's wrong with that? And then offering your own, which you think is better. Yeah, because I think you need to flesh out what you think a better interpretation means.

[01:09:43] Like it has to be like you have to have some criteria if you're going to say that somebody is clearly wrong. And you're going to say it like loudly and in German with exclamation marks. Like you're saying something. But that's what I think your blind spot is.

[01:09:59] Of course you're saying something. You are saying that your interpretation is better. What you want is to give like criteria for a better and worse philosophy, like some sort of objective criteria for a better and worse philosophy, better and worse understanding of reality.

[01:10:16] And I think he just thinks that's not possible. But he gives some features, I think, of good philosophies and some features of bad philosophy. And even some of the ones he critiques I think he finds a lot of charm in.

[01:10:31] It's just like he doesn't think that what he is saying is true in this transcendental way. Like he gets that that is his own perspective as well, which is all that anybody can do.

[01:10:45] But he just has like entire sections where he's just like making actual claims that sound like,

[01:10:51] If, however, a person should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy, comfortlessness and impurities as life conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present fundamentally and essentially in the general economy of life, which must therefore be further developed if life is to be further developed, he will suffer from such abused things as from seasickness.

[01:11:07] And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful. Like he's making actual like he's trying to say this is in fact like what a good psychology needs to be. A good, but not in the sense of objectively true.

[01:11:24] If he's not going to bother to even lay out criteria for what it means, like why he's rejecting something as like wrong or why he's embracing what he's saying as less wrong, then like, I don't know, you could say all along like I'm comfortable with self-contradiction and this is the least self-contradictory of the things that I mean.

[01:11:44] But like, I don't think you're saying anything. Also, I don't think he fears contradiction. He doesn't have a terror of contradiction or self-contradiction like you have because he thinks that we're a multiple. Yeah, no, I don't even think he necessarily thinks what he's doing is the least self-contradictory.

[01:12:01] Like that's importing your own more systematic sensibility on what he's doing. And I also don't think like you say, well, if he's not even going to lay out criteria for us as to how we should like evaluate the plausibility of these claims.

[01:12:18] Like why should he have to do that? We don't ask that of artists.

[01:12:24] I think this is a totally different way of approaching philosophy that is not consistent in the technical sense, but is in the line with his actual philosophy, which I think is very committed to an inimitable subjective nature of trying to make sense of life and the world.

[01:12:51] I just found that his takedowns, for instance, of Kant's notions of synthetic a priori were actually like on good grounds. Like I thought that what he was making was like a point that Kant himself is being incoherent here, like at the very least inconsistent or circular.

[01:13:11] Sure. And somebody like who prizes himself on not being that, that is a good takedown of Kant. Right. So, okay. So circularity like incoherence matter like to him or else then it loses the focus. If you're Kant it does. If you don't think that that's what you're doing.

[01:13:27] I think Nietzsche's critique is, oh, silly Kant, you're being like circular. Like that's Nietzsche's view of Kant. Like, I feel like he is pulled by more objectivity than you are giving him credit for.

[01:13:42] Like aside from his explicitly saying like there is no objective truth, like he's acting as if there is. Like, I guess that's why I can't help but read. I don't know what he's talking about then.

[01:13:52] Like, what does he mean then when he says fundamentally these philosophers are misguided? They're making either logical errors or they're letting their desires overwhelm their reason. Like there's just to me like maybe not like objective capital O, like I see it under a microscope, but true nonetheless.

[01:14:14] I guess we can't, like I feel like this is the same argument we have when we're talking about William James, when we're talking about like one of us has a blind spot here because I just, I don't understand why you can't express views, even like convictions.

[01:14:31] Convictions that you stand behind 100% without also being committed to them being objectively true in some sense. Like that's what I, I don't get why you think. Well, I fundamentally believe that aesthetic claims and empirical claims are not the same thing. Like maybe that's the difference.

[01:14:49] Look, I have an idea. Let me know what you think of this. Let's take a test case, which I think is actually, which I think is actually a good test case for your side. This is when he talks about the self and he talks about Descartes.

[01:15:01] I think that, you know, Cogito, I think therefore I am. He says, this is section 16. There are still harmless self observers who believe there are immediate certainties. For example, I think or the superstition of Schopenhauer put it, I will.

[01:15:20] As though knowledge here got a hold of its object purely and nakedly as the thing in itself, without any falsification on the part of either the subject or the object. I shall repeat 100 times we ought really to free ourselves from the seduction of words.

[01:15:35] Something we have not done for sure in philosophy. But then what he says here, I think it could be a good case for your view. Right. He says, let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely.

[01:15:50] The philosopher must say to himself, when I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, I think, I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible to prove.

[01:16:01] For example, that it is I who think that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and an operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause

[01:16:12] and that there is an ego. And finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking. That I know what thinking is for if I had not already decided within myself what it is,

[01:16:24] by what standard could I determine whether that which is happening is not perhaps willing or feeling. In short, the assertion I think assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states of myself,

[01:16:37] which I know in order to determine what it is, on account of this retrospective connection with further knowledge, it has at any rate no immediate certainty for me. But in place of immediate certainty, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him,

[01:16:55] truly searching questions of the intellect. To wit, from where do I get the concept of thinking? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an ego and even an ego as a cause?

[01:17:06] And finally, of an ego as the cause of thought. And whoever ventures to answer these metaphysical questions, so he's criticizing anyone who tries to venture to answer these through intuition.

[01:17:19] But I think what you're saying, if I understand you correctly, that these critiques of somebody who goes from the inference, I think, therefore I am, without noticing all of the hidden assumptions, unargued for assumptions,

[01:17:36] that that is making some objective claim about the world. That we have no right to do that. Is that right? Yeah, or he's at least in this case making an objective claim about like them being wrong.

[01:17:53] Like that they are not right to take all those steps. Not about the world, but like, yeah. That they haven't established. Yeah. That they have not established what they take to have established. And certainly with the standard of certainty. Right.

[01:18:11] And then, even better for you in the next section, he says, That was so good. I have that so Buddhist. Yes. So that it is a falsification. Like this is a good test paragraph, actually. Right.

[01:18:25] So that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject I is the condition of the predicate think. So there he seems almost to be making empirical claims. Right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Like, they're deflationary. Right.

[01:18:43] Like, I don't know if it's a good thing to do. Yeah. And so, I think, he's making this kind of assertion that the world is not right. And that it is not like that. Right. That it is not like that. That it is not like that.

[01:18:55] And that it is not like that. And that it is not like that. And that it is not like that. And that it is not like that. Yeah. Like, they're deflationary. But yeah, they seem to me to be like, the self is an illusion because, yeah.

[01:19:07] Well, or just that a thought comes when it wishes and not when I wish. Right. Seems like, yeah, you're right that it's Buddhist. But it's also like, I don't know if it's empirical, but it certainly problematizes the idea that I think. Because thoughts just appear in our heads.

[01:19:25] Right. This is a William James, David Hume thing too. We don't even have the conception of thinking like that. Right. We just have thoughts. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:19:35] So, I still think that this is not laying claim to the kind of objectivity that, while at the same time, I think, making something that is going to make all of us look at ourselves and introspect and reflect on our own experience.

[01:19:54] And see whether this is something that resonates with us. But I don't think it's, A, inconsistent with some of the more postmodern-y stuff that he will say. Or B, trying to be consilient with the more scientific worldview. Yeah.

[01:20:14] I think I've gotten to the heart of what just the feeling of resistance that I get sometimes then reading these two sections. Because on the one hand, I think you're totally right that he is expressing a deep skepticism.

[01:20:28] For sure a deep skepticism about the process of doing philosophy. Like for sure that part, like analytic, that whole. Yeah. And probably scientific, like I mean clearly in some cases. Like I don't know how deep the scientific skepticism or the skepticism about realism goes or anything like that.

[01:20:46] But then he has such certainty in his positive claims later on or like throughout that that's what gets me, I think. Like it's just this feeling of like, yeah, maybe you're right, I'm holding an unreasonable standard.

[01:21:03] Like why can't he just simply claim these things and they either stand or they don't stand on whatever grounds? But it's such a clear presentation of a healthy skepticism combined with such a fierce belief in what he's saying. It just trips me up.

[01:21:23] The question is whether there's something... Contradictory about that. Or not even contradictory, but maybe unhelpful in comparison to more systematic or at least more transparently open ways of giving the reader a way of evaluating the claims. You know what I'm saying?

[01:21:46] Because like usually when you encounter that form of deep skepticism, like say saying like you can't even build like a metaphysics on I think therefore I am. Like that's usually accompanied by a sort of humbling attitude like toward the world. And like he definitely doesn't. No, he doesn't.

[01:22:05] And I think that's the thing. I think like you said, this trips people up about Nietzsche because we are accustomed, you're right, to the people who express this kind of skepticism.

[01:22:17] And even the skepticism like there are people who are skeptical of science and scientific methodology and even some of the more grandiose ambitions of science. But who typically accompany that with epistemological humility. And that is not Nietzsche either.

[01:22:38] And so because he's so emphatic in his claims, you might think, well, why would you be that emphatic if you didn't think what you were saying was true, capital T, true. But I really don't think that that's what he's doing.

[01:22:55] I think he just is trying to present a forceful interpretation. And in the same way that, you know, where he says in that same section, one has even gone too far with this it thinks, quote unquote, it thinks.

[01:23:11] Even it contains an interpretation of the process and does not belong to the process itself. So like I think he thinks even what I'm doing is also an interpretation. And we can talk about better and worse interpretations of these processes.

[01:23:28] But talking about the true one or having knowledge of the true one, that's not something that is available. And I think for Nietzsche, not something that's even desirable.

[01:23:42] Yeah. So maybe we can come back to Nietzsche later because then I'm very interested in the step that he takes with his view about like the will to power and like what that's all about.

[01:23:56] Like that's just sort of like the next question that pops into my head because he's hinted at it in these first two sections. And that's a big question. Like to what extent he thinks that this is an explanatory theory of like human motivation.

[01:24:14] Or is it like just wisdom about how we ought to be? Yeah. Or does he think that that's a hard and fast distinction? I can see getting frustrated with that, like for sure.

[01:24:29] But yeah. And in fact, like we haven't even talked about I think what people might associate with beyond good and evil, like the critique of morality. Because actually these two chapters or these two parts hint at it and definitely morality catches a bunch of strays.

[01:24:48] But it's not fleshed out like I think it is later and also on the genealogy of morals. So maybe when we go back to that, because that's also kind of historical.

[01:24:59] Making historical claims about the origin of morality you would think is along the lines of what like evolutionary psychologists do. And yeah. And you know I'm not, I've probably or almost certainly read more Nietzsche than you have.

[01:25:14] But don't have, especially with regard to the will of power, will to power any great sense of what the fuck that's all about. Right. And like did, by the way, before we're done, I wanted to compliment part of Nietzsche.

[01:25:29] There is a section when he's talking about the will, section 19, where he uses this metaphor of our bodies but a social structure composed of many souls. Yeah. That I think is great. To his feelings of delight as commander.

[01:25:47] Le fait c'est moi. What happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth. Namely that the governing class identifies itself with the success of the commonwealth.

[01:25:56] In all willing, it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying on the basis as already said of a social structure composed of many quote unquote souls. On which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing as such within the sphere of morals. Blah blah blah.

[01:26:08] But that's a great. That's very Freudian, right? This idea that we have that we are not one thing. We're multiple things kind of doing battle. And then we identify often with the most successful.

[01:26:20] Yeah. And like we don't, yeah. And we have little knowledge of like the actual causal energy that's coming, that's actually causing all of our actions. That seems to me true. Not necessarily the Freudian, more specific version of that.

[01:26:35] But this idea that there are all these kind of competing drives that we often identify with the one that seems like it's going to be the one that. For sure. Best reflects on our characters, you know?

[01:26:49] Yeah. And that's why I think like what I like about Nietzsche is he does have, he seems to me to have very keen psychological insights. All right. Any last thoughts? There's so much that we even haven't discussed.

[01:27:01] I know. I have so much highlighted that we just didn't get to. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that just means we should come back.

[01:27:10] Grab bag roud though. Section 31 where he talks about his, in our youthful years, we still venerate and despise without the art of nuance, which is the best gain of life. And we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with yea and nay.

[01:27:23] I love that section where he's like, yeah, when you're young, you really go hard and then you get really harsh on your young self. And that also is a folly of you. He goes, yeah, 10 years later, one comprehends that all this too was still youth. That's so good.

[01:27:42] Whatever our metaphysical, I think, metaphilosophical disagreements like, I think we both like some of that Dostoevskyian insight into the way humans deceive themselves. Yes, absolutely. All right. Join us next time on Very Bad Wisdom.

[01:28:39] You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.