Episode 50: Friedrich Nietzsche

In this episode, we discuss the philosophical and theological views of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche, today recognized as one of the most influential thinkers in history, never achieved fame while he was alive. His books, polemical attacks on Christianity and "slave morality," did not sell. Nietzsche suffered from chronic ill-health, and was an invalid most of his life. In 1889, he went insane and died after a series of strokes. Nietzsche argued that the conventional notions of "good" and "evil" were mistaken, and in fact prevented humankind from evolving. According to Nietzsche, conventional morality cast as evil everything that he believed was good- the will to power, war, and conquest, vengeance, ambition, animalism, adventure, and knowledge. Nietzsche argued that we must embrace these so-called evils and transform the human race into the Ubermensch.