Welcome back to the new Thinkery folks. I'm here tonight with Alex Priu. David is maybe joining us a little bit late and just traveling. So as always, like us on the Twitter, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, smash that like button, all that stuff.
We're in for real treats tonight. We have a guest, Michael Granky, and we're going to be speaking about Lisa Van Boxle's book, War Speak, Nietzsche's Victory Over Nihilism. Michael Granky is a tutor at St. John's College.
A tutor is what St. John's College calls professors, and Granky has done two translations of Nietzsche's work himself. One is called On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, and the other is Preface to Unwritten Works. Welcome, Michael.
How are you tonight? Well, thank you. Good to be here. How about you, Alex?
How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you. I'm very excited.
Yeah, this is, and you prepared a lot for this episode, Alex. I could tell. Well, you know, I maybe I'll just editorialize for a minute, but there's a lot of bad, bad books written on Nietzsche, bad articles written on Nietzsche. And this is actually a very, very good book written on Nietzsche.
In fact, I think the first chapter is one of the best things I've ever done, Nietzsche's an introduction, especially to Nietzsche. I thought was really good. So I'm interested to, again, just tell you, take serious certain elements, especially the genealogy of morals, which is book is largely on who takes seriously certain parts of it that I think are often overlooked. So and to do so, somebody who really knows what they're talking about.
So I'm excited. Yeah. So maybe the first we could do is, um, Granky, can tell us a little bit about the book and then Alex, maybe I know you prepared some remarks that would give us an overview of the book as a whole. So maybe Michael could just tell us about the book, the book's author and then turn over to Alex to give an overview of the book itself.
Okay. Well, most people are is a very close reading of the genealogy of morals presented somewhat selectively. So it's not an absolute and thorough going commentary on every detail although I think in some ways it tries to read every detail and make meaningful every every particular thing that Nietzsche left us to orient our reading derives, I think, from that close reading, an argument that the genealogy of morals is a central text of central importance to Nietzsche. Not I think as it might be presented and maybe as an advertised itself when it was first published as a supplement to Beyond Good and Evil, but a book that focuses on the core problem that Nietzsche himself focused on, which came to be articulated for him, I think, is the problem of the value of moral systems and that is closely connected to the title problem, the problem of nihilism.
It purports, I think, to be a sketch of a way in which one would analyze the history of morality in its various forms and developments, can't along that and through that historical approach come to an understanding of the way in which morality has deeply shaped and affected the development of human life. And then Lisa's book takes that understanding and steers it in the direction, I think, that she thinks Nietzsche is pointing, which is that we should take charge of the direction of our own development, seek to produce the changes that would make our life something that we could honestly and fullheartedly affirm and get out of a cycle of negative approaches to life that I think the genealogy on Lisa's book both present is having dominated the human perspective for more than 2,000 years. Now, Lisa herself was a Canadian. She was born in Northern Ontario and she went to the University of Toronto to study political science and literature as an undergraduate.
I think I mentioned literature because I think that background probably particularly helps her in developing her own modes of interpretation and it's very helpful to address the breadth of the various ways in which Nietzsche himself writes. Then she got a master's degree at Boston College and went back to Toronto for her PhD. She's had a couple of hiccups in her graduate studies and I think thinkers and topics a few times until she's settled on Nietzsche. I think she would have found their lifelong for the rest of her life.
The finger that met the most of her and that she thought was the deepest and most serious. Thanks, Michael. That was very helpful. I'll just mention, I think I'll turn this over to Alex here in just a second and let him add to your overview of the book.
I was fascinated with how well she writes and how it seems like as far as a scholar can, she seemed even to be imitating his style in certain ways, sort of, exhorting the reader to do things. Speaking to the reader in the imperative mood, do this, know this, think about this. Then I know Alex's favorite which I'll talk about a little bit later. They'll be these quick aphorisms at the end of a paragraph, long exegesis of what Nietzsche's about and then it'll end with Bosbo's or something like this which I know I'll talk about.
Alex, did you want to add anything to Michael's account of the book? I know you had some things that you were talking about. Yeah, since we're talking about the style of it, Salvin, you brought this up Greg and I was hoping we would get there so I'll take the opportunity. But what's most striking in the book I think is her continual use of the imperative as though she's giving us commands or maybe to be a little lighter instructions that she's trying to teach us and give us lessons or a task to do.
And it struck me as, I mean, so one thing I'll say about the style of book that I think is really, really engaging is that it's not just an argument, it is an argument, but it's a very personal argument. It's a person showing how they've thought through Nietzsche, how they think Nietzsche's thought. And in a way passing along something she's gotten from Nietzsche onto the reader. I think that's where the imperatives come in.
And she at one point says of her sort of when she's articulating this ideal, which we'll get to later that like a woman, it's seductive and generative. And I think that's definitely a part of her writing where she sort of seduces you with interesting thoughts, some of the charm, like you said, Greg, and then tries to generate a kind of thought process in you, which I found really, really wonderful. And so it was in a way very conscious of itself as a writing, which is rare. In a small way, I was struck by some of the imperatives do this, no, this, but some of them are coming along with me.
I think it seemed to be sort of joining the reader to go along with her as she was unfolding and figuring out what Nietzsche was about. Yeah, that's right. I don't know if Michael, you want to add anything to that one. Well, I think if you're thinking about Nietzsche and the use of language, it's characteristic, I think of noble human beings that they speak in order to issue commands.
And I think at least was very attracted to the nobles in Nietzsche. And although Nietzsche's probably neither ultimately for the nobles nor for their opponents, but for the, I think, the ongoing development of humanity, it's hard not to sympathize with the nobles because they're in a way the source of new beginnings and of health. Yeah. All right, folks, today's episode is brought to you by the ancient language Institute where our cohost David Barsman's study.
How's Greek coming along? David, you learning anything? And he's learning it from, yeah, the comfort of my own Oikos, Alex. I really, that means house.
I've been enjoying it. And I've been, I've been casting out my wife and had a Greek, which is wonderful. She doesn't know what I'm saying. I do.
And I can't wait to graffiti up my town in ancient Greek. And they're all these wonderful applications. I'm finding it's delightful. But you're yelling at your son, call him doulas.
I didn't think that was too nice. No, it's not nice. But ancient Greek corrupts. And if you're that kind of guy or gal, then sign up and take the class with me.
All jokes aside, it's wonderful that the methodology of ancient language Institute is unlike any formal language course I've ever taken. You want to talk a little bit about it, Greg? Yeah, Greg, tell the folks at home. Sure.
First, I'll also mention that David's wife is also enrolled. So she does understand she's actually graduating top of her class this fall. I'm about at the bottom. Yeah, here's the bottom.
But they actually do have classes still this fall. You can enroll up until August 13th. They have courses in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. And unlike most of the other arrivals that will sort of inundate you with long, drab, list of vocabulary words to memorize in charts, declining nouns and conjugating verbs, they get you reading and writing a language on day one.
They offer live online courses to meet your flexible schedule to meet your busy schedule. And last but not least, of course, Alex's favorite part, the Aristotle guarantee. Tell us about the guarantee, Alex. But to read Aristotle's nuclear key in ethics, he's mixed it pretty clear.
There's no happiness in life. But Aristotle's dumb and old. He didn't live in the age of the ancient language Institute, ancient language. If you are not happy with what you're getting, it's not for you after the first day.
If you are not flourishing fully as a human being after studying Greek, Hebrew or Latin with them, you get your money back and be happy in your amis. And also a certificate from the College of Natural Slaves. So go to ancientlanguage.com and learn Greek back to the show. Yeah, so maybe we can jump into the nihilism stuff.
You had a very helpful, this is from the very beginning of the book, I promise I read past the beginning. But the first words of your introduction were nothing too often. That is the answer we give ourselves these days to our most important and defining questions. What can I know?
Nothing? What I do? What I do? Nothing?
What can I hope? Nothing? Well, we think of the future, either our own future or the future of humanity. More generally, what do we find?
Nothingness. And I think as you go on to say and as least really clarifies many times, nihilism is not not willing, it's willing nothing. It's a kind of self-destruction, self-annihilation. And as the title or the title rather shows this is or promises, what you're going to get from this book is a kind of victory over this nihilism.
So maybe the best place to start is with a discussion of nihilism. No, so you're kept to me. I had felt to me to write the introduction because Lisa died. And she had asked me about writing it beforehand.
We discussed it. I may have ended up writing it even if Lisa had lived because I think she wanted something from the introduction that was a bit unlike what was in the book and that meant something more in the vein of my voice than hers. And that, the passage of readout is consciously recapitulating Kantian questions. Not that Nietzsche wasn't impressed by Kant, although I think it's worth mentioning him passing, Nietzsche did not think Kant was a philosopher.
Those aren't the only questions one could think of, but I think the Kant's framework frames it well. Now, I think the language that Nietzsche really uses that's sort of striking about nihilism in this book is he presents nihilism today. And I think Lisa does a nice job of sketching a little bit about the way in which nihilism changes over time or has undergone genealogical developments. But nihilism today, as Nietzsche faced it, and maybe as we face it too, means that we're weary of humanity.
And that I think really turns into this hopelessness. We no longer can believe that there's any kind of genuine future that we ourselves in this world can generate. There's nothing, no future project for ourselves. It's really very interesting or appealing.
And this is the end result, I think, as Nietzsche understands it and as Lisa presents it too, it's the end result of being oriented toward another unreal world of eternal and unchanging and absolute things that has been the sort of the model for both reality and for truth, probably for the Western world at the very least, since the time of the early Greeks, well, maybe the late Greeks. Yeah, you know, I think about this sometimes. Sorry, Greg. I was a small one, you go ahead.
Yeah, go for it. Mine was small. I mean, I don't want the, I don't want to rail it. I took to be the serious threat of the argument, but you said, as though offhand, Nietzsche wouldn't have counted count among the philosophers.
I was wondering, maybe we can ruffle some feathers or some contents in our audience. And maybe tell me why that would be the case. Probably we don't have any, but I'm sure. Right, right.
Yeah, so a couple of places Nietzsche's explicitly in saying that the count wasn't the philosopher. And particularly, I think Nietzsche thinks Kant was not oriented by a central characteristic and personal question. He was just a very powerful thinker, but a man who could have devoted his efforts and energy to almost anything, but it was relatively indifferent to the things that he was writing about and spending his time on. And so Nietzsche wants to really does want to say that's a kind of truncated human being who's not so very connected to the serious things that they're doing.
And that's a very interested in what they're doing either, such that they could have been reassigned somewhere else and they would have done the same kind of work. That's, I think he thinks this is like what he calls a philosophical labor or a kind of very advanced and very useful scholar, but not someone who should stand on their own, someone who should be deployed instrumentally by some better guiding mind that has a clear and unifying goal. So maybe the thing he says most powerfully and I think this really comes through in this reading everything about the philosopher is personal. The philosopher has no right to have sort of digression, actually.
He started the genealogy telling you about his 13 year old philosophic efforts or maybe one should call them his theological efforts. But and of course, Nietzsche goes up and he describes his growth and changes in development, but it's all ramifications from the same truck. He belongs to get almost like one of these Darwinian charts of evolution. It all is morphological development with the Santa modification.
And I think he just thinks that's not there in Kant. It's a curious mind just working wonders out of its great intellectual capacity, but not deeply centered, not deeply involved. When you read Antoine of the Edels, how the true world became a fiction, Kant seems almost like a sort of catalyst for something that's already happening, right? Just kind of completing a process.
About the nihilism, whenever I like to think, oh, well, you know, Nietzsche talks a lot about this world versus the other world and we live in a very materialist society and materialist in the sense, not just, you know, obviously concerned with possessions, but also materialists in the sense that we just think everything's matter. But then when you think about what our ambitions are, you know, people being eager to go to Mars, this horrible inhospitable place, it seems to me like it's still a case of willing nothing, right, of trying to go somewhere where we lack any concrete objectives in this world. You're still trying to escape it in some way or believe that there's something higher that we can get to, even though we really examine it, it might be as Nietzsche critiques the platonic forms just an empty fiction, right, that this is something worthwhile. Well, what will we really escape if we go to Mars?
I mean, I just start there. I imagine that the people who I imagine people will live on Mars and I imagine they will change physically in many powerful ways, just because what seems to happen to beings that live under different environmental conditions and probably rather quickly because they'll be separated by a great distance and isolated. So they will live very differently human beings in the past that live. But what will they escape?
What are the, which of the human problems will they escape? I can't see it. I mean, they're going to be in tight quarters if I could put it there with much more limited resources than most human beings have historically lived. It's going to be not easier.
It's going to be harder. It's going to be a diminished human life, I'd expect at least for a significant period of time, if people make it. Yeah, maybe the great, do you want to talk about nihilism? Or should we?
Well, I just, I mean, a lot of folks at home, but you know, our audience is pretty very proud of people who are really familiar with Nietzsche, and nihilism, and some who aren't. And so I guess, do you think you could just speak for a moment about why, you know, hey, what nihilism is? Because I think there's some confusion Alex and I were talking about this. Does this mean sort of you don't will anything or is it?
You actively are with, and then also why is it such a central focus in Nietzsche's thought? And if you could anticipate for us a little bit, you know, the subtitle of Lisa's book is Nietzsche's victory over nihilism. So maybe you can just give us a little bit of a forecast for what the problem is he sees it as she thinks Nietzsche sees it and then his solution to it. Well, probably I want to say the scheme that leads to nihilism is the story of what gets discussed, I think, in the third essay of the genealogy of Moles, the acetic ideal.
It's, you know, ideal of maybe living in this world with a deep orientation toward the other world after this world. And that means mostly, I think, taking many aspects of this world that characterize life or changeability, growth, transformation, and minimizing those things. Along with minimizing our natural impulses, maybe even I think this comes through in one passage, these quotes, minimizing our perceptions, moving away from what we sense toward some notion of a lasting version, a static version of thought, as imagined to be an unmoving, unchanging world. That belongs to the acetic ideal.
The belief in the ideal, which I think one could understand as having been perpetrated on humanity as a kind of project designed to be less satisfied with themselves and this worldly life. And especially, I think, designed to make those who have worldly success, think less of themselves and become more vulnerable to those who have less worldly success in all sorts of ways. That leads to eventually a willing of nothing, something, some giving up on this world because it doesn't look appealing compared to the ideal. But some giving up on that ideal to some degree because it no longer looks believable.
So the ideal itself erodes confidence and satisfaction in worldly life and it ultimately erodes itself. So we could understand that there to a business team where human willing was oriented toward this other worldly ideal for a long time and eventually became unable to orient itself toward that other worldly ideal because that ideal became unbelievable, maybe even unpalatable in some ways, but primarily unbelievable. And then turning for some alternative place in which to invest once will. I think Nietzsche really does think this is the truth.
Living beings have a primary urge to do things. That is regardless of any external stimulus or any kind of emptiness or lack or need, living beings would still do things. An amoeba would move about and it would try to absorb things. That's regardless of whether the world is offering anything to it.
But when the living being has no positive object for its will, nothing constructive and I would say enhancing that it can attach its will to and set itself as an intention. It will still try to exert power. And in those circumstances, it will turn on itself or any available other thing that it can seize on. And that's really the turning on to willing nothing.
It's a simple example would be I think people who find no satisfactory way that they can improve their own looks, their own appearance, who then choose to mar their appearance. And they do actually get, I think, a great sense of satisfaction. They're controlling what happens to them in a world in which they probably feel out of control and very vulnerable. They find something they can control.
I can make myself look less good than I am. I think in Nietzsche's own instance, he noticed about Napoleon, he at least he concluded about Napoleon, who as emperor was the one who would set the fact that he would have to do it. And he noticed that Napoleon was never able to make himself into as good of a speaker as he wished to be. So his decision was to speak less well than he could and actively corrupt the speaking of his empire.
This is just a way in which one can feel one's power being expressed when there's no positive direction for it seeking mirror, you know, I wouldn't say mirror destruction because mirror destruction is still evidence that one has some power in its being expressed. Yeah, she has the vivid image of a parrot put in a cage that for lack of an ability to do anything starts pulling out its own feathers, right, and that human beings want to go similar psychological sort of machinations, just to have something talk on themselves with her. I'm sorry to say I think this was Lisa's frequent experience when she went to the zoo that she saw nihilism in the game. Why were they pacing back and forth and developing neuroses and psychosis and destroying themselves?
Yeah, I wonder if I've often thought the tattoos were response to nihilism as well, the ubiquity of them these days. Well, I meant that to some degree. Yeah, yeah, I thought so. Because, well, I mean, the algorithm is quite lovely.
I think for course, of course. But many of them are these assertions of power over oneself and they aren't in a dark direction, they don't improve the body to make it worse, but they still gratify. That's really sad. I know a student who had on one hand had tattooed men and on the other hand, a tattooed day.
So, great joke. She actually saw this. She actually had the hand in three joke. So, can I connect one of the things that I'm going to make maybe more explicit than what you said was that the religious element of what you were speaking about, that this otherworldly element meant specifically like human religiosity and these kinds of things.
And that Nietzsche's analysis of modernity or post-modernity or whatever we're in, and maybe this would be a good transition to set up something that I know Alice and I spoke about a lot of text as we were preparing for the show and that he wanted to bring up in discussion with you. But that in modernity, it's increasingly difficult for intelligent people, thinking people to believe in these things anymore. And that seems to be problematic in Nietzsche's thought and maybe one of the reasons we turn to nihilism. And he really, Lisa brings this out really clearly in her account of what she calls the moral theological prejudice and how she thinks Nietzsche has figured this out.
Alex, why don't you probably articulate a question on this better than I could have? This gets to, so to get everything we've set off the ground, she needs to actually give an argument against this prejudice, somehow show it's not true, which is difficult. Just difficult. Okay, I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt.
So one of the things that she brings out in Nietzsche is that this is a, like, tattoo's are ubiquitous these days, this prejudice has been historically ubiquitous, right? This moral theological prejudice, is that fair to say? What is that prejudice? Alex, and then maybe, yeah, sorry.
So the way she defines it, and it seems to go out at some permutations, but something like a faith in opposites, right? Between the realm of becoming in which we live and the realm of being where either God lives or these eternal ideas or sort of pure unchanging beings exist where there's plainness and Nietzsche is very, very comfortable loving these things together as appealing to the same sort of psychological phenomenon. So to argue against it, she has to give this, Greg referred to earlier as the buzz buzz moment, it gets from when she's talking about the Mayfly. I'm just going to read this passage because I think she has a really engaging way of writing, I think it might be worth just a minute.
She notes that the Mayfly, which in its mature form lives only 22 hours or so, must experience time and it may not are calibrated to its physiosycology in order to complete the activities that constitute a typical life cycle for its species. If a Mayfly could consider an average human lifetime, it might believe this time is unfathomably long, an eternity. If it could reflect on what it might be like to live so long, it might say, life is made meaningful by our consciousness of death. If life were significantly longer or God forbid eternal, I would be bored to death.
Surely eternal life is valueless. And then she says buzz buzz, which I think to be her translation of this quote back into Mayfly. See to us this speech, which is sound like buzz buzz and I guess that's how our speech would sound to the gods. But this is the crux of her argument against the position of, you know, the theological position or the position of revelation.
She puts it a little later saying that if we were to get divine commands, we need to understand them and interpret them. And that means judging their meaning. And that's all in the human realm, right? This is all sort of human judgment.
And somehow this argument, and she didn't spell it out entirely, which is why I want to discuss it a bit. What exactly is the argument here? Or can you flesh it out a little bit? And is it successful?
Or I think it's rather I think alluded to before, is this just working out the position of modernity? Because it seems like a very modern argument in a way like a subjective argument or I'm in this reading it, but I was struggling to understand exactly what she's getting out here. Well, maybe the way I cast the belief that may fly out of it. For the moment, unless you've interjected, Lisa makes a kind of argument that human experience has to come to us within the framework of human capacities and our time and our space, our perceptions and our capacities to think.
And in a way, that means nothing truly supernatural can show itself to us in its supernatural character. It doesn't mean a bush couldn't burn and speak words to us that we could hear. But what we would experience wouldn't be anything that is supernatural, but only the natural aspects of it, especially, I think, if one understands loosely speaking nature to be what's available to our perceptions. In that respect, I think she means to say that the claims that are advanced on behalf of super natural beings and supernatural demands can have only human means to us.
It's a little akin to, I think, the argument that Spidelsa makes against the possibility of our experiencing miracles. And I think it stands somewhat like that. If I actually, if you ask me to offer some critique of it, which I offered before, she wrote it, or before it was put in file form. It abstracts from the claims that the divine could put some power in us, infused within us some power to experience the specifically super, super natural or divine character of something.
But I think at least what if I remember correctly, it's said to me, even if that were to happen, either you stay that way and you're cut off from the human because you've been infused with divine power and divine capacities. Or it's a momentary thing, and then you have to come and explain even to yourself the experience in terms of human powers and capacities. And so I think that's the nature of that claim, and it is connected to the mayfly passage in the sense of saying that means that are significantly different from us and experience the world significant in significantly different ways. I think in that case, the mayfly experience of duration can't really enter into our experiences the way we have.
And similarly, we can't enter into experiences that are outside the bounds of nature as we're capable of encountering. I think he's wants to say the theological prejudice precisely is a prejudice that there is another world in which there is absolute being. That's, you know, that's the primary aspect of it, whether that's platonic form land, or whether that's various Judeo Christian Islamic gods. And in that other world, there's some, there's kinds of beings that are what they are without any relationship or connection to any other beings that are different, absolutely in kind.
That's what makes the opposites that the faith and opposite values ultimately asserts. There's a passage, I think, on the top, it's on the top of page five, if I remember, let me see if I can quickly get it. The paragraph that's ending on the top of page five says this, to make comparisons and contrast, one must slide back and forth along a continuum of similarity and difference that precludes absolute otherness or opposites. And one must have a satisfactory sense of how far into otherness one has moved, in all such movements, one is necessarily adulterated.
I think at least it's there, this is the beginning of the argument against the theological bridges is saying that any beings that can be compared with any with each other and can have any connection with each other must not be absolutely different from one another. So that even the idea of this kind of beings of this other realm of absolute eternal things would preclude thinking about them in any kind of relationships, at least. It's what's really meant by the father of apples and oranges. Though apples and oranges are not absolutely different from one another.
It's what's really meant by when people say that, right, is that there can be no comparison. I think we suggest if there were a world like that absolute world, all of our thinking that is relational and comparative could not happen. I'm happy to hear you say that because every time somebody says that's me, I'm like, what could be more comparable than two types of fruit. One is a thick wind, one is a thin-minded, it was struck as apples and horses are way more uncomfortable than ever since.
I want to say, if you know the myth of recollection in the meaner, there's one statement in the middle of that myth, I think, talking about how things are recollected. That is that one remembers one thing and the memory of the one thing leads you back to the memory of other things. I think it says all things are soon, all things are born together or often translated, they're all a king. That's not necessary in that myth where the soul has seen each of the beings in that other world, the real beings.
And then you would think they could go directly to those beings. That is the mind and recollecting could just go to those beings. But going through an association of connected memories is what you do when the beings are connected, when they are all a king. And so there's a thing in the me know, I want to say, some thought that maybe for land isn't like this, so it absolutely stops us as being eternal and utterly different in kind.
But more like what I think Lisa's presenting here more like the world as we experience it where everything that exists came into being out of something else that exists and has a connection to every other being. So if you could know one thing, at least in principle, you could come to know the others. So if I could just follow through a part of that thought a bit, when you read that passage from the top of page five, it reminded me a lot of Plato. Right.
It's idea that you have opposing things that are somehow indeterminately connected, right? There's just kind of blurring. Somehow we tend to think of difference in degree, right? Like temperature and a difference in kind, apple and orange.
But in reality, they're kind of both at the same time. They both have a kind of kindness to them, but also a kind of continuum along them. So, and this is something I picked up elsewhere a little bit is it seems like sometimes she's arguing against a very sort of hard, fast platonism while also smuggling in Plato or Socrates in the back door. Maybe that's just me reading into it, or is that conscious on her part?
There's some passages, I mean, maybe even especially some of the things that Lisa presents, but all presents for presentation of Socrates I can say in this book, where I think she presents an account of the young young Socrates pursuing some attempt to say why nature is the way it is and going to be looking for a mind to explain everything that's just really interesting metaphysics, but turning to this second, sailing least frames it in language that suggest that what Socrates was doing justifies Nietzsche's claims. And as they justify the claims that the, for instance, the best regimes would be measured by the those lives that most fully expressed will the power of something. She's definitely grabbing the platonic tradition and steering the way one talks about it in a direction to try to at least emphasize those aspects that would be conducive to being understood in a Nietzsche way. But I also, I do think the claim about nihilism often implicates at least platonism.
And then it becomes a kind of question of how does one understand Plato so that he's free of this situation. Can I jump in here? So this is something I actually want to talk about. I'm glad that Alex brought up Socrates as I thought, you know, on the one hand, this moral theological prejudice we see in religion, but you also see it in platonism, right?
So that there are these eternal existing forms. And then Alex and I would agree that platonism is already a departure from Plato. And so let me see if I can do this. I don't know if I can do this while we're not.
I'm not sure if I'm doing to Nietzsche what Plato or not, because it sounds to me like things are too much in flux for Nietzsche. And maybe this is maybe I'm not quite fully grasping at least his account of these things, but it seems to me that there are two extremes on this position. One is that there are permanent beings, current categories of beings are always never the same and that sort of platonism. And the other is that things are simply in flux.
Isn't there a certain long lastingness even or a stability to categories of beings that might cut the middle here? This is on page 14. So again, I'm sympathetic to this. And I think this actually might be more compatible with the kind of platonic and sciatic philosophy that Alex and I attribute out to play one's talk to you.
But she says this is in that first whole paragraph, the third sentence. There are no definite boundaries between kinds of beings. And I think that you do see this in Plato and even in Aristotle, in fact, that it limits these boundaries between beings break down. But aren't there kinds of things that persist over time?
Is Nietzsche going too far on page 15? In other words, yes, I grant that species change over history, but it's not quick and it's not like fluid and it's not like day one where the three of us talking in dates to the end. Or the three of us talking in day two where automaton robots who don't have to eat any more something like this. And so I wonder if Plato's thought is sometimes going, is sometimes described as having gone too far in the direction of his permanence.
Is Nietzsche's thought, am I doing the Nietzsche approach to play on pushing him too far in the simple liquidity of beings or something like this? I'll read one more quote from Merne then we'll see if you have any comments. This is on the bottom 15 second paragraph near the end of the paragraph. In other words, traditional definitions of the human being tried to define what we are historically, but they fail to offer an adequate definition because a living being is a type of motion that is inseparable from its genealogy.
So, I mean, in this I find persuasive, but we have to understand human history, human knowledge, understanding, speaking of being. But do you see the sort of question I'm asking here is that species change, is it being pressed too far in Nietzsche or feel free to defend Nietzsche in my response? My attack here. I think I don't know whether he just being presented as too far in the direction of chaos or fluid absolutely.
If one uses that nonsense phrase. But what I want to say is, I do think Nietzsche certainly admits that there are things that are lasting, but what does it mean to be lasting? In fact, he's very afraid of things lasting too long, but that constitutes a big problem, even his own writings. I think he has some urge in him to recast and reframe his own writings within the framework of just a couple decades of productive work.
So, Nietzsche fears, I think, things that he calls the stonification or or modification, ossification or moneying all these things that he thinks are philosophic tendencies. And maybe tendencies that are built into our rationality, which includes real errors of reasoning as well. But I want to say, what is lasting? What is it really to mean to be enduring?
And how would one distinguish that from being unchanging? I think if you say a change is happening, but it's slow. Nietzsche, I think, would like to say to you, it's still changing. And I think there's a passage that leads quotes on page 14, it's from human-altic human.
It's section 41. But when Nietzsche talks about what would it be like if we were to live for 80,000 years? He suggests we would not be. So we would have the impression that human beings stayed the same, that they were unchanging from birth to death.
If they had life spans that were 80,000 years long, we would see evolution in what we call an individual. And it would look like discontinuity. It would look like a series of different individuals. Okay.
This is not a proof of any sort of Chris, right? Nietzsche has not met such a person nor seen it. But he does, he ends rather, you know, practically by just saying the brevity of human life misleads us to many erroneous assertions regarding the qualities of man. I guess I'd say about the platonic situation.
And this seems to me, breast tax, not platonism being indicted, but Plato. Does it have an idea of truth as a thing that is once and for all, always and unchanging? And if it has a commitment to that, I think there is the 24th section of the third essay of the genealogy. Nietzsche suggests people who have that conviction.
They are nihilists as well, or that they're thinking leads to nihilism. The thinking of truth that way, places of demand on it that could only be gratified or only satisfied by some world other than the one we've got it. That thoughts, for instance, and meanings don't change with the beings that think them and mean them, but somehow persist independently. That's outside of context and outside of beings.
It's if one were to say, if you think that way, you have to believe human beings are a term. And isn't that what you're calling platonism, but to the extent to which that stays in Plato, I think that's an ultimate point where Nietzsche thinks he sees something that leads to a bad end. It won't be believable in the end, and the will that attached itself to that will attach itself to nothingness as a consequence. You know, it's one way to maybe think about it is to say that what's enduring is not the forms, but the fiction Plato wrote.
Nietzsche likes enduring things. He likes the Old Testament. He likes Homer. He likes people who have created sort of apocal works that give human beings a destiny.
The problem is when the, the problem is when that destiny is some other enduring realm that simply doesn't exist. And I suppose in a way that's the becoming, by drawing attention to becoming, he's also drawing attention to the sort of magnificent powers of creativity that human beings have, right? And what they can do for themselves if they're conscious of it and aware of it, rather than the sort of self-aware, he calls it web spinning a time, self-aware web spinning that goes on with these sort of nihilistic or acetic ideals. Well, to the extent to which one appreciates poetry and its fiction, it's made so the powers of human making and the things that they make, I think, each is very attached to those things that have the power to last for a long time and mean a great deal, in fact, a lot of people.
But I think he's more, he expects from those things that are made by human beings and known to be made by human beings, to be products of human making, that they are meant to be challenged by new makers. They're meant to be superseded, and they, in their very fictive self-presentation, they're a kind of clearing and call to potential writers come try to beat me, come try to exceed me. A thing that is not understood to be a human making and not understood to be capable of being rivaled and exceeded, not understood as to be capable of losing its power in the face of change looks like its intention is to be, to have a finality that will prevent these new calls and challenges. So I do think there's a big difference between presenting something as the best that human beings have managed to do and the things that really inspire our greatest efforts and presenting things that are beyond human, and that we can't outdo.
I just have a small point, I know Alex has some serious stuff, but this really turns, I would say most people's comments understanding Maraleon is head, I mean, just amplify, like most people think it's the only the other world leads, only these transcendent, eternal things that can give life meaning and, and, and your account of Nietzsche leads to the kind of each of which I find sort of compelling, is that no, precisely those things are what robbed this world of life of its meaning. I mean, that's just fascinating how I think what most people turn to for meaning ultimately leads into nihilism by Nietzsche's account. So I know that Alex also wanted to talk, you feel free to wait back in on that, but I know that Nietzsche actually means that Alex wanted to talk about reason and Nietzsche's thought. Yeah, so I feel like we were getting, we need to put a couple pieces in place to get to really the end goal, which is try to get a sense of what she means by Nietzsche's victory over nihilism.
But the one thing I really, I really found valuable about this book, and I think anybody's interested in Nietzsche, especially in the G. And I should read this because Nietzsche occasionally suggests that there is the synthesis of the slave and master morality, and people don't take it seriously, they're just concerned with the sort of interplay between the two, and they don't, I think treats seriously enough that both live within us, and that we have to find a way to have a more full-listed relationship between them than has existed for the millennia. So one of the things I thought was very, very, especially with the second half of the book, she talks about how Nietzsche appropriates the slave types of model of psychological warfare to just spell that out a little bit. These master types, these very stupid, strong master, just go around, they do what they want, they beat up who they want, they take what they want, and then they call themselves good and they call the weaklings bad, and the weaklings not to keen on this or wear this, and so call themselves good and call the masters evil, and actually start themselves to be stronger on the basis of an all-powerful God who will punish those who have served their strength in this world too much.
And this is a kind of psychological warfare, at least argues, there's too many really wonderful passages where she spells this out, but what Nietzsche essentially wants to do is to turn this against itself, and the way he turns it against itself, to quote Lisa, to show that this resentment or resentment or a symptom on his and the reason that they employ, or actually in odds with each other, this is in a way just to return to a point we've talked about a bit, which is that this is all fantasy, right? This other world is all fantasy, it's a fiction, it doesn't stand up to rational scrutiny. So they use reason, they use speech against these masters, they convince them that there is this other world, and because they're stupid and they've never even thought to lie, they never needed to lie, they just believe this lie. Well now the lie can be exposed by somebody who's strong and who's really imbibed this reason.
So I thought maybe you could talk a little bit about how she talks occasionally about the relationship between passion and reason, or she talks about what she calls passion-ating reason. So I thought maybe you could talk about how this, I don't want to use dialectic because that's sticking Hegel out to Nietzsche, but how this relationship between master and slave sort of devolves and how we get, I think, the seeds of a new conception of philosophy that will eventually overcome this nihilism. Well, maybe I think you're right to suggest that the early conquering human beings who are the originators of what Nietzsche calls noble morality and what Lisa primarily calls proactive morality throughout the book, I think maybe just to avoid words that people take to be nasty. That early conquering human being is got a certain kind of integrity of that's based on its simplicity, I suppose, and that's somewhat responsible for its ability to conquer.
It feels good about itself, it's not internally complicated, it doesn't have a rich and varied and unusual, inner psychic life. So we really are thinking about a pre-historical story about our human ancestry, when human beings were less psychically complicated and capable of a certain kind of primitivity that most of us don't have much direct. They have much direct access to anymore. Those noble human beings felt good about themselves and they had conquered other human beings, so they announced a moral claim, they commanded it into existence and felt joy just by saying these things about themselves that they were good, and that the other people who they had conquered and more liked them were in some neglected category, not to be discussed very carefully or thoughtfully, they were the others which were called bad, the simple low people.
The situation has emerged and became a situation of human beings living who were having their way, allowing themselves on the basis of their conquest to directly express whatever urges they felt, and not experiencing much psychic frustration or hindrance in those expressions and so really it's remaining unchallenged in their living in the world by the other human beings around them, and so not very inclined to change or to develop any interior complications or what Nietzsche primarily calls depth. The other people they were living with who were conquered experienced more or less the everyday occurrence that when they had an urgent wanted to do something to express themselves in the world, they either were not allowed to or had to frame that expression in accordance with what those conquerors would allow them to do. And so they had to swallow a lot of drives and urges and when one can call passions, those things not having external outlets didn't disappear, but they kept doing things but internally, and this developed human death, human complication. The director urged, for instance, to physically oppose those who slided you or treated you poorly was turned into something that couldn't express itself externally and had to live within you for some time and maybe found an expression and something that didn't bear any direct relation to the offense or the occasion.
That complicates the human psyche, the soul, that develops the human soul. In fact, it's what I think one could call some, it's a secondary development of mind. Maybe one could understand mind is part of our inheritance, our animal inheritance if we are being the devolves. But the significant development of mind in the human situation really only comes after we become deeply social and maybe and the just picture of this early social ability really is one try powerful tried conquers another powerful tribe and imposes its will out in imposing its will and imposes new conditions that cause mind to develop a significant complication in depth.
So now two groups of human beings are living together, one that is physically ruling and dominating and commanding the other that is becoming more and more thoughtful and clever and subtle and indirect and internally complicated sladdish types divides away in which they can turn the tables on their masters and that's by engaging in an unannounced subterranean psychic warfare against people who don't have their complicated psyches and who can't see it coming. That's the original divergence of the complications in each's account, including a group of nobles or a sect of nobles, the priestly types who divide off from the warrior nobles and really instigate this this revolution inside with the slaves. I think like developing some kind of is least presented and this is in some way the meaning of the title of the book or speak is developing a way of speaking and thinking that engages that subterranean and unannounced war against everything that is excellent that is well turned out that is healthy, confident and feels affirmative about itself and engaging that assault that's been going on for centuries and centuries with a somewhat superior psychology. And I think with a particular insight that the slave morality that was used as a weapon against the nobles, they just find themselves good and call themselves good.
In fact, what they found was they framed the noble types as evil and then they called whatever was not like those beings good which turned out to be themselves depressed. Nietzsche tries to show inherent I think in the feelings of resentment that animate the slave revolt, that there's a hidden acknowledgement of the goodness of the noble type. How to say it's good to be strong, it's good to be whole, it's good to be healthy, it's not good to be poor in spirit which I take to be a biblical phrase which means a deficit of intelligence. That's not good and no one really believes it.
Because the rewards in the afterlife all promise those things will be given to the week, the poor, don't get strong, don't become the rulers, they will have in heaven in basalea sovereignty. That's not a place that's kingship. And if it's wrong to rule, why is God rule? I mean, all these things that show themselves among other things, if it's wrong to enjoy loading over and hurting other human beings.
Why does Thomas Aquinas promise that this is one of the blessings of the save that in from heaven they'll be able to look down and see the tortures in hell. This is I think a scheme in which we get the presentation of this slaver bowl. This might be the perfect transition to one of the main criticisms, ha ha ha, what a niece-lapper that story you just told. Right?
I mean, it's just kind of funny that it's one of the things, look, I'm being a little too fluent here, but one of the things I found most interesting in the book was something that I wanted to push back against, even though it was something that, again, I push back on things because I find it persuasive, but I want to be more convinced. One of the things that Lisa draws out and says is, and I'm going to read maybe a couple of passages beginning on page one, 82 and following, is that this victory over nihilism, one of the manifestations are one of the ways that Nietzsche shows himself to be victorious, is his new approach to life and that it's lighthearted. There's a certain lightness. Things are funny.
He approaches the world with a comic touch. And I'll just, here, here, look, I enjoy Nietzsche. I think especially the last thing you said was just fascinating. I don't see light comedy in Nietzsche.
I see deep dark tragedy. I see black trans coats, fingernail polish in black, dyed black hair, right? And here's the, I'll just read from her and I'll point out all these. She says Nietzsche claims that all previous philosophers were characterized by seriousness.
And of course, I'm in a play-doh and all I see is comedy. These guys are extremely lighthearted, I think. What does it pass chaos as about Nietzsche, actually, about Plato and these guys that they were just joking when they wrote this serious stuff. And so I see a lot of comedy in the agents and I don't see a lot of comedy here.
To the extent that I see comedy in Nietzsche, I see it as dark comedy. I see it somewhat sardonic or something like that. That's the right word. But anyway, I'll read her quote and then I'd like to hear your response because I'd like to be persuaded that reading Nietzsche will bring me, because we'll bring you to this sort of lighthearted comic appreciation.
Here's what she is on the bottom of page 182, the second to last paragraph, but near the end of that paragraph. She says, in keeping with this oppression, the philosopher in all of his earlier simpler shapes is characterized by seriousness, by which we do not hear mean integrity, intensity, of focus or intellectual conscience. We mean an excessive grave-ness or gravity. In his occasional lighthearted moments, the simpler philosopher may dance, but he dances in chains.
I assume that Socrates, by the way. However, within the chrysalis or the tomb-like disguise of the religious type, he slowly evolves into the being a creature, psyche airborne. Once he is transfigured into the poet philosopher, his thinking and being in the world is no longer characterized by grave-ness. Rather, his spirit moves with the agility, grace, quickness and levity, the character is a flying creature.
She talks about him being joyful. He's liberated from the oppressive weight of the moral theological prejudice, but it is also positive for him. I could go on, I mean, quote that I guess got me to the top of 185 when she describes the poet philosopher as having a sort of lightness of being. And of course, I couldn't help but think about the comparable lightness of being.
To me, my impression is that that's Nietzsche, the unbearable lightness of being, as opposed to sort of this playful appreciation of the lightness of being. I don't know, feel free to respond or defend Nietzsche or defend Lisa's account of Nietzsche, taking out behind the witchhead and showing that I'm wrong. No, I will. There's probably a lot to try to show.
And I don't think the witchhead would be an appropriate comic response. Overdown, or he's angry. Yeah. There's a passage I would remember that you can find these things in Nietzsche where he talks about the kind of happiness that belongs to soap bubbles and butterflies.
And I would say the section of Sarah's history from which the aphorism at the beginning of the third essay, the genealogies excerpted is looks a little bit, maybe heavy. It's about a warrior. But what is primarily about is someone who could combine laughter with violence. And I think Nietzsche sees in the Warriors near it someone does some form that we already know of that can do this.
But that's, I think, the sort of advanced height at which Nietzsche's Nietzsche and comedy is meant to see itself, to take those things to which one would say no about life and to see them in a way in which one could say that's worked out well. I think the answer at the center of Beyond Good and Evil. There's a passage about what's at the center at the center of Beyond Good and It's 150. But it's about what happens when the world centers itself around different kinds of beings around heroes around demigods and around gods.
And so Nietzsche says around the hero it turns into a tragedy around the demigod, a state or play. And then he says about God, what? But then he doesn't give you the answer immediately and then he makes you pause with one of those dashes he likes. And then he says a world.
But the natural progression should have been in his I think in the mind, tragedy, state or play comedy. And it takes us a certain kind of ordering principle in order to make things comic that it takes a certain kind of being in order to affirm the world as it is. And I think Nietzsche often suspects that Plato doesn't have enough to do this. Right.
Zenofon, people have been digging up some very positive comments about Xenophon. But of course he's not. Right, right. Yeah, that's right.
Nietzsche has very nice things to say about them. I think I want to say the important books being written about Xenophon recently all quote Nietzsche to establish the importance and quality of Xenophon. That's right. I'll have to remember that.
That is funny. And I agree that Xenophon is funny. Okay. All right.
Good. I think Xenophon is often mocking of Plato. And I think that's funny. But that's something about Plato.
Yes. Yes. Plato, that's a very good point. I suppose comparing Plato and Plato does seem much more serious.
Especially to take them to symposiums out. Right. Right. He's not going to dance in Xenophon.
But by himself. And then Plato, Socrates never gets drunk. And then he steps in and tips his hand regarding a couple of very important things. That's something he wouldn't have said.
That's right. That's a very point. That's a real human being. One real human being invites alcohol and is free from certain effects.
Yes. That's right. And that's also says an interesting thing about what wine does. I think that it alleviates pain and increases friendliness that has this two-part thing that I think even Socrates perhaps sometimes needed.
Of course. Especially if you look at his marriage. Which is also subject to that. And it's sort of a high point amongst a number of presentations of the way in which Socrates life didn't exactly turn out the way he would have wanted it to.
And how did he deal with it. But maybe behind all of this, and I think I did to what Alex was saying about incorporation of both the slave ish characteristics and the noble characteristics. I want to say this. I think that is a very hopeful man.
There's a few places I think in human, all to human. Three where he expresses a desire not to say not to reject anything to find everything in the world to be useful to him. So what I just mentioned, he says he wants to be a fruitful field in which everything that falls to ground sparks. I don't think that is there in Plato.
At least Nietzsche doesn't think that's there in Plato. And at the end of the the gay science, the end of the original publication of the gay science, so that only four books there. The dying Socrates has taken up in the Antipenal Plymouth section. And he's in each of lame Socrates for his last words.
Even though I think Nietzsche knows and in other places, he's written that the last words say very little about life. But I think he blames him because the very next section, the very next section is the presentation of the eternal return of the same. That is Nietzsche's picture of affirming everything. The nobles had strength and health and self affirmation.
The slaves had an incredible development of the human mind, deepening and complicating it and vastly enhancing the power of reason. Nietzsche wants to combine those things. He doesn't want to throw anything away. Even though, for instance, for him, the developments of this life type came under situations of weakness, duress and sickness.
Those were developments that were determined by those conditions. But now they exist in us. And now most of us in the modern age are a mixture of all these things. And Nietzsche thinks there's nothing we have that we shouldn't try to harness because we don't know that there's anything we can't harness.
There's just nothing about the world that necessarily we have to accept. There's a negative that we would reject. And so his aspiration, I think, is to be able to say yes to everything. Thank you, Michael.
I think sometimes people get caught up in this master's late dynamic and they're just rooting for the masters. But he says that at one point, it's been a long time that looked at it, but quickly or wrong, that human history, how does not happen? Human history would have been very boring. You would not have been interested in what was going on.
We became interesting. Literally, we became interesting. We first became interesting because of this. And you talk about how we became much more psychologically complex.
And that's part of that interest for sure. Yeah. And we became interesting because we became evil. That's the other part of it.
So one thing, so maybe we've talked about the synthesis. We've mentioned the lightness. But in the last two chapters, which is really on the third essay of the genealogy morality, which has got an epigraph. And then the first aphorism, which is somewhat spelling out the epigraph.
And then everything else is spelling out that first aphorism. And he suggested teaching how to read and how to think. But it's primarily devoted to a critique of what he calls the acetic ideal. And somehow, negatively through this critique, we're supposed to understand what this synthesis or new type or new way of life is supposed to be.
And yet, because it's wholly negative, it's very difficult to know. And one of the merits of this book, I think, is that, again, at least takes this question that not many people take seriously. She takes it very seriously. And she makes a number of proposals.
Sometimes it looks like a sequence, but then I think they eventually come together. But all of them are the philosopher. So, first of all, why does it have to be a philosopher? But then it's very high risk.
It's very high risk. The philosopher and the warrior, the philosopher and the artist, the philosopher and the poet. And then finally, the philosopher and the historiographer, which seems to actually bring all the other ones together somehow. So maybe I guess there's a couple questions there.
One, why does this new type have to be a philosopher? Two, why do you have to go through all of them? Why these types? Or which is the, what do you see this new type as being?
And then third and finally, the money question, does this overcome nihilism? Is this a victory over nihilism? Just somehow execute this. I think one of the things that I think is a very common thing about why it's a philosopher.
I think one needs a human being whose life activity is in the mass of other human life activity. So, you need a being that's comprehensive in order to present a being that has a sort of authority with respect to other perspectives and other ways of life, because it comprehends those ways of life. And by comprehending it, I mean, has incorporated them into itself. And not so it's not just if there is something that's just a mental activity, it's not just that.
The other thing I think you were saying, I was just in a way talking about it as this affirmative ideal. But at least really makes it maybe more open or explicit, I think the Nietzsche himself does. But Nietzsche goes through an analysis of a series of different types of human beings and what the acetic ideal means to them. And in each case, what Nietzsche shows, I think, is there's some way in which human beings who you could have said are nihilistic and negating and fundamentally opposed to life as a consequence are in fact not that way.
They are living beings, expressing their own power in the limited ways in which they have found it still available to them in nihilistic times or under the rubric of a nihilistic ideal, the acetic ideal. So even I think what Greg mentioned earlier, the tattooed people, they are doing something for themselves as living beings. It's positive. There really is no, I would say in the strict sense, what's meant by evil.
There's no such thing. I think Socrates agrees about this as well. They are doing something that's good for them that expresses their power that really is kind of a constitute some kind of good for a living being. But it's a limited good that has a bad future ahead of it, if it's continued in practice, that it wears out and it leads to worse and less full conditions for both the individuals and their successors who continue the practices.
So that's each of these people under the sway of the acetic ideal are in fact life affirming in a very limited sort of way. In fact, they may find they cut off their access to money, many of the possibilities of life in order to have some power in some limited way. And that power doesn't have a good future. And this suggests this, and looking at each of these positive expressions and each of these outlets of power, one can find something that is good for living beings, something that could be affirmed.
And if you put them together, you are putting together a sort of maximization of what's available to human beings. I think one has to still go beyond these sort of truncated self limited and particularly negatively oriented expressions of the will. You could be tempted to say, we'll just have to throw those people in their ways away. That's not what has been suggested, but rather one takes those things understand how and in what way they minimally and in a limited way we're satisfying as expressions of life, and incorporate them into the future ideal which is affirming all of the this worldly possibilities of life.
Particularly by turning to the what's available to human beings in this world is the way to I think escape the acetic ideal that is to escape its negative future consequences. Finding out, I mean, instead of seeing these people as failures who have ruined themselves are ruining the world, and others, one sees the living being asserting itself and letting itself out and focuses on that and pursues that forward. Now my philosopher, you said that I think I'll leave it just to say again, the philosophic effort is a comprehensive one one way Nietzsche says it is it's the drive to create a world. It's precisely a divine sort of aspiration to be a center of all cosmos that can come into some significant order and have a comic existence mean what turns out is the way one could say I wanted to turn out that way.
The man falls down the stairs and he doesn't get broken forever. He gets back up he laughs, Socrates gets caught dancing alone and he doesn't turn that in shame or something like this he raises it out and proposes a beauty contest. I think we may need a heavy back to discuss that. You want to talk about it's I'd love to.
Me too. You wrote a name. You can make it talk about the leading dogs out that won't be helpful. I'm still working on that one.
So there's a follow-up question I had. Yeah, you have a follow-up question. But my, the Zumfold's reigns. I think it's really a problem.
One visiting family, my father's friend. Every night of all champagne. So those are difficult. So the folks at home, just to confirm Alex is always saying we make fun of him for coming from Silver Spoon in his mouth.
And you heard his in his own mouth. They have champagne every night at the Priu House. So just in case you're wondering, I think very house we share glass of water and we pass around at the Priu House. Champagne around for everybody.
Only in the evenings. Only in the evenings. No, sometimes the afternoon is the last year. This is completely beside the points.
Once we were in, we were in Brittany and we were just staying at this like college and we went out to get. Once we were, once when you were staying at a college in Brittany. Yeah, no. What did this cafe to go get some coffee and some bread in the morning and all the sort of local villagers who were working were there drinking?
I think it was, what is that red liquor? That really thick, berry, berry one. A cure? Is it cure?
No, I don't know. Anyways, they were drinking this thing to start the day. So maybe I'm in authentic in that way. Yeah, I guess I had a brain freeze.
I don't really have my follow-up. I guess maybe to, so one of the things you talked about just there was, you know, when you have all these types bringing together and getting this comprehensive view. I think one way that will strike people, I don't think this is right, but I think it's important to address this. One thing that will strike people is that, well, isn't that just relativism, right?
What makes the comprehensive view better, right? Why isn't it, you say, perspectivism as Nijo talks about, how is that not just relativism? How is this not just sort of nihilistically creating your own own truth and just trying to believe your own lie? Why is this somehow different?
I think it's important to get out. I think that maybe that's touching a bit more on why it's still a philosophy. I was going to ask that, but I thought that was two elementary of a question. I honestly got it.
I was like, how are they just going to laugh at me if I ask that? Because that's what it seems like. That's kind of what it seems like a little bit to me. Yeah, certainly.
Well, I think you mentioned Lisa's discussion of reason, even the use of the phrase, passion, any reason. And in part, reason itself is understood by Nijo to be something that came into being at some point, that it wasn't always there, and it isn't free from the sources from which it emerged. I think if you understand reason itself to be a faculty that came into being out of other existing powers, it makes sense to think something like passion constitutes the origin and of reason itself. And that reason there's the imprint, but I think it can be just deeper understanding probably reason remains, for the most part, driven by passion, by what we call passion.
That is it doesn't have in a strong sense its own agenda. So I just say that to sort of say, yes, there isn't a clear and biased free way of looking at things that's available to beings that are actually interested in the world and care about the world. And care about everything that they're aware of. However, that's what's offered, I think, as a comprehensive view is one that doesn't belong to the narrowness or the particularity of one perspective, but has incorporated many.
And it's a manyness and the incorporation of those. And then what happens to a beam that has access to many perspectives is also some availability of perhaps if they have some measure of self control, a disposition of those perspectives so that it can look at things with different eyes. I think in the genealogy, you need to describe eyes and drives or equates them at one point looking and so pictures of human being has access and control over the many things that make up the part, the partial perspectives of living beings, and has many of those human possibilities within itself as many as possible. And some mastery over them that constitutes some claim to an authority of the position and thought of the being that has that capacity.
They're not wholly cut off from the way others see and they see more and different ways of seeing the same situation so subsequent situation, substance, the identity of over time might not be perfectly correct. Does that make sense? I just want to say that's the argument, not that one has an absolute position free of perspectival characteristics. So I think nature doesn't fear relative.
In these situations, many things are relative. Maybe every being is what it is only in the context of the other beings. That is the kind of relativism, but that is not something that's incapable of being sorted out, especially if human beings can be shown substantially to share many things that is that we live in a shared world, but not a pure world or an absolute form, but a shared world. I point to Kantian aspects, which I think nature always accepted space and time.
The alongside in this space and the successiveness of time is something that non-human beings escapes. And if someone is claims to be human escapes that they can't contact us very well. No, this is something again of this sort of immunity we have to the experience of things that are so radically radically different from us and don't share a world with us. Where that everybody holds the just things to be just in the opposite of the unjust, right?
That's another one that's always true. The only way in which I try to think about it is that if we are as a species of sort of substitute genealogy and a kind of inheritance, and that's giving us a kind of character, it might be then our account of this world is in a way conditioned in that way, trouble us. But it's actually quite true. It's still true that this is the world for being such as we are.
This is the world in which we live. This is our makeup. This is how me such as I am. I must view the world.
And if I'm conscious of that fact, it's not mere relativism or mere sort of subjective term, right? But it's a sort of outgrowth of the nature of things, right? I want to say to the extent to which this world that we're aware of is something we are within and subject to its framework and limitations and whatever partialities and intrinsic biases might belong to it. We're in it.
To the extent to which we can still understand it from within. That's I think the extent to which we can lay claim that this is the world as it is. Right. Well, look, we've got off long enough.
I think this was a really great conversation. The book again is War Speak, Nietzsche's Victory Over Nihilism by Lisa Van Boxel. It's from Political Animal Press. We should mention them and thank them for sending us these copies.
Thanks again for joining us. This was a great conversation. Michael, I'd love to have you back on again sometime, by the way. Maybe we can discuss, I had a reading group when your book on the Future of Education on Stutions Came Out.
So that'd be fun to do maybe at some point. Yeah, this was really informative. I learned a lot. Thanks for coming.
Thanks for talking with me. I appreciate it.