Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy - J. P. Stern & Bryan Magee (1987)

In this program, J. P. Stern discusses the life and thought of Friedrich Nietzsche with Bryan Magee. This is from the 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee, which can be found here: • The Great Philosophers...
#philosophy #nietzsche #bryanmagee

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

This is a reupload. I preferred the audio of this version, so that's the main reason I decided to reupload it. I’ll still leave the previous video up as unlisted, so as to not break any external links with it. Sorry about any inconvenience!

[@longcastle4863]

Not a problem. Re up load away ; _)_

[@dbarker7794]

Thank you.

[@rossg9361]

Bryan Magee is the greatest presenter I’ve ever seen.

[@DonkeyPopsicle]

"He was always going to study physiology, physics, but never got around to it." omg he's just like me fr

[@marekvodicka]

"I was gripped by a really burning thirst: from then on, indeed, I pursued nothing but physiology, medicine, and natural science-I returned even to truly historical studies only when my TASK compelled me imperiously to do so." (Nietzsche, "Ecce Homo", on his time while writing "Human, All Too Human")

[@coimbralaw]

You don’t sound literate

[@noexit4458]

“What have you learned from this video?” “Yes.”

[@coimbralaw]

Take English lessons.

[@kirkj101]

I would take Bryan Magee over any youtuber every time. Thank you for uploading!

[@atlanticist4763]

He's magnificent. He even makes Isaiah Berlin intelligible.

[@zeroequalstwo]

Both Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky address the same concept regarding the "Ubermensch". The big distinction is that Dostoyevsky approaches it from a religious perspective and the mental turmoil that follows. For anyone interested in this concept definitely read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment together with Nietzsche's work.

[@Vgallo]

Two sides of the same coin. Then they should read bros k.

[@bryanutility9609]

This was a great episode. Nietzsche is so much easier to follow than Aristotle.

[@kazkk2321]

It is good that they mention his psychosis was the result of tertiary syphilis not his philosophy

[@stephanosgavrielidis9334]

His philosophy led him to syphilis Make up your own values yes ! His took him to syphilis

[@rosieokelly]

Opinion

[@onetime7408]

This was very interesting. Thank you for uploading.

[@Shivkrsna]

Hey, thanks for posting such old videos. Post more, it’s helpful.

[@chelichnamuda]

Thank You.

[@ed22bm]

yes

[@Jason1717171717]

Came to the comment section to post this, lol. Yes, yes, yes, mmm, yes, yes.😂

[@Xavyer13]

thank you

[@Tymbus]

marvelous

[@jorgemoreno2804]

Brilliant!

[@darillus1]

such a great talk

[@martinward2159]

Yes, yes, yes

[@EzraAChen]

Balanced and very relevant

[@willieluncheonette5843]

" Friedrich Nietzsche is a strange philosopher, poet and mystic. His strangeness is that his philosophy is not the ordinary rational approach to life; his strangeness is also that he writes poetry in prose. He is also a strange mystic, because he has never traveled the ordinary paths of mysticism. It seems as if mysticism happened to him. Perhaps being a philosopher and a poet together, he became available to the experiences of the mystic also. The philosopher is pure logic, and the poet is pure irrationality. The mystic is beyond both. He cannot be categorized as rational, and he cannot be categorized as irrational. He is both, and he is neither. It very rarely happens that a philosopher is a poet also, because they are diametrically opposite dimensions. They create a tremendous inner tension in the person. And Nietzsche lived that tension to its very extreme. It finally led him into madness, because on the one hand he is one of the most intelligent products of Western philosophy, without parallel, and on the other hand so full of poetic vision that certainly his heart and his head would have been constantly fighting. The poet and the philosopher cannot be good bedfellows. It is easy to be a poet, it is easy to be a philosopher, but it is a tremendous strain to be both. Nietzsche is not in any way mediocre - his philosopher is as great a genius as his poet. And the problem becomes more complicated because of this tension between the heart and the mind. He starts becoming available to something more - more than philosophy, more than poetry. That’s what I am calling mysticism. His statement is of tremendous importance: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.” I have always been telling you that you can choose a friend without being too cautious, but you cannot afford an enemy without being very alert - because the friend is not going to change you, but the enemy is going to change you. With the friend there is no fight, with the friend there is no quarrel; the friend accepts you as you are, you accept the friend as he is. But with the enemy the situation is totally different. You are trying to destroy the enemy and the enemy is trying to destroy you. And naturally you will affect each other, you will start taking methods, means, techniques from each other. After a while it becomes almost impossible to find who is who. They both have to behave in the same way, they both have to use the same language, they both have to be on the same level. You cannot remain on your heights and fight an enemy who lives in the dark valleys down below; you will have to come down. You will have to be as mean, as cunning as your enemy is - perhaps you will have to be more, if you want to win. Nietzsche is right. “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” The second part of the statement is actually the very essence of meditation: it is gazing into emptiness, nothingness, into an abyss. And when you gaze into an abyss it is not one-sided; the abyss is also gazing into your eyes. When I am looking at you, it is not only that I am looking at you; you are also looking at me. The abyss has its own ways of gazing into you. The empty sky also gazes into you, the faraway star also looks into you. And if the abyss is allowed to gaze into you, soon you will find a great harmony between yourself and the silence of the abyss, you will also become part of the abyss. The abyss will be outside you and also inside you. What he is saying is immensely beautiful and truthful. The meditator has to learn to gaze into things which he wants to become himself. Look into the silent sky, unclouded. Look long enough, and you will come to a point when small clouds of thoughts within you disappear, and the two skies become one. There is no outer, there is no inner: there is simply one expanse."

[@vario2664]

Nietzsche's 'eternal recurrence' has a meaning of an existential test, in that one should measure one's strength determined by one's ability to embrace all the irreversible circumstances that have created everything about one's life to the point of passionately wanting to relive them infinitely -- "amor fati".

[@GregoryJWalters]

Super!

[@urbanverificationist]

The use of the term "underdog" here is misleading, I think. Rather, Nietzsche contrasts, in all of us, that which is poor in spirit vs our potential for living life with a halcyon spirit. Think, Zorba the Greek. It is self-pity that Nietzsche sees as the enemy in this regard.

[@TheBoofer331]

Nietzsche’s philosophy is almost the total opposite of my own. Fascinating though!

[@matthewphilip1977]

What is the will to power?

[@DeftilSteve]

take a drink every time JP Stern says "yes"

[@Pneumanon]

He took seriously Nietzsche’s directive to say Yes to life.

[@hendrikstrauss3717]

The interview covering kant would kill most seasoned drinkers with this drinking game

[@scoon2117]

Love this show. What channel was this on back in the day? BBC?

[@VidaBlue317]

MTV - it came on after Teen Mom

[@Jabranalibabry]

​@@VidaBlue317😂

[@Jspore-ip5rk]

@@VidaBlue317 Bruh...

[@robinbeckford]

A series on BBC2, yes.

[@kazkk2321]

I don’t think he was anti evolution. In fact he argued for a reevaluation of values around evolutionary theory

[@AA-bn7tf]

Nietzsche probably had brain cancer or some Brain related illness because he didn’t have the symptoms of syphilis.

[@matthewphilip1977]

Well his father died of a brain disease. I think when his father died a third of his brain was missing. Not presumed stolen, I'm guessin, just rotted away. You say he, Nietzsche Jnr, didn't have symptoms of syphilis; why do you believe that?

[@alineharam]

I believe this is now the conensus. I cannot site my source, forgive me.

[@lucusinfabula]

N_ promotes enaction through ways of least difficulty, rebus sic stantibus, insofar as capacitating both H. sapiens & H.sapiens (sapiens) whereas only the the H. sapiens(ssapiens) effectively accessing and processing synergy; logic that is common sense is entertainable by both.

[@BorisBoris-sl1sf]

Yes. Yes. Yes. Ahm. Yes.

[@JoshSmith-ff8dw]

Half of the pleasure of these talks is the sound of their voices

[@BobACNJ]

This type of conversation will never happen today. Pitty...

[@almilligan7317]

Haha. Is that like titty? Pity.

[@scoon2117]

It does, maybe not as posh, but it happens.

[@peckerdecker]

It's almost 2024; & *yes* there are *plenty of podcasts* with people *exchanging ideas*

[@danstracner9053]

I disagree. Because of the internet, such conversations are not only still occurring, they are being enriched by the ready availability of such past conversations as we see here.

[@BobACNJ]

I should have been more clear. My mistake! I was assuming this was a televised show and I think that seeing such high-quality conversations on television about philosophy, just would not happen today. Thank God for the Internet and our ability to see such conversations.

[@jacobvandijk6525]

@ 34:44 Amen ;-)

[@redwolf7929]

It's interesting how society has changed since this came out.I some ways it's freer I. NEICHZIE like manner in other ways more oppressive and geared up for the sheeple

[@humanaugmented2525]

Yeah aint they

[@liamcragin]

Kinda nitpicking here but wasn’t there only one Borgia Pope?

[@leimaniax]

How did we go from these wonderful people, to TikTok?

[@veerabadranb5927]

Eternal Recurrence

[@36cmbr]

Early on Stern said N attack the church but not Christ from a personal POV because N’s father was a minister. When I heard this insight it seemed presumptive on two fronts,. It seems if you oppose the substance of a teaching, then you necessarily reject the teacher who advocates that substance. Now Stern said N rejects religion, the substance and those would be special people whom embrace the substance. The problem with ubermenchism is ignorance. If one is perfect, then that one has nothing to learn - obviously a step back. Calling Nietzsche a philosopher is tantamount to trusting those who wear patient leather white belts and similar shoes to own the bridges that they are selling.

[@DisEnchantedPersons]

I used to be a Christian, life has taught me.

[@hanskung3278]

In this 42min. vid. on Nietzsche there is no talk if Nihilism, how is that possible?

[@polybian_bicycle]

Because he was a metaethical nihilist, but not normative one. He was trying to map out a way out of normative nihilism.

[@hanskung3278]

@@polybian_bicycle He's a metaehical nihilist and doesn't talk about Nihilism?

[@polybian_bicycle]

@@hanskung3278 They do talk about it when discussing his views on where ethics comes from, but don't use that term.

[@hanskung3278]

@@polybian_bicycle That interesting.

[@WEBALON12]

Dostoevsky strongly influenced Nietzsche’s philosophy. Crime and Punishment” addressed 30 years before Nietzsche the idea of the reevaluation of values by the Superman and the unconscious reaction to that

[@Pneumanon]

The Socratic Argy Bargy.

[@ebbyjones3177]

KZbin Gold!

[@veganautics]

Nietzsche's own fate kinda goes to show that the recourse to pure willpower is a degeneration rather than progress, does it not? This little but uncomfortable detail seems to be carefully avoided by all subsequent philosophers.

[@xenoblad]

Not a fan of the guy, but he wasn’t thinking of great men as perfect. You can be great and get sick. You can be great and have flaws.

[@redwolf7929]

@@xenoblad I agree ,men can be " great" but not necessarily great fathers or Christians or even citizens

[@ArtyomLensky]

The reason he went mad was because of an infection, not "because his philosophy was just so bad." This is a stupid charge to put against him.

[@alicecourse559]

Can I get some more context on this interview? Philosophy was discussed on TV?! Why can't we have this again? TV now is all garbage!

[@charlytaylor1748]

That's why we're all here, I guess. Long-form interview has made way for sound-bites and clickbait. Ho hum.

[@polybian_bicycle]

That sort of stuff doesn't sell adverts.

[@ArtyomLensky]

Yes, Macgee ran two shows like this on British television. Once in the 70's and again in the 80's. You can see every episode of both on this channel. I'm so glad because I wasn't born back then and there's no way this sort of thing would be aired nowadays.

[@militaryandemergencyservic3286]

seems Nietzsche read a fair bit of Crime and Punishment and Raskolnikov's ideas before he started pouring it out second hand...

[@kylehenderson5964]

And dares to use a language xxxxx hand. How dare any of us use the ideas of others to improve and spread them

[@matthewphilip1977]

He did write 8 or so books before Crime and Punishment was published but I don't know if any of his well-known ideas, or germs of them, were in any of those books. I'm guessing he would have despised Raskolnikov given Raskolnikov went for Jesus in the end (?).

[@militaryandemergencyservic3286]

Yeah - probably. It was written in 1865 - at exactly the same time as Tolstoy wrote War and Peace (they were published in the same newspaper as alternate instalments.).

[@danielc6106]

He said pacific 😂

[@longcastle4863]

Nietzsche would have modified his philosophy somewhat if he saw the possibilities of annihilation our sciences have come to know. I think he would have relented and said, okay, great men on hold for a while; we have one goal: to get ourselves on other planets in other solar systems as quickly as we can. After that we can still go back to thinking of great men; if that even still makes any sense anymore…

[@AA-bn7tf]

😂

[@xenoblad]

Would he prioritize the the survival of the human species over the flourishing of great men in the short term? Not trying to disagree, just asking.

[@longcastle4863]

@@xenoblad I think he would have. Because I think Nietzsche was smart enough to be a realist in this regard-realizing, in other words, that without an ongoing species you can’t have an ongoing series of great men. I also think he had a kind heart and instead rejecting the herd, the mass of humanity as hopeless (after all, who could blame one when they keep doing things like making democracies that then vote themselves into dictatorships) Nietzsche would have eventually realized we need to find the good, visionary and unselfish in our species and build on these things; to find a way to love, honor and believe in our species enough that we live in such a way that we are glad for the wonders and amazing things the generations upon generations following us will get to see, know and experience, even though we ourselves will not. But I do believe we will also surely discover that we all can have useful, wonderful, meaningful and possibly even amazing lives, while still having the existence of generation upon generations of our future selves as our primary goal.

[@redwolf7929]

One person's great man is another's tyrant

[@almilligan7317]

Makes Nietzsche very uninteresting. If values come from ourselves then love your neighbor as yourself can also come from yourself. We don’t need a God to tell us that this is a good and positive value. In fact it is because we have this value that we have developed the idea of God as Father. Also, I find Nietzsche’s idea of Beyond Good and Evil firmly established in the Christian idea that if one has the Spirit of Man (the Son of Man), or Christ within himself then there is no Law, but we are indeed a law unto ourselves. This is summed up in the famous “love and do as you please.” That is why Christians do not keep the sabbath, cut their baby’s penis, or obey dietary laws. The law is for lawbreakers. Is there a law for God? As Paul will later say, after Christ, “all the law and the prophets (Nietzsche?) are summed up in a single word (strangely not faith, or Jesus, or God), Love your neighbor as yourself.” (That is quite a Word.)

[@Icecreamforcrowtoo]

That's all well and good but if the Christian God is losing currency in Western culture, you're still left with having to address the issues Nietzsche was grappling with in terms of what comes next. Unless there's a huge Christian revival which seems unlikely. He's been proven to be pretty prophetic about the death of God in Western culture. So even if you don't concur with any of his prescriptions, he's not a thinker that can just be dismissed if he's understood properly.

[@almilligan7317]

@@Icecreamforcrowtoo of course! I would say the same about Jesus Christ. The difference between them is that Jesus died a young man for his disciples while Nietzsche died an imbecile and never was able to develop an ethic beyond good and evil. Actually, though, it’s an impossibility since the first premise is that it is good to get beyond good and evil as a more authentic reality. The question is not is there a God, but is there a good?

[@almilligan7317]

In addition are you saying that Christianity is untrue because it’s losing currency (an apt quality of truth for the West-currency) in the West? That in fact might be an indication of its truth.

[@markoslavicek]

​@@almilligan7317 Nietzsche didn't develop an ethic beyond good and evil because that would make no sense to him. He opposed universal systems and he surely didn't want to contribute to this. Criticising him for not doing something he refused to do is therefore unfair. It is true as you say, that if values come from ourselves, then if 'love thy neighbour' comes from the same source, it should be fine by Nietzsche's standards. In fact, this isn't in contradiction with his philosophy at all, and he indeed repeatedly emphasised that whatever we come up with, whatever we choose, we need to engage with it for the right reasons (strength instead of weakness in his view). For example, if your personal morals tell you to be kind, then by all means, be so. On the other hand, if a religious institution or any other authority forces such a behavior on you, then we're having a problem. It seems like an insignificant difference, but it's a crucial one psychologically. In the end, however Jesus or Nietzsche ended their lives cannot be used as a counterargument to their philosophy as it is an ad hominem fallacy. Neitzsche didn't die an imbecile but had a genetic predisposition for his health decline (syphilis diagnosis has been ruled out in the meantime) and we know close to zero about Jesus's life and death if we exclude the fabricated mythology from the Gospels.

[@markdezuba]

A five year can sum up FN "Either you humble yourself and surrender to God or via your pride you raise yourself up and become your own God." Same story spoken a million times in the past. FN is not new and he made no new observations.

[@nickregan2874]

2023. He was right.

[@matthewphilip1977]

Was his misunderstanding of Darwin as follows. Did he presume Darwin to be ADVOCATING striving to pass on our genes, rather than merely describing our striving to stay alive and have sex while we're at it, which merely RESULTS in us passing on our genes?

[@vario2664]

His objection to Darwin is due to the ascendancy of the weak -- not the strong. 'The survival of the fittest" is for him turned on its head due to the prevailing of Christian morality.

[@michaelvan-vn9ku]

The will to power...

[@Three-Chord-Trick]

Like Wittgenstein, Nietzsche's work is totally unoriginal. Nietzsche's thought is just a reworking/rewording of Protagoras and Callicles.

[@Laou41]

A lot of Christianity back then was there?

[@Three-Chord-Trick]

@@Laou41 if you read Callicles' main speech in Plato's Gorgias, you'll see how Nietzsche could apply it to Christianity.

[@zerotwo7319]

two commies don't understand nietzsche, but will talk about it no problem.

[@nickregan2874]

Donald Trump. superman.

[@DavidWaldron]

😂