Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra | The Last Man | Philosophy Core Concepts

[@jonathancampbell5231]

Only now hitting me that Greg looks and sounds like The Dude from The Big Lebowski. Guess he made something of himself and got a Ph.D. Good for him.

[@GregoryBSadler]

People started pointing that out about 8 years back

[@jonathancampbell5231]

I'm very slow

[@nerdwizard]

I'm curious, Dr. Sadler: Which philosophy do you personally seek to embody the most?

[@GregoryBSadler]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWObcmuejb6Aeq8

[@ikzo7927]

Very nice explanation! There are many people making the case that the movie Fight Club is about the Last Man/Overman dichotomy. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yep. It's doing that. And there's way way more to Nietzsche and to life than just that

[@DrJellyFanguzzz]

The last man blinking, in my opinion, is the closest thinking to cattle grazing grass after having "invented happiness". Obviously blinking is an automatic function to all animals with eyes. I think he's saying that without the necessity to create something new, something to innovate, something to improve on, man will speak and blink with the same weight as a dog, eventually. They know they did, they know they say something, they know they feel. However, most people can't specifically discern these. it's all thrown into an amalgam of smug contentment, or concentrated, directed hatred. I think he's just speaking to the daze derived from having too much comfort. "Hate week" in 1984 reminds me of a collective version of the last man blinking. I think it's the fear of finding out that there isn't much variety in the human mind, and that we are in fact, no different from an animal. Sort of like imposter syndrome, but en masse. That society was a natural evolution, and not this thing we invented. With all that being said, I think the implication is that conflict is good as long as it's controlled, and that conflict (it absolutely doesn't have to be against one another) drives humanities necessity to be "über". Once there's no more "predators", the only thing for the herd to do is to graze grass and live life in a happy, temporally-melding stupor. And thus, time meant nothing, their words mean nothing, and their thoughts meant nothing. I don't know, something about the way it was written just screams to me that the person saying "we invented happiness" doesn't have the faintest idea of what being sad is... So, how can you invent the opposite of what you've never experienced it? How can you say you've captured the positive element of a dichotomous event, and say you have true knowledge of it? If these people don't understand hardship, then how can they invent happiness? For what is happiness but pleasantly existing?

[@williammoore1980]

It is not happiness. It’s the height of delusion. The true fatality of comfort. Total lack of discipline. The death of creativity. Essentially all the truth of humanity ceases.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yep. Nietzsche pretty much already has Zarathustra say that

[@black_eagle]

There are quite a few videos around of young nerdy guys advocating a "be nice, be happy, meditate and enjoy yourself" nihilism--a life with no great ambitions, ideas or passions, just small pleasures and good deeds. It's pure Last Man morality--a disturbing thing to see among the youth. Better a few Genghis Khans than a Brave New World of petty pleasure-seekers who have no possibility of anything greater, imo. We seem to be heading toward the Brave New World of universal mandatory Last Man nihilism, though the problem may be self-correcting in that people with no passion tend not to reproduce or hold on to power. The really dystopian scenario is if Last Man nihilism becomes encoded in the technologies that run the world, and we find ourselves living in a Matrix in which pleasure is technocratically maximized, history has been erased and no one can imagine another value system or way of life.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I guess we could probably do with less last men AND asshole Genghis Khan wannabes.

[@Truther271]

Thank you dr greg.... but why dont you do anything on schopenhauer

[@GregoryBSadler]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJy7fKeuocp6d5o

[@sonnyjim5268]

“Watch streaming shows....or Dr Sadler videos...” Now that is happiness.

[@JohnDoe-sz8od]

Hi Dr. Sadler, thanks so much for posting these lectures; I find them very helpful. In the prologue, I was wondering, when Zarathustra talks about the last man, was he giving the people a threat of what will happen if they don't change their ways, or does Zarathustra believe the last man is destined to exist?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Who knows?

[@joshhuxleyisdead]

After watching this, im drawing parallels to the last man with socialism where the aim is to make everyone’s life comfortable- bring up the poor and take down the rich. While the super man is capitalism where unhealthy personal sacrifice to attain goals is rewarded and the last man who doesn’t play the capitalism game is looked down on. Am I missing something? I never took Nietzsche as a capitalist

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yes, you’re missing a lot. Capitalism doesn’t work that way, except in the minds of its fanboys

[@thesoundpurist]

Nice. These guys read deep stuff and share knowledge with us. Happy to have found this

[@GregoryBSadler]

There's no guys, just me

[@RichieSawant]

Am I the Last Man if I take in Nietzsche's sayings as the final word?

[@GregoryBSadler]

No, you're something else. But if you've read and thought about Nietzsche, and not just watched a video, you know that of course. . .

[@JC-ly8pz]

This explains modern western culture

[@GregoryBSadler]

Not really. Maybe little bits of it

[@charlesring9579]

This is the best fakking channel ever, I fall asleep to this man talking about Nietzsche almost every night. I’ve watched The 3-part-video on The Birth of Tragedy (favorite book ever second to The Divine Comedy and maybe Machiavellis The Prince) I’m reading Nietzsche in german and swedish but I find English to be a less-limited language than swedish and the explenations of the different translations of certain word choises of Nietzsche so helpfull! Thank you!

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'm glad to read you find the channel useful!

[@anorderedhole2197]

How does a happy-go-lucky human end relate to his ideas of ressentiment? I'm familiar with Nietzsche speculating of an emerging society full of neurotic bitterness rather than a dull utopia.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Nietzsche is enough of a pluralist to know there are multiple possibilities

[@anorderedhole2197]

@@GregoryBSadler By pluralist do you mean they are two separate ideas, both of which are reasonable, but they are not related?

[@GregoryBSadler]

@@anorderedhole2197 No, I just mean pluralist.

[@anorderedhole2197]

@@GregoryBSadler I must be a pluralist when it comes to understanding what pluralism means.

[@GregoryBSadler]

@@anorderedhole2197 A little too meta for me

[@god8020]

I would be willing to admit that the future of the ultimate man is not something that I would want but I have a question; what exactly is that the people that do desire it don’t “understand”? Does Nietzsche have some insight to people’s inner desire’s? Or to some ultimate truth? Is there something “objectively” better about the superman? If not, to me Zarathustra is a man who’s raving about his personal taste as if there was some sort of cosmic hierarchy of “better” or “higher” values.

[@GregoryBSadler]

No idea what main point you're trying to make here

[@shawncostello770]

I'd say this description is close to the psych wards I have worked in. What a mind.

[@GregoryBSadler]

You mean people in the psych wards, or the way they were run?

[@shawncostello770]

@@GregoryBSadler I mean the way that people are assessed by psychology and admitted either forcefully or by their own insight and the assessments while they are in the ward. There is often an eerie similarity between the communication of the person admitted and the language used in texts to push the bounds of Being. I'm interested in a philosophy of psychology that can not only provide the ground on which phenomenon are presented (such as that of Sartre and Heidegger) but also provide the structure through which Being could present such either sane or insane phenomenon. Your channel has been incredibly useful for narrowing down my search! Thank you! :)

[@GregoryBSadler]

@@shawncostello770 You're welcome!

[@ethannmazak358]

wish u were my proff

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, I do online classes occasionally

[@ezras7997]

Zarathustra reminds me of Adam haha

[@ezras7997]

Or socrates ha

[@MrMarktrumble]

I always took the blinking as the most inane justification. If I make a boldface assertion, and then, to justify my claim ( because the other face is cold, and not buying it at all), I blink, because I could not expect that anyone could actually disagree with me, and I've got nothing to justify what I just said. It is like a slightly shocked( or perhaps "innocent") , submissive and unself aware betrayal of emptiness.

[@GregoryBSadler]

There's lots of people who do that in the present, that's for certain