The Truth is Terrible - Nietzsche's Idea of an Aesthetic Justification for Existence

Brian Leiter discusses the thought of Nietzsche at Davidson College a few years back. The truth is terrible, Nietzsche tells us. There is no God, the universe lacks any ultimate meaning or purpose, and is filled with gratuitous pointless suffering. Our only relief comes with nonexistence upon death. Even the existence of the self, free will, objective value, and absolute truth and knowledge are wholly illusory. All forms & qualities are but mere human conventions, subjective expressions of our competing drives. The unquenchable desire for objectivity is the drive to transcend our finite bodily existence and grab hold of something universal, absolute, unchanging, and God-like. But there simply is none. So it is all too easy to become disillusioned and fall into an abyss of anguish and despair, turning away from existence and the drives, as suggested by the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. But Nietzsche urges against this turning away from life. For Nietzsche, existence is justified, but only as an aesthetic phenomenon. But what does this mean exactly? Brian Leiter explains. (My Summary)
This is a re-upload from the other channel.
More Nietzsche: • Nietzsche
#Philosophy #Nietzsche

[@mykura2018]

great speech - simple as that

[@selimgure]

To me this is not merely a speech.This is a sermon from the church of pessimism, and I am loving every minute of it.

[@Bibibosh]

I really liked the speach! very poetic!

[@tryharder75]

Good stuff

[@TheBigFella]

This is great !!

[@canisronis2753]

Shopenhauer = Being, Nietzsche = Doing

[@xfactorb25222]

Schopenhauer= discovered the terrible truth, Nietzsche= hacked all the genius from Schopenhauer, then tried to escape this truth with childish little psychological suicide attempts.... He had to hold on to the myth, that he is ...special.

[@jamesteather5641]

Absolutely amazing lecture

[@klammer75]

Amazing! Aesthetics as sexual metaphor in the sustaining of human life….love it!🥳🧐🤓🤩

[@tryharder75]

Any idea what year this was?

[@leststoner]

I concur.

[@kaboomboom5967]

Kebenaran itu mengerikan because,its very alien and the unknown and new for us,

[@raa9558]

I learned.

[@alinebaruchi1936]

I still remember their gloves Fallen angels

[@edwardwoods3097]

Will all the content of the last channel be restored to this one?

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

Yeah, most of it will be back.

[@edwardwoods3097]

@@Philosophy_Overdose May I ask the reason for the change of channels?

[@akhilrasheed6436]

@@edwardwoods3097 The old one was taken down.

[@Bibibosh]

@@edwardwoods3097 no you cant ask!

[@spencerwinston4334]

A fascinating analysis of Nietzsche's devastating critique of traditional "values." With his full sight focus on the Machiavellian distortion of values by religious institutions to service tyrants, Nietzsche's philosophical attack came with mountain lightning speed and the precision of Navy Seal alpine warfare from his Olympian Swiss Alps perch. The rarefied air and vantage point of the Swiss Alps along with Nietzsche's expertise in Greek and Latin philology gave Nietzsche the edge. The mercenary soldiers, representing the T.S. Eliot "hollow men" of the traditional state, university Marxist professors, and the lieutenants of the decayed, ossified Roman legion Church aka "origin of the term religion R..e legion", stood no chance against Nietzsche's intellectual firepower. With his courageous, ferocious mountain attack, Nietzsche fought to liberate "modern man" from the shackles of the Roman Empire tradition, and the Machiavellian "storylines" used throughout history to service the state, where souls went to die, "soul diers" all to promote the most sinister of agendas and the most depraved tyrants in history even if draped in silk robes and bespoke Savile Row suits. He fought to reveal again out of a keen instinct to release man to his no-limit capacity, to open the "dog gate" so man was left free to explore the vast Western horizons of thought and creativity, to go out on the leading edge of potentiality all while infused with the immensity and grandeur of the Ralph Waldo Emersonian described "immense intelligence" that pervades all, the real God Nietzsche fought to reveal for the luminosity of man. Thank you for sharing your video and philosophy expertise with Nietzsche aficionados across the world.

[@tarhunta2111]

That is brilliant mate.Well done.

[@Mendelmandela]

N o wonder this philosophical Machiavelli lost his mind in his rejection of the absolute and his embrace of the relative

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

what you are saying here resonates with my own thinking on Nietzsche. However, are you bothered by the fact that some criminals misused his writings, and some interpreters claim that he was illiberal and elitist? What would you say to those?

[@spencerwinston4334]

@@elenabalyberdina2393 Ty for the feedback and compelling questions. The Niezschean ideals, imo as a Nietzsche aficionado, are open to all in a pure democratic sense. The fact remains though that not all have the refined tastes and the elite warrior discipline or ability to withstand solitude in parts that the Nietzschean over man aspires in the quest to become a true "laughing lion" with a full spectrum insight into the will to power vortex in all dimensions and ethereal planes. Just as many are called to win the Navy Seal Trident, most fall by the wayside and ring the bell to pull themselves out of consideration as the physical and mental demands are too rigorous. In nature as well on the most basic form of just raw one-dimensional "power dynamics", many wolves consider themselves the alpha wolf, but nature is not fooled and all the pretenders fall by the wayside and the real alpha leader arises that all accept as if by instinct. Power, as philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "in the end...obeys reality not appearances." So no amount of democratic empty suit sophistry can change the fact that not all have the x-factor Nietzschean noble rarefied tastes or mental rigor to win a Nietzschean "Navy Seal trident." Power of course is so much more than just raw force as the concept is associated with growth, and advancement on higher ethereal realms far far away from the "maddening crowd." Regardless, all of us should attempt to rise above the maddening crowd of insipid "politics and sophistry." Growth and higher awareness on the leading edge await all in the quest for the Niezschean "philosopher stone" and next-level Swiss Alps rarefied air awareness and satori. The reward arises from the challenge and all who strive will advance to a higher realm than the hollow men so pervasive in the "wasteland of modern society." All the best in your journey contemplating the "philosopher for the day after tomorrow." Hope to see soon you up in the Swiss Alps and rarefied Nietzschean air. Stay in touch with your Niezschean reflections. We can all learn so much by sharing ideas. Dom Perignon Cheers.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

@@spencerwinston4334 hey, thanks for your reply. all the best to you too. i am just trying to cope with anxiety of terrible truths and find ways to openly talk about it and support each other, without fleeing into oblivion of one defense or another..., i am so disappointed that so many people misunderstood Nietzsche...

[@bon12121]

26:46 I guess it's similar etymology to resentment

[@cinematiccrisis]

We would probably talk of frustration.

[@alleygh0st]

It's the french word it comes from.

[@Scout887]

I don't think that nietzsche's life affirming words withstand to the observation that bad things and suffering outweighs the joys of life, both in quantity and quality. Only our brain tends to paint over and brings forth good nostalgia if we look back at life. This rises the impression/illusion that joys of life outweigh the misery and suffering. Chocolate does not taste good anymore after having a full bar, after euphoria of having your first child, you will even get tired of it too and it will turn into a profane life-chore, in short, joys of life have a a very transitory, ephemeral quality but you can be damn sure that misery, suffering and pain tend to last more and it can reach levels you don't want to even imagine whereas the levels of maximum joys and fulfilment is still comprehensible in comparison.

[@walterbraun3731]

"bad things and suffering outweighs the joys of life, both in quantity and quality" - what is the measurement you apply? It can only be your very personal evaluation, nothing remotely 'objective' in your individual views. So, what if you changed your perspective, as Nietzsche suggested!?

[@Scout887]

@@walterbraun3731 its my personal evaluation but it includes looking at my surroundings: people (young people too) getting cancer, babies born with defects, neverending economical crisis and now inflation which forces people who have savings into the risky stock market, ... There is an old couple in their 70's i know where the woman fights with cancer since 6 years and his husband now has dementia and they both are now fulltime nursing cases. All things fall apart, its encoded into reality, scientists call it entropy, the measurement of disorder, its ever rising, completely indifferent to the misery it causes. To sum it up in one sentence:: "the terrible indifference of the reality towards sentient beings".

[@walterbraun3731]

@@Scout887 Well, the "indifference of reality" is just a fact, as such neutral, neither good or bad. On the other hand, think of what was necessary (in cosmological terms) to create this world, planet Earth, life... us. For every suffering person you might find ten people who are glad, happy even -- it depends on where you focus your attention (and intention!). Your argument basically complains about the limitation of human existence: life ends in death, therefore life is bad. Such a view has, historically speaking, triggered two main reactions - the imaginings of a divine instance (saving us from the ultimate fate of deteriorating matter), or nihilism. The point of Nietzsche (and Existentialism) was that we are still free enough to take a stance, to give our individual existence meaning (instead of just passively reacting to the world of necessity). But only you yourself can do that; there is no falling back to preconceived, general categories. If you look for a mystical side to it, well, consider this: the whole of Being = one, and you can be a (limited) one too...

[@AnnaPrzebudzona]

@@walterbraun3731 Scout887's argument is not a complaint about life's limitation - death. It's about the great imbalance of joy and suffering. He gave a very good example. Having eaten a bar of chocolate you won't enjoy any more of it, or if you fall in love, the passionate excitement will dwindle away sooner or later but if you had a chronic disease, you wouldn't experience fatigue of pain receptors; obviously you would treat yourself with medicine and/or painkillers but if you didn't, you would continue to feel the pain without an end (and it might even grow). Our pain sensors don't get satisfied or exhausted like our pleasure sensors. In other words, there's limit to pleasure but there's no limit to pain.

[@billyscenic5610]

Ok Schopenhauer.

[@dandydante7924]

I can't fuck with Ecce Homo. Liz had the final say with that publication and practly sold her dead brothers work and transformed it into her own "terrible truth" it's cool I appreciate the talk and it's nice to hear the echoes of the man. But that work is tainted by the black heart of the very person he denounced. Tragic in its own right.

[@nicholasmacdonald1]

From what I understand Ecce Homo was pretty much published as-is. The only work particularly “tainted” was The Will to Power, and Kaufmann’s commentaries are helpful for teasing out the gold from the dross with that one.

[@bryanutility9609]

@@nicholasmacdonald1yes this is the correct answer

[@asundergrowth]

when was this lecture dated?

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

I don't remember, but my guess is 2013-2015.

[@Bibibosh]

@@Philosophy_Overdose thanks!

[@derekharley7343]

Ignorance is bliss, Nietzsche needed to cheer up and chill out!

[@thenotchosen]

Ehhhhhhh What's up doc >?

[@FreedomSpirit108]

I guess it's hard to stay on task for intellectuals as well

[@rachitacharya5665]

9:52 lmao

[@automan1591]

Wowie zowie!

[@RaHeadD10]

French Nietzsche pales in comparison to reactionary and the real Nietzsche.

[@lynnfisher3037]

French? Please explain. Its very possible I missed that ref.

[@quantumfineartsandfossils2152]

when I talk like this I do not get invited to lecture!! so I make more useful empirical observations instead but go figure most people done want those either so back to square one!! I hate nietche he is so unobservant like his mouthpiece here yes the truth is horrible yes we get eaten by insects yes we are all piles of crap BUT people spend their whole lives obsessed with strangers abusing other people for no reason so I really only admire or seek to emulate people who lessen others misery You should not abuse or mistreat anyone or any group of people that lessons human suffering not for fame or to be a hero but as a manner of cognitive reality This is why you dont do what this guy does a& talk like this a few minutes in You talk about even things you dont have like people who meet who have children who protect them who create systems against predators and invite others to contribute then you cant focus on the hubris of nihilism here because then you understand human MOTIVES & show & prove that you care about others without existing as a pathological liar unstable abusive criminal and prove it prove that these are your motives with no rewards just like any other member of your unit if you cannot do this sorry you deserve to be worm food

[@hansfrankfurter2903]

Is this where the silly idea of “depression makes you artistic” comes from? Depression makes you suffer unnecessarily , period.

[@paulheinrichdietrich9518]

We have the Romantics to "thank" for that

[@sigvardbjorkman]

59:10 I wonder about what it was that he "hated" so much, particularly about the Germans more so than he did of other peoples? At the same time Brian here seems to go along with, for what ever reason and out of the blue, in wholly accepting the Nazi self view as being the ones living up to and espousing the German character towards its fullest potential? So Brian crowns his lecture with that as to make all his previous utterances fall into place with especially that in mind? Is this supposed "hate" his own words to cram down to his audience or is it the actual view of Nietzsche himself accurately represented? Nietzsche will also have said something along the lines of that 'one criticises that wich one loves' which could play into the fact that for whatever reason he still did choose to live among those that he for whatever reason supposedly here "hated" and did not move some other place to distance himself from what he allegedly so much disliked?

[@jamesbarlow6423]

He did move from Germany to the Austrian alps and then Italy, remember?

[@cinematiccrisis]

To answer directly: yes, Nietzsche hated the Germans for being disappointingly democratic, un-aristocratic and unselfish, extempting some good exemplars (Bach, Luther, Goethe, Beethoven etc.). He especially despised their new (2nd) "Reich" and its self-satisfaction. Also the Antisemitic movement of his time, which he regarded as pure ressentiment (not to speak of the strong socialist movement of his time). In the later, darker areas of his thought, he argued for creating a new aristocratic Herrenklasse for Europe, by cross-breeding Prussian military nobility (which he regarded to be of Polish descent as, wrongly, himself) for the will to power with the Jewish (for intellect). N.s theory of sensemaking ("justification") has many strong points, but it lead him straight to unrestricted aristocratism, he objected to the modern world of mass affluence and mass communication. I imagine him reacting to large audiences consuming lectures about him on the internet with utter disgust. For over 100 years, N. has been the most beloved philosopher of the insecure adolescent, I think that is a fair revenge of the Weltgeist.

[@jamesbarlow6423]

@@cinematiccrisis Actually he never hated the Germans for being "too democratic." Too nationalistic, yes. Retead w to p

[@cinematiccrisis]

@@jamesbarlow6423 in nationalism he just despised the democratic element.

[@cinematiccrisis]

@Xaviar 77versus99 have you read Nietzsche?

[@johnnywilley8522]

The description of this video is unfaithful to Nietzsche's actual philosophy embedded in his writing - if there is one - it's certainly not the French version represented here; the "life justified as an aesthetic phenomena" makes sense within a more expansive, critical & imaginative reading of Nietzsche, i.e. you all are actually Schopenhauerian in your discussion of "art" in relation to N. -

[@kokubo399]

Would you care to elaborate? This is super interesting

[@sberg91941]

Ugh, who is right, who is wrong? Academics argue everything. Why? In regards to biology, creatures thrive in the environment that they are adapted to. Creatures respond poorly to environments counter to their adaptive mechanisms. Happiness is derived from behaving to your adaptive nature. Idk, just a thought.

[@chopin65]

I don't think the gentleman speaking should bring in his political examples of evil America when evil is so well practiced everywhere. When he is so fat and affluent, he should admit his crimes first. Bad example. Step down from the lectern.

[@JamesJoyce12]

why would someone so challenged be listening to Philo in the first place - step down yourself

[@spencerwinston4334]

A fascinating analysis of Nietzsche's devastating critique on traditional "values." With his full sight focus on the Machiavellian distortion of values by religious institutions to service tyrants, Nietzsche's philosophical attack came with mountain lightning speed and the precision of Navy Seal alpine warfare from his Olympian Swiss Alps perch. The rarefied air and vantage point of the Swiss Alps along with Nietzsche's expertise in Greek and Latin philology gave Nietzsche the edge. The mercenary soldiers, representing the T.S. Eliot "hollow men" of the traditional state, university values and the lieutenants of the decayed, ossified Roman legion Church aka "origin of the term religion R..e legion", stood no chance against Nietzsche's intellectual firepower. With his courageous, ferocious mountain attack, Nietzsche fought to liberate "modern man" from the shackles of the Roman Empire tradition, and the Machiavellian "storylines" used throughout history to service the state, where souls went to die, "soul diers" all to promote the most sinister of agendas and the most depraved tyrants in history even if draped in silk robes and bespoke Savile Row suits. He fought to reveal again out of a keen instinct to release man to his no limit capacity, to open the "dog gate" so man was left free to explore the vast Western horizons of thought and creativity, to go out on the leading edge of potentiality all while infused with the immensity and grandeur of the Ralph Waldo Emersonian described "immense intelligence" that pervades all, the real God Nietzsche fought to reveal for the luminosity of man. Thank you for sharing your video and philosophy expertise with Nietzsche aficionados across the world.

[@MS-il3ht]

Wtf happened to your channel?

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

It's sleeping with the fishes.

[@MS-il3ht]

@@Philosophy_Overdose KZbin really started going full mafia some time ago

[@dharmapalsharma2679]

Wonderful patience to hear see it complete! Conclusions yet to be ✍️ All as Divinely Ordained 🇮🇳🌺🛐☦️🔯🕉️☪️🕎☯️🌺🇮🇳

[@PUMPADOUR]

That kind of thinking happens to vitamin d deficient people of North Europe. Quite sad...

[@sof553]

I'd be much more inclined to think there is a strong genetic element to it than mere vitamin deficiency. On the environmental side Nietzsche was an inverted mirror image of the people he was surrounded by. Very little nuance or shades of grey with either evangelicals or Nietzsche.

[@paulheinrichdietrich9518]

Genetic fallacy in 3... 2... 1...

[@coimbralaw]

Absolutely zero evidence for this garbage assertion.

[@edieremia9464]

Nigga

[@fortunatomartino9797]

Black supremacy The boldness of people who worship George Floyd