Consciousness, Language and Nature: Niet...

Nietzsche's objective is not to challenge the Christian non-naturalistic account of guilt but to show that Christian representation of guilt is a product of the exploitation of human susceptibility to guilt as instrument of self-directed cruelty. 

This keynote speech examines if, according to Nietzsche, experience of nature is inevitably conditioned by some archetypal phantasm or cultural construction process or if unmediated apprehension of nature is possible. 

Nietzsche's Sovereign Individual (SI) argues that 1. Nietzsche denies free will and moral responsibility. 2. SI in no way supports a denial of 1. 3. Nietzsche engages in a 'persuasive definition' of the language of Freedom and Free Will. 

This episode summarises Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals in 10 minutes. It is among Nietzsche’s most sustained and cohesive works consisting of three essays: “Good and Evil, Good and Bad”, “Guilt, Bad Conscience and the Like” and “What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?” In ... Show More

The second part of a two-parter we began near the beginning of this season. The completion of our analysis of Ecce Homo. In this episode, we consider Nietzsche's reviews of his own books, and argue that it presents a creative narrative of Nietzsche's life: Nietzsche as a tragic f ... Show More

On Friedrich Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals (1887), "Third essay: what do ascetic ideals mean?" Self-regulation, where we tamp down certain aspects of our personality, is necessary for disciplined action, but it can clearly go too far. Nietzsche uses this concept of ascetici ... Show More

This part of the text is a re-evaluation of what morality is, or can be, for the philosopher of the future. Nietzsche is a bit sneaky here, by implying the free spirit, or philosopher of the future, to be admirable from the perspective of our own moral intuition. Nevertheless, he ... Show More

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?”—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to th ... Show More

Friedrich Nietzsche provided the first detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture and warns the world of its consequences, most famously in the parable of the madman where he proclaims that "God is dead".   Nietzsche was concerned primarily with ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Nihilism. The nineteenth-century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote, “There can be no doubt that morality will gradually perish: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe”. And, ... Show More

La médisance est un phénomène extrêmement répandu, auquel pourtant les philosophes s'intéressent assez peu. Or, se pourrait-il que notre besoin de rabaisser les autres nous renseigne sur notre identité philosophique et sur notre rapport au monde ? C'est en tout cas l'hypothèse pr ... Show More

In this next episode on Beyond Good & Evil, we discuss the simplification of the world out of a psychological need, and the ways in which we have sought for “Being” in the soul, the ego, the will, and in the materialistic atom. All were expressions of the ”one ruling thought” of ... Show More

Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits was published by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1878 and represents a “monument of a crisis” for Nietzsche, a critical turning point in his life and thought. The book marks the beginning of a second period in Nietzsche’s philosophy, his perio ... Show More