Nietzsche’s redemption of The Body: A rejection of Mind-Body Dualism
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- Опубліковано 29 лис 2021
- This week we’re going heavy on the source material, because this particular set of ideas was fleshed out (no pun intended) in passages spanning multiple works, and for the most part in unpublished notes. As Nietzsche was fond of saying, however, all the main points of his philosophy are covered at one point or another in his Zarathustra - and so this week’s episode takes its name from a passage in Zarathustra, wherein the titular character says “there is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy”.
The Nietzschean view of the self is that the body and its instincts are primary, in contrast to the Enlightenment view of the mind as primary. For Nietzsche, the rational consciousness is a narrator which merely gives an after-the-fact explanation. The true person is the body and its unconscious, irrational drives. This view of the self subverts many of our presuppositions about the power of reason, and about man’s free will.
Episode art: Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, courtesy of Wikimedia commons.
One thing i've noticed relating to the mind-body dualism inherent today is that i've heard some people speak of "the brain and the body", similarly to "the mind and the body", or how the body can affect the brain, as if brains weren't a part of it. Brains are considered as the seat of the mind, but it still has to be separated or isolated from "the body". Kind of funny in my opinion.
Our language and it's "barriers"..
For example: the brain needs unsaturated fats (so is the brain separate from the body?) No, but the brain is made out of more than 50% out of fat, so that's a difference of the body in general and the brain (simply from a materialistic point of view)
Bergson in Matter and Memory already attacks this position with a similar argument to the one you just made. They treat the brain as something isolated or external to the universe.
The brain is a part of the body but I sometimes also talk like that. My reason is that the perceived meaning of words develops historically, if I just say body, many people won't know that I also mean the brain. I also say "humans and animals", even though humans are animals.
I try to add the caveat that I see the brain as part of the body, if it's relevant for the discussion.
Nietzsche’s redemption of The Body: A rejection of Mind-Body Dualism
00:00 🧠 Most people in modern times have an intuitive conception of themselves primarily as minds, influenced by Enlightenment philosophy.
01:28 📚 René Descartes played a significant role in promoting the separation of the mind and body, known as Cartesian dualism.
05:20 🤔 Descartes' philosophy led to the belief that the mind is certain while the body is distinct and doubtable, reinforcing the mind-body dualism.
13:52 🤯 Friedrich Nietzsche challenges the Enlightenment view of the self, emphasizing the self's identification with the body and rejecting the ego as the master.
19:12 🤹 Nietzsche describes the self as a multiplicity of drives within the body, leading to inner conflicts and ambivalence.
21:08 💡 Nietzsche asserts that consciousness emerges from unconscious physiological drives, challenging the notion of conscious control over these drives.
23:00 🧠 Nietzsche explores human drives, instincts, and passions, questioning their nature and significance in relation to reason.
24:31 🧘 Nietzsche argues that drives, not reason, produce human intellect and reason, with each drive possessing its own form of reasoning.
26:54 🤔 Nietzsche questions whether human thinking is genuinely logical or merely a result of the competition between irrational drives concealed by consciousness.
30:36 🤯 Nietzsche suggests that humans use fictions to hide the reality of being driven by multiple competing bodily impulses.
34:29 😖 Nietzsche challenges the notion of pain and pleasure as objective phenomena, asserting they are creations of our nervous system in service of our drives.
37:25 💪 Nietzsche criticizes the fear of passions and argues that suppressing them due to weakness is an aggravated form of stupidity.
42:10 ⛪ Nietzsche contrasts Christianity's hostility towards passions and desires with the Greeks, who spiritualized their passions.
43:04 🤬 Nietzsche criticizes the church's method of combating passions, seeing it as hostile to life itself and enhancing the stupidity of passions.
45:28 😡 Nietzsche notes that social norms require individuals to bear the displeasure of unsatisfied desires, and being unable to do so is considered immoral.
45:58 🧠 Nietzsche challenges the notion of mind-body dualism, highlighting that animals respond to their drives immediately, while humans suppress and control their desires due to fear, morality, and social pressures.
48:47 💡 Nietzsche suggests a solution to the problem of our relationship with drives: distinguishing between weakening and putting drives into service, emphasizing that we can channel our passions into productive avenues.
50:28 🤔 Nietzsche outlines six distinct methods of dealing with powerful drives and notes that the intellect is a tool used in the struggle between these drives rather than a governing force.
52:49 🔄 Sublimation, as introduced by Nietzsche, involves redirecting impulses into creative or constructive activities, serving as a means for individuals to cope with societal constraints on their desires.
56:03 🧘 Nietzsche's perspective on sublimation, as a way to redirect and manage drives, was influential in the field of psychology, notably inspiring Freud's concepts.
59:27 🤯 Nietzsche emphasizes our limited knowledge of the inner workings of our instincts and suggests that our moral judgments are based on physiological processes, often concealed from conscious awareness.
01:00:50 💭 Nietzsche challenges the idea of a stable, unchangeable self, emphasizing that the self is a constantly evolving multiplicity, influenced by cultural, physiological, and experiential factors.
01:06:13 🌱 Nietzsche proposes that individuals can act as "gardeners" of their impulses, cultivating and redirecting them, but our apparent stability of character is often an illusion, and the self is ever-changing.
01:07:38 🌟 Nietzsche rejects the Enlightenment view of a stable, essential self, considering it impoverished, and instead sees the self as a dynamic and mysterious aspect of nature.
01:10:07 💡 Nietzsche criticizes the Enlightenment view that detaches the self from the body, emphasizing that the true self is not a pure spirit but a product of the body, senses, and impulses.
01:11:04 🤔 Nietzsche challenges the idea that the body is a limitation on the true self, arguing that the spirit is a symptom of relative imperfection in the organism, and removing the body results in a "pure stupidity."
01:12:06 💔 The Cartesian and Enlightenment view of the self as a pure mind driving a body is criticized by Nietzsche as fundamentally anti-life, as it neglects the importance of the body, its sensations, and experiences in defining the true self.
thank you. Keegan you are wonderful.
You never disappoint with your content ma man!! 👏🏻
I am so glad the yt algo put me in touch with your channel. Fantastic lectures, thank you.
Wonderful yet again - in fact, life-changing. (And I am an Englishman, rather given to understatement than hyperbole.) These podcasts are affecting me as an artist too. I am a novelist, and my current project is a historical novel about Gabriele d' Annunzio, who consciously strove to be an overman or superman, in the Nietzschean sense.
Indeed. Brilliant lecture which puts many pieces together that have been swirling in my mind for a long time.
Absolute ripper of an episode my man! Thanks.
Really excellent work on the podcast as usual! Thank you for making these!
Really digging your podcast!
Perhaps what we think of as mind is more like a divine sonar? I was going to say a soul compass but we would only be guessing a direction. I feel it is something we must pick up from the changing surroundings and intuitions about what's happening.
Soon as you get caught up in one direction think again . This was very interesting and I love how you go right to the source thank you !!!!!
thank you most gratefully for your most worthwhile efforts 🌠✅🎩
Great video! Thanks for creating
This is such an amazing lecture
Very pleasant listening
Regarding consciousness and matter: Terence Mckenna discusses it a bit in Invisible Landscape (asking the question of which comes first, or which causes the other), and he actually has better scientific knowledge than other "philosophers" (also having the advantage of more recent science discoveries). I am not Christian/religious; my major passion is sciences, particularly biology/physiology, and I do clearly see an intention/non-randomness/organization from small organisms to earth overall, and that to me is enough to call it a basic consciousness/mind. Detailed, language-based self-reflection and abstract reasoning/mathematics are way down the road.
My way to see it is that there exists that basic consciousness, and the human [brain] is the furthest evolved (in our perception and knowledge) physical/material manifestation/creation. I don't think that you can, or should, fully decouple material from immaterial and don't accept unfalsifiable, un-insightful pseudoscience that can't connect "mystical/spiritual" to material (eg, chakra interventions).
Excellent, thank you
I think the ego consciousness is like a king/head of a state. What our forefathers got wrong is they assumed him to be a tyrant but in reality no king rules alone he has to concede at times and is the least Free.
I have had this inner conflict about even using the phrases "Soul" or "Sprit" because while we know what is meant by that, it still kinda implies that the body isn't enough.
The concepts here foreshadow Pirsigs metaphysics of Quality. Again and again I found myself amazed at how the two philosophers concepts dovetail.
Pirsig describes everything as patterns of value , instead of the dualistic, aristotelian subject/object view.
Nature organizes into ever more complex relationships , and the highest quality patterns outcompete the lower quality ones.
Inorganic patterns ( basic matter ) then organize into biological patterns ( life ). Social organizations are built from the biological and intellectual ideas are built upon the social.
The more complex hierarchies use the lower for their benefit and growth , without thought or pity.
Therefore the social seeks to dominate the biological, and because the social is more advanced , it is moral to do so.
When an idea , like freedom of speech , conflicts with society , the idea is the more important pattern of value.
52:44 "Must take part" and "Partei nehmen muss", in German it sometimes has even more meaningful words behind the statements if you ask me.
descartes is right about the mind being the only undoubtable. you tak about pain as a body experience that should undoubtable too, but it is the mind that actually experiences the pain in the body. even phantom pain exists. (a non existing limb can cause pain.) also, the pain can be shut of in a body by painkillers, which basically disconnects the mind and the body, in order not to experience a wound, that is there.
Ur a powerhouse bro
Video about how Nietzsche was the forerunner of Freuds psychoanalysis? :D
there is a correlation in Yalom's When "Nietzsche wept" about it, but its fiction. Joseph Breuer (whom Freud mentions in the psychoanalysis) gets Nietzsche as a patient, but in the end Nietzsche becomes Breuer's "psychologist. Breuer is consulting with his young friend, Freud the meantime.
Freud actually stopped reading Nietzsche because Nietzsche was so far down (or ahead) of Freud's own path, he was afraid of being influenced by it any further.
I never really understood what people were referring to when they talked about one's 'soul'. From my own digging i cant seem to find mine. Perhaps its a semantic thing for me, and i just refer to that 'mechanism/idea' differently in my head. Or i just dont have one bc of being Ginger haha!
1:05:22
Taking away our agency is exactly what this understanding does.
Drives have agency. Rational-deliberative consciousness does not. While a drive’s agency enters into consciousness and then is experienced as the consciousness having agency, the agency *within you* is in the drives. It’s still you.
@@untimelyreflections 1:08:46 I don't understand how we can "tend the garden" when we are the garden. Do you know what I mean? These "micro decisions" are still decisions made by the body, not an "I". I'm not being a dick, I'm genuinely confused. It seems like free will and determinism are being intertwined.
You’re correct that “tending the garden” is technically incompatible with fatalism. I think it represents something of a contradiction on N’s part, an unconscious desire to claw back something from the free will delusion - not because its true but because its useful. He’s attempting to find some metaphor that can inspire while giving an honest picture of the self, but you’re correct that you are the garden, so it collapses. The truth is: if it is your fate to change your fate, you will; otherwise, you won’t.
I love thinking about the implications. For instance, on the one hand, all guilt for one's actions can disappear, but on the other hand, we can't take any pride in anything we ever do.
@@MrJamesdryable The only thing left is amor fati!
My analogy when trying to 'deconvert' mind-body dualism is to question if you can "separate roots from soil nutrition" the tree will die without nutrition. This simulation was missing various pices.
It appears that western tought is like a scientist or mathematician that discovered an equilibrium point in a chaotic system and people and the media will praise and give nobels to that small, constrained and fragile discovery, while reality with endless possiblilities dwarsf that set of constrains.
This analysis of the mind is the most probable I think. unconscious drives are like our neural networks of today. A set of axiomatic 'meta' representations of the data. We might only need another meta representation for all those meta representations to create a coherent narrative. I suppose. Consciousness might be only an architectural problem, not a data problem.
We do not need more data, only a different architecture.
The first two paragraphs of your comment made me love you. Nice analogy at the end.
how can one write such intelligent and pretty things while praising one of the worst piece of japanese animation in his profile :(
Beauty
Experiences of the senses are doubtable and this includes pain. There is phantom pain.
Implying phantom pain isn’t real pain
You're doing the Lord's work my dude
Writing that under a Podcast about the author of "the Anti-Christ" seems kinda funny to me! :'D
Out of all the Nietzsche talks so far I find myself disagreeing with this one the most, although I still agree a decent amount
I feel his explanation of the Ego/Self takes away too much agency. And just like he was correct to suggest that the Pagans were right when they defied our instincts, I also would say that the philosophers were right to deify our Intellect/Nous/Self
I also agree the Christians were, again, wrong in demonizing our instincts. We need to channel them not follow them blindly nor suppress them
In regards to the consciousness and matter question, what came first, I think this is best left to experts in neurobiology and physics and then to be interpreted by philosophy. Personally I think before there was the universe there was consciousness, and before man had that consciousness he was only matter. The divine consciousness came first, then matter (like us), and then the divine gave some of himself to us (soul)
For what it's worth, I definitely agree with the conclusions at the end of the podcast. As we exist, we can't have consciousness without our bodies and they shouldn't be seen as less divine
Regarding consciousness and matter: Terence Mckenna discusses it a bit in Invisible Landscape (asking the question of which comes first, or which causes the other), and he actually has better scientific knowledge than other "philosophers" (also having the advantage of more recent science discoveries). I am not Christian/religious; my major passion is sciences, particularly biology/physiology, and I do clearly see an intention/non-randomness/organization from small organisms to earth overall, and that to me is enough to call it a basic consciousness. Detailed, language-based self-reflection and abstract reasoning/mathematics are way down the road.
My way to see it is that there exists that basic consciousness, and the human [brain] is the furthest evolved (in our perception and knowledge) physical/material manifestation/creation. I don't think that you can, or should, fully decouple material from immaterial and don't accept unfalsifiable, un-insightful pseudoscience that can't connect "mystical/spiritual" to material (eg, chakra interventions).
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Nietzsche is still a dualist and a metaphysician, so I think you are wrong, I Would recommend Heideggers book about Nietzsche, his lectures
Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche is more about Heidegger than Nietzsche.
To me Nietzsche is still epiphenomenalist, that means a dualist. but (almost ) every interpretation is valid, Nietzsche is kind of Rorschach inkblot.
Neitzsche, then Steiner
Animal bodies are organisms -- and hence the brain and rest of the body cannot be discussed separately. The soul and many other words are just that -- words. Check out Hume, Russell and the other secular thinkers.
The problem with😮extremism is doesn't👁️see🕺♂️ ♀️💃the Middle☯️Way & that WE=mc2 can have🧘discipline & our❤️🔥passions, but at the right moment, the perfect place, & for the Perfect, Peerless, Reason💞, here, B'right🌅N😎W!
It's🎺really "I👁️AM, therefore I💭think!"🤔over, "I🫦think, therefore, I👄am". Too🤥bad that the🌎World, a walking corpse, walks🚶backwards with its🫏tail🐊of tales🐈⬛🦎🐒forward⏩, thinking that IT'S⚛️advancing into the Future😂!
CatDog
Where do i find the unpublished notes from 24min @essentialsalts