An overview of Nietzsche's philosophy, concentrating on his middle period (Human, All Too Human; The Playful Science; Beyond Good and Evil). @PhiloofAlexandria
This man loves teaching so much that during lockdown, he starts making UA-cam videos to teach people he doesn't even know or isn't paid by just to teach.
I'm a Christian, and I find Nietzsche to be very compelling. Not sure why. He teases me and makes me dig. We all need great thinkers from history to dig at us and keep us going. This channel should have 100 K plus subscribers ... give it time.
Thank you so much for posting this! Please continue your amazing work!! I've learned about Nietzsche more in this 30 min video than all other videos around the internet.
I'm curious, from what I've learned of Nietzsche (just from other professors and lectures found via web) he was not a relativist, and the idea that he was isn't accurate. Why is that so? (to add, my 'source' for this idea would be the likes of Jordan B Peterson and "Carefree Wandering", I believe he is a professor in Denmark, both have adamantly stated he is not a relatavist)
@@sollux13It’s because he’s more of a perspectivist, which can be misinterpreted as relativism. In my eyes, relativism is saying that everything is relative so it’s all equally meaniningless, but a perspectivist would say that yes everything is relative, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow our relative judgements of things. In a way, it’s like what Jordan Peterson said about post modernists, he ceded to the postmodernists that there are infinite interpretations, but says that only a few actually work.
When I mentioned to an academic aquaintance, now not, that to me Nietzsche reinterpreted ancient philosophy which I didn't study, he said I have to read the original source! There's no need, I replied, Nietzsche's done that for me.
You're basing your opinion on tertiary knowledge. It's like you're basing your opinion and interpretation of Paris on what you've seen from an artist's interpretation and painting of Paris. It's far removed from what Paris is actually like
I’ve watched Dr. Bonevac’s videos esp the analytic tradition series for a few years now convinced that he excels at his trade. And I fully agree with emmereffing. Now it occurs to me that he is a sublime genius combining the art of rhetoric via masterful tone of voice and use of crescendo with factual distillation. His memory is outstanding and his in-person “live” lectures do not follow any reference to written notes. Thank you again Dan Bonevac!
One if the best videos on the subject that I’ve seen. And I’ve seen many. Thank you! I’m wondering which specific book these quotes are mainly drawn from?
Thank you so much for everything i’m a 15 yr old struggling and failing school but philosophy is always there for me and so are your videos, again thank you so much much love
If you're failing school I recommend finding out what the problem is quick. If it's habits or lifestyle management you're having trouble with I recommend Thomas Frank on UA-cam. Maybe you can find something that works and allows you to gain even more knowledge and therefore enjoying philosophy even more!
@@ovvywovvywoo5007 bro wish i would’ve seen this sooner i’m expelled now after a lot of bad life stuff happened but i’m hopefully gonna turn stuff around enough to pursue my passion in philosophy
@@discursiveness It’s a blessing in a way to have these problems at the early age 15 because you learn from mistakes and failure and this will provide you the motivation to make changes that will lead to greater success for the rest of your life.
Energy cannot be destroyed. Find the thing that bothers you and convert that energy into motivation and discipline. Greetings from a 21 Philosophy (and History) student that somehow managed to get through.
Huge fan of your videos, you're an extremely engaging speaker. Is there any way we could get these in podcast form? I would love to be able to access your work on a platform other than youtube.
@@PhiloofAlexandria i second this, Daniel! I’ve started listening to your lectures while gardening. Would be great to have them as podcasts. Thanks for doing these!!
@@PhiloofAlexandria If you make an online course, please announce it on your channel. I would gladly pay and enroll. My philosophy teacher is only teaching me his biases.
For some reason, this feels a bit close to Robert Brandom after reading A Spirit of Trust, with the only difference being Brandom makes it so that our constructions are the basis of a metaphysics of discourse.
Nietzsche's not a true relativist. He believes there is a Truth, just that the lies of our world are sometimes more important (which is why the death of God was so disturbing to him). And what better creature to tell a good lie than a child?
It seems like nietzche is analysing individuals and their choices and taking into account psychological insights, so what if we add game theory and epistemic foundations of game theory,to nietzche's analysis?
I always like to think of Nietzsche as someone who hijacked his poetic / intuitive / subconscious / Dionysian / creative faculty and, through unrelenting reason / rationality / Apollonian criticisms of its products, transformed it into a faculty which produces a great number of less-biased guesses at reality. That is why he writes in fragmented prose and people always debate over whether he was a poet or a philosopher, truthfully he was both simultaneously but probably less of a pure poet insofar as his poetic faculty was being used for something fundamentally different. He describes this in his method of philosophizing 'with a hammer'. I don't think he ever ventured to understand his entire collection of musings in some complete way, and I think there is evidence in that, insofar as he let himself get carried away with his relativism and remarks regarding the unintelligibility of the world. Though he implies it all the time, clearly, he does not believe or act as if reality or human psychology is unknowable, that there aren't more accurate ways of understanding things, otherwise what would be the purpose of his unrelenting reasoning, valuing and attention to historical evidence? You mention he is a kind of naturalist, and see he is perfectly happy to claim to understand chemical interaction as a cause of human psychology - so in what sense can we really believe him when he says things (chemical interaction) are not knowable (prescribing cause) or that our intellectual insights are a fantasy? You can't, and honestly I think Nietzsche's relativism is more a statement of a potential null-hypothesis in order to illustrate common biases held by philosophers / dogmatists throughout time. Would love to hear a more refined argument for how he would justify his writings or methodology if he believed all approaches to knowing things to be mere fantasy.
It bothers me that the ppl Ive only ever related to are Nietzsche, Freud, Henry Rollins and Bukowski. I have a strong allergy response to existence and the ppl in it.
This would mean that the existentialist idea of meaning to life is just a form of superstition. Only a way to cope with our mortality, just like religion. But if naturalism takes hold of the personal ideology, it leads to lack of any meaning. Could there be a way out of this without letting go of naturalism? Or must we always base our concept of truth in theism?
@@kevinbeck8836 the biggest issue with being misinterpreted is that, if the people doing such actually like and respect you, then your work is too disorganized. I think many people who enjoy nietzsche and misunderstand him actually are inspired by the ideas they think he had, so it’s strange how persuasive ideas that nobody really created are.
if there is no universal truth so why and how should one believe in this sentence at the first place because saying that there is no truth is itself a truth... or a sentence that identifies what is truth..... m confused🤔😶
@@PhiloofAlexandria thanks for your reply!! but we should not give up on an idea that early have to dig up more still a long journey to know all of them... was just sharing my confusion .. thanks for these amazing lectures
The claim "there are no absolute truths" bothers me. If that was true, then the claim in itself would be subject to change from "there are no absolute truths" to "there ARE absolute truths." The sentence is killing itself. It seems as if Nietzsche and Hegel are truly saying "there are no absolute truths, except that there are no absolute truths." Thus, even under their reasoning, at least one absolute truth must exists in order to point out the absence of it on all other truths. So what reason do we have to believe that only one absolute truth exists when no other can? I don't understand.
They could be positing their truth. Nietzsche doesn’t believe in valueless people, we all will be subject to some set of beliefs to organize our world. And he is doing the same. He’s not trying to bring his truth up above the absolute level of absolutist thinkers, he’s trying to bring every other truth down the the highly suspect level of his own. Highly persuasively to be honest.
Clearly he’s right about the limits of epistemology being the limits of our world, (as if an objective perspective makes any sense anyway) but whose epistemology? I wish Nietzsche thought more on empiricism, and how meaning can be made by subtracting the differences between various careful experiments - isolating variables, and creating causal arguments. Clearly we can’t leave the cave, and just as well must trust in the authenticity of others as ourselves, but nevertheless there is much science to be done! Would have loved to have shown Nietzsche a helicopter. Is it good? Is it evil? It’s certainly beyond such, and as he might hopefully agree, in terms of its purpose, it works!
To be human is to be a storied creature. History tells us we have always been embedded in myths, archetypes.... We don't make our own stories and it's arrogant to think we do. What a sad outlook and a sad and lonely ending to such an intersting thinker.
Sounds like you enjoy Jung. Humans do make their own stories, almost by definition. Maybe it was humans across time, but humans nonetheless. Myths and archetypes are interesting as a category we discover through history. But any pattern is subject to different interpretation. It’s hard to say that any one interpretation is the most objective, especially when talking about myths.
This man loves teaching so much that during lockdown, he starts making UA-cam videos to teach people he doesn't even know or isn't paid by just to teach.
I'm a Christian, and I find Nietzsche to be very compelling. Not sure why. He teases me and makes me dig. We all need great thinkers from history to dig at us and keep us going. This channel should have 100 K plus subscribers ... give it time.
Thank you. One of the best lectures on Nietzsche I have witnessed.
I wish my lecturers were as invested and passionate as you are.
Great 👍🏼
I have been waiting for this one and had my alarm bell set to go!
AMAZING VIDEO! subbed and liked well done
Thank you!!!!
Bravo more please you are awesome!🕊🦋
Thanks!
Thank you professor. It's always a pleasure to receive a lecture!
Excellent summary.
beautiful message at the end. thank you for delivering it to us with passion
Thank you so much for posting this! Please continue your amazing work!! I've learned about Nietzsche more in this 30 min video than all other videos around the internet.
I love Nietzsche and agree wholeheartedly. Thank you again for these lectures; this one truly is a work of beauty.
Glad you like them!
I love the harpsichord performances you've been posting recently; gorgeous!
I'm curious, from what I've learned of Nietzsche (just from other professors and lectures found via web) he was not a relativist, and the idea that he was isn't accurate. Why is that so?
(to add, my 'source' for this idea would be the likes of Jordan B Peterson and "Carefree Wandering", I believe he is a professor in Denmark, both have adamantly stated he is not a relatavist)
@@sollux13It’s because he’s more of a perspectivist, which can be misinterpreted as relativism. In my eyes, relativism is saying that everything is relative so it’s all equally meaniningless, but a perspectivist would say that yes everything is relative, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow our relative judgements of things. In a way, it’s like what Jordan Peterson said about post modernists, he ceded to the postmodernists that there are infinite interpretations, but says that only a few actually work.
What do you agree with?
One of the best 30 minutes of my life
Thank you so much for this very interesting and detailed lecture on Nietzsche!
Very much appreciate your efforts, thank you for aiding me prioritise my reading.
Oh my, thank you for posting this.
Nietzsche is the cool uncle I never had
Thank u
When I mentioned to an academic aquaintance, now not, that to me Nietzsche reinterpreted ancient philosophy which I didn't study, he said I have to read the original source! There's no need, I replied, Nietzsche's done that for me.
You're basing your opinion on tertiary knowledge. It's like you're basing your opinion and interpretation of Paris on what you've seen from an artist's interpretation and painting of Paris. It's far removed from what Paris is actually like
I’ve watched Dr. Bonevac’s videos esp the analytic tradition series for a few years now convinced that he excels at his trade. And I fully agree with emmereffing. Now it occurs to me that he is a sublime genius combining the art of rhetoric via masterful tone of voice and use of crescendo with factual distillation. His memory is outstanding and his in-person “live” lectures do not follow any reference to written notes. Thank you again Dan Bonevac!
One if the best videos on the subject that I’ve seen. And I’ve seen many. Thank you! I’m wondering which specific book these quotes are mainly drawn from?
They're mostly from Human, All Too Human and The Gay Science-my translations.
Thank you so much for everything i’m a 15 yr old struggling and failing school but philosophy is always there for me and so are your videos, again thank you so much much love
Are you me? I’m in the same situation lol
If you're failing school I recommend finding out what the problem is quick. If it's habits or lifestyle management you're having trouble with I recommend Thomas Frank on UA-cam.
Maybe you can find something that works and allows you to gain even more knowledge and therefore enjoying philosophy even more!
@@ovvywovvywoo5007 bro wish i would’ve seen this sooner i’m expelled now after a lot of bad life stuff happened but i’m hopefully gonna turn stuff around enough to pursue my passion in philosophy
@@discursiveness It’s a blessing in a way to have these problems at the early age 15 because you learn from mistakes and failure and this will provide you the motivation to make changes that will lead to greater success for the rest of your life.
Energy cannot be destroyed. Find the thing that bothers you and convert that energy into motivation and discipline.
Greetings from a 21 Philosophy (and History) student that somehow managed to get through.
We have to love the truth. When we do, we will seek it and when we seek it we will find it. And the truth will set us free.
🙏
Huge fan of your videos, you're an extremely engaging speaker. Is there any way we could get these in podcast form? I would love to be able to access your work on a platform other than youtube.
Maybe one day!
@@PhiloofAlexandria i second this, Daniel! I’ve started listening to your lectures while gardening. Would be great to have them as podcasts.
Thanks for doing these!!
@@PhiloofAlexandria perfectly coy
Hi Professor, thank you for the amazing lecture. Could you make a video on Schopenhauer?
Good question; I haven’t read him since college. But I may try putting together an online course on continental philosophy, which would include him.
@@PhiloofAlexandria If you make an online course, please announce it on your channel. I would gladly pay and enroll. My philosophy teacher is only teaching me his biases.
@@PhiloofAlexandria I’d be interested in such a course!
🙌🙌🙌🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼🙌🙌🙌
I would use this as a companion to Ken Gemes' work.
Ken is terrific!
I once heard someone characterize Nietzsche as a poet rather than a philosopher. That made him easier to understand and appreciate for me.
He has a very poetic writing style especially in thus spake zarathustra
For some reason, this feels a bit close to Robert Brandom after reading A Spirit of Trust, with the only difference being Brandom makes it so that our constructions are the basis of a metaphysics of discourse.
And thus to thus.
The problem with relativists is they always end up talking as absolutists.
Nietzsche's not a true relativist. He believes there is a Truth, just that the lies of our world are sometimes more important (which is why the death of God was so disturbing to him). And what better creature to tell a good lie than a child?
Elaborate.
@10:06 where's this quote from?
Somebody get this man a glass of water.
We better approach life and the universe playfully for there is no reality for us to try to grasp and understand.
If there is no such reality, then how can you know that?
It seems like nietzche is analysing individuals and their choices and taking into account psychological insights, so what if we add game theory and epistemic foundations of game theory,to nietzche's analysis?
Interesting idea!
I always like to think of Nietzsche as someone who hijacked his poetic / intuitive / subconscious / Dionysian / creative faculty and, through unrelenting reason / rationality / Apollonian criticisms of its products, transformed it into a faculty which produces a great number of less-biased guesses at reality. That is why he writes in fragmented prose and people always debate over whether he was a poet or a philosopher, truthfully he was both simultaneously but probably less of a pure poet insofar as his poetic faculty was being used for something fundamentally different. He describes this in his method of philosophizing 'with a hammer'.
I don't think he ever ventured to understand his entire collection of musings in some complete way, and I think there is evidence in that, insofar as he let himself get carried away with his relativism and remarks regarding the unintelligibility of the world. Though he implies it all the time, clearly, he does not believe or act as if reality or human psychology is unknowable, that there aren't more accurate ways of understanding things, otherwise what would be the purpose of his unrelenting reasoning, valuing and attention to historical evidence? You mention he is a kind of naturalist, and see he is perfectly happy to claim to understand chemical interaction as a cause of human psychology - so in what sense can we really believe him when he says things (chemical interaction) are not knowable (prescribing cause) or that our intellectual insights are a fantasy? You can't, and honestly I think Nietzsche's relativism is more a statement of a potential null-hypothesis in order to illustrate common biases held by philosophers / dogmatists throughout time.
Would love to hear a more refined argument for how he would justify his writings or methodology if he believed all approaches to knowing things to be mere fantasy.
15:56
20:50
Happiness is "superficial"?
It bothers me that the ppl Ive only ever related to are Nietzsche, Freud, Henry Rollins and Bukowski. I have a strong allergy response to existence and the ppl in it.
👋 hello friend!
This would mean that the existentialist idea of meaning to life is just a form of superstition. Only a way to cope with our mortality, just like religion. But if naturalism takes hold of the personal ideology, it leads to lack of any meaning. Could there be a way out of this without letting go of naturalism? Or must we always base our concept of truth in theism?
Few can inspire like Nietzsche; few can mislead like Nietzsche as well.
Go on...
If he was a trickster, I don't believe it was by intent.
Few can be misinterpreted like Nietzsche
@@kevinbeck8836 the biggest issue with being misinterpreted is that, if the people doing such actually like and respect you, then your work is too disorganized. I think many people who enjoy nietzsche and misunderstand him actually are inspired by the ideas they think he had, so it’s strange how persuasive ideas that nobody really created are.
if there is no universal truth so why and how should one believe in this sentence at the first place because saying that there is no truth is itself a truth... or a sentence that identifies what is truth..... m confused🤔😶
Roger Scruton had a similar objection. “Someone who says that nothing is absolutely true is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”
@@PhiloofAlexandria thanks for your reply!! but we should not give up on an idea that early have to dig up more still a long journey to know all of them... was just sharing my confusion .. thanks for these amazing lectures
The claim "there are no absolute truths" bothers me. If that was true, then the claim in itself would be subject to change from "there are no absolute truths" to "there ARE absolute truths." The sentence is killing itself.
It seems as if Nietzsche and Hegel are truly saying "there are no absolute truths, except that there are no absolute truths." Thus, even under their reasoning, at least one absolute truth must exists in order to point out the absence of it on all other truths. So what reason do we have to believe that only one absolute truth exists when no other can?
I don't understand.
They could be positing their truth. Nietzsche doesn’t believe in valueless people, we all will be subject to some set of beliefs to organize our world. And he is doing the same.
He’s not trying to bring his truth up above the absolute level of absolutist thinkers, he’s trying to bring every other truth down the the highly suspect level of his own. Highly persuasively to be honest.
Clearly he’s right about the limits of epistemology being the limits of our world, (as if an objective perspective makes any sense anyway) but whose epistemology? I wish Nietzsche thought more on empiricism, and how meaning can be made by subtracting the differences between various careful experiments - isolating variables, and creating causal arguments. Clearly we can’t leave the cave, and just as well must trust in the authenticity of others as ourselves, but nevertheless there is much science to be done! Would have loved to have shown Nietzsche a helicopter. Is it good? Is it evil? It’s certainly beyond such, and as he might hopefully agree, in terms of its purpose, it works!
Are you religious? Just wondering
The was REALLY funny!!!! Nietzsche is dead, God, 1900!!!!!!
Ought is just an "is" too weak to show itself for what it really is.
To be human is to be a storied creature. History tells us we have always been embedded in myths, archetypes.... We don't make our own stories and it's arrogant to think we do. What a sad outlook and a sad and lonely ending to such an intersting thinker.
Sounds like you enjoy Jung. Humans do make their own stories, almost by definition. Maybe it was humans across time, but humans nonetheless.
Myths and archetypes are interesting as a category we discover through history. But any pattern is subject to different interpretation. It’s hard to say that any one interpretation is the most objective, especially when talking about myths.
To discard Ik or to adopt FN lacks intelligent design and should not be suggested. I return
Nietzsche is an anti philosopher. If you perceive him as a philosopher you’ve misinterpreted him.
Bullshit, leave your ideology out of the grown-ups talk.
Can you specify what makes an anti-philosopher different from a typical one?
The Greeks decided how to get from is to ought: democracy.
We have to love the truth. When we do, we will seek it and when we seek it we will find it. And the truth will set us free.
We have to love the truth. When we do, we will seek it and when we seek it we will find it. And the truth will set us free.