PF Jung's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PFJung

If politics is in some sense determined by our psychological temperament, then from an evolutionary standpoint, perhaps there is social value to both the left and right wing perspectives. And yet, centrism remains a dirty word in online discourse, connoting a type of establishment position that favors the status quo. Pf Jung joins me to discuss his philosophy of "radical enlightened centrism", which opposes the status quo while drawing on ideas from both fringes.

Also, a correction: at one point in the conversation I claim that Australia has a mandatory civil service, but this is actually incorrect. I got this confused because of a conversation I recalled between myself, an Australian and a German, in which we talked about mandatory civil service (which Germany has) and mandatory voting (which Australia has), but Australia does not have mandatory civil service.

Continuing with The Gay Science, and beginning with book IV, "Sanctus Januarius". Here, we encounter some of the most famous aphorisms: For the New Year, Preparatory Men ("Live Dangerously!") and Excelsior. Exciting times!

Episode art: View of Genoa under the Snow - Eugenio Olivari (1882-1917)

The conclusion of our two-parter on Erich Heller, and the conclusion to season five! We discuss Nietzsche's friendship with Jacob Burckhardt, and how Burckhardt's view of history can inform our understanding of Nietzsche's divergence from him. We also consider Goethe's four ages of intellectual culture, and Nietzsche's echo of Goethe in his history of European nihilism, and how he comes to differ from Goethe, Schopenhauer and all his influences in his proclamations about history, in which the Overman shall transcend the cyclical, unchanging stagnation of human history by changing the nature of man himself. Finally, we consider what the hazard of modern poetry means for us in the present day, what each figure's answer to this divorce between symbol & real means, whether they succeeded or not, and what we can learn from them.

Something happened to the human mind around the birth of modernity: the divorce of reality and the symbol. Once unified in eucharist, the symbolic and the real are now separate spheres of the human mind, and while it initially seemed that art and science might benefit by this separation, in the long run, both have ended up poorer thereby. In this episode, the two-part finale of season five, we will discuss Luther & Zwingli, and their dispute about the holy communion; Goethe & Schiller and their argument about the difference between the idea and the experience; and Goethe's avoidance of tragedy and what this says about the "hazard of modern poetry".

Additional episode will release tomorrow. Erich Heller two-parter starts next week for the season finale!

An exploration of the chapter on Homer's Odyssey and on De Sade's Juliette. How enlightenment and the rationality of domination is contained in the Odyssey, and how the self-undoing of enlightenment morality is contained in Juliette.

Foundations of Critical Theory, and an exploration of the chapters, "The Concept of Enlightenment", "The Culture Industry". We analyze how myth and enlightenment both contain one another, and why enlightenment negates itself. We explore what this means in concrete terms by examining the culture industry and how the apparent democratization of culture leads to its dissolution. Part one of two.

Don't worry, we're still doing Dialectic of Enlightenment next week, but my tour schedule and personal demands on my time (I'm moving) prevented me from finishing a full episode before departing for another week. Thankfully, I had this reading guide finished and decided to release it now. Back next week with a full length episode. Cheers!

Nietzsche's inaugural lecture at Basel, given in 1869, provides an insight into the young Nietzsche's mind. Surprisingly, even here we find the groundwork laid for his later philosophical project. Nietzsche takes on the issue, rather esoteric and focused on the internal debates of classical philology, of whether or not Homer really existed, and what this means the discipline of philology if he did not exist.

I met up with Tony of 1Dime to discuss the neoliberal moment in American culture. We discuss what neoliberalism means, why there is a general discontent with it, the advantages of neoliberalism, and the potential of a vision for a future beyond neoliberalism as it inevitably comes to an end. We also psychologically analyze the left and the right from the Nietzschean standpoint, consider how many of the alternatives are magical thinking, and finally discuss the history of revolutionary movements and how they always have to draw upon the past.