Weltgeist

WATCH: Schopenhauer Explained: Aesthetics of Music and Nature:
https://youtu.be/JamIJ2IQHe8

Have you ever looked at a piece of abstract painting, and thought "what is this about?" This video is for you. We offer an interpretation of abstract painting using German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of aesthetics. We compare two paintings, Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii, and Wassily Kandinsky's Composition 8. A look at Kandinsky's theoretical writings, in particular On the Spiritual in Art, will offer a solid interpretation of abstract painting that you might not have heard of before.

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The Will to Power is one of the most famous concepts in Nietzsche's philosophy. In this video we will explore the concept as it appears in the work, Beyond Good and Evil. This is part two in a planned three-part series on Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil' alone. If you want to know when the other parts come out, please subscribe.

Nietzsche's problem with the old philosophers of the past, such as Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer, continue. He accuses these philosophers not of having a will to Truth, but of having a will to Power. He then asks us the question: can this will to power explain the state of affairs in the world? Do we even need Christianity, or some complex “otherworldy” philosophy, like those of Schopenhauer, Spinoza, or Kant? What if the world is Will to Power — and nothing besides? What does that look like? This video explores Nietzsche’s tentative answer.

WATCH part 1 here:
NIETZSCHE Explained: Beyond Good and Evil (pt. 1):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG9Djq6PVK8

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“There are three Images of Man fashioned by our modern time, which for a long while yet will urge mortal men to transfigure their own lives…” – Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator.

One of Nietzsche’s earliest writings are his so-called Untimely Meditations, a collection of essays that lack his later aphoristic and polemic style of writing. One of these essays, entiteld “Schopenhauer as Educator” is of considerable interest.

We will go over the essay in its entirety in another video. Please subscribe if you want to be notified when it comes out. The purpose of this video is to highlight an interesting typology Nietzsche proposes about halfway through.

Nietzsche distinguishes three types of men in the modern world. You could say they are archetypes of sorts: men who set an example that is worthy of being followed. Or are they stages individual men must go through? Nietzsche is not particularly clear on this point. Still, let’s take a closer look.

The Man of Rousseau is the first type. This type “has the greatest fire, and is most calculated to impress the people” – the Man of Rousseau is a revolutionary. Yet it also a deeply troubled soul, who feels estranged from the modern world.

Goethe’s Man is not angry nor dangerous. Goethe’s Man represents a renewed appreciation of Culture and history. Goethe’s Man is not a revolutionary.

Where the man of Rousseau seeks to change the world through revolutionary action, Goethe’s man appreciates the world as it is, including its history. Yet he remains troubled. You could say he appreciates art and culture only to distract himself from his own troubles. His life is culturally-minded, full of pleasure, yet it’s an existence going from desire to desire, fundamentally empty. He lacks passion and brute force.

The Man of Rousseau is passionate but lacks refinement and sophistication. Goethe’s Man is refined, cultured, and sophisticated. But lacks passion. Goethe’s Man needs to become angry.

The Schopenhauerian Man tells the truth, even if others around him don’t like it. The Schopenhauerian Man speaks to the universal, which greatly irritates common men who are only concerned with the particular.

Nietzsche praises the ideal of the Schopenhauerian Man, which is the same creature as the ascetic in Schopenhauer’s philosophy: the sage, the monk, the saint.

The Schopenhauerian Man is a true philosopher in that he is not concerned with wordly affairs. The Man of Rousseau seeks to change the world. Goethe’s Man tries to appreciate the world in order to forget his own suffering, and the Schopenhauerian Man embraces suffering, and turns away from the world.

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OUR ANALYSES:
▶ Beyond Good and Evil: https://youtu.be/WIHXZUltfqk
▶ The Antichrist: https://youtu.be/qej1Z8Qzq_c
▶ Genealogy of Morals: https://youtu.be/6PUx4cOfFcI
▶ Twilight of the Idols: https://youtu.be/YpVr_NEvWYA
▶ The Will to Power: https://youtu.be/He6ZC7ZFBt8
▶ Daybreak: https://youtu.be/cOL2z7nuXdA
▶ The Joyful Science: https://youtu.be/U0fTBOJ-C_I

In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche spends the entire final third of the book answering a single question: what is the meaning of ascetic ideals?

The ascetic ideal in Nietzsche's philosophy is the form that nihilism takes, it is that which promotes a movement away from the world, from the body, from the flesh, from our humanity. He sees this principle at work in every realm of human endeavor, from art to religion to philosophy and even modern science.

In this video we provide an overview of how the ascetic ideal - nihilism - finds its way into the artistic world through Wagner's Parsifal, into the religious domain through Christianity, in philosophy with Schopenhauer, and finally how even modern science, through Darwin and Copernicus and the like, provides a feeding ground for nihilism.

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Twilight of the Idols PART 1: https://youtu.be/5r2IflhebzE
Twilight of the Idols PART 2: https://youtu.be/nFbgzoegVNA
Twilight of the Idols PART 3: https://youtu.be/k43MRQwxzBI

Twilight of the Idols is a notoriously difficult book because of its structure. It seems as if Nietzsche hops from one subject to the next, without a clear or logical method to his madness. In this video we will try to discover the common thread that runs throughout much of the work, so that you may hopefully read Twilight of the Idols with a fresh understanding.

The great antinomy in this work, is that of the weak versus the strong. If Twilight of the Idols sounds radical to our modern ears, it’s because of this theme of strong versus weak.

But what does Nietzsche mean when he uses those words?

Twilight of the Idols is full of criticism. Criticism of the modern age, criticism of Christianity, criticism of German culture, even attacks on individual writers such as Thomas Carlyle and Ernest Renan.

Throughout these attacks we can piece together a coherent picture of what weakness entails exactly, and then, of course, we can figure out what “strength” means.

It all starts with the world. Specifically, the material world as it is given to us. Nietzsche challenges us to engage with the world as it presents itself to us. No easy task, considering the rich tradition and history of being sceptical of the world. Christians, of course, disregard the material world in favor of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. And Western philosophy too, broadly speaking, has not much good to say about the world either…

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▶ All-In One Dramatization (free w/ trial: Werther, Faust, & more): https://amzn.to/48tHcTu
▶ The Essential Goethe: https://amzn.to/4pmYur7
▶ The Sorrows of Young Werther: https://amzn.to/4pVbKmM
▶ Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Rüdiger Safranski: https://amzn.to/3KvJf03
▶ Also as audiobook (free with trial): https://amzn.to/4a3jzlR
▶ Faust performance on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qaogjXLdPow
▶ Faust performance on DVD (careful to pick the right DVD option US/EU): https://amzn.to/3Mwwp21
▶ Conversations with Goethe by Eckermann: https://amzn.to/48XAp4m

For Werther, Faust, Torquato Tasso, the Green Serpent, and more: get the dramatization audiobook.
For Faust, Wilhelm Meister, Torquato Tasso, poems, essays on science and nature: get the Essential Goethe book.
For a complete round-up: get Eckermann.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction
01:27 Life as a work of art
03:06 The Sorrows of Young Werther
06:22 Faust, Part One
12:59 Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
18:14 Torquato Tasso
19:04 The Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily
20:05 Conversations with Goethe
21:14 Conclusion

Support us on Patreon, get access to exclusive videos:
▶ https://www.patreon.com/WeltgeistYT

OUR ANALYSES:
▶ Beyond Good and Evil: https://youtu.be/WIHXZUltfqk
▶ The Antichrist: https://youtu.be/qej1Z8Qzq_c
▶ Genealogy of Morals: https://youtu.be/6PUx4cOfFcI
▶ Twilight of the Idols: https://youtu.be/YpVr_NEvWYA
▶ The Will to Power: https://youtu.be/He6ZC7ZFBt8
▶ Daybreak: https://youtu.be/cOL2z7nuXdA
▶ The Joyful Science: https://youtu.be/U0fTBOJ-C_I

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Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaDxR7zOymI
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_3lkq_tAk
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwoLPrywnqs

Welcome to the final instalment in our series on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. In this video, we arrive at the grand conclusion. Nietzsche explores the question: "What do ascetic ideals mean?" Throughout history and throughout different types of men: the artist (Wagner), the philosopher (Schopenhauer), the aesthete (Kant) but most importantly, the priest (Christianity) and the scholar (scientists like Darwin and Copernicus). Nietzsche will argue that a Will to Nothingness underpins the ascetic ideal: it gives meaning to our suffering. Because, as Nietzsche said it at the start: Man would sooner will nothingness, than not will at all.

Thank you so much for watching. If you found this video helpful, please consider liking and subscribing.

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Twilight of the Idols PART 1: https://youtu.be/5r2IflhebzE

One of the most elusive yet most frequently used words in Twilight of the Idols, is the word “décadence.” Interestingly, Nietzsche prefers to use the French term even though he sometimes uses German words like Verfall, Niedergang, or Entartung. In English, we can keep the French term, or use words like Degeneration or even Corruption.

In this video, we will take a deeper dive into this concept, specifically as it appears in Twilight of the Idols. This is part 2 in a planned series on this late work by Nietzsche. If you want to be notified when subsequent parts come out, please consider subscribing to the channel.

Broadly speaking, the term décadence denotes a process by which some entity becomes worse over time. If you stop working out and lifting weights, you will lose muscle mass, and we can say your muscles start degenerating.

Nietzsche uses the term to denote the process by which individuals, or even entire societies or time periods become worse, or, degenerate. Much of Twilight of the Idols is devoted to the description of how this process and works and what that means.

However, in true Nietzschean fashion, we never find a real definition or sustained analysis of what degeneration is exactly. It’s up to us, the readers, to piece things together and make a coherent picture out of disparate parts and fragments.

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Read Epicurus's Letter: http://weltgeist.tv/epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 3rd century BC. The philosophy named after him, Epicureanism, is based on actionable advice and typical Greek moderation. Commonly misunderstood as plain hedonism, Epicureanism offers adherents a good life in four steps. They are about the gods, good things, bad things, and even death. Epicureanism offers something of an alternative to Stoicism, even though both philosophies tend to use the same concepts, such as "ataraxia" and "aponia".

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Support us on Patreon, get access to exclusive videos:
▶ https://www.patreon.com/WeltgeistYT

OUR ANALYSES:
▶ Beyond Good and Evil: https://youtu.be/WIHXZUltfqk
▶ The Antichrist: https://youtu.be/qej1Z8Qzq_c
▶ Genealogy of Morals: https://youtu.be/6PUx4cOfFcI
▶ Twilight of the Idols: https://youtu.be/YpVr_NEvWYA
▶ The Will to Power: https://youtu.be/He6ZC7ZFBt8
▶ Daybreak: https://youtu.be/cOL2z7nuXdA
▶ The Joyful Science: https://youtu.be/U0fTBOJ-C_I

Prometheus is a Titan from Greek mythology who stole fire to help humanity, and was violently punished for this by Zeus.

The figure of Prometheus, and his story, has served as inspiration for artists and philosophers for centuries.

For Goethe, Prometheus was a champion of mankind who, in his defiance of Zeus, exemplified mankind's growing to maturity as we reach Enlightenment and mankind starts to defy the Christian God just like Prometheus did Zeus.

For Lord Byron, Prometheus was the exemplar of a person who finds something in life worth dying for. For his transgression and theft of the fire, he was chained to a rock for all eternity as a vulture gnaws at his liver daily. Yet Prometheus undergoes his punishment with stoicism, and knows that ultimately, despite his suffering and pain, he had given his life a purpose beyond himself: alleviating the suffering of others by granting mankind knowledge. Byron's message is that we should all find something that makes us want to bear the vulture and the chain.

Finally, Nietzsche saw in the Prometheus myth the origin story of Western civilization, contrasted with the Biblical origin story of Adam and Eve. Prometheus brings knowledge to mankind through fire, just as Adam and Eve brought knowledge through the fruit. But this knowledge, in both stories, comes at a cost. For Adam and Eve, it meant banishment from paradise and original sin for mankind. For Prometheus, it meant the vulture, and the knowledge of the suffering of the world for mankind.

Thus Prometheus continues to speak to the imagination of many different artists and eras who each find in his story another lesson we inherit, but ultimately the overarching lesson is this: the price for our knowledge as human beings, is that we become aware of the suffering of the world. And it's up to us to learn how to deal with that.

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