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Nietzsche finishes sketching his vision of a philosophy of the future. True free spiritedness represents a fundamental commitment to hardness and independence of spirit. This makes the philosopher opposite the scholar in terms of his virtues. This total individuality necessitates that there are some truths that are inexpressible or peculiar to the point that they cannot be shared: they must be ”masked”. We finish by looking at the first two sections of part three, “What is Religious”. We conside...
WARNING: It seems my microphone was not fully plugged in during this exchange, and the computer defaulted to the internal microphone... which is, well, garbage. So, my audio quality sounds pretty dreadful here, but it's at least listenable, and there's no way we were re-doing this entire conversation. As mentioned towards the end, however, I may do a regular series episode concerning Burnham's Machiavellians at a later time, if there is further interest in the topic. My friend Karl Nord and I di...
In this section, Nietzsche describes the truth-seeker as an exception among the rule, and emphasizes the difference between esoteric and exoteric knowledge. Nietzsche explores differences in tempo of thinking between individuals and cultures, which he sources to physiological realities. This portion of the text also concerns Nietzsche’s natural history of morality in three stages (pre-, moral, post-) and an experimental portrait of the world as will to power. Does this mean God is refuted and th...
This episode delves into Nietzsche's *Beyond Good and Evil*, dissecting philosophical prejudices surrounding the ego, free will, and atomism. It re-conceptualizes thinking and willing as inseparable, arguing that perceived laws of nature are interpretations driven by psychological needs. Ultimately, Nietzsche advocates for a "physiopsychology" as the true path to understanding, urging the "free spirit" to embrace uncertainty, humor, and a life-affirming, perspectival view beyond conventional morality.
My conversation with horror author John Hunt, an Amazon bestseller in his genre and veteran of the homicide division in the Canadian police. John and I cover a range of topics in this discussion, from why he loves Nietzsche, to the role of revenge and justice in his stories as well as horror and suspenseful writing more broadly. John and I gush over our mutual love of Tarantino, and his pick for his favorite among Tarantino's films may surprise you. Other topics include the best ways to show rat...
This episode explores Nietzsche's view of philosophy as an involuntary, unconscious memoir, revealing a philosopher's deepest drives and moral intentions rather than disinterested truth-seeking. It examines how even respected thinkers like Epicurus, Kant, and Schopenhauer's philosophies are rooted in personal impulses. Nietzsche critiques atomism and the "I think" certainty, proposing that life itself is will to power, and calls for future philosophers to transcend modern dogmas rather than return to old ones.
Delving into Nietzsche's *Beyond Good and Evil*, this episode examines his foundational critique of traditional philosophy and metaphysics, particularly the "faith in opposite values." It explores how philosophers, driven by instinct rather than pure reason, have often created "dogmatic errors" like the concept of "pure spirit" or "good as such." Nietzsche challenges the intrinsic value of truth itself, suggesting that untruths might be indispensable for life and advocates for a new kind of philosopher willing to embrace "dangerous maybes" with lighthearted honesty.
In this episode, I attempt to sum up the relevance of Nietzsche's political insights to the modern day, insofar as his challenge to our values becomes an entrypoint for us to begin the work of revaluating our values. In this piece, I argue that Nietzsche's goal for his readership is for them to find freedom in the unity of their beliefs and actions, and acceptance of humanity and the natural world for what they are rather than what we'd like them to be. Nietzsche invites us to a trusting accepta...
What does eternal recurrence mean in the historical sense? Nietzsche invites us to explore that question in his raising of the Problem of Science, and the notion of conflict as central to life. Today, in the penultimate episode of the season, we'll take a look into a section from Will to Power called "The History of European Nihilism", in which Nietzsche takes on the history of Europe from the perspective of his cultural/moral analysis, and charts the history of the descent into materialism as i...
We all know that Nietzsche said, "What does not kill me makes me stronger", but it is less often remembered that he began that aphorism with the caveat, "From the military school of life". We find, in fact, that many of Nietzsche's powerful insights on self-knowledge, self-control, and the search for truth come from this same military school of life. Nietzsche celebrates war and warriors throughout his work, most notably in passages of book one of Thus Spoke Zarathustra which often beguile first...
Nietzsche described Napoleon as "a type of atavism" - a throwback to an earlier age, and quipped that he, not unlike Rousseau, also sought after a “return to nature”. Nietzsche and Rousseau have mutually opposed perspectives on what nature is, however, and Nietzsche is quick to note that Napoleon was not simply a 'going back', but a 'going up'. To understand why Nietzsche thought the way he did about the figure of a Napoleon or a Caesar, we will recapitulate to the entire Nietzschean understandi...
Jeff Henson is a producer, audio engineer and touring musician in the band Duel. He's worked with acts such as Clutch, Spirit Adrift, Down, The Sword and others in both live and studio recording. As Jeff and I are both about to embark on tours of the United States, and we'd often talked about doing a podcast together, we finally sat down to talk about what the touring experience is like, the principles behind capturing a band's sound, and some light philosophical discussion on the role of art in...
"He who says organization says oligarchy." With these words, Robert Michels advances his sociological theory of what is called the iron law of oligarchy. Whenever human beings arrange themselves into a social group, the structural realities of organizing human beings for coordinated action result in minority rule. Far from asserting this as a reality that we have overcome with democracy, this pattern obtains just as strongly in democratic structures of power as in others. Robert Michels lived fr...
Today I'm speaking with Mark LeVine, a professor, touring musician, and author of several books, including Heavy Metal Islam, a book on the metal scene in the Muslim world. Mark has traveled throughout the world to explore musical styles and scenes outside of the Western mainstream. He became a rock musician at a young age, and spent his twenties reading Nietzsche in graduate school during the day, and gigging in New York City at night. In the course of his career, he's set up concerts in Cairo ...
We've now heard Fustel de Coulanges' understanding of the disturbances in Ancient Rome as revolutions brought on by changes to their religious belief structure. We've considered Machiavelli's fawning historical interpretation of Rome, through Livy, as a people who were more virtuous than any other, and maintained that virtue by subjecting themselves to privation and hardship, and who fell into unrest when they strayed from virtue. And we've now heard Turchin's view, that the unrest of the Roman ...
You have questions, I might have answers. Khajiit has wares, if you have coin. I was originally planning on doubling up episodes this week, but with the approaching tour, I’m going to have to set aside a couple weeks to just release an interview or Q&A in order to have steady releases. Hope this episode satisfies! Cheers.
Peter Turchin has continued the work of Ibn Khaldun, by elaborating upon Khaldun's hypotheses and testing them against the wealth of historical data that we now possess. By means of a structural demographic analysis of historical empires, Turchin has worked for years to generate mathematical models in order to explain the trends that seem to recur in every complex society. Now, with the data of 10,000 years of human activity on the group level, it may be possible to finally move beyond the preli...
From all accounts, Nietzsche did not read nor comment upon the work of Ibn Khaldun, outside of a few remarks from Schopenhauer in one of his essays that Nietzsche might have read. But what we find in his Muqaddimah is a theory of cyclical history, in which many of the key principles of Nietzsche's political philosophy would find agreement. Ibn Khaldun was a historian from North Africa whose work sought to explain why it was that the same pattern seemed to repeat ad infinitum. The Bedouin desert ...
My band Slumbering Sun releases The Ever-Living Fire today, on 2/24! This is a project composed with the themes of amor fati and embracing a world of eternal change. I wanted to tell all of you the story of how this band came into existence, how it fits into my story, and what it means to me. This is perhaps one of my most philosophical outings in music, about the choice to say Yes to life, live the tragic worldview, and fall in love with the world again. I included a song from the album at the ...
We've considered two out of the three main strands of 20th century political thought: capitalism and socialism. Fascism is the third, and it is both the most and the least important of the three to consider. I consider it the least important because fascism was defeated, and relegated to the fringes, and honoring its existence with a critique seems like a waste of time. On the other hand, when it comes to Nietzsche, it becomes particularly important to address because of how Nietzsche was tarred...
After getting several suggestions in our comments sections, Stef and I touched based and decided to have a conversation. I asked him about his attempt to harness both the philosophy of Nietzsche with that of Carl Jung, since there are some contradictions between their thought that keep them from being easily reconciled. We discuss Jordan Peterson, why we both liked him once upon a time, but why he has, perhaps, 'lost it'. And throughout the conversation, Stef gives his vision of the "Promethean ...
Today, we look at the other side of the coin. Nietzsche's critique of capitalism is in fact inextricably bound to his critique of socialism. What he finds beneath both approaches to managing human economic affairs is the utilitarian value structure and the view of the human being as homo economicus. Socialism, rather than the solution to capitalism, is the necessary end of the same internal logic, and further seeks to cut off avenues for man's will to power as we labor under the mistaken assumpt...
Join me, and my friend Mynaa Miesnowan, for a discussion inspired by the work of Alan Watts, and his "Wisdom of Insecurity". We compare Watts' own approach to the insecurity of life to that of Nietzsche's, and generally analyze Watts' ideas from a Nietzschean framework. Ultimately, we diverge wildly from the topics covered in Watts' work, and the starting topic is really more a guidepost for the various directions that our thought takes us. However, contained in this are a couple of fun and fasc...
Our economy, comrade! Silly cover images and slogans aside, this week we'll consider one of the most peculiar aspects of Nietzsche's political thought: his non-Marxist critique of capitalism, which is mostly found in Human, All Too Human, Books II and III. Since Nietzsche is writing during an experimental period in his thought, he's willing here to entertain thoughts which might not have interested him during his later career. He's willing to give advice to democrats on the best ways to preserve...
Stream my new song on CvltNation: https://cvltnation.com/experience-the-doomy-grunge-melodies-of-slumbering-sun-dream-snake/ This episode gets us back into reading Nietzsche, and here I think our prolonged focus on influences and previous thinkers will bear fruit. We’re picking back up with Nietzsche’s middle period, starting from his work in Human, All Too Human. In a chapter from this work, Nietzsche addresses himself to the ideas of Rousseau, Machiavelli, Thucydides, and Plato. He attacks dem...
This episode concerns the least celebrated aspect of one of the most celebrated philosophers of the European Enlightenment: Kant’s politics. Immanuel Kant is responsible for launching the thread of philosophic inquiry known as German Idealism. At the time, perhaps Kant was merely trying to address the skepticism of those such as Hume. Nevertheless, his philosophical attempt to delimit the bounds of reason - to reveal to humanity what we can, in fact, know by use of our reason - launched a revolu...
In this conversation, my friend Quinn and I dare to journey into one of the most labyrinthine passages ever to come from Nietzsche's hand: the 1873 fragment, Zeitatomenlehre, usually translated as the "Time-Atom" or "Time-Atomism" Fragment. Providing a description of this passage in any concise way will be about as impossible as summarizing this conversation, and our interpretations of it, but at the very least, I will offer that this essay is a radical re-evaluation of how we could consider rea...
In Rousseau, we find the mirror image of Nietzsche’s politics. While both have been called romantics, we find enough nuance to consider both something beyond this - and yet, Rousseau & Nietzsche agree in finding problematic the supposed “progress” of the modern world, and both turn their gaze back to the time before civilization to contrast with modern life. But where Nietzsche sees a war of all against all, Rousseau sees a state of natural happiness. Rather than a “going back” to this natur...
