Comments by "Andrew Bowen" (@andrewbowen2837) on "Weltgeist" channel.

  1. There's a lot that this video doesn't touch on from the book. For starters, you spend a lot of time dissecting Nietzsche's critique of Christianity, but that's not the real criticism Nietzsche has in Beyond Good and Evil. His real critique is of dogma, and especially dogma to Platonism, which he asserts Christianity is the foremost example of. So his real challenge is pointed at Plato, who has dominated the realm of philosophy for millennia. He sees that Plato went beyond the ideas of Socrates and crafted a philosophy and system of values in a way that matches what you call "perspectivism." Nietzsche thinks Plato shifted philosophy away from the pre-Socratics on purpose to create his own values, and as such, Nietzsche seeks a return to the pre-Socratic philosophy which will lead to the actual truth of things. Another important thing is that Nietzsche points out that culture, and values in particular, are temporal. He uses the analogy of a Greek play to showcase this: the audience sees the costumes that the actors wear and laugh at it, ridiculing the culture and values of past cultures. However, they fail to realize that they also wear "costumes" themselves. Only when this is realized can a new set of values be created, and the philosopher of the future can join Nietzsche in his nakedness, free of values and embodying truth. This new creation of values has become possible due to cosmopolitanism, which allows the study of cultures and values more freely. All people need to do is realize their own costumes. Speaking of values, Nietzsche points out that it was Judaism, not Christianity, that inverted values. Judaism is what established slave morality over master morality; Christianity took those values and spread them across the world. However, Nietzsche admires Judaism because is created its own values, something that he seeks to achieve himself (or at least get someone else to do). Thus, Nietzsche seeks to reinstate master morality, and values greatness and nobility over piety and chastity. The last thing I will mention is that Nietzsche ridiculed nationalism. He broke off his relationship with Wagner because of German nationalism. Nietzsche saw that history had trended towards a united world, and nationalism was undermining it. To elaborate, Nietzsche saw that living conditions were continuously growing throughout history, from villages, to cities, to countries. The next step in the progression in his mind is a united Europe. So he essentially foresaw the EU and UN and other leagues. It doesn't take genius to foresee that the next step is a united world.
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  2. An interesting perspective that I have been pondering is thay violence can have different targets. This video focuses on human-human violence, but it can occur between anything that a person can have relations with, with devastating effects. For instance, iconoclasm and urbicide are things that inflict great but indirect harm, and are forms of violence against things and materials. Abstracting this beyond these two examples, violence can happen in many ways that we do not usually consider
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  3. Nietzsche seems to argue that all philosophy is sophistry, so he wouldn't disagree
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  4.  @SJ-kc6et  From my understanding, Nietzsche only provided two types of morality: master and slave. Perhaps the philosopher of the future could create a new form, maybe something of the middling sort somehow, but taken in the context of the rest of his works, that seems unlikely. He praises strength and greatness throughout Beyond Good and Evil and criticizes Judaism for making those things taboo. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he poses the idea of the Ubermensche and the last man, who embody master and slave morality, respectively, and he pushes for the Ubermensche. With this in mind, I think the transvaluation of values means to flip them back towards the master side
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  5. I think the most important thing to know about this book is that even though Nietzsche asks, "Why not untruth?" he does not claim there is no truth, because the very purpose of the book is to show the truth. Plus, isn't the will to power a claim to a universal objective truth?
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  6. "How's it feeeel Socrates? To be a bitch..."
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  7.  @Dungeon-uh4ph  are you suggesting that Christianity is why we don't glorify violence, and its absence is why the Greeks did?
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  8.  @Dungeon-uh4ph  I don't even remember to be honest with you. I know it's built off of someting Nietzsche wrote though
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  9.  @Tehz1359  in sections 240 and 241, he discusses Wagner's nationalism and how he disagrees with it, instead advocating for a united Europe. Edit: section 242 is when he predicts the democratization of Europe and uniformity. This whole section is called "Peoples and Fatherlands"
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  10.  @Tehz1359  I'm not sure how much he advocates for it as much as he predicts it to happen. It seems that he thinks this total democratization will occur and then the great philosopher will spring from it and create a more aristocratic order
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  11. Plato, Aristophanes, and Xenophon all wrote about Socrates. There are plenty of sources to pull from to get an image of the man, if he existed. Otherwise, he symbolized something that all three people viewed differently, and it somehow caused Plato to form the academy outside of Athens
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  12. Nietzsche takes that skepticism to a new level, questioning truth and reason itself
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  13.  @luqmaanissah1398  so then why does Nietzsche bother explaining the will to power, eternal recurrence, etc?
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  14. If democracy is intended to prevent brute force, it does a terrible job at it
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  15. You'll only ger a part of the story by watching these videos. It needs to be read
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