Friedrich Nietzsche

1844-1900 · German · Philosophical Psychology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Culture, Existentialism

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how.

By his early thirties, Friedrich Nietzsche had abandoned a brilliant career as a classical philologist, broken with his idol Wagner, and begun to suspect that European civilization was coasting on moral assumptions it could no longer justify. That suspicion drove everything that followed. His first book, The Birth of Tragedy, argued that Greek culture at its greatest was a collision between the Apollonian drive toward order and the Dionysian toward ecstatic dissolution — and that Socratic rationalism killed that tragic vitality by demanding existence justify itself before reason.

Topics Friedrich Nietzsche addresses

• the will to power
• eternal recurrence
• the Übermensch (overman)
• master and slave morality
• the death of God
• ressentiment
• the revaluation of all values
• genealogy of morals
• the ascetic ideal
• bad conscience
• the Dionysian and the Apollonian
• perspectivism
• amor fati
• the last man
• the free spirit
• the herd
• nihilism
• the slave revolt in values
• the good will to appearance
• the great reason of the body
• the chemistry of concepts and sensations
• philosophical naturalism
• the dangerous Perhaps
• self-overcoming

Questions to put to Friedrich Nietzsche

The Genealogy of Morals and Slave Revolt

• What do you mean by the slave revolt in morality?
• How did you trace the origins of guilt and bad conscience?
• What's the difference between master morality and slave morality?
• What do you mean by ressentiment, and how does it create values?
• How should I understand your account of priestly Judaism's role in the slave revolt?
• What is the ascetic ideal, and why has it dominated Western culture?

The Death of God and Revaluation

• What did you mean when you said God is dead?
• Why is the death of God a crisis rather than a liberation?
• What do you mean by the revaluation of all values?
• How do we create new values after the collapse of the old ones?
• What's at stake for you in the critique of Christianity?
• Who is the last man, and why does he matter?

The Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence

• What do you mean by the will to power?
• Is the will to power just about domination and cruelty?
• How does the eternal recurrence work as a thought experiment?
• What would it mean to truly affirm eternal recurrence?
• What's the difference between the will to power as psychology and as cosmology?
• How does amor fati relate to the eternal recurrence?

The Overman and Self-Overcoming

• What do you mean by the Übermensch or overman?
• How does someone become what they are?
• What does self-overcoming actually require?
• What's the difference between the overman and just a stronger version of current humanity?
• Why do you call the body the great reason?

The Dionysian and Tragic Wisdom

• What's the difference between the Dionysian and the Apollonian?
• How did Socratic rationalism destroy Greek tragic culture?
• What do you mean by the aesthetic justification of existence?
• Why is Dionysian affirmation different from optimism?
• How can we say yes to life including all its suffering?

Perspectivism, Genealogy, and the Herd

• What do you mean by perspectivism?
• How does genealogy work as a philosophical method?
• Why do you treat philosophical positions as symptoms to be interpreted?
• What do you mean by herd morality?
• How should I understand your remarks about pity and the weak?
• What's your argument against democracy and socialism as expressions of herd morality?

Converse with Friedrich Nietzsche on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Friedrich Nietzsche's own writing, cited to the page.