There can be little doubt i think that the two 19th century philosophers have
had the widest influence outside philosophy are marx and nietzsche in
continental Europe especially the influence of nature on philosophers
since his there has been predictors but he's also influenced creative writers
including some of the most eminent in the English language for instance but
Shaw WB Yeats and D H Lawrence the quality of his own pros is simply
dazzling and this second nobody is Friedrich Nietzsche was born in saxony
in 1844 he had an academic career of extraordinary brilliance is a classic
scholar and became a full professor in his mid-twenties and almost unheard of
thing but then he threw over his university career went into isolation
and became a philosopher the 16 years he poured out his writings mostly either
short books or ebooks the best days and aphorisms some of the best-known titles
are the birth of tragedy human all too human
the gay science beyond good and evil and most famous of all thus spoke
zarathustra at first he was deeply influenced by the ideas of Schopenhauer
and partner but he rebelled against both and went on to produce some notorious
antiviral polemics until the last four years of his creative life he made no
attempt to build a system of any kind but then he began to think of drawing
all his main themes together into one single comprehensive work first to be
called the will to power then the revaluation of all values but it was not
to be always plagued by ill health in january $MONTH 1889 he collapsed into
mental illness or condition almost certainly caused by tertiary syphilis
and he was helplessly in the same until his death in 1900 with me to discuss his
work is JP stern professor of German in the university of london the author of
one of the best known of the many books on nature professor Stern i think one
can say that nature was the first philosophy really to face up to Western
man
and loss of faith in religion loss of belief in god or in the existence of any
world outside this one and if there's no God and no transcendental world then all
values all truth rationality standards of any kind are not given to them from
some agency outside himself but are created buying presumably these their
needs we choose our that at least we create our that now this is an
extraordinary disruptive and disturbing thing to confront and meet your new that
can we start the story from there
yes I think that this is a perfectly fair wheel starting in addition to what
you said about his life i think when i mention that he was the son of the men's
that he himself had his father was a minister of the lutheran church and
therefore his attack on Christianity is not a neutral not it is interested not
specific thing at all but his violent dramatic melodramatic in many ways it's
an attack on Christianity rather than on Christ and i think the point that you
made that he envisages 19th century man to have to stand on his own feet without
the support of faith or dogma of any kind is centrally as a central kind of
starting point to his philosophy i think we want to see him as somebody who does
not simply profess a flat kind of atheism but who is personally intimately
involved in the denial of divine justice and divine messy and all that but this
kitchen starting point did launch him didn't it into a revaluation of all
value yes' to use the title of his book and one thing he was saying was that in
a way we are basing our lives on false premises because we adopt attitudes and
values and standards which when we actually examine the premises of them we
reject the Tennessee yellow traditional his reminisces what she believed in what
she tried to show
who was at the whole edifice both of Christian very was and of idealism which
he saw derivative from those values was false had to be thrown over and
something else to be put instead the questions to want us to be putting
instead is not quite so simple but that was the basic premise from which he
began and that i think makes for the middle drop the extraordinary melodrama
of the person of the style of the whole phenomenon of nature
now this revaluation of all values of course a colossal task and I think it'll
make our discussion of it clear that if we divide our consideration of it up a
little bit yes there are four main traditions within Western civilization
to which nature addressed himself in which he attacked the tradition of
Christian morality the tradition of secular morality the hard values as he
called the ordinary morality of the mass of mankind and some at least of the
traditions deriving from ancient convention series a trifle properties
now let's have a look at each of those four injures can use a little bit more
about his fundamental criticism of Christian value but I think to see to
start with on the christian i think the attack is a very simple 10 very
straightforward one or the positive values of Christianity turning your road
you turning the other cheek loving your neighbor as you love yourself having
compassion for those suffering all these are ruled out of court
I'm not absolutely because as we shall see later i think i want to make that
point very clearly Nietzsche is constantly making special rules for
special people and she's very much against the notion of generalizing
simply rules in money in the way in which count had done in the categorical
imperative
so yes the first thing then is the attack on non Christ but on christianity
as really furthering the underdog furthering the person who killed stand
on his own feet and requires compassion requires city requires illicitly
requires sympathy from the outside and why was he against
compassion and against city why did he despise those he's not against him he
does not despise them and they come from the strong person
what he despises is the support of the weak person from outside himself
whatever that sources the outside source may be whether it's another person his
compassion or rules or regulations laws or whatever and the reason to being
against this was one reason for being against it was his fundamental appeal is
to authenticity to Salford to the LOV diet to the life within the person live
to the full now what about his criticism of secular morality and the great moral
philosophers like contouring here thursday the utilitarian yourself that
wasn't Christian morality quite good numbers against that to yell why I think
the main reason there is this that all systems of secular moralities are based
on an abstraction from the individual case they're based on energy you to a
generality for nature the word general is the same as common and by common he
means common in the nasty sense of the word and therefore innocence all rules
and regulations one might always go as far as saying all laws are for him
matters for the common herd and no more and now we're of course already on the
third point that you made the point about the common herd here he's most
emphatically not a democratic philosopher he's a philosopher of the
great and the noble people the header Eric kind of philosophy and therefore
for him
the appeal of Democratic ideology is very very low indeed he thought that the
the nobleman the great man the hero should be a law unto himself and
shouldn't be hamstrung yeah precisely Yeti yet whose regulation yes that's the
best phrase you can use a law unto himself
yeah it's not the center to use but it's very very precise what she meant
now what about the last of the four traditions that i mentioned that of
ancient Greece he is
it's worth remembering in this context that he did start out life as a classic
scholar yes is cleansing he knew
asian please and became deeply critical that you have the whole tradition
deriving from Socrates yes but his classic work and I think it's one of the
most remarkable works have a written on the whole problem of tragedy is
concerned with pre-socratic greece with piece of practice tragedy which for him
is a kind of golden age and the whole thing
r goes flat at the point when Europe ease and Stephanie's and and Socrates
come on the scene what happens there is that strength and goodwill and warmth
and beauty are replaced by reason are replaced by rationalizing things by the
Socratic rgrg he never forgave later so to speak for bringing up a hero whose
main qualities are those of talking everybody else into the ground now this
concern with the origins of culture which he displayed in such a rich way we
have to say and with all bound up with his notion that we remade that we make
our values because if we if human values and human culture are made by us not
given to us by God or authority outside ourselves from the whole question so we
get them where they come from becomes a fundamental one here and it's also a
fundamental 19th century concern whole concerned with origins
yes things of the origin of species down is so on with nature influenced by
Darwin yes where he said there was entered our Indian and I think the idea
is that he didn't really understand very clearly want the whole theory of the
origin of the species came to like so many 19th century figures he was always
going to study physiology going to study chemistry going to study physics but
never got around to it so I don't think that there's an awful lot of interesting
things to be said about his attitude to that but i think the main point about
origins is that again like some philosophers
like marks for instance he believes that you can determine the quality of the
product by the nature and quality of the origin this after all is very much what
r I didn't I suspect the tried but very largely from nature
well he does isn't very ready to acknowledge it now what that means is
really that the background the the genealogy of morals for instance you
created one of the titles is in fact indicative of the quality of models let
me say I don't believe this is too but I mean that is very much the 19th century
of you over and over again that you can determine the quality of a mental
product by the nature by the origin of that is at the back of it
yes and we are knowing plant sometimes they call that the genetic fallacy
that's right i don't want to go into your settings very close yes no mention
of Floyd players another question that I get to put to this program of
reevaluating values and seeing values or something that we create to meet our
needs
let nature to a psychological analysis of values in terms of the individual and
social medias didn't expect it becomes an essentially psychological it is a way
of cycle cycle psychologizing a lot of phenomenon this is perfectly correct and
indeed i think he was a very remarkable psychologist in many ways and she puts
he does not produce a system either in psychology or anything else and in that
sense he is different from fraud but he's very very similar in fact much of
an antecedent to fraud because he places a very great your emphasis upon the
unconscious there is a myth about to the effect that fried invented the
unconscious nothing could be further from the truth the unconscious has been
about since the end of the 18th century and each is one of those who use the
term and put remember synthesis on it but he does not have a layer theory of
the self the way that fri did as I say he is very very much less systematic he
disgusts systems he thinks there's something indecent
about trying to encapsulate a human being a human psyche within a systematic
account
another aspect of that is is his notion that but different modalities a
different are appropriate for different PPS that she certainly had to manage
that wouldn't be true to say well in fact you have said it is that he
distrusted rules see you thought they have strongly strongly limited the
creative yes yes he does believe that individual people are entitled to
individual things of behavior and to individual bits of knowledge this is the
most astonishing thing and also i think it was very prophetic kind of thing that
she believed that knowledge was not absolute that you that the acquisition
the pursuit of knowledge was not to be taking absolutely but that a given
civilization had its own particular implement to the kind of knowledge that
you could bear to see the emphasis and it could bear it
he didn't receive situations where knowledge would destroy the NOAA our
knowledge of nuclear missiles has become a lethal threat to asses and that is
something that needs you would raise easily and very well have a yes and he
did in fact say so we have enough about nuclear physics of course but in about
but knowledge generally you see we only have really one other theory of
knowledge apart from our own our own is that all knowledge is worth pursuing
regardless isn't yeah where the other one is the Soviet idea which goes on
know in which simply creates a system by which knowledge is socially useful and
then pursued and not pursued if it's not socially used for niches view is
somewhat similar to this he does believe that didn't civilizations destroyed in
cells and the basic the bone which all this is directed is in fact we're coming
back now to Socrates subtracted in for knowledge this this endless of this
driving force which pushes on up to this point in our discussion we've talked
about nature's critical interpretation
this basic view that up to this point in our history the models and values and
standards of Western yes have all been historically based on belief in god or
gods who gave us these values gave us these moral standards and so on would
judge us by our failure to live up to them or successively answer them and so
now he comes along he says we've lost believe in god we've lost belief in
religion that means we've lost belief in the whole foundation of our value system
and if we're to have a valid value system we've got to reevaluate it and
refund it from the bottom up and we've not really talked to some of the various
critiques individual pratiques into which this let him I now want us to move
on from this to the next stage of the discussion incense it's the obvious
question too high what where his positive values having as it were swept
everything away all the Lhasa scale
what does he know advocating that we put in its place where the answer to that is
a very simple and very complicated on both at the same time the simple answer
is B your self at the top of everything that you are too took to the hilt live
your life fully live it adventurously and all the other things which later on
come under the under the heading of in all the dial that in the humans here I
mean that essentially the be thou thyself is the major elements from it
she begins also the go-to with will towards which ethics or or to the goal
towards which ethics ought to be directed now you may ask because if
everybody is himself in himself alone
how is this to be done in a wider sphere houses to be Daniel political system and
so on the answers to that question are I'm afraid very unsatisfactory as far as
he's concerned as indeed his whole attitude towards social questions never
does get very far
now I said also that this is very very complicated precisely for this reason
because it makes
living together are living together in some kind of harmony extremely difficult
if you add to this the view that laws are after all there simply to make z
make things easy for the weak person you can see there's not very much purchase
to be got out of that breather so it is on the face of it a simple system but
basically i think that is a great deal of difficulty facing anyone who's going
to put this forward in a sense I think we can say that some of them all some of
the fascist our antics early of of the early part of this century is based to
some extent among the intellectuals at any rate on this you that you must
create your own values are but it hasn't gotten very far as you can see this
notion that you must say as he would say yes to life
yes a firm Lions be untraveled to the top of your Bend uninhibited also led
him to the view that that of course this is going to lead you into conflict with
other people but you must simply sweep the massage you must sweep away the weak
and the unable to all those who as it were getting your way
yes that of course is absolutely flat head on in conflict with Christian yes
it has but then you see you only mentioned one hopefully the other part
of it is you must also cold or it is comfortable all that is currently or
that is less than adventures within your self and if you've done that that is the
view that he puts forward inside mr. for instance if you've done that you won't
really want to be so very aggressive towards the others you will have some
understanding of their weaknesses though the understanding of the positive but
torrent understanding of weaknesses is not precisely nature's very strongly
that is based failure or yeah i mean and people of course have always been
shocked by his say they thought that what he was advocating this country to
model stand against oh yes that is . of course was that that in fact model
standards thought to be derived life to be subordinate to
yes that our nation's of truth rationality and all the rest want to
derive from my fiancé's home from the great man yet from the great man and by
the great man he meant as i already mentioned it would be one Napoleon would
be another sometimes Luther sometimes even some of the great blowjob boats
would figure is that and sometimes even subsidies would because he had the
strength of mine to carry through his own project
this supremacy of life associate self-assertion is that even truth truth
itself be subjugated to get see if there are truths which damages that in in
other words would manage our lives then we don't want yes you see we're back
again at the question of the entitlement to truth or of at what he once called
the hygiene of knowledge there ought to be some kind of Hygiene that would tell
us what kind of knowledge we may face in what kind of knowledge AR 0 we should
reject and you're quite right that truth itself in that way is subjected to this
kind of embargo to this kind of this kind of sanction that he puts forward
but she is absolutely how this is that contrary to all morality is that it
actually existed would it be true to say that nietzsche's defense if he came to
defend against criticism has been to say something like this but look the whole
civilization humanity itself if you like the Holy evolutionary process has
consisted of the strong eliminating the week able eliminating the unable the
intelligent eliminating stupid and it's only because these processes of garment
perpetually over millions of years that we have any civilization at all that we
have any humanity at all these things have create years value
yes I think that is precisely what she says and I want you would say a number
of occasions different contexts and his worry about the future is precisely that
this kind of thing will not go on that the Democratic spirit the spirit of the
bed so the of the rubberman will take over and will annihilate are all is
value but we'll put into reverse the very process that has actually created
civilization and markets but in addition to that I think we have to bear in mind
that he has a view of history which is really rather different from the view on
which your analysis was based he sees history as repeating itself
now what it means we should talk about that a little later but essentially
means is this that any historical situation
she can create and absorb and make you solve a the highest that man is capable
of creating there aren't any privileged situations that are published arrows and
and therefore any era that sees itself as capable of fully understanding or
fully creating these values should be should allow shoes should be allowed to
do that and the travelers late 19th century the early 20th century may very
well be what he calls areas of decadence in which this strength cannot be fully
realize now you mention of his doctrine that history repeats itself brings me to
what I would like to think of it the next day yes discussion and in one
country regarding his later work there are four big themes and again i think
four characters say it will help if we take them one of the time yes Ronnie is
what you might summarize under the phrase the will to power phrase which he
has popularized one is the government or translated as the Superman again an
invention of his that into our language and Runyon's this doctor new invention
of the eternal recurrence time and the fourth i would say is his notion of the
East critic understanding of life
yeah let's do with those in order that Scott let's talk first about the will to
power which one's I'm he was going to give it a title to the summation of his
life's work
yes what was this notion of his the will to power where he did solution the world
from your own special and philosopher Schopenhauer of course and he reverses
the the evaluation of that we're short my regarded the will as the source of
all evil in the world and as the source of men's unhappiness he regards it as
the strength of our of men's men strength the source of men strength and
the the
motivation are the admission to the wheel to enact watch it can act is part
of a healthy culture now the the difficulty that I think is that this
obviously brings you in conflict with other people and therefore this stage
the willpower becomes it becomes a world to self-assertion or willow two years at
user patient of the other but that's all there is to the well I think it's to be
emphasized is not overemphasize some some critics have done but it to be
emphasized that the will to power also turns itself in word that is to say it
destroys within the central or that is weak or that is comfortable or that is
are simply arm
yes part of a mans selfie nurture kind of drastic bring of oneself out to the
bar after up to up to the mud which one has created oneself in this differently
about Mark birth to my son so that their yes yes well now let's move on to the
the next of the four years the themes of his later where's Superman everybody
knows the way Sam and it was in fact nature we rented it
it's been a very much misunderstood concept being associated it with the
blonde beast of Lyrian holidays Nazi caricature because that's not what he
meant to talk more i think that is not what he meant at all
I'm i think the Superman is the man the production mean who can be produced by
any civilization
remember I said that any e any error is capable of bringing forth the maximum
values that men are capable of Superman is the man who lives all that the world
to power will secure for him lives it to the floor are is capable of are
repeating his own willing ad infinitum will already arriving at the doctrine
and the most controversial of all things the most
design your life of these use the the eternal recurrence
yes then let's get that know yet because i want us unpack the addition of the
Superman yes which has played such an enormous role and in and support in the
last hundred years
yes it's been so abused and misused by the Nazis example and it wouldn't be
true to say that what nature was actually trying to get at was the notion
of an unrepresented man
yes and if you like the fragrance and yes a man who has reevaluated his
Yahoo's yet he's not living his life according to first values was being to
the top of his bears in an interview uninhibited untraveled free spirit isn't
natural yes I think that is sales and but it would be a man who without as it
were restricting himself would naturally instinctively not do any of the things
that need to regards as evil are for instance the one category that he comes
out are unequivocally that comes out unequivocally in his system is bread
genus is what she calls his auntie mo is the original is the graduating admission
of warmth the graduate admission of our success and all these kind of things now
the Superman is one who naturally does not feel any of these things you know
the story generous spirit it is a generator is a generous spirit are yes
and I that again you see the whole notion of the christian jr a generous
spirit is not all that far from nature's purview
now let's move on to the third floor main themes and you've touched on it
already it's this notion of the eternal recurrence now i would say that if
anything of all the doctrines of nature
this is the hardest not just the people to is there but even to take seriously
having and the face it he appears to be saying that the home of history moves in
epicycles last eposide so that everything comes around again and again
and again forever so that you
my have actually sat in this studio having this conversation an humble times
before and will do so and lovable times hear about you
he merely saying that what he's really saying that and he is playing out what
might happen if you took that you seriously and I think we want to say all
to give up in our whole discussion but a great deal on his thinking is of this
experimental time and and by that I don't mean it's not serious i don't be
meted is not responsible
I don't mean that it is trivial but I do mean that hear somebody who's facing the
whole of human thought and is trying to make some simple shift with almost any
area in it and is trying out again and again with reviews out there is a saying
of his I think of it tragic saying of his in a letter where he writes I feel
as though I were in be a new in equipped as you would be being tried out by some
superior power on a little people so that is strange thing to be feeling for
somebody who's advocating the world to par and the Superman yet I think he did
genuinely feel led now he does then try out this thought and it seems to me not
so much a theory of being not so much a theory of the cosmos it seems to be a
moral theory that is to say I'm or actions are really our intentions our
thoughts should be of sexual superior kind of such a grand kind have such
generosity and Brennus about them that we should not flinch to a and be able to
be willing to repeat them over and over again
ad nauseam ad infinitum oh
so in other words you're really only saying yes tonight
yes embracing light is always says we should if you would be willing to do
that again that's what you're doing that job you had only at this
yes I think to go on very much further than that and try to produce geometrical
or mathematical equations in order to prove either the possibility or the
impossibility of the issues which has been tried has been done doesn't seem to
me to be terribly sensible apologies a huge metaphor is a huge metaphor and of
course agreed to you must be said about neech's uses of metaphors so there's
just something about it because it's very relevant
yes I think I'm we iive think we we are in the habit of taking things literally
in a way in which which doesn't make sense as far as a great many of his
taken targets and you spoke to begin with about his grand style and i think
it is an extraordinary powerful effective style ask myself ready to ride
strong i think it derives from a strange inventions strange discovery he seems to
have made of placing his discourse his language somewhere halfway between
metaphorical and literal meaning and this is something which really very few
people certainly very true german writers and have done before him he
stands entirely on his own as far as thinking is concerned you have mentioned
and we we've seen how he attacks every tradition in the west where he does find
his his speaker says is in the style and maintain and pascal and nashville for
his favorite authors and that whole effortless style i think derives a
tremendous lot from them it's not only me saying it is himself saying it and
this star which is pitched hole-free between beautiful and literal statement
is something quite extraordinary and I think unless we understand it for what
it is and we are going to mistreat him i have a petition which i think is a an
example of what i have in mind
and really talked about the terrible deprivation that she felt 19th century
people experience through what he called lordly the death of God he wrote as
follows he says rather than put with the unbearable unas of their condition men
will continue to see their shattered God and for his sake they will love the very
seconds that will among his room now we see this mixture of on the one hand
conceptual thinking I mean loneliness and Russia are abstract terms belonging
to conceptual over on the other end you got the sevens listening somewhere
through the ruins of the shattered board
well that and the refusal I think to go beyond that
in other words to write out the theory behind the metal phones i think
essentially constitutes what he's about
and it does give us the readers of problems this mix this fusion of poetry
and metaphor on the one hand it is a concept
yes hard conversations on the other yes it's a problem about how to take him
that's really an exactly what you've just been exactly this leads to the
fourth of the four years of the later philosophy we've talked now briefly
about the water power about the Superman and about his doctrine of the eternal
recurrence of time that you've just been saying about his use of metaphor the
existence of north of the form name themes in the laser which is his notion
that life is to be understood aesthetically it and I suppose the point
here is that if there's nothing outside this world no God no transcended realm
or anything then any meaning or justification that life hands must be
meaning derived from inside itself yet so that like a work of art and it's the
only meaning of work of art is what it said he gives itself
yeah he doesn't drive its meaning from outside is it is that
well that certainly is a very fair way of of of coming close to what she's
after in the very first of his books the best of it
look at the the battle tragedy he uses this phrase three times it's only as an
aesthetic phenomenon that the being of man in the world are eternally justified
it's a very complicated sentence I don't think I want to go into all the details
of it but he's saying essentially is this the greatness of the early groups
of the piece of track aids lay in that tragedy that tragedy was a way of facing
the worst aspect of human life that is its transitoriness its impermanence it's
productiveness its dependence upon forces greater than yourself and to make
of these major tale story a wonderful tragedy and this he applies in the
largest in the most cosmic possible sense and he's asking is indeed I think
Shakespeare it occasionally is asking is the whole world really to be taken
seriously or is it not a great game a great play some kind of drama played out
by we do not know who are and if there is to be a justification menu
justification is the phrase he uses which is a very dicey where to use in
this context because of course it's a judicial phrase isn't it
but if that is a justification for men being here and being what he is
maybe it is simply as part of this huge cosmic drama and a great deal of his
thought and I think of some of his most interesting and greatest thought was
precisely into rehearsing and trying to make sense of this justifies this
aesthetic justification of man now you're talking about the way metafile
and he stated considerations are fused in together substance of the report
itself and you spoke very interesting the moment or two ago about his actual
style yes and the tradition to which is created it in its turn has had invented
yes has did I instant some of the great creative writers get that he has
influenced in my introduction to get some years now
no particular field of expertise
family says is known to be in comparative literature it would be
extremely interesting i think to end this discussion with just a word or two
from you about the way nature and his writing and his philosophy of influence
creative writers since years but simply to take the three names that you
yourself mentioned wbhs the first one and it's red nature for the first time
in a very brief little excerpts translated by a man called John common
of all things it seems to be most inappropriate name for a translator of
nature and from 19 to $TIME onwards when he read him i think that is a very clear
change in the general tenor and in the attitude of yates his poetry and that
slightly some trees like this sentimental are yellow roses kind of
poetry or founders yet creates changes very much and the great poetry which is
the poetry or as he has itself causes the poetry of blood and Mama and he's
very strongly influenced by his reading of the Jedi his attempts to grasp some
of the problems that we discussed earlier on with the shorter than the
influence of any different one
it is very much in the biological spirit is in the sphere of that little detail
which I mentioned it is in the sphere of the ruthless life the life that
justifies itself
I'm and the would do drugs I think again it is the question of authenticity
now the authenticity as long as currencies it's a very different kind of
authenticity from the one that nature had in mind
in other words its social and sexual intercourse both of these are really
rather minor factors in nature but it is certain from nature through his wife
freedoms that he acquired some knowledge of me turn that he was deeply influenced
by in a very late and I think rather dreadful cry story of Lawrence's seems
to me to derive straight out of nature psychologizing of the price figure you
look on the continent of course and a low dose me
our undermine all all these people not only have been very strongly under his
influence but they acknowledged the influence throughout a string bag had a
long correspondence through a common trend with nature and so on
I think that there are immensely powerful influences but we have to bear
in mind that the aphoristic style the are tremendous attractiveness of the
metaverse the ability of the message and literally persons don't like to read
heavy books they like to read effort isms all these play very much into
reaches hand one last question professor stand i don't think we can finish our
discussion without touching on it if you say the name feature the most educated
people in the West nada is what they need anything call is the Nazis and the
Nazis seem to have appropriated nature as their philosophy in the same sort of
way as they appropriated valve is there from exile and that's had the effect
ever since of contaminating the reputation of those two genes is in the
minds of large numbers of people now is it there or is it unfair associate
future with fascism
I think you must be associated with it to some extent and fascism rather
National Socialism it was Mussolini who read him extensively who received a copy
of the collected works from the future on the burner in 1938 as a present it to
himself I think probably new phrases mean certainly your faces like the world
to power but hadn't read anything of his
and I think in some ways is this is a justifiable charge and I would put it
this way that to the extent that these part is dependent upon the intellectuals
and to the extent that the intellectuals depended upon some sort of Morris
ill-assorted ideology Nietzsche was part of it but of course at the same time I
think it should be emphasized very strong there are lots of things in him
much more important things in him which are absolute anthem out to these people
do these gangsters let's put it quite quite cleanly and
self-control and the the inward struggle of the self and the attainment of valid
of of generosity for instance the end and greatness of the kind that we have
described have nothing whatever to do with the kind of murders ideologist that
came into being in the third rice and among the and and early on
among the italian and it's quite plain from the fact that you yourself have
devoted so much of your life to studying nature and writing the bathroom that you
think this is a hugely valuable imitates nevertheless yes I said they think it is
an immensely our brand are taking providing we do not go to it with some
expectation of getting a panacea on how to live right but provided we go to it
with a view to finding out what human beings can do what the human possibility
is what the being of man is capable of understanding and creating for within
itself
thank you very much professor step thank you Andrew
had the widest influence outside philosophy are marx and nietzsche in
continental Europe especially the influence of nature on philosophers
since his there has been predictors but he's also influenced creative writers
including some of the most eminent in the English language for instance but
Shaw WB Yeats and D H Lawrence the quality of his own pros is simply
dazzling and this second nobody is Friedrich Nietzsche was born in saxony
in 1844 he had an academic career of extraordinary brilliance is a classic
scholar and became a full professor in his mid-twenties and almost unheard of
thing but then he threw over his university career went into isolation
and became a philosopher the 16 years he poured out his writings mostly either
short books or ebooks the best days and aphorisms some of the best-known titles
are the birth of tragedy human all too human
the gay science beyond good and evil and most famous of all thus spoke
zarathustra at first he was deeply influenced by the ideas of Schopenhauer
and partner but he rebelled against both and went on to produce some notorious
antiviral polemics until the last four years of his creative life he made no
attempt to build a system of any kind but then he began to think of drawing
all his main themes together into one single comprehensive work first to be
called the will to power then the revaluation of all values but it was not
to be always plagued by ill health in january $MONTH 1889 he collapsed into
mental illness or condition almost certainly caused by tertiary syphilis
and he was helplessly in the same until his death in 1900 with me to discuss his
work is JP stern professor of German in the university of london the author of
one of the best known of the many books on nature professor Stern i think one
can say that nature was the first philosophy really to face up to Western
man
and loss of faith in religion loss of belief in god or in the existence of any
world outside this one and if there's no God and no transcendental world then all
values all truth rationality standards of any kind are not given to them from
some agency outside himself but are created buying presumably these their
needs we choose our that at least we create our that now this is an
extraordinary disruptive and disturbing thing to confront and meet your new that
can we start the story from there
yes I think that this is a perfectly fair wheel starting in addition to what
you said about his life i think when i mention that he was the son of the men's
that he himself had his father was a minister of the lutheran church and
therefore his attack on Christianity is not a neutral not it is interested not
specific thing at all but his violent dramatic melodramatic in many ways it's
an attack on Christianity rather than on Christ and i think the point that you
made that he envisages 19th century man to have to stand on his own feet without
the support of faith or dogma of any kind is centrally as a central kind of
starting point to his philosophy i think we want to see him as somebody who does
not simply profess a flat kind of atheism but who is personally intimately
involved in the denial of divine justice and divine messy and all that but this
kitchen starting point did launch him didn't it into a revaluation of all
value yes' to use the title of his book and one thing he was saying was that in
a way we are basing our lives on false premises because we adopt attitudes and
values and standards which when we actually examine the premises of them we
reject the Tennessee yellow traditional his reminisces what she believed in what
she tried to show
who was at the whole edifice both of Christian very was and of idealism which
he saw derivative from those values was false had to be thrown over and
something else to be put instead the questions to want us to be putting
instead is not quite so simple but that was the basic premise from which he
began and that i think makes for the middle drop the extraordinary melodrama
of the person of the style of the whole phenomenon of nature
now this revaluation of all values of course a colossal task and I think it'll
make our discussion of it clear that if we divide our consideration of it up a
little bit yes there are four main traditions within Western civilization
to which nature addressed himself in which he attacked the tradition of
Christian morality the tradition of secular morality the hard values as he
called the ordinary morality of the mass of mankind and some at least of the
traditions deriving from ancient convention series a trifle properties
now let's have a look at each of those four injures can use a little bit more
about his fundamental criticism of Christian value but I think to see to
start with on the christian i think the attack is a very simple 10 very
straightforward one or the positive values of Christianity turning your road
you turning the other cheek loving your neighbor as you love yourself having
compassion for those suffering all these are ruled out of court
I'm not absolutely because as we shall see later i think i want to make that
point very clearly Nietzsche is constantly making special rules for
special people and she's very much against the notion of generalizing
simply rules in money in the way in which count had done in the categorical
imperative
so yes the first thing then is the attack on non Christ but on christianity
as really furthering the underdog furthering the person who killed stand
on his own feet and requires compassion requires city requires illicitly
requires sympathy from the outside and why was he against
compassion and against city why did he despise those he's not against him he
does not despise them and they come from the strong person
what he despises is the support of the weak person from outside himself
whatever that sources the outside source may be whether it's another person his
compassion or rules or regulations laws or whatever and the reason to being
against this was one reason for being against it was his fundamental appeal is
to authenticity to Salford to the LOV diet to the life within the person live
to the full now what about his criticism of secular morality and the great moral
philosophers like contouring here thursday the utilitarian yourself that
wasn't Christian morality quite good numbers against that to yell why I think
the main reason there is this that all systems of secular moralities are based
on an abstraction from the individual case they're based on energy you to a
generality for nature the word general is the same as common and by common he
means common in the nasty sense of the word and therefore innocence all rules
and regulations one might always go as far as saying all laws are for him
matters for the common herd and no more and now we're of course already on the
third point that you made the point about the common herd here he's most
emphatically not a democratic philosopher he's a philosopher of the
great and the noble people the header Eric kind of philosophy and therefore
for him
the appeal of Democratic ideology is very very low indeed he thought that the
the nobleman the great man the hero should be a law unto himself and
shouldn't be hamstrung yeah precisely Yeti yet whose regulation yes that's the
best phrase you can use a law unto himself
yeah it's not the center to use but it's very very precise what she meant
now what about the last of the four traditions that i mentioned that of
ancient Greece he is
it's worth remembering in this context that he did start out life as a classic
scholar yes is cleansing he knew
asian please and became deeply critical that you have the whole tradition
deriving from Socrates yes but his classic work and I think it's one of the
most remarkable works have a written on the whole problem of tragedy is
concerned with pre-socratic greece with piece of practice tragedy which for him
is a kind of golden age and the whole thing
r goes flat at the point when Europe ease and Stephanie's and and Socrates
come on the scene what happens there is that strength and goodwill and warmth
and beauty are replaced by reason are replaced by rationalizing things by the
Socratic rgrg he never forgave later so to speak for bringing up a hero whose
main qualities are those of talking everybody else into the ground now this
concern with the origins of culture which he displayed in such a rich way we
have to say and with all bound up with his notion that we remade that we make
our values because if we if human values and human culture are made by us not
given to us by God or authority outside ourselves from the whole question so we
get them where they come from becomes a fundamental one here and it's also a
fundamental 19th century concern whole concerned with origins
yes things of the origin of species down is so on with nature influenced by
Darwin yes where he said there was entered our Indian and I think the idea
is that he didn't really understand very clearly want the whole theory of the
origin of the species came to like so many 19th century figures he was always
going to study physiology going to study chemistry going to study physics but
never got around to it so I don't think that there's an awful lot of interesting
things to be said about his attitude to that but i think the main point about
origins is that again like some philosophers
like marks for instance he believes that you can determine the quality of the
product by the nature and quality of the origin this after all is very much what
r I didn't I suspect the tried but very largely from nature
well he does isn't very ready to acknowledge it now what that means is
really that the background the the genealogy of morals for instance you
created one of the titles is in fact indicative of the quality of models let
me say I don't believe this is too but I mean that is very much the 19th century
of you over and over again that you can determine the quality of a mental
product by the nature by the origin of that is at the back of it
yes and we are knowing plant sometimes they call that the genetic fallacy
that's right i don't want to go into your settings very close yes no mention
of Floyd players another question that I get to put to this program of
reevaluating values and seeing values or something that we create to meet our
needs
let nature to a psychological analysis of values in terms of the individual and
social medias didn't expect it becomes an essentially psychological it is a way
of cycle cycle psychologizing a lot of phenomenon this is perfectly correct and
indeed i think he was a very remarkable psychologist in many ways and she puts
he does not produce a system either in psychology or anything else and in that
sense he is different from fraud but he's very very similar in fact much of
an antecedent to fraud because he places a very great your emphasis upon the
unconscious there is a myth about to the effect that fried invented the
unconscious nothing could be further from the truth the unconscious has been
about since the end of the 18th century and each is one of those who use the
term and put remember synthesis on it but he does not have a layer theory of
the self the way that fri did as I say he is very very much less systematic he
disgusts systems he thinks there's something indecent
about trying to encapsulate a human being a human psyche within a systematic
account
another aspect of that is is his notion that but different modalities a
different are appropriate for different PPS that she certainly had to manage
that wouldn't be true to say well in fact you have said it is that he
distrusted rules see you thought they have strongly strongly limited the
creative yes yes he does believe that individual people are entitled to
individual things of behavior and to individual bits of knowledge this is the
most astonishing thing and also i think it was very prophetic kind of thing that
she believed that knowledge was not absolute that you that the acquisition
the pursuit of knowledge was not to be taking absolutely but that a given
civilization had its own particular implement to the kind of knowledge that
you could bear to see the emphasis and it could bear it
he didn't receive situations where knowledge would destroy the NOAA our
knowledge of nuclear missiles has become a lethal threat to asses and that is
something that needs you would raise easily and very well have a yes and he
did in fact say so we have enough about nuclear physics of course but in about
but knowledge generally you see we only have really one other theory of
knowledge apart from our own our own is that all knowledge is worth pursuing
regardless isn't yeah where the other one is the Soviet idea which goes on
know in which simply creates a system by which knowledge is socially useful and
then pursued and not pursued if it's not socially used for niches view is
somewhat similar to this he does believe that didn't civilizations destroyed in
cells and the basic the bone which all this is directed is in fact we're coming
back now to Socrates subtracted in for knowledge this this endless of this
driving force which pushes on up to this point in our discussion we've talked
about nature's critical interpretation
this basic view that up to this point in our history the models and values and
standards of Western yes have all been historically based on belief in god or
gods who gave us these values gave us these moral standards and so on would
judge us by our failure to live up to them or successively answer them and so
now he comes along he says we've lost believe in god we've lost belief in
religion that means we've lost belief in the whole foundation of our value system
and if we're to have a valid value system we've got to reevaluate it and
refund it from the bottom up and we've not really talked to some of the various
critiques individual pratiques into which this let him I now want us to move
on from this to the next stage of the discussion incense it's the obvious
question too high what where his positive values having as it were swept
everything away all the Lhasa scale
what does he know advocating that we put in its place where the answer to that is
a very simple and very complicated on both at the same time the simple answer
is B your self at the top of everything that you are too took to the hilt live
your life fully live it adventurously and all the other things which later on
come under the under the heading of in all the dial that in the humans here I
mean that essentially the be thou thyself is the major elements from it
she begins also the go-to with will towards which ethics or or to the goal
towards which ethics ought to be directed now you may ask because if
everybody is himself in himself alone
how is this to be done in a wider sphere houses to be Daniel political system and
so on the answers to that question are I'm afraid very unsatisfactory as far as
he's concerned as indeed his whole attitude towards social questions never
does get very far
now I said also that this is very very complicated precisely for this reason
because it makes
living together are living together in some kind of harmony extremely difficult
if you add to this the view that laws are after all there simply to make z
make things easy for the weak person you can see there's not very much purchase
to be got out of that breather so it is on the face of it a simple system but
basically i think that is a great deal of difficulty facing anyone who's going
to put this forward in a sense I think we can say that some of them all some of
the fascist our antics early of of the early part of this century is based to
some extent among the intellectuals at any rate on this you that you must
create your own values are but it hasn't gotten very far as you can see this
notion that you must say as he would say yes to life
yes a firm Lions be untraveled to the top of your Bend uninhibited also led
him to the view that that of course this is going to lead you into conflict with
other people but you must simply sweep the massage you must sweep away the weak
and the unable to all those who as it were getting your way
yes that of course is absolutely flat head on in conflict with Christian yes
it has but then you see you only mentioned one hopefully the other part
of it is you must also cold or it is comfortable all that is currently or
that is less than adventures within your self and if you've done that that is the
view that he puts forward inside mr. for instance if you've done that you won't
really want to be so very aggressive towards the others you will have some
understanding of their weaknesses though the understanding of the positive but
torrent understanding of weaknesses is not precisely nature's very strongly
that is based failure or yeah i mean and people of course have always been
shocked by his say they thought that what he was advocating this country to
model stand against oh yes that is . of course was that that in fact model
standards thought to be derived life to be subordinate to
yes that our nation's of truth rationality and all the rest want to
derive from my fiancé's home from the great man yet from the great man and by
the great man he meant as i already mentioned it would be one Napoleon would
be another sometimes Luther sometimes even some of the great blowjob boats
would figure is that and sometimes even subsidies would because he had the
strength of mine to carry through his own project
this supremacy of life associate self-assertion is that even truth truth
itself be subjugated to get see if there are truths which damages that in in
other words would manage our lives then we don't want yes you see we're back
again at the question of the entitlement to truth or of at what he once called
the hygiene of knowledge there ought to be some kind of Hygiene that would tell
us what kind of knowledge we may face in what kind of knowledge AR 0 we should
reject and you're quite right that truth itself in that way is subjected to this
kind of embargo to this kind of this kind of sanction that he puts forward
but she is absolutely how this is that contrary to all morality is that it
actually existed would it be true to say that nietzsche's defense if he came to
defend against criticism has been to say something like this but look the whole
civilization humanity itself if you like the Holy evolutionary process has
consisted of the strong eliminating the week able eliminating the unable the
intelligent eliminating stupid and it's only because these processes of garment
perpetually over millions of years that we have any civilization at all that we
have any humanity at all these things have create years value
yes I think that is precisely what she says and I want you would say a number
of occasions different contexts and his worry about the future is precisely that
this kind of thing will not go on that the Democratic spirit the spirit of the
bed so the of the rubberman will take over and will annihilate are all is
value but we'll put into reverse the very process that has actually created
civilization and markets but in addition to that I think we have to bear in mind
that he has a view of history which is really rather different from the view on
which your analysis was based he sees history as repeating itself
now what it means we should talk about that a little later but essentially
means is this that any historical situation
she can create and absorb and make you solve a the highest that man is capable
of creating there aren't any privileged situations that are published arrows and
and therefore any era that sees itself as capable of fully understanding or
fully creating these values should be should allow shoes should be allowed to
do that and the travelers late 19th century the early 20th century may very
well be what he calls areas of decadence in which this strength cannot be fully
realize now you mention of his doctrine that history repeats itself brings me to
what I would like to think of it the next day yes discussion and in one
country regarding his later work there are four big themes and again i think
four characters say it will help if we take them one of the time yes Ronnie is
what you might summarize under the phrase the will to power phrase which he
has popularized one is the government or translated as the Superman again an
invention of his that into our language and Runyon's this doctor new invention
of the eternal recurrence time and the fourth i would say is his notion of the
East critic understanding of life
yeah let's do with those in order that Scott let's talk first about the will to
power which one's I'm he was going to give it a title to the summation of his
life's work
yes what was this notion of his the will to power where he did solution the world
from your own special and philosopher Schopenhauer of course and he reverses
the the evaluation of that we're short my regarded the will as the source of
all evil in the world and as the source of men's unhappiness he regards it as
the strength of our of men's men strength the source of men strength and
the the
motivation are the admission to the wheel to enact watch it can act is part
of a healthy culture now the the difficulty that I think is that this
obviously brings you in conflict with other people and therefore this stage
the willpower becomes it becomes a world to self-assertion or willow two years at
user patient of the other but that's all there is to the well I think it's to be
emphasized is not overemphasize some some critics have done but it to be
emphasized that the will to power also turns itself in word that is to say it
destroys within the central or that is weak or that is comfortable or that is
are simply arm
yes part of a mans selfie nurture kind of drastic bring of oneself out to the
bar after up to up to the mud which one has created oneself in this differently
about Mark birth to my son so that their yes yes well now let's move on to the
the next of the four years the themes of his later where's Superman everybody
knows the way Sam and it was in fact nature we rented it
it's been a very much misunderstood concept being associated it with the
blonde beast of Lyrian holidays Nazi caricature because that's not what he
meant to talk more i think that is not what he meant at all
I'm i think the Superman is the man the production mean who can be produced by
any civilization
remember I said that any e any error is capable of bringing forth the maximum
values that men are capable of Superman is the man who lives all that the world
to power will secure for him lives it to the floor are is capable of are
repeating his own willing ad infinitum will already arriving at the doctrine
and the most controversial of all things the most
design your life of these use the the eternal recurrence
yes then let's get that know yet because i want us unpack the addition of the
Superman yes which has played such an enormous role and in and support in the
last hundred years
yes it's been so abused and misused by the Nazis example and it wouldn't be
true to say that what nature was actually trying to get at was the notion
of an unrepresented man
yes and if you like the fragrance and yes a man who has reevaluated his
Yahoo's yet he's not living his life according to first values was being to
the top of his bears in an interview uninhibited untraveled free spirit isn't
natural yes I think that is sales and but it would be a man who without as it
were restricting himself would naturally instinctively not do any of the things
that need to regards as evil are for instance the one category that he comes
out are unequivocally that comes out unequivocally in his system is bread
genus is what she calls his auntie mo is the original is the graduating admission
of warmth the graduate admission of our success and all these kind of things now
the Superman is one who naturally does not feel any of these things you know
the story generous spirit it is a generator is a generous spirit are yes
and I that again you see the whole notion of the christian jr a generous
spirit is not all that far from nature's purview
now let's move on to the third floor main themes and you've touched on it
already it's this notion of the eternal recurrence now i would say that if
anything of all the doctrines of nature
this is the hardest not just the people to is there but even to take seriously
having and the face it he appears to be saying that the home of history moves in
epicycles last eposide so that everything comes around again and again
and again forever so that you
my have actually sat in this studio having this conversation an humble times
before and will do so and lovable times hear about you
he merely saying that what he's really saying that and he is playing out what
might happen if you took that you seriously and I think we want to say all
to give up in our whole discussion but a great deal on his thinking is of this
experimental time and and by that I don't mean it's not serious i don't be
meted is not responsible
I don't mean that it is trivial but I do mean that hear somebody who's facing the
whole of human thought and is trying to make some simple shift with almost any
area in it and is trying out again and again with reviews out there is a saying
of his I think of it tragic saying of his in a letter where he writes I feel
as though I were in be a new in equipped as you would be being tried out by some
superior power on a little people so that is strange thing to be feeling for
somebody who's advocating the world to par and the Superman yet I think he did
genuinely feel led now he does then try out this thought and it seems to me not
so much a theory of being not so much a theory of the cosmos it seems to be a
moral theory that is to say I'm or actions are really our intentions our
thoughts should be of sexual superior kind of such a grand kind have such
generosity and Brennus about them that we should not flinch to a and be able to
be willing to repeat them over and over again
ad nauseam ad infinitum oh
so in other words you're really only saying yes tonight
yes embracing light is always says we should if you would be willing to do
that again that's what you're doing that job you had only at this
yes I think to go on very much further than that and try to produce geometrical
or mathematical equations in order to prove either the possibility or the
impossibility of the issues which has been tried has been done doesn't seem to
me to be terribly sensible apologies a huge metaphor is a huge metaphor and of
course agreed to you must be said about neech's uses of metaphors so there's
just something about it because it's very relevant
yes I think I'm we iive think we we are in the habit of taking things literally
in a way in which which doesn't make sense as far as a great many of his
taken targets and you spoke to begin with about his grand style and i think
it is an extraordinary powerful effective style ask myself ready to ride
strong i think it derives from a strange inventions strange discovery he seems to
have made of placing his discourse his language somewhere halfway between
metaphorical and literal meaning and this is something which really very few
people certainly very true german writers and have done before him he
stands entirely on his own as far as thinking is concerned you have mentioned
and we we've seen how he attacks every tradition in the west where he does find
his his speaker says is in the style and maintain and pascal and nashville for
his favorite authors and that whole effortless style i think derives a
tremendous lot from them it's not only me saying it is himself saying it and
this star which is pitched hole-free between beautiful and literal statement
is something quite extraordinary and I think unless we understand it for what
it is and we are going to mistreat him i have a petition which i think is a an
example of what i have in mind
and really talked about the terrible deprivation that she felt 19th century
people experience through what he called lordly the death of God he wrote as
follows he says rather than put with the unbearable unas of their condition men
will continue to see their shattered God and for his sake they will love the very
seconds that will among his room now we see this mixture of on the one hand
conceptual thinking I mean loneliness and Russia are abstract terms belonging
to conceptual over on the other end you got the sevens listening somewhere
through the ruins of the shattered board
well that and the refusal I think to go beyond that
in other words to write out the theory behind the metal phones i think
essentially constitutes what he's about
and it does give us the readers of problems this mix this fusion of poetry
and metaphor on the one hand it is a concept
yes hard conversations on the other yes it's a problem about how to take him
that's really an exactly what you've just been exactly this leads to the
fourth of the four years of the later philosophy we've talked now briefly
about the water power about the Superman and about his doctrine of the eternal
recurrence of time that you've just been saying about his use of metaphor the
existence of north of the form name themes in the laser which is his notion
that life is to be understood aesthetically it and I suppose the point
here is that if there's nothing outside this world no God no transcended realm
or anything then any meaning or justification that life hands must be
meaning derived from inside itself yet so that like a work of art and it's the
only meaning of work of art is what it said he gives itself
yeah he doesn't drive its meaning from outside is it is that
well that certainly is a very fair way of of of coming close to what she's
after in the very first of his books the best of it
look at the the battle tragedy he uses this phrase three times it's only as an
aesthetic phenomenon that the being of man in the world are eternally justified
it's a very complicated sentence I don't think I want to go into all the details
of it but he's saying essentially is this the greatness of the early groups
of the piece of track aids lay in that tragedy that tragedy was a way of facing
the worst aspect of human life that is its transitoriness its impermanence it's
productiveness its dependence upon forces greater than yourself and to make
of these major tale story a wonderful tragedy and this he applies in the
largest in the most cosmic possible sense and he's asking is indeed I think
Shakespeare it occasionally is asking is the whole world really to be taken
seriously or is it not a great game a great play some kind of drama played out
by we do not know who are and if there is to be a justification menu
justification is the phrase he uses which is a very dicey where to use in
this context because of course it's a judicial phrase isn't it
but if that is a justification for men being here and being what he is
maybe it is simply as part of this huge cosmic drama and a great deal of his
thought and I think of some of his most interesting and greatest thought was
precisely into rehearsing and trying to make sense of this justifies this
aesthetic justification of man now you're talking about the way metafile
and he stated considerations are fused in together substance of the report
itself and you spoke very interesting the moment or two ago about his actual
style yes and the tradition to which is created it in its turn has had invented
yes has did I instant some of the great creative writers get that he has
influenced in my introduction to get some years now
no particular field of expertise
family says is known to be in comparative literature it would be
extremely interesting i think to end this discussion with just a word or two
from you about the way nature and his writing and his philosophy of influence
creative writers since years but simply to take the three names that you
yourself mentioned wbhs the first one and it's red nature for the first time
in a very brief little excerpts translated by a man called John common
of all things it seems to be most inappropriate name for a translator of
nature and from 19 to $TIME onwards when he read him i think that is a very clear
change in the general tenor and in the attitude of yates his poetry and that
slightly some trees like this sentimental are yellow roses kind of
poetry or founders yet creates changes very much and the great poetry which is
the poetry or as he has itself causes the poetry of blood and Mama and he's
very strongly influenced by his reading of the Jedi his attempts to grasp some
of the problems that we discussed earlier on with the shorter than the
influence of any different one
it is very much in the biological spirit is in the sphere of that little detail
which I mentioned it is in the sphere of the ruthless life the life that
justifies itself
I'm and the would do drugs I think again it is the question of authenticity
now the authenticity as long as currencies it's a very different kind of
authenticity from the one that nature had in mind
in other words its social and sexual intercourse both of these are really
rather minor factors in nature but it is certain from nature through his wife
freedoms that he acquired some knowledge of me turn that he was deeply influenced
by in a very late and I think rather dreadful cry story of Lawrence's seems
to me to derive straight out of nature psychologizing of the price figure you
look on the continent of course and a low dose me
our undermine all all these people not only have been very strongly under his
influence but they acknowledged the influence throughout a string bag had a
long correspondence through a common trend with nature and so on
I think that there are immensely powerful influences but we have to bear
in mind that the aphoristic style the are tremendous attractiveness of the
metaverse the ability of the message and literally persons don't like to read
heavy books they like to read effort isms all these play very much into
reaches hand one last question professor stand i don't think we can finish our
discussion without touching on it if you say the name feature the most educated
people in the West nada is what they need anything call is the Nazis and the
Nazis seem to have appropriated nature as their philosophy in the same sort of
way as they appropriated valve is there from exile and that's had the effect
ever since of contaminating the reputation of those two genes is in the
minds of large numbers of people now is it there or is it unfair associate
future with fascism
I think you must be associated with it to some extent and fascism rather
National Socialism it was Mussolini who read him extensively who received a copy
of the collected works from the future on the burner in 1938 as a present it to
himself I think probably new phrases mean certainly your faces like the world
to power but hadn't read anything of his
and I think in some ways is this is a justifiable charge and I would put it
this way that to the extent that these part is dependent upon the intellectuals
and to the extent that the intellectuals depended upon some sort of Morris
ill-assorted ideology Nietzsche was part of it but of course at the same time I
think it should be emphasized very strong there are lots of things in him
much more important things in him which are absolute anthem out to these people
do these gangsters let's put it quite quite cleanly and
self-control and the the inward struggle of the self and the attainment of valid
of of generosity for instance the end and greatness of the kind that we have
described have nothing whatever to do with the kind of murders ideologist that
came into being in the third rice and among the and and early on
among the italian and it's quite plain from the fact that you yourself have
devoted so much of your life to studying nature and writing the bathroom that you
think this is a hugely valuable imitates nevertheless yes I said they think it is
an immensely our brand are taking providing we do not go to it with some
expectation of getting a panacea on how to live right but provided we go to it
with a view to finding out what human beings can do what the human possibility
is what the being of man is capable of understanding and creating for within
itself
thank you very much professor step thank you Andrew
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