Blast from the past. I took some classes with him at the University of Chicago back in 1981. Sounds the same, perhaps a bit more self-assured. Great teacher.
@@johnstewart7025 i remember the time when in the middle of a class on Hegel's "Phenomenology" he got disgusted, said something about not understanding the book and walked out of his own lecture.
This Man understands his subject completely, that's why he lectures without looking at notes all the time, like most semi-lecturers these days, who are just reading texts. Great lecture!
Off course. Modern teachers steal glances secretly on the notes while teaching their students. Higher educational ground is sliding, and so less of it is standing solid. Some new thinking be provoked by teachers not in students but in themselves.
This reminds me of that Mitchell and Webb skit "Wavy Arms," where the historian is so animated explaining WW2 aviation, that they have to eventually tie his arms behind his back.
Thank you! I rewatch these series from time to time. It gave me a lot of insight for reading Nietzsche, and i enjoy the clearity of how you talk with your hands!
- Philosophy is not about a certain set of questions that everyone has to answer, because the questions change over time. They are dependent on historical context - what was going on makes certain questions arise. Also the societal role of a philosopher changes during time and varies depending on historical context - best philosopher is the not the one who has better answers to questions, but the one who asks better questions/ questions that have never been asked before. He himself asks what’s the value of morality and what’s the value of truth
- context of late 19th century that made Nietzsche ask about truth: the decadents and the loss of vitality (nihilism). Something is good/ valuable if it has vitality, and by that he doesn’t mean birth rate, but cultural productivity
- philosophy doesn’t have to ask profound questions, they can be mundane - dichotomies don’t exclude each other, but implicate in each other ( hot doesn’t exclude cold)
- vitality is not about physical health, but about self valuation and self affirmation - you can only evaluate something by differentiation. Something is better as opposed to something (if it exists cold there must exist hot). Things are something in relation to another thing, you can only value in relation. - 3 Ways of valuation: Passively or reactively valuing, valuing and producing something better, and valuing and producing something that creates new valuation standards (something different) - Nietzsche wants to connect the 3 ways: you can only evaluate (like or dislike something) if you create a different thing afterwards. The only good society is the one that can produce new things (e.g. new art) - Pathos os distance: social egalitarianism is decadent because it doesn’t have room for differentiation (tension). Social hierarchy (slaves and masters that despise the slaves) is needed to create artistic tension and let new things be produced
Well thats a great speech but that professor's is so intensive in his moves, running left and right all time, like he s ready to explode :D he makes me nervous.
@@dickschwanzstein1789 I think Jordan Peterson misunderstands Nietzsche's writing from its historical and philological make up and thus misinterprets Nietzsche to be a philosopher that actually fits in the with his platonic view of truth, because he takes Nietzsche to be so serious about the truth that he was truthful and Nietzsche was truthful but thruthful about the place of myth and lie and is not the philosopher who secretly cared to rescue truth.
@@dickschwanzstein1789 I also don't know how Peterson can read 45 minutes of a passage of Nietzsche and believe Jesus is The Western Heroic ideal. If Peterson was so concerned with truth, he would at least acknowledge Christ is no more a western ideal than Diyonsus and given the myth of Christ is based on the Jewish incorporation of Diyonsus and was the first God to die and that God dies often again and again. You'd figure the guy wouldn't be so sad about God and look towards his own meaning and not develop drug addictions.
@@mpcc2022 Why couldn’t things about Jesus have become aspects of our culture over the past 2000 years? There are many things we may not be aware of as defining western civilization, but which are. Monogamy, for example, is something people in the west simply accept as the default option, whereas in some other (e.g., Muslim) parts of the world, people would for example think it’s a shame to only have one wife if you can have a few. We can’t explain why we feel monogamy is how things are supposed to be, but we do all feel that way. So it’s something that we’ve internalized as a culture and it may very well ultimately come from Christianity. I think a person can agree with Nietschze on many fronts (e.g., God is dead), but also agree with what I said above about monogamy stemming from Christianity. So I’m curious what makes you feel that what Jordan Peterson says about Christianity and Nietzsche is inconsistent. Maybe I don’t understand you well enough
@@dickschwanzstein1789 I don't necessarily don't disagree with your analysis; however, it's a general lack of an understanding of human prehistory and what it means to be human. For instance the roots of Monogamy pair bonding and the emotions that accompany pair bonding such as jealousy and actions like mate guarding are as old as Homo Erectus and is not particularly unique to our species and serial monogamy can be observed as old as hunter gatherers. Furthermore, institutional marriage is as old as agriculture and civilization particularly with the Sumerians which predateds Christianity by a several thousand years and marriage as the legal institution as we understand was an invention of the Roman elite which again predates Christianity. Yes, there is variance in what constitutes legal marriage from society to society across human history, but pair bonding/monogamy can be observed in some form across all of human history and we really don't know how old it is with Homo Erectus and Neanderthal being our best guess. I can explain why it seems natural to westerners, because the emotion of love only seemed to evolve for pair bonding and raising children and this can be observed in some of our earliest ancestors. It's just a myth that monogamy stems from Christianity. Nothing stems from any major religion but the emotions, motivations, drives, and instincts of the human animal. Nietzsche and Jung seemed to understand this in a way Peterson can't because of his romantic interest in Christianity. Further Pan was the first Western God to die, then Baccas or Dyinous, then Yahweh, too add, a dying God is a mythological theme older than the west and Christianity such that either Peterson is ignorant or cherry picks in his analysis of mythological history. Peterson just seems to be a very good psychologist. His philosphical and mythological accumen seems to be lacking. Yet, because the average person doesn't read widely in philosophy, theology, history, and mythology he seems a sage.
Wow, what a achievement! What a lecture! He makes the old Nietzsche thoroughly modern and understandable. Democracy is a dead avenue and will soon or later turn into decay and decadency. We see it now around us! Thanks prof. Geuss for the lecture...great. Thanks a lot.
One thing missing from the lecture is at the end: anyone in any part of the hierarchy is capable of creating new values. N. praises the jews for doing just that even though they were the slave class. He hates their values, sure, but he praises them for enacting valuation.
around 47:00 Can someone help me understand the difference between Nietzche's third type of valuation (e.g. Bethooven's late string quartets) vs. producing a new genre? I thought valuation means to evaluate something existing thing. The fact that Nietzche compares an act of evaluation and producing new genres/arts seem strange to me. Ok I just finished watching the whole lecture. Did Nietzche mean that creativitiy, the ability to go beyond preexisting boundaries/rules of a form of art/thing, is the prerequisite of deep valuation/evaluation? In other words, the ability to produce new things is the requirement of the deepest level of valuating another thing in that domain?
At the end he implied that the first two lectures provided a start (which as Guess explains Nietzsche might not have "preferred") but will just ultimately allow the components of the Geneology that Geuss wants to focus on to shine though in the subsequent lectures.
can anyone explain what he means in the last part of the video? I dont completely understand why Nietzsche says we need a hierarchical society and therefor slaves...?
Was a Nietschean student at 18. Took Nihilism seriously. Ended up a student of VEDANTA, 40 years later. For students who are serious, read HANS KUNG's book : DOES GOD EXIST? The fundamental question of philosophy is: IS THERE A MEANING? You can't prove God, or disprove. If there is a God, 1 life, or many to grow? That is the question, my friends. Vedanta is my truth, at age 59 After much false searching. BON CHANCE, AMIS
Probably has something to do with Nietzsche's idea of slave morality and it not having the right valuation to produce truly great works of art? I don't really buy it buy yeah a slave probably cannot become Nietzsche's idea of genius. If they could, they would no longer be a slave.
It’s a shame Nietzsche hadn’t actually read Hegel; around 13:20, the prof damn near uses Hegel’s precise notion of historicity as the counterpoint to Hegel’s (incorrectly) presumed notion of historicity. I suppose it’s a shame the prof apparently hasn’t read him either.
Professor Geuss could have said that to ask the question about the value of morals or truth implies foremostely the presumption that there is no God (or the summum bonum as the ultimate source of morals and truth). I cannot see any new idea in the notion that valuating is in fact a form of differentiation or measurement or comparison. That has always been the case. For instance when idealists compare things with ideals.
Absolutely marvellous. I just hope I can muster the fortitude to ovecome Guess's dreadful delivery, the ranting and the screaming. I imagine those students in the front row are being sprayed by saliva. Please professor take a tanquilizer.
a person who comments like this, basing it off a dudes teaching mannerisms, which many seem to enjoy, is the actual "type of guy that thinks his way is the only way and thinks that he's waaayyyy smarter than he is ..."
I was hoping to find out why Nietzsche felt there was a problem in his time with loss of vitality. I have often wondered what made him so certain there was this terrible sickness in this time - what exactly it was that he was railing at. Shame that this professor does not find this worth explaining or looking into, as it is the thing that would really help me and I think others. His dismissive joke about killing non-Europeans made me realise this professor finds displaying his own values more than important than understanding Nietzsche. So I've stopped watching and am looking elsewhere for answers.
Or getting into a whole sensitive discussion about colonialism that would detract from the point was worth hand-waiving for the purposes of remaining topical. >.> so sensitive, you're going to take a fraction of a sentence and psychoanalyze him with it. lol people that do this drive me crazy because they and their inability to give others the benefit of the doubt are exactly whats wrong with the world. youre enacting the thing youre accusing him of doing.
