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Johnathan Bi on Nietzsche and the Validity of the Ad Hominem (Episode 143)
769 Plays3 months ago
Caleb Ontiveros speaks with Johnathan Bi, an entrepreneur and philosopher, about Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Stoicism and egalitarianism.
The conversation begins with Jonathan sharing his personal journey from STEM to philosophy, setting the stage for a deep dive into Nietzsche's challenging ideas. They explore Nietzsche's opposition to Stoic egalitarianism and his concept of "higher men." The discussion delves into the psychology behind moral beliefs and value systems, examining how Nietzsche's insights can be applied to critically examine our own philosophical commitments.
(01:50) From Hating Humanities to Loving Philosophy
(06:06) Silicon Valley Detour
(11:01) The Life of Action VS Contemplation
(19:58) Philosophy as a Way Of Life
(27:43) Nietzsche's Challenge To Stoicism
(31:04) The Equality Illusion
(39:20) Nietzsche on Epictetus
(50:04) Nietzsche For Every Day Life
(56:31) Why Ad Hominems Win & Metaethics
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Transcript
Introduction of Jonathan B.
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. In this conversation, I speak with Jonathan B. Jonathan is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and student of The Great Books.
Philosophy and the Life of Action vs. Contemplation
00:00:13
Speaker
He's recently begun releasing an excellent series of lectures along with book notes and interviews at greatbooks dot.io, which I highly recommend. We talk about his story, philosophy as a way of life, the life of action versus the life of contemplation.
Nietzsche's Philosophy Challenged
00:00:34
Speaker
And then in the second half of the conversation, we dive into Frederick Nietzsche, the subject of his first lecture. Jonathan and I talk about how Nietzsche challenges stoicism and stoic ethics.
Nietzsche's Critique and Defense
00:00:53
Speaker
He defends the validity of the ad hominem,
00:00:57
Speaker
in egalitarianism and fundamentally rejects Stoicism's answer to the question of the meaning of life. He's a challenging philosopher, no doubt, but he's one of the greats and someone we can learn a lot ah from. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Stick around for the second half and if you want to learn more ah about Nietzsche, follow some of the resources we mentioned in the conversation and especially check out Jonathan's lecture and interviews with Nietzsche scholars. Here is our conversation.
Jonathan B.'s Journey from STEM to Philosophy
00:01:39
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros and today I am speaking with Jonathan Bee. Thanks so much for joining. I'm excited to be here. Well, let's start with this broad question by way of intro. Now, what's your story?
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah, so I grew up hating the humanities. let let like Let's begin there. um ah So I grew up in Beijing, born and raised. um And I think this is even more true in the Chinese system, but it's already true in the West, which is that all the smart kids are funneled into STEM. And this was sort of accelerated in in China. um Sometimes I like to think that Beijing is the most Western city in the world. If by Western, you mean the modern West. And I think one of the things is its emphasis on STEM education. um So I was funneled into math and I was, you know, subtly throughout my my my life ah told that a only people who can't really do math are, you know, bother themselves with philosophy and God forbid poetry and literature. So I grew up a competitive math guy, competed in the Canadian Olympia, got a full ride to Columbia to study computer science, ah dropped out record time one semester in to build a ah startup, startup crash and burn.
00:02:52
Speaker
And as any good engineer, I wanted to figure out what what had gone wrong. And I quickly realized that it had nothing to do with the actual execution of the thing, or or rather that wasn't the core issue. The core issue was I didn't really want to build the company. The core issue was that I was pulled to doing something that I thought was cool, that I did because of that, but then I was lying to myself of why I was doing it. So, you know, retrospectively, I called it the Zuckerberg complex, where I think Peter Thiel has done too good of a job convincing ah CS grads and in in in ah elite schools to drop out and do a startup and right away where to the point where now I think more people are ah have the sort of false positive than the false negative that they are dropping out when they shouldn't be.
00:03:34
Speaker
rather than the person who should be dropping out, but hasn't. And I was definitely one of them.
Turning to Philosophy for Answers
00:03:39
Speaker
And so this led me to philosophy because this was an internal problem. This was a psychological problem. And I wanted the API document, if you will, of human nature. And I tried meditation. I tried ah psychedelics therapy. um And I got the philosophy by way of stoicism. um So so the the the thinker that I really got into was with Gerard um But one of my first introductions was I think many people's first introduction introductions Marcus really is his meditation
00:04:10
Speaker
um And so that book really showed me the power of philosophy, even if I ended up going away from that, um and it sent me down this rabbit hole. Quickly, I realized that this was clearly the most important thing that one could spend their time thinking about and studying. And um I basically finished my CS degree year super early in my second year, and I just went full on philosophy for another two years. um And by the point of graduation, I wanted to be a philosophy PhD, but like you, you know we were talking before, we start we started recording about your your journey in the academy and how you realized you didn't want to be a professor. I kind of realized I didn't want to be a grad student because I was looking at the grad students and
00:04:55
Speaker
They were all kind of depressed, um like closer especially the closer they got to the job market, and for obvious reasons. right it's like It's a crazy job market. My friend is at Harvard Political Theory, one of the best departments, and they struggle to get jobs. right And when they do, it's not you know big city. You're going back to New York, NYU. It's some it's indiana rural Indiana or something like that right for a few years. And so, um my interest in philosophy has always been very personal and practical, which is why, I suppose, Aurelius and the Stoics and the ancients really resonate with me. Because they they're all that all of their, even their theoretical meditations, right? What is the nature of the universe? What is the logos? How does it connect to the world? It's very deeply rooted in practical questions, right? The ultimate question is, how should I live?
00:05:41
Speaker
And I suppose because of that reason, because I had that, I think, very unusual reason why people would want to go to grad school these days, um I realized grad school at the time was probably not for me.
Building a Startup and Philosophical Realizations
00:05:51
Speaker
And here's the calculus, which is, you know, if I'm doing this for a good life, but apparently everyone who does this is miserable, then then then why would I do this? And so I wanted to keep on doing philosophy, and I realized that I had to carve my own path if I wanted to do it in the way that I wanted to do it. um And so I needed to establish myself first. So very begrudgingly, I would say, I went into startups. I started a company with a gentleman by the name of Joe joe Lonsdale. I was on the founding team. He was the sort of chairman, founder, ah executive chairman.
00:06:22
Speaker
And it was just a company to make money. It was to make money, to build my reputation, and I was very clear about that. And you can already see philosophy doing a number between these two experiences, where initially I was lying to myself about why I was doing startups, and then I was just straight up like, I want to do philosophy. I need money to sustain myself. I need a network in the world to navigate. That's what I'm doing here as a stepping stone. And I was very clear to both the people that I friend the company with, as well as to myself. So the company started doing working really well um And I was supposed to stay there for a better half of a decade and I ended up leaving three years in and this was last year Just when the the company started working and you know, I joked all my Silicon Valley friends i'm I'm doing the exact opposite of what you should be doing right when a company starts working when you start hitting that inflection point You should stay but but but I left and the calculus was you know, you know, I don't have any of the any of the money now It's in private stock, but maybe this could make me financially free
00:07:19
Speaker
And so, you know, Weber and his Protestant ethic says, if you double the pay of a Catholic, they work half as much. If you double the pay of a Protestant, they work they work more. ah Because for one, money is a satisfier. The other money is a maximizer. And for me, money is a satisfier. So I feel like i I could potentially have hit the number with the company. you know I'm not going to see it for probably another decade. um And I just wanted to spend all of my time doing what I think is most important, which has always been philosophy. And that has only been reassured when I was building the company. um And partially because the company was doing so well and the people that I was building the company were but with were the best, right? so because Because if I was building a company that wasn't working and I was building it with B tier players and I'd be like, well, maybe I just didn't build the right company. But because this company was doing so well, I kind of realized that you know even the best case is is, in my perspective, a lot lot less interesting than doing philosophy. I'll get to the end of the story here. so
00:08:18
Speaker
I was thinking about how I wanted to do philosophy and the the grad school was again my my sort of top my top choice that I was looking at.
Constraints of Academia vs. Self-directed Philosophy
00:08:28
Speaker
My old undergraduate professors warned me against it. They warned me against entering into the academy. They said, you know, if you can establish yourself in the world, you can do it on your own terms. That's the best way. And it really came down to what I wanted to learn. So in grad school, as you well know, um you have probably two years of coursework. That's quite broad. And then you're really forced to specialize. right And ah for better or for worse, ah humanities have taken on the STEM model where you're expected to contribute to the scholarship. But to contribute to the scholarship,
00:08:58
Speaker
the the magnitude of that contribution or the quality of that contribution is often not as important in the academy when you're looking for a job but as the fact that you've contributed in a prestigious journal, especially. And what what a lot of people end up doing is focusing on these topics that don't really interest them, but it's so narrow and defined that they're able to become a leader in it. um and And I kind of wanted the the opposite education where, you know, I went to Columbia and Columbia famously has this great books education and And I very much wanted to continue that. you know I haven't read ah Plato's Republic, cover to cover. I read about three quarters of it. I haven't read Phenomenology, cover to cover. like And to me, that just sounds that just seems like I'm illiterate. you know like I'm li i'm ah completely illiterate, and and I want to be not illiterate. um
00:09:45
Speaker
and so I had the idea of this project and I had this idea because I had published a seven-part lecture series on Gerard and you know I was just doing this for fun it was 10 hours I'm like no one's gonna listen to this other than the super nerds like myself but but it had I think you know 200,000 views or something as of today um And so I realized that as we're discovering right now, the audio format, the long-form content is ah is a serious way that people are willing to engage.
Public Intellectual Work and Long-form Content
00:10:10
Speaker
And that was always the concern with doing public intellectual work for me, which is I was looking at all the public intellectuals, the books that they were writing, especially tweets, and it just wasn't what I wanted to do. But I think in long-form content,
00:10:22
Speaker
There really is a very niche but a substantive audience who's very interested in doing this stuff. And so, yeah, what I decided to do was um raise raise at nonprofit money working with this 501c3 nonprofit ah to fund the production of these lectures and interviews. So every six weeks, I spend about six to eight weeks with one of these books. I try to read about three or four of the top secondary literature. I interview to two of the four, probably, books, the authors of the books that I read. And yeah and then I force myself to give a two-hour lecture on the book. And and that's my way of of going through the canon. Yeah, that's awesome. Living the life.
00:11:03
Speaker
um ah I didn't realize you had this plan to begin with. So you thought about, yeah I want to live the philosophical life, whatever that amounts to. And in order to do that, I'm going to need to you know get some amount of financial freedom, essentially. Is that is that right? that That is I don't want to make it sound too deterministic I think I was open to the to to to letting the active life pull me but it just didn't pull me um so so it wasn't so much I know building startups is going to be the second best option to do what I really wanted to do it was i I know I want to do philosophy.
00:11:44
Speaker
um But I think I didn't even realize at the time the extent to which I wanted to do philosophy. um You know, one of my um mentors and friends from undergrad, I asked him, so how did you know if you wanted to be a philosopher? And he said, um only when you know, you can't do anything else. And I think it's very wise why he framed it in the negative, right? Because you would think you frame it in the positive. You do philosophy when you really want to do philosophy. But the rewards of doing philosophy, especially for people who have the capacity to do philosophy, are so minimal in the worldly sense, right money, status, prestige, outcomes, that you should you can only do it if it's the only thing you can do. And that's why he framed it in the negative. In fact, this is this is Plato's point in the Republic, where he says why there are so few philosophers, so few genuine philosophers.
00:12:32
Speaker
which is, he says, if you have the capacities to actually do philosophy, the act of life is going to pull you. People are going to want you to bring into politics and do the ah all all these different things. And so if you have the capacity to do philosophy, you know, you you're you're probably, there's it's probably going to be a lot lot more attractive options in town. And so so that's the only correction I would make, which is I knew I really wanted to do philosophy and it was probably one of my top pursuits in life, but I didn't realize the extent extent that I want to focus on it singularly. um And and that was that was the change. I will say one more thing. um I don't want this to come off as ah as a negative against like the Academy, but just a misfitting of what I want to do right now and the Academy. In fact, I'm i'm actually thinking about um still doing grad school sometime when I do want to focus on a specific topic for a few years. yeah
00:13:18
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think that advice is sound, especially when you're thinking about the academic life. ah for For me personally, I thought about grad school. um I decided to go to grad school because I couldn't see myself doing anything else. um Exactly that. And then as soon as I went to grad school, I realized, oh, this is what being in grad school is like, I think I would actually enjoy some other ventures in life. But the- We have to try to know. Yeah, that's right. um I suppose parts of
Balancing Active and Contemplative Life
00:13:49
Speaker
the philosophical life still always call one back, as it were.
00:13:53
Speaker
One question I was curious to ask is, yeah how does the life of action for you, how did that impede ah contemplation, philosophical activity, apart from just the obvious answer that you're spending a lot of time making things happen? like right but Because I know some people some people think you know it's it's in the practical where I am closest to reality. right You'll sometimes hear here lines like this. so So how do you think about that? That's a great question. And as you know, this is one of the the key questions that philosophy tries to wrestle with. right For Aristotle, what's the better life, the the contemplative or the active? Obviously, as you know, the the Stoics believe that the two could be synthesized um in a very powerful way. And then you have people who think you know you need to pull the two lives as far apart as possible from from each other because they they corrupt each other, right?
00:14:47
Speaker
I definitely think there's many ben benefits, even if you want to do contemplation to enter into active life. In fact, perhaps the people that I look up to the most are people who have had, quote unquote, real world experience, whether that's Socrates, you know, fighting, ah having been but been a soldier and participating in active life once, whether that's Montaigne, right? and And his sort of colorful life. um So I do think that's definitely important. So so I don't want to frame it as ah these two lines are contradictory. um And in fact, I think they're so synergistic that I keep many parts of the active light of the active life to to today, even in this project that I'm doing. right For one, I have to promote these lectures. I have to go out there. I have to fundraise. I have to sell these lectures effectively. So I'm not just doing scholarship. And I think the scholarship is better for not just doing scholarship. So so I definitely don't want to um make it seem too contradictory. and
00:15:41
Speaker
um But for me, I think the question was just where my priority was. you know As you know, when you're building a startup, it's all or nothing. And the outcomes are so exponential that each unit of additional effort you add into the startup can be the difference between you know a multi-billion dollar success or complete failure. um And when you have that singular devotion, You know, it's it's really hard to to make time, just timewise, but it also changes your your disposition, right? Your ability to digest these texts and participating in active life also changes you and and your priorities as well. So it's more it's more like the singular devotion that I think was was was the issue for me. um I do see myself re-entering into active life. I don't know in what shape or form.
00:16:25
Speaker
um But I think when I do enter it, it'll be more perhaps on my own terms that can make more time for philosophy and contemplation. But right now, so so yeah, so I don't want this to be a comment, a general comment about the incompatibility of the active and contemplative, but probably for that exact of that specific scenario, as well as what I want to do now. Now I want to mostly just singularly devote myself to reading and studying. Yeah, I suppose you have that idea of seasons that it seems like many great figures used. Seneca writes his moral letters when he's been exiled from the life of action from the court of Nero. Cicero is the same, essentially.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, and as you as you know, Cicero um felt that philosophy was secondary to the act of life, but of course he he was one of the most well well well-written and well-spoken Roman writers and and orators, and it's because he was sidelined that he felt that the only way to help the Republic was was through his writing. right um Yeah. And so the season's idea really pulls me. And you know one story that brings to mind is an experience I had. so So one of the schools of philosophy I really got into in college was Buddhism. um And i was I went to practice in this monastery in Nepal. It was just like a summer school. I didn't shave my head bald and anything like that. And I had met this Hindu scholar.
00:17:48
Speaker
And what she told me was, it was my first time learning about Hinduism, was that Hinduism, like Buddhism, shares the same end of trying to escape this world, right? Trying to escape the cycle of samsara. But then it's very curious because compared to Buddhism, at least the earlier Theravada schools of Buddhism, Hinduism seems to give the opposite prescriptions, right? So Theravada Buddhism, you would, for example, meditate on a beautiful woman's body as a rotten corpse to detach yourself. Hinduism seems to do the exact opposite. It prescribes festivities and not orgies, but but like indulgences, right? And when I asked the scholar why, she said, you know, one reading of this is that it's satirical.
00:18:32
Speaker
that you're supposed to accelerate through the base or desires to see for yourself to have so much pleasure, so to speak, to see for for yourself the limitations of that life so that you can quickly accelerate to the next.
Existential Accelerationism and Practical Philosophy
00:18:44
Speaker
And, you know, looking back in my life, I started calling this sort of existential accelerationism. um That's how entering the active life was to me. ah For example, money did pull me a lot more before entering into active life. And then both getting closer to it and seeing people who have a lot of it and and fundamentally not changing their lives, that did a number on me in the same way that the Hindu scholar ah suggested that Hinduism would do for a hedonist, for example.
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, um and as as you know, Hinduism is famous for this stage of life, right? First you're, I can't remember what it is. First you're a warrior, then you're a king, and then you're, I don't know, a wise leader, and then eventually you you're're you're you' monastic, right? Eventually you enter into the Buddhist life. and To me, that sounds that seems a lot more interesting. It's a lot more fuller life and a lot less extreme and frankly, damaging than Buddhism, right? That the Buddha just abandoning his family and his kingdom and his wife and his children to go directly a practice in the woods. But yeah, that's that's a tangent. Yeah, that is always um an interesting
00:19:45
Speaker
fact about the most compassionate person that the compassion starts with, begins with, abandonment, a kind of ah heat exploration. abandon yeah Exactly. Yeah, for for oneself, in a way. So it sounds like one of the main things driving your project and our project at Stowe as well is this pursuit, exploration of philosophical activity, understood as thinking about you know philosophy as a way of life, you know something where you're thinking about what is the idea of the good life and then
00:20:23
Speaker
how do you achieve it? Does that does that map on to everything about it? Very much so. Today, what still motivates me are very practical questions, like what I should be doing with my life. The one that pulls me the most, frankly, I just released a lecture on this, an interview on this with Fred Neuhauser, my old professor. um is how do we deal with glory? How do we deal with our desire for recognition? That's something that pulls me a lot. I care a lot about what other people think about me. I don't think anyone in doing content can can, if they tell you otherwise, they're probably lying.
00:20:58
Speaker
um And how do we wrestle with that? um you know and And I tried abandoning all of it. I tried to stop caring. It didn't work. um And then long story short, the answer was there's guardrails you need to put in, um but ultimately it's a good thing, winning recognition. But anyways, that's a whole different tangent, but that's just an example. of the type of questions that motivate me, which is that that they're they're deeply practical, which, by the way, is is why I think, ah you know, to toot my own horn a bit, why the lectures and interviews have done as well as they done and in the first month, at least, is because
00:21:32
Speaker
The way, especially this analytic way that we're taught philosophy these days is deeply impersonal. It's it's it's ah scientific, right right? In a way that I don't think philosophy should be. um I think philosophy for me has always been my problems. Like I have this problem and whenever I tried to solve it, it has nothing to do with wanting to read philosophy. It all has has everything to do with wanting to solve the problem. But for me to solve the problem, it turns out yeah you have to go like a few layers in and then suddenly you find yourself reading Cott. Right? And so for me, it's always the practical and it's still the practical that pulls me. Now the practical will sometimes in the case of Buddhism, for for example, it pulled me into like a metaphysical rabbit hole of trying to understand them or a brief survey of Buddhist meic meta metaphysics.
00:22:18
Speaker
because they claim that it's a false understanding of metaphysics. The notion of emptiness is what leads to suffering, right? And so, but it but it begins with with a practical, it begins with life. and And this has to do with the author that I launched with, which is Nietzsche. Nietzsche says that One of the things that Nietzsche was rebelling from, you know, Nietzsche was one of the academic superstars, right? He was one he was he was trained as a philologist. He was given the youngest professorship at the University of Bonn. His first book, Birth of Tragedy, came out to crickets, kind of, and then he just sort suddenly stopped writing to the academics. And this was was one of the critiques I think he had.
00:22:53
Speaker
of the Academy this time a about at his time that I think has only gotten worse in our time, which is the sort of scientifically of the humanities, the objectification of it. And for him, Nietzsche always said that he wanted to do philosophy from the perspective of life. right And I think what we've been discussing today is not too far from that, which is, what do I need to know to live well? Which is obviously a deeply ah stoic stuff thought of as well. yeah yeah Yeah, I do want to, we should get into Nietzsche, but I think you're exactly right that ah part of what makes your project compelling, why people are interested in Stoicism, existentialism, Buddhism, other philosophies of life is that they do connect with their real concerns. And I think that there's something to be said for you know the virtues of rigorous analytic
00:23:40
Speaker
logical scientific philosophy. But hopeful you know there's if you want to think about one of the cardinal virtues of moderation, that style of thought needs to be tempered. Or or rather, I think the this the priority needs to be proper, where where that that sort of logic is is in service of answering these questions and clarifying these questions and not in service of sort of perpetuating sort of academic games. In fact, my favorite contemporary scholars are all scholars who take an analytical approach ah to effectively continental, and and here i um I think the continental school is a bit closer to this sort of practical concerns that we've that we've been discussing, like existentialism. um my My professor, who I'll bring up again, Fred Newhauser, is a great example of this, where you know the question of how do we deal with recognition right is a deeply practical one, but but he treats it in the most analytic and rigorous of ways.
00:24:34
Speaker
um And in fact, the the scholar who I index the most heavily on to prepare my Nietzsche lecture, Brian Leiter, does the exact same, where you know he he's ah he treats it in a very analytic way, but these questions are extremely, extremely gripping and not what that popular analytic guy would say. What does it feel like to be a bat? What does it mean to be a bat? is just I don't think anyone's ah really googling that term anytime soon. And I'll make one last point here, which is, ah This is actually how I think about content distribution when it comes to ah philosophical content online, which is the idea of Diotima's ladder, right? So this is the famous analogy um used in Plato's symposium when he talks about love. And the story is essentially there's a ladder of goods and the the philosopher, the wise man, the person who's in pursuit of wisdom,
00:25:24
Speaker
is supposed to go up this hierarchy of goods. Maybe not so different from that Hindu accelerationist model I was i was just talking about. And so initially when we talk thinking about love, it's love in one being, right? So it's, this girl is extremely beautiful. And then it becomes, oh no, that there's a lot of common similarities between all these women who I find beautiful. And then, you know, you you go higher and higher and it eventually becomes the form of beauty. And that's how I think about ah distributing content, the type of content that we're filming today, as well as my own interviews and lectures, which is you need to meet people where they are. If people like beautiful women, that's what you've got to give them. and But you can't just give them that. Otherwise, it would just be pornography. You need to also give them that, but lead them up. right So there's two mistakes to make. One is the ah classic think boy Twitter guys mistake, which is to give people what they want and stay there.
Engaging Audiences with Accessible Hooks
00:26:15
Speaker
But the other mistake is to start from the form of beauty. And then you're just kind of no one's no one's interested. And so the the way I think about content distribution is is that, even within a lecture, even within an interview, the thumbnail and the title of a lecture or interview often has very little to do with the actual context of the interview. But it asks a provocative question that people are already asking in their heads or will get their attention. And then the introduction is is it leads them up a little bit more. It's still not the essence. And then eventually, you know as as you get to closer, closer to the end of the interview, um you get to more of the truth, quote, unquote.
00:26:56
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, there's always those, I think if you think about teaching any, you can come at it from a skill analogy as as well, thinking about teaching some skill. Initially, you want the beginner to get some of the basics right, whether it's some martial arts move or ordinary craft, and you're not going to be making the mistakes either of staying at the basics, being all sloppy, or you know noting every single mistake being impeccably precise from the beginning, I think is another ah two other kinds of of mistakes you might see when when teaching generally or when producing philosophical content, either that form that stays at some kind of engaging, entertaining sloppiness or something that is far too precise to be abstract to get anywhere.
00:27:41
Speaker
Exactly, right. Yeah. Well, well I wanted to wanted to talk to you about Nietzsche especially, subject of your first lecture, which is on Nietzsche's on the genealogy of morality.
Nietzsche's Critique of Stoicism
00:27:56
Speaker
I think it's a good place to start. We've talked about Nietzsche before on the podcast. I think he's one of the greats and he's an excellent critic of Stoicism, especially because he comes to philosophy with, I think, just important ends into mind, you know, questions about how to live, how to think, and so on. So I think we we should dive dive into him, you know, paying special attention to where he challenges some common stoic and I think generally common modern ideas. How's that sound? That sounds great. But the one thing that I'll say, um as I've described the but but the
00:28:35
Speaker
impulse of my project is that I am not a native scholar by any means. In fact, I am not even really an expert at a PhD level of this book. you know You should be studying this book and reading all the secondary literature. for For a few years to to really call yourself an expert there. I've spent only probably two months with the book I've read what I think to be the most interesting secondary I've interviewed a few guys and that's about it So um so most of what I say will be limited to the genealogy of morality Which is that the book I know best about Nietzsche and even then I'm gonna give you one specific interpretation Which is the closest one is it's Brian lighter. He's the one that I really really indexed off of
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, excellent. ah you know Of course, I'm no Nietzsche scholar either. I have a pretty good grounding in the Stoics. And I think one one should always be careful with Nietzsche since even when one gets to the experts, of course, there's oh, yeah, how many niches there are, how on it's a lot to read and so on. Yeah, I mean, one of the funny things of reading Brian Leiter, which again, was one of today's top Nietzsche scholars is just the polemic nature of his texts when he talks about the other Nietzsche scholars. It's Oh, well,
00:29:47
Speaker
Walter Kaufman, the guy who introduced Nietzsche to the English-speaking world, was trying to make him a liberal so that he would be watered down and acceptable. And then Alexander Nehemas, which is this famous Princeton ingenuity and is doing way too much of a postmodern reading. So it's a complete knife fight. you're You're totally right. Yeah, that's right. Even more so even more so than than than other thinkers. And that's probably be due to the way that Nietzsche writes, right? Which is probably a good place to start with Nietzsche. Because he writes not in analytic form, he's famous for his aphorisms, almost like tweets, right? Where they're super punchy, they're there are almost always wrong if you if you interpret them literally and uncharitably, but they're wrong in extremely, extremely revealing ways.
00:30:28
Speaker
and they capture the essence of statements. And part of the reason he writes in that way, not in the analytic way, is because of this practical concern that, again, he shares with the Stoics, which is what philosophy from the perspective of life. Yeah. Yeah. I think Nietzsche, i mean some of the Stoics, they would probably be the best performing philosophers on on Twitter, along with maybe some of the famous aphorists. Yeah, LaRouche Foucault would be another good one. Some of the French moralists would be great, but definitely not definitely not the the German idealists, that's for sure. yeah wait Wait until Elon increases the character limit to 3,000. Right, right. So one ah challenge that you know Nietzsche ah throws at us um from taking it describing it from the Stoic perspective is that you know the Stoics were early egalitarian. They insisted that
00:31:21
Speaker
humans were equal in a crucial respect. You know, we have this ability to reason, and fundamentally that makes us, you know, in one of the most important features of the universe, we're the same. we We share in this ability to reason that many of the Stoics will describe as divine. You know, the ancient Stoics saw this as a fragment of a divine that we have that every adult human has. um So Stoicism was open for everyone from the emperor Marcus Aurelius to the slave Epictetus. Maybe not everyone would exercise their reason, of course, but from this starting point, you know you saw other humans as your a kin um because they were another social reasoning animal that you ought to live with and play your roles.
00:32:14
Speaker
um with as part of a greater whole, whether that's the family or the city, ah the company, what have you. But Nietzsche is famously not an egalitarian, so let's just you know state that. you know why does he Why would he challenge this premise? How does he think about equality? Well, one of Nietzsche's orienting goals is the production of what he calls higher men, the cultural production of what he calls higher men. And when you hear higher men, you might think Napoleon or Alexander, and sometimes he brings up those people in mind. But it's really, I think, the creative geniuses that he calls on more often. People like Shakespeare, like Goethe, and of course Nietzsche himself, right? His famous eche homo. His chapter titles are Why I Write Such Great Books, Why I'm So Wise, Why I'm So Clever.
00:33:08
Speaker
ah So, you know, I think he might have considered himself in that in that league as well. Which he should have. Yeah, which he I think regionally should have. um And once you and and then so, and just to be clear on how extreme this preference is. For Nietzsche, the telos of humanity is the production of these few higher men, um like a tree with its fruit. And so ah to to help you understand the extent of that, you know the the Greek societies, to produce Aeschylus, Bousophocles, it required a larger aristocratic class, which at the time, without technology, required a large, safe slave class.
00:33:49
Speaker
And while Nietzsche doesn't seem to say, let's get that back, he doesn't find a problem with it. So so again, I want to frame that central calculus in people's minds um so people don't don't get confused on why Nietzsche is making the suggestions that he is. That's how much he values, that he thinks that aesthetically, at least, um the existence of a few higher men redeem the entire human race and the trajectory of history, so to speak. And so that is his orienting orienting concern. And once you frame those terms, it becomes, I think, a bit more easier to see why egalitarianism is so problematic, which is that ah egalitarianism and the values it promotes kind of stifles um this type of creation. Nietzsche is really interested in in the psychology of these higher men. And you know Brian Leiter gives a great example of Beethoven.
00:34:44
Speaker
you know We think of artists today as bohemians, as hippies, as people who are not only not concerned with social status, but actively go against it or are actively kind. right or right that they're They're usually on the left today. But when you read the notebooks of Beethoven, he's like, well, power is the dominating principle, and it is my principle. And you know my friends are only tools for the production of my higher work. and Or you look at someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, right? which, by the way, I don't think Nietzsche would consider it to be higher men because technology and capitalism, I think, is a a lot more low-minded than than than what what he would like these higher men to be dedicated to. But regardless, one of the closest archetypes we have today, their biography is ah is very much about, they're obsessed, they're singular. Sam Altman right that those once said that Elon wants to save the world, but he wants to be the one who who saves the world. And so I think when you look at the biographies of of a lot of these higher men,
00:35:42
Speaker
um it's a disbelief it's a almost unjustified belief in themselves it's certainly unjust ah unjustified in the beginning of their careers that leads them to the type of greatness and that is an aristocratic self-belief that is the belief that people are different from from others that i can do it and and most people can't right this is steve job's uh uh perhaps reality distortion field it could be interpreted along similar lines and so that's the first past is that he thinks the value systems that egalitarian promotes produces a much more weak, a passive, um a low-minded base type of creature and and not these higher men. Yeah, right
Egalitarian Values and Individual Greatness
00:36:24
Speaker
either' that
00:36:24
Speaker
you know ensuring that you cut down all the tall poppies and so on, I suppose, at more detail. it there's We're equal, and therefore, someone who's devoted to a given project needs to play you know their role ah in you know being an excellent family man, being a kind person and so on, and not be obsessed about you know pursuing a given objective. Exactly. That's part of it. Exactly. you know not reaping the rewards of whatever their accomplishments are either. Exactly. And the example that I think we've already given is Buddha. And and I believe Nietzsche brings this up in in the genealogy as well, which is that the great sage of compassion sort of abandoned his entire family, his kingdom, his wife, his child, his father that had brought him up and nursed him up since he was a little toddler.
00:37:18
Speaker
to go pursue his own project. you know And so again, it's it's that side of these great cultural heroes that I think, because we live in an egalitarian, value-wise at least society, that we like to overlook. right we think We just want it to be sunshines and rainbow. And another example that I can give here is probably Canada. So I had spent my time actually growing up, I lied, between Canada and China, not just China. And in ah Canada compared to America is a lot more egalitarian. But it does have that tall poppy syndrome in high school. If you do extremely well, I don't think you have much more of that ah singular praise that that you get in America. It's a lot less like, oh, let's let's bring him down to make sure the other kids aren't feeling as bad. And so that is the trade off. And it's a lot of and it's a and look, it's a trade off that many egalitarians
00:38:07
Speaker
could look look at and see, we we don't want any of that greatness, right? Or or we're happy with this trade-off in preserving the the contentment, the peaceability of the majority. In fact, Nietzsche ah sometimes says that herd morality, which is what he calls egalitarianism, is good for the herd. And ah this gets to another side of Nietzsche that we can dive into, which is that um Nietzsche really believes that unlike stoicism, there is no singular value system. um that That is a good fit for everyone. um According to Brian Leiter's reading at least, Nietzsche is a moral anti-realist. And so when it comes to a battle of values,
00:38:45
Speaker
It really is a battle of values. It's not like Nietzsche can give you a QED to prove why egalitarianism is bad. He can just use rhetorical force. He can use arguments to almost get you to swap out of it as a Gestalt switch, um and not to convince you out of reason. Because ultimately, when push comes to shove, egalitarianism versus aristocratic inner egalitarianism is a preference really. It's like you like chocolate or you like or you like vanilla and Nietzsche is hoping that his writing is going to get you to prefer prefer an egalitarianism.
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, least it's at least, is you know, since you only question this egalitarian morality. That's right. Yeah, that's, I think it's Nietzsche's always interesting when it comes to the stoics, because I think he had read epi Epictetus, ah Marcus Reis and Seneca says a few friendly things about them, and then gets progressively more, I think, unfriendly as yeah as the works continue continued to come. I did want to share one passage where he's talking about Epictetus from ah Daybreak or sometimes also called the dawn of day where he's talking about Epictetus and he describes him as his ideal man is without any particular rank and may exist in any grade of society but above all he is to be sought in the deepest and lowest social classes.
00:40:18
Speaker
is a silent and self-sufficient man in the midst of a general state of servitude, a man who defends himself alone against the outer world and is constantly living in a state of the highest fortitude. And he says that, of course, because ah Epictetus is a slave. yeah And then he goes on to distinguish him against Christianity as saying yeah Christianity was devised for another class of ancient slaves, for those who had a weak will and a weak reason, that is to say, the majority.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's very interesting. And I think this can lead us actually to to a very, to the next next part of the genealogy. so So now that we understand sort of what his project is, which is to essentially rid us or rid potential hire men of egalitarianism. um And we talked about why he wants to do so. um The question is how, how is he going to um enact this change? And as we said already, Nietzsche doesn't think that values can be proven in a deductive rational way. that at the at the at the end of what grounds are egalitarianism is things like habituation. It's the things like role models. Like when when we grow up and we read Star Wars, the empire's the bad guy, right? The Republic, the democracy is the good guy. it's It's stuff like that. And so Nietzsche thinks that he similarly needs to shock you out of that system. And the way that he does that is through ah genealogy. It's by showing you the psychological origins of how egalitarianism comes to be.
00:41:51
Speaker
And through that, to make you disgusted. Again, it's not to disprove that this that this this is wrong in some rational way, the same way that you know ah A equals not A is wrong, um but it's to to get you disgusted at this value system. And the way he gets you disgusted is essentially by arguing that this value system, egalitarianism, comes from the slave classes. And so the riddle that Nietzsche poses, and this fits very well with what you just described, is how do we go from Greek antiquity, whose values are, I mean, think about Achilles, right, and and glory, or or think about Rome and and Caesar and their
00:42:29
Speaker
unashamed desire for success, wealth, and money, at least compared to contemporary society. How do we go from that to a society that, not to mention the sex, right? I mean, think about ah Hercules going to Thespia, having sex with all the King's 50s daughter in one night, impregnating all of them, each bearing him one son, right? that that That's kind of what what is lionized in in in the Greco-Roman world. How do we get from that? to a world with chastity, right? Virginity today, even in contemporary society, in an atheistic society, the virginity, especially of a woman, is help held to to to somewhat ah of ah of ah as a value. How do we get to, you know, the meek shell inherent to the earth? How do we get to if more difficult for a rich man, you know, to get into heaven than than a camel through an eye of a needle? And Nietzsche's thesis is that
00:43:19
Speaker
it's essentially the slaves, the losers of the Greco-Roman world who latch on to this new philosophy ah promulgated by initially the Jews and then spread made it universal through Jesus um that it's really the underclass that that ah that is on top. And his critique is um Number one, that that these slaves are hypocritical, right? That they also want power. And an example that he he shows is, you know, it's not the slaves actually renounce revenge, they just hide it in the afterlife. And he gives he gives these passages of, I think, one is Dante, and and another one is Tertullian, who describes of all the punishments of of sinners, right? And the people who are punished
00:44:04
Speaker
are precisely the Greco-Roman winners, the masters of their day. right It's the wrathful people like Achilles. It's the people who have money like Crassus. It's the lustful, right the people who are reproductively successful. And so that anyways, there's a whole host of critiques that he had that he has of this. But the fundamental insight is that it's meant to appeal to losers, to the slaves of about society. And I think the question that he wants to ask is, do you want like, do you do you want that? to Is that you? An example, I'll give a modern example to help people situate this.
00:44:41
Speaker
is I had an acquaintance who, when I first met him in college, I thought was the most moral and kind person I've ever met because he he was always concerned with communism, with socialism, with helping the poor. Every time I would meet him, he would speak so passionately about helping the poor. And then when I got to know him a bit better, he confessed to me that it was not a love of the poor, but it was a hatred of the rich that motivated that.
Nietzsche's Genealogical Method
00:45:05
Speaker
that he grew up, he was middle class, he grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood, and he was always made to feel bad about not having money. And so he flipped the value system. Like if money, if making money was actually evil, then suddenly he became on top. And I think that's partially what Nietzsche is trying to say about Epictetus there.
00:45:23
Speaker
Right. Whereas Epictetus is the slave. He can't really control the external world. And so he kind of crosses his arms and says, well, the internal world, that's what that's all that matters. Right. Like, in fact, even stronger. I wouldn't want those distractions of like politics and stuff to mess with me. um That's a bit harder of a case to to make with Marcus Aurelius, right? Given that he's he's the the top dog or the emperor, but we can talk about Aurelius. But I'll just give you one more example. um ah to to I think that's in favor of Nietzsche's argument, which is, so I have an interview coming out, which you've watched with a top classicist, Catharina Volk, who wrote a book, fantastic book about the late Roman Republic, right? So this is the life and times of Caesar, Cicero, Cato, Brutus, that whole gang.
00:46:10
Speaker
And stoicism, interestingly enough, We associate it with Rome today, but it's really the Roman Empire that where it became popular and not really in the Roman Republic. In the Roman Republic, it was a lot more like Epicureanism, academic skepticism. Those were much more popular schools. Cato was probably the mate most famous Stoic, but he was kind of a weirdo because of it at that time. But what you know, I think, are two events that that kind of, not only prove Nietzsche's hypothesis, but lend to this reading of Stoicism as a
00:46:42
Speaker
let me put it more politely than Nietzsche, as a coping mechanism for not being able to control your your life and your world. One is in the Battle of Pharsalus, this is ah Pompey versus Caesar in the Civil War, when Pompey lost and and died, um the remaining Pompeians, people like Brutus, people like Cicero, they were on the losing side, and in their letters to that exchange that exchanged it to each other, there was an increased popularity of Stoke ideas more than before.
00:47:14
Speaker
So they were trying to console each other that victory of a war is actually not important because their intentions were good, or rather that they aimed to do just things.
Stoicism’s Rise During Societal Stress
00:47:25
Speaker
It's this famous stoic metaphor that it's not about the arrow hitting the target, it's about you know you you doing the right thing such that it it would hit the target. right um And another example I'll give is When the Republic fell and when the Empire arose, and especially the upper classes who were used to freedom or now had their freedoms restricted, that's when Stoicism's popularity really, really burgeoned and exploded, which again lends to this reading that it's a sort of coping, it's a sort of therapy for a specific type of person who does not have control in their lives.
00:47:59
Speaker
And in fact, as you as you remember now, I hope, ah this is how I got into stoicism, right? It was through a loss. It was through a failure. It was through not being able to to to deal with my life that stoicism comforted me in some way. but Yeah, yeah. Nassim Taleb has this aphorism, which is, ah you know, stoicism is easy in failure, which I think, you know, captures just, you know, just that very point that there's You know, as someone who is stoic, there's a danger in some stoic ideas ah that you know one takes them on because they are in a subtle way convenient. They make up a story that justifies.
00:48:40
Speaker
failure that perhaps justifies not doing one's best. You know, one one says, you wouldn't want, you know, Elon to say, you know, we'll we'll be sending this rocket to Mars, you know, fate willing, unless something stops it or something of this sort. You know, you want him fully devoted to that task, if that's a worthwhile aim at any rate. um And Stoics and some perhaps in some promoting these ideas of, you know, accept what's out of one's control may forget that, you know, the other aspect of that dichotomy is, you know, doing one's best with whatever is in fact under one's control, you know, one's decisions and judgments.
00:49:27
Speaker
Totally, yeah. um And as you can see, Nietzsche was not really arguing directly against Stoicism or directly arguing against Christianity, egalitarianism. um But i frankly, I think that the genealogy has deconverted more people from egalitarianism than a direct a direct argument ever could. Because again, I think Nietzsche is a master of knowing what people are actually going to be convinced by, of not getting too caught up in this sort of analytic and li mode of philosophy and thinking that's the that's the end all be all.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah, so those you can sort of read the challenge to egalitarianism, one as these abstract ideas about equality, what is true, what are people owed, and so on. Or you can take it more directly and more in a psychological way. How do I use egalitarian ideas in my life? Do I use them in a way that you know promotes ah Justice, is that what I really care about? What do my revealed preferences say you know when I get that offer to become an investment banker? you know Do I leap upon that or do I suddenly feel these egalitarian impulses, all this stronger?
00:50:52
Speaker
I think that's that's a question to for sure. and The funny thing is, my acquaintance is now in investment banking. right He never had a problem with money in the first place. it was In fact, it was precisely money that he that he wanted, but he couldn't have. and That's why he flipped it. so I think that is a very good question to ask. and You know, I do think that people can be genuinely compassionate. They can be genuinely kind. And that, you know, Nietzsche sometimes says in the genealogy that to be compassionate is basically a manifestation of the will to power, right? Because I'm helping you. That means I'm better than you.
00:51:28
Speaker
That might be true and even maybe I'll go even stronger that even in the best case, there's a hint of that, but I don't think that's the that's the extent of the story. right So so in in other words, what I want to say is that Nietzsche's psychological arguments here do have their limitations, especially his critique of Christianity. In fact, I'm willing to go as far as to agree with Nietzsche that he describes the Christian psyche maybe more than better than anyone but it doesn't change the question that the only the only question that matters is is Christ the son of God right because if he is then I don't really care if it's spread through resentment um he's like he's the son of God and I i don't want to go to hell i you know and I think perhaps the same can be true for stoicism which is
00:52:16
Speaker
Nietzsche's genealogy should make you very suspicious of stoicism and your own commitment to stoicism and should make you examine it in all the all these ways that you've just described. But at the end of the day, it's it's like it's the core questions of stoicism. right like Is happiness really only dependent on me? like is Is the cosmos ordered ordered in the way that the Stoics say it is ordered? I feel like you still need to make, and again maybe this is goes back to the necessity of analytic philosophy. That's the crux of the of the problem. Right, right. Merely by providing the psychological explanation, you haven't shown that Jesus is not the Son of God or the best life is know not lived according to nature and so on. Yeah. it It hasn't shown that, but what I will say is, and this is probably more true in the Jesus case than the Stoicism case, it's given my attempt to believe in Jesus, I'll say, a very high hurdle to clear.
00:53:07
Speaker
um Because to me, so far that I've encountered, that has been the most reasonable explanation for why Christianity has spread so much. um Maybe not necessarily the exact psychological mechanisms that Nietzsche has described, but psychological mechanisms. And again, this would be very different if Christianity was the only religion, but you have so many of these religions with the very similar appeals to psychology that again, I think, um and so and so I think what we're doing here, right, is on one hand,
00:53:40
Speaker
First we qualify Nietzsche and says, hey, don't get too carried away by Nietzsche. And then I'm trying to pull you back and say, hey, but this is a pretty strong argument. Like this in itself is already a pretty strong argument because I think what Nietzsche is trying to give you in the genealogy is not just a psychological making you suspicious. I think he's saying this is actually the most likely explanation of why c Christianity spread, why egalitarianism spread. and not that we're all equals, or not that Christ is the one true God, or not that ah you know some stoic doctrine is true. And so it is a very, very high bar, but it's not a knockdown, so so so to speak. Right. that Maybe the total cynicism doesn't succeed, but it's still there and you know it ought to be there when you're thinking about your own commitments or or others' commitments, that question.
00:54:30
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. It's a very high bar. It's a very powerful argument. It's a very high bar, epistemic bar to clear. Yeah, I think the Stoics talk about indifference, things being preferred, indifference, dispreferred, and so on, and these things like wealth, health, and so on. These are the materials of virtue, but they're not you good in and of themselves. And for me, something that I've taken away from Nietzsche is that challenge whenever you are thinking about something that on the face of it seems good. you know Is this one of those cases where you know you it's best to and know promote the health of the community as a whole or maybe some longer you know aesthetic idea or you know thinking about these trade-offs between indifference, where these questions about one's motivations, the history of difference,
00:55:30
Speaker
ideologies or systems of thought can be useful. Totally, yeah. um And maybe one way, trite way of summarizing what you're saying is, you know, when I reaffirm to myself that money is just a preferred indifferent. Is it because I don't have money and I'm too lazy to try to get more, and i but I actually need it for my family? Or is it because I actually have enough and I know I'm addicted and it's genuine? So that would be the question. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Or yeah and make it more concrete with some of these examples of the ancient Stoics you're thinking about. Stoicism became more popular in the Roman Empire. you know Well, well are you know are you the Stoic who is willing to go into exile, willing to be hunted down?
00:56:13
Speaker
by Nero or are you the person who proclaims stoicism well, you know happily, you know singing and clapping along while Nero you know does his little performance because that's out of your control. Yeah, yeah that's that's how i that's how I think about it at any rate. So what what other important insights or what else do you want to mention on results from your contact or study with with Nietzsche? So I think what we discussed
Nietzsche's Ad Hominem and Value Judgments
00:56:45
Speaker
already that I think is really important is really the validity of the ad hominem, right? Which is ad hominem attacks are famously looked down upon because they sort of attack the speaker instead of the thought. And we're taught in school to to not do that, that that's bad. That's a sort of low minded move.
00:57:04
Speaker
But Nietzsche showed me, I think, that it's the most important way to examine the thought, um is to understand the life that it created. Because as as as we said already, thinking in life is a lot more intertwined than probably the sort of rational, scientific model leads us to believe. And so that's probably a general conclusion, but it's not that different from what we described here. um the The one thing that I think is different um is mostly out of Brian Leiter's, again, interpretation of Nietzsche. And again, this is I think is unique to his interpretation, which is that Leiter interprets Nietzsche as what he calls a moral anti-realist.
00:57:40
Speaker
So this is a meta ethical position. And the essential idea is that ah when I make a value judgment, right, so abortion is right or wrong. um You think you're stating a fact, right? A fact about the world. Like, dinosaurs existed in the world before. That's a fact. um But Nietzsche thinks that that's more of an expressing opinion, ah more expressing a preference. um So valuation, normativity, is less about discovering what's real in the world, and it's about a mode of expression.
00:58:16
Speaker
So when you say that I think abortion is right or wrong, you're really saying something like, I prefer abortion or I don't prefer abortion. And I think this is a really big challenge to the Stoics as well, because the Stoics do not believe that, right? they they They do believe that there are moral facts in the world. They do think that there is, um I wouldn't go as far to say there's one rigid system of of life that everyone should live, but there's a common enough structure of human nature that they can make these these proclamations. um Of course, there's flexibility in stoicism, right? where um Where if you're born with a certain disposition versus another, there's there's different tracks that you can take. um But I think that really is a fundamental challenge to stoicism.
00:59:00
Speaker
um Which is, even if stoicism is true for you, um or or enables you to live the most flourishing life, is it ah to is it true for everyone, right? And so this goes back to what I was saying about Nietzsche saying that herd morality is good for the herd, where he doesn't I think blame the slaves for adopting slave morality. In in some sense, um he almost praises them. He definitely praises the priests who are are kind of like ah the people who invented the slave morality, who led the revolt of the slaves. It's moral evaluations.
00:59:38
Speaker
um And again, his view of the priests or the slaves aren't that they got something wrong in a way that doesn't in a way that someone who doesn't believe in dinosaurs got something wrong. It's more of a look, this guy is trying to take my meal. i I need to take his meal. Like if he if he beats me, that's that's good for him. If I beat him, that's good. That's good for me.
Human Variability and Will to Power
01:00:00
Speaker
So I think what's quite different from Nietzsche's meta ethics in the way at least Brian Leiter interpreted it ah from stoicism and mostly most other schools of ethical theory, I would say Aristotelian virtue ethics, um utilitarianism, deontology is Nietzsche does not think
01:00:20
Speaker
And this is in egalitarianism talking, he thinks different kinds and different hierarchies of human are different enough, such that one value system that is good for one is actually detrimental to the other. right And we talked about this already, how egalitarianism that might be great. right If you're a middling person, go live in Canada. Don't live in the States, trust me. um But how one value system that's good for one class of person, one type of person, is could be terrible for another. um And so that I think is a really fun foundational challenge to stoicism. Because now I think not only does the stoic who's listening to to your episode need to answer, well, is this good for me? The stoic in his or her political action needs to decide, well, should I promulgate policies, build a stoic app for everyone? Is this really fitting for everyone? Or is this only fitting for for people with a specific nature like mine?
01:01:13
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's right. I suppose you you have that fundamental challenge for the Stoics because the Stoics think the good life is a life of virtue. That's all you need to be happy, is to be ah virtuous. And what's virtue you know that's living in accordance with your nature? And Nietzsche is attacking that very idea that there is some fixed objective ah nature that one can access to answer some of these yeah these questions.
01:01:45
Speaker
I might put it in a slightly different way. For Nietzsche, there's definitely a human nature. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to run his psychological arguments the way he does. right For example, a key aspect of human nature, Nietzsche thinks, is will to power. loosely the psychological idea that we want to expand or feel powerful in different domains. This is why Nietzsche thinks, reads helping as a form of will to power. I'm helping you because it makes me feel it's an expression of my will to power because I'm superior to you. That's why I'm helping you. So there definitely is a shape of a human nature for nature. But what he's rebelling against is that this shape
01:02:25
Speaker
But there's also a part of human nature that's highly variable between types of person. And what he's arguing against is that the variation is so high in this other type part that is not shared that you can run the Aristotelian virtue ethics argument or the Stoic argument for everyone, right? ah For example, someone might not love contentment or someone might Beethoven, okay, he he was not a good Stoic, and neither did he try to be a good Stoic. But Nietzsche would say that he expressed his will to power in the best way ah through his creation. And that comes at ah at a cost to, for example, Stoic contentment or or tranquility. um But for him, it was the right trade-off. It helped him live the most a high will to power life. So that's what he's arguing against. But I do want to make it clear that it's not that he rejects this idea of human nature at all.
01:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good clarification. i suppose when you know When the Stoics think about nature, there's that descriptive aspect. Can we, as Nietzsche does, you know describe humans as as having common goals, motivations, capabilities, and so on? And both ah to some extent, I think both Nietzsche and the Stoics agree that, of course, while there's variation, there are common drives. um What the Stoics adds to that picture is this idea of a telos, a purpose for
01:03:55
Speaker
people that I think, you know, Nietzsche would want to question. And it's, you know, they think that purpose is ingrained in, you know, the the fabric of reality, reality as rational and so on. Exactly. um And then I'll present another another challenge um from Nietzsche. Again, this is this is Leiter's reading of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche as a Naturalist and Critic of Stoicism
01:04:19
Speaker
Leiter reads reads Nietzsche as a naturalist. um and And you can loosely interpret that as almost like a modern scientist in the sense that you know they're they're empiricists. they They don't like metaphysical speculations. And so Nietzsche in Leiter's reading
01:04:34
Speaker
is very suspicious of grand metaphysical speculations. I think it was in Twilight of the Idols where Nietzsche asks, well, why does Socrates like ideas so much? And the answer he gives is that Socrates is an ugly plebe. And, you know, if I had the biggest brain, but ugliest nose in all of Athens, I too would like ideas. I too would suggest the philosopher King. So you can see his ad hominem again working here. um And Stoicism famously has, ah I wouldn't say compared to its Greek counterparts, has has grandiose metaphysical speculations, but it does have speculation, right, about fate, about ah but the entire universe as a cosmos. Again, this is my very superficial understanding of stoicism. You'll have to correct me.
01:05:16
Speaker
However, I will say ah modern stoicism seems to have abandoned that side, the grand metaphor but speculations, probably for those ancient reasons, that it's a lot less palatable to the modern mind of this idea of either determination and fate or this idea of the the universe as as as as ah as ah as a city. and In fact, this is a big critique, I think, many academic stoics have of popular stoic movements, that it's been transformed to be this productive self-help tool almost in the way that meditation has been. you know The Buddhists call it mic mindfulness, the idea that you can just pull up an app like Headspace and and meditate and and and be on your way to enlightenment.
01:05:57
Speaker
and so ah And i'm I'm just flagging that, that I actually don't think that part of stoicism is that popular anymore in modern stoicism. um But I think Nietzsche would have would have another challenge to that type of ah speculation. Yeah, yeah. There's a debate within the stoic community about how important, to the extent that there is a community, how important these ideas about nature are for living the stoic life, as it were. And some people ch you know think not important at all. Others think it's foundational and you can't live without some of these deeper metaphysical ideas.
01:06:37
Speaker
um I think at any rate, Nietzsche challenges both kinds of stoics, whether you have these traditional stoic type views or perhaps the more thinner thin ones. Totally. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I hope it left you all a lot to think about. I think Nietzsche is one of the you most important thinkers to wrestle with for people generally. um He's provocative, ah somewhat dangerous, but I think at the best of times an enlightening character who can ah cause you to see the world in a different way. So do check out Jonathan's lecture series.
01:07:19
Speaker
um Is there anywhere else you'd like to point people? um My YouTube channel is Google Jonathan B with an extra H, J-O-H-N, A-T-H-A-N, or easier is probably greatbooks.io. um A bit easier to spell than Jonathan. But other than that, thank you so much for a fantastic conversation. Awesome. Thanks for joining. Thanks for listening to StoA Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. If you want to dive deeper still, search StoA in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy.
01:08:03
Speaker
for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyre.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.