Rene Girard: Why do you worship power? Friederich Nietzche: If one wants to create a god, one must proceed as if creating a man. One must conceive of the god as something one has never conceived before, something one has to create from nothing. One creates the idea of the god, then creates the god. … Read more
Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morals” is, at its core, a genealogical study of the origins and evolution of human morals. In this work, Nietzsche examines the historical development of two opposite sets of morality—the “master” morality and the “slave” morality—and argues that the latter has come to dominate modern thought. How has slave … Read more
It’s been two weeks since I’ve started reading Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, and I’m finally finished. It was a dense read, but well worth it for anyone interested in the origins of drama and tragedy. Nietzsche opens the book by discussing the two fundamental drives that he believes are at work in all humans … Read more
Second Essay. “Guilt,” “Bad Conscience,” And The Like. Have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral idea of “ought” originates from the very material idea of “owe”? Or that punishment developed as a retaliation absolutely independently of any preliminary hypothesis of the … Read more
Of course, by simply trying to articulate this quote, I am betraying the idea. But I will try unpack it anyway. First, let’s start with a definition. A philosophy is a set of ideas that can be articulated. A philosophy is symbolic of a deeper reality. But inevitably, any philosophy, no matter how profound, cannot … Read more
The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness – they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.” Nietzsche With Nietzsche, as with any great contrarian, we find quotes that point us towards a truth that is at once counter-intuitive and provocative. Of course, when asked to imagine what it would … Read more
Leo Strauss was a German-American political philosopher, and in this book records his oral commentary of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Chapter 1: Introduction (Nietzsche’s Philosophy, Existentialism, and the Problem of Our Age) There is a connection between Nietzsche and fascism. Although Nietzsche was not a fascist, his philosophy is an extreme version of conservatism, and … Read more
The Psychology of Joker Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, provides the backdrop for the life of the famous Batman villain. The movie touches on key psychological themes that relate to Jung, Freud, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky. Arthur has a problem; he sometimes loses control of himself, and bursts into fits of laughter. While working … Read more
The 19th century gave birth to a new dynamic psychiatry. At the time, Europe was a society that was dominated by men. It was a world for men by men, and women had no say in politics and were not admitted into universities. Male values were celebrated. Among the aristocracy, women and men who had … Read more
The background of dynamic psychiatry can be traced to two centuries back. The 1800’s was a time that is difficult for us to imagine. People were much tougher, since they had no access to the luxuries and comforts of today. Sedatives and narcotics were almost unheard of and public hygiene was at a primitive stage. … Read more