Peter Sloterdijk on Friedrich Nietzsche “I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite” (Stanford, 2018)

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]It's a real pleasure for me to welcome the philosopher Peter Slodike to our show today.

[00:00:05]Peter Slaterdikeke is the author of many outstanding works including the critique of cynical reason, the spheres trilogy and you must change your life. He has spent the past month here at Stanford and I was not about to let him return to Germany later this week without bringing his voice to all of you who are part of the ongoing conversation of entitled opinions.

[00:00:31]He is one of the living philosophers whom I admire the most and whom I read with real pleasure and I'm grateful to him for joining us today to talk about a thinker who is as much a part of Slater's DNA as he is of mine. I mean our comrade Frederick Niche.

[00:00:48]There are any number of topics that Slaughter Dyke and I could have engaged, but we agreed to devote this show to the evangelist who in Etmo declared, "I am not a man. I am dynamite."

[00:01:03]Do it, Freddy. Bring it down. I'm sick of dower faces staring at me from the trumped up tower. We want Easter power in our nation's garden, not blood meal for the craven or the solen.

[00:01:21]I apologize to my guests for talking to myself for a moment there. It's an occasional vice of mine as you may know.

[00:01:28]And before I succumb to further temptations, let me promptly welcome him to the program. Peter Slodikeke, thank you kindly for joining us today on entitled Opinions.

[00:01:37]>> It's my honor. Thank you so much. So our topic as I mentioned is Frederick Nie and I have just finished reading this splendid little book you wrote called Nietze Apostle at least that's the title in English that was published in English in 2013 but it was first uh came out in Germany in the year 2000 on the 100th anniversary of Nichzche's death and I suppose I'd like to begin our conversation by asking you what exactly you mean when you speak of Nietze as an apostle.

[00:02:06]>> The answer is quite simple.

[00:02:10]Um, Nietze had very high ambitions and he asked an elementary question who was the most faithful person in the history of western mankind and the answer he gave by by himself to himself was that this person was obviously St. Paul uh whom he took for the the real founder of Christianity. So so and uh only the apostle St. Paul who is at the same time the uh man who invented the role the apostolic role as such. I will tell a couple of words about that in a minute.

[00:03:00]uh he was a man uh with whom he had to look for a uh for a match. Yeah. If he were really willing to overcome the tradition of classical religious metaphysics. He was St. Paul was the most faithful person in history according to him. And if it were possible to do uh in some uh to undo from some point of view this uh effects that St. Paul had created he would change the course of history according to to to N St. Paul brought genius into resentment, elevated resentment uh up to a level from which on it could became a gospel and that was for for him a faithful maneuver that he wanted to undo.

[00:04:06]>> Do you believe that the figure of of Jesus is secondary to in N's mind to Paul?

[00:04:14]>> Yes. in a certain way. Yes. He he would rather be able to live with nature than with uh St. Paul because for uh Jesus is it is absolutely not not clear if he had a universalist message. So yeah uh Jesus seems to be an elitist. uh he talks to those who can understand and there is not necessarily this general horizon that came into his message uh through the encounter between the the gospels and the evangelical messages and the Greek philosophy only when the two these two languages met is each other and this meeting began in in Paul's writings and were taken up in the fourth gospel that was written later. Uh this meeting uh between Hellenism uh and uh this um unruly uh Jewish message made possible what we call Christianity.

[00:05:23]And of course the word gospel means good news or glad tidings. And um you make a point of niche claiming that he wrote the fifth gospel in his book Zeratustra.

[00:05:38]And can you speak a little bit about this fifth gospel and the paradoxes at the heart of it? Because good news is something that you claim Nietze made a great effort to con to convince himself and to continue believing that he was actually a bearer of good news. But he was tormented by the fact that before you get to any good news, there's terrible news, dreadful, >> awful news that he has to um bring to humankind.

[00:06:09]>> Yeah. First of all, the category of news is such is very is is problematic uh because news in the modern terms is actuality.

[00:06:21]Um whereas for those who used the term oangelion in uh in in former times or in the original scene uh when the uh the message arrived it simply meant message or in German board shaft you know the the angelon angulos is uh is just a messenger that that is important The connection with time is not yet so clear and not that actualistic. By the way, um NI had not yet uh studied the so-called gnostic gospels. they were discovered later on in ancient libraries and also by these uh astonishing uh vessels of these foundings in the desert of of of Egypt what we call Nakamadi the ci of Nakamadi.

[00:07:23]Now we know uh among the scholars uh who deal with uh the broader field uh of texts in which the so-called new testament is is located.

[00:07:37]There have been has been a a whole genre literary that we call gospels. There are at least 30 to 40 that we know in in in our days and out of this corpus of uh 40 four survived. Yeah.

[00:07:55]>> Uh St. Mark in the beginning u was the eldest one the robe was turned around the editors of the New Testament put Matthew in the in the beginning and then was Mark and Luke and the last one is is is is John the Greek apostle that is very important because uh with him the helenization uh of uh the Jewish message started. So it was the the number five that Ni used uh for uh his his own writing contains a claim that he had done something what should change the further course of religious history because he pretended he had introduced laughter into into the as a good news. Yeah. And there is something to be laughed at. And uh and there is some deep hilarity uh in in wisdom even if it has to be gained through a a long tunnel of that and and horrifying knowledges that belong to the modern conditioner because modernity is all about diselusionment. It is a period of of dawn of a of a long protected darkness. We all live uh in a kind of uh mist uh and dust. We we cannot have very uh wide ranging views. Yeah. Because we live in in the in the middle of this dust of deconstruction of the metaphysical uh traditions.

[00:09:46]And you believe that Nietze knew that we were in the modern era. We were somehow uh obliged to live in this tunnel and this dark times for a considerable time to come and that his gospel is going to speak to us on the other side of these um of these times.

[00:10:06]>> Yeah, absolutely. By the way, I I'm grateful for this beautiful coincidence that he used the sound of a dynamite explosion. Yeah. Uh for Nich's time, this sounds uh sounded very Helvetic.

[00:10:21]Yeah. it it because Switzerland was was the country where the uh first heroic efforts were made to to penetrate mountains and to create tunnels and to create new new ways to get to the south.

[00:10:40]Yeah, that is the metaphysical question for all these northern uh people. the essential essential question, how can we win back an easier access to the Mediterranean truth? Yeah.

[00:10:55]And these tunnels in in in Switzerland.

[00:10:59]Yeah.

[00:11:00]uh as it were fulfilled uh um an important role in in the history of of modern culture because they offered the the connection by the way >> connection between Greek between Germany and Greece between Germany Germany and Greece especially yeah the the British uh stopped uh mostly at the Alps because they were the co-inventors of of albinism and that um might suffice for their uh ambitions because they were fond of the of the so-called sublime, the second great category of modern aesthetics. The ocean uh was already at hand for them. They had they had it immediately before their their eyes, but uh the Alps needed certain travel effort and that's what they did. But for for Germans, you know, the tunnels that led uh to the south, you were more essential uh question and to uh uh gain back free access to the truths that lay uh beyond beyond the Arab scene from the north that the Italian truths uh the the Mediterranean Jews And then the the the really big dream Athens.

[00:12:30]>> Sure. And with in Nietze's case, he seemed to have a a a very direct tunnel to Greek wisdom early in his life. And I don't know how he did it, but he seemed to have the dynamite with him. and he bore through the the you know the Alpine range right straight to Greece and seemed to have um not had to go through the same laborious process that some of his predecessors like Hegel and the others had to go through.

[00:12:58]>> Yeah. He had a a channel uh or a tunnel before the channel was built uh through his encounter with Rihad Vagna. He who was in his way also uh a tunnel maker um who but not to towards the Mediterranean troops. Yeah. But for this Nordic inspir inspirations he wanted to to to the northern gods come back on the tragic tragical scene of of of German theater. That's why he one day in his later work he he he created this extremely demanding concept of the via fest beiel that should replace the classical opera in English that would uh could be rendered approximatively by sacramental festival and the people should go to to this meetings in the same habits as they went to a sacrif official uh setting of an ancient um ritual. Yeah. And that should went go even further than the Catholic mass where also the the body of the Lord was transfig was transfigured and and shared with the community. And here also a different knowledge of the truth of suffering should be distributed to an elite audience. Yeah.

[00:14:36]A new German a new Germany.

[00:14:38]>> So new new music for new years. That's was the formula of uh of this later vagarian compositions.

[00:14:49]So you also authored a book about Nze called Thinker on Stage Nichze's materialism which is this in-depth analysis reflection on NZ's first book the birth of tragedy >> which as we know is dedicated you know to Richard Vagner where he makes a connection between the Greeks stage and Vagarian music >> and um I guess for our listeners would you say do do you think that NZ had to do some special pleading in order to make the substantial connection between Vagner and the and the Greeks or whether um whether there was something about the Greek tragedy that that was not exportable to the to the northern mystarian um the northern gods of Vagnner.

[00:15:40]>> Yeah. in the in the first place for native war. The encounter with with with Vana uh was really good luck because it allowed him to to connect Henistic studies in which he was a young specialist.

[00:15:59]Yeah.

[00:16:01]And where his his uh gen genius Yeah.

[00:16:05]manifested itself for the first time.

[00:16:08]This encounter with Vagna was a lucky one for him- because it allowed him to jump directly from Germany, from Turing to Athens and and he he had a direct access to the great Dionian theater uh in in in Athens and he was a privileged uh visitor to that place. Yeah. And uh from Vagnner, he imported u that message of of a of a new seriousness to music and and culture in in in general because the German opera was a light opera at the time. It was a kind of uh operet what you call oparet. Today would say m musical or the opera the classical opera operab he had learned that uh seriousness or heroic music must move away from the entertainment principle and here he he could connect very easily with the Greek uh metaphysic of theater because the theater was was made to allow a large audience in an ideal case to the complete male uh population of of of a big city uh to be present when uh the suffering of God himself uh are are represented and to and to to look at the uh dismembering of of Dionis and and see how his suffering recreates this uh the world and makes a new form of social synthesis possible. Yeah.

[00:18:03]Because all uh experience uh the same drama uh in an ideal case all would cry at the same moment. Yeah.

[00:18:15]That's the moment of of of truth in in this shared uh uh spectacular pres presentation.

[00:18:24]and and from there people return home as after a katis this karagic moment uh of of of the Greek drama became very important and remained important for for niche.

[00:18:42]So would you say Peter that the the message of the Nietze apostle already begins with the birth of tragedy and his thinking about Greek tragic wisdom and Dianisis and the death of the god on stage and the me the meaning of suffering is it already announcing itself in that early work?

[00:19:07]>> I think so. Uh he himself wrote uh an introduction to the second edition of this book that appeared still in his own lifetime and also in in uh in the last clear days uh he he had because uh he lost self-control uh when he was 44 years old. And this is eventually the best piece of philosophical pro he ever written the new introduction because he's extremely self-critical.

[00:19:43]But in one aspect uh uh he still has uh kind of admiration for the young man who did this book. Yeah. because he he he still pretends that this young author was the first one to ask uh the question what dionos or dionis really could mean to us. Yeah. and he his his whole life work was as it were uh just a huge effort to unfold these meanings of a new encounter with the coming god. That was the attributes that already the ancient had given to Dionis. He was not an inmate of the classical olymp. He he was a non-Olympic god.

[00:20:41]Someone who who came from from the east all accompanied uh by a bunch of uh of wild personal uh uh men and women alike almost always almost always drunken carrying flower crowns in their head and he himself riding on on the back of a tiger.

[00:21:04]So with uh with this images before your eyes you you see that this advent and because theus is just as the Christian Jesus yeah a god to come he he has an advent and all new theology is about the question how should we understand the temporal structure uh of this arrival that pretends at the same time to to be already a presence.

[00:21:38]>> So something is to come and something is is already present. That the reason why uh ni became later on especially in the satusa the singer of a metaphysics of the high noon. Yeah because this uh stillest hour. Yeah. When the sun is uh in its tenate and the world seems to stand still and is is is perfect, the god must no longer move. He's already there. And you withhold your breath and and try to to become a fair witness to the miracle of of being of the actual presence there of of of the god or whatever divinity one is referring either dianis or the um the epiphany of of Christ is also in presence but it's also to come at the same time. So there's a strange temporality. So Haidiger mentioned somewhere I don't remember where he says that after the birth of tragedy niche did not write any more books he only wrote pmics and that the birth of tragedy is really his only bonafida book >> in the sense that it presents an argument in the preface that you were referring to the later preface niche is extremely self-critical as you say and he says that the this author should have sung rather and spoken.

[00:23:13]And yet I I have a very different um impression of the birth of tragedy because I find it extremely sober, well reasoned um book that that lays out evidence for its arguments and attempts to present a a rather coherent thesis that can be tested >> uh either empirically or historically or philologically and so forth. and that um I I think that we would have lost a great deal had ner sung this rather than actually reasoned out the arguments for who Dianisis is and who Apollo is and how they come together. I think that nature is right to a c certain extent uh when he says my soul should have been a singer rather than >> but uh what he did in his later days was exactly that. Yeah. Because uh >> uh it's something that I sometimes said about my my book. Oh, with my ordinary voice I'm a baritone, but as a writer I'm a tener. Yeah. And that is that is absolutely the case with with Niche and that and the remark of H of H highiger hits really sensitive spot but not for the disadvantage of of of Niche here because when he turns his back to this field of uh propositional pros uh putting one reasonable sentence of after after the other. Yeah, he he starts uh something that can be understood as that maneuver uh to confront the uh effects uh of this world history of resentment that are linked to the victory of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire. So uh to a certain extent it is true that everything else uh after the birth tragedy were were polical but it is necessarily polical just as all writings of of uh of St. Augustine uh were not sober writings but prayers.

[00:25:49]Yeah. So uh there there is a modal literature a I would say is a mod the modality or a genre plays an u equally important role for the understanding of of writing as just deciphering the propositional content uh of of a written text.

[00:26:14]So as as a philosopher yourself can I ask to what extent you consider yourself an heir to Nietze and uh by heir I don't mean a pious disciple of niche I mean someone who has inherited the um the thought and the corpus and has metabolized it and has uh you know given it new life in a new time as such Yeah, I said that brings us back to that apostal problem. How can a contemporary author be a messenger uh without really knowing by himself what his message can could be. Yeah, this is sounds a little bit weird. Yeah. as if I were an employee of of a post service that rings at at at the door of a receiver and say uh I should have a message for you. Uh but I have I have forgotten that halfway.

[00:27:21]>> Well, I know I I find that there are some distinct messages in your work, but nevertheless, yeah, >> that's true.

[00:27:29]Because by and by there's the effect of the how should should I call this the the labor of experimenting with with truth.

[00:27:39]Uh and finally they condensate into established corpus of convictions. Yeah.

[00:27:46]And convictions are things you can you can repeat without uh being bored by what you say by yourself. Mhm. Uh so the uh the apostle discovers at the same time that kind of speech uh that he's not afraid of repetition everywhere else everywhere else where entertainment is is concerned.

[00:28:13]Repetition is deadly.

[00:28:15]Uh but as as when it comes to the question of of convictions that are the result of uh long long med meditations uh new messages can arise and you you can get to the door of someone. But these conviction convictions and these messages are different from the authoritarian messages uh former apostles carried on. There's a very nice parab by uh France Kafka uh that Max broad found in his diaries and that goes approximatively like this.

[00:28:55]Um they were brought before the alternative to to become kings or messengers.

[00:29:05]Yeah. According to the nature of of children, they all wanted to become messengers and and therefore they are running through each other and shouting to each other their meaningless messages because there are no kings and they would like to put an end to their miserable lives. But but they do not dare due uh to their allegiance to the message. Yeah, that is that is Kafka and I think this is the in in five lines. So the the metaphysics uh of modern communications as such because everywhere are the the messengers who share their m mutual voice uh with each other and very rare are the authors who who at least have a minimal message.

[00:30:14]Well, here's a question about whether a message has to have a king uh who is dispatching it or whether there has to be a god for whom one is acting as a messenger.

[00:30:29]>> Can one be the messenger of of something like the predominance of resentment in human modern behavior, mentality and so forth? Or can one be the messenger of uh something that Nietze worried a lot about which is our um our culture in the modern era especially is seized and possessed by a will to truth.

[00:30:57]And this will to truth at any cost is something that without us knowing what we're doing, we are uncovering one truth after another which is showing us that there is really nothing behind the um uh the things that we are um investigating and that this will to truth will end up demoralizing us beyond any hope. These are messages that one can actually deliver >> to one's fellow men without there needing to be a king behind them. Is it not the case?

[00:31:31]>> Yeah. But uh that is that is the case.

[00:31:35]And the problem is how to transform this message in a good use.

[00:31:40]>> Yes.

[00:31:41]>> That that's the problem. And that's a point where u the the the critical transformation of deception into good news happens. That is niche as a uh the writer of the fifth gospel. And this too we uh we have been leaving this uh era when uh we lived under the metaphysics of a strong sender.

[00:32:11]>> Yeah. and that every uh important message was supposed uh to to to carry the signature of a divine or at least superior force.

[00:32:25]Now deconstruction has happened not necessarily under this this name but it it started at least in the 17th century when uh Spinoza started his mockery on what he called historic religions and uh religions depending on on on priests and on this cast of specialists for holy things. Uh and this mockery uh went on for at least three centuries. And what we have now are this this killings in in Paris to to the fact that the people of Charlie Hebdo uh were daring enough to to print some harmless kic of of Muhammad. Yeah. So this is the uh sender bound forms of of religion where where everywhere the signature of Allah is at the end of the document of the documents send kinds of of message that they are in our fighting with the different kind of uh of message which is virtually more and more the message uh of the uh artistic transfiguration of truth of of unlivable truths. And I think uh that ni also can be read as someone who tried to to make these uh unbearable truths bearable by instilling uh a new element of love uh into into the message. Yeah.

[00:34:09]And this uh and this love resembles to a certain degree to the eldest conceptions of ancient philosophical theology that you can find in in Aristotle. You know that that God necessarily is that entity who deserves most his own love. See the whole uh truth about philosophical theology is uh the absolute narcissism of God.

[00:34:44]And that makes us so so critical about Niche because he enter for for our case he entered too deeply into that realm of of of necessary self love of the god who uh meditates his own godliness.

[00:35:05]uh and we we feel embarrassed when we read uh niches uh so self ulogies and uh >> uh and we we look at uh at the side and feel ashamed a little bit one feels a little bit ashamed for him because we besides him you you hardly ever meet a person who has such a high opinion on himself. Well yes in fact you you quote a number of passages in u nze apostle which are extremely embarrassing but you know when one has read na you get you almost get immune to them because you as you say we we deal with our embarrassment by either um putting aside >> these passages or finding explanations for them whereby they don't really mean what they say.

[00:35:58]Can can I quote for our listeners just a few of these uh things that he would say about himself? Here's something that he'll that he writes in I believe it's at the fact that a psychologist without equal is speaking in my works that is perhaps the first thing a good reader will realize another passage. Does anyone at the end of the 19th century have a clear idea what poets in strong ages called inspiration? If not I will describe it.

[00:36:24]This is my experience of inspiration. I do not doubt that you would need to go back thousands of years to find anyone who would say it is mine as well.

[00:36:34]My Zeratra has a special place for me in my writings. With it I have given humanity the greatest gift it has ever received and I could go on quoting many passages that you draw attention to. And here you you you do relate this self agrandisement to the divine narcissism as well as many other kinds of narcissism. You speak of ethnoarcism when you know they the Franks in the 9th century believe that they had to find a to um translate the gospels into into their own language.

[00:37:10]>> Yeah. and many other ways in which by praising God the praiser is also always involved in an act of self-praise. No >> nse not only unveils that but then takes this into an extreme in his own public uh performances.

[00:37:26]>> Yeah. But uh from a architectonical point of view with regard to the ousus of the written opus as as such uh this divine narcissism is the precondition for that what Nichi called his uh deep idea that is the teaching of the eternal recurrence of the same. Yeah. because uh these both forms of circularity have to meet in order to to make both of them plausible.

[00:38:06]So if in the world always the same thing happens uh even in in huge circles that an individual knowledge never can go fully go through. But if really all the all times the same happen, the individual who is who is in the middle of the pro the process or caught in in in the process will either be just a grain of of dust uh in that uh infernal mill that turns eternally. But if in that same uh full circle the self love of of Dionus Dion Dionis here who loves himself with with the love of of of a being that knows and creates at the same time. Yeah. who has found a way to combine suffering, knowledge and and and creation. And then these both circular circularities can carry the world process and then this megalomanic discourse becomes as it were a necessary proof for for for the truth of that essay. Yeah.

[00:39:31]But finally we do not really know if Nishi really wanted uh that his uh theory of the eternal recounts of the same should be taken opt seriously because when he introduces this idea uh he speaks hypothetically he says how much would you have uh to become a friend of yourself.

[00:40:06]And how much would you have to fall in love with life in general if you were ready to to carry these heaviest idea of all thinkable ideas which is that everything will happen again and you will be exactly come eternally back again as the same person. Yeah. And if you and if you could say yes to that obscene proposition that everything should happen happen again uh without the intervention of a no >> right >> then then these both uh secular circularities could meet. But I wonder if Khalid was right when he when he took uh that theorem of the eternal recurrence of the same literally. I don't think it should be taken literally. It is a test as it were.

[00:41:03]>> Right.

[00:41:04]>> It is a test and uh it should show you how far your uh energies of a affirmation can go. Yeah. He himself was made sometimes very funny remarks. Uh for instance when when he said I am very inclined to drop my strongest idea of the eternal recounts of the same when uh I imagine my mother and my sister.

[00:41:31]>> Right. Right. That's true. When it when things become specific it's more difficult, you know.

[00:41:37]>> Yeah. So the there is I believe something in theological tradition if you want to use a Haidigarian concept for it where the divine is has been conceived from Aristotle onwards as coincident with itself identical to itself. It is that which must necessarily love itself. Uh noose has that quality where it thinks upon itself. In Dante's uh Paradiso 33, the very last kanto of the paradizo when he looks right into the godhead, he sees the trinity smiling to itself on itself through itself. Uh so this sort of principle of identity would almost require the kind of divine narcissism and na then seems to be very aware of it and perhaps at certain times suspicious of it. I'm reminded of one of the first mad semi- mad letters that he dashed off after his collapse in Torino in city of Churin when he wrote to um >> to Birkhard actually >> where in in his in his first paragraph he he writes this is January 6 1889 dear professor in the end I would much rather be a Basil professor than God but I have not dared push my private egoism so are as to desist for its sake from the creation of the world. You see, one must make sacrifices however and wherever one lives. Yeah.

[00:43:08]>> And this idea that it would be better to be a Basel professor than God seems to me to suggest that there is there's something infernal about that that God's entrament with his within his own megalomania and maybe a modest Basil professor uh is somehow more sane than God.

[00:43:31]Maybe uh uh but for us it is very hard uh to conceive a sane god.

[00:43:42]>> Yes.

[00:43:42]>> But but being God but being being a god that creates that much inner tension and all the great systems of philosophical theology dealt with that inner divine turbulence. for for that neoplatinism for instance is nothing but a huge description of that turmoil that is going on in inside uh inside the space of divinity. God remains always in himself but he explodes permanently. He he's recollecting the particles of his explosion and brings them back to the center and so and so forth. That's a system of of proclos uh that found an amazing afterlife in Hegel's system that also is uh caught in the rules of that absolute circularity and from that point of view hide is v to reintegrate niche into the the history of onto the of theology and to uh see in him a thinker uh who delivered an explanation to the two uh strongest ways of self-manifestation of the divine will uh uh the will to power uh as science or technology and the will to power as as art.

[00:45:17]>> Yeah. And in Nietze, can I ask you Peter if you agree that there is a a certain um there's a philosophy of shattering of as Dianesian urge to self- emilation and self um self- undoing as you were describing in the case of the turbulence of of God in even more traditional notions but that this urge that Dianisis has to in his moment of presence is epiphany that moment of presence eventually will and and very quickly turns into the dismemberment of that God precisely perhaps because there is some liberation from this narcissistic trap within which the concept of the divine often often is found finds itself need himself sometimes tried uh to get out of this full circle in exomalo you you find amazing passages where where he says that he personally for for his his own psychological reality. Uh he never had a will and he's as a person uh not able to say what it what it means to be really willing this this or that. This is a precious hint. And the most beautiful part of Saratustra um this high noon scene in the fourth the fourth uh part of of Tatustra which actually is a a kind of European answer to the moment of enlightenment of the Buddha under the bodhi body tree.

[00:46:58]You know, uh here he describes the messenger as as a person sleeping in in the grass under under a tree and tied to life. Yeah. Only through a very thin uh threat thread. You must not not move.

[00:47:23]Yeah. Dionis is is is there. Don't even breathe. Don't don't don't move. The world has become perfect. That that shows that he he's looking for the moments when he was able uh to to bear the burden of of his divine predicament.

[00:47:45]>> Yeah.

[00:47:46]And what do appearances or surfaces have to do with this in the sense that at the end of his life I mean and at the end of his thought he does go back to the Greeks and he he he says uh at the very last page of Nietze Contra Vagner for example which he was working on before in there in Churin he talks about our future and he says you will hardly find us again on the paths of those Egyptian youths who endanger temples by night, embrace statues, and want by all means to unveil, uncover, and put into a bright light whatever is kept concealed for good reasons. No, this bad taste, this will to truth, to truth at any price. This youthful madness in love of truth have lost their charm for us.

[00:48:40]For that we are too experienced, too serious, too gay, too burned, too deep.

[00:48:45]We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn. And then he goes on to say, aren't we now after we've been through these depths?

[00:48:53]Are we not coming back to to the Greek wisdom? Are we not Greeks adorers of forms, surfaces, colors, tones, everything that has to do with the divine superficiality of appearance? And when I think of those moments of the high noon that where the world has become perfect, there's two things about the noon that I I would like to propose to you. See if you agree. One is that the high noon is not the moment of maximum revelation where the world is is revealed. But it it's also the hour at which there's a great deal of concealment in appearances because of precisely this excessive brightness and this stillness. And it's when the animals are actually in hiding. And so and that this acceptance of that which does not reveal itself or that perhaps which you cannot penetrate to the truth of might be part of the experience of the high noon or at least an accept an acceptance of the limitation that our phenomenological ways of being in the world bring with them. Does na at the end come to a a kind of need to to create a kind of renunciation of this strong will to um become the divine sees the divine or be in the overwhelming presence of the divine. There is a moment in later niche's life when he addresses his his future readers asking them uh that first of all they should not mistake him for something he had not been you know uh that is his uh first and last hope not to be uh mis mis misunderstood uh as the founder of a new religion. You know he's saying the title I am pretending for is that of a fool or a poet only fool only poet. I think uh it is a wise decision to take that as his as his last word when it comes to the question of of self of a self-portrait.

[00:51:10]Yeah. together with Vexom. Uh we arrive at at this ambivalence and and the truth question can best be interpreted by the hint that the noon uh for uh n is a is an occasion to repeat uh the divine siesta after create after the creation.

[00:51:37]And there uh two types of stillness come together. There is an oriental element in in in each his reflections. It is a silence of the Buddha who sat 3 days in deep silence under the body under the body bomb because he had understood there's nothing to say, nothing to do.

[00:51:58]And only out of a secondary gesture of of pity he descends and uh decides to become a teacher. But this teaching is always something that is not propelled uh by a manic mission. Yeah.

[00:52:18]>> Well, that's we go back to the Basel professor in the >> that's what Yeah. The B the B professor is a a a hidden Buddhist who has uh it's uh >> and a teacher too.

[00:52:32]>> Yeah. And teach teaching is also a form a form of pity because you see that uh so many people people are still living in that uh bad form of tur turbulence and that are not sufficiently familiar with that double stillness uh of the European uh siesta and the Indian meditation >> right can I ask Zeratustra is a is a bewildering testament and Nietze had in Eommo and elsewhere had what some people consider kind of insane overvaluation overestimation of the importance of that work among all his other works and um I know that you and I share a love of that book not for its overt sentimentalities or other things but because it seems much more uh there there's a lot going on under the surface and can you say something about how important you believe that one book is in the corpus of Nietze I think is it is the book in in in which he uh makes his coming out uh as a writer of a new type of autobiography.

[00:54:09]On the surface, you would say he tried to do something that could only be done uh by a third person. Yeah. Just as it needed a Thomas from Telano to write the vita of St. Francis.

[00:54:29]Uh but he I think he wanted to be Chelano and Francis of Aizi in one per person and to become the uh uh the writer of of a vita not not a modern autobio biography but the vita is >> so you think it's more of a vita than than a gospel.

[00:54:50]>> Yeah it is closer to the vita. So the a saint's life Yeah. the record of a saint's life uh it should be uh collected within a a new volume of the legenda area where the uh modern characters could be brought brought together in that collection.

[00:55:14]uh and these are uh reports on on heroes and saints who are able to reappropriate their own work. Gil by the way was a man who had said uh the man is an autobiographical animal and the very possibility of of historioggraphy depends on the fact the human faculty to to bring the elements of your life story to gather and to arrange them in such a way that you get an autobiographical self.

[00:55:48]But this is a modernism. I think nature here clings to an an outdated and much more heroic form of of writing a vita.

[00:56:00]For instance, these passages uh on his own work. This is to simply reenacting with the tradition that already was in the antiquity uh uh well-known habits that scholars towards the end of their lives wrote a book on their books. Liber liber is a classical genre knows that and she takes it up. The most famous uh example of that of course was the retraion uh that Augustine wrote uh when he looked back on on his uh former writings. So there's a lot of classicism in that eoma.

[00:56:46]>> Yes, that's echo of course and then but zerustra here's uh another question I I I'm very concerned to ask you. I I find that when it comes to Nietz being a prophet, there are ways in which he was for me extremely blind about what would be the most dominant feature of the coming century which he many people consider him the inaugurator of the 20th century. But the one thing he has almost nothing to say about was the uh dominance of modern technology in the era to come. And this okay you you can say that he didn't this was a blind spot in his thinking in Zeratusra especially in part four however I think where he has a prophetic vision uh that has to do with our still our own time is when he's speaking when he thinks of the the last men >> this uh idea of who is the last man in what way is the the the parameters that the last man is is is contained within which is very much the consumerist of our own society which is the complacent uh it's it's not it's no longer even the pet bourgeoa or or these 19th century categories. It's very much the contemporary citizen as a global citizen of a of a kind of uh capitalist system of consumerism that does not think beyond its creaturely comforts of this day and the next day and the and this is where I think there's something in his thinking that promises to to show us a way to transcend this fatality which is European civilization >> after all these centuries and millennia and it that it cannot end in the last man or will it end in the last man?

[00:58:40]>> I think here uh in in nature appears a major problem that will occupy humanity in the centuries to come. Uh and that is the question of how to maintain that what I call the vertical tension inside the the human being. all everything that has to do with verticality for for that Nishi is a thief specialist uh coming from from the tradition because he discovered this new type of problem how to maintain the the vertical tension if the higher region itself has been re removed. Yeah, >> this is so as if uh Jacob's ladder >> you know over which the angel can uh march up and down. Yeah, >> but should still stand upright without having a support on the upper uh level.

[00:59:47]So there there is still height but uh there's no support from above. So everything has has to be erected from from below. The vertical tension has a rocketlike uh dynamics or a will to growth and that can be easily expressed also in biological terms. You can go back to Gert who said that all life is movement and extension. And from from here you get to a less megalomanianic conception of growth as you you can re-ransate uh nature's exaggerations in in the language of of human growth which is still an an important and as I would say an immortal uh idea for also for generations to come. Well, in fact, you in niche apostle, you speak about his extraordinary genius as a marketer of his own brand and that he and that you don't merely invent a brand that then takes off in the market. what you do is that you create the market for the very brand that you're promoting and that >> Nietze created a market for a brand of I think it's related to what you're talking about the latter of having realized that in the era in the regime of the last man which is a regime of egalitarianism or mass that there will always be a need for distinction or a drive to distinction and that his he marketed his his philosophy as a promise to as a way to uh understanding a need before it even became apparent to the world itself that there was going to be a need for distinction in in this world and that he was but then you also say somewhat um I think prophetically that he was promising losers a formula by which they could be on the side of winners.

[01:01:56]>> Yeah. And this was also part of his brand. Uh can you say something about this? Do you do you see when you speak about verticality are you speaking about this need for distinction that will be among uh people in in this particular regime?

[01:02:14]uh I think uh Nichi was among the very rare thinkers who had a feeling for that there is a deep connection between moral moral moral philosophy and public relations and this can be shown by the subtitle of the Saratustra a book for all and nobody kind.

[01:02:44]Um, and I'm convinced that this is uh niche genius. This subtitle betrays something from his his in innermost drive uh his way of ponymics as Haidiger would put it uh was not really ponymics. It it was teaching.

[01:03:07]It's it was a kind of action teaching action teaching like Joseph Boyce would would call his his performances. N was a a kind of action teacher, writing a a book for all and nobody and discovering in so doing the very structure of of higher morality. Because this kind of morality only creates a field of behavior uh that is not descriptive for a living population that portraes the horizon into into which new generations uh will will rise in in resonance with this uh input. And the input has necessarily to be a challenge just as Buddhism was be before it was brought out uh as a Indian form of a of a of a gospel or the way of salvation just as Christian gospel uh was a a pure challenge to the uh pagan environment uh of the former world and and so Niche uh designs a a horizon for for for those who in the morality market of the future uh uh will distinguish themselves as individuals who who show how the the path of humanity can be continued. And in that context you read the this most provocative sentence of the introduction the so-called prologue tora the man is a rope between the animal and the superman and uh you decide if you want to be a successful rope walker or not.

[01:05:17]>> Right?

[01:05:17]>> Yeah. And if you are not successful as a rope walker uh you have tried it. And that is the meaning of this uh philosophical pantomime. And that concludes the prologue of Susla. He sees a rope walker. He he has fallen down and he said you made the danger out of danger you made your profession. There's nothing despisable in that and for that reason I I'm going to bury you with my own hands.

[01:05:53]>> That is that is Kasar's message. It's not success that decides everything. It is the will to to remain within the movement uh and to walk on on the rope. uh if you're not do not want to uh remain simply a part of the masses who are looking up and admiring people doing crazy things.

[01:06:21]>> Right. Well, that's uh that's beautiful because it brings everything back into play that we've been talking about over the last hour, which is above all what is the message? And if that's Zerathus's message um that being on the tight rope and being suspended between two different points maybe being a messenger without um you know the sender in view either behind you or in front of you and this idea of living dangerously I that is also a parable for the kind of thinking that your work certainly um embodies in uh all sorts of ways. and a kind of message of dangerous dangerous thinking as you put it in uh your in your work >> in John you you find a passage when where he said just remain a messenger of the rope >> messenger of the rope that's good that's a good place to conclude our conversation that we've been having here with our professor Peter Slodikeke who's been visiting here at Stanford in the past month offering seminar on his work and um grateful to you for coming on again Peter for this conversation about Nietze and when you come back to Stanford and I and I'm trusting that you will come back very soon we can uh get back into this underworld studio of KCSU again and uh continue this conversation on other uh topics as well. So I want to remind our listeners that you've been listening to Entitled Opinions. I'm Robert Harrison. We're on hiatus at the moment but we're going to be back with you in the spring. So thanks again.

[01:08:02]Thank you.