Actually, I think Nietzsche is somewhat off-base in his self-criticism, and that working one's way through the Birth of Tragedy is the right starting point for studying Nietzsche. Many of his key ideas are introduced in this work. I think it's also very important to understand what he means by Dionysiac, Apollonian, and Socratic responses to the problem of life -- and how they connect up with his own times

Looks like Nietzsche not only is quite popular among my subscribers, but evokes some enthusiasm and passion on their part!

Thanks for sharing your knowledge on youtube. I am basically only able to study philosophy on my own. Its great to have your videos after reading the book. Where else could I go for extra insight to the works that are difficult like this one is (to me).

Yep -- that's my order of favorites with Nietzsche as well. I have to admit that I prefer when he's writing systematically rather than aphoristically. Down the line, I will be doing some lectures on the Genealogy as well.

I'm glad you found them useful -- it's a great work, so I'm always happy to "clear the path," so to speak. As for the question -- the third part of this video sequence on BOT is on precisely that question. The fourth is as well -- but that bears a bit more on the "present time" of Nietzsche's text

Differences? Sure, there's plenty -- Schopenhauer is still working in a largely Kantian framework, just, you might say, turned inside out. Categories like the Apollonian and Dionysiac are in fact part of Nietzsche's aesthetics -- so there's difference in context. There's also differences in the "use" of the aesthetic object between the two. Who's better? I get more out of Nietzsche myself, but Schopenhauer is well worth reading

Thanks for posting the lecture.

@GregoryBSadler

7 жыл бұрын

You're very welcome!

Nietzsche Lecture!!! Yes! Yes! Yes!

I'm glad to hear that. You're welcome

I've really enjoyed your classroom videos. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Glad you found it useful. You can't really go wrong with Copleston

Thanks a lot for uploading these Sir. Very helpful to watch while referencing the text.

Listening to your lecture, I immediately gained new insight into Oedipus Rex and Greek tragedy story structure -thanks.

@GregoryBSadler

7 жыл бұрын

Very cool - you're welcome!

Well, the Dionysiac is reflective of the condition of the primordial Oneness, Nietzsche thinks -- but unless it interacts productively with the Apollonian, whatever articulations it generates tend to be rather ephemeral. Both the Apollonian and the Dionysiac are responses, which can be more or less complex, and you could think of this in terms of "layers"

Glad you find them useful. Thanks for the subscription

I am reading this book now and came across your video , so thought I'd give you a listen! Thanks for doing these lectures! ; ) Just now getting started!

@GregoryBSadler

9 жыл бұрын

You're welcome!

Thanks for posting this lecture. I have been reading philosophy on my own now for about 10 or 11 years. I'm currently reading coplestons 9 volume history of philosophy on the chapters of nietzches. This lecture was very poignant and concise and helped me a lot considering I never took a philosophy class. Thank you.

Greg B the OG, always savin me.

You're very welcome, and I can sympathize! I wrote my Masters thesis on Husserl's Passive Synthesis lectures. As arid as Husserl is, he does not even come close to Kant's first critique (which is a shame, since many of Kant's writings are quite lively and don't kill, but provoke, the reader's interest!

Thanks. I'll probably just finish watching your analysis videos of the book and continue reading the other Nietzsche works and then research the notes I take.

Glad to hear it! Yes, there's a danger of raising the bar too high for Masters theses and Doctoral dissertations. I do need to go back to my own diss, and look it over -- kind of tough to get up the enthusiasm for that project, thought!

In the middle of finishing up my masters thesis and wow are those comments at the beginning comforting.

That's excellent!

I've been waiting for ages for you to talk about Nietzche! :D

@voiceofsocialwlefare45

Ай бұрын

2024

I really love this lecture. I am currently reading Birth of Tragedy and this video helped a lot in solidifying my understanding of this work. One thing i took from this work is the influence the Dionysian/Apollonian dialectic had on the creation of psychoanalysis. I see the Dionysian perspective as the subconscious trying to communicate to the conscious through the Apollonian perspective. This why i think Nietchize said you could not separate because essentially they are two halves of a whole which is the self. I also came to this conclusion when reading Michel foucault's Madness and Civilization. In the chapter Passion and Delirium, Foucault makes an ode to the Dionysian/Apollonian dialectic by stating slightly similar observations. His conclusion though is different, as he believes that the individual should succumb to delineation (the absence of negation) , which is ultimately the most liberating perspective. You also used to teach at Fayetteville State University. I just graduated from there. My professor mentioned you when i was talking about Hegel (Professor Keli Walsh).

@GregoryBSadler

4 жыл бұрын

Kelli is a great teacher, and we got to interact quite a bit back when I was there at FSU what seems like a lifetime ago!

I loved this lecture I just finished reading the birth of tragedy yesterday while also reading the autobiography of Wagner by Bryan Magee. I’m interested in the philosophy of art and Wagner was one of the rare artists who took philosophy and applied it to his works through his readings of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche illustrations on dreams was fantastic it never occurred to me to look at dreams in that fashion. Thanks once again for the lecture for me it cleared up the whole Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy. That one needs the other to check it’s ranging impulses.

@GregoryBSadler

9 жыл бұрын

You're very welcome -- keep on with them though: it gets even more interesting

The Apollonian dream-world is the "appearance of appearance' as Nietzsche states in chapter 4. It tries to remove itself from the basic meaningless suffering and strife of everyday life by projecting an ultimate narrative (the only acceptable theodicy) which is expressed by Greek Gods. Essentially by proposing a meaningful and concise interpretation of the pains of Life so that life itself can function. In chapter 3 Nietzsche asserts that under this illusion nature achieves its ends.

You're welcome -- glad you liked it

Yes, the Greek references will be a lot more meaningful if you've got some contact with the plays, epics, etc. Neitzsche is referencing. I'd say, actually, to just start reading your way through some of those texts. I'm afraid I've got no ideas on what a good introductory guide to Greek lit would be -- perhaps some of the other viewers will have some good ideas about that

It's interesting, the Thucydides angle - I see Hobbes and Nietzsche as very similar in many respects, and there is a connection between Hobbes and Thucydides. One of the speeches given by the Argives about the Athenians represents them as something very similar to the Hobbesian "state of nature" kind of guys - they're something new on the scene, motivated solely by the pursuit of "power after power", as Hobbes would say, or the "will to power" as Nietzsche would say. Hobbes also translated Th.

Yes -- there already is individuation of living things very early on, and these things are definitely not in some sort of perfectly organized, intelligible, harmonious set of relations. Both the Dionysiac and the Apollonian responses are precisely that -- responses, going in quite different directions, which grapple with, and put something else in place of this primordial condition. The Socratic response is also in some way, without fully grasping it, a response to this as well

Again, thank you.

Nice video. Friedrich Nietzsche is worth exploring. Thank you for making the video ;)

Great lecture, Thank you so much it's very helpful.

@GregoryBSadler

3 жыл бұрын

You’re welcome - glad it’s useful for you

Very clear, thanks....

Dr. Sadler, which book by Nietzsche would you recommend I begin with, Beyond Good and Evil or Twilight of the Idols? Which is an easier read for a new and aspiring Nietzschean intellectual? I am in agreement with Nietzsche's self criticism in BT so I gave up on it with after five chapters of what Nietzsche said was "clumsy writing." So which do you recommend out of those two?

I'm no Nietzschean myself -- though I did go through a Nietzschean period as an undergrad and grad student -- and I disagree with him on many points, but I do have an appreciation for quite a bit of his thought. I'd suppose that I find myself similar to Max Scheler in attitude towards Nietzsche. I'd say that there's a certain time of life when it's particularly fruitful to grapple with Nietzsche -- though there's a danger there of just using him to wallow in one's own sensed alienation!

Thanks! -- glad you liked the lecture so much. So, modern western philosophers who have something to say to those interested in Buddhism,Daoism, Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, etc.? Well, if it was just neo-Platonist stuff you're interested in, there's plenty of good stuff out there, but it won't fit in well with the Gnostic emphasis. For Gnosticism, Hans Jonas has a book, The Gnostic Religion, where towards the end he discusses Gnosticism and Existentialism, if I remember right.

Great lecture!

@GregoryBSadler

9 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

i'm very excited to read the birth of tragedy for my book review in school

Dr. Sadler, THANK YOU! Reading TBOT was a conflicting experience for me which ultimately discouraged me from getting into it early on. No doubt brilliant, but the damn romanticism! Lol. Not to mention I started reading Nietzsche with Ecce Homo, so I was spoiled. Your lecture helped a lot with my studies in a time of great fatigue, so thanks again!

@GregoryBSadler

2 жыл бұрын

Glad it was helpful for you!

That would be something!

Wrapping up reading this book along side these lectures. I'd advise those interested to listen to this before reading it instead of after. Even though it'll color the interpretation, having a limited knowledge of Greek culture makes it dense where it doesn't have to be. Spoiler alert So in part three there is talk of Euripidean art vs Dionysian/Apollonian. It's easy to see the Dionysian and Apollonian works by example (Shakespeare and Dostoevsky), but what would be an example of Euripidean art? What comes to mind is the show "Friends" as it teaches the every man how to be a person in our society, and is educational by providing a script for interaction. The question is, does that miss the mark or not? You mention Seinfeld but I got lost there. Also, the movie Barton Fink by the Coen Brothers has its place in this art for the masses vs art of tragedy. His life is tragedy of epic proportions yet he strives to write for the every man as the every man. I'm staying brief here but there seems to be some connection, latent or accidental. Now, I bring this up as a matter of whether that kind of application of BoT would be fair or whether it this is to liberal an approach.

@GregoryBSadler

9 жыл бұрын

All the more reason to start acquiring that knowledge of some of the high points of Greek culture -- no education is really complete without having read some classic epic and drama. There's all sorts of examples of what Nietzsche is calling Socratic/Alexandrian artwork (Euripides is just the first of many examples -- and the one who N. thinks screws up tragedy). New Comedy among the Greeks, which is basically like today's sitcoms, is one example. Look at the features (and there's multiple ones, not just one criterion) Nietzsche describes, and see what else fits.

when I (hopefully) get around to doing some work on philosophical themes in P.K. Dick, I imagine it probably would be a series of writings (perhaps on one of my blogs, perhaps some articles), as well as series of lectures -- there's far too much to fit into on single lecture. I'd work the novels and the short stories, rather than the exegesis, most likely -- there's so much in them, so many allusions he's making. As for my own personal stance, like Marcel, I can say I'm a "Christian Socratic"

I did recognize subtle hints for his later ideas in the few chapters that I read; I'll give it another try. By the way, is there any difference between Nietzsche's and Schopenhauer's aesthetics? Or is one better than the other?

I wouldn't know what to tell you. Most of the ones out there are decent enough to start with. That's one of the problems with being able to read texts in the original language -- you don't worry so much about translations, since you can always go back to the original if there's something fishy-sounding

very good lecture, thanks.

@GregoryBSadler

4 жыл бұрын

You're welcome!

Dr. Sadler would you agree on this interpretation of appearance? We have first the Primordial Unity which perhaps at this stage of Nietzsche's thought is closer to Schopenhauer's Will but it gets manifested in the first stage of appearance which is "Life" aka "the terrible wisdom of Silenus". Individuation already occurs in this level and therefore the Will to exist is manifested in a multiplicity of conflicting forces this is where suffering is at its most basic.

GREAT lecture! I LOVE how you compare it to the Enuma Elis, because I see the same kind of mystic themes there: separation as foundation of existence, the drive for unity in spite of that... I think that's the primordial wound of mystic thought (in almost a literal sense: God/reality's separation from itself), and... Humanity has this additional wound of self-awareness, the knowledge of separation, which I feel like is expressed most clearly in Lacan. It strikes me as funny that I GOT a lot of it on a first reading because I'm into what a lot of people seem "woo." Although in a lot of ways I think it just makes sense on a logical level, regardless of whether you take seriously the greater metaphysics of mysticism.

@GregoryBSadler

2 ай бұрын

Not into "mystic" stuff myself. Glad you enjoyed the lecture

Thanks for posting the lecture. I was wondering, considering what Nietzsche says about art being the Will entretaining itself, can we think the apollonian and the dionysian as forces that the Will uses to obtain it's purposes rather than responses to reality? (Sorry if my english is weird)

@GregoryBSadler

7 жыл бұрын

They're both

You're welcome

I read the book but had trouble comprehending it. The Greek references went over my head since I've never study them out before. Can you recommend any books that are a good introduction to Greek literature?

@Gregory B. Sadler and what speech are you referring? would it be within the realms of book 5 when the truce is in effect and argos becomes an ally of athens?

Fantastic lecture. i picked up a copy of 'birth of tragedy' right after i read schopenhauer so everything fell in together well. My main current of study is buddhism, tao ,neo-platonism, gnosticism, mysticism, & hermeticism but i wanted to look further into the more modern western guys which is why im on this channel. could you tell me your personal view. & what 'modern' well known western philosophers you would suggest to further complement my more 'gnostic' field of study.

Hahaha! point taken! But, Rand does not appear to be a particularly careful reader of Nietzsche. Certainly not an interpreter I'd go to in order to get a full conception of what Nietzsche's actual and full positions were. That said, I suppose her influence -- and talk about enthusiasm, her fans certainly are committed to her -- is one major way some of Nietzsche's ideas do get lived out in our contempory world

my question is: the clash of this two impulses goes in layers? like, there is the Uno, im thinking of ultimate essence, and then there is the dionysian element, and then the appolonian elemente and then the representation in the aestethic way. Or there is the Uno and then the two impulses melted between each other. Or acctually is something totaly diferent? Thank you very much. great lecture!

Well, I am a huge fan of PK.Dick's novels -- both the speculative fiction ones and the "realistic" ones -- and the short stories. I've looked at the exegesis, but it doesn't interest me as much -- I'm far from being a gnostic, you see. Down the line, when I can find the time, I plan to do some writing and lecturing about the philosophical themes in Dick's novels and short stories. But, that's the trouble, eh? Finding the time

Thanks for the lecture. Question are the lecture done like summary or chosen the nuggets in the book?

@GregoryBSadler

2 жыл бұрын

Watch it and compare it to the book you’ve read

@nasherbuenafe253

2 жыл бұрын

@@GregoryBSadler ty professor

Well, watch the video. I do discuss it

How much knowledge of greek culture would someone need to have to be able to understand this book properly? I have only read the iliad and the odyssey and a couple of greek plays. Should I perhaps read some more before diving into this book?

@GregoryBSadler

8 жыл бұрын

+MD Æ It's not as if you have to only read the book once. Why not read it now, and then read some of the authors he references, and then read it again?

@cosmonaut379

7 жыл бұрын

Not much at all really, its more about the concepts behind tragedy and so forth, read now, read tragedies and re read it

This video helped me out a lot. But you were on the right track when you were writing intoxication the first time. Intoxication. :D

@GregoryBSadler

9 жыл бұрын

I'm a poor speller, that's for certain

@melissais

9 жыл бұрын

I don't judge. Thank you for your videos.

Nice i am looking at his book on amazon, it is what i had in mind thank you. I was wondering if you have looked into Philip K Dicks exegesis. Its highly eclectic & creative which one may suspect if you have read Philips fictional works. Would be interesting to read what a more advanced philosopher would have to say about it & to see if you think he will ever catch on in the 'main stream.'

the Babylonian reference was quite interesting, but can you spell out the text you were talking about? I can't quite make it out.

@fredhornaday3665

8 жыл бұрын

+Bogdan M. Enuma Elish

Neitzsche and Schope def my faves. Btw, do you cover Lao Tzu?

@GregoryBSadler

2 жыл бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/nYei2tinoqaufNo.html

“vous êtes un homme!" How well put together can one be?

im still at the begining of the book. at seccion 5 to be precise. progress have become very hard. i cant say that im been able to understand it hahaha have lots of questions.but i will persevere

Not sure what "end" he is talking about. But maybe an evolutionary model is appropriate. If survival for existence is the fundamental part of everything then there has to be (especially for human beings who can contemplate life) this Apollonian dream-world because it makes life possible to live in.

Wish the sound were better. Maybe use a clip-on microphone.

@GregoryBSadler

7 жыл бұрын

Read when the video was published.

@kepeb1

6 жыл бұрын

Ahhh, Pre-dates clip-on mics. JK :)

Intoxicatication

Well, very few people read the Hobbes translation these days besides Hobbes scholars

@Gregory B. Sadler thats the book im reading now but not the hobbes translation cause ive read that its not completely reliable and i have leviathan on my list for the future and a great similarity with hobbes and thucydides indeed hobbes greatly influenced by what he saw as thucydides politcal realism when in fact he was only history

I think the video actually starts somewhere around 25:20

@GregoryBSadler

4 жыл бұрын

I think that's a pretty stupid comment

You'll need to read the book or watch the lecture. If you actually do, that question answers itself

You mean send in an except to the TED people?

No, it's earlier on -- when Argos is making a case to the other cities of the Pelopenese why they need to nip the Athenians in the bud, because nobody can know what they'd do

I'd be willing to say that Nietzsche is a first-rate philosopher, of the rank of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, and so on. Rand? Sure, she's a philosopher, just a third rate one, about as profound or interesting as Herbert Spencer or Bertrand Russell. She does have a systematic philosophy, just a poorly thought out one, which tends to get those she criticizes very wrong, imposes very schematic dualisms, and does argue for her claims, but poorly

Nietzsche blamed himself as being a defective youth in writing the BOT. He did, on the other hand, call it a "proven book" with respect to what he called "the best minds of the time"... alluding to Schiller in that one who satisfies the minds of the time has indeed lived for all times. The book is thus to abide, to outlive. In his self-criticism, he comes to conclude that the greatest problem -- that there IS even a problem here -- is that the Greeks remain enigmatic insofar as we know not what is meant by Dionysian. Nietzsche changed the conception of the term throughout his works -- from the symbolization of tendencies of the godly festivals, and as diametrically opposed to the Apollonian, to the declaratory nature of the human spirit in laying stress on life -- the passions -- in the face of suffering. Why were the Greeks so craving for beauty? Perhaps there was an underlying peculiarity in this relish; a deep-seated pain or melancholy. What then for the opposite craving -- for the ugly? What appealed the older Greeks to the rampant pessimism in tragic myth? The shift of the image from the good to life's dreadful riddle? Is there a secret madness in health? The endemic youthfulness of the people perhaps did will the severity of pessimism. Nietzsche himself maddened over time, and along came his genius, as he references Plato that madness brings about a blessing upon Greece. Perhaps it was the logicizing of the world later on which engendered a more abundant optimism -- the rationality of a peoples as the first sign, or "symptoms of a decline of strength..."

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Yes, I've discussed the fact that Nietzsche decided the book was an early, immature effort, in previous comments, and in the lecture. I tend to think that he was off on that, not a particularly good judge of his own work. But then, I also think that the most important theme of the book is the Alexandrian-Socratic response and what would be required to surpass it, not just the A-D distinction

@Mireya0407

10 жыл бұрын

I'd say you're right. Socrates was an opponent of the tragic art. Nietzsche reflects on how Socrates was the first to speak on the value set of knowledge, with the insight that he knew that he knew himself to know nothing. He talked of the self-professed wisemen of Athens and their conceit of knowledge. Socrates saw knowledge taken up "only by instinct"; the phrase of which Nietzsche believed was the touchstone of Socratism, which would influence Western posterity. Socrates' quest then was the correction of existence; the destruction of existing art, ethics, being, ect...

So what philosophy or religion do you agree with the most? A lecture on the philosophical themes of PKD sounds amazing be sure to record that one! Would you take your information from his novels or his exegesis or both? That would take a while but would be well worth it. Who knows... if you get it right the Logos or 'plasmate' may shoot a pink beam of information at your brain & assimilate you into the cosmic body of Christ =] so says pkd anyway. i hope so.

Dr. Sadler, I've been going over this book again for my comprehensive exam and was wondering something. What is the distinction that Nietzsche makes between imitation and expression. I think that "expression" has something to do with Leibniz, and "imitation" is referring to Aristotle I think. Thanks for any help you can give me. "The sphere of poetry does not lie outside the world, as the fantastic impossibility imagined by the brain of a poet: it wants to be the very opposite, the unadorned expression of truth, and must therefore cast off the deceitful finery of the supposed reality of the man of culture."

I suppose that's one way of looking at it, but then everyone must qualify as a fourth or fifth rate philosopher, and I think it is only the first and second rate ones who are truly worthy of the term.

@Afiq Johari i want to give nietzsche a chance and lean away from plato for good cause of what nietzsche said "my cure for all platonism has always been thucydides" and that plato is "pre-christian morality"

What translation is your book. I'm reading the Kauffman translation and it's very different. Do you think the latter is of lesser quality?

If you could, saying page numbers, so we can quickly reference the page, would make me eternally grateful.

@HiFiClassical

9 жыл бұрын

ENDLESS814RAP There's so many different versions, that it may not be useful to do so.

@cosmonaut379

7 жыл бұрын

......

Well, wait no longer!

I understand that Nietzsche is an existential philosopher, but would you say Birth of Tragedy is an existential text?

@GregoryBSadler

4 жыл бұрын

Yes

It's funny, I've never been able to stand Nietzsche (Can't we all just be nice to each other?), but he seems so incredibly popular to the masses: do people like being told that their life is meaningless or something?

Can I just confirm that before the Titans, you say the name 'Ouranos'?

As much as I dislike Nietzsche, I acknowledge that he is still a great philosopher, just one I wish had never been born. I don't think Rand was influenced much by him, as she seems to think that selfishness has meaning *shiver*, I was just noting that "philosophers" (does she even count?) become very popular as soon as they promote unpopular ideas that the like of Che shirt wearers and Malcolm X supporters can worship as some sort of demi-god.

👍

Yoo nice

I'm really surprised that they don't, if you're at a Jesuit college. The old-school, orthodox Jesuits -- very few of them left these days -- would study him precisely because the Jesuit way was to embrace hard-core scholarship, and tackle possible intellectual opponents head on. Most of the present-day Jesuits, I would think, would be quite all right with someone teaching Nietzsche -- they just wouldn't like his elitism and glorification of violence and exploitation

One only needs to look at the popularity of Ayn Rand to see what happens when people read too much of one author.

Re: around 52 minutes. It's Oedipus, not Odysseus! Great video otherwise though

@GregoryBSadler

4 жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it. Yep, sometimes I misspeak

Nihilism is frightening, and like it or not, he did influence fascism.

Yep, that's right - their terrible father!

An Apollonian remark: The Birth of the Tragedy was first published in 1872, not in 1871.

@GregoryBSadler

3 жыл бұрын

More Socratic nitpickiness, I'd say

No thanks, I'll go on reading Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Singer for my contemporary philosophy, I don't like Nihilism, and I find Nietzsche's arguments against Utilitarianism far from compelling.

Wish they taught Nietzsche at my college but I think the whole "god is dead" kinda pisses off the Jesuits lol. Great job though with all the lectures.

No I'm not, if Nietzsche does succeed then I'll be a Nihilist, and I don't want to be a Nihilist.

i cant understand that guy's acsent

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

I don't think I carry out any ascent -- just staying on the same vertical plane here

@ZiemniakZKosmosu

10 жыл бұрын

For me it sound like plain american English.

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Yep, that's precisely what it is. . . what we call "midwestern standard"