University of wisconsin professor jennifer rattner rosen hagen. Who is it nitch ski. Guest a philosopher who wrote in different forms and all of. The. Somees stayistic, some longer form critiques, and all of them had something to do with the challenge of the universal truth. He took as his enemy the notion of universal truth, and pretty much all of this work has something to do with his effort to pare it down can look at the history of that idea and show anything that we take to be universals, like, oh, god, are human creations, but theyre not rooted in nature or necessity, not mirrors of reality. Host he wrote at one time, god is dead. Guest he wrote that god is dead. And this first makes its appears in his gay science, and in it the gay science its an called the mad man, and hes playing with this idea that a mad man runs into the town square and says, god is dead, god is dead. We have killed him, you and i, and everybody says, he is crazy are and realizes my time has not come yet. And so there he is announcing what is going to be basically his intellectual project for the rest of his writing life before he goes insane, and that is the notion that god is dead. What troubled nietzsche was that over the course of the 19th 19th century in particular germans became more modern and more secular, they continued to go to church and pray to a god that they didnt really believe in anymore. In other words, he thought that modern thought, modern science, the forces of modernity, were undermining the basis religion and yet he said people still held on to it, still clutched on it to because they were too terrified to live without it. And this he found really despicable and thats what he tried to work out in his philosophy. Host where did he teach, how did he come about . Was we wellknown in his time . Guest nietzsche well, we have to separate the myth from the reality, which is that nietzsche did have moments of modest fame. Actually his first book, the the birth of tragedy had a big introduction and then he faded to obscure. He was a theology professor a professor of language, history of language, the genealogy of language, but the academic life wasnt for him. He suffered from a lot of physical ailments, so historians and philosophers debate why he had such tough time in the academy. Nietzsche taught for ten years in basil will some success but due to reasons we can only sort of imperfectly surls sunday out was that his health wasnt what he said it was, he needed to break three. The lived on a pension the rest of his life and gets to inhabit the image of the free thinker he so exalts and woreships in his own philosophy. He didnt have a huge readership but in 1899 he has a collapse and spends the last years of his life in a very declining state. And ended up in a totally vegetative state. And dies in 1900. He is discovered house disnietzsche become nietzsche . He is discovered precisely in those months when his health is declining. Shortly before this mental collapse. So one of the terrible ironies of his life and the posthumous life of his ideas is that in the moment when intellectually and mentally theres a closing of accounts for him, thats the moment when the floodgates open and he becomes the super star that he is today. Host who discovered him . Guest he was discovered this is a little tricky because theres always a quest for priority. People wore reading nietzsche but were those people being read . I think its fire say that the danish critics who had a big audience in the late 19th 19th century, is credited with discovering nietzsche and thats a fair assess. Brings the most fame to nietzsche. I have brief correspondence in that last year and someone finally recognize his genius and then he has a enemy collapse and thats the end of his productive life. So he is credited with getting the world out in Northern European circles, that nietzsche is one to watch. And that is when nietzsches rep few addition takes off. Host who followed him . Who like his senator what kind of people . Guest everybody. Host everybody. Guest athiests, religionists, the left, the right, wimp, men, black, white, old people, young people. So, nietzsche thats not immediate because he needs to be translated, yes. Nietzsche is not translated in earnest until the 1896, 1897 is the first round of translations. Then theres another major effort of translation that happened in the early 20th 20th century. Of course in the late 19th 19th century and 20th 20th century, a lot of educated americans could read german, so people were reading him in the original, but it did require the translations for him to take off. Henry why aim callling him menry h. L. Menkin has a lot to 0 do with nietzsches super stardom. Not to say there werent other folks who were reading nietzsche and poparrizing him in the united states, but menkin is the one who writes the first fulllength mono graph on nietzsche in 190 and thats where we get a kind of full on synopsis before nietzsches life, his travails, struggles with christianity, struggle with health, sexuality. Wouldnt be menkin without a Little Something racing thrown in. And then we get nietzsches ideas, boom. This book sold widely and sold well and it helped do two things. Helped really establish nietzsches reputation in america and did something else, which is it helped menkin become menkin. Host if somebody says, i love nietzsche, i agree with him, what are they saying to you, professor . Guest if theyre just saying that, not much. Because someone ill use the example of something athiests and bible something christians could both make that claim about nietzsche and thats what is so startling about his reception, is that he doesnt track right or left, he doesnt track religious or secular, he tracks rather, he tracks all over our intellectual spectrum. So just the statement, love nietzsche, doesnt tell new much of anything other than that an utterly conventional experience. To find nietzsche so powerful. In fact, i think what is so interesting is how many people well say and have said over the course of the late 19th, 20th century, how they felt when they read nietzsche, he was speaking to them personally. So one of the thing is argue in the book is that nietzsche becomes a super star, public philosopher by way of private longings and private fears. So, you have a disturbed look on your face. Host who wouldnt like Frederick Nietzsche . Guest plenty of people who dont like nietzsche and there are things not like. The didnt have nice things to say about democracy or didnt say nice things about women or nice things about equality. And so these are things that matter to you, youre going to take issue with him. So let me give you a concrete example of what is to like and not to like about nietzsche and i couldnt take anyone but ill take one of the more spectacular examples thats the lee leopold and lobe, two university of chicago students who think that they are the ubermention, what nietzsche had in mind and the wanted to prove host beyond the guest the superman. Translate as the superman. In fact the superman, as in superman comic which we think of as americana has its roots in nietzsches uber men. The two men who couple with supermen were readers of nietzsche. And theres many cases like that. Even the fact we have the word uber, uber comes into our language by way of the ubermensch. We have the example of we have two views that say they have the right nietzsche. They read leopold and the think that who he had in mind and they kidnap and kill a 14yearold boy, bobby franks, on the south side of chicago. They get caught. They werent so uber as they thought. Clarence darrow, the famed Trial Attorney becomes their defense lawyer and he is also a reader of nietzsche but is not a murderer. In fact hes quite sure thats not what nietzsche had in mind so the interesting thing about the whole trial, which is trying to save these boys these young men from being killed themselves, is how darrow had to both say the reason why they did this is because nietzsche is toxic dangerous thinker and they misunderstood him and yet nietzsche is an important thinker that we need in mott concern life but we need to handle him with care. So, its just Something Like that, the leopold and lobe trial. Nietzsche is both public enemy number one as we see with the murder but we also see what the Clarence Darrow thing, nietzsche is the thinker that we americans need in order to embrace modern life. Host political movements that have coopted nietzsche. Guest , oh, so many. I think the one that i mean, really, the whole 20th century is a story of cooptation. The one that surprises my readers the most or at least when i get letters from rathers or comp into contact with readers, its nietzsche the hidden nietzschean origins of black power. So, hughie p. Newton was a reader of nietzsche, and in nietzsche he discovered a lot of things but what he understood from nietzsches he needed nietzsche to tell him that the things your culture tell you are true and are universal, its in fact made up, or its a product of hoyt, product of chance, somewhat arbitrary but not true. So dont take the voice of a racist culture as the voice of your own inner conscience, and thats what for hughie p. Newton this is hwa what nietzsche did for africanamericans to help them hear they no longer had to pray to the white mans god or make themselves prostrate to a religion, in his view, that made them supplicants, and that they shouldnt take this morality which tries to discipline them and keep keep them down as something universal and something timeless. So huey p. Newton is cutting his teeth of nietzsche as he and bobby seal are coming together to form the basis of black power. Host world war ii. Guest the reason why i sigh is i dont know of any other philosopher in history that is blamed for two world wars, but nietzsche was. So, you cant just quickly world war ii i think is the more interesting story here. Because all the ways in which nietzsches reputation is just so terribly damaged. Just quickly if i may, world war i, nietzsche when world war i breaks out and this is so shocking to american observers, it starts to come out, its nietzsche, its nietzsche, rumors german ministers preaching nietzsche from their pulpits. It wasnt hard to listen and hear traces of nietzschean philosophy between the imperial ism overmany during world war i, to to nietzsche is yoked to world war i and has a very hard time those who whatnot to try to save his reputation and say this wasnt what he intended, this is just a misuse of nietzsche, had a really hard time afterwards. Then of course leopold and lobe dont do much for his reputation, and then with the rise of hitler, not mussolini initially, who was a reader of nitch and i an enthusiast of nietzsche. Hitler the rise of hitler in particular was the more i think sort of the more terrifying developments. So over the course of the 1930s, as we see the specter of naziism and then later as americans started to see mussolini as a greater threat than they initially had, it was not hard to find nietzschean traces behind nazi philosophy and mussolinis fascism. So nietzsche is seen yet again as the author and visionary of what would become world war ii. Of course, nietzsche wrote of things that war not so hard to turn into to make him implicated he wrote of the rise of the blonde beast, which people took to be his celebration of the aryan race. His sister was a proto nazi, and in her closing years she welcomed hitler to the nietzsche archives, so theres a linkage to hitler and very unfortunate pictureshart explore lists lists forester with a nietzsche bust so the american imagination gets linked to world war ii, and the entire nazi ideology that, here we have the germans who didnt just want an uber mensch but wanted an uberrace, and we know the language the subhuman people, which was all throughout germany during world war ii, nietzsche was just implicated in all of this. Host what is his reputation today and who ills the antinietzsche philosophy philosopher . Is there such a thing . Guest theres plenty. I dont think theyre as interesting. Sure. I mean, george santana, is not a thinker that we talk about much today but we should because he was a towering intellectual, a towering philosopher, andpot and novelist in the and poet and novelist in the early 20th 20th century hitch thought nietzsche was everything with what he thought was wrong with what the called the german mind, the hyper aggrandized self. He thought that the german what he called the german mind or the german temperment and traces thats back and then nietzsche is the great exemplar is an intel lecture a mine that just didnt couldnt deal with limits so he actually referred to nietzsches amateurish and adolescent. So he is pretty dismisssive of nietzsche and that an example of a thinker who is a robust thinker and careful thinker. There are plenty others. I actually think an interesting case here is an example the example of allen bloom, who the per section his fame now book the closing of the american mind, blockbuster books, allen bloom says whats wrong with Higher Education . Its killing the soul of our children, theyre getting all this pluralism and multiculturalism but theyre not getting great ideas and theyre not getting the challenges of those great ideas. So its how Higher Education is impoverishing the souls of our children, and nietzsche is right there all along, even talks bet the nietzscheanizeation of American Intellectual life and according to bloom, he thinks that so much of what is wrong in late late 20th center intellectual us thats electric to to all thats intellectuals are reading nietzsche and theyre tired of universal truth, tired of someone else residents power, tired of authority, and so he says all the counterculture of the 6s sis nurses on the nietzsche authoritarianity. Its one thing to have protests in the streets and another thing to bring them into the academy and make a ruckus. Hes very critical of the uses of nietzsche. So hit the pause button here. I you read how everyone is talking about allen blooms book and they were talking and they were talking and they were talking bugs it was a major, major, major blockbuster, people picked up on it, ahha, nietzsche its the nietzscheanizeation of our American Intellectual life, blah, blah, blah so you would think allen bloom had problem with nietzsche him didnt. He thought nietzsche was a genius. He wrote beautiful live about nietzsche. He wrote longingly about nietzsche. He that nietzsche was a genius, and his problem was that the thought he was in a culture of intellectual pig pygmies who could not appreciate nietzsche. What he is doing and the closing of northwestern mind which is such an interesting move, is not really blaming nietzsche for the imponcher. Of American Intellectually. The antiauthoritarianism which he finds so despicable, he is blaming what he says is readers who just arent up to the task of truly understanding this great genius. So, again, thats not someone who is critical of nietzsche per se, although he has a reputation for having penned all the failures of the late 20th 20th century American Intellectual life on nietzsche. Quite the opposite. Hes trying to keep his own private nietzsche, a nietzsche in his own image, against lament he sees also the slavish inadequate, impoverished American Intellectuals that cant a handle the ideas. Host you have written biography of nietzsche. Are you a fan . Guest if i may i would say that i people call its biography of nietzsche but its actually a biography of his ideas thats come to life in america. So, one of the thing is say in the book is that its not this is not actually a bang about nietzsche. Some readers have were disappoint. Of course he crops up quite a bit but the book is not about nietzsche. Im an american historian. Im an American Intellectual and culture historiage. My interest ills the history of american thought and culture over 19th and 20th century. What i discovered is you cant when youve get to the late 19th century, and he 20th century, you cant talk about American Intellectuals without talking about nietzsches presence, and his influence. So, just a little modest correction here. Its not about nietzsche. Its about us. So, every reading of nietzsche im not listening whether menkin or darrow or personality or allen bloom or get him right 0 wrong. Thats nonnot an interesting question for an historian to. And im trying to listen to what they have to say about nietzsche to listen to see what that tells us below american American Intellectual life. Its not about nietzsche. Its about us, our intellectual life and our coming to our own ideas about truth, about democracy, about christianity, about god, by way of nietzsche. But im dodging the question. Host has he in your view been a positive influence in american political and cultural life . Guest you know, thats incredible. Never been asked that question. I think he is a necessary influence because i think he is right. I think theres a lot of junk in what he says, a lot of grandstands and mama cheese mow, and clear away the junk. Theyre ideas we lad to come to terms with, which is to just repeat what i said earlier. Is that so much of what we take to be universally true liberty be god, whether it be democracy, whatever it is, nietzsche gave us a way of looking at those ideas, those truth claims to see their origins and their genealogy. And nietzsche helped americans to see that so many truth claims are not rooted in reality. Theyre rooted in power. Theyre rooted in need. Theyre rooted in fear. Theyre rooted in longing. But theyre not necessarily rooted in truth. And i think this is necessary. For any culture, truthfully, but especially american culture, because we have from the start been a very pluralistic culture, of many languages, many religions, manith is in advertise, different races, and so part of what is means to be american, right from our earlier years here, is contested truth. As a pluralistic sensibility, a land of many religions and many beliefs, and we havent we never did a good job of negotiating this prior to nietzsche but his ideas become important as we negotiate this moving forward. So in answer to your question, do i think hes a positive force, yes, and also a negative force, although he had nothing to do with it because he was long dead. And his ideas have been read in all sorts of curious ways. But i think as i said, i think he was a Necessary Force and in that because he helped americans to confront fundamental problems we have had, which is problems of living in a pleurallistic Pluralistic Society and doing so in a humane way, and for that i think well, here ill just speak as a historian, many people were great inflame the 20th century they had nietzsche to think with about these issues. Host university of wisconsin professor jennifer ratnerrosenhagen. Teaches hoyt here at the university. Heres her book american nietzsche the history of an icon and his ideas. Over watching booktv on cspan. On saturday evening a discussion on william f. Buck buckleys run for mayor, and groom discusses his book, the generals. One of the first questions im usually asked when i do a tv or radio show is why did you choose these three men, from Second World War . And the answer is that they embodied, i believe, super characteristics of courage, character, and patriotism. On sunday night at 8 00, a look back at a turning point in World History in 1932, the rise of hitler and fdr. And at 11 15 p. M. Eastern, alyssacast discusses her book, the influence machine, the u. S. Chamber commerce and the corporate capture of american life. Theres a around chose the chamber of commerce as a subject for my book. And its because it sums up the temperature how we got here to this place. Could be the welcome to politics prose is a pleasure to have been here and post 89 hear him discuss his latest book pacific. He w t
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