Wow! Thanks for introducing René Girard - I have to say that this quote hits hard “He [Nietzsche] did not see that the evil he was fighting [resentment] was a relatively minor evil compared to the more violent forms of vengeance….Such frivolity could flourish only in our privileged centuries, in privileged parts of the world where real vengeance had retreated so much that its terror had become unintelligible.”

Your best video…I’ve read girard, Nietszche, the Bible, etc…if viewers go into the implications of this video and even partially understand they will have a large shift in their understanding of the most foundational underpinnings of our individual and collective humanity.

I didn't want to listen to this until I found out everyone else wanted to.

If you replace Christianity with Protestantism in Neitzsche’s writings, his theories hold up much better. Which is probably what he had in mind anyway, coming from a Lutheran family. There is very little of the mob in the Apostolic Churches, whereas it is all over Protestantism, especially the radical reformation.

My name is Nietzsche! It's nice to meet'cha! I'm really quite a fascinating creature. Schopenhauer Was much too sour! I took his will to life and made it power!

Glad you finally got to Girard

Excellent presentation, but just because you disagree with Nietzsche doesn't make him wrong. In Genealogy of Morals he makes his position very clear. I'm afraid I have to disagree with your conclusion.

Girard's conception of mimetic desire someway resemblance to Lacan's. In this way we desire what we imagine the others desire. We desire the desire of the Other. I guess this is what Lacan calls the phantasma (so it is related to phantasy).

Great video! Its hard to find good stuff on Nietzsche or Girard online. One thought, according to Girard, the unveiling actually makes it less possible to scapegoat (hence the Salem witchtrials arent modern myths, theyre chronicles of injustice). Assuming hes not wrong, is it possible for us to return to Dionysus? What would that look like if not various forms of resentment or half hearted bursts of anger, only to be followed up by collective guilt. Whats the path forward for the Dionysisn who rejects both resentment and straight foward reactionary scapegoating like you see on the far ends of the political spectrum?

It may be revealed to Girard that if the scapegoated God Christ was historically “unique” in that he abstained absolutely from enacted revenge and internal resentment, then it follows that he, a first of his “spotless” kind, did not desire per se what others desired. Truly, Christ himself was a creator: his individualism, or to put it in Nietzsche’s artistic terms, his style of character, was also a “formidable lie” - in so far as self-believing art is technically an error. But no creator is more “unique” than another than by arbitrary judgment: Jesus’s death is no more inherently “unjust” than Dionysus’s; and, in fact, by the Will to Power judgment, is Dionysus’s death not more unjust than Christ’s?

Another great vid! Im curious if you have any recommendations for Nietesche biographies?

Girad’s collective violence, scapegoat theory is spot on. Question: what if we continued this practice - in light of Christ and all pagan sacrifices before him - CONSCIOUSLY, such that it’s means were TAILORED to the end of discharging pent up resentment as a catalyst for cultural correction? I have a general idea applied specific to the State: MMA fights between China and America, East and West, wherein two REPRESENTATIVE Warriors fight to the death: the victor is proclaimed stronger, the vanquished is lauded, even deified even with full honors for his cultural valor and sacrifice.

The problem with "F."Nietze♂️ is that he was a sexually🤫frustrated🫦being, intimidated by women♀️, didn't see🥸 himself as attractive, & became irrational at the loss of what was a love relationship of a few weeks & so called himself a philosopher to overcome his own sense of am impotent will to powerlessness, low Self-esteem, & 😢Self-worthlessness!

Great video! Definitely not enough dissemination of Girard or consideration his work in dialogue with others. Great job- I hope you use your work here in essays, you have created an asset and there is a gap.

Of course, violence is not the celebration of logic for those in power that hold power as the highest value. Violence is a tool, but not an admitted admission of failure. As for Christianity's willingness to accept suffering for a hypothicated compensation in a beyond, well, could that also not serve as a great tool for those holding power?

Deeply appreciated! The relevance of this is overwhelming. Girard appears foremost as you declare a merited critic of Nietzsche. Yet his further arguments regarding the uniqueness of Christianity are less informed and weaker. For example just to propose a simple counter argument to the latter: why shouldn't John the Baptist be the fulfilment of Judaic tradition, as he also was murdered sacrificially and proclaimed "messiah" by some?

Nietzsche's worldview doesn't celebrate or commemorate violence in a religious sense. ''The morality of the crucified'' is ambigious because the symbol of the cross implies suffering, and suffering itself implies violence as a virtue. Therefore Nietzsche struggles between violence itself and pacifism, a kind of violent final act whereby he will throw down all swords, lay down all arms, against Christianity's war on the passions, in a final solution the the metaphysical, other-worldy roots of propaganda which fuels modern war. Christianity, Nietzsche acknowledges, shares this contradiction with him of struggling between non-violence (rebuking binary good and evil, transvaluation one might say is impossible in an actual war, you cannot transvalue the values you fight for or else you become an adversary of your own side) and Christianity's contradictory violence inherent in its pacifist models of creating moral duality and enemies of types of human conditions, between the peace orated about on the pulpit and the historical side of its many acts of grnadiose historical violence. ''With God war is declared on life, nature, and the will to life! God is the formula for every calumny of this world and for every lie concerning a beyond!'' Nietzsche says, and so can come across as acting violent in self-defence in a sense. ''The environment in which this strange figure moved, must have left its mark upon him, and the history, the destiny of the first Christian communities must have done so to a still greater degree. Thanks to that destiny, the type must have been enriched retrospectively with features which can be interpreted only as serving the purposes of war and of propaganda. That strange and morbid world into which the gospels lead us-a world which seems to have been drawn from a Russian novel, where the scum and dross of society, diseases of the nerves and “childish” imbecility seem to have given each other rendezvous.'' There in the Twilight of the Idols he says ''the type'' within the Christian community serve ''the purposes of war and of propaganda.'' This is political, in the world and in spirit; In the elevation of suffering, pain and the rebuking of leisure and happiness, in Christianity Nietzsche sees meta-physical causes for the political propaganda of war, ''dividing nation between nation'' in the historical era of the growth of science as a force to challenge religious dogma, in the final part of chapter 48 of Twilight of the Idols, he says ''God'' will favour nationalist propaganda between nations in its place to avoid the corrosive effect knowledge will have on the false boundaries we put between humans based on binaries; ''man must be kicked out of paradise! Happiness, leisure leads to thinking,-all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man must not think.-And the “priest-per-se” proceeds to invent distress, death, the vital danger of pregnancy, every kind of misery, decrepitude, and affliction, and above all disease,-all these are but weapons employed in the struggle with science! Trouble prevents man from thinking.... And notwithstanding all these precautions! Oh, horror! the work of science towers aloft, it storms heaven itself, it rings the death-knell of the gods,-what’s to be done?-The old God invents war; he separates the nations, and contrives to make men destroy each other mutually (-the priests have always been in need of war....) War, among other things, is a great disturber of science!-Incredible! Knowledge, the rejection of the sacerdotal yoke, nevertheless increases.-So the old God arrives at this final decision: “Man has become scientific,-there is no help for it, he must be drowned!” ...''

As a representative of the non collective of Christian existentialists, I thank you for this episode. Also, as an aside, “pyroclastic flow of collective violence”, is a beautiful phrase. It fits nicely with the evolution of Yahweh from angry volcano god, to redeemer God. (we truly are a weird bunch of creatures)

Freud next? That will be interesting. I like Girard a lot. He had some great anthropological ideas. I've got a few of his books in my catalog

How did that work out for the Supermensch?

Very interesting. I'm not totally convinced Girard is right to say mankind could never have come up with reasons for what they did before the Christian. Look around the world and culture from ancient times, which had been formed by Do's and Don'ts that had their "reasons." The Christian mythology is not a "reason" either, but only a certain confirguration of assumptions that ultimately don't have rational grounding but are indirect and consequentialist. In any case the Christian idea grew from a broader set of human experiences that it is a subset of.

This is fantastic content! It’s so well done. You remind me so much of Darryl Cooper, like a more philosophy oriented version of martyr made. Have you considered creating a substack? I would definitely be a paid subscriber. Keep up the great work!

And this is why the cornerstone is not the one the builder desires but the one he refuses.

The only thing I think FN was entirely wrong about re. Xity was when he said, "It was the view of man as evil and bad that made man evil and bad." I don't see why that isn't psychologically backwards

What effect, would or should, the acknowledgement to the a. priori truth, that a physical jesus never roamed the earth. What I mean to say is, how can any of the philosiphical conclusions posited, be given serious consideration, knowing that the foundation of their philosophical thought is based on a false premise.

Very interesting stuff to digest. Thanks for the presentation.

Finally! Was waiting for this.

Wonderful exploration. Girard has some good insights and i never realised he had so much to say about Nietzsche, but it makes perfect sense given his philosophical outlook .

23:28 this insight I agree, the interactions of people are more fundamental. My dog don't care about the bone, until I reach it with my hand, than it becomes the most important object in the room. If we only have scapegoating, if this whole subject can be reduced to this... this... 'god to end all gods'. And now this is a worldwide phenomena, everyone knows it and attacks it. Edit: ("what happens when people fake to be the innocent" should be the question.) We are screwed. Class Day Lecture 2009: The Uniqueness of Humans - what if we see how primates deal with this situation, will this 'lift the veil' even further?

I have taken a further look into the concept of mimetic desire. I cannot say that I disagree with Girard’s theory (?). As an experiment, I watch people. Why do they do what they do? Why the sudden rush to this trend, product, or that? Could it be our semi-conscious mimesis? And what about my own sometimes stupid desires? I am really looking forward to the Jung episode. My spider sense tells me it’s gonna be a good one. Holy jumping Jesus, the podcast continues to deliver.

Conflict made progress With reinterpretation and the remodel seems…,human all too human

..comparing someone to Schliemann could be considered as liebel :) i though that šlíman is actually a czech profanity, but can't find it in a dictionary.

Regarding Girard’s ethical judgment that internalizing resentment is “better” or more “tenable” than discharging revenge, I think it is firstly arbitrary and secondly tendentiously opposed to a “free” Will to Power, but thirdly that it “ought” to be obeyed with respect to Total War - nuclear, as the most extreme example.

My study of Aztec human sacrifice ("El Sacrificio Humano Entre los Aztecas", Michel Graulich) leads me to think Girard's explanation (scapegoating) is only part of the picture. We could call it the social part, having to do with the interaction between persons. But there is clearly a personal part, as indicated by the ubiquitous self-sacrifice of bloodletting in Mesoamerica and self-flagellation and other types of self-harm worldwide. To my mind, although the scapegoating social aspect of human sacrifice seems valid and compatible, another huge part of the explanation lies within the individual. The human has a masochistic streak driven by remorse over it's sadism. And, to dig even deeper, the human self has--even if only unconsciously--an awareness that said self is not really real in the way usually taken for granted in daily egoic reification, but rather an ever-fluctuating collection of psycho-physical constituents; flux, process and becoming as opposed to static being. Just like the Buddhist inquiry into the bundles that compose the sense of self, the Aztec and others of antiquity engaged in a sacrificial dismemberment which prefigured or foreshadowed the dawning realization of Not-Self. The Aztec sacrificer did not sacrifice someone perceived as Other but rather someone who--although captured from a neighboring city for example--wad integrated into the community and treated as Self before being sacrificed. This is because the sacrificer was trying to make penance with the gods by sacrificing something of himself. It is a kind of proxy atonement, similar to Christian notions.

I wonder, do you agree with Girard? Or have a more nuanced view?

30:30 makes me think of the Cold War

Great lecture. True to Girard and Nietzsche, our collective murder and the ascension of the scapegoat as cultural foundation is well put. I had the opportunity to go to Burning Man last year, an emblem of forgetfulness, pagan ritual and revelry without the reverence.

Nature goes on forever for everyone and everything to return as everyone and everything an infinite number of times through evolutionary processes. 🌌

I sometimes wonder if Nietzsche would have recanted his philosophy had he seen man's aggression culminating in nuclear weaponry and the potential consequences of that.

The mission is yet, perhaps never, to be completed.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fK6bdsV-sLm9dKM.htmlsi=0cIfcV_C8Txi_XUS many echoes of this talk between Uberboyo (Nietzschean) and David Gornoski (Girardian)

Good content here. I could listen for hours so I do

Great video! Do you think you would ever cover Zizek’s work on so-called Christian Atheism, which is almost a “death of god theology” and incorporates ideas from German idealism and lacanian psychoanalysis. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this and how it relates to Nietzsche

I wonder why I always desire things that are almost satirical to the desires of others? I think its probably the desire to be individual.

very nice episode.

Nitzsche was correct about consequences of death of God but wrong about solutions including ubermench.

I did not understand.

This was a Brilliant analysis. Nietzsche was tortured by a misunderstading of Christ, honest as it was, he indeed fulfilled the drama of Tragedy. Thanks for this offering...Cheers!

thanks for this

The thing is what we mean by christianity, because we may mean, what pope or bishop, or priest, or reverent, teaches us. But - is it Christianity or it is kind of version of Christianity? Because even heresies prove that Christianity can be understand in quite different ways and what we have is just a way that succeed. It doesn't mean that this is the wrong or false interpretation, but it doesn't prove otherwise.

Very interesting thank you 👍

This ones a banger.

Eureka Salts! that is it! if my valuation depends on the valuation of others, that means the next state depends on the previous state, that is ... this is a complex system! And the solutions of prophets are solutions to this kind of problem! One way to solve this problem.... is to omit / ignore variables! like 'ignoring friction' in physics. That means if I 'let of of my earthly possessions', that is to suppress this variable, I can solve this system! But this also means that might be solutions without ignoring it! E.g money! and might also be other attractors. We might be saved salts!

Great breakdown, thnxs brodhisattva!

How you managed to talk about desire without mentioning Lacan is beyond me. Another great eat vid nonetheless 😎

Love this thank you. I love Nietzsche, but he was wrong on many fronts! Excellent discussion!

There's also the amazing typology facts of the Bible books which predict the future proving its truth in parallels for the "hungry": All the old testament stories were first an allegory, or a shadow, of the coming Messiah and the two covenants/relationships between God and man, layer upon layer unto the elementary version brushed over by so many intellectual philosophers as rubbish, made for children to simply believe. Man has become too intelligent for his own good and missed the climax of our time. It was so powerful, even the Roman empire was forced to wear its mask (yet retain its paganism) and conquered by it indirectly without lifting a sword; that's how you know it's from God. And what about the numerology behind it as well? Point is: Don't throw out the baby Jeshua with the religious bathwater, oh wise philosophers. I love listening and learning from this channel and the different philosophies of men to find my own: a blend of eastern, western, Jungian and always evolving-- yet always sprinkled with Christianity on the top minus the dogmas. Thank you good sir for your podcasts. They are always enlightening.

43.00

Your brilliant video is so welcome. To forgive is not to forget. You should be careful to think Christianity has no sting. This is exactly what I saw on the cross. Thank you.

If Nietzsche was so wrong about Christianity, why are you still having to tell us so a century and a half later?

Rickey Gervais is so cringe, can someone send him this lecture?

Yeah you're totally right, nietzche didnt understand what is really christianity because he just full on anger therefore irrational,

Why not both? I argue that if Nietzsche had learned about Tantric Buddhism, or if there was room to see an open and honest Christianity... I argue the archetype of Christ and the crucifixion is similar to Nietzsche Hermit - if you rebuke him, might as well end him... Jesus was an intermediary between the worlds, allowing us who cannot see the between worlds - a possible connection - Ubermench to Fred for those unwilling to see the universal story. Prayer, contemplation, looking into oneself and the universe... Jung active Imagination, Fred on his walks, his boulder... *Ressentiment is much closer to his rumination, or to re-feel, interestingly modern trauma defines itself similarly - to re-experience the sentiment - Ressentiment- to experience past events/memories as if they were in the present... As with Buddhism - The peccekaBuddha is rare - the lone enlightened - so few have the innate ability to see the between-world - Hintervelten.

In the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche wrote: "Suppose there lurked in the "good man" a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, a narcotic, by means of which the present battened on the future! More comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the guilt, if the maximum potentiality of the power and splendour of the human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would be the danger of dangers?" Does Girard ever answer this? Would he claim that slave morality will at some point reverse the present state of decline or that decline is good if it's the outcome of Christian morality?

Yo essentialsalts! Why, exactly, is a conviction worse than a lie?

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!! My plan for tonight has just risen to ecstasy!!

Wonderful! Girard here is the only thinker who I feel has, with possible success, countered Nietzsche‘s findings. What a valuable presentation. Thanks!

I find Nietzsches critique of Christianity and slave morality very compelling. I would like to live by a strong set of principles that Christianity can provide but I cant look past this. I wonder what Nietzsche would’ve thought about Islam.

I dont think Rene girard was so far from Nietzche in this respect; it appears as one who was no less a student of Nietzche, who, as Nietzche himself would wish, forgot Nietzche and flew through his own way---without the ignoble ignorance of most people (who claim themselves Nietzcheans or otherwise, which, ironically, is very Un-Nietzchean); and if anything, from what this purview displays, Rene Girard is himself no differne than Nietzche, merely another actor in this grande jouer of Dionysus. The essence of Nietzche is to be misunderstood. In that sense, Nietzche was Nietzche, Girard was Nietzche, and 'Nietzche' is a mask---to be useful and not to be idlelized (my word for the new type of idolatry these days, ha!). I believe they would greet in friendship, certainly, atleast he was French!

But didn't the ancients aspire to be stronger, braver, crueler? Just as Christians know they are guilty, sinful and flawed.

Nietzsche was RIGHT about Christianity: Take a look around (this post was made by Raised Catholic gang)

Buddhism is identical to Christianity in exactly the way Christianity is alleged to be unique toward the beginning of this video. See "Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy" By Antoine Panaiote for an excellent analysis. In my opinion, the fundamental difference between Buddhism and Christianity is Christianity's heavier reliance on mythopoetic language to say the same thing Buddhism says explicitly in surprisingly modern-sounding terms.

An irony, perhaps, of Nietzsche: to propose even a fervent anti-moral stance is in a way saying how we should be in the world -- a kind of morality. In actuality, a more "Nietzschean" stance proper would situate morality in the stream of history, withholding timely judgment altogether.

I have to side with Girard on this one. I often see many contemporary Nietzscheans entertain some very ugly and stupid ideas while believing themselves to be victims of a "woke mob". But that being said, Girard pointing out the conflict within Nietzsche's attempt to reconcile Dionysus and Christ together certainly shows the cognitive dissonance with the conception of the Overman being a "Caesar with a soul of Christ" and without it, the redemption from revenge remains little more than a pipe dream. But as Nietzsche got older and by the time he wrote the Antichrist, Nietzsche practically repudiates the Christian entirely that makes Girard rightly see the outcome of what Nietzsche desires to be inhuman. And the last question that Girard speaks about God being killed is striking where he doesn't put up the question whether or not exists (a metaphysical claim), but whether one has become disillusioned from a faith.

There is some similarity between Christ and Dionysus. As far as this is concerned, Nietzsche and Girard feel the same. It can be argued that both Christ and Dyonisos are demigods (they are part divine and part human), so they are gods but they also can die. Both are sacrificed in the end, and although the context is different, the parallels drawn between the two are clear. They concern to the death of a God. A collective murder. And doesn't all this remind us of another contemporary myth, created by Freud, that of the original horde that kills the father?

Shortly before his death owing to chronic syphilis, Nietzsche converted to Christianity on witnessing the suffering of a lame brutalised horse.🤔 ("Green Fire", IngramSpark, geoff nelson hill )

Nobody needed Christianity more than Neitzche. Without Christianity, there would be no Neitzche.

His theory of desire makes no sense because he's saying that people only Desire things because other people Desire then and fight over them but why would people be fighting over them unless they already desired them innately? Clearly the object of desire would have to have been desired by one person initially before another person comes into the picture and creates conflict. It sounds to me like a bit of a cope for someone who doesn't want to believe that human beings can have some pretty nasty desires

Niceeee

I like Christ but I don’t like Christianity. Nietzsche was right about Christianity in that Christian morality, pity for the weak and forgiveness of one’s foes destroys excellence & virtue. I think the collapse of Christian Europe at the end of the 19th century/early 20th century validates Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity.

This Girard guy is a clown

Jordan Peterson is correct about religion read maps of meaning.

Christianity was the first Bolshevism.