 
Enlightenment for all mankind
In the end this awakening is related
to the whole of humanity.
He felt like a prophet in predicting catastrophes,
huge wars – they all came to be –
Nihilism would continue, but eventually
humanity would realize that it is one
and understand what needs to be done.
Philosophical Conversations with Jochen Kirchhoff,
Episode 21: What did Nietzsche want?
Dear Jochen, a few years ago
you wrote in your Nietzsche essay:
„Few thinkers exert such an unbroken fascination
on posterity as Friedrich Nietzsche,
the Philosopher with the hammer, 
Wagner's friend and adversary, the virtuoso of language,
the hermit of Sils Maria, extremist
and experimenter of the Mind (Geist),
the madman collapsing in January 1889 
hugging a horse in Turin.
Suffering a gruesome fate, driven or
torn into madness - by whom and by what?
Nietzsche is always a challenge.
Those who get involved do not get away.
Only those who open up to the heat of his
thinking, at the risk of being wounded, will get it.
You don't have to agree with him,
whether in part or in full.
But everyone suffers aggravation
from intense and insightful reading.
The German Philosopher Martin
Heidegger once said:
„Nietzsche has ruined me.“
That should be taken seriously.
It does not have to be ruin, but something happens
not wearing one's own ideology as an armor,
and thus avoiding Nietzsche's arrows 
alongside happiness and ecstasy in lonely browsing.
We'll approach Nietzsche in 7 points,
touching elemental aspects of his thinking.
1.The diagnosis of the modern soul:
„Will to Nothingness and Nihilism“
2."Revaluation of All Values" 
His philosophical program
3. Nietzsche's idea of humanity.
The vision of Overman
4. "The Will to Power" as
explanatory principle
5. Honoring and perhaps criticizing
the idea of "Eternal Recurrence"
6. The Zarathustra impulse of August 1881,
his self-image as prophet and savior
7. The impact of Nietzsche in your
book "Nietzsche, Hitler and the Germans"
as a reflection of the Third Reich.
How did you come in touch with Nietzsche?
Nietzsche has been occupying me since
I was 18 years old in the year 1962.
A classmate quoted from "Twilight of the Idols".
Later I bought „Thus Spoke Zarathustra",
shortly before graduating
from high school
and my first bigger trip alone. In Paris I read
„Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
I was very impressed and started to read
Nietzsche systematically. All of his works.
I was thrilled! Not in a "Nietzschean" sense,
the 18-year-old was not a Nietzschean,
I did see the ambivalent aspects 
that one cannot simply agree with.
But I dived into his work intensively,
Nietzsche became a kind of friend to me,
and this remained so over the decades.
A friend who often annoyed me,
but whom I loved and asked for advice.
A difficult relationship, he kept me busy...
There where years when I hardly read him,
then I would read intensively.
Then I wrote the book you have mentioned
"Nietzsche, Hitler and the Germans".
I wanted to pursue the nagging question
what about this thesis that he had something
to do with Hitler or National Socialism?
I wanted to get to the bottom of the matter.
Nietzsche was primarily
a writer of aphorisms for me.
On lonely walks I loved opening
a Nietzsche book
reading one or two aphorisms,
and letting them affect me.
I still do it today.
I knew he is not a systematic
philosopher, like others.
A single aphorism though can comprise a whole topic - fascinating, incredible!
I must admit, as someone writing about Nietzsche,
one has to be seriously concerned
one's own prose withstands next to his quotes.
Nietzsche is such a brilliant writer, one
of the greatest writers in German language
comparable only with few.
You have to take that into account.
This is a tremendous challenge.
Nietzsche's prose is so captivating,
sparkling and flashing, like magic
that one is asking: What is this even?
The truth or just a fascination with language?
It was Gottfried Benn who inspired me 
to dive deeper into Nietzsche's work.
He wrote an excellent essay:
"Nietzsche after 50 Years",
where he depicts Nietzsche as an expressionist artist, 
a magician of language.
Nietzsche is a friend to this very day,
a difficult one, but never boring.
Very important:
Nietzsche is THE not boring thinker and writer per se.
Never.
Nietzsche struggled. What was
his problem with the modern world?
Well, a key question...
Why did he struggle with the
modern world and the modern soul?
Nietzsche was repeatedly called
a diagnostician of the modern soul.
What does that mean?
Nietzsche said the modern world is
nihilistic at its core.
Behind the facade of its seemingly intact values 
he saw Nihilism lurking.
But, what does Nihilism mean?
Today Nihilism represent a cynic
who does not believe in anything.
Except in himself.
Sceptically questioning everything.
But where did the term originate?
I researched it because I realized
not many people know this.
It has been used long before Nietzsche,
by Russians like Iwan Turgenew and others.
Nietzsche did not invent the term,
but he used it within a specific context.
According to my research the term
emerged in connection with Immanuel Kant's
"Critique of Pure Reason".
Even Wikipedia does not know about this.
I will read a passage from my book
"Nietzsche, Hitler and the Germans"
quoting an author Christoph Jenisch, 
who explains it:
"When did the word Nihilism first appear?
As far as I know a decade and a half after
Kant's first publication of „Critique of Pure Reason“,
and in conscious reference to this work,
the deathblow to traditional metaphysics,
at least according to Kant, and his followers.
Kant believed proving metaphysical knowledge
is impossible to reason..."
In response to this a completely unknown
author writes in 1796:
"I confess sincerely that the mere thought 
human cognition is completely and utterly unreal
(a valid interpretation)
"in regard to the Thing Itself and the
transcendental creation of all laws of nature,
in my imagination and reason
is paralyzing all higher exertion in a horrible way."
According to Jenisch the Kantian
„Critique of Reason“ literally
represents the most obvious
"Atheism and Nihilism".
Whereby explicitly underlining in parentheses
"Nihilism" is the real word of the cause."
A tremendous statement: Kant the destroyer,
annihilates the human right to metaphysical knowledge.
This is affecting Jenisch to the point he calls it
Nihilism and Atheism.
We've mentioned in our Copernicus video
the rise of a strange suspicion
in late 18th century
Newtonian celestial mechanics
could be making God superfluous...
I quoted Jean Paul's "Speech of the Dead Christ 
from the Universe that There Is No God"
And later Napoleon's famous question
to the mathematician Laplace:
„Where is God in the Newtonian system?"
The answer: "God is a hypothesis.
There is no need for God."
The certainty of modern cosmology
began shaking, and the idea of Nihilism emerged.
And we can now ask 
how Nietzsche understood it.
Whom did Nietzsche consider as main proponents
of „The Will to Nothingness" or Nihilism?
And what did he mean by that?
Yes, you properly mention the formula:
„The Will to Nothingness“.
This is important because it was coined
by Schopenhauer,
A brief word to Schopenhauer:
In his wonderful work
"The World as Will and Representation" the last word is: "- Nothing".
Not in a nihilistic sense, but referring to a different
order of existence than the physical.
Schopenhauer as a mystic...
"Will to Nothingness" in Nietzsche's thought
is an antagonistic pole within the „Will To Power“.
He differenciates between the will
to nothingness, and the boundless will to live,
which he adopted from Schopenhauer.
He felt the nihilistic values triumphing
during his lifetime.
De facto, not ideologically, not superficially,
nihilistic values are being propagated.
In fact the will to nothingness prevails.
Everywhere.
What is a value according to Nietzsche?
A value is not inherent in nature,
in cosmos, in the universe.
Quite modern in this respect,
moral values do not exist, they are set up.
He believed man is a value setter,
an essential characteristic, setting up values,
that he does not find outside.
Philosophers are value setters determining
thinking for centuries or millennia.
A value is a manmade construct,
a certain interpretation, too.
And wrong values can be set up,
opposing life and the ever-evolving will to life.
Indeed.
I quote from his literary estate:
"We have seen two wills for power at war,
a will to nothingness,
understood by Nietzsche
as will to power,
a nihilistic will to power,
opposing a creative principle,
the boundless will to live.
The low instincts dominating
over the higher instincts,
the will to nothingness has
become master over the will to live."
„Will to Nothingness“ is the entire
moral order, of all religions actually,
but especially of Christianity.
To him a decisive approach.
He thinks a contradiction,
a will to power dialectic...
The will to nothingness and the creative will to life
are fighting, both want to dominate.
And the war is raging.
Nietzsche believed fighting for the boundless will to live,
against the Nihilism of his time.
And what did he mean with the revaluation
of all (moral) values?
Which set of values did he attack?
How should they be re-evaluated?
Well, we asked:
What did Nietzsche want?
He said it again and again: 
The revaluation of all values...
He saw this as his elemental task beginning
with his Zarathustra, before less.
Nietzsche's life is very diverse,
he went roughly through 3 phases:
The early Nietzsche, the Wagnerian,
whom he met in 1868 in Leipzig.
Especially "Tristan and Isolde'"
he greatly admired.
This remained during his combative
writings against Richard Wagner.
And he was a fervent admirer
of Schopenhauer, too.
Then gradually he began distancing himself
from Wagner and Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche's middle phase,
which is very close to me,
a brilliant essayist
the most beautiful book being "Dawn of the Day",
asking where is this going now?
He is mocking the Wagnerians, deeply disappointed
by the first Bayreuth Festival.
Not what he expected.
The entire Bayreuth Festival put him off,
and he threw Schopenhauer overboard, too.
Afterwards he took another path.
which is very important, and emerged in Zarathustra.
There is this famous intuition,
almost religious...
we can shed more light on that,
namely in August 1881 in Sils Maria Switzerland.
He had been Professor of Classical Philology, 
constantly ill and suspended
and surviving with a small pension.
From 1881 onward he spent
the summer months in Sils Maria,
which was not a lonely place,
as he would like to see it.
It was a professorship domicile.
The place to be back then.
He walks along Lake Silvaplana seeing this pyramidal block, today there is a blackboard,
suddenly Zarathustra came to him like an intuition,
an inspiration, an enlightenment experience...
"Then one became two and Zarathustra passed by me."
Since then there is a different sound in Nietzsche.
Suddenly the skeptic and brilliant
essayist finds a pathetic, sacred language
reminiscent to Luther's translation of the Bible.
He identifies with Zarathustra.
You might ask why?
Only then he began the radical 
"Revaluation Of All Values",
tirelessly,
designing dozens,
even hundreds of book titles.
How to name it,
how to get it under control?
He became another person,
writing at a breakneck speed
the 4 parts of his Zarathustra.
The success was devastating,
He sold about 100 or 130 copies of
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" during his lifetime.
The fourth part he had to publish privately 
with 40 copies,
a total failure at first.
Nietzsche's world fame did not begin
until early 20th century,
and the European fame only came up when he was mentally ill. Before he was unknown.
Ok, that is the initial introduction.
Well, tell us, which set of values
did he aim to revaluate and why?
Which values in particular
did he want to revaluate?
Nietzsche was a sensitive person,
you might say today a highly sensitive.
A colossally affable, polite,
yet super polite person.
Everybody who knew him confirmed it,
he spoke gently, treated women
with an overwhelming courtesy.
His letters show that, too.
It is not identical with his writings.
He worked as high school teacher,
a university professor's duty at the time.
His students were diligent and calm, 
he never had any problems.
Nietzsche had been a profoundly ascetic,
deeply religious man,
though he would have rejected it...
So, what did he attack?
This is, of course, a personal story.
His approached philosophy 
through his own experience
like no or few other philosophers, I would perhaps name 
Helmut Friedrich Krause as an exception.
He took his experiences and wrote once: 
"Out of my will to health I made my philosophy."
Always ill, suffering tremendous pain, 
episodes of banging headaches and nausea,
he felt everything he was doing
was aggravating his illness.
His job as a teacher, a professor,
all burdensom and ruining him.
He wondered, where can I live?
What is really possible?
He even considered moving to Mexico...
Or what is the right nutrition?
How can one endure life?
Sils Maria was a revelation to him.
Finally the landscape he needed!
Ever sick, he felt Christian moral values
were ruining him, too, because they deny life.
All basic vitality breaking the surface,
all Yes to life, all drunken beauty,
is erased by Christian moral values.
He felt he had to live differently...
...and he did live differently.
Yet, suffering always determined his thinking.
How to get well and say yes despite suffering?
Saying yes to suffering and reaching 
a new life-affirmation. It is deeply personal.
Later, too, his rejection of Wagner's music,
he could not stand it anymore.
He want to be healthy and say Yes.
Nitzsches's philosophy of affirmation is grounded
in a clear and elemental Yes and No.
Will to health is simultaneously the will to affirmation,
in which life is affirmed in spite of everything...
like "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
"Stay a while, you are so beautiful, Moment“,
everything leading up to this moment
has also been affirmed,
the ecstatic yes-moments, the raptures are
inconceivable without the whole terrible prehistory.
If we affirm one single moment,
we have to affirm all of existence.
Metaphysicians build Otherworlds,
but actually deny the world,
inventing an idealistic world,
which does not exist. All fiction.
He is a great matador and precursor of the idea
that mankind is living in fictions.
What about the negativity denied by Christians and ideologues of reason in Nietsche's thought,
what does it have to do with the „Will to Power“?
Well, there is this antagonism,
the will to live vs. the will to nothingness,
the struggle of two impulses,
and he is fighting for the boundless will to live,
a warrior of life-affirmation.
As with most thinkers and also Nietzsche,
there are contradictions, logical inconsistencies.
Affirmation would entail embracing your enemies,
otherwise you fall into dualism:
There are two cosmic principles,
I am inclined to this view, antagonistically
opposed, eternal and unchangeable...
Nietzsche didn't share this view.
To him Zarathustra was the inventor
of the good vs. evil dualism,
summoned to go beyond it.
But factually he introduces a new
antagonism of negative vs. positive at war.
And he does not say Yes
to his enemies at all.
This is a fundamental contradiction.
A philosophical question we often discuss 
in our videos:
if we assume the unity of the world,
what about the contradictions?
Can you reconcile them or
is thinking collapsing?
The mystics struggle with the antagonism
in the world, or simply refuse looking into it.
Very difficult.
Nietzsche too, he affirms
by denying, and reverse.
What about his vision of „Overman“,
also called “Superman” in this context?
Nietzsche was a master of handy,
sparkling formulas, it determined his influence.
He created many suggestive phrases, which can easily 
be taken and used out of context.
Will to power, how convenient,
can be anything, every statement is will to power...
What is the Overman?
Overman is not Nietzsche's invention,
"Hyperanthropos" can be found in antiquity.
(Similar to the "Cosmic Anthropos" 
by Jochen Kirchhoff.)
Fascinating, then I checked Wikipedia again,
Dante already used the verb "transhumanar".
In Dante's "Divine Comedy"
Overman is the Divine Human
who finds himself only in the afterlife
in union with the divine.
Otherwise Overman was a religious term,
widely used.
Everyone knows this famous part 
where Faust invokes the Earth Spirit:
"Yes, look at the Earth Spirit, this sign here..."
Earth Spirit appears talking to Faust
who turns into a little fearful writhing worm,
"What pathetic horror, oh Overman, is befalling thee?"  
You inflate yourself, oh "bellows of the deity"!
Nietzsche's expression for religious people
who inflate themselves but are nothing but worms.
The term has already been introduced,
Nietzsche made it popular,
a religious term used until 20th century.
Sri Aurobindo is referring heavily to Nietzsche:
Superman is the realization
of supramental consciousness.
Today some freaks even think Nietzsche
to be a forerunner of Transhumanism.
Interesting. There are many who say
Nietzsche foresaw,
current humanity has to be overcome.
What is the Overman?
There is the counter term of subhuman and 
immediately there is a terrible political dimension,
there is the Overman and everyone 
else is subhuman.
That is not true.
He uses the term to emphasise the True Man.
Spiritually: Man as he is meant to be.
What I call "Cosmic Anthropos".
He calls it the Overman,
but he doesn't want to be a founder of religion...
There is this famous part in Zarathustra,
I read now an original version
where he introduces the overman:
"And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:
I teach you the Overman.
Man is something that shall be overcome.
What have you done to overcome him?
All beings so far have created something
beyond themselves; do you want to be the ebb
of this great flood and revert to the beasts
rather than overcome mankind?
What is the ape to a man?
A laughingstock, a thing of shame.
And just so shall a man be to the overman:
a laughingstock or a thing of shame.
You have evolved from worm to man,
but much within you is still worm.
Once you were apes, yet even now man is
more ape than any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a confusion
and hybrid of plant and phantom.
But do I ask you to become
phantoms or plants?
Behold, I teach you the overman!
The overman is the meaning of the earth.
Let your will say:
The overman shall be
the meaning of the earth!
I beg of you my brothers,
remain true to the earth,
and do not believe those who speak to you 
of otherworldly hopes!
Poisoners are they, whether
they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones
and poisoned themselves,
of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest sin;
but God died, and these sinners died with him.
To blaspheme against the earth
is now the most dreadful sin,
and to rank love for the unknowable higher
than the meaning of the earth.
Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body; and then this this contempt was the highest
she wanted the body meager, ghastly, and starved.
Thus she hoped to escape it and the earth.
Oh, this soul herself was still meager,
ghastly, and starved:
and cruelty was the last of this soul.
But you too, my brothers, tell me:
what does your body proclaim of your soul? Is not your soul poverty and filth and wretched contentment?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. Behold I teach
you the overman; he is this sea;
in him your great
contempt can go under."
What a religious gesture: "I teach you the Overman", 
ecstatically charged,
Overman is the essential human.
Who does he mention as example?
Leonardo Da Vinci,
whom he greatly admires.
He said, he had a Supra-Christian view 
already in the Renaissance,
he was not a Christian, there is a Supra-Christian view 
in his paintings, he had transcended it.
Particularly dear to him was Emperor Frederick II of the 
famous Hohenstaufen dynasty in 13th century,
who once said: "The world has been deceived
by three deceivers Jesus, Moses and Mohammed."
But then also Napoleon. He even called his memoirs
one of the best books ever.
He admires Caesar, 
he admires people of power.
Well, how come? Does he admire power
seekers, or is this a higher type of man,
accessible also to non power seekers?
Contradictory…
He admires a Renaissance-type slave society,
where a few artist tyrants get to rule.
Philosophers too, should actually rule,
and define the values
for centuries, and be in power.
But differently from how Plato saw it.
Overman is an ideal man, who has overcome 
Christian moral world order.
a cosmic being,
Nietzsche had his own relationship to the cosmic. 
It is an ambivalent formula,
which, of course, immediately invites
any kind of abuse, if torn out of context.
Overman is not judged by any external authority,
but is himself the origin of values...
Christianity and reason are external authorities
condemning and influencing man
although he is able to define values himself.
You can conceive power in two ways:
as capacity to be a great artist
like Leonardo da Vinci, or a genius like Mozart,
or as "power over" and dominance,
like Napoleon, or other conquerors
with millions of death.
The question of "The Will to Power“ leads
deeper into his natural philosophy,
he believed will to power is the basic
constituent of nature.
How did he get that idea?
Yes, very interesting,
Many people do not know Nietzsche 
had studied natural science intensively,
and even integrated scientific theses
and beliefs in part his philosophy.
For example Robert Mayer,
famous for his theses,
at that time strongly criticized, but later
adopted by all, the conservation of energy,
his concept of of power.
Nietzsche propagates force,
force is not passive, an ability,
but it is always executed force.
The world is a manifestation of executed force.
Force is will, too. It belongs together.
Now one could say, this is anthropomorphic,
why should force be will?
But it is will.
Remembering,
Will is not the will of the mind, not an individual will,
in the sense of (German) metaphysics of will,
of the philosopher Schelling f.i.
"I do what I want, I am the one who wants."
Nietzsche dismantles the self completely,
Will is not self will,
rather a principle of force in cosmos.
There's a beautiful sentence by Robert Mayer
in 1845, Nietzsche studied those writings,
"In truth there exists only one single force."
An elemental force, called energy today.
I define it the space energy.
"In truth there exists only one single force,
constantly circulating in dead and living nature,
here and there no process
without modification of force."
Nietzsche adopted this, explicitly
referring to Robert Mayer.
Now Nietzsche: "The world of forces undergoes
no diminution. Force is always there."
Important for "Eternal Recurrence"
Nietzsche assumes this world is not created,
it is eternal.
In this respect similar to Giordano Bruno and my own 
thinking concerning the eternity of the world,
the non-condition of the world, this energy
does not arise, cannot perish, but is always there,
or "The measurement of universal force
is determined." Finite.
Nietzsche's unique cosmology.
He believes in infinite time.
The Nietzsche research completely ignores
his terminology "The Absolute Becoming",
he believes in absoluteness of time, but
space should be finite. A fixed quantum of space.
A common thought.
He rejects infinite space,
and infinite force, too.
"We forbid ourselves the concept of
infinite force as incompatible with the concept force.
Everything is force."
He connects a scientific term,
at the time force, later called energy,
we've spoken about in our videos
the contradiction of these terms
used by physicists.
Force is a finite size, but eternal.
Again, the will to power is not an individual will,
but it is manifesting in a person.
Strange, Nietzsche, the great matador
of the non-ego concept
finally descended into unbridled megalomania.
An egomania hard to beat,
he said incredible things about himself...
He would split humanity in two pieces, over
millennia they would have to swear an oath to him…
Zarathustra the greatest book ever...
people cannot breathe anymore,
they don't know anything and so on.
Completely out of his mind,
the same person actually favors
the non-ego concept.
Again contradictory...
Will to power is a principle,
I tried to show it in an essay in the 70s,
it is a metaphysical principle.
That's the question after all:
is Nietzsche a metaphysician?
Stipulating two principles at war,
how about these principles?
Difficult, he would have denied it.
But still, it could be true.
With the will to power, he believes 
everything is intending to overpower.
Nietzsche does not believe in atomism,
he rejects atoms,
these are only configurations
of this one primordial energy,
his continuum theory,
objective manifestations of this primordial energy,
man with his ego, mind and intellect,
is only a secondary phenomenon.
He adopted this from his former teacher Schopenhauer.
According to Schopenhauer mind or intellect
is only a tool of blind will.
Nietzsche agreed with this.
Did he have a change of
perspective on power from perhaps
creative self expression, "power to",
towards dominance, "power over",
subjugation, rulership?
Or it had been always the same?
This had happened,
but it is difficult to determine when.
If you know the literature,
what I would say about myself,
I cannot find when, it is changing and ambivalent.
"Will to power" is also a battle cry
he throws into the world like a torch!
"All of you are just Will to power,
nothing else exists!"
Every now and there is thesis he had
been falsified, quite important to mention,
if not people will comment, that's all wrong, it is just Elisabeth Foerster Nietzsche who made it up
he never planned it,
but this is not true.
Nietzsche planned over years
to call his main work
"The Will to Power -
An Attempt to Revaluate All Values",
these designs exists.
Shortly before his mental breakdown,
suddenly “The Revaluation of All Values“
was renamed "The Antichrist".
But did he plan this book,
there was an entire philosophical draft.
Nietzsche's friend Heinrich Koeselitz
could decipher Nietzsches scribbeling.
What he gave to to print was true.
Even if Elisabeth Foerster fooled around
and played her own power game,
but in depth she changed nothing.
„Will to Power“ is a fundamental principle
in its entire ambivalence.
In recent editions it doesn't appear anymore
because the Italians, Montinari and Colli,
have been browsing through the scriptures 
and say it is all fake.
That is not true.
„Will to Power" is first of all an accusation
to the priest who pretends to be altruistic,
but in a perfidious way he just wants to rule.
Right,
Important to understand, „Will to Power“
is not just opposition to virtue and goodness,
but the moral order itself is ruled by
a pathetic and lousy desire to dominate
all life-affirming impulses inherent in mankind,
so that the priest can rule.
– He often says that.
– Exactly, it is about emancipation from priest rule.
Indeed, 1968, I jump in here for a moment,
they did not read him,
for them he was a protofascist,
an emergence of psychologization,
over-analysing the other for hidden intentions.
Nietzsche invented this and pushed it to the extreme.
Freud said, without Nietzsche there
would be no Psychoanalysis.
It is true, Nietzsche anticipated
all major impulses of 20th century,
the "over-psychologization",
reducing "great" ideas to small personal affairs
For example, a bit nasty to
his former teacher Schopenhauer,
"The World as Will and Representation"
translated into little "Schopenhauerish":
"The world as sex drive and tranquility".
Total deflation.
He had a strong sex drive, but needed some quiet
for contemplating things...
this conflict kept him busy,
so he made it his philosophy.
Now you can argue, a bit cheap,
but this psychology of exposing
is a great success until today.
Everybody believes in exposing others, because they
know it anyway, see politics.
Psychological exposing was invented by him,
and you are perfectly right,
he applied it to priests, too,
and generally to all people in denial.
He says, one has to be affirming something,
there is no true denial.
I deny in order to exert power.
A thought or value shall rise to power.
Right, a value shall rise to power
or the person himself.
Dismanteling other people,
out of grandiosity,
feeling better, smarter, denigrating others
by exposing: All your half-baked thoughts
are just your will to power,
trying to exalt of your own piteousness.
Nietzsche invented all of it. Before it didn't exist.
To some degree with
Heinrich Heine or Lichtenberg.
But Nietzsche perfected and exaggerated it.
Why now "Eternal Recurrence" in this context
of Nietzsche's philosophy of life-affirmation?
Very peculiar indeed, "Eternal Recurrence",
where did he get the idea?
He knew about this idea from antiquity,
the notion of things revolving in a great cycle
back to their starting point, 
everything recurring in constellations.
This was thought in Stoic philosophy 
and antiquity in general.
Also in the sense of the Platonic Year,
also called the Great Year.
At some point everything
will recur.
Mankinds orientation in time
is twofold:
linear and cyclical.
Spring of this year is the spring of last year
and of the penultimate year.
And yet we are getting older.
On the one hand there is a returning cycle,
on the other hand it continues linearly.
The years shall be added,
mercilessly marching ahead.
How does Nietzsche
come up with this idea?
First in an aphorism as a young man, 
where he rejects the concept.
I said earlier, if you say Yes to something:
"Oh moment remain, thou art so beautiful“
Nietzsche says, one has affirmed everything
leading up to this moment.
Because, if you cut out any previous element,
any biographical experience,
the present moment would be different.
Logically correct, saying “Yes” once
is saying yes to everything.
If I approve of one phase in my life,
I can pretend to deny other times,
but in fact, I do approve of them, because I am 
who I am experiencing those moments.
It is a causal sequence.
Although Nietzsche would have objected.
He is an ardent opponent of causality,
like David Hume and others.
Nietzsche proclaims absolute time,
not in a Newtonian sense,
time as absolute becoming.
Force can never rest.
Man does not understand time is absolute.
How is it therefore possible to justify
the Yes to life philosophically?
The concept appears in "Thus spoke Zarathustra",
l will read part of the passage
where he introduces Eternal Recurrcence
for the first time.
In different religions the thought
of everything recurring exists,
needing to break the cycle
like in Buddhism.
Nietzsche's idea is totally different:
everything is literally repeating.
Everything. An eternal loop.
The present moment is eternity itself.
Call it a nightmare, if you will,
a completely absurd thought.
Now Zarathustra Part 3, keeping in mind
Nietzsche's interest in overcoming illness.
"Not long ago I walked gloomily through
the deadly pallor of dusk, gloomy and hard,
with lips pressed together.
Not only one sun had set for me.
A path that ascended defiantly through stones,
malicious, lonely, not cheered by herb or shrub,
a mountain path crunched
under the defiance of my foot.
Striding silently over the mocking clatter of pebbles,
crushing the rock that made it slip,
my foot forced its way upward.
Upward, defying the spirit that drew it
downward toward the abyss,
the spirit of gravity, my devil and archenemy.
Upward although he sat on me, half dwarf,
half mole, lame, making lame,
dripping lead into my ear,
leaden thoughts into my brain.
„O Zarathustra, "he whispered mockingly,
syllable by syllable; „you philosopher's stone!
You threw yourself up high,
but every stone thats is thrown must fall.
O Zarathustra, you philosopher's stone,
you lightstone, you star-crusher!
You threw yourself up so high;
but every stone that is thrown must fall.
Sentenced to yourself
and to your own stoning.
Oh Zarathustra, far indeed have you thrown the stone,
but it will fall back on yourself.“
Then the dwarf fell silent, and that lasted a long time.
His silence, however, oppressed me;
and such twosomeness is surely more lonesome
than being alone, I climbed, I climbed,
I dreamt, I thought; but every thing oppressed me.
I was like one sick whom his wicked torture
makes weary, and who as he falls asleep
is awakened by a still more wicked dream.
But there is something in me that I call courage;
that has so far slain my every discouragement.
This courage finally bade me stand still
and speak: „Dwarf! It is you or I!"
For courage is the best slayer, courage which attacks;
for in every attack there is playing and brass.
Man, however, is the most courageous animal:
hence he overcame every animal.
Courage also slays dizziness at the edge of abysses; and where does man not stand at the edge of abysses?
Is not seeing always - seeing abysses?
Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage
which attacks: which slays even death itself,
for it says, „Was that life?
Well then! Once more!“
"Stop , dwarf"! I said. It is I or you! But I am the stronger
of us two: you do not know my abysmal.
That you could not bear!"
Then something happened that made me lighter,
for the dwarf jumped from my shoulder,
being curious; and he crouched on a stone before me.
But there was a gateway just where we had stopped.
"Behold this gateway, dwarf!" I continued.
"It has two faces. Two paths meet here;
no one has yet followed either to its end.
This long lane stretches back for an eternity.
And the long lane out there, that is another eternity.
They contradict each other, these paths:
they offend each other face to face;
and it is here at this gateway that they come together.
The name of the gateway is inscribed above:
'Moment'. But whoever would follow one of them,
on and on, farther and farther,
do you believe, dwarf,
that theses paths contradict each other eternally?
"All these is straight lies,"
the dwarf murmured contemptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle."
"You spirit of gravity," I said angrily,"
do not make things too easy for yourself! Or I shall let you crouch where you are crouching, lamefoot;
and it was I that carried you to this height.
"Behold," I continued, "this moment" From this gateway,
a long eternal lane leads backward;
behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever
can walk have walked on this lane before?
Must not whatever can happen have happened,
have been done, have passed by before?
And if everything has been there before, what do you think, dwarf, of this moment?
Must not this gateway too have been there before?
And are not all things knotted together
that this moment draws after it all that is to come? Therefore itself too? For whatever can walk there too,
in this long lane out it must walk one once more.
And this slow spider, which crawls in the moonlight,
and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway
whispering together, whispering of eternal things,
must not all of us have been there before?
And return and walk in that other lane,
out there, before us, in this long dreadful lane,
must we not eternally return?
Thus I spoke, softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts."
And then he asked the shepherd to bite off
the head of the serpent.
In poetic images the idea that every moment of 
existence is carried by two eternities: 
the past and the future.
Nietzsche believed the totality of force, energy, will
and all its possible constellations are finite.
Of course you could say, like me at 18, this is not true,
because the constellations are eternally different.
– Nothing is exactly repeated, or is it?
– Or only similar events...
Similar is something different. He means absolutely identical, because the interconnection of things
is inevitably leading back to the same point.
At one time he says referring to reincarnation:
Do not think that reincarnation takes a long time,
you are back in an instant, because time is gone
you only have this one moment,
and you return as the same person.
A nightmare, pure damnation to the
salvation-seeking person,
whether Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi or anyone else,
repeating everything over and over.
No evolution, no moving on,
like running in the hamster wheel of eternity.
And this identical recurrence would be by definition
static existence, abolishing all becoming.
Right, crazy, given he introduces the idea of
 "Absolute Becoming" we cannot grasp.
But space is finite, a compact unit of existence,
within eternal becoming and nothingness.
Or like the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno:
An infinite world, always new and different.
Infinity offsets Eternal Recurrence.
Nietzsche knew this.
Is this thought absurd or not?
Scientists have discussed this a lot...
Difficult to say, he saw it as ultimate affirmation of 
all life, refusing to say No even to the horrible
like Dionysos who affirms everything.
Although every healthy life-affirming person is seeking
pleasant situations, avoiding unpleasant ones,
preventing evils wisely.
– True, every elemental instinct of man avoids pain
but Nietzsche, as we know suffered extremely.
Nevertheless there is a grain of truth.
People like to talk about their biography,
spreading their own private mythologies,
and others should see it the way they do.
Everyone has got such a narrative about themselves.
Preferably excluding the difficulties,
thinking I should have acted differently,
my life would be different,
I would have been rich and pretty,
now I am poor and ugly.
And then moments of ecstatic affirmation,
Yes, finally I've arrived!
But, I have arrived because of the build-up.
Or is this logically wrong?
Well, it is not the pure logic, it is
the chain of occurrences. One needs to know that.
Of course you can tweak your biography,
and yet there is the context of the bigger picture.
Nietzsche said he fell ill because of his teaching jobs 
and living in such gloomy places like Naumburg or Basel.
He discovered life in Engadine. Finally! Or Italy.
His contempt for Germans, too. "When I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all my instincts
the picture that springs to mind is always
that of a German", is a famous quote.
He flirts with Italy, Southern France,
but in Germany it is impossible to live.
Well, however...
In any case it is the thought of absolute life-affirmation,
of absolute becoming and of absolute time.
It is possible or just an attitude? I've often wondered,
maybe its just an ecstatic attitude, eventually dissolving
Especially absolute repetition in finite space,
I find not very congruent with the idea of becoming,
of aliveness, more like a clockwork.
Indeed, crazy, he rejects the idea of 
existence, of being as a fiction,
But, Eternal Recurrence is static being. Nunc Stans.
The present moment stands still,
you'll never get out of it, trapped in existence.
A pure nightmare.
Now, Nietzsche understood himself as prophet
with the Zarathustra impulse of August 1881.
What salvation is he offering, if any?
He had an inspiration, an "enlightenment
experience". Whoever walks along lake Silvaplana,
at this pyramidal block, thinks about it.
There is an outstanding paragraph in „Ecce Homo“
about this inspiration in August 1881,
megalomania is already present.
He wrote Zarathustra much later and finished it
"in the holy hour of Wagner's death",
A holy hour on 13th February 1883, Richard
Wagner in Palazzo Vendramin, what does he write?
He wrote a treatise "On the Feminine in Mankind" 
before the line slipped,
“The process of emancipation of the female only
takes place amid ecstatic convulsions. Love, Tragedy..."
and he then dies.
Strange, like a theatrical scene, hard to beat...
When Nietzsche had turned on Wagner,
he said "None of you may criticise him.
Who are you to criticise Wagner?
You are way too pathetic and understand nothing."
He still loved him...
Now back to this great passage, I quoted it in
"Phenomenology of Otherworldly Experience",
phenomenologically unique, describing
what happens in the human body.
Nietzsche is a matador of the body, too,
he said: "Forget the "I", your "I" is the body",
transcending the merely physical.
One of the most beautiful passage
of German language at all!
„Has anybody, at the end of 19th century,
an idea what poets of stronger ages called inspiration?
If not, let me describe it.
With the smallest residue of superstition within oneself,
one would indeed hardly escape the idea
of being merely the incarnation, a mouthpiece,
the medium of super-human powers.
The idea of revela­tion, in the sense that suddenly
with incredible certainty and subtlety,
something becomes visible and audible,
shaking us and overpowering us in our deepest being:
all this is merely a description of facts.
One listens, one does not search; one receives,
one does not ask, who is giving;
like lightning a thought flashes up,
with necessity, without hesitation.
I never have had a choice. An ecstasy of joy,
whose immense tension sometimes dissolves into a stream of tears, and whose pace like a storm
and some­ times becomes slow;
a state of being completely beside oneself,
yet with the clearest consciousness of infinite 
fine tremors and waves like vibrations
running down to the very toes; 
a depth of happiness, in which all the painful and dark,
does not act as a contradiction but as a necessary
condition, a challenge, as a necessary color
within such an abundance of light; an instinct for rhythmic proportions, which spans extensive realms
the need for an all-encompassing
rhythm is almost a criterion for the power of inspiration,
a kind of compensating
counter-force against its pressure and tension.
All this happens involuntarily in the highest degree,
and yet like a storm of freedom, of unconditionality,
of power, of divinity. The involuntary character
of the inner image, simile, is the most remarkable part;
one has no more the slightest idea what is image or simile, everything offers itself as the nearest,
the most adequate, the simplest expression.
It really seems, to remind a word of Zarathustra,
as if things approached themselves
and offered themselves to the simile.
This is my experience of inspiration;
I do not doubt that you have to go back
thousands of years
to find someone who can tell me "it's mine too."
A pity the excessive ending
"that you have to go back thousand of years..."
His spirituality is wonderful, many have seen it that way,
that he had an ecstatic enlightenment experience
Whereby the idea of Eternal Recurrence
came to his consciousness.
And he wrote these 4 parts down in a few days.
What did he experience?
...did he really have a vision of Zarathustra?
Who contacted him, who did he contact?
A tremendously detailed account,
such precise statements about an ecstatic experience.
These experiences are common, not unique.
But in late 19th century quite unique.
Interesting that he does not only attack the priests,
but he had been exposed to a flood or 'invocation'
– with a message to humanity.
– Exactly.
What is the salvation message?
He loved great expressions,
not only cynical formulas,
but substantial concepts.
"The Great Midday" is one of those terms.
A funny story, I held a Nietzsche lecture
in the former GDR, and spoke about the "Great Midday",
some people where laughing,
university professors and philosophers.
They told me,
everyone in the GDR thinks of Günter Mittag (Midday),
a powerful political person in the GDR.
Of course my punchline was gone...
At the end of Zarathustra, there is this ecstatically cry:
"Arise now, arise, thou great midday".
It is the overwhelming light at noon, too.
Anyone who has ever been in the tropics knows it.
Challenging,
the abundance of light at noon
is an analogy of extreme illumination,
in that sense enlightenment for mankind, 
awakening should be related to the whole of humanity.
He called himself a prophet in predicting catastrophes,
huge wars, it all came true.The Nihilism will continue,
but eventually mankind will realize itself as unity, understanding what needs to be done.
Here in "Ecce Homo" again, what did Nietzsche want:
My life-task is to prepare for humanity one supreme moment of coming to itself, a great midday,
in which it will look backwards and forwards, it will free itself from the yoke of accident and of priests
and for the first time set the question of the
why and to what for.
This life-task naturally follows out of the conviction
that mankind is not on the right road of its own accord,
that it is by no means divinely guided, but rather that it is precisely under the cover of its most holy values
that the instinct of negation, corruption and degeneration has established a seductive influence.
The question concerning the origin of moral valuations is therefore a matter of the highest importance to me
it determines the future of mankind. The demand
to believe that everything is really in best hands,
that a certain book the Bible, 
gives us the definite and comforting assurance
that there is a providence 
that wisely rules the fate of man.
When translated back into reality amounts simply to this,
that man has been in the worst possible hands
and that he has been governed by the physiologically defective, the men of cunning and burning vengefulness
and the so-called "saints”, those slanderers of the world and desecraters of humanity.“
Philosophers too are just hidden priests,
he was a great forecaster...
He believed mankind will return to their senses, 
from vulgar words to lightning bolts,
one does wonder, how is this possible,
after all we know about mankind?
But he thought an ultimate cosmic event
will capture the whole of humanity,
rescuing and arranging at some point,
finally everyone understands the depths of human existence, becoming overman,
not the violent power seeker.
Interesting how these things played out,
I tried to show in "Nietzsche,
Hitler and the Germans" how to look at him,
and how he had been perceived.
– Overman the counter concept to all too human?
– Exactly,
To the pitiable man, like he writes about in Zarathustra.
Nietzsche had been barely known during
his lifetime, only in Wagner circles,
he had a few interesting correspondences with the Swedish writer August Strindberg, both exhilarated,
then he collapsed, nobody knows what happened exactly. Whether this is the result of an uncured syphilis
is not certain, often claimed rather than proven.
He went mad and this is part of his influence.
On his 44th birthday, 15th October 1888, it overturned.
He wrote "Ecce Homo" where everything appears
in lightning bolts, he's in trance, like being drugged,
before his collapse in January 1889 after
allegedly seeing a horse being whipped in Turin.
He sent letters around, among others to Jacob Burckhard with the sentence:
"After the old god has been assassinated, I am ready to rule the world." Burckhardt then informed Overbeck,
and they moved him with difficulties to the clinic.
Later his mother took care, then his sister,
after the death of the mother 1897 in Weimar
at Villa Silberblick, the house is still there today.
His fame began while suffering as mental patient,
Rudolf Steiner visited him, ecstatics tried to wake him
up through wild dances. 
The suspicion came up maybe he is not mentally ill,
same with the German composer Robert Schuhmann
or the writer Friedrich Hoelderin too,
people assumed they are not mentally ill, just depressed.
In the book "Zarathustra's End" by Anacleto Verrecchia,
an old friend of mine, he describes in detail this process, staggering.
Suddenly people were interested
and wanted to know about his writings.
The first Nietzsche wave appeared,
another big one in the 20th century.
In a sudden short time
he became world famous with a phenomenal influence,
a lonely unknown thinker became an inspirer
for almost all important intellectual movements.
he had been idolatrously worshiped,
cursed too, of course.
The whole left wing has always rejected him,
considering him an irrationalist.
In the GDR and the Eastern Bloc
he belonged in the poison cabinet.
If you wanted to read him you had to open
the poison cabinets. It was difficult to get the lyrics.
He had been a forerunner,
Psychoanalysis too, which Sigmund Freud admitted.
Further he dismantled the subject concept,
the psychologization,
the energizing of the concept of matter.
The early nationalists,
anti-Semites and sectarians found him interesting too.
He got into a difficult path. 1920 into 1930 there was a movement, Stefan George is an example, and others,
the Nietzsche fans were filled with an ecstatic expectation, a charismatic leader had to appear now,
the entire misery of the present should be vanquished by a savior, and somehow Nietzsche seemed to suggest it.
That Adolf Hitler became the leader is another story.
Nietzsche's sister played an unfortunate role
she had been a fervent National Socialist,
and died in 1935.
In addition to Cosima Wagner who died in 1930,
she strongly rejected the rise of Hitler.
Early nationalist sectarians instrumentalized his quotes for their purposes. Of course many rejected him too.
Hitler barely read him, but he organized
the funeral of Elisabeth Foerster Nietzsche,
and built a Nietzsche memorial in Weimar,
which got bombed later.
I showed it in my book there are many
scary Nietzsche expressions
suggesting experiments with millions of people,
letting them down, it doesn't matter,
the importance is to move on.
He mocks (german) nationalists and anti-Semites,
Yes exactly, also about the anti-Semitism of his brother-in-law too, but he favors another anti-Judaism.
To him the Jews invented the slave morality, they pre-determined the good-evil scheme for Christianity.
Although there is a great reverence for Judaism,
he admired the Jewish prophets,he said they are the greatest people existing. Ambivalent.
That is a topic in itself.
I wrote the book because of a strong reluctance,
I thought there is no connection at all
to National Socialism, but then I had to realize slowly,
let's say, there are some delicate elements…
the shortening of formulas; 
the flirtations with bully artists and politicians;
Hitler too believed to be an aesthete himself;
the inhumanity, such a highly sensitive person,
who could not harm a fly,  indulged himself in fantasies
of breeding a new master race.
Of course you should ask: must this be taken serious?
Thomas Mann was convinced, one would misinterpret Nietzsche if taken him serious and literal,
once he said 1947 in a famous lecture:
“Yes, he offers art. But it is an art reading him. No clumsy irony is allowed, whoever believes him is lost.”
Well, how can that be? Gottfried Benn too thought
Nietzsche is just a sparkling vocal artist,
he didn't think it through, fantasies of a lonely man.
But for the sake of honesty, the most
tightened sentences are in is literary estate,
he wrote them for himself. Is it right to use them
or should one rather stick to the published books?
I tried to portray him as an exemplary German.
The fight against his Germanism is typical for him.
Germans always fights against themselves,
constantly wondering: who am I really as German?
A French or English does not ask,
stereotypically said. But Germans always ponder.
Nietzsche is typical in that, he wrote:
„With them the question: what is German?, never dies."
I considered the typical German in the book 
"Nietzsche, Hitler and the Germans",
Thomas Mann believed National Socialism expressed
something typical German in a strange perverted way.
The impact after 1945 is interesting too, there were early developments of discharging him, even from Jews.
For example by Ernst Bloch, Hans Meier,
Adorno and others, who intensively read him.
The sticky aura of fascism dissipated slowly
among the intellectuals in the 60s.
Approximately when I started reading him
things began to change.
At the beginning of the 60s investigative research
came up about "Contemplating the Self".
Is it legitimate using such terms today,
knowing history? Difficult.
After all we're not the judges of history.
Modern man who takes the present very seriously
by judging everything, but in fact is only
a small light in a historical stream.
Today, or perhaps is has always been the case,
we colonize the present out of the past.
I know it, I am morally clean a good person,
I can judge everything, many people think like that...
– But they cannot.
– Are they truly morally clean?
What would Nietzsche say about our
postmodern moral concept of the absolute insult?
Which we have to deal today. Probably he would have strongly denied it as a resentment ideology.
Exactly, it became almost a moral attitude of many people today who consider themselves left-liberal,
knowing what's wrong. They do not.
The whole is built differently, things are not that easy,
all is much more complex. There you can learn a lot about contradictions: Reality is contradictory.
"The enemy is not necessarily the one walking around with horns", as Schopenhauer said
The disaster is knit way more subtly, we live
in a fatal context, hard to see through.
But those people do not read him, they heard about
the famous name, maybe they know a few formulas,
Zarathustra: "You go to women? Do not forget the whip!"
But, who said it? A woman, not by accident,
the biggest opponents of woman are women, not men.
Only a few read him in depth. Nor the tourists in
Sils Maria, I was there around 10 times,
they somehow have heard a few stories about
a sick philosopher, but they are rather irritated.
A funny little story once at the famous Nietzsche rock: “Man attend, what does deep midnight's voice contend?“
People stood around and a man said to his wife when I showed up: "Look, another one." I'll never forget it!
I did not say anything at the time, but today
I might ask what do you mean by that?
Well, that's part of his influence. Many intellectuals read him, Rüdiger Safranski's wrote a great book,
Peter Sloterdijk refers often, and many others too.
Each one has got it's own Nietzsche in the pocket.
But there are influential movements
considering him irrelevant nor a philosopher.
Nida-Rümeling, at that time Minister of State for Culture said in public: "Why should one read Nietzsche?
He does not have a clear statement."
Well, his fame is not by accident...
You quoted it out of my essay, that Nietzsche hurts,
therefore now we come to conclusion,
Nietzsche hurts, often enough and very cleverly
he takes away self-evident-facts, firm convictions,
that one thinks, maybe he's right after all.
There is a passage that I love quoting:
„Always lead the campaign against your own convictions and the arguments of your enemies too,
don't be too sure and self-confident."
Brilliant!
He is a wonderful, difficult, annoying friend,
a never boring challenge!
Many philosophers get boring
after 3 pages you know all about it.
Not Nietzsche, every aphorism sparkles brilliance,
it shakes and hurts you,
unbelievable!
Or you are so firmly anchored in your own ideology
that you doesn't care at all.
Yes, he always upsets...
Even now preparing this video, I was thrilled, 
and it is really fantastique,
it'd be such a shame and a lost for humanity
if these texts did not exist. Really sad.
Especially the German prose would be poorer
by one of the very greatest authors.
In addition to Christoph Lichtenberg,
Martin Luther, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Heinrich Heine.
Many thanks, dear Jochen. We've talked about
Friedrich Nietzsche, whom you refer as a friend,
even though we may concluded
it is good to have a second one,
- or a third or fourth friend
- or maybe a girl-friend, adressed to Mr. Nietzsche...
We have considered: „Will to Power“;
Overman, the transcendence of all too human;
What he experienced climbing the mountain
but not coming down again.
Indeed.
May we leave the audience with a feeling and openess,
even though he did not could go this path to the end.
Many thanks, dear viewers and Jochen Kirchhoff.
Subtitle Black Production Berlin
