Nietzsche: There is No Objective Right or Wrong | Brian Leiter

Interview with Brian Leiter on Nietzsche's Moral Antirealism.

Some links to further guide your study:

Companion lecture:

Professor Leiter's books:

TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 0. Introduction
00:02:38 0.1 Introduction: Nietzsche's Moral Views
00:07:12 0.2 Introduction: Nietzsche and Marx
00:12:31 0.3 Introduction: Nietzsche's Inegalitarianism
00:15:46 1. What is Anti-Realism?
00:37:37 2. Arguments & Objections to Anti-Realism
00:57:28 3. How to Live Life if Anti-Realism is True
01:16:19 4. Postscript: Nietzsche after Nazism

[bi.johnathan]

Instead of ad reads, my channel is funded directly by people passionate about the Great Books. Help me keep making more episodes with a paid subscription: johnathanbi.com

* Join my email list to be notified of future episodes: greatbooks.io

Companion lecture:

Professor Leiter's books with relevance to this interview:

TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 0. Introduction
00:02:38 1.1 Prologue: Nietzsche's Moral Views
00:07:12 1.2 Prologue: Nietzsche and Marx
00:12:31 1.3 Prologue: Nietzsche's Inegalitarianism
00:15:46 2. What is Anti-Realism?
00:37:37 3. Arguments & Objections to Anti-Realism
00:57:28 4. How to Live Life if Anti-Realism is True
01:16:19 5. Postscript: Nietzsche after Nazism

[HulaMask]

I shared this with all of my stripper friends. And we are literally addicted to just chill. You bring insight to people you may not have ever even considered. Johnathon, you truly have the gift of the gab when it comes to speaking and interviewing. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you put in.

[SenpaiAustin]

He’s feeding us again boys! Good to be back

[justanothernick]

Me and my confirmation bias is really happy to have stumbled upon this video at this stage.

My former self wouldn’t have gotten anything out of this since it’s really hard to grasp without a lot of philosophical legwork and the future me might shift my ethical stance.

So thank you!

[aeternaflux]

Anti-realism holds not only for the value of things, but also for the meaning and the purpose of things, and even for ‘things’ themselves. Reality—the eternal becoming, the “ever-living flame which kindles, extinguishes, and rekindles itself in regular measures” in the words of Heraclitus—is not a series of ‘individual events’ or ‘distinct moments’, but a continuum; one with no ‘intrinsic nature’ or ‘essence’, no ‘extrinsic source’ or ‘significance’, no ‘first causes’, no ‘final effects’, nothing ‘independent’, ‘dependent’, or ‘interdependent’, and nothing ‘fixed’ or ‘certain’. It is only through the overstimulation of the human intellect that the scene which appears before each of us becomes abstracted, statified, individuated, moralized, and crystallized, with each ‘distinct moment’ or ‘event’ seeming to follow down a ‘purposeful’, ‘necessary’, or even ‘good’ or ‘bad’ causal chain. Reality, however, is not so simple, and hardly so rational. Just as human reason is undergirded and driven by irrational forces, so too is reality as a whole. We are each, after all, just one ‘aspect’ of the whole that is reality, just a single small ‘event’ in the one, overarching, ever-flowing processual phenomena. And the world is one of chaos, not order; order is only an invention, introduction, and imposition…

To both Mr. Bi and Mr. Leiter, I say this: it’s not enough to say that a moral statement is just the expression of a “subjective taste” and not an “objective fact”, or that the value of a thing has its ‘source’ in ‘us’. This perspective operates out of the same sort of metaphysical thinking of Christianity, Platonism, and other adjacent doctrines. Remember Nietzsche’s wise words, which he put forward to the idealists and the empiricists of his day: “Against positivism, which halts at phenomena and says ‘[T]here are only facts and nothing more’, I would say: [N]o, facts are precisely what is lacking; all that exists consists of interpretation. We cannot establish any fact ‘in itself’: it may even be nonsense to desire to do such a thing.—‘Everything is subjective’ you say (a figment of your reasoning-mind or imagination, for example), but even this is only interpretation! The ‘subject’ is not something given, but something superimposed by fancy and introduced behind.—Is it necessary to posit an ‘interpreter’ behind the interpretation already to hand? Even that would be fantasy, hypothesis!”

[DanielMonte-kssz]

Good vigorous interview Johnathan! You pinned him down into saying we couldn’t make any definitive moral judgments, that we only have tastes and preferences.

[Sportsbikeguy]

I'm subbing for the high quality cinemaotography, sound and presentation.

[la]

Wow brian leiter?! Hes an expert its awesome to see him

[thomasgeraldmoog]

Jonathan has a great understanding of Nietzsche in relation to other philosophers and thus, have very direct questions to relative thoughts that were answered as good as one can. In other words, a good understanding of controversial Nietzschean ideas.

[simonnilsson]

I love this guest. Energy, charisma and deep knowledge in a great topic.

[aeternaflux]

Some people are ‘higher expressions’ than others, at least to those that value cultural refinement over and above all else—those that pursue creative endeavors while lending no credence to the concerns of others have more value, utility, etc. to a culture than those that saddle themselves with sentimentalities in every waking moment of their lives… The latter bog a culture down, diminish its quality—and the tension between the two plays a significant role in the invention of moral positions like egalitarianism or inegalitarianism…

And ‘God’, far from being dead, has only changed faces and hands. His new name is—‘Man’! The secular humanism of Mr. Leiter is the modern Christianity, and is precisely the soil out of which such ideologies as socialism grow. In the ever-prescient words of Stirner, “[O]ur atheists are pious people…”

[bretnetherton]

Awareness is known by awareness alone.

[MiyamotoMusashi]

I wouldn't consider buddhism a religion, as soon as statues are made and worshipped the point of the doctrine is missed
Buddhism trips over itself.

[TAiCkIne-TOrESIve]

32:56 America freeing the slaves is more an improvement in "economics" than in "morality". Furthermore, the economical burden of black slavery in America are already slowly puting slavery out of practice before the war. The war did expedite the process faster and more thoroughly, but the moral improvement is questionable.

[avogue]

I’ve watched the interviews with Brian several times—very good. However, I was struck by the suggestion that he is a Marxist. I found that quite odd, although he handled it well. Globally, undergraduates in social sciences and humanities typically engage with Marx’s ideas at some level. After all, he is one of the great thinkers of the 19th century. His contributions to philosophy, political economy, sociology, and revolutionary theory have had a lasting impact on how societies understand and critique structures of power, economics, and class relations. Interestingly, he’s probably less controversial than Nietzsche.

[xy]

"I have a taste for Aryans and no one else."

[shiwanlin]

I know this discussion focuses on Nietzsche’s views, but I still want to express that while I agree value is not objective like physical laws, I reject the idea that it is entirely subjective. Some values are fundamental to human nature—not as rational constructs, religious doctrines, or rulers’ mandates, but as products of social and psychological evolution over millennia. I see Nietzsche’s notion of affects and feelings in moral response as shaped by both cultural influences and innate psychological forces refined over millennia. Ignoring insights from evolutionary psychology in this discussion is a glaring omission.

I also dispute the suggestion that Beethoven held fundamentally different values from his time. He may have been strong-willed and defied social conventions, but he was a well-grounded human being and, of course, a great musician, whether judged by his contemporaries or modern standards. To be truly different, he would have had to act drastically—say, murder a couple of archdukes over the lack of recognition of his talent or his belief that he was prevented from fully realizing his great abilities.

[MiyamotoMusashi]

He didn't mean God is dead literally. He means society as a collective considers him dead

[cinefilologia]

your content has such a pretentious format... and I honestly love it 😅

[jackanderson]

Morals are not good or bad. They are useful.