Nietzsche on Drives

In this video, Dr. David M. Peña-Guzmán talks about Nietzsche's understanding of the drives (as laid out in Daybreak, 1888). What are the drives? How do they affect our behavior? What sort of control do we exercise over them?

[ripsagoly]

Nietzche is AWESOME ❤️Thankyou for being out these truths and insights, you have most eloquently brought across … please please please MORE ON NIETZCHE 🙏🙏🙏

[fede]

I always paired Nietzsche to Aristotle in my mind, even through Nietzsche was fiercely critical of him, precisely for this reason. I find that the framework of virtue ethics is the best way to understand his "overcoming". I also think this kind of undermines his rejection of free will.

[JLandavega]

Thanks for sharing the wonderful content!

[jacobtroxel]

The symbolic reference or example of the gardener really resonated with me. I really appreciate this lecture and will be thinking about these ideas.

[PhilosophyDaysUth]

His supposed indifference to how we live is hard to square with his apparently normative criticisms of what he sees as the Christian and utilitarian virtues. TY for making this!. 🥰

[johncaccioppo]

I feel that the drive for social inclusion has a place at the top of the hierarchy such that, if it is fulfilled through both internal and external realization, the other drives are kept in balance. But if it is unfulfilled, the other drives become amplified and malignant as the individual struggles for meaning in their downward spiral of loneliness and resentment over rejection.

It is remarkable, the extent to which we deny our true motivations, especially in the phenomenon of perceived social isolation. It's a nightmare so uncomfortable to us that we make it even worse for ourselves, through our desperation and hostility, as if to convince ourselves that it's not even something we want... much less need more than anything else.

The cognitive disruption it inflicts is truly the most profound physiological catastrophe and we find ourselves today in a society where this has become the norm for the majority of the population. Yet, our fear of it is so intense that nobody chooses to speak of it and it continues to be the commodity of sociopaths who exploit the mentally ill for personal gain.

[Philo-Vids]

Brilliant analysis! Thank you for posting!

[bodynutrition]

This entire video could have been summed up- Nietzsche believes unconscious and not necessarily rational desires shape your decisions and behavior.

I believe your thesis for this video was that it was groundbreaking at the time to recognize unconscious determinants of behavior.

How then do you reconcile this as a turning point of psychological thought when Shakespeare's monologues of passions driving behavior occurred centuries earlier or even far earlier Buddhist principles that desire shapes all thought and action?

[sonpollo]

The phantom limb experience is commonly experienced by people who were overweight or underweight but are no longer. Yet, they still perceive their bodies as they were and not as they are. They even think they can see the body they once had that no longer exists when gazing upon themselves. Their reception is locked into their memories and experiences of the self of the past.

[wonderfacts]

Thank you Professor. It's great. Take love. 🌻
But have you finished on "The birth of tragedy"? Please, say, no. Everything you make lucid, interesting, easy to understand. But please do at least one or two more on "The birth of tragedy". It was superb!

[artlessons]

Thanks! I agree with Nietzsche's identification of our biological physical desires. I find today a psychologist would here have ego come into play to keep one in their container. Say one is on a diet and goes to grab a bag of chips as the desire for food shoots up from his unconscious. The demon inside says go ahead eat them like you always did before. . The ego says no no no put them down grab an orange and sit down. A healthy ego takes control over animalistic desires.
call it reason or whatever if you don't have control the unconscious would run ramped...I think Fichte had something to say about distributing the psyche as well!. Cheers.

[willtheo]

Thanks for that. Some things to consider
- nietzche did not believe in biological determinism and did not say drives were rooted in biology or matter. His concept of the eternal return describes the infinity of action and their repetition. It's clear eternal return is not biological or material but more a cosmological principle.
2. Nietzsche does pose ethics around drives and they are not what is acted on or rejected but what is truly active or reactive ( see deleuze " nietzche and philsophy chapter - action / reaction ). What determines this critical difference ? What creates life and what doesn't . What creates new values and what keeps life in a habitual form. If we accept your drive interpretation, that would mean we would have to ignore nietzche as symptomatologist where he saw in principle that man is " a skin disease of the earth ". So clearly he felt most of all
Man made drives were decadent. This is why he created the over / man ubermenschen concept - so man moves beyond his familiar drives . Active and reactive refer to our ability to repeat or create. To what is called becoming in philsophy. This is why nietzche is a philosopher of art and creativity. Not a manager of homeostasis.
3 . In fact we can't really say drives are human and that means also that our rational self concept and everything " representative " is basically a lie./ illusion. In some ways drives totally undermine our self concept or persona and thus undermine any egoic self understanding. This is why nietzche identified with the Dionysian as our natural state. How that translates in psychology is more a French model of self understanding as the shattering of the ego by the eruptions of drives as Freud described in parapraxes, jokes, neurosis, and symptoms in general.
This is probably why drive theory has met such resistance, particularly with what you describe as dream ineterpretations. However even here we have to understand that drives are multiple and in no way suggest a singular person. They are expressions of our collectivity as well as our singularity . As Jung said the unconscious contains everything in it. ( which is why he departed from the Freudian model )
We have to keep Nietzsche in line with continental philosophy which means his inheritors and translators are people like Jung, Heidegger. Bataille, and deleuze. The will is not biological determinism nor is it human.

[shotsi]

Interesting. A thought that comes to mind. We have a history of events of this realisation, and attempts to temper our drives. Religion is one that comes to mind. Esp those espoused in Christianity. Laws that guide social behaviour in civil societies. Etiquette, moral responsibility etc. In a sense not only is it the individual’s responsibility but the society that we live in has set about successfully and with a consensual approach in dealing with our drives. That’s why it’s relatively safe to walk home in the dark in most civilised societies.

[Summer-kbdm]

Seems a little superficial of Nietzsche. Are we talking about Freudian drives? Bc they are much deeper embedded in our unconscious/physiology than is described here. As for "agency" - I have no idea what that could be...wishful thinking? IDK. I think here he is a bit muddled. Who is it that is deciding to 'feed' a drive, and why? What is the motivation? (Obviously now I'll have to read the text.)

It all smacks of cognitive psychology (which I think Nietzsche would abhor).

I think it's rather questionable that we get to decide who we are and what we choose to do. It's a horrible predicament and quite the maze of conundrums. I have never been able to find a good argument for free-will, other than, we need this illusion to prop up our sense (and it is only sense) of a self.