How to understand Nietzsche's style

How to read Nietzsche and ANY philosopher who writes in a distinctive literary way? If you want to transform how you read Friedrich Nietzsche, this video is for you.

This video psychologically demanding - it can help both experienced philosophers and amateurs who wish to know where to start with Nietzsche.

In this video lecture I look at Friedrich Nietzsche's literary style: why did Nietzsche write like he did? I discuss Brian Leiter on Nietzsche and explore how Leiter misses the point in his discuss of the relationship philosopher Bernard Williams had with Nietzsche. I briefly discuss the friendship Bernard Williams had with Bryan Magee. Philosophers Miranda Fricker, Charles Taylor and Avishai Margalit get a mention too.

The first secret to understanding Nietzsche is about seeing that ideas wear rhetorical clothes. The second secret is about understanding that for Nietzsche philosophical concerns matter more than beliefs. The third secret is about understanding the primacy of philosophical process over result. The fourth secret is about tips and tricks for how to engage the three best books by Nietzsche - The Genealogy of Morality, The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil.

------

#vladvexlershow offers a guide to surviving the 21st century. Surviving it politically, culturally, aesthetically, and coming away with a vision of the world that is at once truthful but also hopeful.

Vlad Vexler is a philosopher, musicologist & arts consultant. He is slowly writing a book on Isaiah Berlin. Born in Russia in 1981, his home has been Israel, Australia, Tonga and now London. Since 2003 he has lived with the neuro immune condition ME. For several years he was unable to walk or talk or read. His PhD research focused on political liberty.

Twitter:

Other platforms are still works in progress -

Facebook:

Instagram:

Podcast:

Linkedin:

*website under construction

[VladVexler]

It is as privilege to have you here on the channel 💛. This is a pretty demanding video. I've crammed in a lot. You can see how I am slyly making the video about style in philosophy generally? This is because in the end, philosophy incarnates its own concerns, not Nietzsche or Kant or Wittgenstein. The best way to understand Nietzsche's enormous stylistic depth is to see it as a response to the demands of philosophy. I talk a lot about 'concerns' in this video. I'd love to hear about your concerns - with Nietzsche, with philosophy, or with life.

[jacksoncrocker]

Vlad, this was the most illuminating bathroom break I’ve taken in a very long time. Thank you! Hope you’re well 😊

[extrememiami]

You are an absolute genius and I bet that my grandchildren will be readings your stuff in school.

[rumination]

Having grasped your liberal perspective on Russia I'm very much appreciating your 'back catalogue'. The point you make here is sound and succinct. You deserve your growing channel.

[rapnet]

My main problem with Nietzsche's style is that his polemics are often misunderstood or misused as a propagandist's tool. "This world is the will to power and nothing beside" can be used by propagandists to beat in the heads of moral thinkers who attempt to make sense of a complex world of motives and institutions. Thanks for your thoughtful videos.

[elijaguy]

LOL, hilarious. Your perceptive observations, highlighting the crucial importance of style and context, of the subliminal effect of intricate syntax, and of being part of a Zeitgiest of expression and thinking of place and time, made me not only smile with pleasure but also ponder with appreciation about the often neglected layers of formulations of ideas.

[reereekennedy]

There it is! Lost my philosophy book on his work in a fire, I would dipp in and out making notations. It was tattered but much loved. I hope to replace it soon. Been looking for someone with the willingness and knowlegable to make a path thru!!

[joshuasanford]

thanks again vlad! looking forward to the longer videos if you decide to give them a try.

[richardoldfield]

Re. the two piles of true or false statements/beliefs (etc) that you mention, this connects with the tension between analogue (a spectrum-range continuum) as distinct from digital (discrete categories). The latter, when involving a binary either/or approach, connects in turn to the modern-day elevation of information over knowledge, judgement, and wisdom - an elevation especially apparent in our data-driven (information) computer-age, in which context the binary logic underpinning computer operations is an apt parallel.

[Garcwyn]

To say yes to this video is to say yes to all of them.

[b.questor]

A beneficial conversation between literature and philosophy, one reflecting the other.

[MiKenning]

Wow, this is great stuff. Do you know much about Bertrand Russell by any chance? I would listen to your discussion on his philosophy.

[ipalabra]

Thank you for these secrets! Illuminating.

[joshuasanford]

i am a particularly analytically minded person. i picked up the gay science a while back and it is sitting on my bookshelf. i read a bit of beyond good and evil and enjoyed it. i found the aphorisms digestible. in comparison, i find my kind of thinking presents roadblocks to me when i try to read his writing where he makes many fast assertions that all seem to rely on one another. each assertion can seem like it would take a whole book to get to the center of whether or not it is a reliable claim. while this frustrates my brain, it is surprisingly one of the most exciting parts about his work. it's like he's generating new philosophical careers for people in every paragraph.

do you have any recommendations for an analytically minded person who would like to read nietzche and enjoy the ideas for their impact and beauty, but also try to stay less annoyed by the pace and tone?

[b.questor]

To reach for the objective is to analyze the subjective. Dialogue is the key.

[pfflam]

Some Philosophers come to Philosophy from the Fine Arts - from being artists or exploring the arts first - they probe the experience of creating significant and physically felt form and they are habituated to form-as-effect and so they turn to explore though form, even when thinking in words..

These days we're in the wake of the "Warhol realized Hegel's thesis" and Joseph Kosuth's 'Art as the Idea of Art' - but that's the last of the High Modernist Conceptualism - in Academic Art rhetoric. That Tradition is Idealist and dominated a lot of the art discourse and the way people talked about art - art as "doing Philosophy" through form but essentially being about Idea - Two strains within Conceptualism in the arts; one that took the Thesis "Art is now Philosophy" seriously - mostly that work is predictably dry and often depends on the Philosophy in order to be engaging, but a lot of the Conceptualism is really funny - in my mind that's the best kind of Conceptualism- a lot owing a debt to Duchamp -it plays with Idea and Form but by the playfulness and humor formally shows the possible/impossible of it's Thesis.

Form has different ways of resonating with us -it is emotional, physical, it is intellectual -why else would Nietzsche want to write but to explore expand and immerse himself in the feeling of music?! -Form cuts through us in different ways for different forms - a Brutalist hallway feels different than a log cabin -and for many forms of reasons why, - add historical and contextual. But through writing a philosophical and historical, and by way of historical also mythico-religious text on music, and do so as dedication to both a composer and a woman, he could feel music in each of those ares too in all those registers - he was literally high-strung - music hit him in his nervous system in every register with ecstasy, and in exploring music philosophically he could bring ecstasy into philosophizing - I sound foolish but to me that's not just why "Birth of Tragedy" exists, it's also the why of everything else he wrote in reaction to it.

Which highlights something important for me - Academic Rhetoric and Academic Art are excellent endeavors and are at times the pinnacle of the Life of the Mind and all that, but often the curricula and tenure and etc dictate the actual relation to the work - the wanting to keep a job dictates not just the form their work takes but the depth of engagement in every way -even merely material access to the words and time available to put them down -
anyway - an weighs in . . .

[b.questor]

At 25, I am now 67, I read first, the works of Sigmund Freud, then following his footnotes, I dove into the works of Nietzche and Dostoevsky.
I agree, The Gay Science is a good starting point. Highlighting, underlining, and diagraming sentence structures all helped in my attempt to fully understand his works.
True Confession: I used black tape to partially conceal the title of the book for fear that a certain hot button word was not misconstrued.
After decades, I remember Nietzche's advocation of education reform by way of the Socratic method.
Today, Nietzsche returns to my mind, again.

[marisad]

Hey Vlad, I'm really looking forward to more of your series on Nietzsche. I try so very hard to read and comprehend his writings. I want to understand. Thank you for the excellent insight in your videos. I understood more in your short videos about Nietzsche than hours of my own study (made harder due to ME).

[PRAR]

Process, process & always the process - for when it comes to genuine understanding or trust in (insert noun). Digression: It makes me so easy to live with - looks around and see's a dog. It does mean that friends you cultivate can come from any demographic or age range. But you can imagine the limitations when a person is 'closed' to prodding with contextual or nuance tools. Back in the room: The work to build a working model of a personality from texts is near imposable but rewarding glimpses occur.

[jordanedgeley]

Wasn't expecting the mourinho meme 😂