Genius of the Modern World

[ardcarp]

Bettany Hughes exploration (BBC4) into the lives and thinking of Marx, Nietzsche and (next week) Freud could probably be described as 'entry level'. But that suits me fine. All I ever bothered to know about Nietzsche...apart from spelling his name....was Also sprach Zarathustra because of the Straussian connection. I probably had some notion that he was thought of (probably wrongly) as a proto-Nazi, but it seems his sister had more to do with selling the ubermensch idea to Hitler. I also knew he knew Wagner. I think I found the biographical details, as indeed with Marx last week, the most interesting part. Both men, it seems, would have been dismayed at how their philosophies were misinterpreted, thus giving rise to monstrous misuse of power.

[Serial_Apologist]

Bettany Hughes exploration (BBC4) into the lives and thinking of Marx, Nietzsche and (next week) Freud could probably be described as 'entry level'. But that suits me fine. All I ever bothered to know about Nietzsche...apart from spelling his name....was Also sprach Zarathustra because of the Straussian connection. I probably had some notion that he was thought of (probably wrongly) as a proto-Nazi, but it seems his sister had more to do with selling the ubermensch idea to Hitler. I also knew he knew Wagner. I think I found the biographical details, as indeed with Marx last week, the most interesting part. Both men, it seems, would have been dismayed at how their philosophies were misinterpreted, thus giving rise to monstrous misuse of power.

I do find Ms Hughes a very sympathetic presenter, I must say, though the tacit spin seemed to be along the lines that, in rejecting God, Nietzche was automatically predisposed to reject the idea of compassion, which, I would have thought from his encounter with Buddhism by way of Schopenhauer, he would have understood, albeit rejected in preference for his own modified Darwinism..

One thing omitted from her resume of Nietzsche was that after taking his leave of Wagner, he became an ardent fan of... Bizet! I can't remember where I read this, (Maybe Colin Wilson ), but he is supposed to have proclaimed, "Il faut Mediterraniser la musique", or in other words, bring the sunshine in that he felt was lacking in Wagner's music dramas.

[gradus]

I enjoyed Ms Hughes presentation enormously and found her simplified course in Nietzschean philosophy perfectly digestible. Altogether an excellent programme.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I enjoyed Ms Hughes presentation enormously and found her simplified course in Nietzschean philosophy perfectly digestible. Altogether an excellent programme.

- the programme on Marx was also a fine introduction to his ideas.

[aeolium]

One thing omitted from her resume of Nietzsche was that after taking his leave of Wagner, he became an ardent fan of... Bizet! I can't remember where I read this, (Maybe Colin Wilson ), but he is supposed to have proclaimed, "Il faut Mediterraniser la musique", or in other words, bring the sunshine in that he felt was lacking in Wagner's music dramas.

You may have read it in Nietzsche's work itself or a quote from it: The Case of Wagner opens with fulsome praise of Bizet's music - Nietzsche had just heard Carmen for the 20th time - in contrast to the music of Wagner:

"Bizet's music seems to me perfect. It comes forward lightly, gracefully, stylishly. It is lovable, it does not sweat. “All that is good is easy, everything divine runs with light feet”: this is the first principle of my æsthetics. This music is wicked, refined, fatalistic, and withal remains popular,—it possesses the refinement of a race, not of an individual. It is rich. It is definite. It builds, organises, completes, and in this sense it stands as a contrast to the polypus in music, to “endless melody”....With it one bids farewell to the damp north and to all the fog of the Wagnerian ideal."

I thought this was another good introduction to FN's life and ideas by Bettany Hughes, though I thought she was possibly too harsh on Nietzsche for not foreseeing the potential later abuse or misappropriation of his ideas. After all, as Hughes pointed out, he was never responsible for publishing The Will To Power. Can a philosopher anticipate the metamorphosis of his own ideas decades or even centuries later? If so, then potentially Fichte and Herder also sowed seeds that later flourished under Nazism - as Isaiah Berlin argued. I think that Nietzsche was consumed by his own desire to overthrow key ideas of the established order, particularly the influence of religion, and freeing mankind from that burden.

[Serial_Apologist]

- the programme on Marx was also a fine introduction to his ideas.

Hmm: I thought her exposition of Marx's economic theory was jumbled, or rather, stumbled over - almost as if with a cursoriness that seemed to say: my goodness, we'd better not explain this too clearly or spend too much time on it, because someone might end up understanding and even believing in it!

One thing that emerges in examinations of the relationship between great men and women's ideas and their personalities or actual lives is the little apparent bearing the one so often seems to have on the other. I remember, in the late 1960s, myself being a huge apostle of RD Laing. Later on, his reputation was seriously soiled in my mind by stories which emerged about his treatment of family members and his unfortunate drinking habits - and yet I still rate his "Self and Others" as a model exposition of a phenomenological approach to inter-human communications, and "Knots" as a poeticisation of same. I guess I feel the same about Marx. And Debussy, come to that!

[pastoralguy]

How about Andrew MacGregor?

[Serial_Apologist]

How about Andrew MacGregor?

Well, how about him?

[Pianorak]

Post deleted - see aeolium's post.