Rick Roderick on Nietzsche and the Will to Power [full length]

This video is 6th in the 8-part series, Nietzsche and the Postmodern Condition (1991).

Lecture notes:

I. A myth about Nietzsche is that his work is related to Fascism

This is because his texts have been used by socialist organizations

Nietzsche viewed himself as a "good European" rather than a "good German".

Nietzsche scorned German nationalism.

Many interesting tex have risks.

The return of Nietzsche in the 60′s and his re-return in the 80′s and 90′s, have been interpreted as anarchist and left-wing.

Nietzsche's text allows for multiple political uses.

II. "The Will to Power" is the name of a text was compiled by Nietzsche's sister.

A. Nietzsche's view of power is not as simple as the domination of one person over another. This is because there is no essential self, only multiple personas that have the coherence of a character.

B. Selves aren't simple, and neither is power.

C. Power is applied vertically. We internalize relations of power within ourselves (micrological power).

D. A good conscience and fairness are structured by power.

E. For Nietzsche, power is relational, a complex relational set of intervening and interacting effects.

III. Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" shows us the politics of reading Nietzsche.

A. Foucault does a genealogy of forms of punishment -- how they changed from the feudal to the modern period.

B. "The Spectacle of the Scaffold" details an execution and the conditions of possibility for those practices.

C. A condition of reversal occurs when the victim becomes the local point and wins sympathy of the crowd.

D. Bentham. the utilitarian, designed the "panoptical" which was more of a principle than a building.

1. There was surveillance power -- you can be seen, but you can't see them.

2. It is a new mode of discipline which signifies the expansion of power across many aspects of life.

E. Another modern day reversal is occurring in the university. Knowledge seems free of power, but according to Nietzsche, where there is knowledge, there are the effects of power.

For more information, see http://www.rickroderick.org

A philosophy podcast, The Partially Examined Life, held a detailed discussion of Nietzsche, which can be found here:

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2009/11/10/episode-11-nietzsches-immoral...

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• Friedrich Nietzsche
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• Roderick
• philosopher
• philosophy
• postmodern
• condition