Youtube Nietzsche Documentary

[Lacy Tortelli]

HumanAll Too Human is a three-part 1999 documentary television series co-produced by the BBC and RM Arts.[1] It follows the lives of three prominent European philosophers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.[1] The theme revolves heavily around the school of philosophical thought known as Existentialism, although the term had not been coined at the time of Nietzsche's writing and Heidegger declaimed the label.

I've recently watched the documentary about Nietzsche's life and philosophy Nietzsche: Beyond good and evil and I got that one of the main ideas in his philosophy is that people should spend their life enhancing their self-knowledge and self-cultivating. According to the documentary, this idea had been crucial for Freud's and Jung's philosophy so I believe it could have had much impact on the thinking of society.

The man who will not belong to the general mass, has only to stop "taking himself easily"; to follow his conscience, which cries out to him, "Be thyself! all that thou doest and thinkest and desirest, is not thyself!"

First of all, I've realized that the saying "be yourself" substantially relate to the question of a person's identity. On one side, the urge to live authentically had become one of the main topics of decadence where the role of Nietzsche's thoughts is, indeed, undeniable. On the other hand, I guess his popularity might had been a consequence of the growing corresponding moods in the society. These growing moods might even have had their roots in the philosophy of naturalism.

I've searched through the Google books to find the oldest mention of the phrase "be yourself" and the first to actually relate to the context we understand it in today might be the Socratic dialogue between a "Christian" and a "Socianist" in Christianity and modern infidelity: their relative intellectual claims compared written by Morgan, W. (Williams) in 1854.

The two of the debaters invastigate how can our surrender to God be consistent with the urge to be free. At the same time, people were affected by the biological knowledge that had lead to naturalism - that we are determined by our biological predisposition (Hippolyte Taine). This might have lead to the urge to fulfill your predisposition which is pretty much what lies behind "being yourself". Here, the writer, dealing with the contradiction of having free will and surrendering to God had, in fact, captured the basic question of self-identification:

Note that the context of the debate (the new religious "fidelity" and critique of the stifling religious institutions) seems to be very similar to the context of Nietzsche's philosophy (this notion supports the consequence-hypothesis mentioned earlier).

Thayer makes the point we should live honestly so we could always speak honestly, a point very similar to those that can be seen in contemporary psychological literature. Thayer even quotes the naturalist George Crabb (1754-1832):

So I guess that the origin of the phrase "be yourself" is so complex we can't really ascribe the authorship to a single philosopher, even though there's a good chance Thayer was the one to spread the phrase (even though he didn't have to be the first to come with the idea of meaning of life as cultivating and getting to know yourself).

Our average citizens do not live as did his beloved aristocrats, who relentlessly identified themselves, as individuals, with the good. Rather, most of us seem to be driven by something that perhaps looks like Nietzscheanism. America may have had a genuine, almost Nietzschean moment in the sixties, when post-war conformism (documented so well in novels like Revolutionary Road) gave way to a vaguely Nietzschean radicalism, but it seems to have quickly transformed into something else.

Adam Curtis documents the transformation of this spirit in his documentary Century of the Self. In it, he recounts how American corporations, desperate to reach these new anti-corporate individualists, realized they could tie the project of self-actualization to consumption of a range of products of historically unparalleled diversity. Advancements in small-scale production, as well as increasingly lifestyle driven advertisements, allowed manufacturers to link individualism with the consumption of a wide variety of products that people could identify with.

Rather, I think that Nietzscheanism takes on two limited forms in America; his thought well describes a small and powerful elite whose criterion for politics seems genuinely to be whether it pleases them, and also the small, precious counter-cultural movements which die once incorporated into our market. Each of these forms represents what I take to be a real and distinct danger of Nietzscheanism in a thoroughly un-Nietzschean country. One is an inward directed danger and the other outward.

The other danger is its inverse. As Owen rightfully points out, an unspecified call for the assertion of the self can take on the form of domination, which precisely what I think we see with Spencer and profiteers unconcerned with the consequences of their sales. The specific danger of Nietzscheans is not, however, that there are so many of them, but rather so few. Many people, lacking a sense community and a sense of self, cling to or bow to such figures out of a kind of sad, structural weakness that Nietzsche would have hated. If more people were self-assertive, it is hard to imagine a single amoral Nietzschean, or really anyone for that matter, gaining power.

Willy DeVille was born 61 years ago today. He died in 2009. I was a huge fan of his music, particularly his early work with Mink Deville, and wanted to share this documentary and video clip with you.

Human, All Too Human is a three-part BBC documentary series following the lives of three prominent European philosophers - Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The theme revolves heavily around the school of philosophical thought known as Existentialism, although the term had not been coined at the time of Nietzsche's writing and Heidegger declaimed the label. The first episode "Beyond Good and Evil" is about Friedrich Nietzsche and his gradual shift from religion, to nihilism, and finally to insanity. The second episode "Thinking the Unthinkable" is about Martin Heidegger, who developed ideas from the writings and ideas of Nietzsche in an attempt to better understand individual human freedom. The third and final episode "The Road to Freedom" describes the life of the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, and shows that Sartre believes it is up to each individual human being to give his or her own life a meaning and a purpose.

Martin Heidegger - Thinking the Unthinkable

This episode is about Martin Heidegger, who developed ideas from the writings and ideas of Nietzsche in an attempt to better understand individual human freedom.

Jean-Paul Sartre - The Road to Freedom

This episode describes the life of Jean-Paul Sartre, and shows that Sartre believes it is up to each individual human being to give his or her own life a meaning and a purpose.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), had a tremendous impact on German culture and society, both during and after his lifetime. This selection of quotes highlights some of the major themes in Nietzsche's writings. Some of these themes would have significant political implications in twentieth century Germany.

After World War II there has been an effort by some to suggest that Nietzsche had no connection to the creation of Nazi Germany. This is total nonsense. After all, he had a very low opinion of German nationalism and despised anti-semitism. However, these quotes show that key parts of his thinking did indeed lay the intellectual groundwork for Hitler's regime and Hitler himself would repeatedly cite his debt to Nietzsche.

The World Future Fund serves as a source of documentary material, reading lists, and internet links from different points of view that we believe have significance. The publication of this material is in no way whatsoever an endorsement of these viewpoints by the World Future Fund, unless explicitly stated by us. As our web site makes very clear, we are totally opposed to ideas such as racism, religious intolerance, and communism. However, in order to combat such evils, it is necessary to understand them by means of the study of key documentary material. For a more detailed statement of our publications standards clickhere.

"The order of castes, the highest, the dominating law, is merely the ratification of an order of nature, of a natural law of the first rank, over which no arbitrary fiat, no "modern idea," can exert any influence. In every healthy society there are three physiological types, gravitating toward differentiation but mutually conditioning one another, and each of these has its own hygiene, its own sphere of work, its own special mastery and feeling of perfection. It is not Manu but nature that sets off in one class those who are chiefly intellectual, in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those who are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only mediocrity -- the last-named represents the great majority, and the first two the select. The superior caste -- I call it the fewest -- has, as the most perfect, the privileges of the few: it stands for happiness, for beauty, for everything good upon earth. Only the most intellectual of men have any right to beauty, to the beautiful; only in them can goodness escape being weakness."

In all this, I repeat, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing "made up"; whatever is to the contrary is made up -- by it nature is brought to shame. . . The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types -- the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all. A right is a privilege. Everyone enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence.

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