friedrich nietzsche's beyond good and evil is a notoriously difficult book to understand written in 1886 it has become hugely influential but also widely misunderstood in this series we will explore the main themes of one of the most puzzling and infamous works in all of philosophy we hope that after watching this series you will have a solid grasp of the main ideas in the work but more importantly that you will understand nietzsche's unique way of looking at the world this is the first video in a planned three-part series on just this one work by nietzsche we want it to be a detailed deep dive into the book this first video will be something of a warm up or a teaser if you will if you want to be notified when we release the other videos in this series please consider subscribing to the channel with that out of the way let's dive into this fascinating work part 1 the title the full title of the work actually reads beyond good and evil prelude to a philosophy of the future let's dissect the meaning of this lengthy title beyond good and evil gives us a clue as to what nietzsche is trying to accomplish here he wants us to go beyond the concepts of good and evil what does this mean historically philosophers have been operating under the assumption that any given act is either good or evil this is a moral value judgment when we say he did a good thing we are paying someone a compliment by contrast a bad thing or an evil act is seen as the opposite of good in the first part of the title nietzsche is inviting us to look beyond this binary mode of thinking as we will see nietzsche does not propose as the philosophers before him have done that good is the opposite of evil in other words nietzsche rejects the dichotomy of good versus evil traditionally the good was viewed as something entirely different and opposite from evil nietzsche will attack this presupposition in a broader sense this first part of the title also invites us to look beyond any pair of opposites not just good and evil nietzsche is asking us to go beyond good and evil but as we will see he will also ask us to look beyond appearance and reality beyond will and reason beyond true and false as will be seen beyond good and evil is a work in which nietzsche attacks the very idea of a contradiction all of this intellectual baggage is apparent from just the first four words of the title the subtitle then prelude to a philosophy of the future is often not mentioned but it also gives us important information as to what nietzsche is trying to accomplish here firstly this book is a prelude it's a teaser a starting point a warm-up it is not a finished polished product and not a grand philosophical system more importantly it's not meant to be any of these things and nietzsche himself was acutely aware of this nietzsche wanted to kickstart a new philosophical movement and way of thinking and he wanted others to continue his work beyond good and evil is full of appellations to the so-called free spirits whom nietzsche invites to take philosophy forward a philosophy of the future all of this we have learned just from looking at the title in the following parts we will see how exactly nietzsche wants us to go beyond good and evil part two philosophical prejudices throughout beyond good and evil nietzsche exposes several prejudices philosophers have most philosophers think they are searching for the truth with a clear objective method they assume they undertake the search without prejudice that is to say without any preconceived notions that might cloud their judgment just like how a surgeon would use sterilized clean equipment for his work the philosopher tries to use clean and clear logical thoughts a dirty knife might botch the surgery and make things worse and in the same way logically fuzzy metaphorically dirty thoughts might similarly result in a botched philosophy nietzsche's goal in beyond good and evil is to show that the so-called great philosophers before him have actually been using dirty knives all along without being aware of it maybe you have heard people call nietzsche the philosopher with a hammer if you have this is what they mean by that nietzsche has a real talent for delivering destructive blows to the great philosophers of the past exposing in their work biases at play that have gone unnoticed for a very long time nietzsche with his hammer sets out to destroy these philosophies and pave the way for a new philosophy of the future without the biases of the past what kind of biases is nietzsche talking about let's take for example rene descartes the entire project of the cart from the ground up was designed to eliminate bias using his famous method of doubt descartes set out to find a starting point on which to base all of our knowledge this foundational knowledge must be so certain it should be impossible to possibly doubt it we cannot be sure for example of the accuracy of our senses we cannot know whether we are dreaming or not we cannot even be sure if other people view the world in the same way as we do but what cannot be doubted is that i think even if i doubt the fact that i am thinking i can at least be sure of my doubt itself but to doubt of course means to think so descartes arrives at his famous formulation i think therefore i am this little fact is true no matter what because in order to think something must exist to do the thinking so descartes assumed he had found the one and only thing of which we can always be sure i think therefore i am nietzsche asks is that really the furthest you can go he identifies a lot of hidden assumptions in descartes reasoning for instance that it is i who think that there must necessarily be something that thinks that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause that there is an ego and finally that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking that i know what thinking is in other words to say i think descartes already presupposes the existence of an i which is exactly what he is trying to prove in the first place the card is moving in circles but that's not the whole story descartes has not even sufficiently proved that there is a singular i which is doing the thinking by using the word i he is already overstepping the bounce of acceptability instead the card should have said something like there are thoughts or it is thinking just like we say it is raining by attacking the cards the most famous and influential example of the philosopher of doubt nietzsche is attacking the entire philosophical tradition before himself if even descartes even the famous doubter of all things did not go far enough at his job where does that leave the rest of the philosophers in effect nietzsche wants to show that even the best surgeon in the world is still using dirty tools to get the job done nietzsche's criticism of descartes ego is part of a bigger attack on what he calls the atomistic need of philosophers what is this atomistic need let's use a famous example of philosopher gilbert ryle a foreigner visiting oxford or cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges libraries playing fields museums scientific departments and administrative offices he then asks but where is the university i have seen where the members of the colleges live where the registrar works where the scientists experiment and all the rest but i have not yet seen the university in which reside and work the members of your university the mistake here is obvious the person visiting oxford assumes that the university is a singular building instead of a collection of campuses buildings and people he expects to see the one university of oxford when in reality the university is a collection of buildings scattered throughout the medieval city of oxford philosophers make a similar mistake when they want to look for one self one drive one world one god the grammatical structure of our language tricks us into thinking that things are atomistic that is to say we tend to think of things as undivided holes instead of collections or relationships of multiple things so a philosopher like schopenhauer might say there is only one will to life and the cards might say i think but for nietzsche the will is actually a collection of drives and instincts and the self is a collection of thoughts just like the university of oxford is a collection of buildings instead of one big singular building beyond good and evil is full of critiques of old philosophies of the past too much to cover in a single video but most philosophical prejudices arise from one big misconception most philosophers have had one assumption that seems so obvious no one has seriously thought to doubt it something so obvious it often gets overlooked what is this so-called mother of all assumptions truth is preferable to falsehood nietzsche simply asks why and more importantly he sets out to show that most philosophers search for truth is actually a hidden front for something different that their so-called noble search for objective truth is not as disinterested and noble as it might seem that in searching for the truth the philosopher is actually trying to do something else that the philosopher in other words has an ulterior motive gaining power in the second video in this series we will explore nietzsche's famous concept of the will to power in more detail and we will also see where these philosophical prejudices come from if you want to be notified when the second video in this series is released please consider subscribing to the channel and clicking the bell button we are planning a three-part series on just niches beyond good and evil alone if you want more content on nietzsche please like and share this video as it massively helps out the channel thank you for watching and see you in part 2. it will endeavor to grow to gain grounds attract to itself and acquire ascendancy not owing to any morality or immorality but because it lives because life is precisely will to power the will to power is one of the most famous concepts in nietzsche's philosophy in beyond good and evil nietzsche gives the first more or less systematic accounts of this elusive and notorious concept this video will focus on the will to power as it appears in beyond good and evil nietzsche will develop the concept more in subsequent books if you want to see an entire video devoted to the will to power please let us know in the comments below for now let's explore the will to power as it appears in beyond good and evil this is part 2 in a planned three-part series on niches beyond good and evil if you haven't watched part 1 yet we highly recommend you watch it first in that first video we explore the concept of the philosophical prejudice nietzsche's argument is that philosophers are not in reality the noble objective seekers of truth they want you to believe they are they are not motivated by a will to truth but by a will to power as such the philosophy of each philosopher is a product not of an objective search for the truth but a reflection of the personality of the philosopher himself the rigid boring [ __ ] for example who followed the exact same daily routine every day and who never left his hometown thus produced a rigid boring philosophy based on duty and obligations spinoza developed a rational philosophical system with mathematical precision to compensate for his own frail and weak character schopenhauer the pessimist sought to create a philosophy in which denial of the world was the highest good but what is the will to power exactly nietzsche does not simply mean political or military power although that's certainly a part of it nietzsche believes that the primary drive of organisms is a thirst for power he contrasts this to the biology and chopin howardian philosophy of the day which held that the will to life the will to self-preservation was the primary motivation of living beings physiologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of organic being a living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength life itself is will to power self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof the philosopher is a sneaky creature he does not seek political or military power but a power of a different kind spiritual power power over knowledge and truth truth is not the end objective but power is hopefully this clears up the misconception that some people have that when speaking of power nietzsche would mean political or military power this is simply not the case nietzsche uses the concept of power in a very broad sense he even invites the reader to make a thought experiment could the will to power be sufficient to explain our world supposing that nothing else is given as real but our world of desires and passions that we cannot sink or rise to any other reality but just that of our impulses are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is given does not suffice for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical or material world the world seen from within the world defined and designated according to its intelligible character it would simply be will to power and nothing else the world seen from within the world as will to power and nothing besides what would that look like nietzsche gives us an example in the ordinary scientific explanation of the world when an organism is digesting food the process is explained by a network of causal relationships stomach acid breaks down the food the nutrients of which then get absorbed into the bloodstream and which are then used in a variety of processes in the brain and other organs of the body this process of digestion is causal the rabbit eats a carrot and in consequence the rabbit gets the nutrients which allow it to stay alive this is scientific thinking b follows from a because a is at the cause of b the scientific method seeks to find and explain these processes of causality in the proposed thought experiment by nietzsche we are invited to look at the world through a different lens try and forget the scientific thinking and causality we are entering the world of will to power in nietzsche's conception of the will what happens when we digest food is that our desire for nourishment is greater than the desire of the food to remain undigested ultimately this boils down to a battle of wills our desire for nourishment is fundamentally a form of will to power because we gain power by being alive and nourished however our food also stands to gain power by remaining undigested what happens in the process of eating and nourishment is not a scientific if this then that's causality but a battle of wills in which we impose our will to power upon something else and if we successfully digest the food we have won that battle we have dominated the will to power of the rabbit dominates the will to power of the carrot and thus the carrot gets digested absorbed by the rabbit the carrot has lost the battle its will was too weak granted finally that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will namely the will to power as might jesus puts it granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this will to power and that the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition it is one problem could also be found therein one would thus have acquired the right to define all active life force unequivocally as will to power in this nichian view the entire world is a world of struggle and thirst for power even the insignificant or innocent process of digestion in this thought experiment nietzsche invites us to look at the world through the lens of competing wills in later books most notably twilight of the idols nietzsche seems to have taken this thought experiment one step further whereas in beyond good and evil he talks about this in a conditional sense if this is true in twilight of the idols he seems to really believe in its actual reality if you'd like to see us deal with the will to power in more detail throughout nietzsche's other works please leave a comment below it helps me to know what you guys want to see anyway at this point in nietzsche's intellectual development the thesis of the world as will to power remains a thought experiment and not an actual hypothesis he still maintains however that we are mistaken when we believe that philosophers are motivated by a will to truth and not by a will to power and the same is true of ourselves nietzsche's overarching point in beyond good and evil is that we delude ourselves into thinking we desire truth above all else when it is actually power which we desire thus when thinking up explanations for the world or when doing philosophy we will prefer an explanation that fits our personality over an explanation that approaches objective truth for the simple reason that a philosophy that suits our needs will increase our power this happens whether we realize it or whether we want to or not the search for truth is not like a treasure hunt where one day we stumble upon the buried treasure in the sand the search for truth is like a war a battle a fight we do not want to find the truth we want to conquer it as such we will employ the tools to best win the battle the tools that suit our purposes not the purposes of the truth itself one person might fight with his fists another will prefer a sword in the same way a philosopher chooses the philosophy that suits him best and will then proclaim to the world he has found objective truth this is the essence of nietzsche's perspectivism the idea that there is no objective truth but only different perspectives perspectivism makes sense in nietzsche's proposed view of the world as competing drives the philosophy that wins the great battle for truth will not necessarily be the sign of truth of winning over falsehood it will simply be a sign of the times for example a life-denying philosophy like that of schopenhauer or christianity will not be the sign of a society approaching the truth of the world but it will be a sign of a society in decay a society that hates life a society that hates the material world and seeks to negate it a decadent society we will discuss nietzsche's concept of decadence and his treatment of christianity and slave morality in the next video in this series if you want to be notified when a video comes out please subscribe to the channel and click the bell button thank you for watching and we'll see you in part 3 on niches beyond good and evil that which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient greeks is the irrestrainable stream of gratitude which it pours forth it is a very superior kind of man who takes such an attitude towards nature and life later on when the populace got the upper hand in greece fear became rampant also in religion and christianity was preparing itself this is the third part in our series on niches beyond good and evil in this video we will focus on nietzsche's concepts of horizontimo slave morality and how both of these fit nietzsche's critique on christianity if you have not done so already we highly recommend you watch the two previous parts in this series a lot of what nietzsche has to say on the subject of christianity and slave morality will be more fleshed out in his next work on the genealogy of morals if you'd like us to do a deep dive on this other fascinating work please let us know in the comments and like this video if there's enough demand we might do a separate video or even a separate series for now let's explore nietzsche's fascinating take on christianity part 1 the slave revolt in morals in the previous video in this series we saw how nietzsche's method of critique in beyond good and evil is only partially based on philosophical ideas themselves rather nietzsche wonders why a philosopher would entertain a particular idea so for example spinoza's complex philosophical system built with mathematical precision was simply a projection of spinoza's own personality by constructing a system based on mathematical proofs and deductions spinoza sought to compensate for his own weak structureless personality in this way spinoza could gain power over the truth in his own unique way now nietzsche extends this kind of critique to christianity as a whole so nietzsche is not really interested in christian ideas as such but rather he wants to know why christians hold these beliefs he will therefore attack the psychological constitution of christians it is in this way that we must understand nietzsche's use of the terms religious neurosis and the religious mood aside from being great for shock value nietzsche really does want to say that christians suffer from a kind of spiritual melody from weakness nietzsche believes christianity is anti-life weakness neurosis unnatural anti-life quite the judgment what is nietzsche's reasoning behind these bold claims nietzsche's critique on christianity boils down to what he calls with a french term a kind of sour grapes after isop's famous fable christians and jews during the days of the roman empire were an oppressed powerless people when they did not succeed in taking the worldly material power they desired they instead changed to their tune and made a virtue out of their lack of power instead like the fox in isop's fable who cannot reach the grapes high up in the tree and then shrugs and says meh the grapes were probably sour anyway the powerless in society cope with their lack of power by convincing themselves that earthly power is not worth it or even that power is evil what really matters is not this world but the world beyond the afterlife thus the poor christians for example made greed the love of money a cardinal sin they were powerless to resist the military might of rome so they said do not fight back do not resist but turn the other cheek very broadly speaking this is the origin of the christian worldview that is focused on self-denial and ascetic sacrifice wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen solitude fasting and sexual abstinence this is what nietzsche calls the great slave revolt in morals the christian values have turned the natural order on its head the slaves the christians despised the values of their masters the romans what the romans called good christians started to call bad and vice versa so for example when the romans prays military might christians praise peaceful resistance instead when the romans praise money christians praise poverty romans a prideful people disgusted the christians who instead preached humility when romans embraced the hedonistic pleasures of life by having plenty of food and sex christians advocated for fasting and for sexual abstinence for nietzsche the christian view is the complete opposite of the natural state of the world it's a morality of the weak for the weak the strong should ideally disregard this slave morality that is also where the ubermensch comes in but that is a subject for another video the point is that in having these life-denying values christians are simply using the tools at their disposal they lack earthly power so they seek power by other means by spiritual means but in the end they want power all the same nietzsche claims to see through the deception christians claim to not want power by preaching humility and poverty yet they still desire power just the same they just choose to go about it another way in a dishonest deceptive way this is the essence of the french term resontimo the christians are envious of roman power and they want it for themselves yet they cannot get it so they seek to compensate for this lack of earthly power by preaching a spiritual kind of power instead fast forward a few thousand years back to nietzsche's own time in 19th century europe the slave morality seems to have won people all over europe seem to regard the christian values of humility poverty pity and devotion to the spiritual world as the supreme good and they distrust the material world they distrust earthly power the ideal is the saint the quiet monk in a monastery devoted to books and prayer and fasting just look at the huge success of schopenhauer's philosophy which holds that the material world is full of suffering and evil and that the most ethical thing to do is to withdraw oneself from the world entirely in other words the slave revolt in morality has been very successful indeed the slaves have become the masters part 2 free spirits true out beyond good and evil nietzsche speaks to the so-called free spirits whose job it will be in the future to create a new morality this is nietzsche's answer to nihilism the creation of new values by the free spirits of the future christian morality deals with nihilism by inventing another world the kingdom of god or heaven for which this material existence is simply a preparation schopenhauer deals with nihilism by advocating a retreat from the world the life of the ascetic both schopenhauer and christianity are nihilistic with regards to the material world which is the logical end point of slave morality of course the powerless regard the material world with disdain of course the powerless cannot enjoy this earthly existence but what about those who are not of this powerless constitution nietzsche writes for them nietzsche challenges us to create a new morality and rise above the nihilistic future to which humanity is heading the creative aspect is very important here nietzsche does not claim to discover or find a new morality remember that nietzsche is very distrustful of those who claim to find truth rather nietzsche wants us to create not discover but build invent those who are psychologically weak create nihilistic pessimistic philosophies but what about those who are psychologically strong the free spirits and beyond good and evil have two challenges ahead of them first they must continue nietzsche's work of exposing hidden fallacies and biases in the philosophies of the past and secondly they must also create a new philosophy of the future as we have discussed in part 1 of this series beyond good and evil is a prelude to a philosophy of the future it's not a finished product more a complete philosophical system there is considerable debate as to what this philosophy of the future would look like nietzsche himself explores this question in subsequent works but all we get in beyond good and evil are subtle hints at a few of his more fleshed out concepts of later work amorphati eternal recurrence the ubermensch the trans valuation of all values we will tackle these concepts in later videos if you want to be notified when we release a new video kindly subscribe to the channel and click the bell button we upload every wednesday beyond good and evil is both a very deep and a very shallow work deep in the sense that it tackles a wide range of ideas and concepts of fundamental importance to our lives shallow in the sense that it's a prelude a warm up not a finished product ultimately the overarching message of beyond good and evil is to fill in the blanks yourself nietzsche has shared with us his take on tackling the times and has given the first steps to an answer but at the same time he refuses to give a definite answer that is also one of the reasons why nietzsche is so difficult and easy to misinterpret because he does not give definitive answers people tend to give their own spin on things like writing your own ending to a book or movie beyond good and evil is a book without an ending it's true but that is also its strength in a way it's up to us the free spirits to finish his work i hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the constellation hercules and i hope that the men on this earth will do like the sum we hope you have enjoyed this introduction to nietzsche's beyond good and evil we have more videos on nietzsche planned but if you have suggestions or requests definitely let us know in the comments but more importantly pick up the book and start reading thank you for watching