102: Michel Foucault - Madness & Civilization

Michel Foucault is one of the most influential philosophical thinkers of the 20th century. He remains a controversial figure, but undoubtedly he had a profound impact on the way we think about mental health and mental illness up to the present day. In this episode, we take a deep dive into his work, Madness & Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, based on his dissertation. In this work, Foucault charts a history of how madness was perceived and experienced in the western world, exploring the changes in understanding of insanity from the Middles Ages, to the Renaissance, to the Classical period (17th & 18th centuries), to the 19th century creation of the mental asylum, and finally to the foundation of psychoanalysis.

Aeschylus' Oresteia is the only extant trilogy of Greek drama. Alongside the Parthenon, the Oresteia is considered one of the two greatest 'monuments' to the Golden Age of Athens. In this trilogy - The Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides - Aeschylus dramatizes a rite of passage from savagery to civilization. Over the course of the narrative, the ancient law of blood is overcome by a new civic law, sanctioned by the gods. The word "justice" (Dikê) is used more often in the Oresteia than in any other Greek tragedy. Through these verses, we witness a struggle from the hazy, mysterious world of archaic Greece, governed by gods who behaved capriciously and unpredictably, into the clarity of civic life, in which human beings are empowered to make the contextual decisions of governance. Michael D. Davis, lectures on Philosophy of Tragedy: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiyEzRZtxXGU_Q5-jFqhIHJYbsahnQBNd&si=7o-LZMjQfX5Mb657 Episode art: John Singer Sergeant - Orestes Pursued by the Furies

Welcome to the ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE of The Nietzsche Podcast. Today we're examining the speech of Peter Sloterdijk, given on the centennial of Nietzsche's death, and transcribed into the essay entitled, "Nietzsche Apostle". Sloterdijk puts forward the theory that languages are fundamentally an instrument of 'group narcissism' by which the group recognizes one another and celebrates themselves. However, with the Reversal effected by St. Paul, the function of language becomes self-lowering rather than self-celebrating. Nietzsche's radical use of language is to reclaim the prideful and self-celebratory use of language, and provide us with a 'Fifth Gospel'.

In 1956, Jung wrote the essay entitled, "Past and Future" in German, but we know it in English as "The Undiscovered Self". Having witnessed the horror of the world wars, and the ongoing apocalyptic danger of the Cold War, Jung attempted to explain why it was that societies sometimes went mad. This is how Europe experienced the outbreak of The Great War: as mass insanity. Why would free people gravitate towards cult-like tyrannies? How could ordinarily moral and reasonable people perpetrate acts of unthinkable violence? And how could our constitutional democracies remain susceptible to these outbursts, if we are so committed to principles such as freedom and human dignity? For Jung, the only answer is self-knowledge, but that is the one thing that modern society is making impossible

Yukio Mishima (born Kimitake Hiraoka, 1925-1970) wrote dozens of stories, including famous works such as Confessions of a Mask, and Patriotism. He was considered for a Nobel Prize in literature about half a dozen times, through he never won it. His works were adapted into films, which received international acclaim. He wrote modern No plays which were performed all over the world, in Europe and America. He is known for his provocative style, his romanticization of death and of warrior culture, and for his political radicalism. Mishima desired to return Japan to a pre-WWII samurai culture, ruled under the absolute authority of a divine emperor – and yet, his writing incorporates influences not only from traditional Japanese literature, but from writers from the west: Rilke, Wilde, Batailles, Klossowski, and, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche. From the time he was 19, when he first picked up a copy of Birth of Tragedy, Mishima had a lifelong fascination with Nietzsche. In this episode, we consider the major philosophical ideas in his combination of confession and criticism, Sun and Steel: the unity of art and action, the corrosive nature of words, and necessity of a 'beautiful death' to truly affirm one's existence.

Welcome to season five of The Nietzsche Podcast! First of all, a warm thank you to all of my listeners and patrons who have helped to make this show such a phenomenal success. For our first episode in this new collection of episodes, we're diving headfirst into the Oedipus plays of Sophocles: Oedipus Rex & Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles triumphed with the best tragedy at the Dionysia more than any other playwright, and Aristotle named Oedipus Rex the model tragedy. We will fully explore the tragic downfall of Oedipus, his redemptive last days at Colonus, and Friedrich Nietzsche's interpretation of the significance of Oedipus in Birth of Tragedy. Episode Art: Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust, Oedipus at Colonus (1788), Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Concluding with our readthrough of book I of The Gay Science! We'll return with book II in a short while. In the meantime, we're going back to regular episodes of the podcast in the immediate future, covering a variety of topics. Cheers!

Join me for the next installment of our readthrough of The Gay Science. Here, we cover a number of aphorisms concerning: fame and its effect on friendship; the dying words of Roman emperors; the hidden significance of all historical events; the desacrelizing effects of market forces upon society; and the value in knowing the supposed motives of human behavior, if the professed motives happen to be 'false'.

In this episode, we discuss the way in which selfishness is the root of all selfless morality, how corruption produces greatness, why the ascetic is driven by ambition, and the age old question, "What is Life?"

Join me this week, for a discussion of significant aphorisms from The Gay Science, including Consciousness, Evil, and The Feeling of Power.