Untimely Reflections #47: Melanie Coughlin - Nishitani, Nietzsche & The Kyoto School

Nietzsche's break with Wagner and the beginning of his philosophical career coincide with an adoring appreciation for Voltaire. Nietzsche made a pilgrimage to Voltaire's home in Ferney; an anonymous friend sent him a bust of the philosopher; he dedicated Human, All Too Human to Voltaire, and released it on the centennial of Voltaire's death. What was the significance of Voltaire, on Nietzsche's thought, and why did the definitive French philosophe eventually become less important to Nietzsche's philosophy? Join me as we explore Nietzsche's reverence for Voltaire, the key contrast in Nietzsche's thought between Voltaire and Rousseau, Voltaire as standing for an aristocratic spirit of Enlightenment against the anti-Enlightenment of the Germans and the cult of sentimentality, and finally, how Dionysus versus the Crucified eventually overcome the Voltaire versus Rousseau dichotomy. Episode art: Triumphant France encourages Science and Arts in the midst of the war - Charles Meynier (1768-1832)

Enjoy an early release of the episode slated for Halloween, including an extended meditation on the significance of Halloween, the "autumn feeling", the difference between horror & weird fiction, Ray Bradbury's philosophy concerning death, and a review of Bradbury's The October Country, featuring a survey of its overall themes and a closer (and spoiler free!) reading of four of my favorite stories from the collection. Happy early Halloween to all who celebrate! There will be two additional episodes of Becoming-Spooky, both Patreon exclusive: one for all tiers, and one exclusive to Freigeists. After this, the series will conclude. That is, until next year.

Join me for this foray into the work of Algernon Blackwood - theosophist, occultist, and writer of weird fiction tales. Blackwood tell us the story of Professor Mark Ebor: a man with a double life, but a wholesome one, split between the scientific and the mystical. He is an "incorrigible optimist" whose writings give hope to a weary world. Ebor has always believed it his destiny to find the divine and eternal truths of the cosmos and to become their messenger. Would you like to "find out" the most profound truths about the cosmos? To unriddle the universe and know the secrets inscribed on the indestructible Tablets of the Gods? Then listen in.... IF YOU DARE...

Welcome to Becoming-Spooky! This is the first of three episodes in this special, seasonal series. Join me and deterritorialize the domains of sanity, the familiar and the human. Patrons will receive two additional episodes!The first half of the episode is my full reading of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. The second half includes my philosophical analysis, drawing on Lovecraft's essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, as well as my own impressions about the story.

Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Join me and find out as we explore the most famous novel of Voltaire, one of Nietzsche's most important influences. Candide is a satirical novel that lambasts the optimism of Leibniz, the hypocrisy of religion and tradition, and the pretensions of philosophy itself. We will examine the Lisbon Earthquake & the debates about it that form the background of the work, as well as the life of Voltaire, before an in-depth discussion of the philosophical insights of the novel.

Neema Parvini is well known on Youtube for his channel, Academic Agent, and for his para-academic work at the Academic Agency. He discusses a broad range of topics in political philosophy, and does not shy away from any topic, from elite theory to Marxism, from Julius Evola to Guy Debord. We discuss how he moved from literary theory to political philosophy; what politics really demands and why it is not the same as theorizing, the "take economy", or expressions of individualism; we discuss the difference between Evola & Nietzsche; and we try to come to an understanding of how it is that politics as most people experience it and understand it is fake. Join us for what I believe to be a fascinating conversation about the illusions of politics, and hopefully a step in the direction of disillusioning ourselves. Neema's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AcademicAgentAcademic Agency: https://www.academic-agency.com/

Melanie Coughlin, a scholar whose work focuses on Nishitani and the Kyoto school, joined me for a conversation that will hopefully provide a nice conclusion to the recent focus on Buddhism. We discussed karma, the misleading nature of intentions, Nishitani's theory of affect, emptiness-as-affect, the important difference between Nietzsche & Feuerbach, and the insights of Nishitani regarding technology and the modern world. Melanie's latest article: https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/speculative-philosophy/article/doi/10.5325/jspecphil.40.3.0269/411454/Cripping-Epistemic-Justice-Yoritaka-s-Model-of?guestAccessKey=57a4823a-0672-4798-aff3-1a0d6f49f975

How did the bicameral mind emerge, and how did consciousness eventually take its place? Join me for an exploration of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, in which Julian Jaynes traces the evidence over the centuries that suggest a disappearance of the gods and the emergence of subjectivity. The episode concludes with a brief tour of the shift to subjectivity found in the Old Testament.

What is consciousness? Julian Jaynes rejects all of the popular answers: that consciousness is thinking, reason, memory, or the capacity for learning. Nor does he think it can be accounted for as a merely accumulative development of "sentience" through evolution. In his controversial work, Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes puts forward the hypothesis that consciousness is generated out of language, and therefore that language predates consciousness. Jaynes' argument has sweeping implications for human history and civilization, and he presents evidence for his case through psychological experiments on consciousness, the neurology of schizophrenia, and through the analysis of ancient texts such as the Iliad of Homer. The shocking claim made in this book is that the Greeks of the Iliad were not conscious in the way that we are, but experienced their volition in the form of admonitory voices - actually, a communication from the right hemisphere of the brain to the left, using language as a kind of code - but which the ancients experienced as the voices of gods.

In this episode, we're going to discuss what is likely the founding text of the Zen tradition, the Laṅkāvatāra Sutra. According to some of the earliest sources on Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China, the "Lanka" was the teaching whose "abstruse principle" he passed down to his successor, Huike. Within the same story, Huike laments that within only a few generations, the sutra will pass into obscurity - which is exactly what has happened. Though few read this text today, during my time in Zen, I found the Lanka's philosophical presentation of the "mind only" teaching to be uniquely intriguing among all the Buddhist scriptures I'd read. Join me on this exploration of the Buddha's teaching in Lanka, including an analysis of the eight consciousness model of the mind, the concept of paravrrti, the non-reliance on either existence or non-existence, and sublime teaching that the world is nothing other than mind.My Diagram:https://untimely-reflections.blogspot.com/2026/09/lankavatara-sutra-my-diagram-of-eight.html