Thinking With... A Rhetorical Theory Podcast

S5 EP 7 - Poly and Mono Theism

Book 3 (again)0- 3:15 Bad intros3:20 - 16:00Nietzsche’s materialist comedy; section 124 - the infinite;  panic attacks - cognitive models vs. affective experiential; subjectivity; thinking as terror/comfort; what meaningless means; 16:00 - 39:20section 143: advantages of polytheism; vs. monotheism; agonism vs. true/false; section 149 Plato and Pythagoras as failed founders of religions; the conditioning of “the people”; biodiversity; “it wasn’t me. god did it through me”; the alleged fragmentation of contemporary society; multiple monotheisms? polytheism and monarchy/monarchies; John is skittish about all transcendence;  different orientations to difference (pluralism v dogmatism); 39:30 - 58:20Rome vs. Judea; imperialism and religion; is science monotheistic?; absolutist responses to COVID; the CDC couldn’t be provisional; polytheism as just a moment without a dominant monotheism; experimental science seems to potentially lead toward overman also - despite piety and fealty

S5 EP 6 - Shadows of God

§108-1250- 3:00 Podcasting and Romance; new intros; 3:00- 22:40Book 3 Gay Science §108— The Death of God; theology of atheism; §109 anthropomorphism and will to power; the need for error life v knowledge ; §11022:42 - 41:55John’s “famous” saber tooth tiger anecdote; the recurring problem of identification; thinking was/is risky; perceiving complexity dangerous for life; the advantage of unjust and coarse perception (errors); at some historical, slow cautious thoughtful judgment ALSO became advantageous for life, Socrates as inverted instinct; disputation is not conversation41:55 - 57:00Nietzsche’s interpretive historicism; section 113 - doctrine of poisons; when will artistic energies join with science; is it like Hegelian history? Multiplicity and negation; Booboo agrees to write the Hegel v Nietzsche book

S5 EP 5 - Responding to Nietzsche's "Woman"

0:00–14:25The sections on “woman” are not distinct from the rest of the book; §68 “Will and Willingness” §64 “Skeptics” superficiality of existence ; the feminine operation and the body marked by the feminine operation.14:30–36:20John’s writing project ; maybe these aphorisms are more interesting now? §74 “The Unsuccessful” and §75 “The Third Sex” ; Kaufman can’t handle it anymore ;  §80 “Art and Nature” the fantasy of good speech and the self-controlled cogito ; are we talking about Platonic ideals when we talk about woman as a “ship at a distance”? ; the prospect of metaphysics ; coordinating these aphorisms “on woman” with the rest of the book ; §59 “We Artists,” woman, god, and property.36:20–60:00The multiplicity of misogyny ; Nietzsche is a strange pathway by which to engage feminism;  Beyond surfaces and depths (or between them); why gender is impossible to think and why that’s important; politics vs. metaphysics; deconstructive feminism; the political conditions for thinking; the #FigureItOut movement; exceptions and institutions; honoring Sinèad. 

S5 EP 4 - The Truth of Social Formation

0:00–22:30What does The Gay Science have to do with rhetoric? ; §57 “To the Realists”, §58 “Only as Creators”, §59 “We Artists” ; our drunken passion for reality and reason ; our ridiculous desire to transcend reality ; creation, destruction, and the insanity of maintenance ; is there a political valiance to this dynamic? §76 “The Greatest Danger” ; the dangers of the exception and the rule ; what happens when “the exception” wears tin foil hats and joins the tea party? ; Is this dichotomy too clumsy?  22:30–31:50Complicating Nietzsche’s argument about “truth and lying in a nonmoral sense” ; the active power of rhetoric to “make equal,” which is always a verb and never a noun ; constructivism is an “ism,” not a thing – always the activity of formation ; John wonders why Nathaniel’s brain is in the 12th century ; repetition of difference ; the fascism of territorialization ; dragons are real now ; the repetition of a name builds alliances31:50–36:35Rhetoric doesn’t communicate, it builds alliances, associations, the socius communus ; the social and the production of desire ; the production of the social is the production of desire is the production of persuasion ; rhetorical intervention is not parasitic on the social, psychological, or the real – it is the production of their production ; Nathaniel’s been reading Deleuze again. 36:35–40:45Nate asks the question: is this shit also destructive? ; communities of exclusion, Joe Rogan and the Pope40:45–EndWhy does Nietzsche think our stupidity has been valuable for the species? ; Nietzsche is a symptomtologist: take the perspective of life ; evolution without telos, without reaction ;  evolution of the exception, not the herd.

S5 EP 3 - A Taste for Thinking

0:00–18:30Intro; Approach for a second read; Nate gratuitously makes it about Hegel; §26 “What is Life?” ; the positivity of becoming; §23 “The Signs of Corruption” and §24 “Different Forms of Dissatisfaction” ; §39 “Changed Taste.” The active power of taste & decay; the non-linearity of futurity; taste vs opinion; §11 “Consciousness” the body doesn’t trust consciousness – it’s still in beta testing ; Napoleon & Decay; the individual18:40–31:15The value of consciousness; not your baseliner’s materialism; structure of the aphorisms; intellectual irritability; do I contradict myself? : invention and resolution; contradictions are bodies31:20–41:20What is a body? Is the intellect in the business of forming bodies? ; the taste of concepts; what does the “equal sign” of the concept do? ; § 37 “Owing to Three Errors” ; What can take up and animate the production of scientific knowledge?41:25–51:10Back to the structure of the aphorisms; modalities of life’s violence; a very different sense of the individual; punk-rock-Nietzsche: it’s only one tune; perpetual variation51:15–58:10Is reduction avoidable? ; reduction as a style of inflection; how do you teach this stuff? ; teaching vs. writing: the production of theory-bodies; shout out to Marco’s Provocations series58:15–End Teaching theory; John’s old age let’s us all learn; John’s dating profile; parting provocations