35: The Spirit of Music

"Without music, life would be a mistake." It's commonly known that Nietzsche was a sort of 'musical philosopher' - in fact, it was a feat he aspired to quite openly - but a glance at Nietzsche's thoughts on music reveals that he was so enamored with this form of artistic expression as to have once suggested that music lays at the very heart of reality. Only through music, Nietzsche argues in Birth of Tragedy, can we directly experience the primordial pain and contradiction of reality. Here we will touch on the major points of Nietzsche's engagement with music: his love of Wagner and eventual break from him, the cultural problem he wished to solve, and the perception that music was not just another type of art or entertainment but a geist that could reshape hearts and minds, or even whole societies. Even as his admiration for Schopenhauer and Wagner waned, the love of music - and exaltation of music to the highest importance in his philosophy - remained consistent, even to the bitter end of his life. BONUS SEGMENT: I also set aside a half hour to talk about my experiences returning to the world of underground touring. In the latter part of the episode, I recount the events of my recent outing with my band, Destroyer of Light, on the West Coast of the United States.

Episode art: Francis Coates Jones, "Music"

Yunus Tuncel's Lecture Notes, "Nietzsche, Music and Silent Suffering": https://www.nietzschecircle.com/Silent_Suffering.html

Charlie Huenemann's book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002EL4T2I/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1