Nietzsche: The Many Uses of the Gods

The Living Philosophy

In the episode on Foucault we touched briefly on the question of what might happen if we combined Jung's analysis of the gods with Foucault's analysis of power. There is a precedent for this question in the work of the philosopher loved by both thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche.
In his book, On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche talks about how the gods can have very different effects on their believers. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, God is the embodiment of the superego. He is the ideal that judges; we are creatures with Free Will and whether we thrive or fail is on ourselves. In the Greek tradition on the other hand we have the pantheon of bickering gods. If misfortune befalls us it isn't simply because of something we have done but perhaps becuase of some conflict among the gods that we have no power of. In this way the Greeks "used their gods precisely so as to ward off the “bad conscience,” so as to be able to rejoice in their freedom of soul—the very opposite of the use to which Christianity put its God."
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Further Reading:
- Nietzsche, F., 1989. On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann. _Basic Writings of Nietzsche_, pp.437-599.
- _The Labors of Hercules_. [online] Available at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/labors.html
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🎶 Music Used:
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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction - The Judaeo-Christian Guilt
1:49 Herakles and the Greek Relationship to Gods
4:15 In the Context of the Recent Episodes
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