A deep dive into the influence of Schopenhauer on Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche talks at great length about the inspiration he took from Schopenhauer in his essay, "Schopenhauer as Educator", which is the topic of the first part of this video. Nietzsche pondered the question: "How can human life become transcendentally valuable without the divine?" . He saw nature, as Schopenhauer did, as driven by blind willing, and did not necessarily see consciousness as an elevation beyond this blind willing, in and of itself. Schopenhauer, in his life and thought, gave Nietzsche the insight that man is not redeemed by knowing alone, but by an act of redirecting the will. Man is elevated by the example of the "sincere men who have cast out the beast", the artists, saints and philosophers - who represent the world in concepts, and use discipline to overcome or sublimate their impulses.

The second half of the talk concerns Nietzsche's criticisms of Schopenhauer. Deeper than this, Nietzsche felt himself to have a fundamentally opposite evaluation of the world from Schopenhauer. "How differently Dionysus spoke to me!" he wrote, as he reflected in the late 1880s of his early association with the "romanticism" of Wagner and the "pessimism" of Schopenhauer - but says that he realized he was looking for something far different from what either of his mentors sought. Nietzsche, through his study and admiration for Schopenhauer, eventually learned to overcome Schopenhauer, and overcome pessimism, and set him on his quest to find a way to spiritualize and affirm life.

Taken from episode 20 of the Nietzsche podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3m1jZmvaI3XacmdDFsIaxb?si=8200a07b6d7440de

And from episode 21 of the Nietzsche podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6V2sH2pe6E21DEZbYgW1qT?si=e975ffe8f59b416a

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