Nietzsche on YouTube

Scott Leslie passed along video footage of Friedrich Nietszche that is pretty wild. Nietzsche’s works have undergirded much of Western Civilization’s art, literature, drama, and philosophy throughout the twentieth century; his aphoristic philosophical writing re-imagined entire structures of thought. In many ways, he is far more an abstraction than an embodied reality —a series of revolutionary ideas that sustained over 100 years of analysis, genealogies, and critiques — nver a person. Actually seeing footage of him on YouTube lounging around, quietly thinking with that insane mustache and piercing gaze is strangely disturbing. It’s hard to think there was really someone behind the elaboration of all thee influential ideas, the only thing that may be more disturbing would be a video of Fyodor Dostoevsky enjoying himself.