BBC Two, Monday August 9, 1999.
A verbatim transcript.
[A man in monk’s garb is re-enacting Nietzsche’s parable of the madman in a present-day marketplace.]
KAP: The madman is clearly offerin’ some kind of warnin’ that
there’s a tremendous cataclysm on its way. I think what’s important for
Nietzsche is that there’s a number of events – let’s call them
intellectual events of the Nineteenth Century – which put together all
work towards underminin’ the very foundations of Christian moral
civilization.
[Slow zoom into a late photograph of Charles Darwin.]
If you take, er, Darwin as an example, Darwin was brought up in a very,
er, theological, religious context, and Nietzsche points out that
before releasing or publishing ’is whole Theory of Natural Selection he
had it for twenty years and he kept it in a cupboard stacked away.
[Cut to an office. Caption:
PROFESSOR KEITH ANSELL PEARSON
Philosopher
The red venetian blinds are drawn. To KAP’s right, a bronze bust of Nietzsche.]
I think on Darwin’s part he himself realised that it would have
precisely the tremendous consequences – potentially nihilistic ones
that Nietzsche was detectin’ in... within the theory – that it would
undermine the whole basis of Western morality and metaphysics.
[Panning shot of Basel University.]
That it would show that the world functions and operates quite well, or
quite consistently, without the need for any divine intervention.
[...]
[Mock-up of Nietzsche’s Sils Maria cabin. In the foreground, medicine bottles in various colours.]
’Ee says somewhere that, “you yourselves are this will-to-power.” And I
think that Nietzsche thought that, er, ultimately the task was one of
self-mastery – that is, of acquirin’ a certain kind of self-knowledge
that would not be merely intellectual or abstract, because for
Nietzsche all knowledge is ultimately rooted in the body – so for him,
self-mastery involves acquirin’ as much knowledge as is possible about
the human body, about your body, about its physiology, about its psychology.
[...]
[Still of Nietzsche, paralytically insane.]
He says: “if you cannot live [nervous cough, suggestive of the Sublime] beyond or above the law”, [pause]
[Return to office.]
which he sees as the obligation of the philosopher – to question all
values – which means you’ve got to live outside or beyond all laws – he
says, “if you cannot do that, if you find that task too great as a
philosopher then”, he says, “either you must construct another law, or
find refuge in madness.”
And it’s interestin’ how we would interpret the meaning or significance of Nietzsche’s descent into that black hole of madness.
[Slow zoom into another still of Nietzsche, paralytically insane, cross-eyed.]
Did he ultimately find that burden, that responsibility, too great, and
therefore collapsed under the very weight of the questions he was
posin’ for himself?
[Dissolve into circling aerial shot of man in period costume, atop an alpine mountain.]
I mean maybe those questions are too great for any single individual to entertain or to think through.
Posted by sphaleotas at February 28, 2005 05:27 PM