38: The Genius of the Species

Another episode on a single passage: The Gay Science, book V, aphorism 354: “The Genius of the Species”. One of the most thought-provoking passages in Nietzsche’s work, he expounds on his hypothesis that all consciousness is a product of human sociality, and was only necessary as a net of communication between human beings. This has dire implications for Nietzsche’s aspirations to individualism, and makes suspect everything to him which enters into consciousness. He believes that the deeper, more profound aspects of human life remain, ultimately, untranslatable.

Episode art: Alphonse Maria Mucha - La Pater (1899)