Dr. J. Budziszewski

many people who that's an that's a different kind of straw of steel man argument than you're going to hear from from some people who give a steel man argument because they think that there are arguments in nature i don't really see them i don't really see them he just his character just asserts does he not know that god is dead it's kind of like when i thought oh i haven't been believing in him for some time right he just asserts it it's like we've seen through that now um

And a lot of the appeal of Nietzsche, it's especially powerfully intoxicating to many young people because of the rhetoric, the language that he uses, the images of camels being loaded down and dragons and snakes eating themselves and people choking on them and so forth.

It just sort of blows you away and staggers you and a certain kind of mind that is vulnerable to that says, gee, cool.

Or, yes, I'd suspected that it was like that all along.

So it's hard.

You see, I'm struggling here because I can't extract a rational argument for nihilism.

But I think that he wanted, he was certainly, let's say, put it this way, producing an apologetic for it.

Yeah, he was.

That's my understanding.

Biographically, his father was a Lutheran pastor, wasn't he?

I think he was.

Yes, he was.

And some people have even spoken of Nietzsche's Christian unconscious mind.

Paul C. Witts, a psychologist, has written a book on Freud's Christian unconscious mind.

Yes, that's right.

That's right.

Is that kind of what happened?

I think that's something like what happened.

Now, it wouldn't have worked so well if many people weren't already disposed in that direction.

Like today.