This is a re-broadcast of last season’s episode. (It was so good I couldn’t find a single thing to change. ;))

In this episode, Lauren talks about all things existential. First, she gives some background to Nietzsche’s concepts of master morality and slave morality. Then, Lauren talks with Kierkegaard scholar Carly Corrine Lynch about her journey alongside dear sweet Søren. Theme music by Alex Mrakovich. All other music from Epidemic Sound.

Note: The Zoom recording of Carly is not great. My internet was unstable.

{00:28} It might be helpful to know the timeframe we’re talking about here: broadly the 19th century. Kierkegaard lived from 1813 to 1855; Nietzsche from 1844 to 1900.

{00:38) OK, I cut this from last week’s episode, so you have to take my word for it. Absolute and universal.

{01:05} Gott ist tot. Basically, the Enlightenment killed the need for or possibility of God. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” From Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science.”

{01:18} Nihilists believe there are no morals, period. A moral subjectivist says we make our own morals.

{01:54} Fun fact: Sartre was romantic partners with Simone de Beauvoir, the early 20th century feminist.

{05:15} My use of male pronouns throughout this section is no mistake. Nietzsche didn’t think women had what it took to be an Übermensch.

{05:23} Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Föster-Nietzsche was super anti-Semitic and may be the reason Nietzsche’s work became associated with the Third Reich. She herself was a member of the Nazi Party, so much so that Hitler attended her funeral in 1935.

{05:44} Quote from The Will to Power.

{06:29} It’s hard to get a robot to pronounce “Kierkegaard.”

{06:35} I’m using these terms interchangeably—existential crisis and crisis of faith. That’s not 100% accurate, but I think that for me it makes sense to intertwine them. I was facing the crisis of my existence alongside a crisis of my belief in God.

{07:37} This is, actually, the theme of my dissertation: how young women and queer youth exercise their moral and sexual agency within purity culture… so choosing to kiss boys or not, choosing to date or “court,” etc.

{09:16} I am pretty mortified by this period of my life. Haha.

{09:46} You heard this on season 2 episode 1 of the podcast! (From Kierkegaard’s Journal AA.)

{11:31} The legend.

{41:02} Johan Frederik Schlegel.

{50:00} From Works of Love (1847).

Read Carly’s bio here: https://www.scu.edu/cm/profiles/lynch.html