In the world of the 8‑bit video game, there may be no more a frus­trat­ing, Sisy­phuse­an task than com­plet­ing the var­i­ous iter­a­tions of Mega Man. Each suc­ces­sive lev­el can feel end­less, as one dies and starts again, time after time, with no glo­ri­ous end in sight. It can feel like, as Friedrich Niet­zsche might say, being caught in a cycle of “eter­nal recur­rence,” des­tined to repeat the same actions, over and over again for eter­ni­ty.

The videos here then—part of the pop­u­lar trend of 8‑bit shorts—use the graph­ics and bleep­ing sound effects and music of Mega Man to illus­trate Nietzsche’s seem­ing­ly pes­simistic ideas. First, with a nod to Rust Cohle, we have the theory—or rather the thought experiment—of “eter­nal recur­rence.” Draw­ing on Arthur Schopen­hauer’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Bud­dhism, Niet­zsche imag­ined a uni­verse with no end and no begin­ning, an end­less loop of suf­fer­ing in which one is des­tined to make the same mis­takes for­ev­er.

If this seems ter­ri­fy­ing­ly bleak to you, you may approach life through a haze of resen­ti­ment, Niet­zsche might say, a bit­ter tan­gle of anger and blame that rejects the world as it is. The one who over­comes this snare—the uber­men­sch—has achieved self-mas­tery. Strong in the ways of the “will to pow­er” is he, and delight­ed by the prospect of liv­ing in the present moment an infi­nite num­ber of times, even if the uni­verse is cold, cru­el, and indif­fer­ent to human exis­tence. The “will to pow­er” gov­erns all life, for Niet­zsche, and human life in par­tic­u­lar is weak­ened by ignor­ing this fact and cling­ing to moral sys­tems of resen­ti­ment like that of Chris­tian­i­ty.

Niet­zsche’s argu­ment against Chris­tian­i­ty, as explained above at least, is that it encour­ages, even cel­e­brates medi­oc­rity and frowns upon excel­lence. That such is the gen­er­al tenor of our cur­rent age—an assess­ment the nar­ra­tor makes—is debat­able. Yes, we may pro­mote medi­oc­ri­ties at an alarm­ing rate, but we also at least nom­i­nal­ly cel­e­brate uber men (almost always men), who may not tru­ly be self made but who sure­ly live by the dic­tates of the will to pow­er, tak­ing what they want when they want it. Whether Nietzsche’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of this preda­to­ry behav­ior as the high­est of human pos­si­bil­i­ties inspires you or not may depend on how far you feel your­self to be above the com­mon herd.

Nietzsche’s amoral phi­los­o­phy has appealed to some pret­ty preda­to­ry char­ac­ters, but it also appeals to anti-author­i­tar­i­an, post-mod­ern types because of his crit­i­cal stance toward not only reli­gion, but also what can seem like its sec­u­lar replace­ment, sci­ence. Niet­zsche respect­ed the sci­en­tif­ic method, but he rec­og­nized its lim­i­ta­tions as a means of describ­ing, rather than explain­ing the world. All of our descrip­tions are inter­pre­ta­tions that do not pen­e­trate into the realm of ulti­mate caus­es or mean­ings, and can­not pro­vide a priv­i­leged, god-like van­tage point from which to make absolute judg­ments.

When, in the hopes of replac­ing the cer­tain­ties of reli­gious moral­i­ty and meta­physics, we ele­vate sci­ence to the posi­tion of ulti­mate truth for­mer­ly grant­ed to the mind of god, we lose sight of this basic lim­i­ta­tion; we com­mit the same fal­la­cy as the reli­gious, mis­tak­ing our sto­ries about the world for the world itself. Would Nietzsche’s extreme skep­ti­cism have made him sym­pa­thet­ic to today’s cli­mate sci­ence deniers and anti­vaxxers? Prob­a­bly not. He did rec­og­nize that, like the phys­i­cal bod­ies where thought takes place, some ideas are healthy descrip­tions of real­i­ty and some are not. Nonethe­less, our expla­na­tions, Niet­zsche argued, whether sci­en­tif­ic or oth­er­wise, are contingent—effects of lan­guage, not exposés of Truth, cap­i­tal T.

For more 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy, see our posts on Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da, as well as Kierkegaard and Camus, all illus­trat­ed in short, nos­tal­gic recre­ations of clas­sic video games.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

Niet­zsche Dis­pens­es Dat­ing Advice in a Short Screw­ball Film, My Friend Friedrich

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

Human, All Too Human: 3‑Part Doc­u­men­tary Pro­files Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger & Sartre

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Here at Open Cul­ture, we like to think we keep dis­cus­sions rea­son­able. Not every site can say that; if you’ve ever dared to scroll down into the com­ments on Youtube (to pick an exam­ple pure­ly at ran­dom) you know what I mean. But on that very same repos­i­to­ry of stream­ing videos and shout­ing match­es, you can also find a help­ful aid to your debates both online and off: PBS Idea Chan­nel’s “Guide to Com­mon Fal­lac­i­es.”

When humans talk, some­times we adhere to the rules of log­ic, and some­times we break from them. In every­day life it does­n’t mat­ter that much either way, but, in the heat of an argu­ment, and espe­cial­ly amid the poten­tial con­fla­gra­tion of an inter­net argu­ment, con­sis­ten­cy is all. Under such con­di­tions, some­one who com­mits even a com­mon log­i­cal fal­la­cy may well do so with­out real­iz­ing it, and if you feel like edu­cat­ing them, you can reply with a link to whichev­er of these videos cov­ers the fal­la­cy they used:

• Mov­ing the Goal Posts Fal­la­cy
• The Fal­la­cy Fal­la­cy
• The Texas Sharp­shoot­er Fal­la­cy
• The Straw­man Fal­la­cy
• The Ad Hominem Fal­la­cy
• The Black and White Fal­la­cy
• The Author­i­ty Fal­la­cy
• The “No True Scots­man” Fal­la­cy

Host Mike Rugnetta (whom you might remem­ber from the pre­vi­ous Idea Chan­nel video we fea­tured, “Math Might Not Actu­al­ly Exist”) breaks down the fal­la­cy in ques­tion, accom­pa­ny­ing his expla­na­tion with a visu­al stream of illus­tra­tions, clips from movies, TV, and video games — and of course those main­stays of com­ment threads, ani­mat­ed GIFs. And he does­n’t just explain, he demon­strates, stag­ing a short debate with a straw-filled, shod­di­ly argu­ing ver­sion of him­self each and every time.

Log­ic has always struck me as an inher­ent­ly fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject, and these videos cer­tain­ly pro­vide quick and fun­ny hits of it. I do have my doubts as to whether they’ll actu­al­ly help any­one win an argu­ment. So point out oth­ers’ log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es if you must, but bear in mind that you might be the only one who learns any­thing as a result.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Does Math Objec­tive­ly Exist, or Is It a Human Cre­ation? A New PBS Video Explores a Time­less Ques­tion

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

These days, would we expect to find a pro­file of a homo­sex­u­al rad­i­cal-left philoso­pher spe­cial­iz­ing in dis­ci­pline and pun­ish­ment in the pages of Time mag­a­zine? Maybe, maybe not—and few of us would find out if there were one, giv­en that the mag­a­zine seems to have long since ced­ed its cen­tral­i­ty in Amer­i­can cul­ture, falling back on a sub­scriber base of retirees and den­tist offices. But in Novem­ber 1981, when Time was def­i­nite­ly still TIME, it did indeed run such a pro­file, and now you can read it in full in PDF form.

“Watch­ing French Marx­ists grap­ple with the rad­i­cal the­o­ries of Michel Fou­cault, says the philoso­pher’s trans­la­tor Alan Sheri­dan, is like watch­ing ‘a police­man attempt­ing to arrest a par­tic­u­lar­ly out­ra­geous drag queen.’ ” So reports jour­nal­ist and cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an Otto Friedrich in the piece’s open­ing. “The solemn spe­cial­ists who patrol the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty have their own dif­fi­cul­ties with Fou­cault. Leo Bersani of the French depart­ment at Berke­ley eulo­gizes him as ‘our most bril­liant philoso­pher of pow­er,’ but Yale His­to­ri­an Peter Gay dis­miss­es him: ‘He does­n’t do any research, he just goes on instinct.’ ”

Oth­er sources offer­ing acco­lade, con­dem­na­tion, and a mix­ture of both for the author of The Archae­ol­o­gy of Knowl­edge and The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, include (broad­ly speak­ing) col­leagues like lit­er­ary the­o­rist Edward Said, who com­plains that Fou­cault “has nev­er been able to explain his­tor­i­cal change,” and philoso­pher Richard Rorty, who sug­gests Fou­cault “join the bour­geois lib­er­als he despis­es.” When Fou­cault him­self speaks, he exhibits the expect­ed ten­den­cy toward intel­lec­tu­al defi­ance and rug-pulling rede­f­i­n­i­tion of terms, though the arti­cle also gath­ers sev­er­al moments of sur­pris­ing frank­ness about his own life. (“I can­not expe­ri­ence plea­sure,” he claims.)

Of course, not every Amer­i­can of the day got to know Fou­cault through Time. Rather than in that most main­stream of all mag­a­zines, they may have dis­cov­ered him through one of the least: Chez Fou­cault, the low bud­get fanzine we fea­tured last week. And the con­nec­tion goes deep­er: “In 1981, when Time mag­a­zine pub­lished an arti­cle on Fou­cault,” writes James Miller in his biog­ra­phy The Pas­sion of Michel Fou­cault, “the pho­to­graph accom­pa­ny­ing the piece [above] showed Fou­cault sit­ting with Sime­on Wade”—publisher of Chez Fou­cault. Wade put the ‘zine togeth­er with oth­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia stu­dents, a group whom the philoso­pher’s ideas would con­tin­ue to influ­ence until his death, as evi­denced by his final UC Berke­ley lec­tures in 1983, and beyond—as col­le­gians cur­rent­ly work­ing under the sys­tem of con­trol known as the cul­tur­al the­o­ry depart­ment can attest.

via Crit­i­cal Theory/Pro­gres­sive Geo­gra­phies

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.