Welcome back to Hardcore Literature, your favourite book club.

Deep dives into the greatest books ever written.

Provocative poems, evocative epics, and life-changing literary analyses.

We don't just read the great books. We live them.

Together we'll suck the marrow out of Shakespeare, Homer, Tolstoy and many more.

We'll relish the most moving art ever committed to the page and stage from every age.

Join us and me, your host, Benjamin McAvoy, on the Reading Adventure of a Lifetime with hardcore literature.

Reading the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is like accessing the dark arts.

It's like black magic sorcery for the mind and soul, dangerous in the wrong hands,

hazardous when misinterpreted and misunderstood,

and I would contest that there is no writer more consistently and

drastically misunderstood than Nietzsche. His philosophy can be fatal when abused or confused,

but in the right hands it is a powerful source of strength. His writings can offer liberation.

They can help you forge your way heroically in a wild and chaotic world, a world in which the old

systems of meaning have fallen into the abyss, but armed with Nietzsche's philosophizing,

we can tight rope walk, or indeed dance over that abyss, we can reach the highest summit.

And in a time when everyone is saying no we can let out a life affirming yes

Nietzsche teaches us how to look into that abyss warning us that as we do so the abyss

looks back into us Nietzsche teaches us how to fight monsters, whilst also warning us

in doing so not to become a monster ourselves. Nietzsche teaches us that whatever doesn't kill us only

makes us stronger, he puts a sword in our hands and he sharpens it against his own.

Calling us his friend and his enemy in a single breath and he sends us out on our

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