Hello everyone, I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophizedis.

The off-chancey enjoy the show and whatever it is that it does for you.

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Philosophizedis.org. Today's episode is the first in a pretty big series on Frederick Nietzsche,

a series that'll give us a solid foundation to talk about some other existentialist,

the ultimate goal being that we circle back around and have the perspective necessary to

understand the genius of Simone de Beauvoir in her work The Ethics of Ambiguity.

I hope you love the show today. So I think the best place to begin this series is to talk about

an observation that Nietzsche made about what it's like to be a human being.

But to understand where he's coming from, let's all just agree on one thing.

There are certain things about your existence, my existence, everyone's existence

that nobody really gets that confused about. Certain things that the average person

doesn't really lose sleep over because, well, there's an answer that's reinforced by the default

everyday existence that they were born into. For example, the average person's probably not sitting

around agonizing until one in the morning about why they have eyeballs. Why do I have these eyeballs?

These marbles coated in this viscous fluid embedded into my skull. Why? Why must I blink

incessantly? Well, it's to keep your eyes from drying out silly. You gotta keep them moist.

You fool! Don't you understand? What are we keeping them moist for? What purpose? Why?

Nobody's doing that. But the interesting thing to think about is that this isn't the only thing

that we just sort of take for granted about our existence. Why we have ears, why we have hands,

why we breathe. For the average person, there's a very obvious function that each of these things

...