Berserk as a Nietzschean Tragedy — Art, Morality, Affirmation

Introduction to Berserk

The speaker introduces their first experience with the story of Berserk and how it became their favorite anime. They also mention the philosophical influences in the manga, particularly that of Nietzsche.

First Experience with Berserk

• The speaker's first experience with Berserk was watching the 1997 anime adaptation.

• After finishing the first season, they knew immediately that it had become their favorite anime due to its dark fantasy story, beautiful illustrations, and emotionally compelling characters.

• Upon reading the manga, they found it even more elaborate and developed in its characters and narrative. They noticed small allusions to various philosophers but found Nietzsche's influence most undeniable.

Connection to Nietzsche

• The speaker's connection between Berserk and Nietzsche came through a different route than others who have pointed out specific examples in the manga.

• After becoming emotionally invested in the anime adaptation, they were crushed by its tragic ending. This led them to consider the paradox of tragedy and how we can find enjoyment in tragic stories.

• Many thinkers have considered tragic drama to be one of humanity's greatest forms of art, including Nietzsche. He believed that tragedy revealed something fundamental about existence itself.

• Thinking of Berserk as a tragedy naturally led the speaker to Nietzsche since he examined tragedy for its deeper themes rather than simply studying it as a literary genre.

The Golden Age Arc

The speaker focuses on the Golden Age Arc which is covered in only one season of the anime adaptation but involves an extremely well-crafted narrative structured like a tragic drama.

Overview of Golden Age Arc

• The Golden Age Arc is the only part of the manga covered in the 1997 anime adaptation.

• It covers only 12 of the manga's 40 volumes and involves our protagonist, Guts, joining a mercenary group under the leadership of Griffith.

• The arc ends with a horrific event known as the Eclipse which shatters all emotional attachments made thus far and marks the end of Guts's position in the Band of the Hawk.

Tragic Drama Structure

• The Golden Age Arc is structured like a tragic drama more than any other arc in Berserk.

• The Eclipse with which it ends is infamous for its gruesomeness and devastation. It gives no resolution or happy ending, yet people still enjoy tragic stories.

• Nietzsche believed that tragedy revealed something fundamental about existence itself. Thinking of Berserk as a tragedy can help us understand its significance as a work of art.

The Five Themes of Tragedy in Berserk

This section discusses the five themes of tragedy that are common to Greek tragedies and are also present in Berserk.

The Individual's Radical Insecurity

• Refers to the sudden and unexpected fall into catastrophe which several characters in Berserk are forced to experience.

The Individual's Blindness

• The hero fails to predict the coming catastrophe despite foreshadowings that at least the audience is clear. Guts too completely fails to predict his fate despite being warned in advance.

The Curse of Virtue

• This refers to cases in which the hero produces disastrous consequences simply by trying to be virtuous. In Berserk, Guts is determined to realize certain virtues such as independence and a demanding ideal of friendship, and it is precisely the pursuit of these virtues that eventually creates the preconditions for catastrophe.

Questions About Justice

• Berserk presents us with a world that is morally lacking, amoral or even evil, leading us to question the nature and possibility of justice.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

• Tragic catastrophe is ultimately unavoidable. Every single episode of the 1997 anime begins by reminding us of this fatalism.

Nietzsche's Philosophy on Tragedy

This section discusses Nietzsche's philosophy on tragedy and how it relates to Arthur Schopenhauer's ideas.

Arthur Schopenhauer's Influence on Nietzsche

• Schopenhauer made Nietzsche interested in philosophy in the first place and influenced not only Nietzsche's concern with the value of existence but his understanding of tragedy.

Schopenhauer's View on Tragedy

• Schopenhauer praised tragedy as the highest literary art form, the summit of poetic art. He saw tragedy as being uniquely free of illusions, free of the kind of happy endings and poetic justice found in other literary genres.

Nietzsche's View on Tragedy

• Nietzsche believed that tragedy was necessary for human existence because it allowed us to confront and overcome our deepest fears and anxieties. He saw tragedy as a way to affirm life in spite of its inherent suffering.

The Paradox of Tragedy

• Fatalism makes the paradox of tragedy even more apparent. If the tragic ending is inevitable and we know this, then the tragic drama cannot even afford us the comfort of hope.

Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Tragedy

This section discusses Schopenhauer's philosophy of tragedy and how it relates to the human experience.

The Two Aspects of Human Beings

• Schopenhauer believed that humans have two aspects: the particular aspect, which is our mundane self driven by our will, and the universal aspect, which is independent of the will and can overcome it in certain rare instances.

• The particular aspect includes things like personality traits, idiosyncrasies, habits, and desires. The universal aspect involves things that we share with humanity as a whole, such as beauty and morality.

The Positive Part of Tragedy

• According to Schopenhauer, tragedy depicts things contrary to our will and desires. As a result, the particular part of us feels emotional pain.

• However, because tragedy reveals something universal to us, it engages our universal side which transcends our desires. All genuine aesthetic experience taps into this side of us.

• While as particular individuals we might find tragedy incredibly painful, as subjects who transcend that individuality we feel relieved and elevated to a higher perspective.

Resignation from Life

• Tragedy facilitates resignation from the world in our will for Schopenhauer. It shows us not only that the world is horrible but also that the part of us that suffers from it is not the only part of us.

• Resignation leads to awareness that there is still left in us something different than what does not will life - what he calls our universal side - which appreciates the truth of tragedy even while our particular self is horrified by it.

The Purpose of Tragedy in Ancient Greek Culture

This section discusses Schopenhauer's admission that ancient Greek tragedies did not lead their audiences to reject life and condemn existence, despite the fact that they depicted great and undeserved misfortune.

Lack of Resignation in Ancient Greek Culture

• Schopenhauer admits that almost all Greek tragedies show the human race under the dreadful dominion of chance and error, but not the resignation these bring about which redeems us from them.

• He writes that ancient Greek culture in general didn't have much of a spirit of resignation.

Berserk and Emotional Attachments

This section discusses how Berserk did not lead to resignation for the note-taker, but instead intensified their will.

Schopenhauer's Admission About Greek Tragedy

• Schopenhauer makes a revealing admission about Greek tragedy - it depicts heroes who suffer great and undeserved misfortune, but it doesn't lead them to reject their desires or resign themselves from the world like he would advise.

• It also doesn't seem that ancient Greek tragedies led their audiences to reject life and condemn existence.

Emotional Attachments in Berserk

• The note-taker reflects on how Berserk led them to form emotional attachments and then made them painful through tragic events.

• However, Schopenhauer would see this as a clear lesson - our attachments are not worth it in the first place.

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on Tragedy

In this section, the speaker discusses Nietzsche's disagreement with Schopenhauer's view of Greek tragedy. While both philosophers saw the significance of tragic drama, they had different reasons for finding it great.

Nietzsche vs. Schopenhauer on Greek Tragedy

• Modern tragedy is more inclined towards pessimistic resignation.

• Nietzsche disagreed with Schopenhauer's life denial from the very beginning of his career.

• Nietzsche saw the fact that Greek tragedy does not end in live denial as proof of its greatness and the health and vigor of ancient Greek culture.

• By contrast, modern western society was seen by Nietzsche as fundamentally sick culturally and psychologically deteriorating.

The Corruption of Moral Standards

In this section, the speaker discusses how our understanding of Greek tragedy has become corrupted by a certain type of moralistic worldview which devalues not just tragic drama but life itself.

The Devaluation of Tragic Drama

• Our understanding of Greek tragedy had become corrupted by a certain type of view - a moralistic worldview which judged everything according to moral criteria.

• These moral standards were ultimately unattainable and thus devalued not just tragic drama but life itself.

The Idea of Evil in Berserk

In this section, the speaker discusses chapter 83 in Berserk where Griffith encounters an entity known as "the idea of evil" which explains that humans desired its existence because they wanted reasons for pain, sadness, life, and death.

Humans' Desire for Meaning

• In chapter 83 of Berserk, Griffith encounters an entity known as "the idea of evil" which explains that humans desired its existence.

• Humans desired reasons for pain, sadness, life, and death because they wanted reasons for the destiny that kept transcending their knowledge.

• What humans find unbearable is not suffering but suffering without meaning or purpose.

• The Christian worldview spread so effectively in part because it gave people a reason for why they suffered.

The Self-perpetuating Cycle of Suffering

• Viewing ourselves as sinful leads to even more suffering and thereby even more proof that we are sinful.

• The idea of sin may be an invention but once it is firmly established in our psychological and cultural life it really almost acquires the appearance of a god for the sake of which we are willing to endure and inflict the greatest of sufferings.

This transcript does not have many sections with timestamps. I have included all relevant sections with timestamps.

The Narrative of Slave Morality

This section discusses Nietzsche's model for how slave morality arises and functions. It begins with the most downtrodden sections of society, the slaves, who envy the rulers of society and wish to retaliate but do not have the power to do so. The desire for retaliation festers in the psyche and becomes an ever-growing resentment that eventually produces an imaginary form of revenge.

The Inversion of Values

• Slave morality produces a new all-encompassing system of values which completely inverts the value system of the masters.

• Wealth, sex, good food, power, and devices are now seen as sins because they are things that only masters have access to.

• Conversely, because slaves lack access to these things their disadvantages become virtues.

Resentment Becomes Creative

• Resentment at the heart of slave morality is driven by thirst for revenge.

• This thirst for revenge produces an imaginary form of revenge - an inversion of reality where slaves may be weak in this world but will be in heaven while their enemies burn in hell for all eternity.

• Nietzsche believes that all human beings have an impulse to aggression even if this aggression is turned against one's own self.

Farnese: An Example of Slave Morality

This section discusses how Farnese exemplifies Nietzsche's critique of slave morality. Growing up in a noble family with emotionally neglectful parents causes her to grow resentful and develop destructive tendencies. She compensates for her feelings of impotence by burning heretics as it satisfies her sadistic impulses.

From Difficult Child to Leader of the Holy Iron Chain Knights

• Farnese becomes the leader of the holy iron chain knights, a religious military organization, and begins hunting down accused heretics and burning them.

• Her behavior is supported by the holy see, a major religious organization, which gives her institutional legitimation and moral justification.

Farnese and Nietzsche's Slave Morality

This section discusses how Farnese exemplifies the hypocrisy identified in slave morality by Nietzsche. It explains how her masochistic impulses are driven by her need for power, vengeance, and sensual pleasure.

Hypocrisy of Slave Morality

• Farnese exemplifies the hypocrisy identified in slave morality by Nietzsche.

• She decries selfish desire and sensual pleasure as sinful but is driven precisely by those very same things.

• When punishing people for being sinful, she satisfies her aggressive impulses and even derives sensual pleasure from it.

• Scaring people with the threat of eternal damnation satisfies her thirst for vengeance.

• Believing herself to be acting on behalf of God satisfies her need to feel powerful.

Masochistic Impulses

• Both Mosgus and Farnese exemplify masochistic impulses.

• Mosgus practices what he calls prostration, a ritual in which he falls face down to the floor as a show of his submission to God.

• Farnese is seen self-flagellating.

• When our aggressive impulses find no outward release, they turn inwards against ourselves. Thus we can satisfy our aggressive impulses through self-harm.

Psychological Breakdown

• When Farnese first witnesses an attack by a horde of demons, she finds the experience so terrifying and incomprehensible that she is unable to psychologically process it.

• Her system of beliefs is breached, and her psychic mechanisms break down symbolized in the story as her being possessed by a demon.

• The demon speaking to her confirms the Nietzschian reading of her psyche.

Farnese's Transformation

This section discusses the transformation of Farnese from a cruel and bitter character to a stronger, more honest, and self-aware person.

Overcoming Passivity

• Farnese turns to religion as a coping mechanism for her fear, but it puts her in a state of passivity.

• Guts encourages her to deal with her fears through active struggle instead of retreating into passivity.

Self-Overcoming

• Due to Guts' influence, Farnese gives up her faith and position as a religious leader.

• She is forced to recognize her weaknesses and becomes more honest and self-aware.

• Her transformation embodies Nietzsche's ideal of self-overcoming.

Innocence of Becoming

• Farnese's transformation shows the innocence of becoming, according to Nietzsche.

The Psychology of Resentment and Morality

This section discusses how the psychology of resentment leads to the morality of good and evil, which is born out of a desire for revenge and provides a reason for suffering. It also explores how this morality creates an unattainable moral standard that equates being human with being sinful.

The Birth of Morality from Resentment

• The morality of good and evil is born out of the psychology of resentment to satisfy the desire for revenge as well as to provide a reason for suffering.

• In order to deem all opponents' evil, one must set up a moral standard which they all necessarily fall short of, but in doing so, one inevitably erects an unattainable standard that is equated with being sinful.

• Even Schopenhauer believed in a form of original sin and applied it to tragedy.

Conflicts between Moral Ideals and Earthly Life

• Our moral ideals demand something that life on earth seems incapable of attaining, leading those in the grip of slave morality to conclude that if the world makes it impossible for our moral ideals to be attained, then the world itself must be evil.

• Nietzsche takes the opposite route by stating that there is no higher value than enhancing and invigorating life. If our moral ideals conflict with our earthly existence and cause us to devalue life, then it is those moral ideals that should be abandoned rather than our attachment to life.

Nietzsche's Existential Goal

This section explores Nietzsche's existential goal, which is to recognize that life is painful and yet love and affirm it nevertheless. It also discusses how Nietzsche proclaimed the innocence of becoming and hoped for a modern rebirth of tragedy that would affirm life once again.

The Innocence of Becoming

• Life itself is fundamentally innocent, but particular human beings attribute sinfulness to it, giving it the appearance of something guilty.

• Nietzsche praised Greek tragedy as an art form that stared the horrors of life in the face and yet remained free from resignation, world-weariness, and Christian obsession with evil, guilt, and sin.

• Berserk is an example of a modern tragedy that expresses the innocence of becoming without relying on crude simplified moral judgments or dividing people into good and evil.

A Culture Beyond Guilt and Sin

• Nietzsche dreamed of a new culture beyond guilt and sin that would reflect the innocence of life.

• The idea of evil did not always exist, so there may be a future within Berserk where humans live without it.

Nietzsche's Philosophy of Tragedy and Affirmation of Life

In this section, the speaker discusses Nietzsche's philosophy of affirming life through tragedy and art. He explains how Nietzsche believed that only through aesthetic appreciation can existence and the world be eternally justified.

The Function of Tragic Drama

• Art is unique in its capacity to transform even the most horrific and painful parts of life into something valuable, affirmative, beautiful, and divine.

• Greek tragedy presented us with the horrors of life not to condemn it but to celebrate it even in the face of its horrors.

• Nietzsche defines tragedy as the highest art of saying yes to life.

Dionysus and Tragedy

• Dionysus is a god who expresses the inseparability of intoxicating joy and great suffering.

• Late in his career, Nietzsche put forth an opposition between Dionysus and Jesus Christ, both religious martyrs for whom suffering is essential but representing two opposed attitudes to suffering.

• There are some similarities between Dionysus and Guts from Berserk. Both were born from dead mothers, had caretakers who went mad, and are associated with blind rage.

The Theme of Unity in Opposition

This section discusses the theme of unity in opposition and how it is central to the god of tragedy. Tragic drama seeks to affirm life as a whole, which is structured around fundamental oppositions.

Tragedy Affirms Life as a Whole

• Tragic drama affirms life as a whole, which is structured around fundamental oppositions.

• During the finale of the eclipse, the demon known as Slan says that unity in opposition is crucial for life.

• Slan's comment is analogous to what we might say about Berserk as a tragic work of art that presents us with life and death in all their oppositions.

Nietzsche's Ideal of a Free Spirit

• Nietzsche puts forth the ideal of a free spirit who stands in the middle of the world with cheerful and trusting fatalism.

• Dionysus represents finding redemption in the totality of life, which contains both life and death, happiness and suffering, creation and destruction.

• Saying yes to opposition and war becomes tragedy that affirms qualities crucial for dionysian philosophy.

Tragedy Has Life-Affirming Effects

• Successful tragedy has life-affirming effects by presenting us with beauty despite all suffering.

• We identify not just with the suffering individual but also with the nobility of life itself.

• Even if particular individuals perish in tragedy, life itself continues to stand triumphant and beautiful.

Guts: A Nietzschian Tragic Hero

This section discusses how the character of Guts in Berserk is a Nietzschian tragic hero who embodies the theme of unity in opposition.

The Character of Guts

• Guts is given the nickname "the struggler" and his character is a call to never give in to resignation but instead struggle beyond all limits.

• Guts undeniably is a tragic hero of the Nietzschian variety, embodying the theme of unity in opposition.

Tragedy as Life-Affirming Art

This section discusses how tragedy can be life-affirming art that teaches us about beauty and nobility despite suffering.

Tragedy Teaches Us About Beauty Despite Suffering

• Tragic drama presents us with beauty that shines forth despite all suffering.

• We are made to feel that suffering is not an insufferable objection to life, and even the worst misfortunes are compatible with the greatest beauty.

• We identify not just with the suffering individual but also with the nobility of life itself.

Tragedy Can Empower Us

• Tragedy shows us that despite all changes, life is at bottom indestructibly powerful and joyful.

• Even when it seems overwhelmingly futile, we can struggle beyond all limits like Guts.

The Value of Tragedy in Life

In this section, the speaker discusses how life is unjust and irrational, but that doesn't mean it's not worth living. He talks about how tragedy can teach us to value life as a work of art and celebrate its beauty.

Tragedy as a Celebration of Life

• Genuine fans of Berserk wouldn't conclude that life is in vain just because it's unjust, irrational, and impermanent.

• The value of a work of art isn't determined by whether it has a happy ending or not. Nietzsche hoped we could see life as something that doesn't need a happy ending to justify it because its beauty eternally justifies itself.

• What Kentaro Miura created was a tragic celebration of life. By celebrating his life, we celebrate life as a whole.

The Tragic Artist

• Nietzsche wrote about what the tragic artist communicates: "the courage and freedom of affect in the face of a powerful enemy, in the face of sublime hardship, in the face of horrible problem." This victorious state is what the tragic artist selects and glorifies.

• The heroic man praises his existence through tragedy. The tragedian raises the drink of sweetest cruelty to him alone.

• The tragic poet cries out that "it is an adventure to live...this exciting changing dangerous gloomy and often sun-drenched existence." It is not something to be taken for granted.

Thanking Patrons & Conclusion

In this section, the speaker thanks his patrons for their support throughout the year. He also talks about how difficult it was to make this video and how much he loves Berserk. He ends by discussing his upcoming book and future videos.

Thanking Patrons

• The speaker thanks his patrons for their patience and support throughout the year.

• He lists all of his patrons by name, thanking them for their contributions.

Conclusion

• The speaker talks about how difficult it was to make this video because Berserk is full of things worthy of discussion and analysis.

• He hopes that his video is not only informative philosophically but also leads many new people to become Berserk fans.

• The speaker mentions that he will be uploading a supplementary text of notes on his Patreon page for people who want to learn more about the philosophy topics discussed in the video.

• He talks about how he hasn't released much content this year because he was working on his upcoming book, which is now finalized and in the process of being printed. The official release date is November 9th.

• Finally, the speaker says that now that he's done working on the book, he will try to get another video done as fast as possible and asks viewers if there are any particular topics they'd like him to cover.