In-person: Nietzsche and Jung

Please arrive on time, if circumstances allow. NO READING required, just an affinity and curiosity for the material. Join us for a 90-minute meetup to explore the deep and often unsettling intellectual relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Jung. We will focus on how Nietzsche’s radical critique of modern morality, religion, and rationality reverberates through Jung’s development of Analytical Psychology. Nietzsche’s ideas—especially the *“death of God,”* the emergence of the Übermensch, and the confrontation with nihilism—became, for Jung, psychological realities rather than purely philosophical claims. Jung repeatedly engaged Nietzsche as a *prophetic figure of the modern psyche,* someone who had experienced the collapse of traditional meaning from within. This encounter shaped Jung’s concepts of individuation, the shadow, and the collective unconscious, especially in relation to inner conflict and cultural disintegration. A central focus will be Jung’s seminars on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where he offers a sustained psychological reading of Nietzsche’s poetic-philosophical text. In these seminars, Jung both reveres Nietzsche’s insight and critically examines the *dangers of inflation,* fragmentation, and psychic overload that he believed Nietzsche himself embodied. The meetup is open to both newcomers and experts, with space for accessible discussion alongside deeper theoretical exploration. NOTE: We meet in the Daffodil Room at Pier 57 in Chelsea—a spacious, well-lit room on the right toward the back, opposite the cozy seating sofas. A food emporium nearby offers plenty of options for food and conversation afterward. Again, no reading required, just an affinity and curiosity for the material. \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-