CMI Arts Initiative Talk
Date: Wednesday, 13 August 2025
Time: 3:30 PM
Venue: Seminar Hall
Tyler Durden calling: On Frederich Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals
Saroj Giri
Delhi University.
13-08-2025

---

Abstract

Why did Nietzsche consider scientists as no different from priests?

He despised the priests — but also the scientist. Scientists too are as much steeped in the ascetic ideal as the priest.

The ascetic ideal reinforced mediocrity and slave morality, giving rise to the average little man of resentment and suppressed hatred. The type of human produced by democracy.

Such are Nietzsche’s views in his Genealogy of Morals.

Many commentators opine that the figure of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) from the cult classic film Fight Club (1999) is crafted around Nietzschean themes. We will explore that in the lecture.

Tech gurus like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel too deploy Nietzschean themes of the vitality of life, survivalism and Superman to reinforce acceleration towards machinic intelligence. Intelligence can be non-human and non- biological, they claim.

However, these tech gurus and their transhumanism are mired in what can be called the “cult of life”. This is what I argue in my essay, “Peter Thiel’s transhumanism and the fear of human finitude” (The Wire, 31 July 2025).