How Does the Fight Club Relate to Nietzsche's Philosophy?

hello today we will discuss film fight club its philosophy and how this film is connected to friedrich nietzsche fight club is based on chuck palahniuk's book however we will discuss the ideas of the film not the book because the director david fincher took some liberties and changed the number of scenes and also the ending his version eventually turned out to be more profound and meaningful than polonics one why is it important to talk about fight club when it came out in 1999 it was left almost unnoticed but later became an iconic movie the film took stock of the second half of the 20th century showing its breaking points crisis and contradictions a whole generation of young people will repeat the mantra maybe self-destruction is the answer or we are a generation of men raised by women and wondering if another woman is really the answer we need at first glance the film is but a critique of the consumer society but we wouldn't have talked about it if everything was so simple spoiler alert please turn off this video if you haven't watched the movie yet so it's main plot twist is that the two main characters turn out to be one person initially we meet the narrator a middle-aged middle-class man who works for a car corporation travels around the country decorates his apartment with the help of an ikea catalog and suffers from insomnia to somehow get rid of the blues he follows the recommendation to 10 social events for men with a testicular cancer so he feels what real problems are let me remind you that the narrator is not from a low social class he has a fairly well fed life and is completely embedded in the structure of the consumer society it's not the case of a revolt of the unprivileged masses as it was in the 19th and early 20th century the so-called middle class is rebellion here even though they've got everything except for one thing desires let's go back to the main character one day he met another single servant friend and single servant friend is his definition of someone to talk on the plane with the new friend's name is tyler durden he seems to be another meaningless acquaintance but then the narrator's apartment explodes out of the blue and he's forced to live with tyler in a dilapidated house on the outskirts this is where the gradual formation of the fight club begins and then it turns um into the project mayhem which makes a series of explosions on the city at the very end of the film as you may recall tyler is the narrator's alter ego his ideal of masculinity marla also plays an important role she and the narrator first meet at anonymous meetings of the cancer patients they often meet afterwards or rather it is tyler who meets her and the narrator only watches them so we have run through the plot what about philosophy talking about fight club people very often bring up nietzsche let's be honest people bring up nietzsche in all kinds of contexts usually far-fetched and out of place and as we will now find out niche has a rather distant connection with fight club too the tagline of the film is it's only after you've lost everything that you are free to do anything we see the idea of self-destruction at the core of the movie it is necessary to renounce everything that connects you with the world only under this condition can you find a true freedom how is this rebellion manifested first it is a revolt against standardization against the one dimensionality of a human in modern society similar lives in similar apartments with similar interiors it should be noted that the revolt is triggered by material liberation and therefore an important first step is the explosion of the protagonist apartment you're not your job you're not your clothes you're not your car says tyler getting rid of all tangible things will bring freedom the next step is to reject all the moral values to literally free yourself from all ties with the world from only generally accepted rules and conventions that make a person part of the system by rejecting all the so-called achievements of capital society a human will be able to gain freedom but to feel like yourself you must also discover the true human nature and this means according to tyler's philosophy to experience real life through pain note that at the beginning of the film the narrator attends cancer meetings to witness the unfolding tragedy of human mortality tyler promotes becoming part of that tragedy this is your pain tyler tells the narrator after giving him a chemical burn to feel pain is to feel life and here by the way we can remember his story from nietzsche's real life himself while proving to his classmates the truthfulness of the ancient myth nietzsche took an amber from the fireplace and held it until everyone in the room agreed with him which left niche with a burn and we see here how violence takes on a liberating role what else do we lack for complete freedom freedom from the father from god we remember nietzsche's statement god is dead god remains dead and we have killed him in the film we see tyler comparing the father to god saying that they both left us the father abandoned the son as god abandoned humanity this idea is very much in tune with nietzsche's idea and god has left this world and we are left here alone free from any external authority but the philosophy of fight club focuses on the negative side of nietzsche's concepts while completely missing the positive creative part of his philosophy let us directly turn to neat shape in this spoke zarathustra we find three stages the individual must go through to become superhuman the first stage is the camel stage this is a situation in which a person accumulates person knowledge from the outside it refers to everything that we absorb from outer authority books sages and so on the second stage is the line stage this is the stage of denial in which all accumulated knowledge is discarded this is where the conversation about nietzsche's nihilism comes in and this stage can be connected with tyler's ideology but this is only freedom from something which is not yet true according to niche true freedom is freedom four it opens at the third stage the stage of the child at this stage you create your own values here we see both this aristocracy the spirit which is so characteristic of nietzsche and the idea of superhuman superhuman is perhaps the most complex concept of nietzsche's his complexity is precisely the reason why it is used everywhere that's why we also see superhuman in discussions about fight club man is something that should be overcome what have you done to overcome him man is a rope stretched between an animal and a superhuman a rope over an obese never yet hath there being a superhuman naked have i seen both of them the greatest man and the smallest man all too similar are they still to each other rarely even the greatest found i all to human i have now read nietzsche's quotations about superhuman nietzsche's concept of superhuman is that human is a transitional stage between animal and superhuman the narrator in the movie is exactly at this stage a person is something that needs to be overcome what does superhuman possess freedom but not just freedom from anything but freedom for creation and the character of the film does not reach this stage so fight club intuitively uses nietzsche's agonistic rhetoric and convinced his ideas about humans liberation but does not bring the idea to an end however if someone becomes interested in philosophy and reads nietzsche after watching the film this is already a small victory this was art for introvert till the next time