Part 3, What is Religious

[Lia]

I think both Aristotle (NE) and Nietzsche endorse the idea that different virtues are appropriate for different kinds of men.

[Lia]

I hope this is allowed. I know Nietzsche seems to negate a bunch of things in these chapters (truth, falsification, cruelty...) like Thomas said in @57 up there. But, when he starts putting things back together, I think it becomes clear that it's not total rejection but a refinement, (view spoiler)[and (self?) cruelty is clearly one of those things that Nietzsche endorses for a specific species of philosopher. (hide spoiler)] See §210.

[Lia]

Cphe wrote: "It's all very well but saint or free spirit - surely all would have started as a part of the herd."

It reminds me of Plato's educational program, to make sure the education for leaders and rulers are different from that of the ruled.

So in some societies that do have hierarchy, class differences, it's conceivable that some chosen "philosopher kings" were never part of a herd, never taught to despise inequality, nobility etc.

I *think* Nietzsche isn't just endorsing a return to a lost past though, (even though he clearly had a thing for eternal recurrence.) I think he recognizes we are past that, and the new philosopher will have to rise above his contemporary fads, and not reject valuable tools out of hand just because common herd morality demands it.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "I think he recognizes we are past that, and the new philosopher will have to rise above his contemporary fads, and not reject valuable tools out of hand just because common herd morality demands it. ."

Is it possible for the new philosopher to endorse "herd" morality when the herd happens to be right? Not in an opportunistic way, as a noble lie, but to actually recognize the truth of the herd... Say, in the case of a herd of enslaved people who demand their freedom, collectively, from an oppressive master. Or would he say that only some of the herd, the free spirits among them, are deserving of freedom?

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: "Or would he say that only some of the herd, the free spirits among them, are deserving of freedom?"

Let me address this first, because it’s less of a land-mine.

By “recognizes we are past that” I mean Nietzsche seems to diagnose the modern world as hostile to those who wishes to rise above “the herd.”

I don’t think Nietzsche literally calls for enslavement of the majority, I like to imagine he's writing a revised version of “Nicomachean Ethics,” (remember NE was most likely lectures for youths who might aspire to become politicians), a manual for becoming who you are that is adapted for the modern world. I also think he believes this “higher type” is always the ones who create their culture and define the "conscience of their race” (or something like that.) So this is really more about making “difference” and “distance” possible for the “Great-souls” in modernity, than a defense of literal slavery, exploitation, and abuse. Now, I do think he believes these “higher types” should create “lies” in the form of arts — theatre, poetry, music — that create the “correct” sentiment, because herd-minded people act on impulses and sentiments and not Homo economicus style clear-eyed free-choices. They are modern inheritors of herd, slave mentality, precisely because they are slave to their psychology, their impulses, their need to belong. They are not self-legislator, they want others to legislate for them.


Thomas wrote: "Is it possible for the new philosopher to endorse "herd" morality when the herd happens to be right? Not in an opportunistic way, as a noble lie, but to actually recognize the truth of the herd... Say, in the case of a herd of enslaved people who demand their freedom, collectively, from an oppressive master."

So, let me step on this land mine gingerly. I think the new philosopher will have to come up with a way to do what he thinks is right without getting lynched. I think Nietzsche’s idea of a Free Spirit is also freedom from selfish desire for comfort, for easing psychological tension, he is a self-cruel self-legislator who does what “the moral laws within him” tells him is right. And if what the herd demands is coincidentally right and not just lazy, easy, and comfortable, I think this “legislator” must work with the herd. But still, based on what Nietzsche says about noble ones always being the kind who takes human to ever higher ground, discovering higher possibilities etc, what he deems is right (for his whole society, for all human) is not necessarily going to be what is most comfortable for all.

Finally, let me quote William W. Sokoloff, a commentator on Political Science (view spoiler)[

Nietzsche's apparent contempt for some of the core values of democratic culture, moreover, should not be construed as the rejection of democracy. His critique of equality can actually strengthen democracy insofar as it incites, in the words of Wendy Brown, a "richer practice of democracy.’ (Politics out of History, 136.) Specifically, Nietzsche is a "useful interlocutor of democracy offering precisely the challenge that might lead democracy to 'climb' in the manner Nietzsche insisted was the sole purview of culture.” We should entertain the possibility that ressentiment is the real threat to democracy insofar as it prevents the type of independent thought and action that democracies depend on for political invention. Far from destroying democracy, Nietzsche might be able to keep us on the lookout for traces of ressentiment in the political sphere so that they can be identified, engaged, and negotiated politically. Nietzsche's own form of nine-teenth-century ressentiment should not be mistaken for iron fist hostility for the demos. Pathos of distance is not a sickness triggered by democracy and aristocratic indifference to the suffering of the weak but an elevating sensibility that allows one to make distinctions ( "The Case of Wagner”). Pathos of distance is Nietzsche's alternative to ressentiment and is connected to his defense of autonomy.

(hide spoiler)]

These commentators might not be defending what Nietzsche himself actually promotes or argues for, but they certainly seem to think Nietzsche's diagnosis is useful for strengthening democracy.

[MJD]

Roger wrote: "No doubt Nietzsche, like all other philosophers, is really motivated by the Will to Power, and he seeks to discredit Christianity because its rules interfere with his freedom."

That sounds about right to me, especially in context to what he says in The Anti-Christ .

It seems to me that he thinks that Christianity, and other systems of "slave-morality", hold back the ability of elites - the "supermen" foretold about in Thus Spoke Zarathustra - to thrive.

In this way I think that his view is similar to Marx's, who wrote: "Criticism [of religion] has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower."

But, while I see connections to his criticism and Marx's criticism of religion in Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, it seems that N. would be fine with the "herd" remaining in "chains" (not only fine with it, by the way, but thinking that it was for the best) while the "supermen" broke free to pluck the living flower.

[MJD]

Cphe wrote: "Oh! I was wondering if he had some religious background. Thank you."

I think that N.'s Biblical knowledge really shines in The Anti-Christ. While I think that it's fair for someone to disagree with his interpretation of the Bible, I do think that it would be unfair to say that he doesn't have a thorough knowledge of its content.

[Lia]

I think you probably have to grow up steeped in the tradition to keenly feel and be driven by what you are losing (faith, security, certainty). Not sure about Nietzsche himself, but James Joyce, TS Eliot, Heidegger all grappled with the void left behind by a rapidly changing world that is no longer amenable to their childhood faith.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "I don’t think Nietzsche literally calls for enslavement of the majority, I like to imagine he's writing a revised version of “Nicomachean Ethics,” (remember NE was most likely lectures for youths who might aspire to become politicians), a manual for becoming who you are that is adapted for the modern world.."

Excellent response. Nietzsche makes most sense to me, politically, when I assume that he is making Aristotelian assumptions. But I think the notion that his argument somehow "strengthens" democracy is really, um... counterintuitive. His argument is effectively a denial of freedom to those who aren't entitled to it by nature, i.e., those with the power to "become who they are." Social stratification seems to be built-in to this model.

[Lia]

Thanks Thomas. I think that author's argument basically boils down to treating Nietzsche as a useful "frenemy". Nietzsche himself seems to promote this idea that a worthy friend should also be a worthy opponent that challenges your ideas, and a gardener somehow exposes his plants (Plato! Couch-Potato!) to harsh condition to strengthen them. Imaginably, Nietzsche's critique of equality can be something like a vaccine for the herd. (But, yes, it's counterintuitive. Just like I think that gardener thing is counter intuitive. Do gardeners really do that?)

[Christopher]

I, too, am sceptical of attempts to rebaptize N. as a good democrat or good liberal.
(Everyone should read "The Nietzsceanization of the Left, and vice versa" from The Closing of the American Mind)
But I will point out that a. Nietzsche absolutely LOVED Emerson. When he lost a copy of Emerson on a train trip, he quickly acquired another copy.. and b. Nietzsche became a beloved writer in the early 20th C. particularly among Americans who knew or felt they were above the madding crowd.. Bohemians, poets, Kahlil Gibran, et al.

[David]

Kerstin wrote: If we could magically turn back time and eradicate every trace of Christendom, would the world look better?

We would have:
no hospitals, infirmaries, or soup kitchens. . ."

I believe somewhere earlier in the book Nietzsche states we owe some gratitude where it was due to earlier attempts and getting us to where we are now, but now it is time for us to loosen our hold on them and let them go away, including religion.

As for the line of thinking of what we would have without Christendom, I think if we started over we would still have everything on your list, except perhaps for specific people and specific works of art. I am tempted to say this is one of the things Nietzsche was referring to when he said,

What I wanted to say was this: Christianity has been the most disastrous sort of arrogance so far.

But, I think he was referring to something else.

Interesting though that you mention hospitals. What do you think of Nietzsche's remarks that religion has weakened the human population by catering to the weak?

in order to work in this way in good conscience basically for the preservation of everything sick and suffering, which amounts, in fact and truth, for the deterioration of the European race? Turn all evaluations of worth on their heads. . .

I have been trying to compare that to Socrates' statements in the Republic that suggest that too much medical aid is a very bad because it just prolongs suffering.

[Rafael]

Kerstin wrote: "If we could magically turn back time and eradicate every trace of Christendom, would the world look better?

We would have:
no hospitals, infirmaries, or soup kitchens
no universities or public schools
no freedom of the individual
no equality of the sexes
no accounting
no abolition of slavery (even though it reared it's ugly head repeatedly)
no musical notation
no genetics
no geology
no Big Bang
no human rights
no gothic or baroque architecture
no Michaelangelo
no Dante
no preservation of Greco-Roman classics"

Well. charity is one of the 5 pillars of Islam. There's centers of studies in the islamic world. During the Medieval Age there's no individual liberty, God was the center of the world. The equality of the sexes was not achieved by christendom, was by the Enlightment. Since ancient China there was the notion that slavery could and should be abolished. The Greek classics were preserved by the muslims.

I am pretty sure that the other things in your list would be created by someone too, they would just not be named as that. Your list and your thinking is quite eurocentric. In 1000 AD Europeans lived in houses made of wood and thatched roof. The chinese invented gunpowder and paper many years before that. The amerindians built pyramids made of rock at the same time. Timbuktu (Mali) was created in the 12th century and at the 15th century was a center of studies for muslim, jewish and christians. There were there religious freedom that Europe not achieved for many centuries. The chinese, the persians, the indians were societies with great achievements in many areas, our numerals came from them.

[Thomas]

Let's be careful to keep the discussion firmly pinned to Nietzsche and what he thinks about religion. What any of us individually thinks is important, but let's not allow our personal beliefs to take the crosshairs off Nietzsche. There's plenty there to aim at...

[MJD]

Thomas wrote: "Let's be careful to keep the discussion firmly pinned to Nietzsche and what he thinks about religion. What any of us individually thinks is important, but let's not allow our personal beliefs to ta..."

For my interpretation of N.'s thoughts on religion and religious like thinking (i.e. the works of Schopenhauer) in this book and in his other works, I think that that his point is that religious thinking says "no" to life whereas his thinking says "yes" to life. That is, while Hindus may want to overcome Maya, Schopenhauerians overcome the Will, etc. N. seems to be saying that this overcoming of the world of appearance is life-denying.

Here is a movie reference that I think may help: I think that N. views the religious thinker as a kind of Morpheus-like character from "The Matrix" trying to convince people to turn their back on the world and pursue a transcendental reality. I think that N. wants people to fully embrace the world as is in a life-affirming manner ("amor fati"). In this way N. seems to be of the opinion that the "red pill" that religious thinking offers is poison, and those that offer it up are peddlers of poison.

[Note: I also want to put it out there that in context of what I stated above, I think that the "truth" of religious claims may not ultimately matter within this thought process. Even if it could have been proven to N. in no uncertain terms that the Bible was literally true I think that following a religious life would still be seen as life-denying in the sense that it belittles one's material life on Earth, and thus N.'s response to someone proving the truth of the Bible would be "so what?")

[Dave]

David wrote: "He then lists his big three, human sacrifice, the neurotic and epilepsy-like sacrifice of human nature to religious asceticism, and that last sacrifice that is still a little puzzling to me but seems to be a mix of sacrificing all earthly aspirations to the afterlife and sacrificing god himself for religious-like belief in other things, like science."

I found this section particularly interesting but was also puzzled by what Nietzsche is referring to here as the "third rung" of sacrifice.

Soon after this section, in #58, he talks about how "our modern, noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates and prepares people, more than anything else does, precisely for 'unbelief.'"

To me, this sounds like a critique of capitalism. Perhaps the third rung in Nietzsche's genealogy of religious sacrifice involves humans giving up their time and labour to serve new gods (the owners of capital)?

[MJD]

Dave wrote: "David wrote: "He then lists his big three, human sacrifice, the neurotic and epilepsy-like sacrifice of human nature to religious asceticism, and that last sacrifice that is still a little puzzling..."

I think that there is a sort of Ayn Rand egoism running through N.'s thought. If he has a problem with capitalism it may be in workers being too beholden to the interest of their supervisors and/or customers in a manner that gets them away from pursuing their own interest.

[Rafael]

Thomas wrote: "Let's be careful to keep the discussion firmly pinned to Nietzsche and what he thinks about religion. What any of us individually thinks is important, but let's not allow our personal beliefs to ta..."

Ok. Sorry for my harsh words.

[Thomas]

MJD wrote: "For my interpretation of N.'s thoughts on religion and religious like thinking (i.e. the works of Schopenhauer) in this book and in his other works, I think that that his point is that religious thinking says "no" to life whereas his thinking says "yes" to life"

Lia has suggested this as well, and there are a couple of references in the text that back this up, but I'm not convinced so far that saying "yes" to life isn't just a way of casting "will to power" in a more favorable light.

I wonder if there is any case in which a free spirit might cede power for the same reason -- to preserve his life, say in the event of a war which requires people to act as a group and assemble under a unified command. Or in a state with limited resources, where submitting to equality under law prevents one person or an elite class from seizing all the resources. These concessions seem to me to "say yes" to life as well, even from an egoistic perspective.

[Roger]

What makes "life" so valuable? Isn't us just a meaningless thing that happens every so often, just like everything else?

[MJD]

Roger wrote: "What makes "life" so valuable? Isn't us just a meaningless thing that happens every so often, just like everything else?"

I think that N.'s thought on the issue is that a someone like him creates his own meaning.

Thinking about how N.would respond to your question reminds me of how Mao responded to the notion that China was "poor and blank" : https://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...

"Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are "poor and blank". This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted."

[Lia]

Roger wrote: "What makes "life" so valuable? Isn't us just a meaningless thing that happens every so often, just like everything else?"

Imaginably, "life-as-such" isn't particularly valuable, remember Nietzsche's diagnosis of (part of) what's wrong with Christianity is that it preserved what ought to be allowed to perish (ouch) in BGE 62. If there is such thing as "ought to let perish" for Nietzsche, then clearly "life in itself" isn't so valuable.

Somewhat similar to what MJD said, I think Nietzsche believes human is the kind of creature that needs value to stay alive, and strive to give life value, to create meaningfulness out of cold, cruel, indifferent nature.

I don't think religion is a universal-bad for Nietzsche, it seems he adored the Old Testament, for example, and thinks no other (religious?) text measures up to it. (I know he said it's cruel, but I don't think Nietzsche rejects or vilifies cruelty.)

I think for Nietzsche, "religiosity" is an "instinct" for human (BGE 53) but its satisfaction is refused with deep suspicion in the modern turn. But then he goes on to say that (BGE 54) the attempt to assassinate the old soul concept under the guise of the critique of the Cartesian subject/predicate grammar is only anti-Christian, not anti-religious.

In BGE 56, Nietzsche suggests someone who thinks pessimism through its depths, whose thinking is liberated from the good-and-evil delusion of Christianity/ morality, will accidentally stumble upon the opposite ideal: the most ultimately world-affirming Eternal Return. (Is he talking about himself? I suspect he is. He used to adore Schopenhauer in his youth.)

What I think: it seems merely staying alive isn't what Nietzsche affirms. What he affirms, is affirmation itself: saying yes to life, saying yes to all that life is involved in, including cruelty, including the dark side of the world. To see THAT clearly with no self-deception and still say YES, ENCORE! I want that repeated over, and over, again and again, is what it means to give value, to affirm life, and for Nietzsche that's what humans need, that's what Homer did so well contra Hesiod (life is so worthy it's worth going through everything Odysseus went through to come back. Even Hades-Achilles regrets choosing glory over being alive. Even a demi-God is jealous of what humans have.)

That's what Socrates subverted (life is a sickness, gimme Hemlock, k? Thx bye.) Christianity affirms life to such a point that even God himself is sacrificed on a cross for *men*, that's a very high form of affirmation, a psychologically satisfying understanding of human life that makes all the meaningless sufferings bearable.

Piety, the will to untruth, "may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself." (BGE 59) Piety = artistic fabrication, it's turning the formless men into art.

For the ordinary human beings who exist merely for servitude, religion gives an inestimable contentment with their situation and type, manifold peace of the heart, an ennobling of obedience, one further happiness and sorrow with their peers and something transfiguring and beautifying, something of a justification for the whole everyday character. (BGE 61) It makes the most of and sanctifies and justifies suffering.

For the strong, religion makes it possible to overcome resistances, it's a means to an end: to rule. Religion is means to an end that gives beauty and meaning and value and makes life and unfreedom tolerable.

But modernity (Nietzsche's milieu) is set up to reject, subvert that. I don't think Nietzsche is critical of the (in progress) modern rejection of Christianity, but he diagnoses that the need for value-giving, life-affirming function of religion is not extinguished with it. We grow out of that "toy," we are children still, still in need of more sophisticated toys. And he predicts? Promotes? Proposes? Eternal Recurrence (or Eternal Return, depending on translation) as the next-level life-affirming thing.

Religion is problematic for Nietzsche when it's no longer treated as means to an end, that's "the other side" of these religions (BGE 62). It wants to be the ultimate ends and not means among other means. That is, I think, for Nietzsche, religions serve a vital role of giving values and meanings to human, who need that to live, i.e. affirmation. It's not merely staying alive that Nietzsche thinks is all that important; it's flourishing, creating affirmation of life itself, creating beauty and meaning. So he's not anti religion as one of many useful tools to achieve that. But I think he is against reifying religion as ultimate ends.

Sorry I wrote a book.

[Christopher]

Lia,

Would it have been shorter if you'd had more time?

I think the will to power is meant to cover things which a 'mere' will to life, or a will to "comfortable self-preservation," the Enlightenment formula (and very much still the bourgeois ideal, and hence the American ideal) cannot explain. Like Dostoevsky's underground man, the human desire to be free.. the will to power... will reject pre-programmed happiness even in self-destructive ways.

I will take up Socrates another time, but he was sentenced to take hemlock, it wasn't really a rejection of life. But his decadence was perhaps his scorn of glory, earthly glory. The free man looked down upon the slaves and the slavish; but Socrates convinced the "noble" Greeks that they were also, in fact, not truly free (this is in Gay Science somewhere.. let me get back to you on that).

[Lia]

Donut wrote: “ Would it have been shorter if you'd had more time?”

Nope. If I were a groundhog stuck in a recurring loop (or Dark on Netflix) I’d write that damn long thing all over again. Encore! Long live life words!


I think I more or less agree with you about will to power covering the “more than merely comfortably alive” part. I confess I don’t know how to read Plato, or Socrates, and I keep “self-overcoming” my previous interpretation of what Plato said Socrates said, or what Nietzsche said Plato said Socrates said. You might catch me with a different interpretation on a different day of the week. I’m not overly attached to this current reading of Socrates offering Crito’s cock to thank Apollo for ending his sickness.

[Lia]

Btw, this

Modern men, obtuse to all Christian nomenclature, no longer feel the gruesome superlative that struck a classical taste in the paradoxical formula “god on the cross.”

Reminds me of what Nabokov said about his contemporaries no longer understand the peculiarly Spanish kind of pitiless cruelty that "baits an old man who plays like a child into his dotage." I wonder if Nabokov was disgusted by Cervantes's cruelty itself, or disgusted by readers of the modern world that "gentrified the cruel and crude old book into a genteel and whimsical myth."

Who knows? Maybe Nabokov was Nietzschean...

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "What he affirms, is affirmation itself: saying yes to life, saying yes to all that life is involved in, including cruelty, including the dark side of the world. To see THAT clearly with no self-deception and still say YES, ENCORE!."

The problem that I keep running up against is that I don't know what that THAT is. It seems to me it could be anything, which means it also could be nothing. On what ground does the free spirit stand? When the free spirit achieves perfect dominion, what is the story she tells? And what keeps that story from being toppled by the next free spirit with another story, the next new testament? It seems inevitable, unless the stories have no real meaning. Nietzsche prefers the god of justice in the OT, but justice has no significance when suffering and cruelty are celebrated as "what is."

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: “It seems to me it could be anything, which means it also could be nothing. ”

Doubting again, Thomas? Oh look, a donkey! I think we’re in a Satyr Play!

It hurts me indescribably to say this, but

Thomas wrote: “When the free spirit achieves perfect dominion, what is the story she tells? ”

Pretty sure FS has to be male. Remember Truth is a woman, and this is some kind of PUA program to seduce her. (Presumably that means either women are neither real nor attainable, or Nietzsche is truth-friendly. Hmm.)

I suspect FS stands on no ground at all, they fly! Others would fly if they can, but they can’t, so they stay securely grounded and asleep, even after Hume wakes them.

This is just my observation, grounding in (traditional) philosophy seems to be laid down for certainty, and my impression is that Nietzsche eschews certainty.

Maybe FS are becomings, not beings? They want to overcome the milieu they are thrown into, they want to make it new, to fly past the nets that threaten to hold them down. And the next free spirit must topple what their forefathers built, or else they wouldn’t be free spirits. FS are the frontiers, the rascals, the bad conscience of each age, the harbinger of change. Like Heraclitus’ river, they aren’t ever the same.

Heidegger, case in point, is said to be strongly influenced by Nietzsche. But Heidegger said: ”The task of our lecture course is to elucidate the fundamental posi­tion within which Nietzsche unfolds the guiding question of Western thought and responds to it. Such elucidation is needed in order to prepare a confrontation with Nietzsche.” You’d think he’s a follower, an admirer, but nope, it’s a confrontation, and it seems confrontation is the only way to pay respect to Nietzsche, based on what Heidegger thinks Nietzsche said. (Believe it or not, Heidegger is really funny in this series, I think Nietzsche is black magic, he made Heidegger crack jokes.)

About the Bible: I don’t think Nietzsche prefers justice, I think he prefers the acknowledgement of hierarchy and esotericism and rare taste that the OT presumes, whereas the NT tries to appeal to the mass. It’s the style, the form, the “class”, not the message or content he affirms.

As to your first point: Thomas wrote: “I don't know what that THAT is. It seems to me it could be anything”

By “THAT” I meant Nietzsche seems to want to embrace both dark and light, both being and nothingness, both Apollo and Dionysus, both truth and value, both solitude and community, both destructive Achilles and yes-saying Odysseus. Those who pretend to extinguish their value (or pre-judgements) for truth say no to value. Those who suppress their will to truth/ reason in order to embrace something that gives life value (Pascal) say no to truth. FS wouldn’t want static, congealed, comfortable, unchanging, final, ultimate “truth,” “equality,” he wants opposing pairs to remain in productive tension, neither one completely suppressing the other, but coexist in a kind of unstable will-to-power, each doing their best to eclipse the other. Supposedly that constant struggle is stressful, Christianity had trained European to have a distaste for that; whereas Homeric arts affirmed, glorified that struggle of the will (to power?). Even extremely tragic, destructive, crushing epics stir admirations and gratitudes, they affirm even Achilles, they worship even destructive gods, and that practice of culture-wide affirmation is what enables them to strive, to affirm life even when their environment is hostile and life full of toils, to push beyond comfortable surviving at Calypso’s or Nausicaa’s or Circe’s.

In that sense, his issues with Christianity is not that it’s false, but rather, it’s bad for the health of humanity/ society.

[MJD]

Thomas wrote: "Lia wrote: "What he affirms, is affirmation itself: saying yes to life, saying yes to all that life is involved in, including cruelty, including the dark side of the world. To see THAT clearly with..."

I think that N.'s "praise" of the OT is made clear in the "Anitchrist", parts 25 and 26 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322...

I think that the following quote in particular from part 25 of that book should help clear up things for this book:

"Originally, and above all in the time of the monarchy, Israel
maintained the right attitude of things, which is to say, the
natural attitude. Its Jahveh was an expression of its
consciousness of power, its joy in itself, its hopes for itself: to
him the Jews looked for victory and salvation and through him
they expected nature to give them whatever was necessary to
their existence—above all, rain. Jahveh is the god of Israel, and
consequently the god of justice: this is the logic of every race
that has power in its hands and a good conscience in the use of
it. In the religious ceremonial of the Jews both aspects of this
self-approval stand revealed. The nation is grateful for the high
destiny that has enabled it to obtain dominion; it is grateful for
the benign procession of the seasons, and for the good fortune
attending its herds and its crops.—This view of things remained
an ideal for a long while, even after it had been robbed of
validity by tragic blows: anarchy within and the Assyrian
without."

I think that the most telling sentence in the quote above is: "Jahveh is the god of Israel, and consequently the god of justice: this is the logic of every race that has power in its hands and a good conscience in the use of it." It seems to me that when N. praises the concept of "justice" it is a conception of justice put forward by Thrasymachus in The Republic, that is that "justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger."

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "Pretty sure FS has to be male. Remember Truth is a woman, and this is some kind of PUA program to seduce her. ."

Being and nothingness, Apollo and Dionysus, opposing pairs in productive tension... but not male and female? I don't think there's going to be much production going on there. :)

Maybe FS are becomings, not beings? They want to overcome the milieu they are thrown into, they want to make it new, to fly past the nets that threaten to hold them down. And the next free spirit must topple what their forefathers built, or else they wouldn’t be free spirits. FS are the frontiers, the rascals, the bad conscience of each age, the harbinger of change. Like Heraclitus’ river, they aren’t ever the same.

Well said, and this does seem to be the natural state that the FS aspires to. It reminds me of Kant's dove metaphor (directed at Platonism) :

"The light dove cleaving in free flight the thin air, whose resistance it feels, might imagine that her movements would be far more free and rapid in airless space.”

The problem with removing being from the being/becoming dichotomy is just that -- the removal of being. The hammer of philosophy becomes a handful of water. There are no standards (even provisional ones) against which any being can be measured, and no resistance against which anything can work. This may in fact be the way the world really is -- in constant flux, at least from a purely naturalistic point of view, but I think the ability to stop the world, frame it, give things names, and grasp things so we can do stuff -- this is what makes us human and allows us to create a human world. (Oh, yeah... human, all too human.)

Such elucidation is needed in order to prepare a confrontation with Nietzsche.” You’d think he’s a follower, an admirer, but nope, it’s a confrontation...

I guess that's not too surprising. Heidegger is the guy who built a career on the question: "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: “.. but not male and female? I don't think there's going to be much production going on there. :) ”

😗 I think all the FS are metaphorically males, what they are chasing — “Truth” — is the female. That’s why I suspect Nietzsche might be “Truth-friendly”, at least “Truth” reinterpreted. I think Nietzsche is so antagonistic about women in his books because he thinks fecundity requires males and females to maintain distance and difference, they need to push back against each other and maintain a kind of tension. If he likes someone (Plato? Epicurus? Spinoza? Kant?) he gets “productive” by antagonizing them on stage with masks on (sounds like a kindergartener :p)

Thomas wrote: “The light dove cleaving in free flight the thin air, whose resistance it feels, might imagine that her movements would be far more free and rapid in airless space. ”

I agree resistance is needed for flight! I think Nietzsche anticipates so much push backs for his FS in the modern world, he has to teach them to choose solitude in their little Epicurean garden to avoid martyrdom.

Thomas wrote: “This may in fact be the way the world really is -- in constant flux, at least from a purely naturalistic point of view, but I think the ability to stop the world, frame it, give things names, and grasp things so we can do stuff -- this is what makes us human and allows us to create a human world. (Oh, yeah... human, all too human.)”

Tom, you peeped! We aren’t supposed to talk about Nietzsche’s naturalism until §230!

You just articulated my thoughts on what FS in Nietzsche’s schema are supposed to do: they forge the conscience of their race, they train their ears to listen, they cultivate their taste — to crystalize, to take a snap shot of their (not ahistoical) culture at each point in time.

This is from Heidegger’s lecture on Nietzshce’s version of “Truth”:

To the question "What is truth?" Nietzsche answers, "Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides" (Der Wile zur Macht 493). " 'Truth': this, according to my way of thinking, does not neces­ sarily denote the antithesis of error, but in the most fundamental cases only the position of various errors in relation to one another" (Der Wile zur Macht 535).

That sounds like truths too are errors, are lies, they aren’t what actually, naturally is, they are a crystalized version of the constant flux, and Nietzsche’s academy develops the ear and taste to choose what to crystalize, to construct the “Truth” that is essential for life. If Plato kicks out the poets; Nietzsche builds an academy exclusively for them.

I don’t think Nietzsche is erasing beings and females etc, they can still be parts of the whole, but the Free Spirits — well, they have to trade in becomings, and they have to be males.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "Tom, you peeped! We aren’t supposed to talk about Nietzsche’s naturalism until §230!

You just articulated my thoughts on what FS in Nietzsche’s schema are supposed to do: they forge the conscience of their race..."

Nope. No peeping here. There's just no alternative if art and science are relegated to the dust bin. Only nature remains. Given that, it's paradoxical that he takes refuge in music and poetry and all manner of human artifice -- including the notion of truth as a woman in need of seduction. The Daedalus allusion is apt, I think. He's about as likely to be successful in this seduction as poor Stephen is in forging the conscience of his race. It's an egotistical fantasy, but a poetic one.

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: "There's just no alternative if art and science are relegated to the dust bin. Only nature remains. Given that, it's paradoxical that he takes refuge in music and poetry and all manner of human artifice -- including the notion of truth as a woman in need of seduction. The Daedalus allusion is apt, I think. He's about as likely to be successful in this seduction as poor Stephen is in forging the conscience of his race. "

This nature vs artifice is really, really, really, insanely Ovidian. I still can’t find relevant satisfactory secondary text on this, but I’m thoroughly convinced that they are birds of a feather.

What if nature and artifices are in a productive conflict that is uniquely human? That whatever nature IS, (Being!), is what is meaningful to man, that there is no nature (the word, the construct, the concept) without human picking and choosing?

What if “falling” isn’t a universal-bad for Nietzsche, there can be no rising without falling, what if what he likes about eternal return, about Dionysus and Osiris, is that they contain within them the seed of destruction and rebirth?

You know how Joyce’s Dedalus is constantly coming up with something, and then immediately being undermined, foiled — by his Latin-speaking hat, by Mulligan, by his childhood friend Lynch ... what if THAT is what Nietzscheans affirm: BOTH the fall and the rebirth?

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "What if nature and artifices are in a productive conflict that is uniquely human? "

Then why not male AND female? Why not virtue ethics AND the advantage of the stronger? Why is he so embittered by religion, and the demos, and ideas, and women, when these serve as crucial foils for the values (or non-values) that he advocates? It seems to me that the adversary plays the most important role of all in his bipolar universe. Without the oppressive oppositions he complains most about, there is only darkness over the surface of the deep.

[Lia]

So we’re arguing in circle, repeating the same thing without getting through to each other, and the burro over there is laughing his ass off. What gives?

YES, male AND female, but without erasing the distance, separation, difference; or else the tension of the bow collapses. I don’t think Nietzsche is denying the existence of female, or even neglecting their roles or participation in the grand scheme of human affairs. The tension of this separation, concealment, desire, deflation, frustration… this obsessive, driven, productive process of attempting to “get the girl”, IS the dominant metaphor, which Plato (?) Ovid, Kant, and now Nietzsche all used in some capacity to denote the quest for truth, knowledge, reality, good etc. (and I suspect Joyce’s Molly-in-bed performs similar metaphorical role in contrast to the two male striving figures walking through the rest of the book. In the end she arranged, she picked what she liked about Blephen and Stoom and Rudy to affirm or reject.)

I also doubt Nietzsche is actually, factually “embittered” by religion. In fact I think he just unconcealed what religion is (he isn’t asking a question, he’s telling us.) He’s presenting religion from the ancient Greeks to Christianity to Buddhism (and whatever Asiatic eyed gods, I suspect Dionysus), he described how they become what they are (religions), what functions they served in human communities, and what dark side they bring about. The significance is perhaps that some thinkers came up with an idea, popularized it, and it became a movement, a “true belief.” (I suspect he’s taking a leaf out of these “religions” to social-engineer his post-Christian postmodernity, and FS-philosophers are assigned that role.)

In that sense, religions aren’t value-free, unbiased, pure, a priori, transcendental, higher, singular, complete Truth, but real phenomena essential for human flourishing.

One thing I keep having to adjust to as I read is the possibility, the idea, that Nietzsche might talk about something that is commonly seen as negative, but without being critical about it: things like tension, stress, cruelty. Maybe you have the indescribable hurt of Pascal in mind when you charged Nietzsche with complaining about oppression. But recall in the beginning of Part III, Nietzsche laments:

he wishes he had a few hundred helpers and good, well-trained hounds that he could drive into the history of the human soul to round up his game. In vain: it is proved to him again and again, thoroughly and bitterly, how helpers and hounds for all the things that excite his curiosity cannot be found … one might perhaps have to be as profound, as wounded, as monstrous as Pascal’s intellectual conscience was—and then one would still need that vaulting heaven of bright, malicious spirituality that would be capable of surveying from above, arranging, and forcing into formulas this swarm of dangerous and painful experiences.

But who would do me this service? But who would have time to wait for such servants? They obviously grow too rarely; they are so improbable in any age.(BGE 45)

So he’s in need of someone like Pascal, only a bit more — he has to go beyond Pascal and survey and arrange this swarm of dangerous and painful experiences Pascal (ostensibly) contained within him.

If anything, it sounds like he has profound admiration for Pascal, what Pascal endured is part of what supplies the tension for his bow. You might call it oppression, but I’m not ready to accuse Nietzsche of “complaining” about it.

TL;DR: the things that you think Nietzsche either excluded or complained about, I read Nietzsche as enlisting and affirming; and he affirms both their dark and light sides, both the destructions and the boons. I don’t think he’s tearing down what people built before, I think he’s establishing where he stands in history of thoughts and how he can take that productive tension to shoot for the future.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "So we’re arguing in circle, repeating the same thing without getting through to each other, and the burro over there is laughing his ass off. What gives?"


Wait! I thought that's what Nietzsche encourages? Circles, endless contradictions and paradoxes, the "tension" of opposites!

But you're right. It does go nowhere. That's sort of the problem.

[Lia]

A crowd flowed over the Canon Thread, so many,
I had not thought Nietzsche had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each ass fixed his eyes before his hooves...

[Lia]

Patrice wrote: "i keep wondering, isn’t mastery of self the hardest and highest form of will to power? what is harder? what is more empowering? it seems to me that religions invent these tests of the will over the..."

In §62 Nietzsche said

one always pays dearly and terribly when religions do not want to be a means of education and cultivation in the philosopher’s hand but insist on having their own sovereign way,

So, it seems Nietzsche affirms religion as a useful tool for philosophers to cultivate and educate, the trouble is that religion dangerously “wants” to go beyond that and be “sovereign” — free from the philosopher’s control.

And the consequence is not empowerment, not tests of the will over the body, but sublime miscarriage of the “higher men”:

Stand all valuations on their head—that is what they had to do. And break the strong, sickly o’er great hopes, cast suspicion on the joy in beauty, bend everything haughty, manly, conquering, domineering, all the instincts characteristic of the highest and best-turned-out type of “man,” into unsureness, agony of conscience, self-destruction—indeed, invert all love of the earthly and of dominion over the earth into hatred of the earth and the earthly—that is the task the church posed for itself and had to pose, until in its estimation “becoming unworldly,” “unsensual,” and “higher men” were fused into a single feeling.

And the consequence of that is the sickly, mediocre herd animal:

Christianity has been the most calamitous kind of arrogance yet. Men, not high and hard enough to have any right to try to form man as artists; men, not strong and far-sighted enough to let the foreground law of thousandfold failure and ruin prevail, though it cost them sublime self-conquest; men, not noble enough to see the abysmally different order of rank, chasm of rank, between man and man—such men have so far held sway over the fate of Europe, with their “equal before God,” until finally a smaller, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre has been bred, the European of today—

[Thomas]

Patrice wrote: "i keep wondering, isn’t mastery of self the hardest and highest form of will to power? what is harder? what is more empowering? it seems to me that religions invent these tests of the will over the..."

I think it depends on why one is mastering oneself. I think of something like the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, which are performed to strengthen the adherent's faith in God. An extended period of silence and meditation requires "will power" and a certain self-mastery, but I don't think it comes from or results in "will to power." It's might involve self-mastery, but it is done for the glory of God, not oneself. Nietzsche's self-mastery seems to be with the purpose of self-aggrandizement alone, with the purpose of rising above "the rabble."

[Ian]

That's a good point, although Nietzsche might have disagreed.

His direct mentions of Darwin are disdainful -- he was English, which seems like a red flag to Nietzsche, anyway -- an attitude which makes sense if one recalls that Nietzsche was a Lamarckist.

That is, Nietzsche believed in evolutionary change, but through the transmission of *acquired* characteristics. Hence the importance he placed on the mental and emotional habits of people's ancestors, along with physical traits or aptitudes.

From time to time he mentioned Jews as an example of a race that had sharpened its intellectual powers over time, unlike, say, upper-class Germans, especially those in army families. (He was pleased to learn that his new dinner partner at a health resort, Helen Zimmern, was not English, as he had thought, but Jewish. As it happens, she was born in Germany, so, despite being a naturalized British subject, she wasn't English on two counts....)

As it happens, Darwin dabbled in Lamarckist explanations himself, but attributed far more importance to the selective pressure of competition.

"Survival of the fittest" may not have been Darwin's coinage -- and, in the context of his theory it would be tautological, given that "fitness" is being defined by survival. And it it is misleading, since fitness for individual survival without a superior ability (or opportunity) to transmit the favorable traits could be just an evolutionary blind alley.

[Thomas]

Patrice wrote: "i don’t know very much about Loyola but didn’t he start the Jesuits? soldiers for God? the best of the best? just as in any military the number one necessity is self discipline. to get men to follo..."

Yes, he was the founder of the Jesuits. He founded the order after he was wounded in battle -- that's where "God's soldiers" comes from. Their primary mission was, and still is, education, and they are seen as the church's "intellectuals." Nietzsche references this directly in section 188:

That for thousands of years European thinkers thought merely in order to prove something -- today, conversely, we suspect every thinker who "wants to prove something" -- that the conclusions that ought to be the result of their most rigorous reflection were always settled from the start, just as it used to be with Asiatic astrology, and still is today with the innocuous Christian-moral interpretation of our most intimate personal experiences "for the glory of God" and for "the salvation of the soul" -- this tyranny, this caprice, this rigorous and grandiose stupidity has educated the spirit. Slavery is, as it seems, both in the cruder and in the more subtle sense, the indispensable means of spiritual discipline and cultivation, too.

"For the greater glory of God" is the motto of the Jesuits. Nietzsche blurs the line here between education and indoctrination, or perhaps he thought Jesuits (rightly or wrongly) were in the business of indocrination. Paradoxically, Jesuits have a reputation for independence, sometimes even rebelliousness, which is why a Jesuit had never been selected as pope before Francis. I had Jesuit teachers who could justly have been called dogmatists, but there were others who demanded that their students question everything, especially themselves. In either case, self-discipline was required.