I: Some people have pointed out that even though you are more scholarly than most (older) philosophers, you are less scholarly than many men of your time. Some people say this makes your words uninformed and relatively useless.
N: A scholar is someone who explores what others have written. He will become constricted by what others have written. A scholar also by his very nature seeks out the knowledge of others. A philosopher on the other hand creates knowledge. I find it ironic that I am criticized for not being what would destroy a rising philosopher.
I: Huh? Don’t all philosophers begin as scholars, at least at some level?
N: Yes, and they attain what they need to attain to write their philosophy. Some go back later and do more scholarship to further support their philosophy.
I: I guess the general theory here is that the more scholarship you do, the better the philosophy that is eventually produced. So the criticism of you is that since you haven’t done a lot of scholarship, you haven’t produced a great philosophy.
N: Most scholarship is a waste of time. All philosophy is specific to a culture, the laws of the philosophy are specific and restricted and limited. Once you know what scholarship is valuable to you, you do that scholarship and the rest is ignored. Then you spend your life dealing with idiots who criticize you for ignoring useless material.
I: I see this is a touchy subject with you. Moving right along, what’s the meaning of your Superman?
N: The idea is that God represents placing honor and value in a removed higher power. Thus man becomes diminished and his focus is misplaced. By replacing God with the Superman, man’s energies are focused inward and his object of worship emerges out of himself.
I: So what exactly is the Superman supposed to be defined as?
N: Again, I am no tyrant. I provide the structure for the Superman and the humans then build a reality out of it.
I: How do you respond to the statement that the Superman is an unnecessary reaction to God, a kind of Antithesis that serves more to distance culture from God’s corpse than any kind of positive progress?
N: Distancing culture from God’s corpse IS positive progress. Human culture can only begin anew when a sort of distance of that type is achieved.
I: So in other words, when humans distance themselves from God they no longer need the Superman.
Brian, this one has more innacuracies (though I realize you are going for a fictional interview). Nietzsche was NOT opposed to scholarship. In fact, he was the chair of philology at Basle University before he wrote most of his important books. He only left that position for health reasons (he had stomach problems for most of his life).
The stuff about the Superman is good until the last question. I don’t even know what it is supposed to mean. However, there is no end to the Superman, there are only new ones that overcome old views. Even the Master morality (which didn’t have God really) had to be overcome in the end. Nietzsche is not against Christianity per se. He just thinks it has outlived its usefulness and that we are struggling to overcome it. You hint at that, of course, but you don’t give the part about how Nietzsche does not see Christianity as inherently bad, so much as just past its time.
Not really. I’m going for non-fictional content, although of course the grammar will be inaccurate. I’m also trying to maintain Nietzsche’s mood to an extent.
The guy idolized Goethe and frequently attacked scholarship as being for the dusty and moldy. The most you can say in defense of scholarship was that Nietzsche supported scholarship which led to active truths.
Are you referring to… “So in other words, when humans distance themselves from God they no longer need the Superman.”?
The point of the Superman is power from the earth, power from within humans. This stands in contrast to God, where power is from the heavens and from divinity. The Superman is in Nietzsche’s mind the Antithesis of God.
The reason Nietzsche created the Superman was to be immoral… it was a kind of mockery against God.
Its kind of like when you see something you don’t like and say “I’m going to, I’m going to create JUST THE OPPOSITE!”.
The Superman’s value is tied to opposing God, and it serves no purpose and certainly no value outside of God. So when God goes, so too does the Superman.
LOL. The Superman is no metaphor for Evolution. I would even argue that Nietzsche understands the Superman as being LESS likely to exist, especially under his “mob rule” understanding of current culture.
By worshipping the Superman, Nietzsche was proclaiming the ALLOWANCE for it. Nietzsche’s constant understanding was that the mob (what he called the “herd”) was powerful, certainly more powerful than any human, Superman or otherwise. What Nietzsche constantly attacked was the RIGHT of the mob to destroy Supermen. So he spent a lot of time denouncing the herd and trying to undermine their power.
According to Nietzsche, we should see as he sees, honor the Superman, and therefore encourage its existence.
Actually, Nietzsche thinks Christianity is completely bad. As he said, there is only one Christian, and he died on the cross. Everyone else who calls themselves a Christian is a sham. Nietzsche isn’t the world’s greatest critic of Christianity because he thinks its pretty cool generally but just a bit weak lately.
Nietzsche tried to justify all reality… he had an insane generosity which led to him affirming ALL life. So in that sense and in the sense in which he completely disavowed the concept of regret he supported Christianity. But another part of him denounced all Christianity except for Christ.
The guy idolized Goethe and frequently attacked scholarship as being for the dusty and moldy. The most you can say in defense of scholarship was that Nietzsche supported scholarship which led to active truths.
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Right, but what he denounced was SLOPPY scholarship, not scholarship itself. Goethe was not exactly uneducated, despite his rantings against established scholars. Niether was Nietzsche. Your interview suggests that Nietzsche was NOT a scholar (whether that was your intent or not), and that’s just not true. He WAS a scholar. He just thought he was better at it then others.
Are you referring to… “So in other words, when humans distance themselves from God they no longer need the Superman.”?
The point of the Superman is power from the earth, power from within humans. This stands in contrast to God, where power is from the heavens and from divinity. The Superman is in Nietzsche’s mind the Antithesis of God.
The reason Nietzsche created the Superman was to be immoral… it was a kind of mockery against God.
Its kind of like when you see something you don’t like and say “I’m going to, I’m going to create JUST THE OPPOSITE!”.
The Superman’s value is tied to opposing God, and it serves no purpose and certainly no value outside of God. So when God goes, so too does the Superman.
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I disagree with this. first, the Superman is not immoral…there is not such thing to Nietzsche, at least not in objective terms. He would of course SEEM immoral from a Christian perspective. the Superman is the person who creates a NEW morality out of the tension between master and slave morality (or between slave morality and its opponents, as an alternate interpretation). This is made clear in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil. The Superman creates the morality which will overcome Christianity. That’s true. If that’s what you mean, I agree. However, it isn’t simply the opposite of Christianity. It isn’t a return to Master Morality. Nietzsche has NO idea what the new morality would be. However, he felt he was a leader in the fight against Christianity. He was not, however, a Superman.
In other words, the Superman is someone who is more powerful than other men. At the end of the next great morality, there will again be a need for the Superman to come and overcome it.
LOL. The Superman is no metaphor for Evolution. I would even argue that Nietzsche understands the Superman as being LESS likely to exist, especially under his “mob rule” understanding of current culture.
By worshipping the Superman, Nietzsche was proclaiming the ALLOWANCE for it. Nietzsche’s constant understanding was that the mob (what he called the “herd”) was powerful, certainly more powerful than any human, Superman or otherwise. What Nietzsche constantly attacked was the RIGHT of the mob to destroy Supermen. So he spent a lot of time denouncing the herd and trying to undermine their power.
According to Nietzsche, we should see as he sees, honor the Superman, and therefore encourage its existence.
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I don’t know why you are attributing a claim to evolution to me. I never said the Superman was an evolutionary force. I said he was a CHANGING force. This is critical. Truth changes for Nietzsche. There are two cycles of morality that we have seen (or can remember): master and slave moralities. slave morality is certainly not an evolution from master morality. This isn’t Hegel we are talking about. It was just a reaction to it. Slave morality came out of master morality. In a strange sense, the priests were the Supermen, who were powerful enough to overcome the aristocracy and instill a new morality.
I agree with you about the herd/mob stuff, but I am not sure what you are arguing through it. Of course, the Superman is less likely to come from a mob society. That’s no secret. That’s why Nietzsche hates Christianity so much…it diminishes us. My point is broader…that EVERY morality will eventually need to be overcome as it grows stale and its “truth” is no longer viable. In that sense, the Superman is an eternal figure who unsettles things…who understands that “truth is a woman” and therefore subject to the will. the Superman is just that person who has the ultimate will to power. He isn’t the Antichrist (using that word in Nietzsche’s sense, obviously) though he MAY appear in that form THIS time.
Actually, Nietzsche thinks Christianity is completely bad. As he said, there is only one Christian, and he died on the cross. Everyone else who calls themselves a Christian is a sham. Nietzsche isn’t the world’s greatest critic of Christianity because he thinks its pretty cool generally but just a bit weak lately.
Nietzsche tried to justify all reality… he had an insane generosity which led to him affirming ALL life. So in that sense and in the sense in which he completely disavowed the concept of regret he supported Christianity. But another part of him denounced all Christianity except for Christ.[/quote]
Your quote here is a good one, actually one of my favorites. However, it doesn’t mean there was no such thing as Christianity. It just means that no one really has the complete self hatred to be a full-blown Christian. The Christian morality still dominates. As for your last sentence, I would say he isn’t the world’s greatest critic of Christianity. A Christian can simply agree with him and walk away. he gives NO good reasons for Christians to change their beliefs. You have to already reject slave morality, at least to some degree, in order to agree with him.
The second paragraph though is more my point. It isn’t that he LIKED Christianity. He thought it led to terrible things. However, he saw it as a natural (perhaps inevitable) result of the fall of master morality…which HAD to fall. All great moralities destroy themselves in the end. Platonism (Christianity) was simply the vehicle of Master Morality’s destruction.
Christianity also brought some powerful symbols of the will. It reinvented human power to some degree (even as it subverted it). It produced some of the greatest art ever (from Bach to Michalengelo to Augustine, etc.). It was a powerful movement and I think. He respected that. For proof read through section 16 of Genealogy of Morals.
Nietzsche hated Christianity to be sure, but I think it was more because he SUFFERED from it then that he didn’t respect it. He saw its power as a movement. Unfortunately, the movement itself was tragic. He can’t condemn it in the normal sense however as that would go against his views of the will topower. Christianity IS a movement of the will, a will of slaves against their masters.
Part of Nietzsche wanted to not be a scholar at all. He had a strain shared by German culture of the time of Anti-Intellectualism. He held a fondness for the Upright, Naive, Simple, Honest man.
Nietzsche was denouncing scholarship without ambition, or scholarship without goal, or scholarship without applied effect. His “dusty and moldy” comments were directed at scholars who hole themselves up and accumulate knowledge which they do nothing with.
I didn’t say that. Here’s what I said…
“The reason Nietzsche created the Superman was to be immoral… it was a kind of mockery against God.”
What created the Superman (Nietzsche) created it IN ORDER to be immoral… its creative reason was Immorality against God.
This means that its value is tied to God, and once it achieves its goal (distancing from God) it is no longer valuable.
Or rather, the point is becoming (not being) the Superman. Once you’ve become it, you’re ready to move on.
Hmm… Christianity was already crumbling during Nietzsche’s time. What exactly is left to overcome?
Also, I don’t think its possible to overcome something which holds no value to you. Overcoming is by nature a war. Why fight against something that you don’t respect?
Nietzsche destroyed Christianity in his writings, but as I’ve said before he was a far better destroyer than he was creator. The Superman was part of his creative efforts (the next step in culture) but since it is tied to God, its really a fool’s game. God was already dead BEFORE Nietzsche (finished off by Darwin after centuries of decay).
Nietzsche’s great weakness was that he was tied to the past, and specifically tied to God-aligned culture. He never could create…
Anarchism (which rose during and after Nietzsche’s time) is a cultural cleansing which allows for creation. So if the idea is that a new culture would be created after the tide of Anarchy, it makes no sense to associate the Superman with OVERCOMING Christianity since Christianity would have to be overcome prior to Anarchy.
Our understanding is fundamentally different. I see God as having decayed and then been finished off by Darwin. During Nietzsche’s time, there wasn’t anything to overcome regarding God. Christianity was emotionally dead during and even more so after Nietzsche’s time, but it was again not so much overcome as simply decayed. The rise of Aristotle in the 13th century onward, the Corrupt Church, the Renaissance, the Luther rebellion, the Enlightenment… all signs of God’s decay. So Nietzsche isn’t so much trying to OVERCOME God as trying to forget God. I guess you could say overcoming the MEMORY of God and Christianity, perhaps. Or maybe just teaching people about God in order for them to understand God’s and Christianity’s decay.
One of the things about Nietzsche was that he built up Christianity so much that it almost seemed as if it had value… he had to essentially recreate Christianity in order to, as you say, overcome it.
A different man would have gotten out the broom and dustpan, collected the remnants, and walked into the dawn.
In proof of this, I offer you the Madman with his Lantern. The Madman is a Nietzsche-figure, cavorting among the late Enlightenment figures with their staunch rationality and God-mockery.
The whole point of this is to RECREATE God in order to grant it value and thus enable an overcoming. The Madman wants to create God in order to have it be killed, The figures the Madman is talking to want to deny God.
The idea behind this is that Nietzsche feels that a decayed God is not sufficient for the culture that succeeds it, and that a denied God renders past history confusing if nothing else (why spend millennia worshipping God and then centuries watching it decay if its not existent in the first place?)
Its what I consider to be Nietzsche’s greatest accomplishment, but it also shows why he’ll never be able to create. Think about what “God is dead” accomplishes…
#1: It justifies God-aligned culture. Unlike how Secularists see God (as nothing at all and thus God-aligned humans as total fools) Nietzsche understands God as existent. God is dead isn’t a radical statement because of the “dead” part… according to Secularists God never lived and therefore was ALWAYS “dead”… its a radical statement because it implies that God once lived… that God is something that exists, once living and then a corpse.
#2: It justifies Secular culture. Without “God is dead”, what exactly is the justification for spending centuries of culture attacking God? Attacking something that you deny has to be the hallmark of insanity I suppose. But understanding that God exists grants value to the centuries of attacks.
“However, there is no end to the Superman, there are only new ones that overcome old views. Even the Master morality (which didn’t have God really) had to be overcome in the end.”
That’s pretty much Evolution, is it not? The new overcomes the old, working toward some higher logical goal.
Nietzsche considers his morality superior regardless of whether or not it overcomes within culture Christianity. I suppose he would say that people can only support a culture that they are good enough for. This does not mean better cultures could exist for… better people.
Nietzsche does not mean that whoever wins deserves to win. He often detests the brutal and the empty militaristic spirit, even though (and probably ESPECIALLY due to) the effectiveness of that in strongarming a culture.
The Superman is, as you have already said, a MORAL force.
Wagner was powerful. Wagner was a tyrant. Why wasn’t Wagner the Superman? Because he was immoral. It has nothing to do with power, although it has a lot to do with power under the right context (a culture that can support that morality).
Now, Nietzsche definitely supports fighting to make the Superman (and other aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy) a reality, but he is all too aware (after centuries of depressing Christianity) that culture is not necessarily good, and often bad cultures OVERCOME good ones.
As Nietzsche himself said, he does not believe in Evolution with respect to culture. Human reality is only as good as humans themselves can achieve. Better reality ALWAYS does not exist… since there is always reality that only exists for better humans than those who exist. Human limitation, after all.
My understanding of Christianity is that it emerged out of the lack of understanding that people had of Christ and of the mistaken killing of Christ. Christianity is really nothing more than a revenge against Rome.
So this overcoming is really pretty weak, just as an overcoming is which results from strongarming. Not all overcomings are created equal I guess you could say.
I see things more along the lines of Roman/Christian morality rather than Master/Slave… the former is much more clearcut to me. And I don’t appreciate the analogy of Roman = Master Christian = Slave although I’d say there is a relationship there.
I agree that Nietzsche in his younger (and stupider) years pushed his Will to Power, and that he meant something close to what you are saying. He changed in later years to an understanding closer to that which I am presenting here.
Power is strictly the ability to create reality. But that is of little value, since any reality can be created. A nuclear war could occur which would wipe humanity from the planet. Does that mean that humanity was OVERCOME by its extinction? Or maybe an alien race (assuming this silliness for the sake of argument) comes and annihilates humans. Wow… they OVERCAME us. Then they go back after their fun sporting event and worms rule the earth. Wonderful… overcoming is simply fantastic.
Overcoming is only valuable if the new reality is GREATER than the old reality. And things like brutality, annihilation, etc… IMMORAL acts corrupt the virtue of overcoming. Only when used wisely… only when accompanied by morality and wisdom does Overcoming WORK.
Nietzsche was differentiating Christ from the imitators and saying that no imitator could hope to be successful. I suppose the argument is, then why bother trying.
Ahh… he attacks slave morality very effectively I’d say. Any Christian who agrees with him isn’t really a Christian.
From Human, All Too Human after speaking of errors in the thought of Christians: “Thus: a definite false psychology, a certain kind of fantasy in the interpretation of motives and experiences in the necessary presupposition for becoming a Christian and for feeling the need of redemption. With the insight into this aberration of reason and imagination one ceases to be a Christian.”
There are many of these types of Nietzschean statements.
Hmm… certainly Christianity USED Plato to support itself in some regards, but to say Plato is aligned with Slave Morality is silly. Plato could have been used in many ways and only in conjunction with other factors (like Christ and the NT writers) was he then associated with Christianity.
So I’d say Christianity destroyed Master Morality rather than Plato destroyed it or it self-destructed.
If Plato was told about what his philosophy was used for after his death do you think he would have approved?
Art can’t be easily compared from culture to culture. Its value is largely insular so its difficult if not impossible to say on a cross-cultural basis what the “greatest art” is.
Nietzsche didn’t completely dismiss Christianity by any means, but he didn’t respect it as much as you are implying.
One of our major disagreements again is that you are using the youthful Nietzsche and I am using the older Nietzsche (and my own progressions) with respect to culture.
I’m going to quite quoting our earlier messages (so we can start over with the quoting!) because they are getting too long. To clarify, I MAINLY using Genealogy of Morals (which is NOT young Nietzsche…it was published in 1887) to make my points, since we are discussing slave/master morality. I’m not sure why you don’t like that distinction, since it is Nietzsche’s. The Rome/Christian conflict is certainly where slave morality arose, but Rome is not where master morality arose. Master morality is most clearly exemplified by Homer, according to Nietzsche. Certainly the Romans were part of that tradition, but many were already being corrupted by Platonism by then.
As for my connection between Plato and Christianity, Nietzsche writes : “But the fight against Plato or, to speak more clearly and for ‘the people,’ the fight against the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millenia–for Christianity is Platonism ‘for the people’–has created in Europe a magnificent tension the like of which had never yet existed on earth; with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals” (from the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil…1885). In fact, this quote also sums up nicely what I mean about the good that Nietzsche thinks might come out of the decay of Christianity. conflict is critical to Nietzsche because it produces new movements. And NEW does not mean better. I think that’s what you thought I meant when you attributed evolution to me. I said old movements are overcome by new movements. That’s not evolution…it’s just change. Unfortunately, so many ads nowadays use “new” as synonymous with “better,” but that’s not how I am using it. I just mean more recent.
Christianity is CLEARLY a Platonic movement because it relates to another world that is better than this one. One that we cannot see here, but MIGHT see when we die. THIS world is illusion…or at least is only temporary, and thus less real than the other world. That’s Plato and Christianity. Idealism is Plato and Christianity. The GOOD is Plato AND Christianity. It’s all the same thing in the end. I can cite many other passages if you want more proof, but Nietzsche is very clear that Platonism, Buddhism, and Christianity are all basically the same, morally speaking.
But I still don’t understand how you can say that Christianity has been destroyed. Look around us. The madman parable MIGHT be about the Enlightenment, but it could just as easily be about someone who recognizes that God is no longer a real force in the world, i.e. is no longer followed by people who profess to believe in him. The madman KNOWS God is dead, but the people he is talking to do not know this. They aren’t deniers of God. They are deniers of God’s death. But they are also hypocrites. They don’t see what the madman sees…first that God is dead, even to them, but second (and more important) that God’s death leaves a darkness that must be filled. I’m not sure where you are getting the claim that the madman wants to recreate God. I don’t see anything about that in the parable. Instead, he seems to be saying that WITHOUT God, we don’t have a center anymore. The Earth is unchained from the Sun…things are no longer connected and orderly. God gave us comfort…the madman asks where we will get that comfort now. Being without God is NOT comforting. It’s terrifying. Suddenly, Yeats is right: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” We can’t go on unless we REPLACE God with something else.
Of course, you admit this to some extent when you say that Nietzsche wants to create something new but cannot. He cannot because Christianity still lingers in him. He doesn’t have the will to escape it. Christianity is NOT gone. It lingers in our Protestant morality. It lingers in claims that “everyone is equal,” or worse that “everyone is special.” Those are Christian claims. God loves us all, even crack whores and rapists. We’re all special in some way. We’re all important. It lingers in our repressed sexuality. It lingers in our guilt and in our pity. Pity is a Christian ideal. It lingers in our desire to keep the rich from becoming too rich, to keep anyone from thinking he or she is REALLY special, really different, really better than other people. It lingers in our belief in a soul because the soul is a Christian invention.
But I think you are absolutely right in saying that God should be dead post-Darwin and post-Nietzsche. In fact, I am not sure either of those people were even necessary. Deism is just a preliminary form of atheism and it has been around for a LONG time. Many of the U.S. founding fathers were deists. However, look around and you will see many people still worshiping God and still thinking sex is dirty, even evil. In fact, you will still find people using the term evil. That’s what I mean by saying that Christianity is far from dead.
As for a real Christian denying Nietzsche, I don’t think so. Here’s why: Nietzsche is saying that slave morality (e.g. Christianity, his focus) praises people for being weak, poor, unattractive, unhappy, impotent. Just read the beatitudes and you will see that that’s EXACTLY what Christianity is about, and it doesn’t deny it…it affirms it. A Christian can simply say, yep! Nietzsche is right. That’s what we praise. In fact, I think a real Christian HAS to do that. They may not like the label of “slave” but the morality is there. Of course, they DO have to deny that following these ideals is bad for mankind. They certainly deny that, and they certainly deny that God is dead. I only mean to suggest that they can agree with Nietzsche on what it means to be a Christian without having to then reject Christianity. That’s why I think he isn’t necessarily a good critic of the faith. He won’t really convince many true Christians (if there are any left) to change their views. I think Darwin might have been better at doing that.
I haven’t studied the derivation of slave/master morality very much, but why would you say Christianity birthed slave morality? Looking back to early God aspects like the Old Testament, it was still true that all it took to gain value was to worship God. Despite the fact that this predated Plato.
Jesus and the New Testament definitely took things to the next level… an extreme rendition you could say.
LOL. I don’t mean to be too harsh but Nietzsche might be getting carried away with Dionysian excess here.
Nietzsche ALWAYS looked for a way to make something glorious. Even if he in fact succeeds that hardly implies that the thing itself had anything to do with it.
Answer me this… given that Nietzsche served as a Priest for humanity, as a balm against the pain of the death of God, as a HOPE for humanity, does he have any CHOICE in saying that the present situation is a great one?
The guy is like someone who walks over to a depressed person and does WHATEVER HE CAN to cheer him up. I don’t take those kind of words at face value.
The very fact that Nietzsche had to do so MUCH is testament to the weakness of what he was trying to affect.
Does a strong man need help lifting? Does a rich man need money?
How can Nietzsche be promoting Master Morality and at the same time be speaking to “the people”?
Nietzsche seemed throughout his writing to be a very desperate man. A very despondant man. A man who thought in many ways that he was the only hope. A man in many ways who thought he was the next version of Jesus Christ. Ecce Homo!
Isn’t this a condemnation of the world? To assume that the world needs such an extreme human… such an extreme revolution?
Isn’t a true celebration of the world to say “I need do nothing! I play upon the earth, this glorious earth!”
Tell me this. After reading Nietzsche, do you think of humanity as more pathetic or more great?
After reading Nietzsche, do you think of Nietzsche as more pathetic or more great?
Who is Nietzsche serving?
Well, Evolution is change toward some goal or reason or focus (biological evolution for example is change toward greater survivability and greater reproducability). So apparently you are claiming that change happens (at least culturally) without any goal or reason or focus.
I probably agree with you, or at least I can’t come up with a good argument against. There probably isn’t any higher logic to cultural change as long as you use a big enough time scale.
Assuming you are talking about Plato’s Forms, all of earth reality are reflections of those.
In Christian reality, God’s ideals (heaven) are SEPERATE from earth reality. There isn’t a built-in relationship.
Plato doesn’t have an antithesis to the Good, for example. There is no Hell in Plato’s reality.
So again, while I agree that Christianity used Plato to build something, they added many non-Plato flavors and Plato would not have supported Christianity. He would have said… “Um, this isn’t what I had in mind…”
Its very much like Nazism and Nietzsche. Just because something uses something else that doesn’t mean that it HONORS that other thing.
That’s Christianity. Plato doesn’t say you will achieve the Form upon death. That’s another one of the “added flavors”. I suppose Plato would say that remarkable humans can achieve the Form during life and the rest of the humans remain ignorant.
Also, Plato does not say the world is illusion but rather than the world is a pale imitation of the Forms. But at least they ARE an imitation. Heaven might be attainable but as you say, its only attainable UPON death which is a critical distinction between Plato and Christianity (and illustrates the horror of Christianity).
Christianity is Good and Evil. Plato is Good and The Reflected Good.
Nietzsche said he admired Plato, and not because he was “powerful”. He didn’t say the same about Christianity.
Plato is Plato. Christianity is the abuse of Plato. Anything can be used well or poorly, and who can say what would have happened if Plato had been used well?
Spiritually, Christianity is dead. I guess you could say the Christians of today are zombies, or misguided fools.
It isn’t about the Enlightenment, but it addresses itself to Scientists, to late Enlightenment thinkers who have a certain conception of God (that it never has existed except as irrelevant fantasy).
The Madman is the one who DOES understand God as a real force… something can’t die unless it lived. The men he is addressing deny God wholesale. The whole point is to render God existent so that his murder can have meaning.
The Enlightenment figures splutter and say “God was not murdered! God never lived in the first place! God is a fantasy and we just DISPELLED the fantasy with our Science, with our Critical Minds, with our Cynicism, with our Materialism!”
The radical aspect of the Madman is that he introduces God as SOMETHING THAT CAN BE MURDERED. The Enlightenment thinkers deny this.
No. The Enlightenment thinkers speak with mockery…
“Have you lost him then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated? - thus they shouted and laughed”.
They are mocking the Madman who said “I am looking for God”… the Madman understands God as existent (and then killed) and the Enlightenment thinkers deny God’s existence (and therefore deny the POSSIBILITY of God’s death).
The Madman is no Atheist. The Madman is an Ex-Christian who have overcome his Christianity by destroying the Christian god.
They aren’t hypocrits. But the reality which emerges from denying God’s existence is horrifying… you have to deny culture.
You are right here… with the statement that God exists and then that God was killed, the “darkness that must be filled” emerges as a truth. This truth can never come from denying the existence of God.
Prior to Nietzsche, there was the Christian view of God (existent, a good ideal, etc) and the Scientific view of God (fantasy, irrelevant, non-existent).
Nietzsche (through the Madman) presents a THIRD view of God (existent, a BAD ideal, an ideal which was killed by culture).
Nietzsche is criticizing the Scientific view of God. He is introducing a new paradigm regarding God.
All of that derives only from the third view, yes.
As I said, the decay of God has a long history, beginning in the 13th century. Deism is a step along the way.
I understand, but Nietzsche would say those people are irrelevant and thus their views don’t have the power to make God live.
No, a Christian would say not that those people are praised, but rather that those people are accepted. A non-Christian can easily make a connection of course.
I mostly disagree with that. Christians aren’t exactly the most knowledgeable humans around, and I have a feeling that Nietzsche’s words would be news to most of them. Dealing with this new knowledge would render many of them non-Christians.
Your idea of the Christian as someone who actually UNDERSTANDS himself is flawed.
I don’t read many Christian texts, but I haven’t seen anyone analyze Christianity as effectively as Nietzsche did. So I’ve never seen a better critic. And again, my words on Nietzsche “deconverting” Christians rests on the understanding that many Christians are ignorant of the nature of their religion.
I think on the Christian (modern Christians) issue, we are talking around each other. You are talking about people who claim to be Christians, but don’t understand their own religion. I think that is the large majority of so-called Christians too. However, I am talking about people who REALLY are Christians, or at least are really trying to be. To say that there aren’t any Christians that understand their own religion is just wrong. There are some sincere Christians out there. I’m not sure why you are saying Christianity merely accepts that weakness, poverty, etc. exist. It does praise those qualities. When Christ says, “blessed are the meak for they shall inheret the earth” I don’t know why you would take that as anything but praise. When he says that it is easier to pass a camel through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, I don’t see how that isn’t praising poverty, or AT LEAST condeming worldly wealth. The history of Christianity is all about the denial of worldly things. That’s the master/slave distinction, and it is CRITICAL to understanding Nietzsche. If you haven’t read the first part of the Genealogy of Morals, you should do so. It will clarify what I mean. Nietzsche is the one who says that what is good to Christians is weakness instead of strength. If you disagree with that, you are disagreeing with him (though I agree with him on this).
Here’s a quote to show what I mean:
“It was the Jews who, with awe-inspiring consistency, dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation (good=noble=powerful=beautiful=happy=beloved of God) and to hang on to this inversion with their teeth, the teeth of the most abysmal hatred (the hatred of impotence), saying 'the wretched alone are the good; the por, impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God, blessedness is for them alone–and you, the powerful and noble, are on the contrary the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity” (section 7 of Genealogy of Morals, first essay).
That’s what he thinks the slave revolt in morality did. It turned all the standards around. And NO, it wasn’t present in the Old Testament. It was a decidedly Christian movement. The Old Testament doesn’t have these values. It values war and power. Read it again. Think of the heroes: Sampson, Moses, Abraham…all strong or powerful or rich. Now think of the heroes in the New Testament: lepers and whores, the sick and the poor. Blessed are they, the New Testament says. The Old Testament doesn’t do that.
As an aside, be careful. You seem to be eager to attribute things to me that I haven’t said. I don’t think you are doing it on purpose though. For example, I NEVER said that Nietzsche wanted master morality to come back. He doesn’t. He doesn’t think it is possible in the wake of the slave revolt. He thinks the new morality will be NEW…it will be something the world hasn’t seen yet. It isn’t a return to old moralities that are long dead and long irrelevant.
Your Plato points are right. I didn’t mean to suggest Plato and Christianity were the same in every way. I only mean that you can see the Genesis of Christian ideas in Plato…in the other worldliness that Plato has. YES, Plato thinks this world participates in the forms, but this world is not as real as the other world as far as Plato is concerned. It isn’t as good as the other world. And the part about seeing the forms after death was just a referrence to the possibility that Socrates mentions on his deathbed. He says that he hopes his questions will all be answered and he will know the world as the gods know it…and know the forms themselves finally. That message is one of the earliest attempts (especially in Greece) to suggest that the afterlife might actually be better than this life.
We actually agree on a lot of this, but we approach Nietzsche a bit differently. I also get the impression that you haven’t read the Genealogy. If that is true, I recommend it highly. I think it is his best and most clear work. It is about the master/slave morality distinction and clarifies how it is really Christianity that finalizes the revolt (though you are right to suggest that there are elements in the Old Testament, especially after the Jewish enslavement in Babylon).
The context is of existent Christianity. You are saying Christianity exists because there are Christians around. I am saying most of those Christians are ignorant of Christianity and thus Christianity doesn’t really exist (at least as a powerful force).
I think very few TRUE Christians exist currently.
Even Christ had contradictions. He obviously had vast ambitions so I’m not sure he was following his own precepts.
But yes of course you are right about what underlies Christianity. True Christianity ;).
I agree with all of that.
Hold on there. The Old Testament was about saying that no matter WHO you are, God is above you. It may have showed strong people, but that was only to highlight even THEIR relative weakness in relation to God. It was a treatise that amounted to “everyone is weak in relation to God”. It allowed for the understanding that weakness is actually good, although it didn’t straightforwardly present it.
The Old Testament attacks personal pride. It attacks personal ambition. It attacks anything that is frowned upon by God.
True, but the Old Testament set the stage for that.
Here’s a question for you…
If everything God opposes is bad and everything God supports is good, and WHAT God supports is moral in nature, then isn’t the only human value morality and previous values like (non-moral) strength and power rendered irrelevant? Does it require power to be moral? Does it require strength except the obeying strength of morality to be moral?
Actually, Nietzsche would be highly pleased if Master Morality came back. This does not however imply that he thinks such a thing is a realistic possibility.
Oh sure, just as you can see the genesis of Nazism in Nietzsche. But I think in order to attribute a movement to someone that movement has to HONOR the thing, not just use it for its own purposes. I wouldn’t be very happy if some of my words were twisted and something I didn’t like then claimed to be inspired by me.
The real question is all such cases is “Does the inspirer support the movement?”
True, but Plato would say that the point of life is to access the forms in order to improve life. Not to ESCAPE life by means of the forms. The Forms to Plato are something that enables the world to be remade in its image.
The world to be remade in its image… this is NOTHING like what Christianity presents.
LOL. A man hopes many things on his deathbed, few of them realistic. On his deathbed comes all the regrets, all the lost ambitions and lost dreams, all the sweetness of his loves. If a man walked the earth as if he was on his deathbed he would be deemed insane.
Of course he hopes… but to then treat that as a realistic suggestion is nothing other than idiocy.
Here’s a radical and highly beneficial suggestion… ignore all deathbed words whenever you cannot understand them.
Yes, that is true. I am into other things at the moment however.
Hold on there. The Old Testament was about saying that no matter WHO you are, God is above you. It may have showed strong people, but that was only to highlight even THEIR relative weakness in relation to God. It was a treatise that amounted to “everyone is weak in relation to God”. It allowed for the understanding that weakness is actually good, although it didn’t straightforwardly present it.
The Old Testament attacks personal pride. It attacks personal ambition. It attacks anything that is frowned upon by God.
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Yes, you are right. But it doesn’t do it to the extent that the New Testament does. Like I said…the Old Testament has elements of slave morality. It just isn’t as refined. The Greeks were against hubris too, but the heroes still showed a love of power. The Old Testament still favors war (real, physical war) as a solution to some problems. The New Testament doesn’t. Again, I only mean to say that the Old Testament isn’t as consistent about praising slave virtues. But you are right that the hierarchy itself demands some slave virtues to be present. Still, the Jews were still masters in many ways, as evidenced by the passages immediately following the Ten Commandments (which give commandments on how to treat slaves, etc.). That should answer your question too…yes, an omnipotent God renders human strength irrelevant, in the grand scheme. But still strength is praised in the Old Testament…it’s just strength given by God. But it is still physical. There is no real sense of the soul in the Old Testament (or even an afterlife, for that matter). Those elements really don’t come (as we know them today) until the New Testament, and the subsequent scholarship done on it.
Actually, Nietzsche would be highly pleased if Master Morality came back. This does not however imply that he thinks such a thing is a realistic possibility.
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Yes, I misworded that. I didn’t mean to say want…I meant to say he doesn’t think it can come back.
Oh sure, just as you can see the genesis of Nazism in Nietzsche. But I think in order to attribute a movement to someone that movement has to HONOR the thing, not just use it for its own purposes. I wouldn’t be very happy if some of my words were twisted and something I didn’t like then claimed to be inspired by me.
The real question is all such cases is “Does the inspirer support the movement?”
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I don’t think so, and here is why. The inspirer doesn’t have to support what he inspires in order to BE the inspiration, or even to have elements of the new movement in his own. Plato may not have meant to inspire Christianity, but he still did so. You can never know what your ideas/life will mean to others, but that doesn’t diminish the affect. Christianity goes beyond Plato, but it still seems to be part of the same kind of thinking. Nazism does not. It borrows from a radical misinterpretation of Nietzsche (as you and I have both said elsewhere). It is inspired indirectly. Actually, it might be more fair to say Nazism came from several sources, and then incorporated Nietzsche because he was popular (or had ideas that could be twisted). As you probably know, the Nazi movement used propoganda to twist everything German into some precursor or call to Nazism.
And lots of people begin movements without realizing them. I am really talking about a change of thinking when I say Plato starts the Christian movement. I mean to say that without Plato, Christianity would not have gotten anywhere, and almost certainly would not have had the elements that Paul added to it (which is really most of Christianity if you think about it). Before Plato, people weren’t really thinking about another world that is in some way better than this one. Even the Jews seemed to be thinking that the better world that God promised them would be here on Earth.
True, but Plato would say that the point of life is to access the forms in order to improve life. Not to ESCAPE life by means of the forms. The Forms to Plato are something that enables the world to be remade in its image.
The world to be remade in its image… this is NOTHING like what Christianity presents.
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yes, that was his intent. Well, sort of. He didn’t think this world would ever perfectly resemble the forms. That’s impossible because this world always changes and the forms never do. But he DID think we should try to understand the forms and make this world better. However, that suggests that the “other world” (for lack of a better term) is superior, and that this world is illusion (or less real…permanent and real mean the same thing to Plato, so since this world changes it can’t be completely real…it has lots of Nothing in it).
So Plato doesn’t directly suggest we must go to the other world…but he DOES suggest that we can’t find truth here…we can only find it in the forms, which is only accessible through reason and not the senses. Reason gets us to that “other world” while the senses leave us trapped here. As for your point about Christianity, do you really think it doesn’t want to make this world more like heaven? Recite the Lord’s Prayer, and listen to the last line. In any case, both philosophies suggest that what we see is not reality, or at least not the whole thing (or even the better part).
LOL. A man hopes many things on his deathbed, few of them realistic. On his deathbed comes all the regrets, all the lost ambitions and lost dreams, all the sweetness of his loves. If a man walked the earth as if he was on his deathbed he would be deemed insane.
Of course he hopes… but to then treat that as a realistic suggestion is nothing other than idiocy.
Here’s a radical and highly beneficial suggestion… ignore all deathbed words whenever you cannot understand them.
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I understand what he meant…and it was said in a DIALOGUE…not actually BY Socrates. Plato wasn’t even there. It is also said in the Apology, though, if you need another reference because you don’t believe things said on a deathbed. Some would say that deathbed confessions are the best kind…ask a police officer. People who are dying are often the best witnesses. Finally, to suggest that Socrates would make things up to comfort himself as he was dying does a great disservice to him. His strength is precisely that he does NOT do such things. That’s how Plato portrayed him. You seem quite willing to dismiss any quotes that don’t fit with your view of a philosopher. Sometimes, they are being ironic, or they are getting carried away. But they do EDIT their works. They tend to mean what they say, since it isn’t just a conversation.
It doesn’t really matter though, since Socrates/Plato says that he doesn’t actually KNOW if there is an afterlife at all. It was just a side point. The main point is that the forms aren’t here in this world.
