The thought that the nazi’s ran a tight ship is a sailor-boy’s wet dream, not based on reality. The only reason they lost the war (which they might very well have won) was that Hitler was too sloppy to be commander in chief. For example, he overslept with 6 hours on the morning of D-day, so no command could go out for reenforcements at the beach.
He sent his soldiers to winter Russia without coats, because he thought he would inflame them with his psychic heat. The sloppiest bunch of the lot, with a chain of command more defective and orders more arbitrary than any free-the-panda-smokers-hopers club of hippy-activist. The west would probably be plague infected, the last traces of culture rotting away if the corporate-facists had given up and left the bounty to the dreamers as you would have liked.
Capitalism is the most tightly ran ship since the absolute rule of the Egyptian priest-kings. Try to imagine a mob of drunks accomplishing in Washington what they di on a yearly basis in Rome - or in Berlin in '89 and in Moscow in '91. Absurd. Why do you think rap music propagates the most hopeless forms of ethnic depravity? Do you think it is because of freedom of expression? Our commander in chief doesn’t have to kill anyone looking the other way - nobody wants to look another way.
Read section IV of the Will to Power. A lot more relevant to controlling the hearts of man than Marx on Feurbach.
Ah, all memories are selective, but mine is especially selective. Well, that may or may not be, in any case there is nothing I can do about it - the selection occurs wholly unconsciously.
I did not say you were disturbed; now that’s sloppy (reading). I said that your behaviour was disturbing - to me.
Now for something else: Zarathustra’s reason for declaring all gods dead. This is not the same as his, and Nietzsche’s own, reason for declaring God dead (which is that the Christian God has become unbelievable).
“To repeat: how many new gods [Götter] are still possible!- Zarathustra himself, to be sure, is merely an old atheist: he believes neither in old nor new gods. Zarathustra says he would [believe in a God who could dance]; but Zarathustra will not- Do not misunderstand him.
The type of God after the type of creative spirits, of “great men.””
[WP 1038.]
I edited my post Sauwelios. To be short: I have no need for your biblification of Nietzsche. But I’m sure you can make some money of it - ‘Nietzsche for the Moon-sick’ or ‘Revelations of a Rabid God’
Who knows you could then afford a retreat to actual mountains, breathe clean air, and maybe understand something of the higher man.
Go on, continue making your assertions, and presenting a selective reading of Nietzsche. You can ignore my rebuttals of those I may make when I come across them.
By the way, when I want to add something to a post I already made, I simply quote it (entire, or just the relevant passage(s)), and then make a new post of my addendum. I think this is to be preferred above editing your post (except for making minor corrections to it, such as typo’s and spelling errors), as it does not break the chronological order of the thread.
Well there are endless theories as to what caused the loss of the war. Probably the biggest deciding event was the decoy radio transmission regarding the target beachs for the allied ships waiting off the coast. The Nazis were fooled into believing that the heaviest attacks would take place where they really wouldn’t after intercepting the false transmission.
They reinforced the wrong defenses along the coast line. Himmler, bless his soul…was a damn good general if I may say, but his day had come.
I have demonstrated with perfect clarity why odium is not necessary. It is a means to separates one from the herd. When one is allready on a mountaintop, there is no need for odium. You hate, therefore are not on a mountaintop. Is this not clear reasoning?
Let me make it even more clear: why does Nietzsche go grow wings to soar away when he feels odium? Because he wants to be free from that odium, so he can be his glorious self.
It is ridiculous to preach odium. Hate and disgust is something one feels instinctively when coming across something that threatens the expression of the self. Odium is a means to self expression, not an end.
I clearly see why you identify with Nietzsche’s odium. So do I. So does every creative being. So are most things in Nietzsche - that is his genius. I challenge you to show me something in Nietzsche I have not understood.
The point is that they were hotheaded maniacs, and hotheaded maniacs do not run tight ships. Hitler had no thought. Neither did Stalin. Both were plebs. Roosevelt was an intellectual and Churchill was a thinker. He knew the dialectic process. That made him a more powerful commander than Hitler and Stalin, who believed in absolutes, like vulgar men of the mob.
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.†- Churchill
By the way, there is a difference between hating and loathing. Horace’s odium is loathing. It is a question of looking up against or looking down upon.
Now, as I do not literally live on a mountaintop, I come across people whom I loathe. Perhaps I even come across people whom I hate (i.e., who inflame in me the hatred of myself); but these are not the same people.
“Catiline—the form of pre-existence of every Caesar.—”
[Twilight, Skirmishes, 45.]
Indeed: “I loathe thee; and I hate loathing.”
Oh, so the selves of those wallowing in the mire are simply not threatened?
“Though Zarathustra avoids it, his speech [Of the Flies in the Market-Place] provokes he disturbing question: what kind of delicate creature is this potential superman who allows himself to be driven from society by flies?”
[Peter Berkowitz, Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist, page 169.]
I think it is you who identify me overly with Nietzsche’s odium. Anyway, I will accept your challenge. Please explain the second proposition of Nietzsche’s Decree Against Christianity, which he did at the end of The Antichristian:
“Every participation in divine service is an assassination attempt on public morality. One should be more severe toward Protestants than toward Catholics, more severe toward liberal Protestants than toward the orthodox. The criminal character of a Christian increases when he approaches knowledge [die Wissenschaft]. The criminal of criminals is consequently the philosopher.”
Chuckle, so move to China, Cuba or North Korea. They live with no freedoms, no posting your thoughts.
At the moment I wish all the Marxists would move to another land, I enjoy my freedoms, but you seem afraid to claim that you enjoy yours and prefer control, totalitarian dictatorships.
Supporting genocidal maniacs, this is a new low for you.
Chuckle, it was more than the decoy that lost the war, the two fronts, the Russian winter, added with the fact that we cut their supply lines, go gas. Can’t run a conventional war without gas.
As religion becomes more iberal and less an identification with the church, it’s focus shifts from obedience to a centralized political authority (the pope in the case of Catholicism) to an increasinglly uncontrollable and unverifyable authority of God in oneself - it’s ultimate consequence in (the likes of) Spinoza, who rejects all influence from outside as coming from God, arguing that the only holy law man can know is what his body dictates. As God becomes more an object of experience and less of worship, morality grows from public to private. Secular law becomes irrelevant: crime.
I don’t support it. I don’t support anything really. However I would bet that the population explosion that has occured since the fifties, and the increase of famine and poverty in the undeveloped primitive countries, as well as at home in this “battle of consumer classes”, wouldn’t be happening at such a rate and with such momentum, now, if WW2 ended differently.
This doesn’t involve my opinion. I don’t care about politics. Hitlers philosophical ideals were silly, but his political ideologies shared a consistency with many aspects of marxism. National Socialism is an innovation from marxism because it is a historical materialism and is therefore grounded in communism.
There is nothing “wrong” with genocide, but this doesn’t mean that it is necessary either.
I am no Kantian. I am a Consequentialist-Pragmatist-Isicist.
…and remember, the ocean is the ultimate solution.
The key to understanding this whole passage is the sentence, “The criminal character of a Christian increases when he approaches knowledge [die Wissenschaft].” In the first, most obvious place, approaching knowledge is criminal from the perspective of Christianity: man’s first step toward knowledge was Original Sin.
“Has the famous story that stands at the beginning of the Bible really been understood—the story of God’s hellish fear of science [die Wissenschaft]?.. It has not been understood. This priestly book par excellence begins, as is fitting, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he knows only one great danger, consequently “God” knows only one great danger.”
[The Antichristian, section 48.]
As I said, from a Christian perspective it is criminal to approach knowledge. But what has Nietzsche to do with Christian perspectives? It is not criminal, from Nietzsche’s perspective - which is, needless to say, anti-Christian -, to approach knowledge; it is criminal to approach knowledge and be a Christian…
“Every practice of every moment, every instinct, every valuation that is translated into action is today anti-Christian: what a miscarriage of falseness must modern man be, that he is not ashamed to be called a Christian in spite of all this! — — —”
[ibid., section 38.]
The philosopher, then - philosophy being the mother of the sciences -, is the most anti-Christian man. If he calls himself a Christian, he is really the criminal of criminals.
“Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say that philosophy has been corrupted by theologians’ blood. The Protestant parson is the grandfather of German philosophy; Protestantism itself, its peccatum originale [original sin]. Definition of Protestantism: the partial paralysis of Christianity—and of reason…”
[ibid., section 10.]
So it is the Protestant’s half-heartedness that Nietzsche finds offensive.
The above passage contains an autobiographical allusion: Nietzsche’s own grandfather (and father) was a Protestant parson. This is why Zarathustra says that his “blood is related to theirs” [Of the Priests].
Nietzsche originally intended The Antichristian to be the first part of a four-part work, The Revaluation of All Values, which would become his crowning achievement. The second part was initially intended to bear the title “The Misosopher”. We clearly see a pattern here: Christian - Antichristian; philosopher - misosopher. This pattern continues in the intended title of the third book: The Immoralist.
I think Nietzsche meant “philosopher” here to mean “lover of truth” (as he repeatedly translated it). A misosopher, then, is a hater of truth. This “truth” is the truth aimed at by the truthfulness which was the stinger with which the scorpion Christianity killed itself: the moral imperative “Thou shalt not deceive anyone, not even thyself”. This “truth” is nihilistic truth: Nietzsche later changed the intended title of the second book of the Revaluation to “The Free Spirit. Critique of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement”. Note, though, that the order is: first The Antichristian, then The Misosopher: there is no going back to the lies of Christianity:
“Ultimately, it is a matter of the end to which one lies. That “holy” ends are lacking in Christianity is my objection to its means. Only bad ends: poisoning, slander, negation of life, contempt for the body, the degradation and self-violation of man through the concept of sin—consequently its means too are bad.— It is with an opposite feeling that I read the law of Manu, an incomparably spiritual and superior work: even to mention it in the same breath with the Bible would be a sin against the spirit. One guesses immediately: there is a real philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an ill-smelling Judaine [a Nietzschean coinage: compare “nicotine”] of rabbinism and superstition—it offers even the most spoiled psychologist something to chew on. Not to forget the main point, the basic difference from every kind of Bible: here the noble classes, the philosophers and the warriors, stand above the mass; noble values everywhere, a feeling of perfection, an affirmation of life, a triumphant delight in oneself and in life—the sun shines on the whole book.— All the things on which Christianity vents its unfathomable meanness—procreation, for example, woman, marriage—are here treated seriously, with respect, with love and trust.”
[The Antichristian, section 56.]
And how can this misosopher be a misogynist if he applauds treating woman seriously, with respect, and with love and trust?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Christianity is so ridiculous it results in ridiculous polemics from every direction. What is worse, Christianity, or the Anti-Christianities? Sometimes I cannot tell the difference. I have heard things said by atheist so stupid they would even confound the gods, if there be a God(s).
Sauwelios of ILP, your system and approach is much like a dungeon and dragons strategy guide. I love you to pieces, man, but you come up with some strange stuff sometimes, like your buddy Fritz.
The course of the evolution of Christianity is quite simply plotted and needs no necessary antithietical; Nietzsche’s re-evaluation is no different from the first evaluation-- it is just more morals, new morals, but morals. It is a nemesis just for the sake of ranting. Did Fritz even have a job? We don’t need Fritz to defeat Christianity no sooner than we need Fritz to attempt to analyze historical Christianity in text. That would be like writing a report on Big Foot, even if he doesn’t exist.
Part of the context of the religion is the parable and metaphor of the allegory depicted in the text. The “original sin” concept is an example. It is designed by bourgeois theorists to create complacency. (long story)
But be resentful and decadent as it may, the contrary, the WTP is still again a teleology and metaphysics.
I agree with you, aspacia - I think the idea that the losers of the war should have won springs from the rich westerner being too happy for his own conscience.
The idea that the world would be better if more people had been massacred is an intellectual frivolity only those who live outside of any necessity can entertain.
Detrop - perhaps you and Sauwelios object to freedom because it is difficult to justify.
“Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly, however, shall thine eye answer me: free for what?”
Sigh. I will summarize my exegesis for the sake of clarity.
It is not criminal, from Nietzsche’s perspective, to approach knowledge; it is criminal to approach knowledge and be a Christian.
As philosophy is the mother* of the sciences, the philosopher is the most anti-Christian man. If he calls himself a Christian, he is really the criminal of criminals.
It is the Protestant’s half-heartedness that Nietzsche finds offensive.
What followed after this sentence was no longer part of my exegesis, but a digression which I thought interesting and useful. In any case, I have shown that Jakob’s explanation fails to hit the mark.
*I should rather have written “father of the sciences”: for, although (natural) philosophy is the beginning of science, philosophy should also rule the sciences: see Beyond Good and Evil, chapter 6.
