As far as Nietzsche's historical sense, he's the only western philosopher who even utilized ANY Historical sense at all. — Vaskane

That does not account for Hegel who was bold enough to claim what that history was destined to bring about.

It also excludes those philosophers who presented "natural' right as outcomes of our development as human beings, as seen in the differences between Hume, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, etcetera.

Against that backdrop, the use of the word Genealogy by Nietzsche seems less explanatory than others.

As far as Nietzsche's historical sense, he's the only western philosopher who even utilized ANY Historical sense at all.
— Vaskane

That does not account for Hegel who was bold enough to claim what that history was destined to bring about.

It also excludes those philosophers who presented "natural' right as outcomes of our development as human beings, as seen in the differences between Hume, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, etcetera.

Against that backdrop, the use of the word Genealogy by Nietzsche seems less explanatory than others. — Paine

Ah, but Nietzsche’s view of history is ‘untimely’, neither history as a chain of empirical events viewed from an external perspective nor history as dialectical progression, but a history whose basis and sense is rethought in every epoche. This is the sense of the genealogical for Nietzsche.

but a history whose basis and sense is rethought in every epoche. This is the sense of the genealogical for Nietzsche. — Joshs

I don't think he's trying to let each "epoche" speak for itself. He's myth making to explain why we have directly opposing conceptions of goodness. His answer is that it's our heritage, built into our language. One could easily swap that answer with something about the structure of the human psyche.

but a history whose basis and sense is rethought in every epoche. This is the sense of the genealogical for Nietzsche.
— Joshs

I don't think he's trying to let each "epoche" speak for itself. He's myth making to explain why we have directly opposing conceptions of goodness. His answer is that it's our heritage, built into our language. One could easily swap that answer with something about the structure of the human psyche. — frank

Our heritage is defined by our practices, and a genealogy of history tracks changes in our practices, and how these changes alter the sense of meaning of our linguistic concepts. In its most general sense the genealogical is the method of analysis of the Will to Power, which is not a psychological concept.

The will to power must not be interpreted psychologically, as if the will to power wanted power because of a motive; just as genealogy must not be interpreted as a merely philosophical genesis. ( Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy)

What I have in mind by the untimely is captured by Deleuze here:

There is no act of creation that is not transhistorical and does not come up from behind or proceed by way of a liberated line. Nietzsche opposes history not to the eternal but to the subhistorical or superhistorical: the Untimely, which is another name for haecceity, becoming, the innocence of becoming (in other words, forgetting as opposed to memory, geography as opposed to history, the map as opposed to the tracing, the rhizome as opposed to arborescence). "The unhistorical is like an atmosphere within which alone life can germinate and with the destruction of which it must vanish. . . . What deed would man be capable of if he had not first entered into that vaporous region of the unhistorical?" Creations are like mutant abstract lines that have detached themselves from the task of representing a world, precisely because they assemble a new type of reality that history can only recontain or relocate in punctual systems.

He is sui generis and thus not quite "Jewish" but only "within the Jews". — schopenhauer1

Yet everyone ought to agree that he is/was Jewish.

As I said, I'm willing to accept that all of it is myth. — schopenhauer1

All literature on Jesus is myth? Then on what basis do we form an idea of him? Some things must be taken as truth or truthful. imo It is not fair to regard everything in the gospels as myth; this is not just my position its also Bart Ehrman's.

That is to say, we really don't know if the Hillelites held "official" positions and that there could not be ones that could vascilate between various points of view, but generally align with the core ideas of their main "party" or "school of thought". So I don't think that really provides solid evidence against this. Rather, Jesus' call for intention over ritual seems more in line with Hillelite ideals. — schopenhauer1

Broadly-speaking, Schopenhauer characterized Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity as "life affirming" because of their emphasis on embracing the here and now, and this life. He characterized Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholic Christianity as life-denying — schopenhauer1

There are trends in the Hillelite tradition, otherwise we wouldn't be able to talk generally about it - it would just be a collection of disparate individuals with their own disparate opinions. I agree that Judaism is generally life-affirming. Jesus is unquestionably life-denying if we regard his teachings in the gospels as accurate representations of his thought.

Regarding the question of whether Jesus is a Pharisee... I don't wish to get too bogged down in semantics. Maybe he had a Pharisaic upbringing. It's entirely possible. Could have been a member of Pharisaic civilization. When I form my views on Jesus as a thinker I am based my analysis of him based on what he says in the gospels, particularly Mark and Matthew. Pirkei Avot is a Talmudic tractate on Jewish ethics at that time and I find considerable contrasts (although with some common ideas) with the teachings of Jesus. It's fascinating for me: Pirkei Avot has timeless wisdom with a practical utility; with Jesus his teachings tends to focus more attaining the ideal even if it puts one at great danger. Jesus never really expresses concern for his followers physical well-being or living a long life; OTOH he says it is of no great matter whether one dies at e.g. age 6, 30, 60, or 90 because it is all in God's hands. Jesus differs from Judaism both on the nature of salvation and on the nature of God.

Jesus is unquestionably life-denying if we regard his teachings in the gospels as accurate representations of his thought. — BitconnectCarlos

Right, and that is my whole point countering the general way you are interpreting Jesus. You are taking traditional (Christian) Gospel portrayals as gospel. In scholarship of texts in the ancient world, you have to understand the intent of the authors, the surrounding context, the surrounding differences in cultures, the conflicts going on when they were writing, their audience, their influences, and then weigh what was trying to be conveyed to what was probably the case.

The authors of the New Testament have a point of view. They need Jesus to look sui generis. You can see this "othering" of Jesus (both as in othering from his Jewish origins to othering as even a human being) by the way he is portrayed in Mark (it starts at what people actually knew about him.. his preaching years in the Galilee and being baptized and being associated with the more well-known Jewish charismatic leader at the time, John the Baptist). It then moves to Matthew which focuses on more of his mashalim (parables) and revealing more of his understanding approach to halacha (Jewish law interpretation). However, I am willing to admit, as I said, that the this is also pure propaganda by the author who knew a thing or two about Pharisee-law and placed it in the character of Jesus. But that would be dangerous, as it now re-focuses Jesus in a more Jewish context of debating the minutia of Jewish law. But then, this actually endorses the "embarrassment theory", as it would be embarrassing to have Jesus embroiled in common 1st century debates on the minutia of Jewish law. He should be busy being Othered as a Son of God who is the Logos and beyond all that stuff. Well, Matthew cuts it both ways, see, in this mythological account, he is given a Roman-style birth story, where he is the "son of a virgin" a concept foreign to Jewish Second Temple Period theological notions of messiah (or God for that matter), but very common in the pagan Greco-Roman-Near Eastern world. Luke gives us an elaborated version of this with angels and such, further putting Jesus as certainly divine, at the least something of angelic origin, leading a way for a Son of God. By John, we start getting full blown Platonic notions of the "Logos", and clearly influence from Diasporan Platonic notions (pace Philo of Alexandria). This Logos in John is still its own thing because it isn't just the Logos, an organizing principle and telos, but the "Logos made flesh", which combines Platonic AND mystery-cult aspects of a god that "dies for the (sins of?) humanity" (pace Mithra).

So this is to all to say, you have to peal back those mythological layers, to get to the "historical" figure. If you buy into Jesus "condemning the Jews", you have now bought into the Othering of Jesus from his Jewishness so that he can now become safe for non-Jews to have him as their own, so they can worship him without having to worry about that more "national/ethnic" aspect of him. Since this is a thread on antisemitism, you can see how this Othering of Jesus contributes to this, by removing the Jewishness from Jesus, as well as the humanness from being someone embroiled in the Jewish religio-political debates of his time, to being some otherworldly Christ who died for the sins of humanity. He is not Jewish, but universal and then the Othering is complete.

When I form my views on Jesus as a thinker I am based my analysis of him based on what he says in the gospels, particularly Mark and Matthew. Pirkei Avot is a Talmudic tractate on Jewish ethics at that time and I find considerable contrasts (although with some common ideas) with the teachings of Jesus. It's fascinating for me: Pirkei Avot has timeless wisdom with a practical utility; with Jesus his teachings tends to focus more attaining the ideal even if it puts one at great danger. Jesus never really expresses concern for his followers physical well-being or living a long life; OTOH he says it is of no great matter whether one dies at e.g. age 6, 30, 60, or 90 because it is all in God's hands. Jesus differs from Judaism both on the nature of salvation and on the nature of God. — BitconnectCarlos

I think now you are getting bogged down in making a fluid understanding of Torah-law interpretation into something Ideal and archetypical. Don't read Rabbinic post-Temple views of the world as 1st century Pharisee notions of the world. The Pharisees may have been more fluid. They were pioneering these interpretations in a time of turmoil in regards to the Roman Empire. Could there have been Pharisees that also had leanings towards Essenic style apocalypticism? Certainly. After all, in Josephus and the Talmud there is a mention of "Menahem the Essene" who mysteriously left the Sanhedrin as Av Bet and Shammai took his place. Could the idea even of a "Son of Man" who would help the righteous Jews defeat their enemies even been more potent during the time of Jesus and other Pharisees even, certainly. We even see this notion of an angelic Enoch (in his angelic form as Metatron), in Enoch 3, a Rabbinic Jewish esoteric text (though not canonical in anyway, it reveals possible attitudes towards that idea).

:up:

Jesus is unquestionably life-denying if we regard his teachings in the gospels as accurate representations of his thought. — BitconnectCarlos

No, I don't think so. I think you misunderstood something.

It helps if you make an argument for your position.

Did you make an argument for the gospels being life-denying? I didn't see that.

my position is due to the clear and powerful emphasis that jesus places on the afterlife and avoiding hell. he preaches a hard line. do you disagree?

with Jesus his teachings tends to focus more attaining the ideal even if it puts one at great danger. — BitconnectCarlos

Where is this in the gospels?

my position is due to the clear and powerful emphasis that jesus places on the afterlife and avoiding hell. he preaches a hard line. do you disagree? — BitconnectCarlos

His predominant message was about love and forgiveness when he wasn't talking about the end of the world. Yes, the afterlife comes up from time to time, but Jesus didn't inject that into Judaism. It was already there.

Thanks! :smile:

[Delete]

I would suggest, though, that there are other ways of understanding the emergence of the morality of Good and Evil besides that of a weakness or sickness. This implies some sort of pathology or regression occurred in human history with respect to a prior period of a healthy Will to Power. — Joshs

It also implies that a human can and should find ultimate satisfaction in an unending consumption and constant conflict and struggle. Eat, drink, make merry, fight, and never get bored with any of it.

Let me get this straight. You don’t want to single the jews out as the only recipients of discrimination. But you do want to single the jews out in the follow way:

“When one religion claims to have superior knowledge of "how things really are", this is an automatic declaration of war to all other religions.” — Joshs

I'm not even singling them out.
Every religion normally believes it is the superior one, this religious supremacism is not special.
What is rarer is the combination of religious supremacism and national/racist supremacism. Some examples of this are Judaism, some schools of Hinduism, and national Catholicism.


As for my comparison with poor people being discriminated against: How come so few people cry foul when it comes to discriminating against poor people?

Nietzsche is taking for granted that there actually is no God, right?
And that as such, no religion has ever received any "divine revelation", but instead made its own religous doctrine?

Christianity, became a philosophy of the "weak" because it emphasized humility, charity. It was a sort of philosophy of the slave, and not of the aristocrat which he championed. — schopenhauer1

But then this doesn't take into account, well, to put it in gross terms, the value of "keeping up appearances."

It seems to me that in many religions, there are 1. the things that you're supposed to say, 2. things that you're actually supposed to believe, 3. things you're actually supposed to do, and all three are different. There is an art to reading between the lines.

It's not clear that, for example, the Christian emphasis on humility is supposed to be taken beyond verbal affirmation. Yes, humility should be talked about, it should be preached, but not actually done.

It seems naive to take religious doctrines simply at face value. It often seems they are intended as sand thrown in the eyes of the enemy, or a means to cull the weak (who actually believe the doctrines and try to behave accordingly).

If a religion teaches, for example, humility, does this have any other significance but to paint a particular self-image? It seems more like an act of mimicry, deliberately pretending to be harmless. Or, on the other hand, an attempt to control the other person by (in)directly instructing them to be humble ("_You_ should be humble and let me do whatever I want").

metaphorically that mental aspect which protects you from living life to the fullest, from taking those risks, breaking out of our comfort zones — Vaskane

This sounds like something from a self-help book.
I have trouble believing that what you're saying is really what Nietzsche meant. It sounds just so plebeian. Do aristocrats really think of themselves in such terms? Do they think of themselves as "living life to the fullest" and "breaking out of one's comfort zone"?

If a religion teaches, for example, humility, does this have any other significance but to paint a particular self-image? It seems more like an act of mimicry, deliberately pretending to be harmless. Or, on the other hand, an attempt to control the other person by (in)directly instructing them to be humble ("_You_ should be humble and let me do whatever I want"). — baker

Indeed. Self-righteousness becomes its own smug example of non-humility. If you are humble, you simply ARE humble, you don't have to say it. It is not a slogan, "WE are the humble ones". That already negates it. But I think you are speaking more about using it as a tool to make sure people are compliant, as in "Shut up and be humble!". It is commanding to be docile and therefore allows people to be controlled more easily. I think that is true, however, the value of humility is infinitely better to get along. For example, in the San Bushmen society, there is an element of downplaying one's kill in the hunt which got meat for the community. Why? Because that person might get a big head and then get ideas that he is better and there goes the social structure. Egalitarian societies die when certain people (families/coalitions) start thinking they deserve more.

Otherwise I suggest contemplating why you questioned me (not that it's not allowed, hell I encourage it to the fullest, because I always seek to affirm my own abilities by a good challenge) to say "no," to me, or to challenge yourself, or perhaps even both? — Vaskane

Here is a thread that has to do with Jewish people. As an analysis of them and some phenomena related to them, you have been offering the arguments of someone who flat-out denies or ignores what is central to Jewish people, namely, the existence of God and God's revelation to the Jewish people. And who instead, basically, implies that the Jews merely invented their morality and religious doctrine as a reaction to certain challenges.

Does this seem fair to you?

With his analysis of the Jews, Nietzsche is imposing his own atheism on them, taking for granted that atheism is the only correct way to see things.

If anything, this discussion leads me to conclude that the origin of antisemitism is atheism.

Rule number 1: if you want to understand a philosopher -- you need to remove your lens and put theirs on. Otherwise your preconceived notions leave no room for learning. — Vaskane

I don't seek to understand Nietzsche per se. I am skeptical about how relevant his input is to understanding the origin of antisemitism, given that as an atheist, he dismisses the possibility of divine revelation -- all the while proposing to analyze people who believe to have received divine revelation.

If a religion teaches, for example, humility, does this have any other significance but to paint a particular self-image? It seems more like an act of mimicry, deliberately pretending to be harmless. Or, on the other hand, an attempt to control the other person by (in)directly instructing them to be humble ("_You_ should be humble and let me do whatever I want").
— baker

Indeed. Self-righteousness becomes its own smug example of non-humility. — schopenhauer1

No, that's not what I mean. I'm talking about the importance of _t_talking the _t_alk.

There are many things in life that one is supposed to understand on one's own, without anyone explaining them to one. There is a whole art to saying things for the sake of saying them, and all involved know one doesn't mean them and isn't even supposed to mean them. And it's taboo to point this out.

A common example is to always answer "Fine, thank you" when someone asks you "How are you?" Because that "How are you?" is not actually a question. It's a cue sentence, meant to show that the person saying it is playing by the rules, and testing the other person whether they do so too, a test they pass if they reply "Fine, thank you".

My contention is that this phenomenon goes far further than that, that it extends to many ideological claims.

God said it was okay for me to ignore their revelations, see how that works? — Vaskane

This is disgracefully facile. It goes to show you have no respect for those you presume to analyze.

Basically any argument that asserts God gave me X is dumb af as it can't be proven.

Irrelevant. What Nietzsche is doing (and now you, along with him) is plain old authoritarianism, a kind of cultural imperialism.

You could read Theodor Lessings Der Jüdische Selbsthass, or Jacob Golomb's Nietzsche and Zion. You may actually come into a more informed opinion rather than just basing your opinion on emotional reactions.

It's not an "emotional reaction". It's about fairness.

I'm not a theist, nor do I particularly like theists in general. So I'm not defending them on this count. But to go so far as to presume to analyze someone, and yet dismiss as irrelevant that which they consider important to them?? I would not do that. Perhaps this disqualifies me from being an Übermensch such as yourself.


So here's an Übermensch for you:

If a religion teaches, for example, humility, does this have any other significance but to paint a particular self-image? It seems more like an act of mimicry, deliberately pretending to be harmless. Or, on the other hand, an attempt to control the other person by (in)directly instructing them to be humble ("_You_ should be humble and let me do whatever I want"). — baker

Yes it helps people successfully operate in the world. Jesus says all who humble themselves will be exalted and all who exalt themselves will be humbled. As humans we could behave in any number of ways: Don't go around exalting yourself... for numerous reasons. Jesus provides helpful social advice and helps one be well liked/attractive. Similar ideas can be found in Jewish thinking but Jesus puts in stronger terms. Jesus teaches you be attractive.




Yes forgiveness is very important, but there's a not-so-subtle reason for it. "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you." (Matthew 6:14).

And if hate and resentment are important to them, then they can hold on to it and expect the same formula to be applied to them. — Vaskane

To what end?
Can you tell?

Now go on and read mate — Vaskane

It's not about merely reading it, is it. It's about liking it, agreeing with it.

Yes forgiveness is very important, but there's a not-so-subtle reason for it. "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you." (Matthew 6:14). — BitconnectCarlos

Jesus has a pretty bad temper in Mark. He's cool as a cucumber in John. Some scholars speculate that he's a composite of a number of preachers who came out of the desert to rant about the status quo. You can make up any Jesus you want and start your own religion!

In short, Judaism popularized hate and resentment as the equation for birthing values with the ancient slave revolt in morals. AntiSemitism is just another form of slave morality following the Judaic formula. — Vaskane

Judaism popularized a book where the oppressed are uplifted and mighty kings are humbled. it is not about hating the aristocratic. much of the old testament attests to the regal glory of the mighty king david. it is jesus who says "blessed be the poor and meek" and "it is harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." it is the jesus of the gospels who most adequately encaptures what jesus refers to as "jewish slave morality."

Judaism popularized a book where the oppressed are uplifted and mighty kings are humbled. it is not about hating the aristocratic. much of the old testament attests to the regal glory of the mighty king david. it is jesus who says "blessed be the poor and meek" and "it is harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." it is the jesus of the gospels who most adequately encaptures what jesus refers to as "jewish slave morality." — BitconnectCarlos

The idea is that there's a brand of morality that idealizes the underdog. History is a cloud out of which you can pull whatever narrative you like. I can easily support Nietzsche's assessment with certain facts about Judaism. I can easily show that Christianity didn't inherit a pacifist spirit at all. It's all a matter of what axe you want to grind or what chip you have on your shoulder.