Yes, iirc, as N sees it Christianity, like Platonism, supremely(!) values some 'other world' (dis-embodied life, or "spirit") at the expense of absolutely(?) devaluing this world (embodied life), which he diagnoses as nihilism (—> cultural 'decay & decadence').

As far as values go, Nietzsche drew a sharp distinction between Christianity and ancient philosophers:

To harm stupidity.- Surely, the faith preached so stubbornly and with so much conviction, that egoism is reprehensible, has on the whole harmed egoism (while benefiting, as I shall repeat a hundred times, the herd instincts!) -above all, by depriving egoism of its good conscience and bidding us to find in it the true source of all unhappiness. "Your selfishness is the misfortune of your life''-that was preached for thousands of years and harmed, as I have said, selfishness and deprived it of much spirit, much cheerfulness, much sensitivity, much beauty; it made selfishness stupid and ugly and poisoned it.

The ancient philosophers taught that the main source of misfortune was something very different. Beginning with Socrates, these thinkers never wearied of preaching: "Your thoughtlessness and stupidity, the way you live according to the rule, your submission to your neighbor's opinion is the reason why you so rarely achieve happiness; we thinkers, as thinkers, are the
happiest of all.''

Let us not decide here whether this sermon against stupidity had better reasons on its side than did the sermon against selfishness. What is certain, however, is that it deprived stupidity
of its good conscience; these philosophers harmed stupidity. — Nietzsche, Gay Science, 328

I feel it of at least some relevance to ensure all are aware mankind has absolutely never created life in a laboratory setting from non-life. Electrical stimulation. Introduction of living germs, elements, cells, etc to stimulate a larger organ or organism. But never has he created life. As such, remains truly the unspoken (and in my opinion intentionally, albeit foolishly ignored) great mystery that makes the Hard Problem seem like a cheap scratch-off lottery ticket.

So, while I might be a bit short of your intended point of discussion, the logic (or theory) of those 1,000 or 2,000 years ago does not seem to be without standing or bearing even in 2025. That is to say, has not yet to be disproved.

:fire:

...the logic (or theory) of those 1,000 or 2,000 years ago does not seem to be without standing or bearing even in 2025. That is to say, has not yet to be disproved. — Outlander

That's fair, but it has been never been proven either. So what do we do? Would it not be prudent to put the as yet undemonstrated logic of the ancients in brackets and just carry on? I'm not particularly partial to Freddy (in as much as I can follow his writings), he seems to be offering a project which is the exact reverse of the nostalgia projects of people like Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke.

"Freddy" makes the point (or suggestion) that eternity is here & now (concrete, embodied nature), therefore the only viable source of value (i.e. ^becoming, re/pro-creativity), rather than some imaginary – promised / make-believe – "hereafter' (abstract, dis-embodied spirit).

^self-overcoming

Yes, that does make sense.

That's putting it lightly.

In the prologue to Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche declares the most protracted error of Plato was dogmatism and that came through Socrates. In Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche details that objective dogmatism is slave morality. The problem really boils down to this: the greatest presentment of man occurs through a crime against the moral systems of the time... Prometheus, Oedipus, Adam and Eve...

This dogmatism seeks to remove "Evil" from the picture all together and thus deny aspects of our human nature (or in relation "body"). Where as Nietzsche's equation from Aphorism 1 in BoT to Ecce Homo is the overcoming of oneself in their opposite...

The morality system "Good and Bad" keeps this intact, the morality system "Good and Evil" breaks this cycle of overcoming in ones opposite.

In Christianity (and Plato before that) what animates human beings is the (holy) spirit, that is the general and immaterial which breaths life into the lifeless body. — ChatteringMonkey

By the time Nietzsche arrives, the concept of 'the immaterial' has been largely misunderstood. Reconstructing it, the original term in Greek, (as I understand it, and as one not schooled in Ancient Greek) was psuchē (subject of Aristotle's 'On the Soul'), a term which is now generally translated as psyche, or mind. The Greek term however encompassed the totality of the being - which in modern terms would also include the sub- and unconscious aspects - and also qualities such as traits, dispositions and drives.

Aristotle held that the psuchē is the form or essence of any living thing rather than a distinct substance from the body (using the philosophical, not everyday, sense of 'substance'.) It is the possession of psuche (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all - the psuchē is the 'form of the body' as is often quoted, and nous the rational faculty (that faculty which is able to grasp rational principles.) It is the rational faculty (nous) within psuchē that grasps the essence of things, and this rational capacity is what makes it immaterial. Why? As Platonist scholar Lloyd Gerson put it,

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible ('the psuche contains all things'). Among other things, this means that you could not engage in thought if the mind were purely a function of a physical organ. Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Platonism vs Naturalism, Lloyd Gerson

Obviously a lot to be said about all of this, but the point is that, after having been incorporated into theology as 'the immortal spirit', the original Aristotelian understanding was largely lost sight of (although preserved in Thomas Aquinas and other works of philosophical theology.) But it comes across much more like an invisible entity, which no sensible person ought to believe in, when originally it was a more subtle concept.

Nietzsche (and later Heidegger) were right to critique how 'spirit' became reified into a static, unchanging entity. However, I wonder whether this critique fully accounts for the dynamic aspects of Christian Platonism, which in its more sophisticated forms retained a more fluid understanding of soul and intellect. I suspect much of Nietzsche’s critique is aimed at a simplified, institutionalized understanding of 'spirit'—one that had been drilled into generations of students through rote learning and dogmatic instruction, often devoid of its original philosophical depth.

:up: :up:

You stole all my other points, and with such legit stylistics! :sweat:

Nietzsche was the first to unmask the Judaeo-Christian morality system. As far as Nietzsche's concerns "even the greatest amongst you is a disharmony and hybrid of phantom (spirit) and plant (body)," a coming together of opposites into a single unity. Just as psuche is understood. I dare say in his century he may have even understood the notion in greater detail than anyone ever before him. It is the "spirit" that informs Nietzsche on his considerable mastery of human psychology.

at the expense of absolutely(?) devaluing this world (embodied life), which he diagnoses as nihilism (—> cultural 'decay & decadence'). — 180 Proof

Awfully rich of a man who lost his virginity to a hooker to talk of "cultural decay" and "decadence." The abbeys and cathedrals of the medieval world may want a word with him. :lol:

...Those are through the lens of your Christian values. Not Nietzsche's values which reflected much from the ancient Grecian culture.

Nietsche did not exempt himself from the decadence of his era any more than Socrates denied he too was an ignorant Athenian.

:wink:

Did the ancient Greeks not value brilliant architecture or artwork? The best of it was made for the divine.

the funny bit being really that you were too short sighted to see how your insult fell flat. Nietzsche praises their architecture actually.

The philosophies of the dogmatists were, one hopes, only a promise which lasted for thousands of years, as the astrologers were in even earlier times. In their service, people perhaps expended more work, gold, and astute thinking than for any true scientific knowledge up to that point. We owe to them and their "super-terrestrial" claims the grand style of architecture in Asia and Egypt. It seems that in order for all great things to register their eternal demands on the human heart, they first have to wander over the earth as monstrously and frighteningly distorted faces. Dogmatic philosophy has been such a grimace... — Nietzsche BGE Prologue

eing really that you were too short sighted to see how your insult fell flat. Nietzsche praises their architecture actually. — DifferentiatingEgg

Then N does understand that a focus on the 'other world' can lead to greatness and not nihilism.

Aye, but we killed that way of life...thats what Nietzsche means ... and the rise in Nihilism from the death of that way of life is what concerned Nietzsche. His philosophy fixes that. Literally by giving the Psychology of Jesus back to the secular world.

I understood N more as favoring a more 'noble' morality over a 'slave' morality, which, in all fairness, is an apt description of christianity. But the cathedrals and abbeys built would have been in service of that 'slave' morality? It's been a while since I read N so I would have to go back to his thoughts on cathedrals and abbeys/brilliant christian architecture.

Amor Fati is Nietzsche's equation that replicates the Glad Tidings of Jesus Christ.

And we can see from AC 39 and 33 precisely how highly Nietzsche regards Jesus. He literally pulls many of the traits of the Ubermensch from Jesus. And the only time Nietzsche ever points to the superman becoming reality is in Ecce Homo, when Zarathustra comes down from the Mountain and goes around with compassion suffering with others, but from themselves, in a similar manner as Christ.

From Ecce Homo:

"See how Zarathustra goes down from the mountain and speaks the kindest words to every one! See with what delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the priests, and how he suffers with them from themselves! Here, at every moment, man is overcome, and the concept "Superman" becomes the greatest reality,—out of sight, almost far away beneath him, lies all that which heretofore has been called great in man."

Amor Fati is Nietzsche's equation that replicates the Glad Tidings of Jesus Christ. — DifferentiatingEgg

But without loaves and fishes, presumably.

Aye he comes with the dithyrambs instead!

Looking back now, I find that exactly two months before this inspiration I had an omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive change in my tastes—more particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra might perhaps be classified under the rubric music. At all events, the essential condition of its production was a second birth within me of the art of hearing...

...What language will such a spirit speak, when he speaks unto his soul? The language of the dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb...

...The whole of my Zarathustra is a dithyramb in honour of solitude, or, if I have been understood, in honour of purity. Thank Heaven, it is not in honour of "pure foolery"! He who has an eye for colour will call him a diamond. The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always my greatest danger.... Would you hearken to the words spoken by Zarathustra concerning deliverance from loathing? — Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The dithyrambs are literary music, meant to incite a person into a certain creative self abnegated state where you're bound by less of your Apollonian limitations. That is the true magic behind Thus Spoke Zarathustra. To assist the Apollonian moralist in overcoming himself in his opposite.

Nietzsche pretty much details Jesus as a master moralist in AC 33 and 39 and the only true Christian :wink:
Nietzsche's fight wasn't against Christianity of the Gospels which is an account of the life of Jesus, but rather that of the Christianity preached by the disciples in the rest of the Bible, which was mostly Judaism, and if one recalls Jesus was an outcast from Judaism for rejecting their traditions to create his own life affirming values. Wait My fault, I thought you responded to my last message with that message. I got confused cause it was edited. My b.

Jesus was an outcast from Judaism for rejecting their traditions to create his own life affirming values. — DifferentiatingEgg

I will read AC 33 and 39, and thanks for those references.

This I do not agree with.

Then Jesus said unto His disciples, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me."

And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48where ‘their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.’

I would only agree this interpretation if by "life affirming" you mean living for the next one and the mentality that comes with that mindset.

Not really worried about agreeing with a man who resents Nietzsche all because he's no good at understanding Nietzsche's philosophy. Being in agreement would bring us closer. Why would I want such a lowly disease anywhere near me? I'd rather keep you quarantined.

Jesus. Did you just liken me to a lowly disease...for my apparent Nietzsche hatred? :chin: :snicker:

I don't resent Nietzsche. I don't think too much about Nietzsche. It's called asking questions and challenging an idea. Welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

I gave you a taste of yourself? I don't see you that way, but I don't really care that you do or don't agree. But now you know how you appear. Appearances aren't always the truth of the matter.

The morality system "Good and Bad" keeps this intact, the morality system "Good and Evil" breaks this cycle of overcoming in ones opposite. — DifferentiatingEgg

Overcoming in ones opposite sounds rather Hegelian, something Nietzsche was not. The problem with 'Good and Evil' isn't only that it flips the valuation of world based 'Good and bad' on its head, and are thus world and life-denying, but also that it distorts them in the process... it moralises them.

Hegelian, something Nietzsche was not. The problem with 'Good and Evil' isn't only that it flips the valuation of world based 'Good and bad' on its head, and are thus world and life-denying, but also that it distorts them in the process... it moralises them. — ChatteringMonkey

:up: :up:

Who said anything about Hegel? We're talking of the double orbit of Heraclitus, geesh, the incitation of opposites to higher and higher births. And it's quite apparent from your statement you're not that well read on Nietzsche. Though you do have some pretty decent fundamental knowledge about his works. I can clobber you with his aphorisms if you really require?