He's similar to Kierkegaard in declaring that only a few people will understand his works.

Was he a revolutionary? Or a lunatic? I'll add comments as I go through it. All comments welcome. — frank

Few contemporaneous people I think he meant predominately. People are educated in the culture of their times, and assume that frame as a given for their thinking for the most part. It takes a lot of work and a certain kind of temperament to be able to create a point of view beyond that. If one doesn't have that particular mindset, one probably won't get it.

He was a philosopher. Questioning the mores of their times, re-evaluation of values as he would put it, is what "real" philosophers do according to Nietzsche. And that is what he does, revealing the psychological motives of the cultural and religious ideas of his time... sounding them out with a tuning-hammer, to see what they mean not in terms of truth necessarily, but in terms of motive.

Anyway, it's an interesting read, especially for the psychological insight into Christianity and the archetype of Christ.

Few contemporaneous people I think he meant predominately. People are educated in the culture of their times, and assume that frame as a given for their thinking for the most part. It takes a lot of work and a certain kind of temperament to be able to create a point of view beyond that. If one doesn't have that particular mindset, one probably won't get it. — ChatteringMonkey

So he imagined people at a later time would understand it. I don't think that's true of Kierkegaard (somebody correct me if I'm wrong), although his belief that Christianity is a dead religion might be interpreted as predicting a future without it.

So you have read it and liked it? Cool.

Was he a revolutionary? Or a lunatic? — frank

I really can't see how anyone who's actually read Nietzsche can claim he's a "lunatic." I don't think it absurd to say his thinking was revolutionary for his time.

Every time I read the Antichrist, I'm amazed at the brilliance and clarity. One of his most direct attacks on Christianity.

How many times have you read it?

Three or four times, plus once via audiobook. (But that's over the course of 20 years.)

Holy shit! Any comments you drop here would be appreciated.

:100:

:fire:

The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding – at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

God becomes the formula for every slander upon the 'here and now.' 

"Faith" means not wanting to know what is true.

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not. — The Antichrist

Only general comments. I think he nails it, really.

His views on Paul, his analysis of priests, his calling Jesus the leader of a “Buddhistic peace movement,” etc etc. All very different from what you’d hear anywhere else, even today — let alone the 1880s. With such style, to boot.

One of his most polarizing works, I’m sure. But to me one of the most important.

So you have read it and liked it? Cool. — frank

Yeah, I read most of his stuff. What I like about this polemic is that he doesn't waste time on pointless discussions about the truth of Christian doctrine etc, like for instance the new atheist would. He pretty much just assumes it is all myth, and goes straight to the heart of it, questioning the values it promotes.

:up:

"It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn back the curtain from the rottenness of man. This word, in my mouth, is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against humanity. It is used-and I wish to emphasize the fact again-without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward "virtue" and "godliness." As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of decadence: my argument is that all the values on which mankind now fixes its highest aspirations rations are decadence-values. I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. A history of the "higher feelings," the "ideals of humanity"-and it is possible that I'll have to write it-would almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster."

So we dive right into a scathing condemnation of Christianity for what it's done to mankind.

But... not all of mankind is Christian. Should we expect Buddhists to be unbungled and unbotched by virtue of being free of the influence of Christian nihilists?

Do Hindus enjoy greater buoyancy because their spirits aren't dragged down into the muck by pity?

Are atheists supermen?

Was he a revolutionary? — frank

I don't recall calling him that.

Or a lunatic? — frank

I vaguely remember calling him that. I'm not sure why?

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not. — 180 Proof

Ouch! :cry:

What if I were to tell you that what you said is right on the money but there's more to love than just that. True, in love we "...see things most decidedly as they are not" but love isn't about what someone is but about what someone can become. Love isn't about the actual but about the potential. Necessarily then, "love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not."

What sayest thou, o wise one? Sense/Nonsense?

Only Freddy Zarathustra can answer to that, Fool. :smirk: Ouija board, anyone?

Or a lunatic? — frank


I vaguely remember calling him that. I'm not sure why? — TheMadFool

How do you tell if a person is unhinged?

This is N's take on pity:

Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy-a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause (the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first view of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one measures the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect."

Yea. I think one could talk about the problems associated with pity without tossing our brothers and sisters in the nearest dumpster because they have visible challenges.

Pity is problematic if it's part of a rejection of life on it's terms.

Suffering is made contagious by pity — frank

That's his take on empathy. This is going to get depressing!

Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. — frank

He was contextualizing human psychology within Darwinism. Nothing wrong with that but...he seems to be forgetting that the mind has its own agenda, the mind is a universe unto itslelf and in my humble opinion doesn't kowtow to evolution. If you ask me, it seems happy where it is and thus the technological frenzy to adapt the world to us instead of the other way round.

Pity is problematic if it's part of a rejection of life on it's terms. — frank

Let me play by Nietzsche's rules. Microsoft Windows comes to mind. I'm not an Apple fan, sorry if that's offensive. Anyway, there's an icon on the desktop, a picture of a dustbin. Into it goes all files you delete. Why is it there?

He was contextualizing human psychology within Darwinism — TheMadFool

That part is bullshit. It's an acknowledgement of the ideas of the time.

Anyway, there's an icon on the desktop, a picture of a dustbin. Into it goes all files you delete. Why is it there? — TheMadFool

Because by virtue of a time warp you're in 1994?

That part is bullshit. It's an acknowledgement of the ideas of the time. — frank

Look again!

Because by virtue of a time warp you're in 1994? — frank

When are you from? :chin: — Sarah Connor

There is this exuberance for the anti-christian which is similar to the point of view being criticized.
The text reads differently if one assumes the author is aware of that or not.

That part is bullshit. It's an acknowledgement of the ideas of the time. — frank


Look again! — TheMadFool

I thought we both thought it was bullshit. Pity doesn't interfere with nature selection, does it?

I thought we both thought it was bullshit — frank

Well, if it's all bullshit, why fret!

Pity doesn't interfere with nature selection, does it? — frank

You're asking the wrong question. The right question: how does pity contribute to evolution?

$5 a week? I don't know.

$5 a week? I don't know. — frank

Google!

Google! — TheMadFool

:up: Get a pixelbook. There's no dustbin.

After claiming that Kant was popular only because he appealed to theologians, N says:

"Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every "impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction."

This is in keeping with a liberal outlook. Life needs to be 'every man for himself', otherwise disaster.

This quote always stood out to me from The Anti-Christ:

What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that a resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power, not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but proficiency (virtue in the Renaissance style, virth, virtue free of moralic acid.) The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so. What is more harmful than any vice? — Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak — Christianity …. — Nietzsche

Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak — Nietzsche

Yep. It's the opposite of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Jews who left the robbed man to die were right according to N.

:up: Yeah, contra passivity, conformity, pity, 'learned' weakness, body-hatred, etc ... consecrated in (Pauline-Augustinian) Christianity. N had said as much at length throughout his publishing career, and this summa crystalizes his stance.

Nonsense. There's no indication that the "robbed man" was any more "ill-constituted and weak" than the cruelly whipped horse which, sobbing, N threw his arms around on that fateful winter day in Turin (his heart-mind completely broken).

:up:

Nietzsche was a drug user. He took sedative pain killers because of pain in his abdomen

He had syphilis, which is neurologically devastating.

I loved GOM, but I think The Antichrist is a little nutty. But I'm not through with it yet.