The idea of 'self' as 'pre-exists' may be problematic because it would mean that no change or modification is possible — Jack Cummins

Change is possible if one thinks the will is not some unified thing, but rather something compound, or a result of many underlying competing drives. Then some change in circumstance may prompt one part of the will to subdue another part of the will that maybe isn't as appropriate for the changing circumstance for instance.

It seems to me that a self as a central organising process doesn't solve the issue of what and why the self would choose to edit if it is supposed to be a process that is seperate from the will. And if it is not seperate from the will (so that it can have some preference to choose something over another thing) then that part of the will that is (part of) the central organising self is something that pre-exists and not something we choose ourselves.... and then we again arrive at free will being incoherent.

I don't think that "I" generate thought myself in the sense that there is some agent consciously deciding what to think before I have the thought.

Don't be fooled by language, it not because there is an "I" in "I think" that there is some consious agent behind the thinking.

In fact, when you get right down to brass taxes, who's doing much rational thinking at all that leads to anything concrete? We do plenty of post hoc rationalizing to make us feel good about our irrational behaviour though. — Baden

Post-hoc rationalisation probably was the original form of 'rational thinking', as social group-animals it was pretty important to justify/rationalize our actions.

So you know, it seems that Plato/Socrates (contra the Sophists) got us on the wrong track with this weird ideosyncratic notion of rational thinking to arrive at the truth.

I don't think its usefull because free-will doesn't even make sense conceptually.

We are free to act on our will, but not free to choose our will.... We are our will, who would be the "we" apart from our will that wants to change the will.

We can reflect, but without some pre-existing volitional component why would we want to change our will after that reflection. If we would change something, it is just a part of the will (some drive) acting on antother part of our will (another drive).

Free will is a moral/religious concept.

It should try to be less reliant on the US for its defence by building up one itself, try to establish more of a foreign policy agenda of its own to weigh on its periphery in the first place, and protect its internal market effectively as protectionism is threatening to replace globalism.

All of this means - if it actually wants to make progress on these issues - that it should seek to integrate the EU even more into a real federal entity instead of the half-baked thing it is now.

Should it succeed in these directions the US might even come to value Europe more as an ally, and then Trumps antics maybe won't matter as much.

Failing that, it doesn't look to good for Europe, even without Trump. Trump makes things worse probably, but ultimately it's just a small part of the challenges it faces.

Well, if we learn, we tend to learn from adversity... so maybe we can find something positive somewhere on the way down.

But specifically to the 'worst' imaginable part, we used to just move to some other part of the globe when faced with ecological problems... the problems we are facing now are global and from a human perspective almost eternal. There is no escape... it's almost metaphysical what we are facing.

What, like glaciers and islands disappearing, 50C heat and widespread extinction, while Putin waves his nuclear missiles around like an angry baby with its rattle? — Vera Mont

Yes, something like that :-) ... fire-apes with weapons of mass-destruction on an overheating globe is definitely a concern I would say.

Indeed. But we do seem to live in an era which is consistently selling the idea that this is the amongst worst eras imaginable and that deep state or secularism, liberalism, the Left or the lizard people are to blame. It seems we need to return to a golden era - for Trumpists it's the MAGA fantasy, for some philosophers it seems to be Platonism or God. — Tom Storm

Yes, and for socialists it's a workers utopia, for enviromentalists it's a pre-agrarian garden of eden...

I do think the idea that we are living in the worst possible eras imaginable sells itself to some extend because of certain ecological and social issues we have.

Ok, thank you for your efforts to make your points more clear.

During any age, there is always an ethos, an ethic by which that age develops its political character and social personality. While certain ages had more prevalent and identifiable characters, ours is one that hides its nature, and maintains its values in a sub-active manner, that is meant to say without a title, or a movement, or party representation. In fact, the greatest and most powerful attribute of this age’s ethic is its invisibility. — EdwardC

I think I agree with this by and large, but I probably come at it from an opposite angle. If our culture has an ethos, it's a secularized protestant Christianity pushed to its furthest extend in its concern for individual victimhood above all other values.

This is basically the thesis of philosophers/historians like Nietzsche, Tom Holland, John Gray that I'm reiterating here. Since the dawn of civilization until Christ you basically had strength/power as the highest value. This was understood and made very explicit by, among other things, monumental architecture that served to emphasize the strength of the ruler in various ways.

Romans initially hung criminals and defeated opponents on the cross to signal debasement and humiliation... to signal the worst of the worst. Christianity took this symbol of utter humiliation as the central symbol of their movement, and inverted the valuations that came before by turning good/noble into evil, and bad/base into good... the meek shall inherit the earth, the last shall be the first etc etc. As the Roman empire was degenerating further and further, Christianity took hold of the empire and became the state religion.

Fast-forward a good millennium after Christianity had consolidated itself and basically had become synonymous with European culture, you get the renaissance and a couple of heresies developing out of that, like Protestantism which put even more emphasis on the individual and his personal relation to God. This eventually turned into the enlightenment and secularism, which did away with God but still kept this basic value of elevation and emancipation of the individual above everything else. Those heresies focused more on the individual became dominant especially in the Anglo-Saxon world (unlike most of continental Europe), which later became the dominant empires spreading its ideologies all over the world.

Out of this also came the currently dominant political ideologies like liberalism, socialism and communism (all of them concerned with the emancipation of the individual), which are not in opposition to religion (as it is typically construed), but a secular continuation of the valuations of a very particular religion that arose in the middle East out of Judaism, and further developed in Western Europe.

So the circle back to your point, if every age has an ethos, than I would say our current ethos is something like secular liberalism/Protestantism which is the implicit religion of the current hegemon in a globalized world, the US. You could easily make the link to Wokism/identity-politics and the like as the pinnacle of this elevation of victimhood, but I don't really want to open that particular can of worms here.

But yes, it is invisible insofar people don't even see it as an ideology, as a faith of a particular group in some value, among possible others, but as universal objective morality itself... morality construed as the avoidance of all suffering as its only goal.

What Tom Holland for instance observes is that we in the West periodically have these religious revolutionary emancipatory movements because of this Christian inversion of values that is inherently unstable and self-undermining. This is how we presumably could arrive at this secular hyper-individualist ideology, because it continuously has the tendency to erode its own institutions that seek to propagate their powerbase.

So to circle back to another point you made, I don't think these private actors deliberately seek to undermine traditional values or inject a sense of "hypersexuality" or tribalism into the collective conscious, as much as they just opportunistically make use of tendencies already present in current culture or make use of the void that has been left by a religion that has eroded its own institutions over the millennia. Bread and circuses... appealing to the "baser demons of our nature" is always a good bet to sell something.

I don’t know. I think there is a deliberate character to an age. You’re right that it’s often something about the weak vs. the powerful, but other than that, I’m not sure how much of this you related to… — EdwardC

Yeah, I've read your post several times to figure out what exactly you were pointing to. And I'm still not sure. While I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you said, I seems very specific to me... as if you are abstracting and generalising from a concrete local history that really happened.

What stood out to me was a sense of decadence/corruption in general as I alluded to.

But aside from that I don't think I agree with an age having a 'deliberate' character in the sense that there is some cabal consciously and consistently channeling culture in certain ways to benefit from it... I think these things happen far more opportunistically and by accident than as the result of conscious deliberation.

I think you are reading to much into this, most civilisations tend to suffer from entropy over time and slide into decadence.

And the reason for this cycle is pretty straightforward. At the start of their ascend a people generally have strict norms and values, and high social cohesion because they find themselves in a precarious situation being surrounded by older and bigger neighbours... that is the only way to survive essentially.

Then as they become more powerfull, and as generations get replaced with new ones, the pressing need for these strict norms and social cohesion disappears because they don't have to fear their neighbours so much anymore, and they generally have more than enough wealth... and so they tend to erode over time. It's hard to keep simulating a need when it isn't there.

I think we are just seeing the latest example of an empire running on fumes. But, there are a lot of fumes, and some kind of temporary re-invigoration isn't impossible, so it could take a while.

Are you asking if that is what Plato said, what his view on it was. Or if what Plato said is true in reality, in how things play out?
— ChatteringMonkey

Well, I was only asking about your opinion about whether you think Plato was not accounting for the needs of the individual in Plato's Republic. — Shawn

In the sense that the individual doesn't get a say in where or what he has to contribute to society? Yes I would say that his political philosophy is indeed a bit totalitarian and leaves little room for the individual to develop himself in more organic ways.

But this wouldn't be my main problem with his views, as I do think that liberalism for instance has gone to far in making society cater to the individual, rather than the other way arround. Insofar as he values the collective above the individual, I would agree with him on that point because individuals are ultimately a product of society. And so if everybody only looks to what he wants as an individual and nobody takes care of the whole, or no sacrifice can be asked from individuals for the whole, then you get a bad functioning society... and as a consequence also badly formed individuals.

My main problem with Plato's political views would be that they seem very theoretical and idealist to me. You almost never actually get to draw up a society from scratch, but have to work from existing societies and try to improve on those with all the real-world limits and restrictions that come with that.

Do you think this is true? — Shawn

Are you asking if that is what Plato said, what his view on it was. Or if what Plato said is true in reality, in how things play out?

I don't think I really understand what you are getting at.

Interesting way to put it. Plato really couldn't fit into his picture Thrasymachus' portrayed psychopathy or sociopathy that pervades humanity instead of being guided by man's intelligence (nous) and strivings for eudaimonia. — Shawn

This is how Plato would frame things perhaps ;-).

Thrasymachus or any realist would say that Plato is essentially doing the same thing, i.e. vying for (political) power with his philosphy, he just isn't as aware of it as they are. Or if he was and his whole philosophy was a conscious ploy for power than he was even more devious than any sophist.

Positive. as I believe, with Nietzsche, that this is essentially where philosophy took a wrong turn, in siding with Plato's idealism (as all of western philosophy is a footnote to it afterall) over Thrasymachus realism.

Insofar as philosophers have been idealists, of course they didn't esteem him, they cannot, because it flies in the face of all of their basic assumptions.

Justice is the advantage of the stronger, might makes right, is a description of how things work, not a declaration of how we want things to be.

Something changed in him deeply after some revelation involving Amor Fati, and it mirrors quite a bit of that which he says of Jesus' Glad Tidings in his much later works. — Vaskane

You could also view Amor Fati as a classic Tragic formula, i.e. the tragic hero who aims high and knows he will fail in the end, but still loves and affirms it all anyway.

I think this is the difference with "Good tidings"/"Euangelion", in tragedy there is no good news ultimately, the only justification is life itself.

The kingdom of heaven it seems to me is a kind of psychological trick where the world gets shut out to attain inner peace. The 'heros' aim in this case is not going under, spending himself in attaining some wordly goal, the aim is inner directed... feeling good.

In the whole psychology of the “Gospels” the concepts of guilt and punishment are lacking, and so is that of reward. “Sin,” which means anything that puts a distance between God and man, is abolished — Nietzsche, Antichrist 33

I agree that Nietzsche probably saw this as an improvement upon the moralising relgions, but Jesus way is not the only way to attain that. It was absent in Greek culture too, before Socrates in Homeric Greece at least... there was no sin the Gods didn't commit themselves.

Anyway I got to go, I enjoyed the discussion.

Yes I get that you don't want to claim that he wants to promote Chirstian values, but that he was inspired by Jesus specifically. I guess I just have gotten another sense from reading his work. I seems to me he got most of his inspiration for re-evaluation from the pre-socrates Greeks. That was his first intellectual love so to speak, and it seems to have stuck with him. But I could be wrong offcourse.

a man who asserts appearance is more valuable than truth — Vaskane

And what do you mean with appearance in opposition to truth, there is only appearance ;-).

He wasn't married to it insofar it conflicts with life-affirmation. Some fictions are necessary for life,... some, not that many, truth is still important. He did choose Zarathustra for that reason.

"Nietzsche does not demur of Jesus, conceding that he was the only one true Christian.[28] He presents a Christ whose own inner life consisted of "wit, the blessedness of peace, of gentleness, the inability to be an enemy".[29]

Nietzsche heavily criticizes the organized institution of Christianity and its class of priests. Christ's evangelism consisted of the good news that the 'kingdom of God' is within you:[30][29] "What is the meaning of 'Glad Tidings'?—The true life, the life eternal has been found—it is not merely promised, it is here, it is in you; it is the life that lies in love free from all retreats and exclusions", whereby sin is abolished and away from "all keeping of distances" between man and God.[29]

"What the 'glad tidings' tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of heaven belongs to children".[31] - WiKi on AntiChrist — Corvus

What is I think important to realise here is that, while most of these discriptions of Jesus may sound positive to "our modern ears", Nietzsche probably wouldn't have evaluated these all that positively. "Peace", "Free from all exclusions" "away from keeping all distances", "no contradictions" etc etc... all of these things don't contribute to overcoming, but to a kind of sterile unproductive happiness. On the contrary Nietzsche might say, for overcoming you need struggle, pain, difference, hierarchies... the pathos of distance,

So in short, whileNietzsche probably descriptively agrees with all of this, his evaluation of these things is just totally different.

Thank you for the reference.

The Redeemer type
Nietzsche criticizes Ernest Renan's attribution of the concepts genius and hero to Jesus. Nietzsche thinks that the word idiot best describes Jesus. — Wiki

Yes, this was the idea I got from reading the Anti-Christ, that he though him to be a bit of an idiot... but an idiot can be likeable I suppose.

Also interesting that he may have gotten that description from Dostoevsky's novel the Idiot. That would make a lot of sense actually, and also explains Nietzsches ambivalence towards such a figure.

The way I would make sense of it, is that Jesus is only a yea-sayer in the sense that he affirms his inner world of sensations, because he has become incapable of taking up the world as it is.... that is affirmation out of ignorance. Nietzsche would want us to affirm the world as it is right?

With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth.
— ChatteringMonkey

Perfectly inline with the prior parts of the section even on Nietzsche's ideas of destruction:

"Negation and annihilation are inseparable from a yea-saying attitude towards life." — Vaskane

Notice the quotation marks arround free spirit though. He's saying it tongue in cheek, 'technically' he's a free spirit... because nothing gets to him anymore, that is he's not a free spirit for the same reasons other free spirits are free.

And because nothing gets to him (but his inner sensations), he doesn't even negate anymore. If negation is inseperable from yea-saying, then where does that leave us?

What is that to the third stage of the three Metamorphoses? — Vaskane

Degeneration? ;-)

The physiologists, at all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in the living organism, the result of degeneration. — ChatteringMonkey

Childishness is not the same as childlike. In any case in context it seems clear to me that he doesn't mean it as a positive in this particular instance.

But alright, I will grant you that there seems to be some aspects of the dionysian in Jesus. It is speculated that Jesus was inspired by the figure of dionysus, which does make some sense to me, in the dissolution of bounderies and emphasis on love.

I also vaguely remember Nietzsche saying something along the lines of the Ubermensch being a Ceasar with the heart of Christ.

Still in context of his whole philosophy, what Nietzsche valued and so on, something seems off to me with the idea that Zarathustra is essentially the same as Jesus. Like the way he talks about Jesus in the anti-Christ seems to paint a picture of Jesus as this weak figure, oversensitive to pain and unable to deal with reality. How would one reconcile that with what Nietzsches seems to value and his positive valuation of figures like Ceasar or Napoleon... they seem nothing like Jesus.

So yeah, I still think maybe he liked some particular things about Jesus, but disliked most of the rest.

Well it seems to me it's not only their pessimism that got them fired, but especially their activism.

I think maybe there is a case to be made that a scientist shouldn't be trying to be an activitist or politician, because these two activities don't allways go together all that well for obvious reasons.

In an ideal world, a scientist describes the world as best as he can, and then politicians and activists take up the task of changing the world informed by the picture scientists have painted. Mixing the two doesn't seem ideal, if not for reasons of potential conflicts of interest, then for reasons of credibility.

But given the scope, severity and urgency of the problem, and the fact that politics doesn't seem to work as it should, I can definately understand more scientists going in that direction.

Hansens position seems to be a minority position among Climate scientists, which doesn't mean he's wrong ofcourse, but still a minority position.

If he's got the right idea though...

He is a symbol for Nietzsche, but a symbol for the psychological state of bliss ("kingdom of heaven") and a symbol for the values he opposes because they are life-denying (Jesus on the cross turning the other cheek, giving universal forgiveness to mankind)... hence the "Anti-Christ".

It is true that he thought what the church made of Jesus teaching was a gross falsification (and much worse), but that doesn't mean he condoned or even subscribed to Jesus ideas.

I can only repeat that I set myself against all efforts to intrude the fanatic into the figure of the Saviour: the very word impérieux, used by Renan, is alone enough to annul the type. What the “glad tidings” tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of heaven belongs to children; the faith that is voiced here is no more an embattled faith—it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit.The physiologists, at all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in the living organism, the result of degeneration. A faith of this sort is not furious, it does not de nounce, it does not defend itself: it does not come with “the sword”—it does not realize how it will one day set man against man. It does not manifest itself either by miracles, or by rewards and promises, or by “scriptures”: it is itself, first and last, its own miracle, its own reward, its own promise, its own “kingdom of God.” This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain sort: in primitive Christianity one finds only concepts of a Judaeo-Semitic character (—that of eating and drinking at the last supper belongs to this category—an idea which, like everything else Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.—Here it is of paramount importance to be led into no error by the temptations lying in Christian, or rather ecclesiastical prejudices: such a symbolism par excellence stands outside all religion, all notions of worship, all history, all natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books, all art—his “wisdom” is precisely a pure ignorance[11] of all such things. He has never heard of culture; he doesn’t have to make war on it—he doesn’t even deny it.... The same thing may be said of the state, of the whole bourgeoise social order, of labour, of war—he has no ground for denying “the world,” for he knows nothing of the ecclesiastical concept of “the world”.... Denial is precisely the thing that is impossible to him.—In the same way he lacks argumentative capacity, and has no belief that an article of faith, a “truth,” may be established by proofs (—his proofs are inner “lights,” subjective sensations of happiness and self-approval, simple “proofs of power”—). Such a doctrine cannot contradict: it doesn’t know that other doctrines exist, or can exist, and is wholly incapable of imagining anything opposed to it.... If anything of the sort is ever encountered, it laments the “blindness” with sincere sympathy—for it alone has “light”—but it does not offer objections... — Nietzsche in the Antichrist

Nietzsche himself yes, Jesus no, would be my interpretation. Zarathustra is the mouthpiece for Nietzsches philosophy. A lot of his next work Beyond Good and Evil is a restatement of the ideas Zarathustra expresses in Also sprah Zarathustra.

As is evident from the section from Ecce Homo I quoted above, Nietzsches Zarathustra is inspired by the Historical Zarathustra, but yes he is definately not meant to be the same, but rather the opposite, moralist <-> immoralist.

As for Jesus, I don't see why one would get the idea that Nietzsches Zarathustra is anything like Jesus, other than he is meant to be a kind of prophet-type.

I dunno, I think all of this is pretty straightforward.

But there wasn't anything specifically about Jesus in the aphorisms you encouraged me to read, other than the very last sentence I had quoted.

He's an immoralist because he rejects the traditional metaphysical systems of Good and Evil moralists have set out historically.... he's beyond Good and Evil, not beyond good and bad. You can be an immoralist and still have virtues in his conception, it just won't be the traditional Platonic formula for virtues of "the good, the true and the beautiful", but rather 'vir'tu with emphasis on the latin root "vir", manly.

Alright I have read through it, once more, and it just seems to confirm what I already wrote earlier, Nietzsches aim is to flip the moralist/prophet project on its head.

People have never asked me as they should have done, what the name of Zarathustra precisely meant in my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist; for that which distinguishes this Persian from all others in the past is the very fact that he was the exact reverse of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things. The translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But the very question suggests its own answer. Zarathustra created this most portentous of all errors,—morality; therefore he must be the first to expose it. Not only because he has had longer and greater experience of the subject than any other thinker,—all history is indeed the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things,—but because of the more important fact that Zarathustra was the most truthful of thinkers. In his teaching alone is truthfulness upheld as the highest virtue—that is to say, as the reverse of the cowardice of the "idealist" who takes to his heels at the sight of reality. Zarathustra has more pluck in his body than all other thinkers put together. To tell the truth and to aim straight: that is the first Persian virtue. Have I made myself clear? ... The overcoming of morality by itself, through truthfulness, the moralist's overcoming of himself in his opposite—in me—that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth. — Nietzsche

I shall have an excellent opportunity of showing the incalculably calamitous consequences to the whole of history, of the credo of optimism, this monstrous offspring of the homines optimi. Zarathustra, the first who recognised that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist, though perhaps more detrimental, says: "Good men never speak the truth. False shores and false harbours were ye taught by the good. In the lies of the good were ye born and bred. Through the good everything hath become false and crooked from the roots." Fortunately the world is not built merely upon those instincts which would secure to the good-natured herd animal his paltry happiness. To desire everybody to become a "good man," "a gregarious animal," "a blue-eyed, benevolent, beautiful soul," or—as Herbert Spencer wished—a creature of altruism, would mean robbing existence of its greatest character, castrating man, and reducing humanity to a sort of wretched Chinadom. And this some have tried to do! It is precisely this that men called morality. In this sense Zarathustra calls "the good," now "the last men," and anon "the beginning of the end"; and above all, he considers them as the most detrimental kind of men, because they secure their existence at the cost of Truth and at the cost of the Future. — Nietzsche

Why Nietzsche choose Zarathustra should be clear, he was the first moralist, the first monotheist, the inventor of Good and Evil etc etc... On top of all of that, Zoroaster was the one to proclaim truthfullness as the highest virtue. And then a bit further Nietzsche clearly states that the moralist is necessarily a falsifier of reality... a liar. So you see the irony in the use of symbolism here, he used the stated values of the first moralist precisely to overcome the moral traditions he himself gave rise to...

Literally the last sentence of his last work :

"Have I been understood? Dionysus versus the Crucified"

There's still a versus there. If you want to make a case that they compliment eachother and even come together in the end, by all means do, but I certainly haven't seen any evidence for that.

They consequently are versus each other, Complimentary Opposites PAIRING to generate something greater. — Vaskane

Yes it was his first book, immature and still under the influence of Schopenhauer (and Hegel) as he said so himself. He views evolved over time, and he moved progressively more towards the dionysian later. Either way Apollo and Dionysus were certainly not identical like you would have it with dionysus and Christ.

Yes I know, he disliked the church doctrines even more than the true Christian ideal.... that doesn't mean he liked Christs true teachings. It is possible to dislike multiple things and for different reasons.

Not making any distinctions anymore, not resisting anything anymore, is not life-affirming. The basic principle of life is precisly making those distinctions in order to affirm its particular will.

Read the passage about "inner subjectivity" being the only reality left for Christ. Christ is the orginal hippie in search for eternal bliss. Projecting your will outward into the world doesn't matter anymore, it's all about feeling good.

No, I don't think so. It is Dionysus VERSUS The Crucified... AGAINST the Crucified. That is the fundamental opposition he settled on in the end, after starting with Dionysus VS Apollo in the Birth of Tragedy.

Also he deemed the old testament much higher than the new testament, the gospel. So a rejecting of Jewish doctrine is not necessarily allways a positive in Nietzsches book.

I don't see how that proves your point. It describes the "kingdom of heaven" as a psychological state to be attained here on earth... that is the idea of not resisting to anything anymore, of turning the other cheek.... out of an oversensitivity to pain. Bliss. He describes it, but that doesn't mean he subscribe to it. Nietzsches whole philosophy is about making distinctions and valuation based on those distinctions, wherein pain plays a vital role... they couldn't be much further from eachother.

Yes sure that's also a big part of it, he tempts people who aspire to greatness, many among them were artists, the list is endless.

So it was natural for Zarathustra was depicting Jesus, and tacitly Nietzsche himself too. I am glad that I am learning something about Nietzsche with this discussion. Thanks. — Corvus

The only similarity is that Jesus and Zarathustra were creators of values. That's the one aspect Nietzsche could respect in Jesus, that he had the strenght of his convictions, and managed to overturn conventional morality and create something new to suit his character. That's why (as I said above) he choose a prophet-type as the mouthpiece for his philosophy in Thus spoke Z, because they were doing a similar prophet thing, creating new tables of values.

Where they took that exercise however, what values they created, could not be more different.