Posted by:
Time in Motion
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Date: January 16, 2021 11:48PM
Lot's Wife,
[Forgive the duplicate sill figuring out the site]
I did not say “ the Christian communities had selected the core documents by 120 AD.” I said “the early Christian communities decided the the basic outline of the Canon themselves” and the early communities likely had “a collection of Christian documents that looked very similar” (note the words: very similar) to the later official canon and I then clearly said, “it's true that it was later that the Bible collection became official.” As you can see I did not say as you falsely claim “the Christian communities had selected the core documents by 120 AD.” So you are countering with a Straw Man. I agree with what you wrote after that because I have read or skimmed much of Ehrman myself and what you wrote actually harmonizes with what I wrote because it appears we have read the same stuff.
I have read or listened via audiobook to most of Nietzsche and consulted scholars on N, so I am surprised you are so confidently disagreeing with me. You wrote: “N never wanted to be a preacher; theology was a required subject in his gymnasium, and he got high grades in it, but he never voluntarily studied it let alone intended to become a minister.” I didn't have the patience to read through all the bios I read on N on my kindle to quote to you how you are mistaken, so I just googled it and this popped up first thing: “After graduation in September 1864,[59] Nietzsche began studying theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn in the hope of becoming a minister.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_NietzscheI realized it is Wikipedia so I then saw this, “By 1864, he focused his attention on becoming a minister and began studying theology and philology at the University of Bonn.” Source:
http://www.philosophicallibrary.com/german-philosopher-friedrich-nietzsche/You said N. never wrote an autobiography. So I googled that and found several places that explain that his book Ecce Homo is an autobiography.
I agree N hated Christianity with a passion. So now you appear to agree with me on that from previously saying in your first confidently claiming I am wrong, “He was not advocating the breakdown of Christian morality” (Date: January 15, 2021 02:52AM). You then wrote “To the extent that he praised Jesus, it was Jesus the iconoclast and not the image that emerged from the Pauline-Church Fathers-Constantinian process.” Yes I’d say that is correct, which he covers in his book The Antichrist. But again, he did however not only praise Jesus but also criticized Jesus as well for being partially responsible for Christian mortality. Here is a good example of what I am talking about where he criticizes Jesus’ moral ethic: see
http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/human-all-too-human/aphorism-87-quote_a576767c1.htmlI just read TSZ where he further criticizes Jesus’ ethic and Christian morality, but I don’t have the patience to quote from it, but if you read it yourself you will see what I mean. I recommend the Graham Parkes translation for seeing all the NT references provided in footnotes (which are quite illuminating), showing that he was replacing the good and ethical role-model-Jesus with his beyond Right and Wrong, anti role model Zarathustra the godless. It is clear if you read TSZ that Zarathustra is an anti-Christ, a reversal of Jesus’ ethic of kindness, giving, caring for the poor and the needy. N wants his readers who are higher men (elite men), above the rabble, to return to the Greco Roman ethic and become “hard,” (tough), avoiding “Christian” pity/compassion, and by dying as hyperboreans (as he put is elsewhere) their “spirit” can then pass on into future generations and evolve the superhuman species (either memetically/culturally or genetically is unclear), so that a new post-Christian band of higher “men” (or perhaps new hominids) will rule over the leftover human rabble. He repeatedly says in TSZ that mankind is basically polluted by Christian morality and so Christian men need to die off so a new species can emerge that say Yes to the earth and evolving Life. I learned this in part from reading his notes when writing TSZ.
At this point in my response, I’d like to know your sources because it is the opposite of everything I have read from what I consider the top Nietzsche scholars. For example, you say, “At no point did N seek to eliminate the Zoroastrian influence on Christianity … To the contrary, Zarathustra is Zoroaster, the father of Zoroastrianism.” In all due respect, are you serious! I’m baffled. Nietzsche’s makes it clear in Ecce Homo:
“I have not been asked, as I should have been asked, what the name ‘Zarathustra’ means in precisely my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous uniqueness of that Persian in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the actual 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 this question is itself at bottom its own answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality: consequently he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only has he had longer and greater experience here than any other thinker…what is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, upholds truthfulness as the supreme virtue…To tell the truth and to shoot well with arrows: that is Persian virtue. – Have I been understood? The self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite – into me – that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.”
He was using Zarathustra so the reader thinks of dualistic Zoroastrianism which N is seeking to unravel and reverse with his immoralist monism. Have you actually read Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Ecce Homo, etc? I really am struggling to understand how you can get N. so wrong yet express your views so confidently. Also see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra#SynopsisYou wrote “He wanted his new Superman to be like that, to engender a radical new vision for humanity that would unite people in achieving higher aspirations.” I think you have a watered down liberal Nietzsche you read somewhere, or something. Superman/Overman is not meant to inspire people today to higher aspirations like Jesus did for Christians, the free spirits and higher men like Napoleon or Goethe (or Nietzsche and his Zarathustra) are meant to do that. The Superhuman is not a goal for men now, but is an unclear future hope for a new post-Christian species or culture. Just as we evolved past homo erectus to become homo sapiens, and evolved beyond Romans into Christians, N likely expected his higher men to live in such a way so as to pass on a new spirit into future generations that would evolve humans into something else, the Supermen or Overman/Beyond-moral-man. He begins TSZ saying I love those who die as higher men so their spirit passes over the bridge to the Overman. The Overman is what comes after civilized human beings. OK, in a way sure the Superman is meant to replace the Christian God and the Messiah species, so in a way I guess it can be seen as an inspiration. But it is not so innocent as you make it sound, N was a nihilist, an optimistic one, but still a nihilist. His god was Dionysus, the personification of the amoral will to power.
Regarding scientific materialism, I have read almost everything he wrote and he very much despised scientific materialism, as what he called the will to truth. He was influenced by Heraclitus. He promoted only practical truths toward exercising your will to power, but if truth was not useful, then lying was OK. He was pro science yes, as practically useful, but did not care much for logic and constantly broke all the rules of formal logic with for example his constant ad hominems, etc.
Yes, I am aware of Wagner and his sister. So we agree there. Except that I think there have been a lot of liberal professors at University that have tried to gloss over Nietzsche’s full attitude of the Jews. He was not what we’d call an anti-Semite, but he probably held an elitist prejudge against Jews like many did. He had mixed things to say about Jews and Judaism to say the least. For example, here is what one person writes on N and anti-Semitism, “In another place, Nietzsche writes that Jewish scholars support logic because logic “makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses” (TGS 348). Source:
https://www.atlassociety.org/post/nietzsche-and-the-jews-judaism-and-anti-semitismRead the whole short article in the link for the full context.
Many scholars find that his last works are a commentary on TSZ and N himself said TSZ is his best book or something to that effect. So I don’t think you should try to distance yourself from TSZ. But we agree that his other books should be read along with TSZ. Regarding your last statement you seem to just want to disagree with me through straw men arguments. You said, “And it was not a madman who said ‘God is dead:" You then said N said it not the madman. I actually wrote, “Nietzsche’s madman …” so OF COURSE I know N said it, as the madman is a character in HIS parable. Yeesh! Even more, the madman does say: “Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”