This is very much one of the things I have been trying to say. Nietzsche is in other words extremely misunderstood. As he himself said, he found there to be hierarchy thinking, political thinking and Will to power and control behind every philosophy and theology. — Beebert

Nietzsche opposition is to morality is as an excuse for hierarchy. Not in the sense of there are no right or wrong actions or people who are better or worse, but rather to the citing of moral character as an account of the worth of existence. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Since sacrifice does not undo what has been done, it cannot pay for wrongs at all, not even in Jesus. — TheWillowOfDarkness

God is just as ignorant as the sacrifice obsessed humans which went before him, at worst building a religion on the very premise of sacrifice which was meant to be targeting, at best lying about why Jesus is sacrificed (i.e. that Jesus died as a sacrifice for sins, rather the death being a cultural act of power to cause people to alter their relationship to sacrifice). — TheWillowOfDarkness

God is dead because we already have the meaning God is meant to grant us and always well. — TheWillowOfDarkness

As with regards to the priests. — Agustino

True about lay-men. Not as often true about priests and pastors. — Beebert

I can't say I find Lord of the Rings to be particularly good art though... — Beebert

They don't, and no I wouldn't. Having sex with a lot of women can on the opposite mean you don't understand sex. My main suggestion regarding this lay in much of Nietzsche's understanding of women. — Beebert

I personally understand Blake as cririzising priests who preach chastity in order to achieve power and mental and social control over others instead of understanding the true meaning of chastity. — Beebert

Now if you dont mind, I would really appreciate you commenting on the things from my earlier post(s) that you avoid commenting and replying to but said you were going to comment on later. This one for example : — Beebert

'Nietzsche wrote in Daybreak: “In this book faith in morality is withdrawn — but why? Out of morality!" This means that morality as the object of Nietzsche's critique must be distinguishable from the sense of morality he retains and employs. — Beebert

Once more, before I move on
I am directing my gaze forward
In loneliness, I am lifting my hands
Up to Thee, to whom I flee,
To whom I, from the deepest bottom of my heart
Solemnly consecrate altars
So that, at all times,
His voice would call me again.
Thereupon, written deeply inside, the word
Is blazing like fire: To the unknown God:
I am his, even if I remained with the hord of the infidels
Up to this hour:
I am his – and I feel the ties
That pull me down in fight
And, even if I should flee,
Still would force me into his service.
I want to know Thee, Unknown One
Thou, who is reaching deeply into my soul,
Who is raging through my life like a storm
Thou Unfathomable One, akin to me!
I want to know Thee, and serve Thee.

"And yet all the same I know of nothing more monstrous in its inner untruth, than to connect Nietzsche with the modern militaristic Germany. This means -- to read the alphabetic letters, without understanding the meaning of the words. They know Nietzsche only through certain fragmented aphorisms, turned round in reverse and filled with shoddy nuances, they read through and ponder on too little in him, and sense not his spirit and his fate." — Beebert

There is a reason why Freud said of Nietzsche that no man in history has ever had a greater understanding of himself and man than Nietzsche. And that very likely no man in the future will ever reach the insights and the understanding Nietzsche reached. — Beebert

How can I be responsible for everything if God is the one creating me without my consent for example?' — Beebert

I also dont believe Nietzsche was cruel, pitiless and without compassion. But rather that he had a quite strong tendency towards feeling compassion and pity... — Beebert

And this has been much of my argument all the time, that man is created in order to create, or to be a co-creator. I did not know this though about Aquinas, and if what you say is the case, I am inclined to agree and appreciate this insight of his, though I would appreciate to read how he defined it. — Beebert

On a superficial level, have you heard about the different interpretations on Nietzsche's sexuality etc? — Beebert

I once read a biography of Nietzsche and laughed myself to death almost when I read Nietzsche's letter about how he liked Lou-Andreas Salome but that when it comes to marriage, he wanted his friend to tell her that he might consider it, but at max (!)for two years! As if more than two years with a woman in a marriage would be unendurable. That was hilarious to read. — Beebert

I would say that I most often disagree with his view on women. — Beebert

I am talking about a certain type of forced chastity — Beebert

self-torture for the sake of it — Beebert

condemning attitude towards sex in its totality, losing the insight about the holy nature that also can exist in sex. — Beebert

There are some pleasures I don't want to experience, such as those found in the traditional list of deadly sins — Thorongil

there are some pains I don't mind experiencing, such as those derived from fasting, exercise, surgery, and so on — Thorongil

And to anticipate an objection to the latter claim, I do not experience such pains as pleasurable nor do I submit to them in order to feel pleasure. — Thorongil

Correct, that was his view in the Destiny of Man too. But you see how the purpose here is to create, not to seek salvation. Nietzsche too reasoned like Berdyaev that sublimating the sexual drive can be fundamental for the creative act. Though except that, Nietzsche is probably not the best to seek advice from regarding questions about sex — Beebert

Though except that, Nietzsche is probably not the best to seek advice from regarding questions about sex — Beebert

Chastity can definitely be tyrannical and pharasaic, so it all depends on how Blake understood chastity. — Beebert

For him, sin was to reject life and vitality, sin was to embrace nothingness. — Beebert

It wasn't just simply a moral violation. — Beebert

Regarding Berdyaev's view on creativity, they can co-exist, but that is rare, not rule. Read his Destiny of Man for an explanation, it was his thought, not mine. — Beebert

And here is a quote from Berdyaev that I agree with: “Kant is a profoundly Christian thinker, more so than Thomas Aquinas,” — Beebert

In Berdyaev's work Destiny of Man, as well as in his autobiography, he advocates for two paths in life: The path of creativity, the path chosen by artists Most often; musicians, writers, painters etc. And the path of salvation. Both leads to heaven in the end in his view. And you can rarely choose both at the same time. And he couldn't accept the thought that Nietzsche and other brilliant men were in hell. — Beebert

"He is a compelling writer, a Nietzschean whose critique of Nietzsche is sharper than a blade" — Beebert

The two may be closely related; so it's an easy mistake. — John

I believe it is a composite of 'Buxtehude' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieterich_Buxtehude) and 'Buddha'. Perhaps Shyster Eggfart is fond of organs. ;) — John

I see. But the Buddha bit threw me off, I was thinking along completely different lines. — Agustino

Partly his insight that man is irrational. — Beebert

I hope you know what Nietzsche thought about the enlightenment — Beebert

"That wasn't my impression at all" Lol then you havent read or understood Berdyaev either. He sometimes even referred to himself as a "Nietzschean-Christian" — Beebert

Morality, as you seem to look at it; what is its purpose? What is its goals? — Beebert

I am not an enemy of morality in itself. — Beebert

If you want to look at someone who actually had the RIGHT to criticize Nietzsche, I recommend to you Berdyaev — Beebert

He had a great understanding of Nietzsche, and he admired him and considered him one one of the greatest thinkers to have ever lived. — Beebert

And he too was sceptical and critical towards Aquinas. — Beebert

Btw, regarding Notes from Underground; I guess you dismissed the message there as false and untrue? — Beebert

To me, your worship of the concepts "Righteousness" and "morality" sounds too lawful. — Beebert

Kierkegaard for example had a där better understanding of the core message of the gospels than did Aquinas — Beebert

How a christian that admires Dostoevsky and Kiekegaard for example (which I do too) — Beebert

can for example prefer Aquinas and Plato to Nietzsche, I can't understand. I dont quite understand that... — Beebert

Have you read Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky? — Beebert

This Faith transcends according to Kierkegaard both reason/rationality and [social] morality. — Beebert

In my eyes, and certainly in Dostorvsky's too, men like Aquinas, Hegel, John Calvin etc. did not really understand the possibility of doing the impossible — Beebert

In my eyes, and certainly in Dostorvsky's too, men like Aquinas, Hegel, John Calvin etc. did not really understand the possibility of doing the impossible, because they worshiped morality, necessity and rationality to much. — Beebert

Take Genealogy of Morals, the first essay for example. From memory, I remember N. argued that "good" originated from the nobles and aristocrats (and he specifically said he means noble and aristocrat in a social sense). Thus bad was meant to anything that is common, or plebeian. How is that deep? That's as crass and crude as Hume David who said that justice is what is useful. No wonder the powerful social class who initially was dominant determined good and bad according to itself, by taking itself as standard. And no wonder that the "slaves" sought to overturn their dominance out of spite (ressentiment) and therefore created "good" and "evil" where evil belongs to the traits of the aristocrats that were previously deemed good. What's with all this low quality crap? It doesn't even actually have anything to do with what morality is, but rather with what people call morality... why is that even interesting?

Indeed, it is precisely in this sense that Chesterton laughs at Nietzsche. Nietzsche lacks the courage to tread down the paths of real morality. That's why Nietzsche was a coward - he could not manage to pursue Truth - no, he was much more concerned about the petty truths of men - or better said what men think and how men act. That's of no interest to a seeker of Truth.

And keep in mind that I am somewhat sympathetic with N's anti-herd mentality but more along Platonist lines of thought than N's. — Agustino

Eggfart* — Sapientia

I don't like it. Change it back. — Sapientia

Successful as in successfully propagating your genes, sure. There are other kinds of success - but it all can be resolved down to surviving and passing on your genes. — Harry Hindu

You really do live in an alternate reality. — Michael

It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite indefensible compliments to Christianity. They talk as if there had never been any piety or pity until Christianity came, a point on which any mediaeval would have been eager to correct them. They represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity. They will think me very narrow (whatever that means) if I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all mankind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk. Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. — G. K. Chesterton

And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth. — G. K. Chesterton

If you wanted to dissuade a man from drinking his tenth whisky you would slap him on the back and say, “Be a man.” No one who wished to dissuade a crocodile from eating his tenth explorer would slap it on the back and say, “Be a crocodile.” For we have no notion of a perfect crocodile; no allegory of a whale expelled from his whaley Eden. If a whale came up to us and said: “I am a new kind of whale; I have abandoned whalebone,” we should not trouble. But if a man came up to us (as many will soon come up to us) to say, “I am a new kind of man. I am the super-man. I have abandoned mercy and justice”; we should answer, “Doubtless you are new, but you are not nearer to the perfect man, for he has been already in the mind of God. We have fallen with Adam and we shall rise with Christ; but we would rather fall with Satan than rise with you.” — G. K. Chesterton

What makes you think Chesterton and Russell are deep while Nietzsche is not. And also Aquinas. — Beebert

That would be like calling Bentham or John Stuart Mill deep. There Btw you have to mediocer Philosophers not worthy to be called deep. — Beebert

What Aquinas said and what he felt in his heart, and what you discover If you can more in depth understand What is the heart behind words, is something else. — Beebert

While Chesterton is deeprr and better than Russell in his comments, he lacks psychological discernment. — Beebert

Chesterton is right that Nietzsche as a person was quite weak. Physicallt. So? — Beebert

This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold.

Nietzsche was an outsider, Chesterton an insider. — Beebert

And explain to me What makes you think Chesterton and Russell are deep while Nietzsche is not. And also Aquinas. — Beebert

Nietzsche Btw rejected Darwin's understanding of evolution. — Beebert

Read through his fragments of thoughts called "The Will To power". — Beebert

And the laughable Russell was wrong in calling Nietzsche a romantic. All men are not born with a senare of artistry and art. Russell was one of them. So his words means nothing. — Beebert

being unfaithful to wifes he means? — Beebert

Have you btw heard this superficial philosopher's understanding of Jesus and comments on him? — Beebert

At least Nietzsche was honest in his likes and dislikes. — Beebert

How many thousands of years ago did the first human condemn the present age as if the world was once perfect or even slightly better? It must satisfy some need...

But what? — Mongrel

Well, those are the guiding values of our materialistic and individualistic commercial civilization. — Erik

It felt like he was using his penchant for deceit as a selling point, wearing it as a badge of honor, as of that personal trait would make him an exceptional politician once it was channeled away from his personal business endeavors and towards the larger interests of his constituency. — Erik

Self-proclaimed — Beebert

If Nietzsche cant even make you understand him, what makes You think I could? I lack faith in it. — Beebert

Name these philosophers that are your friends. — Beebert

His general outlook remained very similar to that of Wagner in the Ring; Nietzsche’s superman is very like Siegfried, except that he knows Greek. This may seem odd, but that is not my fault.

In spite of Nietzsche’s criticism of the romantics, his outlook owes much to them; it is that of aristocratic anarchism, like Byron’s, and one is not surprised to find him admiring Byron. He attempts to combine two sets of values which are not easily harmonized: on the one hand he likes ruthlessness, war, and aristocratic pride; on the other hand, he loves philosophy and literature and the arts, especially music. Historically, these values coexisted in the Renaissance; Pope Julius II, fighting for Bologna and employing Michelangelo, might be taken as the sort of man whom Nietzsche would wish to see in control of governments. It is natural to compare Nietzsche with Machiavelli, in spite of important differences between the two men… Both have an ethic which aims at power and is deliberately anti-Christian, though Nietzsche is more frank in this respect. What Caesar Borgia was to Machiavelli, Napoleon was to Nietzsche: a great man defeated by petty opponents.

Nietzsche alludes habitually to ordinary human beings as the “bungled and botched,” and sees no objection to their suffering if it is necessary for the production of a great man. Thus the whole importance of the period from 1789 to 1815 is summed up in Napoleon: “The Revolution made Napoleon possible: that is its justification…”

It is necessary for higher men to make war upon the masses, and resist the democratic tendencies of the age, for in all directions mediocre people are joining hands to make themselves masters… He regards compassion as a weakness to be combated… He prophesied with a certain glee an era of great wars; one wonders whether he would have been happy if he had lived to see the fulfillment of his prophecy.

There is a great deal in Nietzsche that must be dismissed as merely megalomaniac… It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is a warrior, not a professor; all the men he admires were military. His opinion of women, like every man’s, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear. “Forget not thy whip”–but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks.

He condemns Christian love because he thinks it is an outcome of fear… It does not occur to Nietzsche as possible that a man should genuinely feel universal love, obviously because he himself feels almost universal hatred and fear, which he would fain disguise as lordly indifference. His “noble” man–who is himself in day-dreams–is a being wholly devoid of sympathy, ruthless, cunning, concerned only with his own power. King Lear, on the verge of madness, says: “I will do such things–what they are yet I know not–but they shall be the terror of the earth.” This is Nietzsche’s philosophy in a nutshell.

It never occurred to Nietzsche that the lust for power, with which he endows his superman, is itself an outcome of fear. Those who do not fear their neighbours see no necessity to tyrannize over them… I will not deny that, partly as a result of his teaching, the real world has become very like his nightmare, but that does not make it any the less horrible.

We can now state Nietzsche’s ethic. I think what follows is a fair analysis of it: Victors in war, and their descendants, are usually biologically superior to the vanquished. It is therefore desirable that they should hold all the power, and should manage affairs exclusively in their own interests.

Suppose we wish–as I certainly do–to find arguments against Nietzsche’s ethics and politics, what arguments can we find?… The ethical, as opposed to the political, question is one as to sympathy. Sympathy, in the sense of being made unhappy by the sufferings of others, is to some extent natural to human beings. But the development of this feeling is very different in different people. Some find pleasure in the infliction of torture; others, like Buddha, feel that they cannot be completely happy so long as any living thing is suffering. Most people divide mankind emotionally into friends and enemies, feeling sympathy for the former, but not for the latter. An ethic such as that of Christianity or Buddhism has its emotional basis in universal sympathy; Nietzsche’s, in a complete absence of sympathy. (He frequently preaches against sympathy, and in this respect one feels that he has no difficulty in obeying his own precepts.)

For my part, I agree with Buddha as I have imagined him. But I do not know how to prove that he is right by any argument such as can be used in a mathematical or a scientific question. I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.

Other vague modern people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief mark of vague modern people. Not daring to define their doctrine of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint or shame, and , what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality. Thus they think it intellectual to talk about things being 'high.' It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase from a steeple or a weathercock. 'Tommy was a good boy' is a pure philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas. 'Tommy lived the higher life' is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.

This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, 'beyond good and evil,' because he had not the courage to say, 'more good than good and evil,' or, 'more evil than good and evil.' Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, 'the purer man,' or 'the happier man,' or 'the sadder man,' for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says 'the upper man.' or 'over man,' a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce

As he starts on his journey he meets an old hermit, a saint. The saint tells Zarathustra that he himself loves God but not man, because man is too imperfect. Zarathustra replies that he loves man, and then he asks the saint what he is doing in the forest. The saint replies, “I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs I laugh, cry, and hum: thus I praise God.”

The two separate, laughing like young boys. But when Zarathustra is alone again he wonders to himself, “Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!”

The old saint says he loves God, not man because man is imperfect, and Zarathustra says he loves man, and God is dead… As it seems to me, obviously, in the depth of his heart, the common Christian, with very few exceptions(Aquinas NOT being an exception), is Zarathustra's hermit saint. — Beebert

there is nobody higher than you — Beebert

It is very difficult to understand Nietzsche; he is so subtle, so deep, and so profound. It is beyond the reach of any idiotananda. Beyond the reach of most. You also need to be interested, brave and Independent to understand even a tiny fraction of his thoughts. — Beebert

This says christianity: If man is sinful through and through, then he ought only to hate himself. Fundamentally, he would have to treat his fellow men on the
same basis as he treats himself; charity needs to be justified and its
justification lies in the fact that God has commanded it. Love man for God's sake in other words, not man. Man is a villain. Why Love man at all? Because God so commnds? — Beebert

In the political arena Trump does seem to represent at least a more brazen disregard for truth than is normally seen, even amongst the professional liars and hypocrites who typically inhabit this world. — Erik

But I don't understand what you do on a philosophy forum. — Beebert