The element of being literate and educated certainly played a part but it should not be ignored that great efforts were made to convert them to Christianity or confine their civic rights and participation.

And so, with respect to my previous post, what's your point about Philo Judaeus?

The element of being literate and educated certainly played a part but it should not be ignored that great efforts were made to convert them to Christianity or confine their civic rights and participation. — Paine

@Jamal

True. Around the turn of the 20th Century, the Germans tried mandatory education for Jewish children to force assimilation. It didn't work. The USA would later use the same tactic on the Lakota. It destroyed their culture.

In other words, more blaming the victim. :roll:

I think it is potentially useful to recognise what oneself and everyone else is doing with our lives and our deaths. — unenlightened

Not everyone engages in othering, though, it doesn't come naturally to all people. This is a problem, for them at least.

It might be possible to do it less vehemently at least, and it might be possible to modify societies so that the fault lines of identity become more blurred.

But to what end?

War and strife are massive mid-term incentives for economic growth, as crude as this sounds.

What point is it to save the body at the cost of destroying the spirit?

Not everyone engages in othering, though, it doesn't come naturally to all people. This is a problem, for them at least. — baker

Them? or Us? That is, are they that engage in othering a problem for us who do not, or is it the other way round? No, actually, don't even try and answer. I'll just repeat: everyone engages in othering.

@schopenhauer1

Washington asserted that every religious community in the United States would enjoy freedom of worship without fear of interference by the government. /.../ — Mount Vernon

But what was the purpose for this state-issued and state-protected religious freedom?

Did Washington believe that all religions are equal, equally true, equally valuable in some profound spiritual way?

Or was the reason for this state-issued and state-protected religious freedom more prosaic, namely, to get the various religions and factions to stop fighting with eachother for supremacy? Given that in those fights, there can be a lot of collateral damage, general civic unrest, etc..

In other words, more blaming the victim. — 180 Proof

It would be strange if religions wouldn't fight.

When one religion claims to have superior knowledge of "how things really are", this is an automatic declaration of war to all other religions.

Religions are in constant competition with one another. They differ only in how they engage in that fight. Things just get more bloody the more guns one side has.

Just because the members of two religions aren't currently shooting at eachother doesn't mean they are not at war. What they have is "negative peace", a tense state without open armed combat, but with a war-like mentality of hatred and contempt for the other side.

I'll just repeat: everyone engages in othering. — unenlightened

If only.

Up until the mid 20th century, Jews in the U.S. refused to integrate into social institutions such as country clubs, summer camps and Ivy league schools, and instead founded their own clubs, camps and even schools (Brandeis). Oh wait, that was because they were barred entry into those places. — Joshs

How is that different from the situation for poor people who have been barred from even more places?

In other words, the Jews haven't been the only ones facing that kind of predicament. So it's misleading to single them out, as if everyone else was having a great time.

So I'm not saying you're wrong. But, regardless of where antisemitism started, it is ultimately a consequence of popularizing resentment as the foundation for moral systems, which was made popular with Judaism. — Vaskane

You'll have to explain to me how Judaism popularized resentment as its moral foundation. If you ask the Jews I suspect they'll tell you morality consists of following God's commandments, none of which involve resenting.

I guess it's also lost on you that you're not making sense.

I'll just repeat: everyone engages in othering. — unenlightened

Ain't that the truth.

I think Nietzsche’s highly complex formulation of ressentiment, and its relation to historic judaism, is likely to be misconstrued on this forum as simply a blaming of the jews. I appreciate that Nietzsche’s larger concern in the Genealogy of Morals was not to single out some group for attack but to apply his notion of Will to power, as a
psychic battle among competing drives, not just to the history of morality but to the history of scientific truth.

I would suggest, though, that there are other ways of understanding the emergence of the morality of Good and Evil besides that of a weakness or sickness. This implies some sort of pathology or regression occurred in human history with respect to a prior period of a healthy Will to Power. Why not treat the rise of Judeo -Christian morality without the value judgement implied by ‘weakness of will’? It can be seen instead as a phase of a historical development or evolution, which made Nietzsche’s own philosophy possible.

Up until the mid 20th century, Jews in the U.S. refused to integrate into social institutions such as country clubs, summer camps and Ivy league schools, and instead founded their own clubs, camps and even schools (Brandeis). Oh wait, that was because they were barred entry into those places.
— Joshs

How is that different from the situation for poor people who have been barred from even more places? In other words, the Jews haven't been the only ones facing that kind of predicament. So it's misleading to single them out, as if everyone else was having a great time — baker

Let me get this straight. You don’t want to single the jews out as the only recipients of discrimination. But you do want to single the jews out in the follow way:

“When one religion claims to have superior knowledge of "how things really are", this is an automatic declaration of war to all other religions.”

When one religion claims to have superior knowledge of "how things really are", this is an automatic declaration of war to all other religions.” — Joshs

What we know is that there was no religious intolerance throughout most of the ancient world. That changed when monotheism and the concept of false gods became prevalent. It's probably overly simplistic to say the Jews were responsible for that. It's probably more that the western world in general went through a transformation that the Jews had gone through much earlier.

Either way, that transformation was accompanied by a new emphasis on truth and an association of falseness with evil.

Either way, that transformation was accompanied by a new emphasis on truth and an association of falseness with evil. — frank

You can measure anything as a standard for what makes an enemy- ideology, religion, power. For much of history it was power. In the West, religion and ideology gradually replaced power alone, but certainly, power was never dead as a reason.

You can measure anything as a standard for what makes an enemy- ideology, religion, power. For much of history it was power. In the West, religion and ideology gradually replaced power alone, but certainly, power was never dead as a reason. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. Where there are multiple cultures in competition, there are two primary survival tactics: military prowess and intolerance of foreign ways. It's shouldn't surprise us that the world is now full of both. It could be seen as a kind of natural selection.

Exactly. Where there are multiple cultures in competition, there are two primary survival tactics: military prowess and intolerance of foreign ways. It's shouldn't surprise us that the world is now full of both. It could be seen as a kind of natural selection. — frank

You might be interested in this just posted:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14754/western-civilization/p1

I would just say it's important to take Nietzsche's history with a grain of salt, not just because of his own attitude regarding the mythical nature of truth, but because there was much information about the ancient world that just wasn't known at the time.

That provides Nietzsche with a less bias fiction on what happened. — Vaskane

He didn't know anything about the Bronze age because little was known about it at the time. I remember overlooking a fair amount of false conclusions from him, though I'd have to look back at it to remember details. My take was that his outlook should be taken as myth making. There is truth in there, but it's not necessarily based on facts on the ground. I'd go with MI Finley over Nietzsche as far as history goes.

And for someone who has been called out for not knowing much of anything, but rather just running their mouth, I'd wager you've not read much of Nietzsche at all — Vaskane

Yea, but that was by someone who's not all that bright himself. :razz:

Let's say then "educated in the Jewish tradition" - such a statement seems self-evident to me as Jesus is able to cite Scripture 78 times and draws from a wide variety of the books. Luke 4 describes Jesus reading from a scroll. I don't particularly doubt Jesus's literacy. Amos, a shepherd, was literate and wrote in the 8th century BC. I believe there's a tradition of literacy in Jewish culture. I would also question whether Jesus was a peasant and if he was not that would have raised his prospects of being literate. In any case, I don't find it that far fetched that he was literate.

EDIT: After further research I am less certain in my position. Jesus may have been illiterate. Chris Keith's "Jesus's literacy" concludes that Jesus was unlikely to have been literate. In the gospels, however, Jesus is not omniscient. Scholarship seems divided on this. — BitconnectCarlos

You can find literature for any and every position on Jesus. As I said, I'm willing to accept that all of it is myth. But if Jesus not only referenced biblical literature (not vague stories or oral tales), and if he understood also various hermeneutics used by the Pharisees which seems evident, I would say that it is not only possible, but probable that he was heavily influenced, or was even a student at some point in that group. If that is the case, t makes sense the mythological component needs to divorce him from this embarrassing fact so as to "other" Jesus from a particular Jewish group and his Jewish background in general. If he looks like a "one of a kind" he can then be a universal figure, a Christ, a Logos, a Son of God, and not particularly nationalistic or internal to "his people". He is sui generis and thus not quite "Jewish" but only "within the Jews". But it takes knowing a bit about the goings on of Greco-Roman Judean/Galilean geography, politics, religion, history, and society. You also have to figure in players like Herod Antipas, the tetrarchy, the Decapolis Romanized cities in the Transjordan, Judean direct rule under prefects (and then procurators), versus being ruled by puppet kings, and various views on the powers that controlled the region. This helps understand the religious groups positions towards that foreign power. Essenes were highly metaphysical (End of Times, Good/Evil, Messiah is immanent, angels will help the cause, repent now, return to a purer understanding of Torah). Pharisees were "wait and see", but not all. The Shammaites seemed more aligned with the Zealots and eventually there were internal rivalries (perhaps violent ones) between the Hillelites and Shammaites in Jerusalem and on the Sanhedrin. The Sadducees did not seem to care about moralism, or widening the purity laws democratically, as why would they? They also seemed more influenced from an Epicurean standpoint of the "here and now" is what matters, not a World to Come. Anyways.. a lot going on at that time.

It's internal in the sense that Jesus is a Jew criticizing other Jews. I do believe Jesus & followers were originally a break-away sect of Judaism. Yet IMHO his teachings as presented in the gospels are a different animal than what one would find with Hillel or Shammai, although I'm not well read on either of these two.

I do think that it was more like a "Hillel with urgency" approach to law, combining the more lenient views of Halacha of the School of Hillel
— schopenhauer1

Jesus is stricter on some things (e.g. monitoring one's thoughts and eye contact) and looser on others (shabbat restrictions, hand washing.) — BitconnectCarlos

So, no group in its early phase is "monolithic". Name a major political party now that doesn't have "factions" and disagreements. That is to say, we really don't know if the Hillelites held "official" positions and that there could not be ones that could vascilate between various points of view, but generally align with the core ideas of their main "party" or "school of thought". So I don't think that really provides solid evidence against this. Rather, Jesus' call for intention over ritual seems more in line with Hillelite ideals.

Also, and you really overlooked my point here, the idea of "condemning various types of Pharisees" is clearly seen within the Pharisee tradition itself, so if anything, it would more solidly put Jesus in that tradition of self-examination.

↪Joshs The whole of Aphorism 24 from the Anti-Christ shows Nietzsche believes the Jews aren't weak of will at all: — Vaskane

Nietzsche says:

“the Jews were a priestly nation of ressentiment par excellence”. Ressentiment is structured around revenge and hatred , a revaluation of values.

“Whereas all noble morality grows out of a tri­umphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self ’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance – this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself – is a feature of ressentiment…”

The ascetic ideal emerges from ressentiment, and is characterized as a coping mechanism to deal with a weak, degenerative, impoverished and sick physiology:

the ascetic ideal: this hatred of the human, and even more of the animalistic, even more of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to get away from appearance, transience, growth, death, wishing, longing itself – all that means, let us dare to grasp it, a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental prerequisites of life, but it is and remains a will.”

“And when we view it physiologically, too, science rests on the same base as the ascetic ideal: the precondition of both the one and the other is a certain impoverishment of life, – the emotions cooled, the tempo slackened, dialectics in place of instinct, solemnity stamped on faces and gestures (solemnity, that most unmistakable sign of a more sluggish metabolism and of a struggling, more toiling life.”

I'm a big fan of Nietzsche. I feel a connection to his writing that goes deep, like into the realm of dreams. He was the forerunner of people like Freud and Jung. Like you, I'm fascinated by the way consciousness evolves, but I think we're limited to metaphors in describing that. Historical accuracy isn't required or called for by Nietzsche's project. That was my point, I guess.

This quickly becomes a precarious topic because on the one hand, Judaism is possibly the most influential orientation of consciousness in human history. On the other hand there are huge, unhealable wounds that humanity bears that are touched upon by the OP.

If you don't let go of the past, your heart won't have any room for the present

Waking from a dream.

Rising to the surface as a sun, exhaling streams of light

Making the world

Is a loveless job

:cool:

↪Joshs To consider them weak in will to power would be to consider them as decadents, which Nietzsche states that "the Jews are the very opposite of décadents." He goes on to explain their will to power -- to survive where so many other civilizations didn't -- was to become the head of movements of decadents to gain immense power and transfigure the values of the ancient world away from life affirmation, to keep man kind tame enough as to not remove the Jews from existence.
If you want to believe Jew are weak in will to power that's your interpretation, but certainly not Nietzsche's stance — Vaskane

What I’m centrally interested in is how you would
characterize ressentiment, particularly its manifestation as the ascetic ideal, from a critical philosophical stance. Put differently, what, according to Nietzsche, is the crucial philosophical self-understanding lacking in those (including the jews) who believe that a nirvana of pure will to nothingness is a solution to the pain and suffering of living, or that science progresses toward absolute objective truth, or that there are moral universals? How are these all examples of the ascetic ideal (which the jews bought into lock, stock and barrel), and what kind of ethics should replace them?

What I’m centrally interested in is how you would
characterize ressentiment, particularly its manifestation as the ascetic ideal, from a critical philosophical stance. Put differently, what, according to Nietzsche, is the crucial philosophical self-understanding lacking in those (including the jews) who believe that a nirvana of pure will to nothingness is a solution to the pain and suffering of living, or that science progresses toward absolute objective truth, or that there are moral universals? How are these all examples of the ascetic ideal (which the jews bought into lock, stock and barrel), and what kind of ethics should replace them? — Joshs

From what I understand, Nietzsche's opinion as Jews as "anti-life-affirmation" is actually just the inverse of Schopenhauer's opinion of Judaism as life-affirming. He liked to do that with Schopenhauer. Broadly-speaking, Schopenhauer characterized Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity as "life affirming" because of their emphasis on embracing the here and now, and this life. He characterized Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholic Christianity as life-denying, as they emphasized an asceticism beyond the confines of this life. Since he thought the only way to deny the "will-to-live" was to embrace asceticism, he praised these ideas and maligned the former. I do want to emphasize that Schop's anti-Judaism, Islam, and Protestantism is very much a caricatured archetype so that he can have a foil for his life-denying views. It is also important to note that he wasn't fond of Catholic, or even Eastern religious trappings of asceticism either. He just thought they were more on to something with ascetic ideals. He wanted asceticism pure and simple, no mythology.

Anyways, Nietzsche actually seemed to reverse this notion. Instead, Judaism, mainly in its step-child Christianity, became a philosophy of the "weak" because it emphasized humility, charity. It was a sort of philosophy of the slave, and not of the aristocrat which he championed. It is bizarre 19th century playing with idealized and caricatured religious archetypes to try to promote a philosophical viewpoint.

Either way, it seems like Judaism can't win with either. It's either too life affirming or life denying, depending on how you want to spin them. And this goes into a broader idea of anti-Judaism and antisemitism. That is to say, people turn it into whatever the boogeyman is that they want to malign. You associate it with that group and proceed to make them your proverbial bad guys. You want lefty-communist bad guys-type antisemitism, you blame Jews. You want world bank owning super-capitalists, you blame the Jews. You want X bad thing. It is the immutable nature of its mutability of how you can use the Jews as a foil, that makes it pervasive.

I will say, the kind of anti-Judaism of Schopenhauer, was probably a bit too early for the modern style antisemitism. As far as I know, he didn't hate Jews more than any other ethnic group. He had something mean to say about everyone, including fellow Germans. Nietzsche's era was getting closer to actual antisemitism in the modern sense, but he seemed to disavow such views.

I will say, the kind of anti-Judaism of Schopenhauer, was probably a bit too early for the modern style antisemitism. As far as I know, he didn't hate Jews more than any other ethnic group. He had something mean to say about everyone, including fellow Germans. Nietzsche's era was getting closer to actual antisemitism in the modern sense, but he seemed to disavow such views. — schopenhauer1

In Nietzsche’s early years, it seems as if the elements were in place for a Heidegger-style anti-semitism. Like Heidegger, the young Nietzsche was in the throes of German nationalism, and idolized the early Greeks. This combination in Heidegger led him to connect the German Volk with the proper path of thinking the Greeks laid out, turning the jews into outsiders who corrupted this early thinking and spread the corruption to Christianity. A return to the proper path meant embracing the way of the German Volk against that of the rootless outsiders. But Nietzsche turned against both the Greeks and German nationalism. If the jews were corrupters, they just happened to be among the first and most effective. Since the inclination to turn the will against itself was present in all of humanity, there was no need to fetishize the jews, and no reason to assume they were any less capable than any other group of overcoming nihilistic tendencies.

If the jews were corrupters, they just happened to be the first and most effective. Since the inclination to turn the will against itself was present in all of humanity, there was no need to fetishize the jews, and no reason to assume they were any less capable than any other group of overcoming nihilistic tendencies. — Joshs

:up:

I think this is an interesting quote:

The mature Nietzsche once described himself as “Wagner’s antipode.”In his own view, he was as opposed to Wagner as the North Pole is tothe South. Moreover, it was his break with Wagner in the mid 1870sthat finally allowed Nietzsche to find his own identity, to develop hisown intellectual personality and mission. In the 1880s Nietzsche contin-ued to take Wagner seriously even as a fierce opponent. He looked uponWagner as a temptation he had to overcome, as a servitude and even asan “infection” or “disease” he had to experience before liberating him-self and coming into his own. Under the heading of “Wagner,” Nietz-sche did not only mean the music dramas, but a whole complex ofattitudes and a worldview, which included romanticism, Schopenhauer’snegation of the will, German nationalism, and anti-Semitism, amongothers. Similarly, in calling Wagner his “antipode” Nietzsche intendedto dissipate all these intertwined shadows—including anti-Semitism—which Wagner’s domineering figure had cast in his way. For Nietz-sche, his overcoming of Wagner was at the same time a powerful self-overcoming for Nietzsche—so deep had Wagner penetrated his ownself, albeit as an alien and self-alienating force. — Article

I can't seem to get the rest without paying, but I can see where it's going on.

Another quote is also revealing but in a different way regarding what I mentioned earlier, of slave philosophy versus aristocratic will-to-power:

“This is precisely why the Jews are the most disastrous people in world history: they have left such a falsified humanity in their wake that even today Christians can think of themselves as anti-Jewish without understanding that they are the ultimate conclusion of Judaism.”

And here:

instinct of a people [the Germans] whose type is still weak and indeterminate enough…to be easily obliterated by a stronger race. But the Jews are without a doubt the strongest, purest, most tenacious race living in Europe today. They know how to thrive in even the worst conditions….

The fact that the Jews, if they wanted (or if they were forced, as the anti-Semites seem to want), could already be dominant, or indeed could literally have control over present-day Europe—this is established. The fact that they are not working and making plans to this end is likewise established….[W]hat they wish and want instead…is to be absorbed and assimilated into Europe…in which case it might be practical and appropriate to throw the anti-Semitic hooligans out of the country….

This to me, indicates, he is against the values (of embracing the principles of humility/charity/being quiet and prayerful, etc.) not the people. And really, it is anti-Christian principle (akin to criticizing Schopenhauer's notion of asceticism in Catholicism), rather than actually being "anti-Jewish". It's kind of a schizophrenic hodge-podge, but consistently he does not like Wagner-style antisemitism.

The growing anti-Semitism in Germany during the 1870s and 1880s disgusted him. He derided the hatred of Jews by the composer Richard Wagner, a friend with whom he eventually broke, and he tried to block his sister’s marriage to an anti-Semitic agitator. Nietzsche had several Jewish friends, including one of his greatest admirers, the famous Danish literary critic Georg Brandes. After a stimulating conversation with another Jewish friend, Helen Zimmern, Nietzsche noted, “It is fantastic to what extent this race now has the ‘intellectuality’ of Europe in its hands.” His biographer, Curtis Cate (Friedrich Nietzsche, Overlook Press), accurately calls Nietzsche an “anti-anti-Semite.”

Moreover, though he is mainly remembered for his concept of the “Ubermensch” and “the splendid blond beast”—as he called the aristocratic predators who write society’s laws—Nietzsche was an antimilitarist. He hated the German monarchy and loved France (at that time, Germany’s main enemy), Switzerland and Italy, where he spent most of his adult life. Far from believing in the superiority of the Aryans, he liked to imagine he himself had Polish ancestry.

To give a sense of Nietzsche’s worldview—though these extreme sentiments came after 1888 as he began to descend into madness—Nietzsche urged the rest of Europe to unite against Germany, called on Jews to help him in his campaign against Christianity and said he would like to kill all the German anti-Semites.

There is no doubt that if he had lived to see Nazism he would have been appalled and outspoken in his enmity, though his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, became an enthusiastic Nazi; when she died in 1935, Hitler himself attended her funeral.

How then did this pro-Jewish philosopher become an inspiration for the murderers of 86 percent of Europe’s Jews? So much so that his works became official Nazi doctrine and the dictator ordered that a monument be built to honor him?

The immediate answer is Nietzsche’s hatred of Christianity and belief that a post-Christian, secular morality must be developed. In this regard, he was part of the post-Darwin reaction to the cracking of religious certainty. As a believer in what Brandes called “aristocratic radicalism” and having a horror of democracy, Nietzsche, in the words of Cate, contrasted “the positive ‘breeding’ of aristocracies to the negative ‘taming,’ ‘castration’ and emasculation of the strong by insidious ‘underdogs.’” Or in Nietzsche’s own words:
Christianity, growing from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a product of this soil, represents a reaction against the morality of breeding, of race, of privilege—it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence.

In his book Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche penned what became the core of Nazi philosophy and the death knell for European Jewry:
All that has been done on earth against ‘the nobles,’ the ‘mighty,’ the ‘overlords’…is as nothing compared to what the Jews did against them: the Jews, that priestly people who were only able to obtain satisfaction against their enemies and conquerors through a radical revaluation of the latter’s values, that is, by an act of the most spiritual revenge…. It was the Jews who…dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation…saying ‘the wretched alone are the good ones, the poor, the helpless, the lowly…. You who are powerful and noble are to all eternity the evil ones….’

This was, however, in contrast to what the Nazis made out of it later and the Islamists do today. Nietzsche didn’t accuse the Jews of doing anything on their own—no conspiracy of the Elders of Zion—but merely the “invention” of Christianity. What should be stressed here is that his diatribe against Jews was a small, isolated part of his writing that did not otherwise carry over into his life or thinking. It was his sister who helped pervert her brother’s thinking when she grafted her anti-Semitic, nationalist ideas onto his philosophy in the book The Will to Power.

Nietzsche dissociated the existing Jews from the harm he perceived arising from those Jews—especially Paul—who had created Christianity two millennia earlier. Nietzsche used these terms interchangeably when he said the “Western world was now suffering from ‘blood poisoning’” through being Jewified, Christianized or “mobified.”

But earlier, he had written admiringly in explaining his opposition to anti-Semitism: “The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest and purest race now living in Europe.”

Indeed, they fit his aristocratic prescription since they survived “thanks above all to a resolute faith that does not need to feel ashamed in the presence of ‘modern ideas.’”

Germany, he continued, would do better to deport the anti-Semites than the Jews who would provide many good qualities.
— Nietzsche article Hadassah