Yes, because he doesn't let you spew falsity — Agustino

You are sooooo full of yourself, dude. How about you go drop a pizza and then pick it up. That'll force you to stoop a little low for a change.

You are sooooo full of yourself, dude. How about you go drop a pizza and then pick it up. That'll force you to stoop a little low for a change. — Heister Eggcart

The more Agustino writes, the more a thread becomes intolerable to participate in. — Heister Eggcart

So let's see. You come in a thread that I started and claim that the more I write the more the thread becomes intolerable - well, guess what, if it wasn't for me, the thread wouldn't exist in the first place :P >:O

May I ask you, when you claim you read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy of Morals for example, and you find him saying basically that these works are not for the common average man, etc. Do you find it true or o offensive? Do you understand yourself as one of those who these Books are for, ons of those who do NOT belong to the herd-mind, or do you find yourself belonging to one of those who these Books are NOT for, that is, to the herd-mind?

Do you find it true or o offensive? — Beebert

The fact that he thinks so about his own works doesn't make it true to begin with (I find it quite laughable, poor Nietzsche), so you're creating a false alternative. No it is not offensive, but neither is it true. If you asked me the same question with regards to, for example, Plato's Republic, then I would affirm it is not for those who belong to the herd.

Suit yourself. You are not offering any convincing counter arguments proving me wrong, so I have nothing to work with. You say I am wrong, but don't show how I am. — Lone Wolf

I have actually. Several times now I have referred to the dictionary definition and specifically to various other statements of yours, and I explained what the problem was. I specifically mentioned what was contained in these statements and absent from the dictionary definition. But apparently you're just pretending not to notice and expect me to actually go back and quote the dictionary definition and every single statement that I referred to previously and addressed at the time.

This is beyond a joke. I would suggest that you either pay closer attention in future or be intellectually honest.

Hah. Well it is obvious you find Nietzsche either offensive or someone you simply dont understand. You dont understand the depth in "Eternity in a moment" and "The marriage between light and darkeness". You need artistry for this. Not just moral prejudice or a dry-headed intellect. That his statement that his works are not for everyone is true is obvious when one observers your understanding of him even AFTER you have read his works

"Eternity in a moment" — Beebert

:s Nietzsche isn't even the first to discover this idea, what's so amazing about it?

"The marriage between light and darkeness" — Beebert

What do you find deep about this idea and why?

Not just moral prejudice or a dry-headed intellect. — Beebert

:-}

That his statement that his works are not for everyone is true is obvious when one observers your understanding of him even AFTER you have read his works — Beebert

Or maybe his works are just:

A tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. — Shakespeare

There was a time when I used to find Nietzsche deep, but not anymore. He's actually quite a superficial thinker in the end. Lots of bang for nothing.

Well. I don't care what you think. But I don't understand what you do on a philosophy forum. You give the impression of someone who either lies and says he has read something he hasn't, but in reality has just read poor second sources, or as someone who simply aren't capable of understanding in depth what he actually encounters in a text. In any case, an actor who pretends, either willingly or not: A Don Quijote perhaps? But that is not an insult...

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

Im not the first nor the last philosopher to think that Nietzsche's philosophy lacks depth.

You seem to blindingly presume that N's philosophy is deep and worthy of reverence. I'm just asking you to prove that. So far you're just asserting it.

That doesn't speak to your advantage. So You are a philosopher? Self-proclaimed or professional? Name these philosophers that are your friends. I am sure there are people who think as stupidly as you about this, the opposite would be surprising.
If Nietzsche cant even make you understand him, what makes You think I could? I lack faith in it.

In order to try to make You understand now, after you apparently have read Nietzsche, I would be forced to write a book in order to even hope you would understand. Though I am not rejecting the Idea of eventually actually writing a book about it. A book that once and for all eliminates misunderstandings and prejudices concerning Nietzsche and places him Where he deserves to be placed, that would be a great thing. A dream even.

As You know, Zarathustra is entrusted by Nietzsche with the task of conveying the news of God’s death to the world.

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.

It is good that God has been discarded. Now man has to take his life in his own hands. And the beauty is, if you become responsible, responsible for yourself, if you declare your freedom – you have to declare it because God is dead; there is nobody higher than you – if you accept that now you have to seek and search your way, you have to grope for it on your own, life will take a new plunge into the depths of the unknown. Life will become again an adventure. Life will again be an ecstatic discovery of new facts, new truths, of new territories, of new peaks of joy.

And it is only by becoming an adventurer that you will come upon the new face of God – which will be far more true than the old, because it will be far more mature than the old.

Nietzsche remained in difficulty: on the one hand he continued to fight with the old God; on the other hand, in moments when he was not so strong, he became scared too.

Zarathustra says,

Away!

He himself fled

My last, only companion,

My great enemy,

My unknown,

My hangman-god.

No! Do come back

With all thy tortures!

To the last of all that are lonely

Oh, come back!

All my tear-streams run

Their course to thee;

And my heart’s final flame –

Flares up for thee!

Oh, come back,

My unknown god! My pain!

My last – happiness!

These words look almost insane: “My unknown god! My pain! My last happiness! Ah, come back!”

Nietzsche remained divided, split. One part of him was still afraid: “Maybe God IS alive”; maybe he was wrong. Who knows? How could one be certain about such profound matters? And he was the first to say it, so naturally he was scared. He wanted to get rid of the enemy. He called God ‘the enemy’, enemy of man, because God had been like a rock on the chest of man, that is What seems to be your so-called God. I am not talking about the God of Buddha, Jesus and Moses. I am talking about the God of the common masses, of the mob. Nietzsche is also talking about the mob.

The God of the crowds is an ugly concept: it shows much about your weaknesses, but shows nothing about the truth of existence. When you pray on your knees you simply show your weakness, not that you know what prayer is. When you go to the church you go to demand something, to beg for something. You simply show your beggarliness but nothing about God. Very few people have known the truth of God. Aquinas is not one of them. Nietzsche was close.

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.

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? Because of fear of punishment? It follows
from this, that all the natural instincts of man (the instinct of love etc.) appear to be forbidden in themselves and only after they have been denied are they restored to their rights on the basis of obedience to God. Look at Pascal, the admirable logician of Christianity, he did went so far!
Consider his relations to his sister. "Not to make oneself love" seemed
Christian to him.

How, under the impress of the ascetic morality of, it
was precisely the affects of love, goodness, pity, even those of
justice, magnanimity, heroism, that were necessarily misunderstood:

It is richness in personality, abundance in oneself, overflowing and
bestowing, instinctive good health and affirmation of oneself, that
produce great sacrifice and great love: it is strong and godlike
selfhood from which these affects grow, just as surely as did the desire
to become master, encroachment, the inner certainty of having a right to
everything. What according to common ideas are opposite dispositions are
rather one disposition; and if one is not firm and brave within oneself,
one has nothing to bestow and cannot stretch our one's hand to protect
and support. How was one able so to transform these instincts that man thought valuable that which was directed against his self? when he sacrificed
his self to another self. Oh the psychological wretchedness and
mendaciousness that has hitherto laid down the law in the church and in
church-infected philosophy!

Self-proclaimed — Beebert

Self-proclaimed, like Nietzsche was self-proclaimed ;)

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

You could show WHERE I misunderstand Nietzsche.

Name these philosophers that are your friends. — Beebert

Pff there are so many. For example Bertrand Russell -

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.

Or G.K. Chesterton:

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

Really your behaviour is quite laughable pretending that Nietzsche is unanimously accepted as some "deep" thinker. This is absolutely not so by many philosophers.

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

That's false. Aquinas and other Christians would not claim that they don't love other people because they are imperfect. So erecting a giant strawman is by no means profundity.

there is nobody higher than you — Beebert

I disagree, there are many things higher than myself, and a cursory glance around is sufficient to prove this.

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

Sounds like a citation straight out of Osho :P

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

Christianity does not suggest that man should hate himself because he is sinful. Rather he should repent out of love for himself and for God.

The trouble with N. was that he was awfully deluded at times - take the holy cruelty passage from Gay Science for example. But anyway, consider the two statements by G.K. Chesterton and B. Russell...

Russell, who didnt understand not only Nietzsche, but also not Augustine, Kant, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer, and christianity in its totality, is not to be talen seriously. That would be like calling Bentham or John Stuart Mill deep. There Btw you have to mediocer Philosophers not worthy to be called deep.

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. Something more in line with Nietzsche'a understanding. While Chesterton is deeprr and better than Russell in his comments, he lacks psychological discernment. I dont care to debate with you more. I know that I know something you dont in this, and I cant help you.

Chesterton is right that Nietzsche as a person was quite weak. Physicallt. So? Another proof Chesterton didnt understand him. Nietzsche was an outsider, Chesterton an insider. Russell was just conventional. Btw, explain to me Why interpreting the world morally is better than understanding it artistically. And explain to me What makes you think Chesterton and Russell are deep while Nietzsche is not. And also Aquinas.

, "'more good than good and evil,' or, 'more evil than good and evil.'" Nietzsche Btw rejected Darwin's understanding of evolution. He called it shallow, especially the Idea of "survival of the fittest". Oh sorry. You really dont get Nietzsche. Read through his fragments of thoughts called "The Will To power". That is better than me writing 100 000 words to you without achieving anything. What you and I do now, is nothing but imposing our Will to power on each other. 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. Nor his fantasy about universal love(being unfaithful to wifes he means?) or that Nietzsche in his THought was a coward filled with hatred. Certainly not. Have you btw heard this superficial philosopher's understanding of Jesus and comments on him? Be sincere I suggest! You wouldn't like his words on Christ. At least Nietzsche was honest in his likes and dislikes. That is at least some sort of boldness, instead of making up excuses as Russell did.

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

I haven't said they are deep.

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

Yes, I agree. However remember that you asked me for philosophers who don't agree with Nietzsche and don't find him deep. You didn't ask me for deep philosophers who don't agree with Nietzsche and don't find him deep. The problem, of course, is that apart from Wittgenstein there aren't any truly "deep" philosophers after Nietzsche.

And yes, Nietzsche is deeper than Hume, Bentham, Stuart Mill, Russell, etc. but that doesn't say much. Having said this, I think Russell and Chesterton do make some good points regarding Nietzsche.

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

Why do you say that Aquinas didn't say what he felt in his heart? Do you think he was dishonest, and if so, why do you think so?

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

Why do you say he lacks psychological discernment, and what exactly do you mean?

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

Chesterton didn't comment about Nietzsche's physical weakness. He commented about his weakness as a thinker:

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.

This means Nietzsche wasn't bold as a THINKER, not physically.

Nietzsche was an outsider, Chesterton an insider. — Beebert

Chesterton wasn't an insider. He was very witty, and different than most of the people you'd call insiders. He was also very critical of hypocrisy.

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

Aquinas is deep, but his depth hides behind the Scholastic method of exposition that he's under. The dry and exceedingly boring style in which he wrote makes his ideas difficult to understand for the common man. However, for example, Aquinas understood the limitations of reason and the necessity for revelation and/or mystical experience in order to truly know God. At the end of his life, for example, he looked at his Summa before he had finished it, and said that after his mystical vision, all that he had written is like straw. Aquinas was definitely not a dummy or an ivory tower intellectual, even though he did write in that tradition.

Chesterton is also deep, quite possibly much deeper than Nietzsche. Their writing styles are even somewhat similar, though N. was more aphoristic. Consider:

"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone."

And Russell was much inferior to N. when it came to depth.

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

I know. He thought the slaves had won for example, even though the slaves are the weak.

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

I haven't read those, but from what I know they were altered by his sister after he went insane, so I wouldn't say the best place to find out what N. thought.

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

Russell was good at discussing irrelevant matters, as many modern day philosophers are. They wonder how many angels can dance on the head of a pin...

being unfaithful to wifes he means? — Beebert

As far as I am aware, Russell was never unfaithful to his wife, rather it was his wife who was unfaithful and Russell tried to go along with it and hide it to protect the children. Definitely not admirable, and quite possibly the trait of a coward in his case. But I don't remember ever reading he was unfaithful himself.

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

Yes, somewhat - however I have not read the Anti-Christ, where I heard he goes into most depth on this. But I do know he has statements both admiring and hating Jesus (it's Paul whom he hates the most it seems), but ultimately he seems to have preferred Dionysus.

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

Was he?

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.

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

I need to sleep now but let me just comment on the quotes of Chesterton.
I agree that Chesterton, though certainly not on the level of Nietzsche, was a brilliant man. And this quote is the proof, I loved it:

"It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite inefensible 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."

Just to make my admiration of Nietzsche clear : How a christian that admires Dostoevsky and Kiekegaard for example (which I do too), can for example prefer Aquinas and Plato to Nietzsche, I can't understand. I dont quite understand that...
Have you read Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky? There he says that man gives up as soon as he encounters the impossible . By impossible he means the "Stone wall". This wall is Natural science, mathematics, reason, rationality etc. What can take man over this wall? God and faith. Nietzsche thought this work of Dostoevsky spoke the truth about man and existence all the way through. What Kierkegaard call faith in form of the absurd is the same as climbing over Dostoevsky's stone wall. This Faith transcends according to Kierkegaard both reason/rationality and morality. It isnt concerned with it; because it goes beyond it (Beyond Good and Evil ). A proof is Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. Another one is Job. Nietzsche knew this too, but expressed it in other words, mainly because his philology was so good, perhaps too good for his own best. Kierkegaard says that the greatness of Job is that he was right all the way through: nothing is to be explained in moral or rational terms when it comes to suffering.
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. It appears to me that Calvin and Aquinas turned God Into the stone wall, rather than the One who makes it possible for man to climb over the stone wall. Job would have blamed Plato when he said "This world is constituted by the combination of reason and necessity", according to Kierkegaard. For Job, a promise of reward in the next life in his moment of suffering would not be enough, and that is also Nietzsche's great truth. And Nietzsche knew it from experience to be true. Kierkegaard's says that for Job, the ethical thinking is empty: its "you shall" is empty words, and its methaphysical comfort is a lie. Job's greatness is that his quest for True freedom is greater than all hope for reward etc. This is what Nietzsche knew and understood, and this is why I consider him far greater and closer to the truth than Aquinas, Calvin etc. And it is also why taking the sort of critique most christians direct on Nietzsche seriously is ridiculous, same with Russell's critique. And it is also why Chesterton in many of his attacks on Nietzsche lacked psychological AND philosophical (even religious) discernment

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

I do admire Kierkegaard because he was a righteous man, I don't admire Dostoyevsky personally (he had a mistress, he cheated people with regards to money, etc.), but I do admire his work.

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

Well, in regards to Plato, Nietzsche is just one of Plato's characters. Nietzsche is like Thrasymachus from Plato's Republic. How can a tiny character be greater than the one who invented him? Plato created Nietzsche before Nietzsche was even born. There is no question of greatness there - Plato saw much beyond Nietzsche. Nietzsche had a very one-sided vision - and he himself, I remember, admits as much in his better moments.

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

Well not completely. I'm half-way but everytime I'm re-starting it, I end up putting it back down and moving onto a book that I haven't read at all. I feel a bit bored with it because Dostoyesky goes over what I already know pretty much. I feel he's teaching me nothing helpful there.

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

This is true, and Aquinas would agree.

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

Clarify what you mean by doing the impossible?

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

That's entirely false, because what N. understood by morality was entirely different than what Aquinas, Plato, etc. understood by morality.

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

To me, your worship of the concepts "Righteousness" and "morality" sounds too lawful. Like the scribes sometimes. I dont mean to be rude when I say this, because I dont think you are dishonest and hypocritical. But I dont feel I can make it possible for us to understand each other. When I talk about making possible the impossible, I am talking about what is the whole core point of the writings of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. While I find men as Aquinas, Calvin etc to be moral monsters that even naturalize the supernatural. In other words, Kierkegaard for example had a där better understanding of the core message of the gospels than did Aquinas, who remained in the ethical sphere, no matter how much he tried to define doctrines and dogmas such as "grace", "faith", "redemption", and the "supernatural" and their relation to the natural world.

I absolutely do NOT agree with you about Plato inventing Nietzsche long before Nietzsche.

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

What you do not see is that Kierkegaard for example did not say that morality was unimportant, just that it wasn't everything. Kierkegaard himself was quite a conservative and moral person. It seems to me that you and people like N. and Blake deem morality unimportant, which is a false view.

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

What's the core message according to you?

I am not an enemy of morality in itself. I am against the completely moral outlook on existence and of the universe, as if life is a moral problem and the solution is a moral one. I am also against understanding all things morally and agree with Kierkegaard who said that rationality and moral interpetations of everything often causes people to sink in to either despair or impotence. Morality, as you seem to look at it; what is its purpose? What is its goals?
When Nietzsche threw himself over the horse that was being beaten by its owner, crying out with tears "stop beating the horse!", it was a christian act made by Nietzsche, inwardly as well as outwardly. And it wasn't what I would call a moral act, but an act of true love, of deep understanding and compassion. And it was an instinct, without interference from the intellect. The gospel is neither a Court of law nor a Book of morality IMO. If it has any right to claim itself to be True, it must be about True love, creativity, spontanity, freedom, strength, nobility, courage, honesty and affirmation of life in the HERE and NOW, not only in the life to come. I didnt like Chesterton's criticism of Nietzsche, he gives the impression (even though I doubt it is true) of someone who just had a cursory glance on Nietzsche and dismissed him immediately. If you want to look at someone who actually had the RIGHT to criticize Nietzsche, I recommend to you Berdyaev. He had a great understanding of Nietzsche, and he admired him and considered him one one of the greatest thinkers to have ever lived. He at least understood Nietzsche, admired him, was greatly influenced by him, and yet believed in Christ. And he too was sceptical and critical towards Aquinas. Btw, regarding Notes from Underground; I guess you dismissed the message there as false and untrue?