About Nietzsche.

[catsidhe]

This is in relation to a conversation with tcpip over here.

I will say at the outset that bibliophilia is a curse and a blessing. A curse, because when you think of a piece of information, you think to yourself, "I've read that... I'm sure I've got the book that's in ... somewhere ...", the blessing is when you look up one thing in a book you haven't looked at in ages for a specific nugget of data, and then browse to find something else, even more interesting.

Here is one such case. Last night, while Mim and I were watching the semi-hagiography of the then Cardinal Ratzinger and his Vatican, someone (probably the narrator) mentioned "2000 years of the Papacy". Mim looked at me and queried this 'fact'. I pointed out that the first Bishop of Rome was Rocky Peter. He could not have been such any earlier than about 29AD¹, however, so the '2000 years' was out by about 24 years.
"Ah," said Mim, "but who was the second Pope? The third?"

In the freshly inspired curiosity over the subject of the first few Popes, I pulled out the only reference I could think of that might have that sort of info: An Encyclopedia of Religion, Virgilius Ferm, ed. (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1945). Much to my dissappointment, there was no list of Popes, although there were several pointers to other references which would have them. Nevertheless, I discovered the line "A very ancient poem "Adversus Marchionem", written at the beginning of the III century, refers to Peter as having passed on to Linus "the chair" (cathedra: cf. "chair of St. Peter") "on which he himself had sat" (Migne, PL II, 1077).

Having discovered this, I started to browse, and discovered that entries exist for philosophers as well, insofar as their thoughts touch on religion. One such entry was this:

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm: (1844-1900)

"Prophet of a non-religious religion and an un-philosophical philosophy" (Wilamowitz-Moellendorf),

sometime professor of classical philology at Basel, later a free-lance essayist whose works were hardly read during his lifetime but have been of great influence and caused tremendous controversy since his death. Nietzsche rebelled against philosophical pretensions at arriving at "Truth" or knowledge of "Being", and adopted for himself, perhaps under the influence of Pascal, the aphoristic mode of writing, developing not so much a systematic philosophy as a series of brilliant thrusts at the accepted ideas of his time. Claiming that the individual should not passivly accept but should impose his will on his environment, and should adopt a personal relation to his problems ("All truths are bloody truths"), he rebelled against Christianity for its stress on the weak virtues of pity and love, against nationalism, commercialism, democracy, the scientific spirit, and nineteenth century ideals in general. Influenced by Schopenhauer, but rebelling against him also, he developed the theory of the will to power as characteristic of all life and as providing for man the only acceptible basis for value. He thus argued for a "transvaluation of all (accepted) values" and for an "immoralism" which should teach men to be hard, live dangerously, adopt a "master-morality" which should justify the rights of the strong, and work to produce the "superman", since "man is something that is to be surpassed." Making one exception to his rule againt metaphysical conceptions he maintained belief in "eternal recurrance", taking his own inconsistancy here as evidence of the strife in all things.

Nietzsche maintained that "God is dead", killed by the uncompromising will of man himself to discover the facts. The result is tragedy and a new emphasis on suffering. Nietzsche agrees with Christianity that suffering must be given meaning but disagrees as to what the meaning is. The God on the Cross pronounces a curse on life and attempts to win salvation by appealing to what is higher than life. The god Dionysos cut to pieces is, on the other hand, a promise of life, since he is ever re-born out of his own destruction. Man must ever learn amor fati, love of the fate which eternaly returns.

The eternal recurrance of contradictions on Nietzsche's own thought has led to the most diverse interpretations of his work. Christians have found in him a passionate defence of the divine discontent. Anti-Christians have emphasised the need of taking literally his fulminations against the Christian virtues. In recent years the Nazis have claimed him because of his protest against pacifism and humanitarianism and his praise of authority and physical strength. They pass over in silence his revolt against nationalism and totalitarianism, his dislike of Germans and anti-Semites, and his plea for "good Europeans".

Works: Werke (19 vols. 1895-1913); The Complete Works of F. Nietzsche (18 vols. tr. O. Levy, 1909-13); also The Philosophy of Nietzsche (1937), 1 vol Eng. tr. of the principal works with introd. by H. W. Wright. Of the scores of commentaries: seines Philosophierens, (1936); W. M. Salter, Nietzsche the Thinker (1917); C. Brinton, Nietzsche (1941); G. A. Morgan, Jr. What Nietzsche Means (1941).

J.S.B

The J.S.B. signature refers to the author: Julius Seelye Bixler, who is listed as

BIXLER, JULIUS SEELYE, M.A., Ph.D., D.D.
Recently, Bussey Professor of Theology, Harvard University; now President of Colby College, Waterville, Maine.

His name should be unusual enough to get some dirt out of google, anyway.

Remember that this was written between 1942 and 1945.

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[1] Because Joshua ben Joseph was 33 when he began his ministry, and he was born in about 4BC at the latest, thus providing a rough terminus ad quem. Nyah.