Nietzsche on a Christmas Afternoon

Brian Micklethwait, blogging over at Samizdata earlier in the week, pointed to a series of posts by Friedrich, of 2Blowhards, concerning Nietzsche.  Friedrich’s three part series, was, for me, as someone who has never read Nietzsche, a treat.  Friedrich’s series is entitled "Coming to Grips with Nietzsche" and here are the links.  Part I. Part II. Part III.

Though I have never read Nietzsche, I was aware that the phrase “God is dead” was attributable to him.  Reading Friedrich’s posts provided a more sound understanding of what Nietzsche was attempting to say with this statement, and, within the comment thread associated with Part III, the complete quote was provided by a reader to provide additional context to those three words.

The grip that I was able to latch onto, while reading Friedrich’s posts, is that Nietzsche was, in the main, attempting to discredit some of the more, in his eyes, onerous burdens Christianity has strapped to the minds of men.  I can appreciate his efforts.  I think Nietzsche could have been more successful though if he would have directed his weapons at the hierarchy of the church, the creators of Christianity, rather than at God.  I’ve said something similar before.  God isn’t the problem here.  The problem is individuals erroneously thinking they hold the keys to the one true path and their willingness to torture, coerce, browbeat, what have you, other individuals who won’t follow their path.

Organized religions, especially Christianity, have created religions that only seem to make sense if God is powerless.  To compensate for this, they created all the other burdens which Nietzsche hoped to destroy.  At least that’s my take.

Posted by on 12/25 at 01:08 PM

  1. You might find something by Thomas Paine interesting, John.  Almost a hundred years after it was published, "The Age of Reason" incited Theodore Roosevelt to refer to Paine as “that filthy little atheist”.  The matter is not at all that simple, but that’s a good indicator of the quality and impact of one of the most cogent and scathing critiques of Christianity ever penned.  It runs, a great deal, along the lines that you’re talking about.


    As for Nietzsche, he’s an authentic headache.  I own the entire corpus (all Kaufmann translations), and I’ve been through a bit more than half of it in the first pass.  He is perhaps the single author most quotable to aphorism that I’ve ever read, and that’s been a big problem since he wrote.  (Caveat: I’ve not read the thread at 2BH’s, so none of this goes there.) Personally, I see no system at all to his work.  There is a great deal of assembly required, from hither and yon.  He’s extremely interesting, of course, but wide open to cynical exploitation.  (Like: the Nazis, for instance.)

    It’s a major chore, but I’ve generally made up my mind to forego discussion of the man, in favor of reading what he, himself, had to say and breaking my neck to sort it out for myself.  Big gig.

    Here’s a note for you, though: in 1906, a twenty-six year-old man with a high-school education and a bit of experience on the local newspaper’s police beat sat himself down in a library in Baltimore and began hauling his amateur German through Nietzsche’s work.  After two years, he produced one of the first comprehensive treatments of Nietzsche in the English language.

    "Friedrich Nietzsche" by H.L. Mencken.

    The scholarship has, naturally, advanced quite a bit since then, but if you like Mencken, this is a real treat.  The Transaction Publishers edition went to a second printing in 1997.  I see it in the stores now & then.

    Posted by Billy Beck  on  12/25  at  07:42 PM

  2. Ps.—Friedrich’s postscript to his “Part III” is spot-on.  Nietzsche is an irrepressibly engaging stylist.  I’ve not made up my mind whether the way he romps comes at the expense of systemic integration, but there can be no doubt that he’s a gas to read.

    Posted by Billy Beck  on  12/25  at  08:15 PM

  3. Billy -

    Thanks for the pointers.  I’ll be heading to my local book resellers to see if I can find both Paine’s “The Age of Reason” and Mencken’s “Friedrich Nietzsche.”

    Also, your comment ”...I’ve generally made up my mind to forego discussion of the man, in favor of reading what he, himself, had to say and breaking my neck to sort it out for myself."

    I’ve generally found that sorting it out for yourself is the only way for an individual to really gain anything from any writer or philosophy.  Otherwide you’re just plucking other’s pennants when you really want the flag.

    Posted by  on  12/26  at  04:43 AM

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