Thursday, December 25, 2003

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 John Venlet on 12/25 at 01:08 PM
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