Of course The Genealogy is one big fallacy. Nietzsche accounts the so-called "origins" of Judeo-Christian morality and then concludes the tradition reversed the evaluations of "good and evil" in the past. But where's the logic in that? How do we know what N- said was true? What really IS good and evil anyway? Why are some things good and not evil, evil and not good according to N-? His caricaturization of Judoe-Christian morality is a strawman. Every Chrisitian I know agrees. So who is right? How N- approaches philosophical topics is typically one-dimensional and illogical.

And in what sense did they "weaken" the human spirit? In N-'s own private sense? How do you test for that claim? What does "Weaken" mean in N-'s terminology? He just presupposes "Teutonic" contrary opposites of good and evil, master and slave, and then bashes Christianity with it. I wouldn't subscribe to his evaluations in a scientific sense anyway. Just look at the pragmatic argument against it.

Christianity is alive and well.

The argument is invalid. (2) is false. And (3) is a result of Neitzsche's own hatred for Christianity because he didn't understand its message since he didn't identify with it.

This argument you offered fallaciously derives an "ought" from an "is" and caricaturizes Christianity as if it were nihilistic about this life, placing value only on the life to come. Then tell me why the Catholic Church, for example, has the best track record to this day assisting the sick, feeding the hungry, and taking care of poor with its countless charities? And did you know that "becoming Christian" is not a condtion for receiving that assistance? Catholic organizations are behind most of the secular charity organizations out there.

And if Christians didn't value this life, then why don't they just ignore people's suffering and council everyone to commit suicide, while doing it themselves like that religious cult several years ago whose members committed suicide because they thought that action was the quickest path to landing oneself on an alien ship?

Suffering is good, it strengthens you and imparts wisdom and character. But what is wrong with the altruistic act of assisting someone in need? My grandmother is now dying of cancer, and I also have a handicapped sister. Should I follow N- advice and stop taking care of them both because N- thinks all altruistic acts of Love come from the sentiment of "pity"?

To be honest, I just don't like how his name sounds.

Wasn't Nietzsche, to use the jargon you'd promote, a perspectivist?

What if today's Christianity has a different message from that of the days Nietzsche was around? What can be said about the Christian might be largely the product of culture and not the religion.

Well what's that supposed to mean?

It's easy to be charitable towards the organizations doing work with grassroots activism and volunteerism. I'd be more convinced if I heard that the ones who are joining the NGOs and working in the field are the theists as opposed to secular.

Besides, one does not join a religious institution to be generous. One already has the will t be generous regardless of which organized religion one belongs to.

Because that would have been against what was culturally deemed acceptable in Christianity.

Remember learning about that purgatory scam from history class?

I think the real question in this whole argument lies in the relationship between the influences of culture and organized religions on the populace's values, mindsets, and lifestyles, and how that relationship has changed throughout the 20th century up to now. How it has changed will allow us to determine perhaps why Nietzsche was allowed to say "Christianity" then and not now.

He didn't think that all altruistic acts came from the sentiment of pity.

But here's an example of what I think Nietzsche means: foreign aid, and charity. I will use the distinction "western society" and "developing world" to make it easier to communicate what I mean to say. Foreign aid coming to Africa largely from western society helps in the short term as a utilitarian appeal to African governments, but such charity doesn't work to solve the inherent problems. Trillions have been poured into Africa yet poverty hasn't been solved.


www.bit.ly/cmePv7


A billion live on less that a dollar a day. We're trying to spread democracy thinking that this is all what's right for them, yet we don't bother to ask what does Africa want? It would be a poor image if organizations didn't help in some way, so they offer charity, out of the need to sympathize and have pity. But Africans are probably tired of pity now. They don't want to be constantly dependent on foreign aid to be economically sustainable just as they were once dependent on colonial rule. They want to be able to take care of themselves, and by all means the western world has the technology to give them that. Why should we meddle in their economic prowess and culture when we could give them technologies and knowledge so that they can emerge a culture and way of their own?

You just don't hear about these third-wold countries in the media very often, because these reports don't make for "good copy" and high ratings. Having to watch hundreds of millions die of starvation and disease causes someone to want to spend only a few dollars a year to save a child's life instead of spending 3 dollars a day on a Starbucks cappuccino. This consumer society is incredibly narcissistic and hedonistic. We could be saving lives with the least amount of cost to ourselves. It's truly sickening.

Nope... Not exactly... Consider all the moral forms, and even the physical... If you were the last person alive on the planet, which of those forms would would have meaning??? Meaning is something we share, and without people to share with, then, there is no meaning... When we communicate, what do we share??? We share meanings...What do you have to say with no one to say it to??? No individual has morality unless he carries it with him from his community in the traditional sense of ethics as custom or character...Indians would let themselves get burned up, cut up, butchered for days on end for the enjoyment of their captors because to do less than would disgrace their own people, and invite attack upon them...They were ethical as we cannot imagine being ethical, and that is the sort of society all our lives have come out of; but they survived, and we have not... We have lived with our Western laws for only a thousand years, and we have not captured justice or morality with them and we have not brought it to bay with philosophy...Until we grasp what it we are seeking we will never know it, and yet we all know something of morality since we all learned some of it at our mother's knee...

It may be Gerrman for Anus...

I don't promote perspectivism or truth-relativism. I disparage it.

And what message would that be today that is so different than the past? "What if?" is groundless speculation.

...that christians have not committed mass suicide.

Is there something wrong with being charitable, then? Some people can only send money to help others, and not their time. But that doesn't mean didn't work for that money. Charity is charity, regardless of the form that comes in.

And of course there are both secular and religious working in the field of larger faith-based charities. But haven't you paid attention to the fact that a sizeable portion of local charity work in cities such as food banks for the homeless are mostly run by participating local parishes and organizations run by nuns and friars?

What does this have to do with anything other than the fact that people are generous, which is a good thing? I don't see any other religious groups with the extensive reach that the Church has. And we are only talking about one religious institution, too, with such are far-reaching impact on people no matter how imperfect those attempts to reach out are.

What exactly are you claiming? That all Christians are repressed suicidal failures?...lol.

I've heard of that strawman, yes. Pejoratively you call the formulation and articulation of Doctrine "a scam."

Again, this is merely speculation. And these are all sociological questions.

Yes he did. Nietzsche called Christ's message of Love thy Neighbor and organized Christiantiy "the religion of pity" and accused it disparagingly of "wanting to turn the world into one big hospital."

Do you really think building schools, feeding people, and giving them access to health care is a way of hurting them?

The number one killer in the developing world is malnutrition and disease. And there is not a damn thing these people can do to help themselves because of their own governments.

So what's your alternative? To let people die of famine and disease because trillions of dollars have already been spent to try to repair a situation other a**holes continue to screw up? That's incredibly selfish.

You just don't hear about these third-wold countries in the media very often, because these reports don't make for "good copy" and high ratings. Having to watch hundreds of millions die of starvation and disease causes someone to want to spend only a few dollars a year to save a child's life instead of spending 3 dollars a day on a Starbucks cappucino.

Now we can blame some of the skewed perceptions of Nietzsche on his aphoristic style of writing or his complex ideas. Afterall, he did attempt to weed out certain individuals with the way he delivered his ideas. However, some of the commentary on Nietzsche, especially in this section of the forum, are clearly more than a result of Nietzsche's relative ambiguity. From the mocking comments on his idea of the overman to the claims that he shared fascist views and viewed the Jews as inferior to the Nazis, some seem intent on not trying to understand the man's ideas. Now I have my theories on why some react this way, but why do think this is so?

I can already see the jesters waiting to perform.

So the Indians were more ethical than Westerners because they were willing to let themselves be tortured to death in the name of their people?! Have you ever heard of the Aztecs? And I cannot have any moral obligations to myself if I'm left alone in the wilderness of Alaska? I have no meaning without other people? This is a battle cry of individual weakness that I cannot stomach. I believe that I have moral obligations to myself before anyone else and that my moral authority comes not from my "tribe" but from me. I would say that I'm a virtue ethicist not primarily because I think it would help other people, but because I believe that an ethic of character will propel me to greatness. The fact that my ethic of character may help other people is secondary to the fact that it will help me.

I never saw Nietzsche as being ambiguous in any way. Matter of fact, it was his brazenly direct approach that inspired me to read through much of his work (The Gay Science is my personal favorite). What I found interesting, though, is that he was not really that complex, but rather quite easy to understand with the guise of complexity; it is, perhaps, for this reason that his ideas were so pervasive and dangerous. While I cannot say that he was necessarily a fascist or even that he felt the Jews to be less than the Nazis (Nazism, I believe, came after Nietzsche), I would say the idea followed its natural course.

Ideas are incredibly dangerous to man, for they often seem to take a life of their own as the generations pass. Nietzsche's ideas and concepts followed this principle because of their nature and what they entailed. He called it too! In The Gay Science, he wrote of man (whom I will designate, natural man) as being fueled by an avaricious and lustful desire for possession. What other way was there for the following generations to take his concepts? Every youth who unwittingly echoes his sentiments and the plague of Nazism are the rightful heirs to the idea which Nietzsche presented. I wonder, though, if he had any idea of these consequences.

Every individual is a criminal waiting only for an opportunity... Only as members of a community even if it is the community of humanity can we be moral...

He is no longer cutting edge... The world has seen the effect of his philosophy come and go, and sanity has returned, so to speak...It is not ideas that are dangerous, but people are dangerous who do not use ideas to think, but use them to avoid thought, as a substitute for thought...No one can justly let others do their thinking for them.... Great if you believe they are smarter, or more learned... A healthy bit of contempt or pride is required of each of us, so we never take any word as Gospel... Think for yourself, if you are indeed an individual...I am by fault, as an illness, as the reslult of an injury; but only the young freely accept this condition without any understanding of its implications... Every individual is a criminal waiting only for an opportunity... Only as members of a community even if it is the community of humanity can we be moral...

I never saw Nietzsche as being ambiguous in any way. Matter of fact, it was his brazenly direct approach that inspired me to read through much of his work (The Gay Science is my personal favorite). What I found interesting, though, is that he was not really that complex, but rather quite easy to understand with the guise of complexity; it is, perhaps, for this reason that his ideas were so pervasive and dangerous. While I cannot say that he was necessarily a fascist or even that he felt the Jews to be less than the Nazis (Nazism, I believe, came after Nietzsche), I would say the idea followed its natural course.

Ideas are incredibly dangerous to man, for they often seem to take a life of their own as the generations pass. Nietzsche's ideas and concepts followed this principle because of their nature and what they entailed. He called it too! In The Gay Science, he wrote of man (whom I will designate, natural man) as being fueled by an avaricious and lustful desire for possession. What other way was there for the following generations to take his concepts? Every youth who unwittingly echoes his sentiments and the plague of Nazism are the rightful heirs to the idea which Nietzsche presented. I wonder, though, if he had any idea of these consequences.

How is your immorality going to hurt you, or your morality going to help you if there is only you???You have learned about morality in relationships with people so you really cannot imagine morality without the people, but, what if there were no people... What would good, mean, or evil???

Sure I have heard of the Aztecs, and they were no different... They sacrificed human life for rain and the rain fell on all.... Do you believe they did not meet their deaths with equanimity??? Consider that before primitives in America, North and South had ever heard of Jesus, that he was already a hero to them, because he laid down his life for his friends, the primary virtue among primitives...

You say this like the people in the developed world are sickened morally and have their priorities messed up, but that is a failure to see the way in which society molds people into 'citizens.' People are not raised into philanthropic donors because that type of being is not profitable to the powers that be.
What this means is that there is a major problem with people of knowledge not informing the ignorant masses, or in many cases paid off by corporate interests to dis and misinform the ignorant masses. Sure people are narcissistic and hedonistic, but it is hardly their personal problem as it is a symptom of a diseased meme pool.

To many people, Africa is just a poor third world disease cesspool torn apart by civil war. But that is all that is ever covered in the mass media because that is the image of the situation that want people to hold. Giving spare change to charities would contribute to the people's economy in Africa while the $3/per cappuccino addiction will put $100 directly into the pockets of corporate America. Many people do not know that they could support communities in Africa for minuscule monetary contributions because that information is not provided to them. It is rarely plastered on television, it only makes print in niche publications, and it is not likely littering the margins on web pages.

The ideas that rule our times and construct the consumer and information cultures intentionally mold people into simple automatons that are easily manipulated by marketing campaigns and press releases. Some individuals get away from time to time but there are systems in place that reel them back in fold as they advance through university and career paths.

But back to the main Nietzsche thread. Nietzsche is an easy target for academic philosophy because he wasn't one of them. And the same goes with Plato.

Nietzsche though, was a very troubled thinker, which makes him the easier target. He used literary techniques in his thoughts, was trained in philology, and was much more a psychologist writer than an academic philosopher. Thus, it is not even fair to judge N from an academic philosophy perspective. It is easy to call the arguments invalid when they are not even really arguments at all. They are a presentation of ideas and a looking into of the bright but haunted mind that N possessed.

Did he attack. Of course, but that is the style of the work. There is much to be absorbed from any of his work, but it is comical to try to employ academic philosophy standards and terms on something that never was meant to meet those standards in the first place.

In many ways, Nietzsche has more in common with a fiction writer like Dostoevsky, than with the academics he blasts throughout his work.

But anyway, what do I know. I only wrote my capstone paper on Nietzsche, studied ancient Greek, and I could care less about nearly all analytic philosophy and their methods of inquiry.

Perspectivism is very different from relativism. Why put the two together, what valuation are you implying here? Just because you don't promote perspectivism doesn't make it wrong.

The way I see it, one's approach (or reproach) to "What if's" demonstrates a person's attitude and has nothing to do with epistemic matters.

That's quite the low priorities for defining "alive and well" simply leaving it to a matter of whether the people of a religion exist today or not.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with it.

Yes, I participated in helping to raise money for the Haiti relief at the church and school.

I'm just saying that it's also important to know why people are generous.

Swing and a miss, lol.

Oh so it was sincerity then?

What's condoning about a sociological question if it's relevant?

Ironically, this does nothing to invalidate my point.

Governments need a continuous reason for being provided aid. I believe I've already stated an alternative. That's exactly the point. It's the audience the media has to appeal to, one of sympathy.

You continue to utter statements like these about the depraved individual and his lack of morality when disconnected from 'community'. Yet where is your argument? Are you going to keep making these statements, or can you come up with the premises that lead to the conclusion, I wonder.

because if we look at criminality the bulk of it is cenetered on the young who are finding themselves apart from their families, and for whom crime is a form of self expression...

When communiites were a universal reality as they still are in some places, there was group responsibility, and children learned from a very young age not to screw up, because the vengeance taken would be taken indiscriminately upon anyone in the whole community, and that, as with the barbarous Native Americans, that their courage would also defend the whole people...

What people do when they are virtuous and moral feeds the life of the community, and when ever there is a justification for injustice it is an individual making the argument, for there is no benefit to injustice for the community... Rationalization applied to morals is a failure because when one makes a sacrifice, or endangers their life for others, it is irrational... It is emotions and emotional attachments that fire morality...People know what is right, but only a person, thinking of their own benefit or pleasure can justify infustice, and rationalize crime, which injures the whole of the community.

You are offering an argument to justify a culture's moral complacency--as if slave-owners were not morally culpable because their culture didn't tell them that slavery was wrong. First, almost every person KNOWS about starvation, malnutrition, and disease world-wide. Just ask any average person on the street. We just don't see the ads to donate to some charity organization that much in magazines and on television because they are buried in a cesspool of advertisements for bath products, beer, and automobiles. But of course people know about it.

So ignoring a fact doesn't make people less culpable for neglecting to do something about it. You pretend as if a person's neglect to help a starving child in another country somehow makes person less culpable on account of the distance between himself and the child. That's bull. "Distance" is not a morally relevant factor. We are just as morally culpable for neglecting to save a 6 year old drowning in two inches of water whom we pass by on the street as we are failing to help that same child 10 miles away.

If someone is aware of it, and can do something about it, then that person ought to do at least something about it.

It doesn't matter how infrequent that information is presented. It only requires that information being presented ONCE to find oneself morally accountable for neglect. And it simply doesn't matter these problems are a 15 hundred miles away.

So you are blaming someone's failure to behave morally on this abstract thing called "culture"--as if "culture" is the problem. I hate to break to you, we ARE culture. So we ARE to blame. That's like saying "I am not to blame because my culture made me this way." That's not right at all. Slavery was entrenched within the political system and the economy down South, and Slave-Owners depended for their livelihoods on that labor. That still doesn't morally justify Slavery as an institution which forms a deep part of that culture.

But Nietzsche wasn't a fiction writer. He was a philosopher. Therefore, he is on philosophy's turf. N- is not immune from criticism.

That's truly sad. You are missing soooo much. Logic promotes intellectual freedom because it is a way of de-programming yourself of the B.S. you think you know. It continually pulls me out of my own biases, consequently making me more self-aware, while also expanding my horizons. If someone just looks at logic and sees numbers, he is missing the point. Logic is a powerful tool that uncovers presuppositions, implicit ideologies, and exposes the diseased thought-memes with which our culture has brainwashed us--whether secular, quasi-scientific, and religious. And N- stunts this growth into intellectual maturity because he promotes the lazy-minded relativism ramapant in Western Culture whether he intended that or not.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra? It is not written as a philosophy book, but rather as a work of fiction much like the Bible and the modern book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Not to mention, when N wrote, he took on a persona from which he wrote. He thought of himself as philosophizing with a hammer, so he was intentionally writing with great zeal and bombast. N was a staunch social critic, philologist, psychologist, philosopher, and classist, so it is not fair to discredit his whole body of work because he was a flawed philosopher. N was a possessor of ideas, and because his arguments may suck, that does not mean that all of his ideas such.



Well, that may be true that my interests are sad, and I am filled with bias, but I don't give a f#ck about academic philosophy any longer. The field is generally so far removed from doing anything to actually make society better that it amounts to little more than hot air. It is great that there are many academics that have worked out all of these moral issues, but do nothing to solve them. They just argue with their egghead colleagues and few ever step off a campus and do anything to solve the moral dilemmas they ponder and write about, but generally only professionals read. Until the philosopher attempts to take their messages to the people who can use it to make their's and others' lives better, academic philosophy is little more than verbal and written masturbation. I will take my classics and works of great literature over current philosophical works because, first, they matter, and second, people actually read them and you can have discussions with people across the limits of specialized learning.
I have studied logic. It is a nice tool, but formal logic is pretty much a wash for nearly all people. It is not going to help them become better critical thinkers, readers, and writers. To the academic, it may be very useful, but all it amounts to is telling one group to go play their game over there so not to influence another group while this group is manipulated into doing silly acts because they do not know what they are doing could be radically different.

Now we can blame some of the skewed perceptions of Nietzsche on his aphoristic style of writing or his complex ideas. Afterall, he did attempt to weed out certain individuals with the way he delivered his ideas. However, some of the commentary on Nietzsche, especially in this section of the forum, are clearly more than a result of Nietzsche's relative ambiguity. From the mocking comments on his idea of the overman to the claims that he shared fascist views and viewed the Jews as inferior to the Nazis, some seem intent on not trying to understand the man's ideas. Now I have my theories on why some react this way, but why do think this is so?

I can already see the jesters waiting to perform.