Nietzsche's The Antichrist

[Charlemagne_III]

Perhaps you need to do some more research?

Try this:

telegraph.co.uk/education/3313279/Madness-of-Nietzsche-was-cancer-not-syphilis.html

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Perhaps you need to do some more research?

If I recall correctly, people suspect that Aquinas’ religious ecstasies were induced by a medical condition.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

If I recall correctly, people suspect that Aquinas’ religious ecstasies were induced by a medical condition.

No way to prove that they were; no way to prove that they weren’t.

 

[Aloysium]

If I recall correctly, people suspect that Aquinas’ religious ecstasies were induced by a medical condition.

I believe that St Thomas divided ecstasies into three categories according to their cause: Divine, demonic and physical. He apparently had a religious experience that in comparison to its bread, made his writings appear so much straw. I understand that he was coherent and most definitely would have understood the nature of what he experienced.

No way to prove that they were; no way to prove that they weren’t.

Any proof requires familiarity with the subject matter. Most mathematical proofs are jibberish to the uninstructed. There is a ring of truth to what is written about his experience, that convinces most people, even those of different faiths.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I believe that St Thomas divided ecstasies into three categories according to their cause: Divine, demonic and physical. He apparently had a religious experience that in comparison to its bread, made his writings appear so much straw. I understand that he was coherent and most definitely would have understood the nature of what he experienced.

Any proof requires familiarity with the subject matter. Most mathematical proofs are jibberish to the uninstructed. There is a ring of truth to what is written about his experience, that convinces most people, even those of different faiths.

Still no way to prove to unbelievers they were or were not real ecstasies.

 

[reggieM]

Reggie, I think all your arguments are excellent especially the one about metaphysics!

We are in an especially fortunate position with an extra century and a bit’s scholarship, more education for more people (on and off), largely affordable books, public libraries, internet. And the blessings in our Anglo-American heritage of the last 150 years.

Nietzsche was a bloke, who said things. Like people do. The argument is more against those who promote him, to my mind. His dad was a Lutheran pastor and that was probably not like the nice Lutheran pastor in your town in the U.S. He probably had drummed into him that Catholicism was a worse kind of atheism than atheism itself.

It’s incumbent on those who promote him to admit that his lassitude in not continually critiquing his own and others’ critiques is a serious pitfall.

I don’t know what Nietzsche thought of what J H Newman had to say for example. Was Newman writing for a Prussian Lutheran readership? Could Newman leave unsaid some things that we knew in this country and Prussians didn’t?

In any event it’s not surprising as Ridgerunner points out, that people like him said things like that. The problems weren’t only in him.

Anybody that is actually promoting his views should remember that Nietzsche was a gentleman of leisure, engaging in polemic during his few years of semi-fitness. He was essentially a poet. What we don’t get, and should expect of a “philosopher” that proponents actually propose to promote, is cut and thrust among members of the same and other faculties and similar institutions of learning. He only lectured for one year and that was in his own interpretation of some of the Classics.

So, I agree, he didn’t put in enough spade work around classics, philosophy, questions of God or anything. If he had done, like so many others, he still might not have ended up with views we could agree with all that much.

Whilst syllabuses must remain broad and even get broader, it would be good if university teachers would point out that Nietzsche wasn’t a philosopher in the sense of someone whose work was forged out of the same kind of hard graft as usual ones’ are.

Not only German Lutherans, most American and English Protestants and even the bulk of Catholics, in practice go with something suspiciously like the institutionalised acedia that has afflicted all the churches since about the year 1200 and only too loudly shouts the death at the lived out level, of the God Whose aim it once was to indwell. Of course we all repeat the official version of our faith and try to think we are adhering to it. Unbelief IS slavery.

Kierkegaard (another story teller) is often regarded as a forerunner of what are nowadays many varieties of existentialism and he advocated authenticity in response being given priority over convention when appropriate.

Somebody like Kant had no problem talking reams about God because it was the form in his day, and after all there really are the arguments. Perhaps what Nietzsche was saying was, what’s the point in any of the philosophy in the face of such a volume of unbelief and hypocrisy and it was as if society were on a search to replace man with a pretend superman - a search sadly as I write somewhat advanced in the UK.

I should have said Macintyre by the way, with a A in it.

Thanks, Vic. Fascinating insights!
It’s easy to forget the historical situation these guys were living through. We read back from a 21st century perspective.
I like your characterization of him as a poet. There was a lot of romanticism around at the time so poets and novelists were thought to have a greater level of genius than the ordinary philosopher.
Like Camus, for example. The Stranger is found on lists of “the Greatest Books of All Time”. I was taught in school that he was a genius, etc. No one ever explained why they thought that or why the book had any value at all … but nonetheless.

 

[BroIgnatius]

Perhaps you need to do some more research?

I see. Well, I did say “it is thought” not that “it is.” In addition, my training was in the 1970s when this idea was prevalent. Dying from brain cancer and dementia makes the same point. His condition in the last 11 years of his life does not invalidate his work previous to this illness. The new research makes no difference to my point.