>>> rosserjb at jmu.edu 11/07/00 05:37PM >>>
The clearest statement of Nietsche's opposition to anti-Semitism is in his essay, "Nietsche contra Wagner." Of course, Hitler famously identified himself with Nietsche's ubermensch who would be "beyond good and evil." I fully agree that Nietsche would have vomited if he had known how his concepts were being used. Barkley Rosser -
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Hello Barkley,
It is interesting. In _Existentialism and Alienation _ ( International, 1965), Sidney Finkelstein says:
"Nietzsche can be quoted for quite opposite attitudes,; as one who gave a fresh ideological impetus to anti-Semitism, and as a critic of anti-Semites; as a German nationalist, jingo, and proto-fascist, and as a critic of jingos; as one who exalted aristocracy, and one who scorned the Junkers and aristocrats in the German government of his time; as an atheist, who proclaimed in _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ "God is dead", and as a religious thinker who upheld "myth" against science. ..."
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(continuing to quote Finkelstein who is quoting Nietizsche at first)
quoting Nietzsche:
""Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society; it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life."
Finkelstein continues ," In _The Genealogy of Morals_ (1887), Nietzsche implemented these thoughts with an invented history of Europe, and in the process, provided a virulent new ideology for anti-Semitism. The basis for this peculiar chauvinism ahd been laid in _The Birth of Tragedy_, where he had invented a "pure" German "character" or "spirit" based on German "myth". Whether he meant by this something so crazy as that the German people of his time represented a pure-blooded race in direct descent from the early Germanic tribes, it is impossible to say, for Nietzsche here, as always, ignores historical data. However, he insists on this purity. "So highly do we rate the pure an vigorous kernel of the German character that from it alone may we venture to expect this elimination of forcibly ingrafted elements." In this earlier book, where Nietzsche gloried in the victory over France, the "foreign" element referred to was the "Romantic", or in other words, French (racially as mi! xed as the Germans). Now, in _The Genealogy of Morals_ , it is the Jews. He gives a new twist to medieval anti-Semitism which , ignoring the fact that the early Christians had considered Christ and themselves to be Jews, indicts the Jews as the killers of Christ. To Nietzsche now, the Jews conspired to invent Christianity out of hatred for the Gentiles. To revenge themselves, they decided to transmute all values and invented a slave-morality.
Nietzsche :" It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good equals aristocratic equals beautiful equals happy equals loved by the gods) dared with a terrifying logic to suggest thae contrary equation...namely, "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, the weak, the lonely, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathesome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation - but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless"
Then, Nietzsche goes on, the Jews killed Christ to pretend that he was their adversary, and so to entrap the Gentiles into following Christ's teachings. " Is it not due to the black magic of a really great policy of revenge, of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so that all the world - that is , all the enemies of Israel - could nibble without suspicion at this very bait ? "
The truth which these Jewish-Christian teachings tried to obscure, Nietzsche says, is that the "Will to Power" is the guiding principle of history, as it is the organization of society. " I used the word, 'State'; my meaning is self-evident, namely a herd of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, which with all its war-like organization and all its organizing power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. Such is the origin of the 'State'. That fantastic theory that makes it begin with a contract is, I think, disposed of. "