Chuck G.
-clip- Naturally I spent a good deal of time reading Nietzsche in my 20s. But honestly, while I enjoyed the great rage against the machine of modernity, I didn't have much sympathy with N. I didn't like his rants on the herd---common people. I had already made up my own mind about God and morality, and I was not enthalled with him. In fact, he made me sick (existentially nauseated) in a strange intellectual way. I thought what a fabulous mind, somehow poisioned by its own erudition. There is something sad about Nietzsche. I came to think of Nietzsche as a kind of warning. Beware.
^^^^ CB: Chuck, thanks for another one of your typically interesting discussions.
My reaction to Nietzsche is similar to yours. However, he seems to have such popularity on the intellectual _left_, that I have made myself overcome my old response of gagging at him, and started to study him. So, I can more and more make more knowledgeable responses to his ghost on the left. I can't quite understand why leftists aren't turned off more widely by his elitism and glorification of ruling classes. ^^^^^ -clip-
What was Strauss looking for in Nietzsche? We forget that Nietzsche was essentially what we would call a classics professor. He taught Greek literature and philosophy, so it is possible that theme was what Strauss sought. -clip-
^^^ CB: Yes, classics prof.;and glofification of the Greeks, Romans and their imperialism.
I wonder whether "postmodern" ( post-structural ?) critiques of the canon of Western Civilization have more merit than they've been credit for. Critique of religion and Christianity is common. But what about deeper critique of the Graeco-Roman roots of capitalism ?
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The other theme involved here is the flow of 19thC history where the dialogue over modernity was conducted through the arts as a battle between the painters of romanticism, realism, and later impressionism---over and against the classical inspired artist like David and Ingre---which was turned into academic painting---those endless historical portraits and scenes of national heros like Napoleon or Bismark or Wilhelm or whoever.
I had to read a book for my German lit class that I still have, Eric Heller, The Disinherited Mind, essays on Goethe, Burckhardt, Nietzsche, Rilke, Spengler, Kafka, Krauss. (I have yet to re-read it...) For at least the first five, you can see a common thread. These were all writers intensely engaged with the problem of resolving Greek antiquity with their own idea of modernity. The great promise of the liberated, rational, and secular human spirit was seen as the consumate achievement of antiquity. Such a pinacle was lost during the dark ages and only resurfaced in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The revival of classicism became part of the great promise of modernity and a return to ancient roots, and the true center of the human spirit (add Gobineau for the dark side). This formed a core belief system in all of the above along with Kant, Hegel, and most of the 19thC luminaries (even Marx to a limited extent).
^^^^ CB: Yes, note that this revival of European classicism is with the rise of capitalism. I'm thinking that capitalist colonialism and slavery were also a revival Graeco-Roman colonialism and slavery. "Rule Britannica" was not Latinized for nothin'. As the European academics rediscovered the original "academy" , the European bourgeoisie got through them inspiration from Alexander and Caesar to CONQUER ,COLONIZE AND ENSLAVE other lands and peoples ! I don't think there's sufficient cause in the economic logic of capitalism to cause colonization and enslavement as much as has happened.
(We might call this the "light" side instead of the "dark" side. Afterall, it's the en-_light_enment.) ^^^^
Nietzsche saw Christianity as a kind of perversion of antiquity, which of course it was.
^^^ CB: Actually, originally Christianity _was_ a slave revolt, a class struggle by oppressed and exploited classes, straight out of The Manifesto. Nietzsche's disdain for it as a slave relgion explicitly and clearly puts him on the wrong side in the class struggle, . It's all pretty clearcut. Nietzsche is a propagandist for ruling classes down through history, not just the current one. He seems the antithesis of Marx ,and his thesis seem the anti-thesis the thesis of the Manifesto. Why leftists intellectuals wouldn't focus on this in N., I don't get.
On the other hand, maybe I do get it. Most intellectual classes down through the ages have been agents of their ruling classes. In fact, ruling classes originate in the old antagonism between predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor. Philosophers are typically not with slave classes. Nietzsche may be a route for modern intellecutals to return to their true classical roots as agents of ruling classes.
That wouldn't contradict much of what you say about Strauss , either.
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I suspect it was some where within this tightly bound historical moment that most of Strauss's world view was formed. In his early work, I think he was looking to find some way to resusciate Judaism's ancient Hellanistic roots in neo-platonism. I suspect Strauss saw Judaism aligned with classicism, through his imaginary ideal as a balance between the rationalism of antiquity and a modern scepticism (in his Zionist writings anyway).
I will probably get an enormous amount of shit for saying this, but I suspect that Judaism was almost a dead religion by the late 19thC and that it was literally brought back from historical oblivion. I think Judaism was rescued most especially by German Zionism. Whether the orthodox agreed or not, (and they mostly disagreed), Zionism put Judaism back into history. As I went through Guttmann's Philosophies of Judaism, I was struck by the undertone of urgency in Rosenzweig, Cohen and of course Guttmann himself.
^^^ CB: This is a plausible idea. If there were many secularized Jews, cultural ,not religious, Jews.
I also read where there were anti-Semites who supported Zionism. I think it was because they wanted the get Jews out of Europe !
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But I am mentioning this impression only to give Strauss some benefit of the doubt. He must have felt a similar threat---the doors could close on an entire world. It was possible, given the sweeping changes that were gathering on the horizon of modernity, that one day there would be no living memory of what it had meant to be Jewish and live in a traditional community. (I am thinking of the late 19thC to say late 20s before the Third Reich)
So, if you are following this, then that was Strauss's attraction to Nietzsche, who was kind of a grand rhetorician of lost worlds. The pronouncement that God was dead, was in effect a statement that the soul of Christianity was dead. But of course also an affirmation, we are free to re-invent the world.
^^^^^ CB: Yes, this may be a theme that makes N. attractive to leftists. It also made N. attractive to the rightwing radicals in Germany. Won't call any names here, but ...
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Well, first time as tragedy, second round as farce. I think (but have no way of actually knowing) that the Islamic world has been undergoing a deeply related transformation. Of course the Christians and Jews are engaged in some nth round of similar rivivals.
^^^ CB: We may still be in the first time tragedy phase.
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I don't know Charles. I think all these people are out of their fucking minds. I obviously don't believe any of this bullshit.
^^^ CB: Yea, but somebody has got to deal with all the intellectual toxic waste.
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On the other hand, it is nice to live a city where I pass by old Churchs, an old Synagogue done in the Bzyantine style, or a Mosque with its dome in gold. It makes me feel like I live in a civilized world. I don't begruge any of that. I just don't want to hear their crap on the news.
^^^^ CB: I'm getting to be overwhelmed by all the bad news. "No news is good news" is so true.
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Speaking of which, it sounds like Ratzinger is a neo-con.
CG
^^^^ CB: Yea, and Bush is the Devil.