The Bizarre Case of Nietzsche: The Pro-Jewish Writer Who Inspired a Million Anti-Semites
No serious thinker has done more harm to the Jewish people than Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings were an important inspiration for Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Yet far from being an anti-Semite, Nietzsche was one of the most pro-Jewish German writers of his time. How can this paradox be explained, and does it have any lessons for the present day?
Nietzsche was the son and grandson of Protestant ministers. He became an academic expert on ancient Greece, yet his poor health forced him to resign his professorship at a young age. He spent most of the rest of his life on a pension, traveling from spa to resort town trying to avoid the extremes of weather that gave him such physical discomfort.
A massively productive and self-consciously iconoclastic writer, Nietzsche never attained a large readership in his lifetime, though his fame did grow. His life and works are too complex to summarize here, but one constant feature of his worldview was his friendliness — even admiration — towards Jews.
The growing anti-Semitism in Germany during the 1870s and 1880s disgusted him. He derided the hatred of Jews by his friend, the composer Richard Wagner, with whom he eventually broke. He ridiculed it on the part of his publisher. He tried to block his sister’s marriage to an anti-Semitic agitator. Nietzsche had several Jewish friends, including one of his greatest admirers, the famous Danish literary critic Georg Brandes. After a stimulating conversation with another Jewish friend, Helen Zimmern, he noted:
It is fantastic to what extent this race now has the “intellectuality” of Europe in its hands.
Moreover, though he is mainly remembered for his concept of the “superman” and the “blond beast,” Nietzsche was an anti-militarist. He hated the German monarchy and loved France (at that time Germany’s main enemy), Switzerland, and Italy, where he spent most of his adult life. Far from believing in the superiority of the “Aryans,” he liked to imagine he had Polish ancestry.
To give a sense of Nietzsche’s world view — though these extreme expressions came from 1888 as he began to descend into madness — Nietzsche urged all of the other countries in Europe to unite against Germany, called on Jews to help him in his campaign against Christianity, and said he would like to kill all the German anti-Semites.
There is no doubt that if he had lived to see Nazism he would have been appalled and been outspoken in his enmity, though his sister became an enthusiastic Nazi.
How then did this pro-Jewish philosopher become an inspiration for the murderers of 86 percent of all the Jews in Europe?
The immediate answer is his hatred of Christianity and belief that a post-Christian, secular morality must be developed.
In this regard, he was part of the post-Darwin reaction to the cracking of religious certainty. As a believer in what Brandes called “aristocratic radicalism” and having a horror of democracy, Nietzsche, in the words of his biographer Curtis Cate, contrasted “the positive ‘breeding’ of aristocracies to the negative ‘taming,’ ‘castration,’ and emasculation of the strong by insidious ‘underdogs.’” Or in Nietzsche’s own words:
Christianity, growing from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a product of this soil, represents a reaction against the morality of breeding, of race, of privilege — it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence.
In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche penned what became the core of Nazi philosophy and the death knell for European Jewry:
All that has been done on earth against “the nobles,” the “mighty,” the “overlords,” … is as nothing compared to what the Jews did against them: the Jews, that priestly people who were only able to obtain satisfaction against their enemies and conquerors through a radical revaluation of the latter’s values, that is, by an act of the most spiritual revenge. … It was the Jews who … dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation … saying “the wretched alone are the good ones, the poor, the helpless, the lowly … and you who are powerful and noble are to all eternity the evil ones.”
This was, however, in contrast to what the Nazis made out of it then and the Islamists have done today, nothing that they did on their own, no conspiracy of the elders of Zion, but the “invention” of Christianity. Nietzsche used these terms interchangeably when he said the “Western world was now suffering from `blood poisoning’” through being Jewified, Christianized, or “mobified.”
What should be stressed here is that this diatribe against Jews was a small, isolated part of his writing that did not carry over into his life or thinking otherwise. He totally dissociated the existing Jews from the harm he perceived arising from those of them — especially Paul — who had created Christianity two millennia earlier.
Earlier, he had written admiringly in explaining his opposition to anti-Semitism: “The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe.” Indeed, they fit his aristocratic prescription since they survived “thanks above all to a resolute faith that does not need to feel ashamed in the presence of ‘modern ideas.’”
Germany, he continued, would do better to deport the anti-Semites than the Jews who would provide many good qualities.
Very insightful, thanks.
It’s the 1930′s all over again.
What I can’t find in this article is evidence that Hitler and Nazism were indeed influenced by Nietsche. I know that the Nazis made much of Nietsche as a “proto-Nazi”, but that does not prove that they were influenced by him. Considering that Marx published “On the Jewish Question” the year Nietsche was born, and Engels started advocating the elimination of entire people to make room for Germans when Nietsche was a little boy (and much earlier than The Origin of Species), I very much doubt that Nietsche’s influence on Nazism was important.
Nietzsche’s thoughts on aristocratic breeding, combined with the insights of Darwin are plenty enough to support German nationalism (or National Socialism). His admiration for the intelligence of German Jews isn’t necessarily at odds with this. The fact is that the important fact is that Jews are different people than Germans. Whether or not another race/ethnic group/deme/breeding population is more intelligent than yours is important to know, but doesn’t mean that your people are destined to be subservient to them. Perhaps you have some offsetting advantages. In any event, nature doesn’t operate on the basis of initial surrender, but on the basis of competition, and devil take the hindmost. Nietzsche didn’t put forward the blond law professor, but the blond beast, after all.
“The fact is that the important fact is that Jews are different people than Germans. Whether or not another race/ethnic group/deme/breeding population is more intelligent than yours is important to know, but doesn’t mean that your people are destined to be subservient to them.”
What unmitigated balderdash. There are no racial differences. Differences in education, yes. Differences in opportunity, yes. Differences even in culture, yes.
Tripe like the above is EXACTLY what the national socialists preached… OMG, and I suspect that this person doesn’t see him/herself as an anti-Semite.
“What unmitigated balderdash. There are no racial differences. Differences in education, yes. Differences in opportunity, yes. Differences even in culture, yes.”
Though I don’t know that there’s any truth to Jacobite’s implication that Jews are smarter than Caucasians (or vice versa), I do think there exists the possibility of one race being, on the whole, more intelligent than others. Many think it’s racist to say because, in America at least, this claim is typically used to demean African Americans.
Still, the facts are these: intelligence is a physical attribute; no different than eye color or height. Physical attributes are determined partially by one’s race. This being the case, it’s not unreasonable to think that intelligence could vary somewhat between the races.
By the “blond beast” Nietzche meant the lion.
Darwin? We’re gonna drag Darwin into this?
Nietzsche: the prototype of the 21st Century American Left Wing Asshole. Never could stand his writings and thought he was out of his mind, for the most part. Only a warped brain could produce what he did and why he is still relevant (?) is beyond comprehension.
why he is still relevant (?) is beyond comprehension.
No doubt.
Keep trying, though.
Please do.
I never got very far in Nietzsche’s writings either. The parts that probably made some sense were incomprehensible, and the parts that made no sense were unreadable. As far as National Socialism, I’m not sure what Nietzsche would have thought. The NAZIs were pagan enough in theory, although their war against religion had to proceed carefully in a Christian nation. OTOH, Hitler was not blond. I find it hard to believe he would have thought more highly of the Jewish-supported polity (i.e., socialist/Communist). Secular, yes; but the ultimate-levelling, mediocrity-enforcing Communists look much less like blond-beast aristo supermen than the NAZIs.
“the gypsy corporal” Von Rundstedt used to call Hitler (and publicly so) -
Most of the Prussian Wermacht brass despised Hitler – and neither they, nor Hitler were influenced by Nietszche in any extent in their further proceedings –
The problem here is that Rubin’s piece is a majestic piece of crap, which tries to advance the oxymoron that Nietzsche is the unwittting architect of the modern european antri-semitism by way of his praising the Jewish qualities versus the Aryan brutishness –
Why Nietzsche (aside the odious name spelling problem) is still presented in colege as a philosopher is beyond me – he’s just a post romantic ranting figure, an exhalted, fuzzy & moody guy (the frenzied version of Werther), who had no apport in philosophical field whatsoever – the mighty intelectual that Rubin is should find a few minutes to read about tertiary syphilis’ consequences also, then refine his views about Nietzsche’s penetrating views –
What happened in Germany in the 30-s was was caused by a convergence of long simmering factors that eventually exploded in WWII – and since here, we also do not yet know, now in America, in Europe, or elsewhere, what are the true consequences of the Potsdam Treaty and of the collapse of the Warsaw Pakt – as far as Zarathustra’s role in these… I let Rubin hallucinate about that -
Yeah, if Nietzsche isn’t hard enough to spell, try colege
I agree with almost what you said
If you think Nietzsche was the forerunner of Leftists, then you do not understand a single thing he said.
The only thing he despiseded more than Marxism was Nihilism, which are the only two things he despised more than anti-Semitism.
“Nietzsche: the prototype of the 21st Century American Left Wing Asshole.” This statement just goes to show that you know little to nothing about the man’s philosophy. Nietzsche would feel sick in the stomach upon the sight of the American left! The timidity and herd mentality Nietzsche railed against is expressed best with the left. Nietzsche was a right-winger par excellence, if you will forgive the crude distinction of right and left.
“Second, like Nietzsche, they don’t realize how their “sophisticated” arguments can affect the unsophisticated.” How true.
‘Playing with fire’ would apply quite fittingly to much of the Left’s tactics these days. They will ally themselves with any of America’s enemies, no matter how base or despicable. The plan being that when the time comes, and the various members of the ‘popular front’ are no longer useful, they can be ‘taken care of’, as had been done in Lenin’s Russia.
We’ll see. More than one demagogue has gone down, literally, this path.
“No serious thinker has done more harm to the Jewish people than Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings were an important inspiration for Adolf Hitler and Nazism.”
Wrong. Nietzsche is not responsible for Hitler’s misinterpretation and misapplication of his ideas. If you accept that Nietzsche is responsible for the work of Hitler, than you must also accept the liberal argument of Nancy Pelosi that Glenn Beck and Ron Paul are responsible for people like Joe Stack and J.P Bedell, and that the Bible is responsible for the Westboro Baptist Church and the Lord’s Resistence Army. It’s called personal responsibility. If I ask a friend to go get me a pack of cigarettes, and he goes out and kills the first guy he sees and steals his pack, is that somehow my fault?
Wow!
There are those who so loathe and despise Jews that no matter what anyone says or writes they can manage to use it for their malicious purposes.
There are also those who have serious and justifiable differences with Israeli policies who are not anti Semitic in the least.
Yet often the two groups conflate so well that it is impossible to seperate the two.
The problem of what is rapidly becoming what is known as “eliminationist” anti Semitism today in Europe and increasingly so in the United States under Obama’s tutelage, as you explained it, is very similar to the problem that Nietzsche unwittingly created.
Once again, Dr. Rubin, you have deeply impressed me intellectually.
“What should be stressed here is that this diatribe against Jews was a small, isolated part of his writing that did not carry over into his life or thinking otherwise. He totally dissociated the existing Jews from the harm he perceived arising from those of them — especially Paul — who had created Christianity two millennia earlier.”
Just shows that all power-hungry megalomaniacs like Hitler can twist anybody’s ideas to suit their own world views regarding jews or any other ethnic race. I wonder if George Soros reads a lot of Nietzsche? After all, magalomaniacs like Hitler and Soros have so very much in common.
I was relatively ignorant of Niezsche and his writings as they motivated the Hitlerzeit criminals.
Man, you are right on the money, though, identifying the tenure-tracking professor types as the modern day equivalent of Nietzsche. It really makes me wonder.
ALSO: this really makes it clear why so many people use the word “islamofascism” — which I consider a goofy neologism, but still — you can see the connection now between the islamists and the Hitler genocide.
Nice work.
ALSO: this really makes it clear why so many people use the word “islamofascism” — which I consider a goofy neologism, but still — you can see the connection now between the islamists and the Hitler genocide.
Perhaps more than you realize Contra, you must keep in mind that the Baath part is a fascist party, and that there is credible evidence that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was at least a partial architect of the Holocaust.
As to whether or not Nietzsche is responsible for the atrocities committed in his name — that’s a hard call. To some degree I suppose he is. Or at least it could be argued he is.
The ultimate responsibility ends, however with the evil men who took his philosophy and used it to justify actions for which evil seems inadequate as a descriptor.
Patrick
Yes, Patrick, I knew about the Baath Party and the grand mufti.
And it just goes to show you how the enemies of the Jews are always on the move, though they try different stratagems in different generations.
“Nietzsche was an anti-militarist. He hated the German monarchy and loved France (at that time Germany’s main enemy), Switzerland, and Italy, where he spent most of his adult life. Far from believing in the superiority of the “Aryans,” he liked to imagine he had Polish ancestry.”
So with respect to Germany, Nietzche was the Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky of his time?!
Far from it. Nietzsche would have considered both of them as vile as he came to consider Wagner.
Nietzsche was not a pacifist because he considered it feeble to go to war.
He was a pacifist because he considered it as beneath the human condition to live as predators as to live as herd animals. Neither was fit for what people could achieve if they embraced the “overman”, and focused on creatively advancing themselves and those around them.
I’m sorry, but Nietzsche was not a pacifist. Nietzsche affirmed warfare as a political realist. He was Machiavellian in this respect. That’s not to say that he called for barbarism, but he believed that warfare was a part of life and that it had constructive value for the power of the species. He believed that we should retain some of our war-like instincts if we are to continue to grow into a powerful species.
It is written: “All who hate Me love death.” Nietzsche hated God and wound up loving death. He thought himself wise and became a fool. He ‘loved’ Jews, but hated their Messiah.
Humanistic thought, as outlined in the Humanist Manifesto, is full of such nonsensical tripe. Will it lead to bloodshed? Obviously, it already has. But it will eventually lead to something greater as well. This hatred of Christianity is spoken of in the 20th Chapter of Revelation, called Gog and Magog. At the end of Christian pre-eminence, Gog and Magog will march across the globe, driving Christianity before it until it surrounds it. And then….
“Rev 20:7-10 When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the [fn] seashore. And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”The rest of the chapter goes on to describe the Final Judgment.
Nietzsche’s philosophy is not new. It’s as old as Satan himself because it stems from Satan himself. Laugh if you will, but Jesus IS coming and His reward is with Him. This is war…pick a side.
amen to that!!!anyone who reads the Bible knows that the Jewish ppl are ‘the apple of God’s eye’ becoz thru them the Messiah came to give life to all who believe on His Name–in death there will be no choice– only the Judgment-believers to spend eternity with God and unbelievers to condemnation of God and the 2nd and final death
Sigh. Speaking as a Jew, I’d like to ask religious Christians to try to think of/about Jews in terms OTHER than simply in relation to their supposed role in Christian theology. While we and Israel are grateful to have the support of evangelicals, it’s a bit disconcerting to know that this same support is predicated on a spiritual belief in our demise in a coming rapture. We do, will not, and do not WANT to believe in your Jesus. We never, EVER will. To believe otherwise is to believe the ridiculous.
In any event, stop quoting NT scripture at us, would ya?
Would you rather we didn’t support Israel?
I don’t think he was saying that.
…Jesus was a JEW and never claimed to be anything else. the rest was made up well after his earthly demise.
Excellent question! And speaking as a Jew who has argued countless times with my brethren on this issue: we very very much do want your support for Israel! Furthermore we are extremely appreciative of it irrespective of what some Jews, who have not taken the time to consider the issue in a full and proper way might think.
The problem, with the gentleman to whom you were replying is that he would want you to answer a big long questionnaire (if you will) about why you are supporting Israel in an attempt to “ferret out” any reasons (people) he doesn’t find kosher.
Well first of all I always tell this story. If you are hitchhiking on a long dark highway in the western US in the middle of the night, and few if any cars are passing you buy, and all of a sudden after maybe an hour, a big truck, plastered with bumper stickers about Jesus lumbers to a halt, pops open the passenger door (which was nice of him right there) leans over and asks if you’re going in the same direction of the city towards which he’s traveling. You say yes and jump on board (after ascertaining that the driver is not a complete “crazy” to the best of your abilities).
It matters not one whit to you for whom he voted in the recent elections in accepting his support for a drive. It matters not one whit to you the extent to which he believes in Jesus and whether his Pastor has asked him to even attempt, in a friendly way, to “convert” any Jews with whose paths he might cross — as you can say (as I have done many a time) “thank you kindly sir for the respect you are showing me, and all the stories that you have told me about Jesus and Christianity and why I might even consider converting at some point, as we can never tell the future — for now though, I think I will stay a Jew, however I will certainly always remember your words, and as you know sometimes one has to just “plant a seed” and it just might grow at a later date” — with a smile on your face). And what’s more, I’ll bet you anything, the Jewish passenger may very well have learned something from the various stories that were repeated to him. If you can not take every opportunity to try to learn, then you’ll be miserable half your life.
And the two of you merrily continue your drive. Of course the ride is analogous to his “support” for Israel.” It matters not one whit what he thinks his particular version of the end times will be and that it might involves us Jews, exactly in the same way that it matters not one whit what our notion of the end times will be and the extent to which any Christians will play a part.
It would be like trying to “pick a fight” almost to attempt to “vet your driver” or “vet your Israel-supporter” in order to ensure that he is “clean” of heart and soul in that he bears no ill will towards Jews, either in the current day or in an “afterlife” — something so far from our everyday experiences as to make not “dealing with him” as a common man, ridiculous.
It dovetails precisely — and I won’t tell this whole story — but with the homily about a man trapped in a well who is praying with all his might for the L-rd to rescue him. Well one by one, people come by, a man in a truck with rope, who the trapped man says, “no thanks. I have FULL confidence in the L-rd and I am praying as fervently as possible.” And this goes on and on all day until it gets dark and the trapped man gets a little scared now and says to the L-ord, “G-d, why hath thou forsaken me?” And G-d responded(!), “Forsaken you? Son, I have sent you 5 people throughout the day precisely because of the strength of your prayer to come save you, but it was you who turned them down each time.” And from this we learn “G-d helps those who help themselves.” — BUT, there are other aspects from this I think one can learn.
Briefly, we can say that the man trapped in the well was “too far removed” from every-day-life (an important concept in Judaism by the way). We need not to be so removed from the everyday travails, needs, and offers of help in everyday life. What’s more, to say “yes but this Christian is only helping Israel because of explanation A is in fact second guessing G-d. In short, who are you to second guess G-d — perhaps he has is own plans that you do not know about (imagine that!) or perhaps, the Christians have been correct all along. It’s entirely irrelevant to us in the here and now.
In both cases, men, in the “here and now” are offering help. You do not want to be in a position whereby you are in some sense “second-guessing” G-d. In both cases, real-world help has appeared, not in a miraculous sense, but in a common every day sense by people who seem to be good of nature and truly willing to lend their aid to you or your cause. It is the height of hubris and of (“second-guessing G-d”) to then ask these helpers a litany of questions as to their views of events which have not yet occurred — at least in our “constrained” way of looking at the world (i.e. time being linear, and all the other laws of science we know of).
So, my point having been made (I hope!), let me tell you, a heartfelt, “Thank You Mr Conservative Wanderer.” In addition, I will tell you that whenever — and I mean whenever and wherever I happen upon a person who has a warm and respectful reaction to learning that I am a Jew, and then goes on to express his or her support for Israel (some use the word, “Christian Zionist”), I right there and then, shake that person’s hand profusely and in a truly heartfelt way.
–FF
We do, will not, and do not WANT to believe in your Jesus.
“Do not” is a simple statement of fact; and “not want” is an understandable expression of basic human nature — there are things, for instance, that I don’t want to be believe but do — “will not believe”, however, is silliness.
What in the world set that off? Before your comment, no one except your mother knew you existed. Stop trying to silence people with whom you disagree.
Straw man. Nobody is trying to silence anybody.
I think someone has misled you into why as Evangelical Christians support Jews. It has nothing to do with the rapture or Armageddon and everything to do with a covenant between one man named Abram and his God.
If New Testament scripture bothers you, then perhaps Old Testament scripture is a problem too…
The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone
Thanks Tex! I was going to write the same thing and you said it so well. It doesn’t surprise me that many Jews misunderstand Evangelicals, especially in Israel where they can be besieged with Christians of all sorts attempting to convert them, and are told by many rabbi’s that is their intension and they are not actually wrong. But Evangelicals believe that God has not broken His covenant with the Jews and that it is our imperative to love and support Jews and the state of Israel.
Amen!
Contrary to an opinion posted above, I have no ‘laundry list’. I am merely sick of people attempting to convert me to a religion I have thoroughly studied and just as thoroughly rejected. I speak for most Observant Jews on that. I am grateful for any support for Israel for any reason, but would prefer (if it mattered) that such support be given for the sake of a legitimate democracy and staunch ally, and in not in relation to an eventual prophesied Armageddon. Also contrary to view stated here, there are many, MANY evangelicals who believe exactly that – that the Jews must return to Israel in order for the ‘second coming’ to happen, and that the Jews will all become Christians at that time. I have no intention of debating theology here, since nobody can ever prove matters of faith. However, I would like to stop being constantly annoyed by wet-behind-the-ears teenagers showing up at my door quoting from a book they cannot read in its original language.
History has taught Jews to be very leery of religious Christians. I am pleased that so many American evangelicals claim to have accepted Judaism as an acceptable faith in its own right, and that we can all be fellow countrymen together pursuing fine secular ideals. I hope that at least some of you will understand that many Jews are holding out fully believing in that acceptance until a few more generations have passed. We have integrated into tolerant societies many times before, only to be told to get out or die. I honestly do believe that America is unique and different (which is why three generations of my family have served in her military), but we would be fools not to remain cautious. I say again that it is worth pointing out to religious Christians that we are not ever going to convert en masse, because many of them state openly that they expect exactly that. Forget it – t’aint gonna happen.
you can make stuff like that up …sounds like that other religion of peace.
Here’s irony , the closer the seminaries of Germany came to agreeing with the sanhedrin of Jesus’s time ( Jesus not devine ) through their adoption of the so called higher criticism . The more Germany became fit to host the Holocaust .
Humanity has such a copious capacity for madness. This is like the plain and simple economic truths facing this country right now. Any child can look at California and then Texas and see the simple truth of economic reality. Yet so many do not. And will not.
“Consider Jewish scholars in this light: All of them have a high regard for logic, that is for compelling agreement by force of reason; they know, with that they are bound to win even where they encounter race and class prejudices and when one does not like to believe them. For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses..”
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 348)
Nietzsche was a mad genius, so far out as to be worthless to humanity. He was his own worst enemy. In order to convey his brilliance, he coined words, actually new meanings to existing words, then consistently used his unique meaning for the rest of the ton of books he wrote, without footnotes or explanations. He assumed the reader consumed very book he ever wrote, in sequence, in order to grasp his thought. Thus everybody gets him wrong, depending on which text they read, or out of sequence.
One scholar spent years, unwinding the skein of his unique vocabulary and figured out his real meaning to mere mortals. (Nietzsche and Jung, Sailing a Deeper Night, P. Dixon, Peter Land 1999).
A hair this side of insanity, he was profoundly religious, that is loved God, and loathed institutional corrupt religions, and his decadent German society. He wrote that if that is your concept of God, then God is dead. He held that society needs Ubermench to advance. He meant a mix of a saint and George Washington. The word translates “Overman”; the Nazis used the dead author’s word to create “Supermen”, and the superiority of the Aryan race.
Liars do that, then and now.
One of the greatest disservices to Nietzsche is the mistaken and generally held belief that he celebrated the death of God. Not only did he not celebrate that circumstance, he foresaw the inevitability that without God men would end up worshipping themselves and as self-worshippers commit every conceivable (and inconceivable) crime. Which they have. Why blame the messenger for the message?
Very interesting article – some equally interesting observations by those above.
How ironic that so much of the irrational western hatred is aimed at both Christian and Jew. But I’ve found if you pull the curtain back a little further, the real hatred is directed at the message itself.
Being taught there is nothing new under the sun concerning human nature, I agree with those above. Nietzsche was to his generation as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn are to our generation.
And I would add the names Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, George Soros, and even men like Bill Maher to the list.
Bill Maher?
Be serious, man. Bill Maher is a former “guest star” on the television show with Angela Lansbury, “Murder She Wrote.” Go look it up. I saw it on a friend’s tv a few years ago.
Anybody who could be that desperate cannot be regarded seriously, EVER.
And in 1886 Nietzsche broke with his editor, Ernst Schmeitzner, because he was disgusted by Schmeitzner’s anti-Semitic opinions. In 1888 he wrote a scathing criticism of his former friend Wagner, including the latter’s anti-Semitism.
The most virulently anti-Semitic “Nietzsche” is to be found in The Will to Power, which was posthumously “edited” (most scholars now think largely written) by Friedrich’s overtly Jew-hating sister Elisabeth.
called on Jews to help him in his campaign against Christianity — Barry Rubin
They took him up on that one and carried it the next 100 years and counting, it would seem.
There are also those who have serious and justifiable differences with Israeli policies who are not anti Semitic in the least.
Sure. Ask yourself why when you tell them a bout say Darfur they are not interested. Ask yourself why a terrorist killed by Israel is a an atrocity and a thousand innocents killed by any other nation makes them yawan. Ask yourself why from all the “oppressed” in the world they sepend alml their “supporting energies” those who are the best fed, the best treated by their enemies, the ones who try to put bombs in meternities and have told loud and clear that they want to exterminate the Jews. I, for one, have little doubt that 99.9% of those people who “have serious and justifiable differences with Israeli policies who are not anti Semitic in the least” want the Palestinians finishing Hitler’s work and that is why they are so concerned by their fate.
exactly. I used to hear these arguments out. I did it for years until I saw clearly that some people will argue against Israel in EVERY SINGLE CASE. How many of these self-styled mid-east experts are there out there? who don’t seem to know any of the facts of history, and any attempt to relay it to them is a ‘zionist conspiracy’. They libel and slander an entire country, accuse them of murder, sedition, theft, fraud and god knows what else, are then proven incorrect, and then go on doing it again as if they are a credible voice on the matter. All of the absolute misery that is obvious in the surrounding regions to Israel is totally irrelevant. Israel must be the subject of discussion in all cases. It is the only subject of discussion. Israel causes all the problems in the world. I’m convinced this is some kind of mental illness they have.
Interesting. Article, comments, all. History, progress, understanding; jagged lines when we move forward that tend to straighten only when we fall.
Humility is the most essential virtue in the progress of a great mind, and the most repellent to it. Nietzsche appears to have viewed it as a liability.
Nietzsche was fair to the Jews. The following was contained in a broadside against Wagner and expresses his feelings pretty accurately. “I declare war against Wagner. … Wagner has condescended step by step to everything I despise — even to anti-Semitism.” When he was deemed mad at the end, he called the shot on what was coming in Germany. This is from Peter Viereck. “In January 1889 Nietzsche begged the pope for a sort of League of Nations to save Germany from her coming internal barbarism and to save international civilization from Germany. … Already in that year he named the ingredients of his predicted future barbarism specifically as the Wagner cult … anti-Semitism, ‘atavistic attacks’ of racial nationalism, and … realpolitik… In these letters Nietzsche urged Europe’s rulers to … form ‘an anti-German league to encircle the Reich’ in order to ‘abolish Wagner … and all anti-Semites.”
WOW! This is incredible, idov! How was the book as a whole — and could you list the book if you read this comment? Thanks in advance!
– FF
Peter Viereck — Metapolitics, The Roots Of The Nazi Mind
The direct quote is from The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner
As a note, since both the article and commenters mention it:
The “blond beast” does NOT mean Nordic people.
It means lions.
When Nietzsche mentions the “magnificent blond beast” in his writings, he is talking about people who live in what he described as the three primary states of mankind – that of the predator, who he equated with the lion. (He equated those who lived subserviently with camels.)
When he gives examples of peoples who are like the “blond beast”, among others he lists the Zulus. I am sure nobody considers them archetypal “Aryan” supermen.
Kaufmann addresses this concept in his translations of Nietzsche.
Nieztche doesn’t equate the lion with predatory people and the camel with those who live subserviently. The camel is a necessary step for reaching “overman status”. The camel means being able to drink brackish water when such is the water of truth. In other words. people who aren’t able to check what they believe in because they fear discovering it was wrong and ruining their intellectual comfort are unable to become overmen. The lion fights for bringing down the old truth, the one who had been proven wrong by the camel. If you disprove something who is widely believed in but you keep quiet about it because you fear being mocked and ostracized then you aren’t overman material. And the child is the creative step, establishing a new theory requires creativity, toying with new ideas, forgetting. Just like a child
In which book does Nietzsche list the Zulu as blond beasts?
Another important background element in understanding Nietzsche:
Nietzsche was not an atheist because he despised G-d.
He was an atheist because he despised what men had done to G-d.
People love to run around quoting his famous epigram:
“G-d is dead.”
Those same people are invariably completely ignorant of the rest of that epigram:
“And we have killed him.”
Nietzsche was talking about the destruction of the meaning of religious codes of morality by rote practice, focused more on wistful expectations of the afterlife, rather than a sincere understanding and embrace of the values. For all his anti-Christianity at one point he notes that the Gospels report that Jesus was telling people to stop following the letter of the law and instead follow the spirit of the law.
Beyond that, Nietzsche recognized that with the destruction of religious morality, men were left adrift with nothing to guide them. The most common result of that, and the one he railed against as much as he did against religion, was the embrace of Nihilism – with nothing to believe in people would believe in nothing. That is why he insisted people needed to create a new morality – not because moral behavior was useless, but because people had abandoned any sense of morality at all. And waiting behind nihilism was Marxism, combining both the worst aspects of religious slave mentality or resenting anyone who had anything better than you, with the worst aspects of nihilistic absence of a promise of anything, topping both off with rigid control of every aspect of life.
Chomsky, Zinn, Dawkins, and Maher are more like the “Last Men” that Nietzsche warned about – the ones with enough will to dominate, but without the will to create a truly new morality.
Closer to what Nietzsche described are Aleister Crowley and Ayn Rand, who managed new moralities, but selfish ones. They were simply raising the “blond beast” to a new level.
The closest equivalent to Nietzsche actually preceeded him. Adam Smith and his “Theory of Moral Sentiment”, which is an essential companion to “The Wealth of Nations”, explaining how the balance between raw greed and social conscience produces the best results, and the greatest wealth.
Thanks, Sam, for trying to communicate some difficult, but accurate, ideas that FN tried his entire life to express. I agree, FN would have considered Zinn et al as the Last Men, just as I do.
I find Kierkegaard to be a fine companion read to Nietzsche, a close but unique take on the same problems.
BTW, Nietzsche regarded Heine, a Jew, to be the finest poet in the German language. That sure set off the Jew-haters in his time.
A better source to identify the cultural source of antisemitism in Germany that led to Hitler is Barzun’s “Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of Heritage.” In it, Barzun dumps a huge part of the rise of Jew hatred on Wagner, and the influence of his cult in the 19th Century. Nietzsche said exactly the same thing about Wagner 100 years earlier, for those with ears to hear it.
So A. Crowley was the true version of what Nietzche meant? Great, that makes me feel a whole lot better knowing it wasn’t Hitler but Crowley that fit the bill.
As for Nietzche being some really cool guy who was just misunderstood, I think the jury will be out on that one for some time. Professional philosophers I know who defend him are hardly people I respect for their good judgment, and the problem I have with this article is that it is a whole lot of assertions without evidence. Cite quotes and actual events, not just generalized opinions about the man.
Furthermore, I think there’s an overall problem in the field of philosophy in the way it 1) is so drawn to thinkers who are pretty antisocial, and 2) actually think it’s fine and dandy to rip the parts they like out of XYZ thinker’s writing and run with it. I lost all respect when my phil prof showed us proudly how I think it was Bacon’s introduction that sounded rebellious out of context but had the opposite meaning of the rest of his life and thinking had been ripped from the treatise and used to forward a totally different kind of philosophical inquiry. Very weird and intellectually dishonest.
No, Crowley falls short too, as his philosophy was too selfish. The Overman is a moral person, who actually cares about the advancement of his fellow people, and makes an effort towards that advancement because he recognizes how it affects his interests. Crowley is simply, in his limited way, far and away superior to any of the Last Men Marxist spokesmen we have running about for the last century and a half.
As for actual cites, you really need to read several hundred pages of Nietzsche for that. Nietzsche can be easily and massively misquoted to “prove” nearly anything. You need to consider an entire work by him to get beyond surface appearances.
Of course that was what he intended, as he considered adherence to the “surface” of previous (religious) morality to be what had destroyed it, with nobody caring about why this or that thing was moral or immoral, and just following by rote.
Mr. Rubin – I learned something from you I did not know. Thank you.
Thanks for all of your remarks. Let me respond briefly. I did not say or intend that Nietzche was a forerunner of today’s leftists. As was pointed out, he was profoundly anti-socialist. (Comment 2 and 5) The story of the Nazi use of his work is well-documented but lay beyond my article. One aspect is what he wrote; the other is how his sister, who lived to meet Hitler a couple of times, distorted it. (Comment 9) Nietzsche can be described as a profoundly contradictory man: a romantic who was simultaneously a radical who opposed all existing society and a conservative who wanted to preserve what he thought were its best elements. Sam, Idov, Commenter 13, and others make some good remarks. I should add that I do think there are brilliant ideas in Nietzche’s works but as noted they are mixed with hints of his developing madness and a strong element of egomania. Remember the atmosphere at the time was a tremendous spiritual crisis due to Darwin and other scientists and thinkers. It was Doestoevsky who wrote that if G-d does not exist everything is permitted–an idea that horrified him and hinted at the horrible nihilism of the twentieth century to come. We can learn a lot from those debates for our present day dilemmas. PS: For those who enjoyed this I think you will like my next article about how well-intentioned Christian reformers undermined their own religion and how this relates to contemporary trends in the Muslim-majority world. Again, thanks to all who read the article.
It can be alleged, however, that Nietzche, unwillingly planted some of the seeds who led to Nazism. Hitler’s “Is right what is good for the German Volsk, is wrong what harms it” is not far enough” can be traced directly to Nietzche saying “Morality being mere shackles set by the weak for the strong”. Now I don’t know German philosophy enough to tell if Nietszche was the first to come with this idea.
What’s amazing that anyone took his thinking seriously. While, at times, he’s interesting, he’s clearly mad.
I prefer Ray Nietzsche.
Nietzsche was no anti-Semite himself, but it’s unsurprising what Nietzscheism has led to. A generalized hatred of humanity will sooner or later find the Jew in its cross-hairs.
There is not generalized hatred of humanity in Nietzsche. There is a generalized alarm than humanity was being defined lower and lower to where the line between the herd, the animal, and humanity was in danger of being blurred. Nietzsche felt it was his obligation to first raise the lantern, and when no man could be found to point to as a clear direction out of the cave (and I do not mean this in the traditional Platonic allegory, but as a lowering of consciousness)), he took it upon himself to try and create a poetic conception of the type of man worth becoming. I believe he considered his work to be the poetic framework for a new…religion.
As I read N, ordinary humanity is not important enough to warrant hatred, they are inherently comical, and cannot engender such a strong brew of emotions. The Wagner cult may have risen to N’s hatred; he viewed them as dangerous to the true culture of Europe, a culture that still had enough noble in it to hear his satyr’s song. He urged the poets of Europe to dig deeper, beginning with a close investigation of the soul and the self–the over-man begins with himself, with a long and thorough self-reckoning, not by running about with a gun, urging conquest.
A HUGE aspect of this is missed in the article and the comments. And that is the person of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Who is that? His youngest sister, who: (a) was an Aryan ideologist and anti-semite; (b) who when she returned from Paraguay found him mentally incapacitated and so took over his whole body of work; (c) who then “cut, forged, destroyed and elided” his works and (d) converted them into supporting documents for Nazism and 3rd Reich.
This began to be known as far back as the 1950′s. You really need to dig into the role of Elisabeth to figure out what really happened. Once you understand that SOMEBODY ELSE diced and sliced his works while he was mentally ill and helpless your question: “far from being an anti-Semite, Nietzsche was one of the most pro-Jewish German writers of his time. How can this paradox be explained…” is answered. He didn’t do it. His sister did. She deleted stuff, made stuff up — if you don’t know this, then you cannot answer the “paradox”. In fact “The Will To Power” was entirely made up by Elisabeth by piecing together fragments from his notebooks in whatever order she wanted, supplemented by her own anti-semitic pro-aryan texts. This was conclusively proven in the late 60′s.
In that case, let’s just stick her name on all his works and forget about him. Though I will say the same phil prof I mentioned earlier in the thread who defended him likewise and said it was his sister who distorted things did not leave Nietzche himself off the hook for it entirely. I recall specifically a comment he made about how odd it was that Nietzche despised the weak yet ended up the way he did, so surely there must have been something there already worth distorting.
The works that Nietzsche published can be relied upon to reflect his views; those published by his sister, to wit, ‘The Will to Power’, will reflect her views. To discard the former due to the latter is pure folly.
So we should exault the writings of a person who sounds very much like he is in the violent thoes of bi-polar disorder?
He doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense.
the thing about anti-Semitism / anti-Zionism is that they are nebulous notions founded on nonsense – the bigoted statements typical of anti-semitism can just as easily be lifted and re-applied to some other culture
I have forgotten at least as much Nietzsche as I can remember, but I do remember his discussion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian in “The Birth of Tragedy.” Apollo is or symbolizes light, order, reason; Dionysus intoxication, madness, divine or other wise, self-sacrifice, willed or otherwise, and resurrection (Think Jesus, “I am the vine.”) The Greeks, and I would argue, all of humanity embraced and were gripped by both of these constellations of impulses and values.
To risk over-generalization, Hitler unleashed the Dionysian in German society and generated great energy, while the Apollonian was used not to control the atavistic impulses, but rather to create damned good weaponry and relatively efficient methods of extirmination. What Hitler did to permit Germany to rise from the ashes was miraculous. What he/they did after that, or as part of that was diabolical. Could someone have roused Germany without scapegoating (or at least not extirminating) Jews, or extended Germany’s power without the massive war? Beyond my pay grade.
Very interesting. As an aside to this apparently contentious subject, I would point out that though Nazi philosophy had many influences stretching back over a century, Heiddegger appeared to be its backbone.
The author didn’t mention the criticism of Judaism that Nietzsche makes in The Birth of Tragedy. There he argues that the Fall of man in Aryan myth results from a noble striving for higher things whereas in the Old Testament the Fall result…s from feminine passivity.
When Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to man, man gains the knowledge needed to rise above his animal origins. Prometheus’s act is a crime against divine nature but also heroic, and daring. “Humanity achieves the best it is capable of by committing an offense and must in turn accept the consequences of this, namely the whole flood of suffering and tribulations which the offended heavenly powers *must* in turn visit upon the human race as it strives nobly towards higher things.” This contrasts with Genesis, where the Fall is caused by Eve’s curiosity, openness to seduction, and lasciviousness, which Nietzsche sees as feminine attributes.
Hitler would have been a raving anti-Semite even if he’d not read a word of Nietzsche. I think the Nazis decided to wipe out the European Jewry because they recognized that they were going to lose the war, not because they believed they could succeed in establishing the morality of the future that Nietzsche hoped for or that establishing that morality would require the destruction of the European Jews. Since the holocaust of WWII would occur regardless of Nietzsche I think it is unfair to call him the philosophical architect of the holocaust.
Unfortunately, as Walter Kaufmann points out in his biography of Nietzsche’s his actual term “übermensch”, which literally translates as “over-man” had been haphazardly translated as “superman”. Nietzsche’s intent on using the term over-man was to describe a man who had overcome the pettiness, prejudices and more common, more barbaric aspects of his nature to attain a higher, more noble plane of existence. The original meaning became twisted and distorted by those who used Nietzsche’s work to further the cause of anti-Semitism and build a case for an Aryan master race.
There aren’t too many things in this world more useless than philosophers.
All they are is jumped up court jesters, kept around for amusement purposes only.
I wouldn’t trade every philosopher that was ever spawned for one good farmer or one good carpenter.
Especially, philosophers that are also certified loons, like Nietzsche.
Very enlightening. Nietzsche obviously had some issues with his father.
On a side note has anyone ever done a serious study on the 60′s? What I mean is it seems like every 100 years, mid century, roughly the 60′s, a major shift happens in our world. Sometimes its good and sometimes its really bad. Just in America we have seen . . .
1760′s – The American Revolution
1860′s – The Civil War
1960′s – The Sexual Revolution
makes me wonder what is in store for my grandchildren. Hum?
In my opinion, Nietzsche wrote both responsibly and honestly about the Jews. I can’t see how anyone can read Nietzsche thoroughly and honestly come to the conclusion that the Jews should be murdered and removed from Western civilization. It’s always easier for people to find a scapegoat than to actually analyze the conditions under which these diseases grow. The Nazis thought they found it in Nietzsche and racial pseudoscience. The author of this article thinks they found it in Nietzsche as well. The reality is that antisemitism is a resentful disease that has been growing ever since the Roman Era. It strengthened under Christiandom and later found more support in scientific racism. In his writings, Nietzsche clearly disdains the particular Jews (Paul, etc) who gave birth to Christianity, but glorifies the Jews who stood against Christianity. The antisemitism of the last century was already beginning to fester during Nietzsche’s life, which is why he thought it was of vital importance to speak out against it. The fact that antisemites like his sister and the Nazis were still able to find a reason to hate the Jews after reading Nietzsche only exemplifies their hatred for the Jews.
Furthermore, Nietzsche was barely a proto-Fascist and definitely not a proto-Nazi. Fascism, especially in the form of Nazism, is a mob mentality built upon great ignorance. It is simply a modified form of state socialism and we all know how much Nietzsche hated socialism.