Nietzsche's notion of slave morality
Nietzsche describes Christianity as a slave morality but what about Fascism and Nazism they appear to me as being prime examples of slave morality or values rather than Christianity. Hitler, before assuming power was a down and out, la ggard, a feckless drifter unlike Jesus who displayed great virtue, courage, compassion and strength of character. Nietzsche characterizes slave morality as one which emphasized obedience, pity, conformity and following the herd. And he said that it's a morality based on resentment but it seems to me that this is more true of nazism rather than Christianity'. The Nazis were full of resentment against so-called enemies and full of self-pity and emphasised blind obedience and conformity to their Fuhrer. Seems to me a classic example of nietzsche's so-called slave morality. Whereas in Christianity the emphasis on love, forgiveness, compassion, hope and kindness seems to me sources of strength, rather than weakness, which are completely absent from nazism.
Comments (42)
Yes. But that's exactly what the Stalinists did with Stalin long before Hitler and Maoists with Mao Zedong after him. And you can see the same attitudes in religious movements like militant Islam.
What should not be overlooked is that Nazism went hand in hand with Christianity.
This is very much a minority view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_aspects_of_Nazism#cite_note-SG-19
The consensus is noted to be that Christianity and Nazism are not related. The article does note that at some point, likely for political reasons and not theological ones, the Nazi party did support "Positive Christianity," which bears little resemblance to what many would consider Christianity, as it appears its chief aim was to cleanse it of any Jewish context:
"Alfred Rosenberg was influential in the development of Positive Christianity. In The Myth of the Twentieth Century, he wrote that:[20]
Saint Paul was responsible for the destruction of the racial values which existed in Greek and Roman culture;
the dogma of hell which was advanced in the Middle Ages destroyed the free Nordic spirit;
original sin and grace are Oriental ideas which corrupt the purity and strength of Nordic blood;
the Old Testament and the Jewish race are not an exception and one should return to the Nordic peoples' fables and legends;
Jesus was not Jewish, because he had Nordic blood which he had inherited from his Amorite ancestors."
Christianity and Nazism are related by the simple fact that most Nazis were also Christians.
Many Christians were also anti-semitic which was one reason Nazism was attractive.
But none of this has anything to do with Nietzsche's notion of slave morality.
That's not a correlation. The vast number of people in Western civilization were Christians. Most Christians were opposed to Nazism. You have to establish a link between the belief system of Nazism and Christianity to form some correlation. It'd be like saying having 10 fingers is associated with Nazism.
Quoting Fooloso4
Nazism wasn't a religious movement It was a minority position among Western nations, and it was defeated by Christians. In fact, it was defeated by a large percent of people of Germanic descent. To the extent you define "anti-Semitic" as anti-Jewish, again, it's obvious that in the West they'd be Christians, considering the overwhelming percent of the population was Christian, with only few percent being Jewish and an even smaller percent being of other religions.
Quoting Fooloso4
Nietzsche was openly critical of Christianity and he would describe that religion as being consistent with a slave morality.
You claimed that Nazism and Christianity go hand in hand, so it appeared you were making the argument that Nazis and the Christians, whose hands were clasped together, were all members of the same slave moral mentality. It would be in that regard that all of this has to do with the slave morality, but, for some reason, you now declare your prior posts irrelevant.
I am not suggesting a correlation. It is not because they were Christian that they were Nazis. What I am saying is that the fact that they were Christian did not prevent them from becoming Nazis. The OP points to the Christian emphasis on love, forgiveness, compassion, hope and kindness, but this did not prevent them from becoming Nazis.
He claims that:
Quoting Ross Campbell
My point is that this seems true of both, especially given the fact that they were both.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, but if I understand him correctly Ross Campbell objects to that description.
Quoting Hanover
Perhaps I did not make my point clear enough. Hand in hand rather than opposed to each other.
With regard to all being members of the same slave moral mentality, from my first post:
Quoting Fooloso4
In other words, Nietzsche was talking about a particular historical movement, that cannot be reduced to obedience, pity, conformity and following the herd, or transferred from one time and place to another. As a genealogy its concern is how that morality developed. A main point of which is how its weakness became its strength.
Again:
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't blame @Hanover to be honest. You do tend to employ oracular pronouncements that you subsequently seem to retract without apparently retracting them - or without knowing what you're actually asserting.
In any case, the OP does seem slanted to me.
Well, Nietzsche hated Nazis along with "Christianity."
See the Genealogy of Morals for details.
This.
The Nazi's made use of Christianity's centuries of anti-semitism including Martin Luther's fulminations against Jews. It's likely Nietzsche would have thought the Nazi's a bunch of tossers and cowardly conformists. His sister certainly cultivated Hitler and tried to skew her brother's ideas to support him.
It is not only likely but something expressly directed against the immediate ancestors of the Nazis:
In the Genealogy of Morals, he says:
V is pointing to N's ideas which clearly stand against organised views like Nazism. The date isn't relevant.
Remember N said Christianity failed because the last true Christian died on the cross. Pretty sure N didn't think Jesus was a real person but a contrived myth which grew out of control. I personally disagree with N on Christian compassion.
Contrasting virtuous Christianity with depraved Nazism is no great intellectual achievement. The Nazi's did not base their ideas on Nietzsche and seemed to be very keen to have the support of Christianity - which they often received. They also had "God is with us" festooned on Nazi/Wehrmacht belt buckles.
"Gott mit uns" was a Prussian military tradition going back to the 1800s. The Nazis simply continued it. I don't think we should read too much into it.
The fundamental difference is that the early Christians had no power. They turned inward because they were powerless to make outward changes. Their inwardness led to their power. Rather than impose rule on the world they learned to impose their will on themselves and rule themselves. Nietzsche saw this as a great advancement for mankind.
This is the same as saying "The Christian faith is a tradition going back to the first year. The rest of the Christians simply continued it. I don't think we should read too much into it."
You are probably unable to see how wrong your statement was, because you can't see yourself doing anything that is wrong. But look at my statement and see the fallacy in it. Then look at your statement and see the fallacy in it. I challenge you to do this -- I bet you are unable to.
You just admitted your historical ignorance when you said that. "God is with us" is a slogan many if not all warring Christians say -- since Christians have started warring. It is NOT exclusively a Prussian military tradition.
For your information, Muslim warriors say something similar if not the same in their language for their God.
Regarding pity, Nietzsche argued it was a form of contempt when expressed in certain registers. The idea has certainly been used in a condescending fashion in different contexts. Nietzsche's contempt for the contempt is not an argument against the idea.
The quality is no longer easily identifiable.
lol I never said "Gott mit uns" was "exclusively" Prussian. I simply said the Nazis continued a Prussian tradition. They didn't specifically introduced it to appeal to Christians as suggested by @Tom Storm.
And that's where you were wrong. They continued a world-wide tradition.
Quoting Apollodorus
Like what else the fuck would they introduce it for? You are out of logic, my dear friend. Let us see you say, "They introduced it to appeal to Satan worshippers and to atheist communist scum."
If you only made sense ONCE!! JUST ONCE, I beg you.
lol I do appreciate your sense of humor. Do carry on.
I do appreciate your sense of delusional misunderstandings to the core. What I wrote was not humorous. You are simply trying to discredit the information by slighting it. You are a disgrace to thoughtful argumentation, because you render your own arguments to the level of the fallacies of a seventh-grader in public school.
How do you live with yourself?
Leave it be. There is no wrestler on the other side.
I am sorry... I don't get this. Please explain in nominative terms, not in parables, similes or metaphors. I really don't get what you are saying.
If you mean not to kick a guy who is down, then I say he shouldn't be getting up. As long as he's on his feet, kicking is fair.
You aren't being challenged upon what you actually said. I like to see some recognition that what I asserted was understood by any who would object.
Then I have really no clue what you are talking about.
Quoting Valentinus
Thanks. I have NO clue what you are talking about. Sorry. You must speak less mysteriously if you wish for my understanding.
You were challenged to explain your point of view as expressed by your comment.
You expressed the thought that you were not understood by way of the reply.
So, is the following discussion an argument about an agreed matter of discussion or two ships passing in the sea, with little to say about each other than they noticed the passing of the other.
"From here on" as in "the following discussion" does not express the meaning of the first two posts I asked you to clarify for me.
You are on your own.
And you are on your own.
I am aware of this argument. My point is that if Nazi's were ostentatiously godless, as is often argued, they would have deliberately chosen something more pagan or secular, perhaps 'Adolf Wants Me For A Sunbeam'.
One reason for Nietzsche's contempt for Christianity is its positing of the meaning of this life in a beyond (a crude form of Platonism), in an idealized afterworld, thereby slandering this world, the only world, in all its richness, strangeness, creativity, beauty, terror, etc. Moreover, that idealized world is designed to rob our normal drives of their innocence and to invert the supposedly "natural" hierarchy among human beings, privileging the weak, the resentful, the numerically superior mediocrities over the ascending, joyful, yes-saying creators.
His criticisms definitely seem to rely on caricatures and straw men. I do however think there's quite a bit that's compelling in his analyses, not only of Christianity, but of the modern, secularized Western world which has rejected Christian metaphysics while clinging to its (in Nietzsche's opinion decadent) values and assumptions.
He did distinguish between Jesus the man and teacher (sharing many of the positive views of Jesus that you highlighted earlier), whom he grudgingly admired even while remaining critical of his ultimate vision, and the organized system of Christianity which came to dominate Europe not only politically, but mentally and spiritually. He seems a bit similar to Kierkegaard in that regard although I'm not too familiar with the latter's work so I can't speak with confidence.
I think he interpreted the uniformity of modern science and the egalitarianism of modern democracy to be symptomatic of that lingering Christian influence: The result is a world composed of an indistinct mass of petty human beings consuming mass-created products while boasting of their "progress" and "freedom" and "individuality" etc. He saw the extreme, presumably Christian-inspired leveling coming and tried to formulate the rudiments of a counter-movement. He's a dangerous thinker for sure.
Not sure if that adds anything; it's a pretty standard take. Basically, Christianity does a number on what Nietzsche's takes to be "life" and this is not due to later perversions of a corrupt institutional church - it's right there in the words and deeds of Jesus. (I think this is an interesting debate and I'd like to see it addressed by competent scholars.)
Correct. Steigmann-Gall makes some valid points in The Holy Reich. Obviously, some Nazi leaders, perhaps including Hitler himself, were atheists. But on the whole, Germans were Christians and the Nazis intended to use a sanitized form of “positive Christianity” for their own purposes.
Richard Steigmann-Gall – Wikipedia
Non serviam
Some heavy interpretation in there. Could the so-called "God" of the Bible have been Satan who'd demonsrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was lord, master and ruler of the universe, demanded people do the exact opposite of the decalog injunctions and the people, "revolted" by these commands to commit evil, well...er...revolted en masse, declaring in unison, "Non serviam"? Makes sense doesn't it, considering the call to conduct horrific genocide in "the good book."
It is not clear what Jesus meant by "Kingdom of God is at hand". Some take it to mean a geopolitical change, but others interpreted it as a change in the person. Paul, on the other hand, is quite clear. The world was at any moment going to undergo a fundamental change with only the saved remaining as "spirit bodies" (I think he gets this from Plato's Phaedo). It, of course, did not happen.
Paul taught that we are born in sin and must be saved. The physical body is a slave to sin. Hence the saved will be "spirit bodies". The Earth will be transformed to Heaven on Earth.
The kingdom of God is psychological state according to Nietzsche... a state beyond suffering, completely peaceful... by denying the world. In the symbology he often uses, it's at end of the apollonian spectrum, the dream... hence dionysus VS the crucified. The Antichrist is where he gets into this I think.
Christian culture had truth as on of it's core values...
Anyway the thing I think you need to understand about his philosophy is that he evaluated things on the axis of life-affirmation - life-denial.... that was his method. It's right there from the start, in his first book, the Apollonian VS the Dionysian. Science too is Apollonian because it tempts to measure the world and make it predictable... ultimately to reduce suffering. It's essentially the same optimism of Socrates whereby one hopes to make the world better by learning/wisdom/conceptualising the world. What keeps one going is the hope for a better world, an ideal or dreamed-up world.
The Dionysian by contrast doesn't hope for a better world, but seeks to affirm this world by valuing it in aesthetic terms, the tragic.
Maybe, I would like to see his ideas being really tested empirically... but do keep in mind he didn't see himself as the arbiter of truth, but rather as a 'tempter', he tried something, later to be picked up by future philosophers.... And ultimately what matters to him most was not necessarily that it was true, though I do think he was aiming for that too, but whether it was life-affirming.
Quoting Ross Campbell
First he writes good, and I mean really good, to the point that he spoils the taste. And yes his provocative style appeals to a certain demographic, which is maybe a bit unfortunate... because I think, 'technically' he is a really good philosopher too. Because of his style this maybe goes a bit unnoticed.
Most importantly, I think it's because he talks about something that really concerns people... namely how to live your life. People no doubt will disagree, but that's what I think philosophy is about, since the beginning, since Socrates, i.e. "what is the good life".
Quoting Ross Campbell
Yeah true, "a book for all and none"... he didn't intent to speak to everybody, or society at large, but to the individual. But that is essentially the philosophers way isn't it? What do you do when you find yourself as a thinking individual in this maelstrom of seemingly blind societal forces of tradition. Re-evaluation of values...
And maybe this is also the way to redeem his philosophy from this apparent lack of application to the political and the societal. What he was doing was at the same time more humble and more general. Maybe it's simply not feasible, and a bit of a conceit, to make widesweeping and general statements about society and politics that transcend the particular context of an author. In that case, helping posterior individuals think straight, would also be the best way to (indirectly) influence later societies and politics.
Jesus is the very encapsulation, the very essence, of servant/slave morality. IMHO the gospels usher in a moral revolution.
The Nazis used Christianity opportunistically but their inner circle were not Christian.