From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: Nietzsche Redux (was: Re: Robert's "Book")
Summary: Robert holds Nietzsche while I punch him out
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:23:05 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >It's clear enough.  In my last passage through this neck of
| >the woods, I gave a precis of _The_Genealogy_of_Morals_ very
| >like that above, and asked any Nietzsche fans if he _really_
| >meant what he said.  Because to me, while Nietzsche's analysis
| >of Resentment as a development of the Will-to-Power is right
| >on the mark, his critique of it is silly.  It is clear to me
| >that, if the Will-to-Power as Resentment overthrows the Will-
| >to-Power as something else, it is the stronger and _healthier_
| >(if you will) form of the Will-to-Power.

sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
| No, this shows quite a misunderstanding of Nietzschean thought.
| If there is any word that Nietzsche wouls NEVER apply to
| _ressentiment_, that word is "healthy."

Correct.  _I_ say resentment is healthy, lively, vigorous,
and (by implication) that submission is morbid.

rs:
|                                          He spoke of it as a
| kind of sickness, an infection that was contagious to the
| healthy. Because the resentful are sick, they must be ministered
| to by a priest who himself is sick, and hence the preaching
| of "ascetic ideals."  The resentment-filled ideology of
| Christianity did not conquer becasue it was strong; rather,
| by cunning deceit, these anemic little vampires sucked the
| life and health out of Rome, leaving it emaciated like a
| corpse, at which time even German barbarians could conquer it.
| Really, Nietzsche is QUITE explicit about this, I cannot see
| how you can miss it.

I didn't miss it, I agree this is what Nietzsche seems be
saying -- it is mainly Nietzsche's fans who disagree with
me.  The difference between me and Nietzsche is that I
evaluate the outcome differently.  Nietzsche seems to say,
and you definitely say, that the Christians were somehow
inferior to the Romans ("... cunning deceit....  anemic
little vampires....").  But the fact is, they were superior
to the Romans as far as power goes: _they_won_.  So what
was the goodness of the Romans?  It wasn't power, as we've
seen, so it must have been some kind of lily-livered effete
aesthetic thing -- as I suppose imperialism, slavery and
mass murder usually are.  History has repeatedly shown that
they're no match for liberalism.

The truth is, Rome didn't have any life and health.  It was
a slum, as far as I can determine.  _It_ was the vampire,
sucking the blood out of the Mediterranean world until there
was no blood left, and the Germans and Arabs could come in
and take it apart, while the Christianized slaves stood
aside and let it fall: good riddance!  But I digress....

gf:
| >  I admit I have
| >not read his work closely; after fifty or so pages of _The_
| >_Genealogy_of_Morals_ I gave up, because I thought Nietzsche

rs:
| Ah, HERE is how you missed it.

gf:
| >Yes, but people like Robert Sheaffer and certain others I
| >need not name, but who were far worse, thought they had found
| >a philosophical basis for their theories and actions in
| >Nietzsche; and had Nietzsche lived to see this, it would have
| >been advisable for him to reconsider his ideas.  I know I do

rs:
| Yes, you've read all of fifty pages of Nietzsche, but you're quite
| certain that this guy Sheaffer has it all wrong.

And you've read all my articles assiduously, and missed the
simple fact that I _accepted_ your view of Nietzsche, only
to be corrected by other Nietzsche fans.  Argue with them.

|                                                   What if Nietzsche
| was even *more* Politically Incorrect than you dare think?

Yeah, what if he was?  Heh.

| By the way, my article on Nietzsche's "Der Antichrist" was published
| in _Free Inquiry_ magazine, Winter 1988/89 issue. You might want
| to read it. How many articles on Nietzsche have YOU or
| Humberto published?

What's this, an argument to Authority?  From a supposed
Nietzschean?

In a subsequent article, Robert amicably holds up Nietzsche
so I can punch him in the snout:

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >Nietzsche often seems to spot a critical cultural issue, and
| >then manages to put himself on the dumb side of it.  (One
| >wonders if he does so ironically.)  A famous example, which
| >relates to our subject, appears in his _Genealogy_of_Morals_
| >where he describes how the subjugated peoples of the ancient
| >slave empires evolved an ideology, Christianity, which
| >destroyed the values and morale of their formerly hearty,
| >strong, cheerful oppressors.  According to Nietzsche, this
| >was a Bad Thing: the weak and bad were overthrowing the
| >strong and good.  The problem with his theory is, of course,
| >that the alleged weak and bad, by overthrowing their rulers,
| >showed that they were actually the (relatively) strong and
| >good -- by Nietzsche's own standards.  They won.

rs:
| There has been a lot of misunderstanding of Nietzsche coming out
| of this thread. What he actually said about Christianity's victory
| was NOT that they became stronger, and hence won; rather, they
| won by their cunning "covert revengefulness", they infected the healthy
| citizens of Rome with their sickness, their hatred of life:
|
|    From Nietzsche's "Der Antichrist":
|
|    [58] "One may assert an absolute equivalence between _Christian_ and
|     _anarchist_: their purpose, their instinct is set only on
|    destruction." [The prinicpal activity of the 19th century
|    "anarchist" was to throw bombs; the 20th century anarchist merely
|    posts to Usenet.]

False about the 19th-century anarchists, but we digress....

fn:
|    "Christianity discovered its mission in making an end of just such
|    an organization [Rome] because _life prospered within it_"

Yes!  Life prospered, such that in the fourth century, Gaul
became _depopulated_ by Roman administration, and the Romans
_invited_ the Germans to settle there, beginning the down-
fall of their authority in the west!

fn:
|    [59] "Ruined by cunning, secret, invisible, anaemic vampires! Not
|    conquered - only sucked dry! Covert revengefulness, petty envy
|    become master! Everything pitiful, everything suffering from itself,
|    everything suffering from base feelings, the whole ghetto-world of
|    the soul suddenly on top!"  (Sounds like the day the Politically
|    Correct dream of!)

Yes!  The self-reflective destroys the unreflective!  Because
it is more complex and more powerful -- because it is more
"cunning", that is, intelligent!

God, what an idiot Nietzsche seems!  Can no one rescue him,
if not from me, then from his friend Robert?
-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
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