Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 13:17:14 +0100
From: Rene de Bakker <rene.de.bakker-AT-uba.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: the antichrist


At 18:36 12-3-03 -0800, Kenneth wrote:
>
>After completing "Twilight of the Idols", Nietzsche abandoned his previous
>plans for writing a work to be called "The Will to Power". Instead he
>decided to write a four part "Revaluation of All Values:  not a collection
>of notes or aphorisms but four essays; and he succeeded in completing the
>preface and the first essay: "Der Antichrist".
>
>The title is ambigous. It first calls to mind the apocalyptic Antichrist
>and this more sensational meaning is in keeping with the author's intention
>to be as provocative as possible. But the title could also mean "The
>Anti-Christian," and this interpretation is much more in keeping with the
>contents of the book, and in sections 38 and 47 the word is used in a
>context in which this is the only possible maening.
>
>It is also likely that a parallel to "anti-Semite" is intended. Nietzsche's
>attitude toward anti-Semitism in this work is, at first glance, puzzling;
>it has even been suggested that his anti-Christianity might have been
>motivated by anti-Semitism. But he is as opposed to anti-Semitism as ever.
>This is plain in all the other works of 1888, including the two books he
>composed after "The Antichrist:  "Ecce Homo" and "Nietzsche contra Wagner".
>
>et cetera
>
>reed it, or inherit the wind

Kenneth,

What i read last night:

(after: 'concept-albinos', my neighbour banged the wall:
i was laughing too hard)

#17
Wherever the will to power declines in any form, there is invariably also a
physiological retrogression, décadence. The deity of décadence, gelded in
his most virile virtues and instincts, becomes of necessity the god of the
physiologically retrograde, of the weak. Of course, they do not call
themselves the weak; they call themselves "the good" ... No further hint is
required to indicate the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction
of a good and an evil god first became possible. The same instinct that
prompts the subjugated to reduce their god to the "good-in-itself" also
prompts them to eliminate all the good qualities from the god of their
conquerors; they take revenge on their masters by turning their god into
the devil.— The good god and the devil: both abortions of décadence.— How
can anyone today still submit to the simplicity of Christian theologians to
the point of insisting with them that the development of the conception of
God from the "God of Israel," the god of a people, to the Christian God,
the quintessence of everything good, represents progress? Yet even Renan
does this. As if Renan had the right to be simple-minded! After all, the
opposite stares you in the face. When the presuppositions of ascending
life—when all things strong, brave, masterful, and proud—are eliminated
from the conception of God; when he degenerates step by step into a mere
symbol, a staff for the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he
becomes the god of the poor, the sinners, and the sick par excellence, and
the attribute "Savior" or "Redeemer" remains in the end as the one
essential attribute of divinity—just what does such a transformation
signify? what, such a reduction of the divine?— To be sure, "the kingdom of
God" has thus been enlarged. Formerly he had only his people, his "chosen"
people. Then he, like his people, became a wanderer and went into foreign
lands; and ever since, he has not settled down anywhere—until he finally
came to feel at home anywhere, this great cosmopolitan—until "the great
numbers" and half the earth were on his side. Nevertheless, the god of "the
great numbers," the democrat among the gods, did not become a proud pagan
god: he remained a Jew, he remained a god of nooks, the god of all the dark
corners and places, of all the unhealthy quarters the world over! ... His
world-wide kingdom is, as ever, an underworld kingdom, a hospital, a
souterrain kingdom, a ghetto kingdom ... And he himself: so pale, so weak,
so décadent ... Even the palest of the pale were able to master him—our
honorable metaphysicians, those concept-albinos. They spun their webs
around him until, hypnotized by their motions, he himself became a spider,
another metaphysician. Now he in turn spun the world out of himself—sub
specie Spinozae. Now he transfigured himself into something ever thinner
and paler; he became an "ideal," he became "pure spirit," the "Absolute,"
the "thing-in-itself." The deterioration of a god: God became the
"thing-in-itself" ...

it's serious stuff though, and actual in all its details.

"Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously."
(preface) 

"post-post-nietzschean" is maybe clearer to long post-ears

greetings from the old motherland and Ariadne. 

Rene








-----------------------------------
drs. Rene de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering 
tel. 020-5252368              


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