From: Tristich-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:35:33 EST
Subject: Re: Nietzsche and Jesus


Steve Callihan writes in part:

> The point, I think, is that Nietzsche is far, far from endorsing a morality,
>  or any view at all, simply based upon its power. That a power predominates
>  cannot mean, for him, that it is therefore proven--strength does not make
>  right, in other words. It merely testifies to a certain utility. It seems
to
>  me that Nietzsche is seeking to apply an entirely separate standard, that
he
>  is seeking to adjudge issues of power from a perspective other than
>  power--that of authenticity, unity of style, grand style. In a sense, an
>  aesthetic, an artistic, standard. The type of power matters, in other
words.

Yes, I think you are right. Take the Church, for instance, an institution
whose power was on the wane until the reformation had the ironic effect of
propping it up again.  I often remark that Nietzsche is said never to have
read Brothers Karamozov, even though he said Dostoevsky was the only
psychologist who had anything to teach him. (Can it be that Lou Salomè or
someone never even talked to him about it?)  There, in the story of the Grand
Inquisitor, Jesus returns to find that the Church has stood his teachings on
their head. Why? Because the populace is deemed not ready for the freedom that
his teachings entail.  "In all the world there has been only one Christian,
and he died on the cross," Nietzsche said somewhere, and I sometimes  wonder,
at the risk of charges of blasphemy from two different directions, was there
not another one who went mad in Turin?

Friedrick Haines


	--- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---