This time it's Nietzsche

Our next class in the Uncanny Journeys course is based on Frederich Nietzsche's A Genealogy of Morality, so we are reading that -as usual, I am reading it aloud while Ellen is cooking or driving. I have read very little of Nietzsche in the past. I know something about his thought, so what we are reading doesn't come as a complete surprise. But I'm getting a much more detailed and specific sense of his argument. In a nutshell, he feels that the origin of the concepts of "good" and "bad" are in the distinction between the nobility and the common man. They are not originally MORAL concepts, but distinctions of class and power. And that is how it should be, according to Nietzsche. The "good," for him, should describe what characterizes the aristocricy - and for him that means strength, health, physical robustness, power, cheeerfulness, and even cruelty and war! "Bad," describes the lower class, what is inferior, submissive, weak, timid, sickly, etc. He blames the Jews for turning this valuation on its head: the wealthy and powerfful are "bad," and the outcast, lowly, poor are "good." E.g. Is. 61.1- "The spirit of God is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor," etc. Christianity took it even farther. "Blessed are the poor." It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." That is probably an over-simplification, but it's close. This leads Nietzsche to his "superman" concept. It is easy to caricature Nietzsche. E.g., his discussion of the Jews might lead you to think he was an anti-semite; yet there is evidence that he was not. But at this point, I am inclined to reject his argument. I would not want to live in the world he seems to be advocating.

Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900)