From: Richard Ridge (richard_ridge@tao-group.com)
Date: Fri Feb 08 2002 - 06:14:07 MST
> Although millions of others, such as Romani, Sinti (sic),
> homosexuals,
> the disabled and political opponents of the Nazi regime were also
> victims of
> persecution and murder, only the Jews were singled out for total
> extermination"
How exactly do they imagine it would be possible to single out homosexuals
for total extermination? It's not exactly the most feasible of prospects, is
it? Not to mention the fact that attempts to construct a hierarchy of
suffering (with all of the accompanying sanctification that suffering
purportedly dispenses - in reality no-one has ever been ennobled by
suffering).
> PS Nietzsche "will to power" refers entirely to the self. To
> self-determination, to self-affirmation, to self-reliancy.
Exactly; Nietzche is concerned with the individual, which is why in 'Thus
Spake Zarathrustra' he is loathe to determine how he envisages the
ubermensch as being; to do so would be to dissolve self determination in
favour of group identification. If you look at 'Human, All Too Human' one of
main themes is the difficulty of achieving social progress without
individuals acting in terms of self discipline and responsibility and
preferring irrational crowd behaviour (of the kind preferred by the Fourth
Reich, which is so often used to tar by association - though I would
respectfully put forward the bilious Thomas Carlyle as a rather more suited
candidate for said tarring). For example:
"The subordination that is valued so highly in military and bureaucratic
states will soon become as unbelievable to us as the secret tactics of the
Jesuits have already become; and when this subordination is no longer
possible, it will no longer be possible to achieve a number of its most
astonishing consequences, and the world will be the poorer. Subordination
must vanish, for its basis is vanishing: belief in absolute authority, in
ultimate truth. Even in military states, physical coercion is not sufficient
to produce subordination; rather it requires an inherited adoration of
princeliness, as of something superhuman. In freer situations, one
subordinates himself only on conditions, as a consequence of a mutual
contract, that is, without any prejudice to self-interest."
> As to the charge that he was a "racist," the last few minutes of his life
> affirm his detestation of anti-semitism
The problem with this is that there tends to be a confusion between
ethnicity and religion; given his views on christianity, one can hardly
expect Nietzche to have been wildly enamoured of judaism (or any other
Abrahamic religion). That said, he does occasionally pay judaism some
compliments that he would certainly never have lavished on christianity.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:42 MDT