If you need to explain, never ever shorted the phrase. Just keep saying “bourgeois nihilism”.

The bourgeois nihilism of today is distinct from the bourgeois nihilism of Nietzsche’s era…

  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    5 months ago

    This is just the same (lazy) warmed-over guilt by association from the Nazis’ vulgar interpretations of his works

    Not really that vulgar when you look at what Nietszche thought about Jews:

    There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of “aristocrats of the spirit,” reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something. As is well known, it is a favorite term among ambitious Jews. For spirit alone does not make noble. Rather, there must be something to ennoble the spirit. What then is required? Blood.

    What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable. One would as little choose early Christians for companions as Polish Jews: not that one need seek out an objection to them — neither has a pleasant smell.

    Do I still have to add that in the entire New Testament there is only one solitary figure one is obliged to respect? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take a Jewish affair seriously — he cannot persuade himself to do that. One Jew more or less — what does it matter ?

    • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      This is such a bizarre, absurd argument. What do those sentences, taken out of context and misrepresented, demonstrate about Nietzsche’s view of Jews?

      The New Testament isn’t exactly considered the Jewish part of the Bible. Just on the face of it, the quotes seem to be more anti-christian than anti-jewish.

      Also idk about the implication that stanning Pilate is antisemitic. He does have an absolute banger of a line.

      This take on Nietzsche is particularly ironic considering that actual German nationalism was being born at the time, and Nietzsche opposed it. He broke with Wagner over all the batshit antisemitic stuff (again, Nietzsche was anti-christian, not antisemitic…).

      Nietzsche famously loathed Christianity, and the slavish mentality he perceived to be at the core of the faith.