This was written after reading a bit of Nietzsche for a philosophy class I'm taking. First half is summary, second is a bit of commentary. I do hope you enjoy it and he's actually a really interesting thinker. You can decide whether or not you think I agree with what he says... or even if I fully agree with what I'm saying in the commentary.
In this particular section, Nietzsche attempts to provide a critique for Christianity. He begins by talking about how power is what motivates humans to act and should be the standard for happiness (and therefore, the standard for what is good, also). He then moves to say that pity is the greatest evil and that the Christian religion is the result of the greatest culmination of pity for other people and their failures. Weakness is bad, he argues and there is a vicious cycle between pity, suffering and weakness, which causes humanity to spiral downward. This vicious cycle, which keeps humanity from power and happiness, is one of the greatest problems of mankind. Since “Christianity is called the religion of pity” (1036), and pity completes the cycle, Christianity is responsible for the downward spiral that mankind finds itself in.
He then moves on to talk about nihilism and how pity is the practice of such. If pity is the practice of nihilism and Christianity is the religion of pity, would it not follow that Christianity is nihilistic in its nature? At the end of this piece, Nietzsche talks about condemning Christianity and the church. The church has corrupted everything, he claims, and that the only way to remedy this is to completely annihilate the church and all organised forms of religion. It’s worth paying attention to the language Nietzsche uses. He calls the church a parasite and claims that parasitism is the only thing that the church knows and he is very, very intent on assuring that everyone knows the evils of religion.
To get a better feel for what Nietzsche was actually saying, one must look at the overarching ideas of what he wrote, not at the specifics and nor at him saying “God is dead”. I took a bit of time to re-read through the rest of the section and I actually found myself enjoying– and agreeing with– a lot of what he had to say. One of his main overarching themes is talking about how most people don’t think for themselves. They blindly follow along with whatever the outside forces say to do, like lemmings all falling into the water and drowning because their leader chose to do so. In Nietzsche’s case, the outside force is religion, specifically Christianity, but really, he seems to hold disdain for all sorts of organised religion, but the culprit does not have to be religion. One can apply part of Nietzsche’s ideas into the context of modern society and find that this is very prevalent, particularly in middle school and high school. Teenagers blindly do whatever the popular kids do just so they won’t get ridiculed, without even a thought to the potential consequences. Although I think that Nietzsche took his ideas a bit further than is necessary, he does have some good points. What is really sad is that his assertion of the role of the church in corrupting people is not far from the truth. At a lot of the churches that I have tried out, people go to service, listen to the band sing (occasionally they will sing along) and hear what the preacher has to say. I must admit that few things disgust me more than people following along blindly.
In response to Nietzche’s most famous statement of “God is dead and we have killed him” (1022), it is interesting to note that he is attempting to take God out of morality. Take the command of “thou shall not murder”, for example. Ann, a Christian, can follow this commandment because God told her not to murder and she’s afraid of going to Hell, while Bob, who is an atheist, can follow it because he simply wants to and Carl, who follows it because the government tells him that murder is bad. Ultimately, the outcome (none of these three will commit murder) is the same, regardless of their motivations. If other influences (whether internal or external) can produce the same outcome (there will be no murder), then is God really necessary for morality? Nietzsche’s answer is an obvious no and really, I can’t argue with that, especially since it’s nearly impossible to tell what another person’s motivations are for their actions and I’ve seen situations where one cannot tell the difference between Christian and Atheist. Strictly speaking, this is a question of ethics, not of metaphysics or epistemology. What we think doesn’t matter; it’s our actions that make a difference.
In this particular section, Nietzsche attempts to provide a critique for Christianity. He begins by talking about how power is what motivates humans to act and should be the standard for happiness (and therefore, the standard for what is good, also). He then moves to say that pity is the greatest evil and that the Christian religion is the result of the greatest culmination of pity for other people and their failures. Weakness is bad, he argues and there is a vicious cycle between pity, suffering and weakness, which causes humanity to spiral downward. This vicious cycle, which keeps humanity from power and happiness, is one of the greatest problems of mankind. Since “Christianity is called the religion of pity” (1036), and pity completes the cycle, Christianity is responsible for the downward spiral that mankind finds itself in.
He then moves on to talk about nihilism and how pity is the practice of such. If pity is the practice of nihilism and Christianity is the religion of pity, would it not follow that Christianity is nihilistic in its nature? At the end of this piece, Nietzsche talks about condemning Christianity and the church. The church has corrupted everything, he claims, and that the only way to remedy this is to completely annihilate the church and all organised forms of religion. It’s worth paying attention to the language Nietzsche uses. He calls the church a parasite and claims that parasitism is the only thing that the church knows and he is very, very intent on assuring that everyone knows the evils of religion.
To get a better feel for what Nietzsche was actually saying, one must look at the overarching ideas of what he wrote, not at the specifics and nor at him saying “God is dead”. I took a bit of time to re-read through the rest of the section and I actually found myself enjoying– and agreeing with– a lot of what he had to say. One of his main overarching themes is talking about how most people don’t think for themselves. They blindly follow along with whatever the outside forces say to do, like lemmings all falling into the water and drowning because their leader chose to do so. In Nietzsche’s case, the outside force is religion, specifically Christianity, but really, he seems to hold disdain for all sorts of organised religion, but the culprit does not have to be religion. One can apply part of Nietzsche’s ideas into the context of modern society and find that this is very prevalent, particularly in middle school and high school. Teenagers blindly do whatever the popular kids do just so they won’t get ridiculed, without even a thought to the potential consequences. Although I think that Nietzsche took his ideas a bit further than is necessary, he does have some good points. What is really sad is that his assertion of the role of the church in corrupting people is not far from the truth. At a lot of the churches that I have tried out, people go to service, listen to the band sing (occasionally they will sing along) and hear what the preacher has to say. I must admit that few things disgust me more than people following along blindly.
In response to Nietzche’s most famous statement of “God is dead and we have killed him” (1022), it is interesting to note that he is attempting to take God out of morality. Take the command of “thou shall not murder”, for example. Ann, a Christian, can follow this commandment because God told her not to murder and she’s afraid of going to Hell, while Bob, who is an atheist, can follow it because he simply wants to and Carl, who follows it because the government tells him that murder is bad. Ultimately, the outcome (none of these three will commit murder) is the same, regardless of their motivations. If other influences (whether internal or external) can produce the same outcome (there will be no murder), then is God really necessary for morality? Nietzsche’s answer is an obvious no and really, I can’t argue with that, especially since it’s nearly impossible to tell what another person’s motivations are for their actions and I’ve seen situations where one cannot tell the difference between Christian and Atheist. Strictly speaking, this is a question of ethics, not of metaphysics or epistemology. What we think doesn’t matter; it’s our actions that make a difference.
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