In today’s post Tarquin O’Flaherty adds to our memory of Nietzsche.
I agree with Mr Eames regarding ole Nietzsche (See Friday’s Post). He almost single-handedly reminded the world to believe in itself rather than all that faith based, ‘you’ll get your reward in Heaven’ cobblers.
However, we are all standing on the shoulders of giants and old Friedrich Wilhelm is no exception.
The Christian Church had us by the balls for centuries, taking advantage of our lack of education and native superstition, and using fear(of Hell, excommunication, Divine retribution, etc) to keep us in line.
The minute a broader, more tolerant view began to surface, spurred by the Crusades, economic growth, the invention of printing, plus the discovery that the earth was not the centre of the universe, thinking people began to question the established order
The result of this was the Humanist movement, begun in Italy, where people began to throw off the crude, superstition based machinations of the church and began to believe in their own intrinsic, human worth.
Out of this came alternatives to Pliny the Elder’s belief that hanging jackass testicles from your forehead would cure the pox (or something)
Modern medicine,and indeed all of the disciplines begin with the belief that experiment and research rather than Catholic mumbo-jumbo would provide answers.
So, Humanist thinking, by the time Nietzsche came along, had already changed the world utterly. Despite this, the nouveau riche, the newly created ‘middle class’ of 18th and 19th century Protestant Europe, became just as repressive as the aristocracy it had ousted.. In the countries where the new Protestantism took hold, Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, Germany, the Low Countries etc. lunatic, tub-thumping, bible bashing re-established itself, and infected everyone with its guilt ridden ‘philosophies’. Something needed to be done.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche took it upon himself to remind the new middle class of just how important, powerful and God-like Man himself is.
Hitler took him literally at his word and attempted to build the (Aryan) “Superman’.
Which illustrates precisely why Pope said that; ‘..a little learning is a dang’rous thing…’
This proves, God help us, that this sawn-off and psychopathic corporal only ever read the bits that propped up his already made-up mind. When he read the bits about our being God-like, Adolf assumed Nietzsche, being German, was talking about the Germans. If the Germans were Gods, then all others were the children of a lesser God, and expendable.
A simple mistake… anybody could make it… pity about the hundred million dead people…
Interesting too that Christianity became powerful by either wholly ignoring Christ’s simple ideas, or ‘interpreting’ them.
We’ve moved on since then, abandoned Christ in favour of Nietzsche, whom we’ve ‘interpreted’ to the tune of millions of dead men and women.
I wonder who’s next for ‘interpretation?
Heigh Ho…Tarquin