Taken from: Political Thinking, by: Glenn Tinder /
2nd Edition
Chapter reference: Inequality and Equality
Atheism according to
Nietzsche: “For certain other thinkers,
the excellence of the best men is purely worldly. It consists in such qualities as political
genius, artistic mastery, and athletic prowess. Excellence does not depend on any sort of
transcendental relationship but is entirely within the person. It might be said to consist, at least for
some thinkers, not in being related to the divine, but in being divine. The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
constitute an extreme and moving statement of this belief. Nietzsche was convinced that one condition
determined the spiritual atmosphere and the duty of serious men in his
time: an awakening to the unreality of
G_d. His melodramatic proclamation of
this condition is by now a familiar phrase in the ears of everyone: “G_d is
dead.” It has thus become incumbent on
man to rise up out of the self-destructive humility imposed on him by
Christianity and to affirm his full worldly being. What does this mean? What is the nature of man’s worldly
being? According to Nietzsche, it is
“the will to power.” Being is power, and
it is in the nature of man ceaselessly to transcend himself and thus to search
for greater and greater power. Hence, if
a man is not to affirm himself, taking up the cosmic room which once, so to
speak, was filled by G_d, he must unapologetically dedicate himself to the
enhancement of his power. This did not
necessarily mean political activity and war, a great artist, Nietzsche thought,
would be more powerful than a Roman emperor.
But it did mean inequality. Nietzsche repeatedly, and with utmost
bitterness, attacked the idea of equality, which he saw as one of the devices
by which the masses, in their pettiness and rancor, crush human greatness. The average man is weak, and the grandeur of
humanity thus depends on those with the daring and the strength to raise
themselves far above the vast herds of common people. Now that “G_d is dead,” human existence
depends for its splendor and significance on the few who, rather than
worshipping transcendent gods, become gods themselves. But this means that the idea of equality,
cultivated for ages by Christians and pressed upon the modern world by
socialist and other reformers, must be thrust aside. Human relations must again, as in ancient
times, be formed by domination and rank. “
Chapter reference: Estrangement & Unity
It would be well for us, in the
twentieth century, if we were able to answer this question, for the individual
seems to be threatened from all sides.
“The organization man,” “the lonely crowd,” “the revolt of the masses,”
and like phrases are well-known signals of alarm in which writers have
expressed the pervasive sense that the individual is being engulfed and
lost. But how can we save him if we
really do not know what we mean when we speak of “the dignity of the
individual?” The question is posed
perhaps more dramatically than anywhere else in the writings of Fyodor
Dostoevsky (1821-1881). For Dostoevsky
the issue lay between two radically antagonistic ideas, that of the “man-god”
and that of the “G_d-man.” The former is
the idea of one who has repudiated G_d and has embarked on the enterprise of
elevating man to the status of G_d.
Dostoevsky believed such an enterprise to be a logical and inevitable
outgrowth of atheism. Its results,
however, he saw as being far from the global compassion that is invoked by
humanitarian atheist and agnostics in the twentieth century. He thought that the denial of G_d was in
effect also a denial of the dignity of individuals and of the authority of all
moral laws. Thus the man-god would
become a criminal, a nihilistic revolutionary, or a tyrant.
Not only did Dostoevsky reject the
atheism and agnosticism that are so common at present; he rejected the
widespread sentiment – shared even by believers – that whether one is an
atheist or an agnostic is purely a private matter. On the contrary, these attitudes imperil even
the minimal decencies in society at large.
Dostoevsky would say that the G_d-denying but humanitarian people who
are so numerous today simply have not yet realized the real meaning of their
own faithlessness. The G_d-man, in
Dostoevsky’s mind, was an entirely different matter. The Messiah is the original G_d-man. The idea of the G_d-man is that of mankind
exalted to divine status through the mercy of G_d, rather than through the
assertiveness of men. The decline of
Christianity, which has become more pronounced in the twentieth century that is
was in Dostoevsky’s time, but which Dostoevsky prophetically foresaw, was in
his eyes an all engulfing catastrophe.
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With the rise of Lawlessness, we
are a witness to a society whose god has indeed become that which Nietzsche
ascribed. It is measured in terms of political
genius, artistic mastery, and athletic prowess.
Consider these three items very carefully, for they are the one who
should rule, the cream which should rise to the top, for according to
Nietzsche, excellence is in the person and power is the fuel by which humanity
is to be driven. Here, men are not
equal, for human existence depends for its splendor and significance on the
few, such as the political genius, artistic mastery (musicians, authors,
actors, etc) and athletic prowess (nuff said).
What do we see being elevated in
Ponder this, in Messiah Yeshua
The Messianic Resistance
Ya’akov