Ernie: Excellent observation.
Nietzsche served in the military during the Franco-Prussian war. In fact, one theory -which is altogether plausible- is that at that time, as part of a "boys night out on the town" he contacted syphilis. Which some people, including Kaufmann, have looked at from the vantage of references in his writings from later years. Various things N said make really good sense if this hypothesis is correct. But so far there is nothing that rules out a few other theories. Anyway, yes, indeed, N regarded the Prussian achievement as a Great Good. But so did maybe 85% of all other Germans. I think he admired Bismarck -greatly- but there is the complicating fact that Bismarck worked for the Hohenzollern Reich and N may well have known of the weaknesses of the German royals. This may mean zilch to Americans but, as I know from my grandpa, who loathed the Hohenzollerns, this meant a lot to the Germans of that era. As if, say, George Washington's extended family consisted of an assortment of ne-er do wells, fanatics, people with dubious morals, and the like. As close as we ever got was Dolly Madison's son, whom James raised as if he was his own, The son turned out to be grossly irresponsible, a real jerk who was forever getting in trouble with the law and racking up huge debts that James paid off. The H family who employed Bismarck had something like that reputation. But I am anything but a scholar of German history of the 19th c so I will leave it at that. ------------------- Your comment, below, is spot on. Arguably the real test of a philosophy (or religion) is how it deals with crushing defeat. Which values do you abandon, and which do you double down on? In fact, this is a theme that I would like to look into, some time in the future. There is one view which I subscribe to -with some qualification- which says that defeated religions are susceptible to apocalypticism. It is widely thought that the Persians, who had fallen to Alexander, created various texts that were antecedent to Revelation in the NT but no-one can be sure with extant (known) Persian documents even if there are partial texts that can be interpreted this way. Where the Christians of the time of John of Patmos defeated? It depends on when it was written. But there was a period in the early second century, which seems to be when Revelation was written, when persecutions we bad enough that it may well have seemed that the Roman state was going to crush the still new and "weak" Church, hence the Apocalypse. It also seems that John of Patmos lived, before his time on Patmos anyway, in a part of Anatolia where there was a large minority of Persians who settled there in the sunny days of the Persian empire. They could well have had, current among themselves, still existing Zoroastrian versions of something akin to Revelation and that's where John got the idea. But this is unprovable also even if the theory makes good sense. The key documents simply have never been located. Maybe they will turn up some day, but, so far, they have not. Hardly a surprise, of course, there are references to hundreds of now lost documents from antiquity, in various texts , so we know they once existed. The Bible includes its own references to lost books, like Iddo the Seer, I think there are about 30 lost texts, but this is getting us far from your question. Billy ________________________________ From: Dr. Ernie Prabhakar <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2018 7:48 PM To: Centroids Discussions Cc: Billy Rojas Subject: Re: [RC] The fall of German Enlightenment? Explanation Hi Billy, > On Sep 14, 2018, at 11:40 AM, Billy Rojas <[email protected]> > wrote: > > But the whole question is complicated by the fact that German culture from > Bismarck's time onward was authoritarian, or largely authoritarian. > Bismarck's\ > reforms were major and deserve recognition but what he did was > essentially pay off the working class with money and job security > in exchange for loyalty to the Reich. This loyalty was regarded as essential > since, until Bismarck, "Germany" did not exist, it was a collection of duchies > and margravates and small and medium sized 'states,' plus Prussia, > which was a true nation with a strong military. Anyway, Bismarck > engineered German unification and was a political "god" for a while > due to his achievment. But isn’t precisely the sort of godhood Nietzsche celebrated? While Nietzsche himself would probably be appalled at the Nazis, it is hard not to see deification of authorization leadership (in contrast to “soft” religion) as laying the groundwork that the Nazi’s twisted to their own ends. Arguably the real test of a philosophy (or religion) is how it deals with crushing defeat. Which values do you abandon, and which do you double down on? — Ernie P. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
