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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26777 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Those concepts are all largely true about Islam and Judaism too. For hardcore Nietzscheans who consider all Abrahamism slave morality that tracks, but I’d say for those specifically down on Christianity alone, it’s more that the New Testament lacks a certain martial character that is found in both Jewish and Muslim history, in the latter case especially in the life and conquests of Muhammad.

Not a Nietzschean, but his basic description of mass religion tracks just fine. Not just abrahamic, I would argue every large religion is a religion of submission, of slavery. Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism etc. all count. All are functionally about convincing the ruled to keep to their place.

Non-slave religions cannot spread beyond a tiny martial minority, nor survive social progress or the achievement of wealth and comfort. The slaves outnumber the free a thousand to one. Religion must take its adherents where they are.

For hardcore Nietzscheans who consider all Abrahamism slave morality

It's worth remembering that in Nietzsche's discussion of master/slave morality in the Genealogy, he initially introduces slave morality as a structural phenomenon - it's defined by its relationship with other systems of morality, not by its inherent content, which therefore at least in principle opens up the possibility of a type of Christianity that is not founded on slave morality (or indeed, the possibility that those who appear to be masters are actually slaves):

The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self ’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance – this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself – is a feature of ressentiment: in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all, – its action is basically a reaction. The opposite is the case with the noble method of valuation: this acts and grows spontaneously, seeking out its opposite only so that it can say ‘yes’ to itself even more thankfully and exultantly, – its negative concept ‘low’, ‘common’, ‘bad’ is only a pale contrast created after the event compared to its positive basic concept, saturated with life and passion, ‘we the noble, the good, the beautiful and the happy!

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