How Nietzsche was not anti-semitic

[kvon]

Nietzsche was fiercely anti-christian which he considered very closely related to Judaism and was infact a jewish invention as he calls it in gayscience. etc. no body can claim that nietzsche was not anti-jewish or pro "priestly caste." he was perhaps one of the greatest anti-semite.

[the_dwarf]

interestingly he was not nearly as critical towards Jesus as he was the christians. I didn't read the part in Gay Science where he said christianity was an invention of the Jews; in The Antichrist he puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of Peter.

as for the Jews themselves, he didn't say terribly much, but he did revere a product of their religion: the Old Testament. other times he compared it disfavorably against such works as the Laws of Manu, but he had an appreciation for it nevertheless.

a reading of Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist should clarify these details.

[Christian]

Nietzsche was for the most part anti-Semitic, but he believed Christians to be worse.

[the_dwarf]

is it just me, or is it bizarre how the nazis took what nietzsche said to be anti-semitic to suit their purpose (irregardless of whether it was anti-semitic or not) yet completely disregarded his overwhelming fervor against christianity? nazis were christians.

wait a minute... I forgot. they were christians.

[War God]

interestingly he was not nearly as critical towards Jesus as he was the christians. I didn't read the part in Gay Science where he said christianity was an invention of the Jews; in The Antichrist he puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of Peter.

Not Peter; Paul.

as for the Jews themselves, he didn't say terribly much, but he did revere a product of their religion: the Old Testament. other times he compared it disfavorably against such works as the Laws of Manu, but he had an appreciation for it nevertheless.

I think he only did that with the New Testament (for which he did not have an appreciation---except for the Gospel According to John, in the beginning of his career).

Nietzsche's stance toward the Jews is not as simple as any of you present it, as none of you seems to have defined the ground of both his anti-Semitism and anti-anti-Semitism. This ground is his antipathy towards ressentiment.

Guard against injuring the anchorite! If ye have done so, however, well then, kill him also!
[Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 'The Bite of the Adder'.]

[Christian]

Nietzsche's stance toward the Jews is not as simple as any of you present it, as none of you seems to have defined the ground of both his anti-Semitism and anti-anti-Semitism. This ground is his antipathy towards ressentiment.

Thanks for the tip.

[amorfati]

Since I don't know about the english version of the antichrist I can't say much about the way it might also be influenced by his sister, but there are two distinctly different versions in german, one of which has clear anti-jewish statements in it. As I learned from reading the will to power, there are some works that have to be carefully read (the will to power as you probably all know in particular). However I find it not too hard to tell what actually was work of Nietzsche, and what was added to please the fascists. When you know Nietzsches works it becomes quiet clear.
As War God mentioned, Nietzsche dismisses ressentiment. I don't remember the actual quote, but he once said that he can't blame a christian for twothousand years of misapprehension.

I'd like to add, that the christian churchs' roles in Nazi-Germany really have to be cleared. They, especially here in germany, like to present themselves as adversaries of the fascists and are given any opportunity to do so by the german media. Even though the catholic church as well as the roofing bond of evangelicals (created by Hitler, but still very influential in the communitys and populated by big names of the church) supported their deeds. It really makes my blood boil and people here are too stubbornly unknowing about these things. But try mentioning Nietzsche in presence of germans...

[Onasander]

I think that Catholic church and the Costra Nostrum, and every other european offshoot that came to america and returned with a vengence untouched by the european disease gave the church a tad bit of redemption..... my catholism never killed a jew, our jews were never rounded up..... I take no shame. I am of German descent, but not that kind of german- my ancestors came here long ago.

The who Nietzsche pro-anti semite thing though just needs dropped. I see no point to keeping the debate going, what little that can be gained is overcasted with proximity to pain and misunderstanding.

(Some Anchorites fight back, especially in the Catholic tradition. Watch your back, not all of us hum and tweedle our thumbs.)

[the_dwarf]

whoops, I always get those two mixed up. it was Paul, he does blame him in AC but the passage I was thinking about was in The Dawn, #68.

All the world still believes in the authorship of the "Holy Spirit" or is at least still affected by this belief: when one opens the Bible one does so for "edification."... That it also tells the story of one of the most ambitious and obtrusive of souls, of a head as superstitious as it was crafty, the story of the apostle Paul--who knows this , except a few scholars? Without this strange story, however, without the confusions and storms of such a head, such a soul, there would be no Christianity; we should scarcely have heard of a small Jewish sect whose master died on the cross. Of course, if this story had been understood in time; if Paul's writings had been read not as revelations of the "Holy Spirit" but with an honest and free spirit of one's own, and without at the same time thinking of all our personal troubles, if they had really been read- and for a millenium and a half there were no such readers- then Christianity would have been done for long ago: so much do these pages of the Jewish Pascal expose the origin of Christianity, just as the pages of the french Pascal expose its destiny and that of which it will perish.

That the ship of Christianity threw overboard a good deal of its Jewish ballast, that it went, and was able to go, among the pagans--that was due to this one man, a very tortured, very pitiful, very unpleasant man, unpleasant even to himself. He suffered from a fixed idea--or more precisely, from a fixed, ever-present, never-resting question: what about the Jewish law? and particularly the fulfillment of this law? In his youth he had himself wanted to satisfy it, with a ravenous hunger for this highest distinction which the Jews could conceive - this people who were propelled higher than any other people by the imagination of the ethically sublime, and who alone succeeded in creating a holy god together with the idea of sin as a transgression against this holiness. Paul became the fanatical defender of this god and his law and guardian of his honor; at the same time, in the struggle against the transgressors and doubters, lying in wait for them, he became increasingly harsh and evilly disposed towards them, and inclined towards the most extreme punishments. And now he found that--hot-headed, sensual, melancholy, malignant in his hatred as he was-- he was himself unable to fulfill the law; indeed, and this seemed strangest to him, his extravagant lust to domineer provoked him continually to transgress the law, and he had to yield to this thorn.

Is it really his "carnal nature" that makes him transgress again and again? And not rather, as he himself suspected later, behind it the law itself, which must constantly prove itself unfulfillable and which lures him to transgression with irresistable charm? But at that time he did not yet have this way out. He had much on his conscience - he hints at hostility, murder, magic, idolatry, lewdness, drunkenness, and pleasure in dissolute carousing - and... moments came when he said to himself:"It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome." Luther may have had similar feelings when, in his monastery, he wanted to become the perfect man of the spiritual ideal: and just as Luther one day began to hate the spiritual ideal and the Pope and the saints and the whole clerisy with true, deadly hatred- all the more the less he could owe it to himself- so it was with Paul. The law was the cross to which he felt himself nailed: how he hated it! how he searched for some means to annihilate it--not to fulfill it any more himself!

And finally the saving thought struck him, together with a vision- it could scarcely have happened otherwise to this epileptic. Paul heard the words: "Why dost thou persecute me?" The essential occurrence, however, was this: his head had suddenly seen a light: "It is unreasonable," he had said to himself, "to persecute this Jesus! Here after all is the way out; here is the perfect revenge; here and nowhere else I have and hold the annihilator of the law!"... Until then the ignominious death had seemed to him the chief argument against the Messianic claim of which the new doctrine spoke: but what if it were necessary to get rid of the law?

The tremendous consequences of this idea, of this solution of the riddle, spin before his eyes; at one stroke he becomes the happiest man; the destiny of the Jews--no, of all men--seems to him to be tied to this idea, to this second of its sudden illumination; he has the thought of thoughts, the key of keys, the light of lights; it is around him that all history must revolve henceforth. For he is from now on the teacher of the annihilation of the law...

This is the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity. Until then there were only a few Jewish sectarians.

during the supposed time of Jesus, we come to find in modern times that there was absolutely no mention of Jesus by any of the scribes, historians or philosophers about this man who, according to the Bible, had followers from far and wide and performed miracles that everybody talked about. although those scribes, historians and philosophers wrote about everything else even less noteworthy. secondhand accounts were written starting around 70 AD, the works that were accepted or rejected as gospel. I'm beginning to think the Jesus story was entirely fictitious, spread as far as it was by Paul and his accolytes before they were decimated, repeated by those who believed his baseless gossip, and finally written down.

Porphyry had an opinion on the veracity of Paul's stories and his regard to Jewish law:

You seem to me very much like inexperienced captains, who, while still afloat on the voyage that lies before them, look on themselves as afloat on another sea. Even thus are you seeking for other passages to be laid down by us, although you have not completed the vital points in the questions which you still have on hand.

If you are really filled with boldness about the questions, and the points of difficulty have become clear to you, tell us how it was that Paul said, "Being free, I made myself the slave of all, in order that I might gain all" (1 Cor. ix. 19), and how, although he called circumcision "concision," he himself circumcised a certain Timothy, as we are taught in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts xvi. 3). Oh, the downright stupidity of it all! It is such a stage as this that the scenes in the theatre portray, as a means of raising laughter. Such indeed is the exhibition which jugglers give. For how could the man be free who is a slave of all? And how can the man gain all who apes all? For if he is without law to those who are without law, as he himself says, and he went with the Jews as a Jew and with others in like manner, truly he was the slave of manifold baseness, and a stranger to freedom and an alien from it; truly he is a servant and minister of other people's wrong doings, and a notable zealot for unseemly things, if he spends his time on each occasion in the baseness of those without law, and appropriates their doings to himself.

These things cannot be the teachings of a sound mind, nor the setting forth of reasoning that is free. But the words imply some one who is somewhat crippled in mind, and weak in his reasoning. For if he lives with those who are without law, and also in his writings accepts the Jews' religion gladly, having a share in each, he is confused with each, mingling with the falls of those who are base, and subscribing himself as their companion. For he who draws such a line through circumcision as to remove those who wish to fulfill it, and then performs circumcision himself, stands as the weightiest of all accusers of himself when he says: "If I build again those things which I loosed, I establish myself as a transgressor." [Macarius, Apocriticus III: 30]

This same Paul, who often when he speaks seems to forget his own words, tells the chief captain that he is not a Jew but a Roman, although he had previously said, "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, and brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the exact teaching of the law of my fathers." But he who said, "I am a Jew," and "I am a Roman," is neither thing, although he attaches himself to both. For he who plays the hypocrite and speaks of what he is not, lays the foundation of his deeds in guile, and by putting round him a mask of deceit, he cheats the clear issue and steals the truth, laying siege in different ways to the soul's understanding, and enslaving by the juggler's art those who are easily influenced. The man who welcomes in his life such a principle as this, differs not at all from an implacable and bitter foe, who enslaving by his hypocrisy the minds of those beyond his own borders, takes them all captive in inhuman fashion. So if Paul is in pretense at one time a Jew, at another a Roman, at one time without law, and at another a Greek, and whenever he wishes is a stranger and an enemy to each thing, by stealing into each, he has made each useless, robbing each of its scope by his flattery.

We conclude then that he is a liar and manifestly brought up in an atmosphere of lying. And it is beside the point for him to say: "I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not" (Rom. ix. 1). For the man who has just now conformed to the law, and to-day to the Gospel, is rightly regarded as knavish and hollow both in private and in public life. [Macarius, Apocriticus III: 31]

That he dissembles the Gospel for the sake of vainglory, and the law for the sake of covetousness, is plain from his words, "Who ever goeth to war at his own charges? Who shepherdeth the flock and doth not eat of the milk of the flock?" (1 Cor. ix. 7). And, in his desire to get hold of these things, he calls in the law as a supporter of his covetousness, saying, "Or doth not the law say these things? For in the law of Moses it is written, Thou shall not muzzle an ox that is treading out the corn " (v. 9). Then he adds a statement which is obscure and full of nonsense, by way of cutting off the divine forethought from the brute beasts, saying, "Doth God take care of the oxen, or doth he say it on our account? On our account it was written" (v. 10). It seems to me that in saying this he is mocking the wisdom of the Creator, as if it contained no forethought for the things that had long ago been brought into being. For if God does not take care of oxen, pray, why is it written, "He hath subjected all things, sheep and oxen and beasts and birds and the fishes" (Ps. viii. 8-9)? If He takes account of fishes, much more of oxen which plough and labor. Wherefore I am amazed at such an impostor, who pays such solemn respect to the law because he is insatiable, for the sake of getting a sufficient contribution from those who are subject to him. [Macarius, Apocriticus III: 32]

Then he suddenly turns like a man who jumps up from sleep scared by a dream, with the cry, "I Paul bear witness that if any man do one thing of the law, he is a debtor to do the whole law" (Gal. v. 3). This is instead of saying simply that it is not right to give heed to those things that are spoken by the law. This fine fellow, sound in mind and understanding, instructed in the accuracy of the law of his fathers, who had so often cleverly recalled Moses to mind, appears to be soaked with wine and drunkenness; for he makes an assertion which removes the ordinance of the law, saying to the Galatians, "Who bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth," that is, the Gospel? (Gal. iii. 1). Then, exaggerating, and making it horrible for a man to obey the law, he says, "As many as are under the law are under a curse" (Gal. iii. 10). The man who writes to the Romans "The law is spiritual" (vii. 14), and again, "The law is holy and the commandment holy and just," places under a curse those who obey that which is holy! Then, completely confusing the nature of the question, he confounds the whole matter and makes it obscure, so that he who listens to him almost grows dizzy, and dashes against the two things as though in the darkness of the night, stumbling over the law, and knocking against the Gospel in confusion, owing to the ignorance of the man who leads him by the hand. [Macarius, Apocriticus III: 33]

For see here, look at this clever fellow's record. After countless utterances which he took from the law in order to get support from it, he made void the judgment of his own words by saying, "For the law entered that the offense might abound;" and before these words, "The goad of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law" (1 Cor. xv. 56). He practically sharpens his own tongue like a sword, and cuts the law to pieces without mercy limb by limb. And this is the man who in many ways inclines to obey the law, and says it is praiseworthy to live according to it. And by taking hold of this ignorant opinion, which he does as though by habit, he has overthrown his own judgments on all other occasions. [Macarius, Apocriticus III: 34]

When he speaks again of the eating of things sacrificed to idols, he simply teaches that these matters are indifferent, telling them not to be inquisitive nor to ask questions, but to eat things even though they be sacrificed to idols, provided only that no one speaks to them in warning. Wherein he is represented as saying, "The things which they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, but I would not that you should have fellowship with demons" (1 Cor. x. 20).

Thus he speaks and writes: and again he writes with indifference about such eating, "We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one" (1 Cor. viii. 4), and a little after this, "Meat will not commend us to God, neither, if we eat, are we the better, neither, if we eat not, are we the worse" (v. 8). Then, after all this prating of quackery, he ruminated, like a man lying in bed, and said, "Eat all that is sold in the shambles, asking no questions for conscience' sake, for the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (1 Cor. x. 25-26). Oh, what a stage farce, got from no one! Oh, the monstrous inconsistency of his utterance! A saying which destroys itself with its own sword! Oh, novel kind of archery, which turns against him who drew the bow, and strikes him! [Macarius, Apocriticus III: 35]

Nietzsche's esteem for the Old Testament was in Beyond Good and Evil, #52.

In the Jewish 'Old Testament,' the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare to it. One stands in awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was, and sad thoughts come to one about ancient Asia and its jutting peninsula, Europe, which wants so definitely to signify, as against Asia, the 'progress of man.' Of course, those who are merely wretched tame domestic animals (like our cultivated people of today, including the Christians of 'cultivated' Christianity) need neither be amazed nor even sorry when faced with these ruins: the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone of 'greatness' and 'smallness.' Perhaps they will even find the New Testament, the book of grace, more to their taste (it is full of the odor of the real, effeminate, stupid canter and petty soul). To have glued the New Testament, a kind of rococo of taste in every respect, to the Old Testament to form one book--the 'Bible,' the book--that is perhaps the greatest audacity and 'sin against the spirit' which literary Europe has on its conscience.

The Anti-Christ, #56 is the comparison to the Laws of Manu that I was thinking about.

— In the last analysis it comes to this: what is the end of lying? The fact that, in Christianity, "holy" ends are not visible is my objection to the means it employs. Only bad ends appear: the poisoning, the calumniation, the denial of life, the despising of the body, the degradation and self-contamination of man by the concept of sin — therefore, its means are also bad. — I have a contrary feeling when I read the Code of Manu, an incomparably more intellectual and superior work, which it would be a sin against the intelligence to so much as name in the same breath with the Bible. It is easy to see why: there is a genuine philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an evil-smelling mess of Jewish rabbinism and superstition, — it gives even the most fastidious psychologist something to sink his teeth into. And, not to forget what is most important, it differs fundamentally from every kind of Bible: by means of it the nobles, the philosophers and the warriors keep the whip-hand over the majority; it is full of noble valuations, it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life — the sun shines upon the whole book. — All the things on which Christianity vents its fathomless vulgarity — for example, procreation, women and marriage — are here handled earnestly, with reverence and with love and confidence. How can any one really put into the hands of children and ladies a book which contains such vile things as this: "to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband; ... it is better to marry than to burn"?29 And is it possible to be a Christian so long as the origin of man is Christianized, which is to say, befouled, by the doctrine of the immaculata conceptio? ... I know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly things are said of women as in the Code of Manu; these old grey-beards and saints have a way of being gallant to women that it would be impossible, perhaps, to surpass. "The mouth of a woman," it says in one place, "the breasts of a maiden, the prayer of a child and the smoke of sacrifice are always pure." In another place: "there is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden." Finally, in still another place — perhaps this is also a holy lie — : "all the orifices of the body above the navel are pure, and all below are impure. Only in the maiden is the whole body pure."

a part of the introduction to The Basic Writings of Nietzsche explains his supposed anti-semitism.

There is another, a historical, reason why Nietzsche has aroused so much rancor across the twentieth century, especially after the outbreak of the First World War: his presumed advocacy of a brutal Teutonic philosophy of life that explained the alleged conduct of the German armies during the war.

After January 30, 1933, this reproach grew even fiercer. On that day, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, and with that, the charge that Nietzsche had inspired much of the Nazis' murderous ideology became widespread and seemed utterly plausible. In Germany itself, after that fateful date, servile commentators, knowing what would please Joseph Goebbels, did their utmost to claim Nietzsche for Hitler's "movement." This was not so easily done; it necessitated explaining away the passages in Nietzsche that could not possibly be reconciled with Hitlerian dogma, but which were present, the authors had to admit, in Nietzsche's works.

One way of dealing with this dilemma was to falsify his texts, or to take some of Nietzsche's comments out of context. Thus, his infrequent anti-Jewish remarks, normally surrounded by declarations of admiration for the Jews, could be stripped of this praise, so that they could misdescribe Nietzsche's philo-Semitism as anti-Semitism. The fact is that it was particularly the German anti-Semites of his own time that Nietzsche most despised. In the United States, a not dissimilar view - Nietzsche the prophet of the Third Reich - though of course less infected with propaganda, carried the day. The one or two more responsible interpreters who knew their Nietzsche better than this were swamped in the hostile consensus.

[War God]

Since I don't know about the english version of the antichrist I can't say much about the way it might also be influenced by his sister, but there are two distinctly different versions in german, one of which has clear anti-jewish statements in it. As I learned from reading the will to power, there are some works that have to be carefully read (the will to power as you probably all know in particular). However I find it not too hard to tell what actually was work of Nietzsche, and what was added to please the fascists. When you know Nietzsches works it becomes quiet clear.
As War God mentioned, Nietzsche dismisses ressentiment. I don't remember the actual quote, but he once said that he can't blame a christian for twothousand years of misapprehension.

I've never heard of two versions of The Antichrist. Anyway, yes, it has clear anti-Jewish statements in it. I never said Nietzsche did not have anti-Jewish (= anti-Semitic) sentiments. But as I've said, these spring from his antipathy towards ressentiment---i.e., from something reasonable.

The Kaufmann edition of The Will to Power contains nothing that is not by Nietzsche (though it does contain a couple of passages which were not written by him, but dictated---"evidently dictated", to quote Kaufmann).