Has anyone reconciled Nietzsche and religion?

"A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to survive, to its virtues—it projects its joy in itself, its feeling of power, into a being to whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will give of his riches; a proud people need a god to whom they can make sacrifices.... Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god.—Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries; he must be able to play either friend or foe—he is wondered at for the good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration, against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone, would be contrary to human inclination. Mankind has just as much need for an evil god as for a good god; it doesn’t have to thank mere tolerance and humanitarianism for its own existence.... What would be the value of a god who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, cunning, violence? who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous ardeurs of victory and of destruction? No one would understand such a god: why should any one want him?—True enough, when a nation is on the downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, then it must overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous and demure; he counsels “peace of soul,” hate-no-more, leniency, “love” of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he creeps into every private virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he becomes a private citizen, a cosmopolitan.... Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in the soul of a people; now he is simply the good god.... The truth is that there is no other alternative for gods: either they are the will to power—in which case they are national gods—or incapacity for power—in which case they have to be good...."

"The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion——and since then they have not managed to create any more gods. Two thousand years have come and gone—and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists, and as if by some intrinsic right,—as if he were the ultimatum and maximum of the power to create gods, of the creator spiritus in mankind—this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain imagining, in which all the instincts of décadence, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!—"

i did

Nietzsche himself did it. He included religion as slave morality. This in no way means he thought slave morality ought to be 100% eradicated. You can't have a top without a bottom, after all.

Picrel made Christianity Dionysian before Neech was even born.

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"The philosopher, the way we understand him, we free spirits, as the man of the most all-encompassing responsibility, who has the conscience for the collective development of human beings—this philosopher will help himself to religion for use in his work of cultivation and education, just as he will use contemporary political and economic conditions. The selective and cultivating influence which can be practised with the help of religions is something multifaceted and different, according to the type of human beings who are put under its spell and protection. That’s something the Brahmin, for example, understood: with the help of a religious organization they arrogated to themselves the power to appoint a king for the people, while they held themselves apart and outside, sensing that they were human beings with higher purposes, something beyond kingship. Meanwhile religion also provides instruction for some of the ruled and an opportunity to prepare themselves for ruling and ordering in the future, those slowly ascending classes and groups, that is, those in which, because of fortunate marriage traditions, the force and desire of the will, the will to rule oneself, is always rising:—to these people religion offers sufficient stimuli and temptations to travel the route to a higher spirituality, to test the feelings of great self-conquest, of silence and solitude:—asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means for educating and ennobling people when a race wishes to become master of its origins from the rabble and works its way up towards future ruling power. Finally, for ordinary people, the vast majority, who are there to serve for common needs and are permitted to exist only to that extent, religion gives an invaluable modest satisfaction with their situation and type, all sorts of peace at heart, an ennoblement of obedience, one more source of joy and suffering with people like them, and something of a transfiguration and beautification of and a justification for the whole routine, the whole baseness, the whole half-animal poverty of their souls. Religion and the religious significance of life bring the brilliance of the sun onto such constantly troubled men and make it bearable for them to look at themselves."
Beyond Good and Evil #61

You have not read Nietzsche.

I see why you might think this.

Evola Didn't necessarily reconcile Nietzsche with religion, he more thought Nietzsche got 90% of the way there but didn't quite make it, as he refused to acknowledge metaphysical truths. Its precisely his lack of spirituality which Evola thought made Nietzsche ultimately fall short, and why many traditionalists rejected Nietzsche as a kind of decadent modern. So in a way it was the very fact that Nietzsche couldn't be reconciled with religion that Evola criticized him for.

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>But it is a rational universe

Jesus you haven't read Nietzsche at all, nor any existentialist for that matter. The irrationality of the universe is one of the foundational concepts in existentialism. Go read Kant retard.

Only one creature could have. Only one creature did.

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All modern European pagans did.

Yeah I’m a Nietzschean Taoist/Buddhist

Vimalakirti

Nietzsche is best reconciled in Tantrism (Shaivism, Shaktism, Vajrayana) where the will to power is best exemplified. To be able to train yourself to master the occult serpent power and acquire superhuman capabilities. To identify yourself with Shakti (fem. Power).

jbp

Unironically my mom. She loves this pollack and she loves christ

Rene Girard in "I see Satan fall like lightning.

No. Nietzsche and Marx sit at the insuperable end of a strand in Western thought which had as it’s premise (which it mistook for a conclusion) the denial of the supernatural.
Now, you can try to fulfill the human religious impulse without the supernatural, but what you get instead is totalitarian politics.

Thanks professor, very interesting.

How can religion be slave morality when the west was ruled by the catholic church for hundreds of years?

I was reading some reactionaries and scholastics which say Nietzsche is the conclusion of the philosophical project begun by Descartes

That’s definitely true, but it’s complicated. Everything you need to get to Marx and Nietzsche is, in some sense, already there in Descartes.
Del Noce thinks there’s a second line of thought that starts from Descartes, and travels through Malebranche, Pascal, Vico and Rosmini which represents the truest hope for a genuine revival of Catholic religion, precisely because it sets its sights beyond the Medieval ideal, and supersedes the categories of progress and reaction.

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Yes Acéphale

>Now, you can try to fulfill the human religious impulse without the supernatural
Religion is:
1. Exploitation of group bonding mechanisms - aeon.co/ideas/why-the-community-that-sings-together-stays-together
2. The basic attitude of "Don't overthink it, just do it, motherfucker" - aeon.co/ideas/we-need-highly-formal-rituals-in-order-to-make-life-more-democratic
3. Common memes/myths

You could just as well go hunting a mammoth together, or something.

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>it’s premise (which it mistook for a conclusion) the denial of the supernatural
Because when a magician pulls a coin out of your ear, he is clearly conjuring matter out of nothing. Why even doubt it?

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for comparison

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My own personal take:
Somewhere in Beyond Good and Evil he talks about the "I" being a synthetic judgement, ultimately a belief or in other words a superstition. I think his argument here isn't that we should stop believing in the existence of ourselves but that it is inescapably necessary to believe in things which cannot be verified absolutely in order for us to live. I've recently come up with an argument for the notion that identity necessarily originates interpersonally and that a person's sense of self cannot exist unless they have established relationships with other people. In short, the identity of any kind is necessarily defined by its function within its relationship to an extrinsic entity. A chair is a chair because people sit on it; a family member is such because of their relationship to the other family members. In order for a person to conceptualize themselves as an entity they must interact with others or else they cannot formulate a framework of values from which to self-evaluate. Belief in a God establishes a standard of identity that renders one's perception of themselves at least somewhat independent of the perspectives of others. Without belief in God identity technically dissolves because if a person attempts radical individualism in a true sense they technically attempt to presume that they are their own thing-in-itself which doesn't work as I've explained so they either become essentially psychopathic or they project their identity onto objects and people creating a false attachment that weakens the individual. The only way an individual can become fully empowered is if they accept a God. In my view this reconciles Nietzsche with religion because it satisfies Nietzsche's axiom that Good = that which increases power; if God is the most empowering thing you can believe in than God is the highest good and doubting his existence is bad.

>The only way an individual can become fully empowered is if they accept a God
>a proud people need a god to whom they can make sacrifices.... Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god
>when a nation is on the downward path, ... then it must overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous and demure

Kierkegaard
Lev Shestov

>than God is the highest good and doubting his existence is bad
"The thing that sets us apart is not that we are unable to find God, either in history, or in nature, or behind nature—but that we regard what has been honoured as God, not as “divine,” but as pitiable, as absurd, as injurious; not as a mere error, but as a crime against life.... We deny that God is God.... If any one were to show us this Christian God, we’d be still less inclined to believe in him"

He also said that Christ was a misunderstood free spirit who overcame all resentment and who's crucifixion was a testament to what he taught.

>He also said that Christ was a misunderstood free spirit
"Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.
As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for death.
Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth—and laughter also!
Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow!
But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit."

I'm aware that Nietzsche criticizes Jesus my point is that you lose your identity if you don't believe in a collective bond between you and something besides yourself so you have to pick between identifying with a God, identifying with other people, or identifying sovereignly which I argue doesn't work. Nietzsche's idea of letting your will decide that the superman is the meaning of the earth is the same as accepting God as your primary source of identity.

"Master morality" does not mean "the morality of whoever happens to be in charge at the time". Nietzsche is a critic of his contemporaries. Obviously he thinks the liberal institutions that are seizing power in Europe exemplify slave morality. Whether something is master or slave morality has less to do with the current social status of the people who practice it, and more to do with where it originated, which psychological forces shaped it, and what symptoms it induces in people who adopt it.

Peak bugman

Thanks for the rec. I'll give it a read. I'm neither catholic nor Aristotelian, but those philosophers who are have really interesting insights to the development of philosophy post Descartes. I guess thats because the Cartesian project was begun with the intent to critique catholic philosophy. The dialectic continues.

>letting your will decide that the superman is the meaning of the earth is the same as accepting God as your primary source of identity.
In terms of Nietzsche, "God" in the Christian sense is kind of world denial. "The meaning of the earth" could only be equated with god in a pantheistic sense, which Christianity rejects

>Genealogy of Morals (warrior-priest schism)
>Laws of Manu
>Cesare Borgia as Pope
Yes

And Nietzsche was actually very sympathetic to left wing politics as well. Just look up 'Nietzsche on socialism'.

>what symptoms it induces in people who adopt it
But a master needs slaves. If a morality induces people to be slaves for the sake of their masters (the church for example) then that is inherently master like.

John Neville Figgis comes to mind

why don't you read the author and attempt to understand him on his own terms instead of defining said terms differently and then willfully misinterpreting him

this again...

You can’t reconcile nietzche because he just says, “everything that comes out of your head is gay and that brute force is the only thing that matters.” Which is based but there really isn’t anything to bring Nietzsche into the western canon better than, “here is a man who reeee’d and reeeee’d he did.”

>But a master needs slaves
"Master morality" is a morality of an ancient barbarous "blonde beast". Those are joyous and healthy, because they forget quickly, i.e. they are retarded as fuck.
"Slave morality" is a morality of enslaved peoples. Those became *smart* (you became an "interesting animal" only due to this), but resentful and therefore utterly mad.

"This, yea, this alone is Revenge itself: the Will’s antipathy to time, and its “It was.”
Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a curse unto all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!
The spirit of revenge: my friends, that hath hitherto been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty."

Plenty have.

Forgetting quickly is not stupidity, it is noble simplicity, the same concept Christians used to describe the God who did not contemplate a multitude of ideas or things (which would reduce God's perfection). Most of those "blonde beasts" (including the Japanese no less) he is speaking of would still be able to outwit you, in Genealogy he states that the masterful are "capable" of forgetting, which means it is willful forgetting and not accidental, because they're above grudges. This is why those same "strong ones", like the brahmins, were masters. It wasn't just brute force, which is a misreading and misunderstanding of the blonde beast. That was certainly one aspect of their existence though, or in the case of the Indians, the warrior caste.

It's there again because you didn't learn the previous time.

>Most of those "blonde beasts" (including the Japanese no less) he is speaking of would still be able to outwit you
"Species do not evolve towards perfection: the weak always prevail over the strong—simply because they are the majority, and because they are also the more crafty. Darwin forgot the intellect (—that is English!), the weak have more intellect. In order to acquire intellect, one must be in need of it."

>it is noble simplicity, the same concept Christians used to describe the God who did not contemplate a multitude of ideas
>This is why those same "strong ones", like the brahmins, were masters.
"Where life and knowledge seem to contradict each other, there was never any serious fight to begin with; denial and doubt were simply considered madness. Those exceptional thinkers, like the Eleatics, who still posited and clung to the opposites of the natural errors, believed in the possibility of also living this opposite: they invented the sage as the man of unchangeability, impersonality, universality of intuition, as one and all at the same time, with a special capacity for that inverted knowledge; they had the faith that their knowledge was at the same time the principle of lift. But in order to be able to claim all this, they had to deceive themselves Gradually the human brain filled itself with such judgements and convictions; and ferment, struggle, and lust for power developed in this tangle. Not only utility and delight, but also every kind of drive took part in the fight about the 'truths'; the intellectual fight became an occupation, attraction, profession, duty, dignity - knowledge and the striving for the true finally took their place as a need among the other needs. Henceforth, not only faith and conviction, but also scrutiny, denial, suspicion, and contradiction were a power; all 'evil' instincts were subordinated to knowledge and put in its service and took on the lustre of the permitted, honoured, useful and finally the eye and the innocence of the good. Thus knowledge became a part of life and, as life, a continually growing power, until finally knowledge and the ancient basic errors struck against each other, both as life, both as power, both in the same person the ultimate question about the condition of life is posed here, and the first attempt is made here to answer the question through experiment. To what extent can truth stand to be incorporated? - that is the question; that is the experiment."

bump

So african tribes were master morality until the europeans came and mucked it all up. Knew it!

This. If you like Nietzsche but also like metaphysics/spirituality and you haven't read Evola, what the fuck are you doing?

didn't he like Islam?