The Antichrist Bookclub 2.0

Last thread was derailed by spammers:

warosu.org/lit/thread/S20213395
^^^ Take a look at the link above ^^^

I have waited a bit, and now I am trying this again. We'll see if this one goes better.

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Too many Nietzsche threads filled with new anons who have not done the readings. To fix it, I think we may have to start a book club. We will be reading through "The Antichrist" by Friedrich Nietzsche. You can find a pdf of the book here:

gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

We will be reading about 5 passages a day. Since there are 63 sections, including the preface, it should theoretically take less than two weeks to complete. However, some passages might warrant more time than others, so it may take anywhere from 13 days to perhaps even a whole month or more, depending on how it goes.

If you have any thoughts or questions based on the reading, feel free to post them. Or just sit back, observing and enjoying the text. You can challenge other anons on their opinions and interpretations, but keep it respectful. Overall, let's have some fun reading a classic.

Without further ado -

Attached: The_Antichrist_(book).jpg (249x399, 9.63K)

The Preface:

This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my “Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?—First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me—I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops—and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him.... He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner—to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm.... Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self....

Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers foreordained: of what account are the rest?—The rest are merely humanity.—One must make one’s self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,—in contempt.

Friedrich W. Nietzsche.

Section 1:

—Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how remote our place is. “Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans”: even Pindar, [1] in his day, knew that much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness.... We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?—The man of today?—“I don’t know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn’t know either the way out or the way in”—so sighs the man of today.... This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,—we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compro mise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that “forgives” everything because it “understands” everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such south-winds!... We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from “resignation”... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal....

[1]Cf. the tenth Pythian ode. See also the fourth book of Herodotus. The Hyperboreans were a mythical people beyond the Rhipaean mountains, in the far North. They enjoyed unbroken happiness and perpetual youth.

Section 2:

What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.

What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.

What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.

What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity....

Section 3:

The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.

This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man—the Christian....

Section 4:

Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This “progress” is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening.

True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in these cases a higher type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will remain possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may occasionally represent such lucky accidents.

Section 5:

We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts—the strong man as the typical reprobate, the “outcast among men.” Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!—

Sounds like a good read, this should be higher on the catalog desu

Thank you so much, I commit. I guess it has already started because you have already post the first five sections. I can't read it now but in several hours I will. I hope this thread won't die before I'm avaliable

Nietzsche really likes using dashes and exclamation marks, doesn't he?

Generally I believe the dashes were ellipses but editors generally change them to dashes to avoid confusing it with an abridgement.

What a coincidence, I picked up and finished reading The Antichrist yesterday. But I'll be following this thread...

Attached: 643.png (429x582, 332K)

He requires too much for being a reader of him, reachable though

Nietzschean has as its ground the contradictory, he is an alchemist coinciding oppositions to reach the Hyperborea of the Real. He is not saying 'troofs' but showing how to break (with a hammer) that which is a hidden untruth that offlines innocence of life with guilt and patterns. If it is possible to say that this “outcast among men” is merely a cope made to camouflage inability at higher ontology (what is more complex easily includes that which is less complex, i.e. cannot be dominated/made outcast/be forced to suffer) then iit can be also said about Christianity: that yes, there are vulgar versions (perhaps every historical one?), preoccupied with forming man from an outside, but the True Christianity is an attempt at non-man or an absolute Man. Non-Man is beyond the dialectical: a Christian never crosses path with his non-Christian 'opposition'. A Nietzschean who is defined by its own and not by what is of le slave.

Nietzsche is showing ways to overcome Nietzsche. Nietzsche is a Christian in a sense that Jesus Christ was a Nietzschean.

i didn't read nietzsche before so i don't know if in a true reader of him as he says this books is for. I meet some of the requeriments he ask, i hope they are sufficient.

I feel very identified here though i didnt understand what the last line means
>The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal....
a yes, a no, a straight line? I understand the goal part, maybe he treats them as synonymous here. What i mean is that a goal is a yea (because you decide to do something), it is a nay (because the things you have to reject) and it is a straight line (because you planned a path to reach your goal).

i dont know what he understands as power and he doesnt argue any of his statements. I guess and hope they are argued in previous books or later in this one.
I can infer that he means
>we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compro mise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that “forgives” everything because it “understands” everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such south-winds!... We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from “resignation”... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way.
as power, from the first section. That is, something like being honest with oneself and be brave to overcome the difficulties, maybe even enjoying the path

i think this doesnt add much. Obviously if there is a better way of living the children must be educated that way

based and surely this is going to remain that way the rest of human species existence. I think this is innate for the human being

this is true. If there is little strong men and to those christianity ban, there is none strong men. Thankfully, christianity isn't as prominent now as it was in the past although it is far from disappearing

it was a good read, thank op. I'm eager to discuss the next sections. It is a shame that too little people got engaged, maybe they will in the future

I'll offer my analysis or critique. I'm going into this blind.
I see this as self-granduer. Practically meaningless.
>What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
>What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.
What is power and why is it within the boundaries of morality or something we should strive towards?
>What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.
Why should we attain happiness? There are higher goals in life than happiness like sacrifice.
>Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
Again, what is "power"? Something given to us in the form of war? For what purpose does efficiency serve and to what end? Why should we separate virtues from morality?
>The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is "weak" and why is it bad? I thought we were separating ourselves from morality?
>What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity....
Does he mean to say that helping the poor and meek is bad? For what possible reason could he have this assumption?

>The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.
What is "valuable" or the most worthy of life? Why should we guarantee any future?
>Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man—the Christian....
Why is it that he thinks it is the Christian that is a "herd animal" or a "sick brute man"? Perhaps he's referring to the soft, liberal Protestants of his time, but even then he's making a historical claim pre-dating the German Protestantism.
I agree with this, but again I don't know what he means when he speaks of a "higher type" of man or culture. Is he referring to people such as Alexander the Great or Caesar? Or would he have spoken the same way of Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill?
>We should not deck out and embellish Christianity
It's a bit too late for that. The rest of the section is pure unsubstantiated rhetoric. I can imagine reading this from a teenage redditor today.

From what I've read so far, Nietzche is making a lot of assumptions without elaborating further or defining what he means. You are required to interpret what he means on your own without his elaboration. He seems deluded in thinking he has achieved some sort of enlightenment but his words are empty.

bumping this quality thread

This thread isn't going to take off. Hopefully my effortpost wasn't for nothing.

philosophy after plato was a mistake

>I don't know what he means when he speaks of a "higher type" of man or culture.
A generous one, showing others the way to become generous: the gift-giving virtue: the virtue of gift-giving. Think posting: when posters engage each other in the spirit of generosity they express themselves without ill will to impose themselves on the other party, there is no war to win. There is only a game (gamers) to play. In Sneedzsche there is no 'left' nor 'right' — no worldly insecure greed of the ignoble — but becoming towards the Real.

The higher man of our region would speak in poetry (both versified and not versified), innocently proposing ontological questions then giving possible answers full of lies and truths. The higher man is a gardener tending to a Rose field.

is nietzsche really that much philosophy? i dunno, i didn't understand too much of what he wanted to say but he definetly was a great writer

this adds nothing to the conversation, please elaborate so we can understand your point

>is nietzsche really that much philosophy? i dunno
i don't know neither, that's what this thread is for, to know him as a writer and philosopher

I'm the critique user and I agree. I'll stick with the Greeks, these Germans are mentally ill.

it sounds slef-granduer because he speaks as we, ie he includes himself, but i think it isn't meaningless. I do feel identified with it, i guess the critique is that it is emotionally-dependent. I mean that if you dont feel it, maybe it sounds meaningless as you said. But it is justified, in the prologue he says
>This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my “Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?—First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.
>The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me—I know them only too well.
ie this book is for the people who understand him ie people who can relate to his words.

>What is power
it isn't clear for me neither but maybe it is what this user says, idk. I hope some nietzsche-versed user explain this

>why is it within the boundaries of morality or something we should strive towards?
i think that is because the nature of his target reader because of how he describes them pe this line
>The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal....

>Why should we attain happiness?
he just says what is happines, nothing about it being the higher goal

>Does he mean to say that helping the poor and meek is bad? For what possible reason could he have this assumption?
imo he doesnt mean that literally but metaforically. I mean not monetary poor but poor of mind, self-respect, etc

>What is "valuable" or the most worthy of life?
probably those who are powerful or seeks power

>Why should we guarantee any future?
because the good of the species? or maybe as an alternative ie gave that we will have children it is better to raise it well (nietzsche way in his opinion) than bad

>Why is it that he thinks it is the Christian that is a "herd animal" or a "sick brute man"?
read section 5, i think he blames the christians in sections 2, 3 and 4 without explaining for explaining it in section 5, as foreshadowing

>I don't know what he means when he speaks of a "higher type" of man or culture.
probably those who look for power and fit in his section 1 description

i think you've understood, at least partially, nietzsche. Good post user

Yeah I'm sorry, I'm not wasting time with Enlightenment cope. Maybe others can enjoy his writings but this gave me a bad taste for godless Germans.

okay user you do what you consider the best with you time, not gonna critique that. Maybe in the future you can revisit him, future is unsure

As opposed to what, the even more degenerate French and Americans?

Perhaps it's important for my personal interests to understand at least the basics of modern philosophers but I can tell I will be annoyed by unanswered fundamental questions and definitions in one's philosophy, especially in hindsight of the unanswered questions and assumptions in the world we live in today. In his defense, Nietzche at least seems understandable compared to Kant or Hegel where you would need a guidebook to understand their jargon and meaning. I have enough of an understanding of Nietzche and his dialectic of power being the determiner of truth in a world without morality. This iron will to power seems to have influenced the Fascists of the early 20th century and their motives for war.
No, they're the same shit. Such godless people can only produce a soulless world as this. This board has taught me Germans are too autistic for their own good.

>derailed by spammers:
False. Go to the church.

>This book belongs to the most rare of men.
lol
>Some men are born posthumously.
oh look he steals from the Gospels again

these are reposts

>This iron will to power seems to have influenced the Fascists of the early 20th century and their motives for war.
As far as I know fascists misinterpreted him. I don't think Nietzsche power is military power neither
>The weak and the botched shall perish
means you should kill worse (in the Nazis opinion) races

>Perhaps it's important for my personal interests to understand at least the basics of modern philosophers
Yes it is, you gain new perspectives and ways of thinking

>I can tell I will be annoyed by unanswered
Not based, I mean you should be better than that. If it isn't a good reading because they doesn't explain terms you drop it. If it is good enough for you to break your brain trying to understand them, so do it. But annoyance is never a good response, it gives you nothing worth it

> Be unmarried sickly siphilitic man
> Say:
> What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.

What should we make of this apparent incongruity? Doesn't his sickly nature debunk his philosophy?

Nietzsche hiked for 8+ hours every day, you can't even go without jerking off for 8 hours.

>Nietzsche hiked for 8+ hours every day
Bullshit.

Oh? What's the problem? The "sickly weak" man was showing more vigor and strength in his daily life than you? Keep coping.

Source?

Nietzsche was such a pathetic man. A small, insecure, fragile person whose only happiness was in the moments where he could feel powerful and strong. In seeking feelings of power he signals his weakness.

I'm not the user you think you're responding to, but it's completely unrealistic. Even experienced hikers only do around 10kms of cardio twice a week.

ITT: seething christers

> In seeking feelings of power he signals his weakness.

Based. A strong man does not seethe and write a bunch of books about how christianity touched him in his naughty place.

He couldn't even get a woman, he was too autistic. A genetic fitness of 0. What an embarrassment. Even a retarded indian day laborer has more of a hand in the future with his 8 children than poor old mustache man.

I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest.—The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science—the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions—a man must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to “know.”... “Therefore, man must be made unhappy,”—this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest.

This is embarrassing.

rent free

Christianity has historically valued a genetic fitness of zero, it's called celibacy

The eternal seethe against Christianity only makes it stronger.

You will worship the Pachamama

Kek, tell that to the perennial Catholics. I feel sorry for the West.

Push what is falling

Back to seethe again cuck?

>seethe
>cuck
Nice thoughts - did you get them yourself

>The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science—
snorted and laughed. Define science by using only the scientific method lmao - I can wait

science just means knowledge, his point is that the priest fabricates obvious lies about another world because he is a nihilist and an enemy of knowledge as such

You can see the exact same pattern from the last thread, look at the last 100 or so replies in it. Christcuck seething and samefagging.

Yes, but I think that the reason why needs to be drawn out, because, especially after the Enlightenment thinkers, with their preoccupation in making philosophy adhere more to the rigor of mathematical arguments, it's not self-evident that he seems to be a philosopher.

Consider this more a tl;dr than a thorough argument itself; that shit would take too long.

1) Nietzsche, for all his complaints about Plato, does grant that Plato is a legitimate model of philosophy, and he in certain ways does similar work in his books. He takes it that philosophy values questioning, and not just merely answers, and in this agrees with Plato's characterization of philosophy in the Symposium as Eros (longing, desire) for wisdom. So his skepticism and effort to call into question "truths" taken for granted are both in the spirit of Plato. Practically, he's trying to put his readers in the position of questioning their received opinions. (His notebooks, on the other hand, especially earlier ones, show him privately working out hypotheses he just declares in his writings; he basically hides his work.)

2) He seems to also agree with what he takes Plato to be doing; to be, as a philosopher, a skeptic, but as a writer for readers who won't necessarily be philosophers, to present a teaching or dogma to. (This relates, not incidentally, to his criticisms of Plato and the Good and immortal soul.) But by the by, this is the meaning of what he says in Beyond Good and Evil when he says true philosophers are legislators; they present a comprehensive way of understanding the world that people might subscribe to, even if they're not strictly true. In his journals, he admits to writing "with a mask" and using bombastic rhetoric that he feels is appropriate to the situation he's addressing. It's worth doing a quick word find in Beyond Good and Evil for his only two uses of "Dionysus", which he uses to imply he and Plato are both closer than his initial argument makes clear.

3) All this puts him squarely more with the Greek philosophers than anyone after them. Parmenides laid out his thoughts in a poem mimicking Homer's style. Heraclitus wrote short passages using wordplay and puns. Empedocles and Anaxagoras use love and strife to describe material processes. Plato wrote dialogues obscuring what he believed from what Socrates believed. Etc. Nietzsche's literary style is meant to do similar work, alternately inspiring and obscuring what's going on.

I'm not sure this helps *much*, but maybe it helps to begin situating him?

Trad caths should be banned from Yea Forums. First effort post in ages and they make every effort to derail it.

>science just means knowledge
Sorry I can't figure out an expirement for that statement. Please help
>his point is that the priest fabricates obvious lies about another world because he is a nihilist and an enemy of knowledge as such
Yikes. The worst part is I can tell you're older than a teenager.

Hi
not catholic

you won't even debate me :(((((

>no argument from the nihilist to defend his fancies
Sorry, I don't believe your absentee father is the cosmic ordering principle of my universe. Yes I am probably older than you, pachamama castrato

>Sorry
I forgive you :)
>I don't believe your absentee father is the cosmic ordering principle of my universe
He's p bad at being absent if I believe in him. Then what is?