RadixJournal - Bowden! - 8 - On the Genealogy of Morals

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Vanguard, a podcast of radical traditionalism.

00:00:24.480 Here's your host, Richard Spencer.

00:00:27.380 Hello, everyone. Welcome again to Vanguard.

00:00:32.180 And welcome as well, Jonathan Bowden. Thanks for being back on the program.

00:00:37.100 Yes, hello. Nice to be back.

00:00:38.900 Well, today we're going to try something a little bit different.

00:00:43.320 In previous podcasts, we've taken on big philosophical issues such as democracy, feminism, Nietzsche, so on and so forth.

00:00:52.660 And today we're going to try to get a little closer to the text and focus in a little bit more.

00:01:00.820 So today we're going to record a broadcast on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, which was published in 1887.

00:01:11.040 And I'm sure there are a couple of different ways that our listeners could use this podcast.

00:01:15.600 If you've never encountered Nietzsche before, I think you could still profit from it as a taste of his thought.

00:01:22.900 And also, if you are interested in studying Nietzsche, I'm sure you could either read the text before or perhaps after the broadcast

00:01:33.500 and use the broadcast as a reader's guide or an interpretation.

00:01:38.380 So, Jonathan, let's dive right into the text.

00:01:43.760 This is one of my favorite of Nietzsche's works.

00:01:47.820 It's actually the first Nietzsche work that I read.

00:01:50.940 And it's probably the best of his works that serves as an introduction in the sense that so much of the rest of his oeuvre is aphoristic.

00:02:02.300 It's poetic.

00:02:03.160 And in the case of Zarathustra, it's quite bombastic and maybe ironically so.

00:02:08.840 But on the Genealogy of Morals, it seems more like philosophy.

00:02:12.780 It deals with moral questions and historical questions.

00:02:15.540 And it's written in a more straightforward style, at least straightforward for Nietzsche.

00:02:22.180 But, Jonathan, why don't you give us a background of this text and some of your more general thoughts on it?

00:02:31.140 And I'd mentioned that it is a moral inquiry, but it doesn't really look at morals in themselves.

00:02:40.120 Indeed, it might treat morality on sich in itself as somewhat of an illusion.

00:02:46.400 It doesn't try to find the origin of good and evil behind the world in another region, in heaven, in a godly realm.

00:02:55.580 It actually tries to find the origins of good and evil in the world.

00:03:00.440 And it's also a question of values, not only morality, but it's also a question of the value of values.

00:03:07.620 That is, what does it mean that we treat un-egoistic, in Nietzsche's words, or selfless actions as good,

00:03:19.240 and we treat actions that might express a superior, domineering manner as evil?

00:03:28.080 What is the value of that value, and where does that value come from?

00:03:33.780 When did this arise in the history of not just the West, but really the history of the world?

00:03:41.300 So, Jonathan, maybe pick up on a few of those ideas and give us your general thoughts on what the genealogy of morals is and its background,

00:03:51.520 what Nietzsche is trying to achieve.

00:03:53.060 Yes, I think he's trying to achieve an ethical superstructure for a radically aristocratic way of thinking,

00:04:02.280 which is to return that to modernity insofar as it existed in the past.

00:04:07.280 I also think he wants to get away from what is recorded as dualism,

00:04:11.920 the idea that you have good and you have its counterpart evil,

00:04:14.760 and that these are metaphysical certainties or metaphysical statements of intent and belief

00:04:21.320 that are very ancient, and that are Manichaean in the Persian sense,

00:04:26.160 which Paul took in early Christianity and grafted into the heart of the Christian religion.

00:04:31.840 All three of the Hebraic faiths are very dualist in relation to morality

00:04:37.040 and have a large pre-codified codex about what is moral and what is immoral.

00:04:44.020 And his belief is that morality is in part socially derived and is culturally expressed.

00:04:50.860 And in an aristocratic society, that which is good, beautiful, true, and so on,

00:04:56.100 will be regarded as exalted and moral, as a self-evident prerequisite.

00:05:00.800 And that which is low or mean or ugly or debased will be regarded as evil,

00:05:07.820 or at the very least as bad, as the opposite of good.

00:05:11.380 And he thinks that is an axiomatic and understandable way of looking at it.

00:05:15.900 What he thinks has happened is that morality has become inverted

00:05:19.020 by virtue of the morality of those who suffered or were enslaved in the ancient world.

00:05:26.360 And this is what he calls slave morality.

00:05:28.220 And he associates slave morality and the desire to eradicate it

00:05:32.800 by in turn professing its nature to be part and parcel of the ethical substructure of Christianity

00:05:39.040 and of the Judeoist Christian religion in particular.

00:05:43.200 And he regards Christianity, ethically speaking,

00:05:46.260 as a revenge of the low upon the high

00:05:48.620 and as a revenge of the low-born upon the high-born

00:05:52.400 and as a revenge almost against the ancient world itself,

00:05:56.060 ushering in the Middle Ages where everything is valorized or everything is moralized

00:06:03.760 and everything is divided into a good act or a good thought

00:06:07.380 or an evil act and an evil thought.

00:06:10.380 And that if mankind is to progress on from their stupor,

00:06:14.040 then it has to return to more ancient verities and velities,

00:06:18.200 more ancient feelings and areas of psychic force,

00:06:21.740 whereby actions are described as good and bad

00:06:24.440 depending upon whether they impinge upon whether something is high or low.

00:06:30.300 This also leads to a hierarchical value in terms of morality

00:06:35.660 where actions are perceived as cascading from on high,

00:06:40.160 like a sort of devouring fountain or something,

00:06:42.780 rather than being alternative or alternate.

00:06:45.420 He's also very much opposed to the idea of instantaneous valorization,

00:06:51.240 this idea that you have a binary morality.

00:06:53.760 You put forward a statement and there's a click-click response,

00:06:56.620 moral-immoral, good-bad, good-evil.

00:07:00.440 And although he's more keen on good-bad disjunction

00:07:02.880 than the good-evil disjunction,

00:07:04.860 he always wants to get away from the idea

00:07:07.060 that you can just valorize everything

00:07:09.480 in and with an appropriate clip of the dial.

00:07:11.900 He's very opposed to televisual morality in a strange sort of way,

00:07:16.280 whereby everything is determined

00:07:17.980 in accordance with a prior indicator

00:07:20.820 as to whether it's good or evil,

00:07:23.160 and that all of one's judgments are then colored

00:07:25.360 by that particular alternation.

00:07:28.580 And he sees Christianity over 2,000 years

00:07:31.260 as the main vehicle for this valorization

00:07:34.880 and this sort of ethical charging

00:07:38.300 and super-sweeping of everything,

00:07:40.440 so that all higher standards are produced

00:07:44.240 and brought down to the instincts

00:07:46.860 and unfettered pleasures and life chances

00:07:50.460 of those who are ill-born and ill-conceived.

00:07:53.560 Jonathan, let's put some pressure on this

00:07:56.780 because the distinction between good and bad

00:08:00.680 and good and evil is simple in a way,

00:08:02.940 but as revealed by your last talk,

00:08:07.600 it branches out into all these interesting directions.

00:08:12.740 You know, one way that Nietzsche talks about this

00:08:15.260 is purely in terms of linguistics,

00:08:17.900 and a good example that works well with English

00:08:22.140 is the history of the word virtue,

00:08:24.960 virtue, and that is it obviously originates from,

00:08:30.420 excuse me, it's obviously connected

00:08:32.260 with words like virile and things like this,

00:08:35.520 and it originates with the original Latin of virtus,

00:08:38.460 which, of course, connotes manliness, being a man,

00:08:42.260 and it connotes all of those things around it,

00:08:44.420 like courage in battle, steadfastness, and so forth.

00:08:48.420 And in some ways, you know,

00:08:51.000 a word doesn't hold its meaning throughout time.

00:08:54.720 It can shift subtly.

00:08:57.280 And what you have over the course of centuries

00:09:00.900 with the word virtue

00:09:01.880 is that it becomes Christianized

00:09:04.340 and in a kind of ironic way feminized

00:09:06.680 to the point that virtue now means female chastity,

00:09:11.600 almost, you know, not quite the opposite

00:09:13.660 of its original meaning,

00:09:14.800 but certainly one that is quite alien.

00:09:16.900 And this linguistic aspect of this

00:09:20.880 is something that is very important to Nietzsche.

00:09:22.920 I mean, he thinks the origin of the word good

00:09:25.560 is really something even with,

00:09:27.040 connect with the word God.

00:09:28.920 I think he connects bonus with bellum,

00:09:33.580 and so he does a lot of things

00:09:34.840 of connecting the word good with the warrior.

00:09:38.500 And so, Jonathan, let's put a little pressure on this

00:09:42.480 before we talk about the reevaluation of values

00:09:44.680 and so on and so forth.

00:09:45.520 Just that original formation

00:09:49.500 of the notion of good and bad,

00:09:52.580 and in particular, how Nietzsche,

00:09:55.200 this view is different from, say,

00:09:58.060 a utilitarian view of the like of Herbert Spencer,

00:10:01.020 who thought that good and evil

00:10:03.220 were simply connoting something that's useful or not.

00:10:06.660 It's something very different

00:10:08.260 in Nietzsche's aristocratic morality.

00:10:10.320 Yes.

00:10:12.720 I mean, language is extraordinarily important to Nietzsche,

00:10:15.300 not just because he was a master of the German of his day,

00:10:18.720 but also because he was a trained philologist.

00:10:21.120 Right.

00:10:21.520 So he would look at the ancient origins of words

00:10:24.480 and trace through over centuries their change over time

00:10:28.300 and their differentiated usage.

00:10:30.380 So much of the genealogy is actually concerned

00:10:34.360 with the origin of words,

00:10:37.360 where many words meant masculine or masculine beauty

00:10:42.300 or war-like ardor or chivalry or courage under stress

00:10:46.360 and bravery under pressure.

00:10:48.360 And these words would have themselves changed over time,

00:10:53.160 as in the case of virtue,

00:10:55.380 to mean something that was approximately its opposite 0.90

00:10:57.980 or near, damn it, its opposite over time. 0.95

00:11:01.480 And this is part of the way 0.96

00:11:02.720 in which words are wrenched out of their context

00:11:04.920 and reused for all sorts of purposes,

00:11:08.120 partly just a sort of natural selection and wordplay,

00:11:11.200 but also much more subtle ideological repositionings

00:11:14.720 in order to deflate one set of meanings

00:11:17.260 and enhance another at a later date.

00:11:20.240 So he basically considers the good and the good life

00:11:22.980 to be that which tends towards aristocratic virtue

00:11:26.920 in its prior definitional structure.

00:11:29.880 So one carries oneself well,

00:11:33.420 one has an integration of body and spirit,

00:11:36.620 one looks well and looks good,

00:11:40.420 that which manifests greater manliness

00:11:42.900 and greater courage and greater dexterity

00:11:45.540 in the use of these things on the battlefield

00:11:47.460 and in the senatorial sort of structure

00:11:52.880 or political structures of a particular time.

00:11:57.900 These are naturally good in and of themselves,

00:12:00.360 but they're not universally good.

00:12:01.920 They're good for a particular class of persons.

00:12:04.540 They're good for a particular sensibility

00:12:06.120 that goes with that aristocratic class of persons.

00:12:09.020 They're not necessarily good for others,

00:12:13.680 and therefore, in effect, they're reverse utilitarian.

00:12:16.340 They're sort of negative utilitarian.

00:12:19.300 They're sort of futilitarian in utilitarian terms

00:12:22.040 to develop a neologism.

00:12:24.120 They don't really go with the flow of majority desires at all.

00:12:28.580 Indeed, they're militant minority desires.

00:12:31.260 I've just seen the British film of Shakespeare's Carolinus

00:12:35.140 for the actor Ralph Fiennes in it,

00:12:38.780 and Carolinus always strikes me as a particular text

00:12:41.760 that's very emblematic.

00:12:43.880 It's a sort of genealogy of the morals of which Nietzsche approved,

00:12:49.740 where you have this extraordinary arrogance towards the Roman plebs.

00:12:53.520 You have this refusal to obey the dictates

00:12:57.100 of the tribunite structure in ancient Rome.

00:12:59.180 You have the consul, as in a sense, set above the people,

00:13:03.240 if not even the Senate itself.

00:13:05.520 And you have an aristocratic morality to court,

00:13:09.560 which is not just conceptual,

00:13:12.440 but rooted in the words that it chooses to use,

00:13:15.640 rooted in a detestation of the majority, even,

00:13:19.240 and rooted in a maximalization of particularism

00:13:23.920 and of the pathos of difference

00:13:25.920 and of minority and individualized sentiment

00:13:29.580 as long as that individualism is high-born.

00:13:33.380 Well, also, in many ways,

00:13:36.220 Nietzsche personifies good and evil and good and bad

00:13:39.880 in the text in quite dramatic fashion.

00:13:44.320 And in terms of, I want to talk about the Jewish issue,

00:13:49.440 which is a very complex one, a little bit later.

00:13:53.080 But first, I just want to talk about his idea of the originators of good.

00:13:58.020 And as you were saying,

00:14:00.280 it certainly had little to do with what it means to be good now,

00:14:05.620 like you might hear in church or something like that.

00:14:08.200 But it was the aristocratic leader's kind of expression

00:14:14.380 of their own joy in themselves and things like this.

00:14:17.160 And let me just read a little bit from Nietzsche's text

00:14:20.880 to give you a taste of this,

00:14:22.140 because he had a very distinct idea of the originators of the word good

00:14:28.520 to the point that he thought of them really as a people.

00:14:33.000 There they savor the freedom from all social constraints.

00:14:36.940 They compensate themselves in the wilderness

00:14:39.940 for the tension engendered by protected confinement

00:14:42.860 and closure within the peace of society.

00:14:45.780 They go back to the innocent conscious of the beast of prey

00:14:48.920 as triumphant monsters who perhaps emerge

00:14:51.840 from the disgusting process of murder, arson, rape, and torture,

00:14:56.560 exhilarated and undisturbed of soul,

00:14:59.720 as if it were no more than a student's prank,

00:15:02.500 convinced they have provided the poets

00:15:04.500 with a lot more material for song and praise.

00:15:07.040 One cannot fail to see at the bottom of all these noble races

00:15:10.960 the beast of prey,

00:15:13.360 the splendid blonde beast prowling about avidly 0.95

00:15:17.360 in search of spoil and victory.

00:15:19.400 This hidden core needs to erupt from time to time.

00:15:23.560 The animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.

00:15:27.360 The Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility,

00:15:31.740 the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings,

00:15:34.800 they all shared this need.

00:15:37.080 It is the noble races that have left behind them 0.96

00:15:39.760 the concept of barbarian wherever they have gone.

00:15:43.640 Even their highest culture betrays a consciousness of it

00:15:46.900 and even a pride in it.

00:15:49.200 For example, when Pericles says to his Athenians

00:15:52.020 in his famous funeral oration,

00:15:53.860 our boldness has gained access to every land and sea,

00:15:57.240 everywhere, raising imperishable monuments

00:15:59.740 to its goodness and wickedness.

00:16:03.440 So just to, you can pick up on this,

00:16:06.680 just to make everything clear,

00:16:08.360 I think this is some passages like that

00:16:10.340 certainly disturb Nietzsche's liberal defenders

00:16:13.240 like Walter Kaufman, who, you know, to give him credit,

00:16:16.320 certainly did a lot of good in bringing Nietzsche

00:16:19.160 to the wider public.

00:16:20.200 But Nietzsche really, it's not a metaphor.

00:16:23.800 Nietzsche did have a concept of,

00:16:27.480 let's call it Aryanism, 1.00

00:16:29.040 as the origin of master morality

00:16:32.400 and the older concept of goodness.

00:16:35.040 Yes, yes, Kaufman is a liberal revisionist, really,

00:16:42.000 in terms of Nietzsche's studies.

00:16:44.060 I suppose he had to emerge at a particular time

00:16:46.620 in order to safeguard Nietzsche's reputation

00:16:48.980 after the Second World War.

00:16:51.300 And it's possible that without people like Kaufman,

00:16:54.160 I doubt he would have gone down the memory hole,

00:16:56.060 but he might not have the present talented notoriety

00:17:00.440 which he presently enjoys.

00:17:02.000 But, yes, one sees in examples like that

00:17:07.280 there's a definite attempt

00:17:09.760 to make these things non-literal as well.

00:17:12.520 For example, the blonde beast is meant to mean a lion

00:17:15.220 rather than anything else.

00:17:17.680 But, of course, that's just one of many meanings

00:17:19.620 that you can have of it.

00:17:21.340 Yes, this creation of the Codex as a master morality,

00:17:26.080 the morality of Greek tragedy in a way,

00:17:28.560 as being the inner morality of the Grecian aristocracy

00:17:33.740 and of other aristocracies as well,

00:17:36.480 such as the Persian, Scandinavian, Japanese, and so forth.

00:17:40.980 Maybe the British imperial aristocracy in its heyday,

00:17:44.640 which could be analogous to the Elizabethan period

00:17:47.540 rather than later periods,

00:17:49.740 which probably Nietzsche would have found

00:17:51.700 the 19th century too stultifying and too moralistic.

00:17:54.260 But the Elizabethan swagger

00:17:57.700 was something that was very close to his heart

00:18:00.420 and was very close to the Renaissance sensibility,

00:18:03.860 which he prized in amoral readers and rulers

00:18:06.800 like the Borgia House and so on,

00:18:09.760 who he regarded as untainted by Christian morality

00:18:14.140 and existing in a pagan sort of residue

00:18:18.140 and wherewithal,

00:18:20.120 whereby they cast aside traditional notions

00:18:22.640 of good and evil

00:18:23.700 in order to embrace what was customarily known

00:18:26.580 as the aristocratic good

00:18:28.560 or a master as against the slave morality.

00:18:31.920 Right.

00:18:32.460 And then also he personifies evil,

00:18:37.400 the creation of evil,

00:18:38.820 the earlier transvaluation of all values.

00:18:42.020 And he does it in a way

00:18:43.360 that is equally disturbing and offensive

00:18:47.040 for someone like Walter Kaufman.

00:18:48.820 And I don't mean to beat up on Walter Kaufman.

00:18:51.980 He, you know, he is a good translator,

00:18:53.880 but he certainly did try to turn Nietzsche

00:18:56.740 into some kind of enlightened liberal

00:18:58.740 or something like this.

00:19:00.240 But he personifies the creation

00:19:02.780 of the notion of evil

00:19:03.760 and the turning on its head,

00:19:05.300 the earlier good and bad,

00:19:07.340 with the Jews.

00:19:08.340 He says in section seven of the first book,

00:19:13.200 with the Jews,

00:19:14.060 there begins the slave revolt to morality,

00:19:16.860 that revolt which has a history

00:19:18.900 of 2,000 years behind it

00:19:20.960 in which we no longer see it

00:19:22.660 because it has been victorious.

00:19:25.720 So Jonathan, talk a little bit about the Jews.

00:19:29.260 And Nietzsche is, of course,

00:19:30.600 referring to the Jews in the Roman Empire

00:19:32.980 and pre-Jesus Jews.

00:19:38.820 But he sees in many ways

00:19:40.640 the domination of Christianity 0.99

00:19:42.080 as a kind of culmination of their mission

00:19:45.780 to destroy the Roman Empire, 0.61

00:19:48.280 even if they rejected the actual religion.

00:19:52.080 So talk a little bit about how the Jews function 0.95

00:19:54.860 in Nietzsche's work.

00:19:57.420 Yes, this is the idea

00:19:58.800 that they carry to the strongest degree

00:20:01.160 the sort of anti- or transverse moralism,

00:20:04.800 which is opposed to these,

00:20:06.620 what he considers to be

00:20:07.780 these verities of the ancient world.

00:20:09.560 They invert the master morality

00:20:13.240 and make of a slave or beholden morality

00:20:16.500 a master morality of a different sort,

00:20:19.140 the masterful morality, one might say.

00:20:21.540 This is the idea that those who suffer

00:20:23.780 and those who undergo the agonies of privation

00:20:27.000 and those who are in a weaker position

00:20:30.020 are automatically morally in an enhanced state

00:20:33.580 and are indeed superior

00:20:35.460 by virtue of their suffering.

00:20:36.860 And the more suffering that they have,

00:20:39.480 the more ennobled they are by it.

00:20:42.240 And obliviousness to the suffering of another

00:20:45.340 is itself a sign of moral inadequacy

00:20:49.760 so that those who sympathize

00:20:51.660 with the suffering of others

00:20:52.880 and those who undergo suffering themselves

00:20:55.060 are on the way to a superior lexicon

00:20:58.180 in relation to what it is to be moral.

00:21:01.140 And also the concept of pity,

00:21:03.280 pity for oneself and pity for another,

00:21:05.360 becomes the elixir of moral goodness

00:21:08.460 or becomes part and parcel of such an elixir

00:21:11.380 where Nietzsche himself, of course,

00:21:13.220 loathes and reviles pity for oneself and for others

00:21:16.860 and regards it as the epitome

00:21:18.700 of what he calls slave morality.

00:21:21.240 Now, the reason all of this was done

00:21:22.860 was to upend the fact that the Jews 0.98

00:21:25.240 were victims of Romanism 0.98

00:21:27.040 and of Roman imperialism

00:21:28.920 as it existed in the Middle East

00:21:30.840 and they wished to slip the yoke of Rome

00:21:33.220 and assert their own tribal and cultural independence

00:21:36.260 as they had done before.

00:21:38.740 And they took away from the masters

00:21:40.960 the weapons of the masters

00:21:42.660 subtly and religiously and linguistically

00:21:45.480 and in a code-like way

00:21:47.920 in order to give themselves the weapons

00:21:50.980 to store their own armory.

00:21:53.940 Nietzsche sees ideas very much

00:21:55.820 as the pursuit of warfare by other means,

00:21:58.340 particularly when groups and peoples

00:22:00.860 become involved in their adoption

00:22:03.380 or their non-adoption.

00:22:05.820 So he considers this taking of the idea

00:22:09.480 of the beauty of pitilessness

00:22:12.720 when perceived in an aristocratic vein

00:22:15.300 and inverting it

00:22:16.900 so that beauty is sympathy for the weak

00:22:19.100 and those who suffer

00:22:20.080 to be one of the great blasphemies of human history

00:22:24.880 and to be one of the great sort of

00:22:27.440 non-utilitarian, utilitarian devices

00:22:30.620 by a means of which the weak

00:22:32.580 can humiliate and humble the strong.

00:22:35.680 And he considers that the Jews

00:22:37.180 were a cardinal

00:22:38.280 in developing this semi-text,

00:22:41.560 if you like,

00:22:42.060 this textuality for what it was

00:22:44.640 to be moral in the future.

00:22:46.500 Yes, I mean, he sees this

00:22:47.940 in world historical terms.

00:22:50.880 In chapter 16 of the first book,

00:22:54.060 he says,

00:22:54.380 the symbol of this struggle

00:22:55.560 inscribed in letters

00:22:56.820 legible across all human history

00:22:58.960 is Rome against Judea,

00:23:01.260 Judea against Rome.

00:23:03.020 There has hitherto been no greater event

00:23:05.180 than this struggle,

00:23:06.820 this question,

00:23:08.140 this deadly contradiction.

00:23:10.720 Rome felt the Jews 1.00

00:23:11.860 to be something like anti-nature itself, 0.97

00:23:15.020 its antipodal monstrosity, as it were. 0.99

00:23:17.760 In Rome, the Jews stood 1.00

00:23:19.260 convicted of hatred

00:23:20.840 for the whole human race,

00:23:23.380 and rightly,

00:23:24.440 provided one has a right

00:23:25.540 to link the salvation

00:23:26.700 and future of the human race

00:23:28.020 with the unconditional dominance

00:23:29.720 of the aristocratic values,

00:23:31.880 Roman values.

00:23:33.160 So he obviously sees it

00:23:34.880 in this trans-value,

00:23:37.820 the original revaluation of values

00:23:39.860 in the figure of the Jews.

00:23:42.200 But how does that,

00:23:44.020 obviously it goes beyond them

00:23:45.800 to Christianity itself.

00:23:48.740 So what was first

00:23:49.840 a kind of warfare,

00:23:51.500 a subterfuge warfare,

00:23:52.860 where the Jews were able to,

00:23:55.860 through,

00:23:56.180 by means of values,

00:23:57.720 able to turn Rome against itself.

00:24:01.020 But then you have a new situation

00:24:02.860 where, you know,

00:24:03.980 Jesus is worshipped in the,

00:24:07.040 in Rome,

00:24:07.920 in what used to be the center

00:24:09.540 of the Roman Empire,

00:24:11.540 and thus, you know,

00:24:12.400 aristocratic values

00:24:13.300 of the old world.

00:24:14.140 So maybe talk a little bit about,

00:24:17.660 I guess maybe one way

00:24:18.720 to think about this

00:24:19.620 is that what first was subversion

00:24:23.200 on the part of the Jewish system

00:24:25.020 of values

00:24:25.580 almost became a general decadence

00:24:27.920 of Western culture as a whole,

00:24:30.560 and it spread, obviously,

00:24:32.180 far beyond the Jews. 0.84

00:24:33.420 But talk a little bit about this,

00:24:35.520 Jonathan,

00:24:36.040 about this original subversive activity

00:24:39.180 of ancient Jews,

00:24:41.020 and that spilling out

00:24:42.360 into all sorts of things,

00:24:43.740 which I'm sure Nietzsche

00:24:45.460 would associate

00:24:46.020 with egalitarianism,

00:24:47.260 with democracy,

00:24:49.040 with, you know,

00:24:51.000 the destruction

00:24:52.060 of the old ways of life, 0.53

00:24:54.540 and so on and so forth.

00:24:56.700 Yes, it's a sort of,

00:24:58.020 Christianity becomes 0.96

00:24:59.020 a generalized ethical Judaism

00:25:01.920 for Gentiles,

00:25:03.120 and is perceived as such

00:25:05.340 by Nietzsche.

00:25:05.640 I think it's his version

00:25:10.080 of the Passion,

00:25:11.460 which is a unique reading

00:25:13.000 in modern Western civics

00:25:15.640 and in modern Western literature.

00:25:17.700 If one thinks of the very notorious

00:25:20.560 and controversial film,

00:25:22.480 the Passion of the Christ

00:25:24.560 by Mel Gibson,

00:25:26.660 there's the famous moment

00:25:27.860 where the Jewish Pharisees 0.97

00:25:30.120 are screaming

00:25:30.840 on behalf of their mob

00:25:32.580 for the crucifixion 0.83

00:25:34.080 of this religious prostrate 0.97

00:25:35.760 to take place.

00:25:37.300 Somebody claims to be,

00:25:38.800 in some respects,

00:25:39.720 the king of the Jews,

00:25:41.080 and yet has nothing

00:25:42.760 but a discreet

00:25:43.740 and rather minor

00:25:44.980 religious following,

00:25:46.500 and it's a minor Jewish

00:25:47.740 fringe political

00:25:48.980 and millenarial leader,

00:25:51.000 on the one hand.

00:25:54.260 And on the other hand,

00:25:56.760 you have Pilate's

00:25:58.080 natural distaste

00:25:59.120 for these intra-Jewish disputes,

00:26:02.300 and you have this moment

00:26:03.320 where he washes his hands

00:26:04.960 in front of all of them

00:26:06.660 to tell them

00:26:07.800 there's a plague

00:26:08.440 on both your houses.

00:26:09.880 I refuse to take part

00:26:11.400 in any of this.

00:26:12.780 And in the end,

00:26:13.480 he just allows

00:26:14.280 the majority

00:26:15.020 of the Jewish subjects

00:26:17.220 of Rome's imperialism

00:26:18.820 in Palestine

00:26:19.400 to have their way

00:26:20.960 in relation to

00:26:22.500 the killing

00:26:23.300 of what he perceives

00:26:24.200 to be an relatively

00:26:24.960 innocent and harmless man.

00:26:27.000 But by virtue of, say,

00:26:28.800 washing his hands,

00:26:31.100 Nietzsche describes him

00:26:32.000 as the most moral character

00:26:33.340 in the whole story,

00:26:34.960 which, of course,

00:26:35.700 is a blasphemous usage

00:26:36.940 because to all Christians,

00:26:38.820 the most moral person

00:26:40.020 in the whole story

00:26:40.760 is Christ himself, of course.

00:26:42.400 And Pilate is condemned

00:26:44.080 because although he carries

00:26:45.720 out his necessary function,

00:26:47.520 he doesn't side

00:26:48.400 with the cause

00:26:49.120 which is morally better.

00:26:50.960 But his attitude

00:26:52.540 towards the thing

00:26:53.420 is one of divining shrug

00:26:56.180 and a divine indifference

00:26:58.300 which has about it

00:26:59.720 the welter

00:27:00.300 of an aristocratic purdha, 0.86

00:27:02.540 the welter

00:27:03.040 of an aristocratic disdain

00:27:04.880 for these popular

00:27:06.340 excitations and amusements.

00:27:08.420 And the morality

00:27:11.540 that was put forward

00:27:12.760 by ancient Hebraic faith

00:27:15.160 as an inversion

00:27:16.740 of classical

00:27:18.440 and aristocratic values

00:27:19.880 to be used

00:27:21.260 by a people

00:27:21.960 that wish to claim

00:27:22.760 its own destiny

00:27:23.700 is then wrenched

00:27:25.340 from their hands

00:27:26.440 and sublimated

00:27:27.980 into the big ethical structures

00:27:29.780 of the enormous religions

00:27:31.640 of the Middle East

00:27:32.640 which are for Gentile consumption,

00:27:35.580 principally Christianity

00:27:36.600 and Islam.

00:27:38.180 Nietzsche has very little

00:27:38.980 to say about Islam

00:27:40.360 and probably

00:27:42.320 taking from

00:27:43.880 certain accents

00:27:45.460 from Schopenhauer

00:27:46.480 would be more favourable

00:27:48.580 towards Islam 0.99

00:27:49.440 than towards Christianity

00:27:50.600 partly because of Islam 0.97

00:27:52.400 as patriarchy,

00:27:53.980 partly because of its attitude

00:27:54.980 towards women,

00:27:56.500 partly because Islam 1.00

00:27:57.500 is a third pagan 0.83

00:27:58.660 in terms of the Arab structures

00:28:00.600 and religious faith

00:28:02.280 that pre-existed

00:28:03.560 in the Middle East

00:28:04.640 unlike Christianity 1.00

00:28:06.000 which seeks to be

00:28:06.880 a complete repudiation

00:28:08.140 of the pagan past

00:28:09.280 ethically

00:28:10.160 and in other ways.

00:28:12.000 That's one of the

00:28:12.640 important elements here

00:28:13.820 that Nietzsche

00:28:14.340 just doesn't preach

00:28:15.260 a return to aristocratic radicalism.

00:28:17.720 He preaches a return

00:28:18.660 to the paganism

00:28:19.520 that preceded Christianity 0.99

00:28:21.100 for the whole of society.

00:28:23.400 Right.

00:28:23.660 Whether it's a literal worship

00:28:24.920 of ancient gods or not

00:28:26.160 doesn't concern him

00:28:27.280 but morally

00:28:28.380 he wishes to see

00:28:29.660 a return to paganism

00:28:31.060 a return to its offices

00:28:33.140 and to its sort of

00:28:34.940 hierarchy of deities

00:28:36.280 household and social

00:28:38.220 and he also wishes to see

00:28:40.580 that each layer

00:28:42.660 of the society

00:28:43.400 has a role

00:28:44.340 in such a pagan context

00:28:47.000 but its role is defined

00:28:48.620 from the top downwards

00:28:49.800 not from the bottom upwards.

00:28:52.760 Well let's focus just

00:28:54.380 a little more

00:28:55.460 on the Jewish question

00:28:56.640 and when I was

00:28:57.820 reading this

00:28:58.600 I again

00:28:59.920 I haven't read it

00:29:01.380 in a number of years

00:29:01.960 it was a great pleasure

00:29:02.860 to read it again

00:29:03.520 Nietzsche talks about

00:29:05.440 the Jews on the contrary 0.94

00:29:06.460 were the priestly nation

00:29:08.160 of ressentiment

00:29:10.140 par excellence

00:29:11.140 in whom there dwelt

00:29:12.740 an unequaled

00:29:13.640 popular moral genius

00:29:15.340 and do you think

00:29:17.240 that there is something

00:29:17.940 to be said

00:29:18.540 that a book like

00:29:20.420 Kevin MacDonald's

00:29:21.800 Culture of Critique

00:29:23.160 is in some ways

00:29:26.060 this Jewish revolution

00:29:28.200 in a nutshell

00:29:29.360 spoken of in terms

00:29:31.640 of intellectual history

00:29:33.220 in the 20th century

00:29:34.040 in the sense that

00:29:36.120 MacDonald talks about

00:29:38.780 Jews entering

00:29:40.400 American society

00:29:41.680 and they

00:29:43.100 under the guise

00:29:45.260 of universalism

00:29:46.720 or something that promotes

00:29:48.260 freedom and tolerance

00:29:50.180 they actually

00:29:51.600 bring in

00:29:52.860 a kind of

00:29:53.860 a poisonous doctrine

00:29:55.360 whether it be

00:29:56.120 cultural Marxism

00:29:58.040 pro-immigration

00:29:59.500 views

00:30:00.280 Freudianism

00:30:01.280 etc.

00:30:02.460 that is

00:30:03.400 later

00:30:04.200 taken up by

00:30:05.500 it's kind of

00:30:05.880 swallowed whole

00:30:06.960 by the Gentile

00:30:08.760 host community

00:30:09.520 and it leads

00:30:11.260 to their decadence

00:30:12.340 and maybe even

00:30:13.140 their death

00:30:13.820 do you think

00:30:15.220 that

00:30:15.480 obviously

00:30:17.040 many would

00:30:18.020 consider that

00:30:18.600 anti-Semitic

00:30:20.280 but

00:30:20.540 do you think

00:30:22.460 that there

00:30:22.840 is

00:30:23.480 that Nietzsche

00:30:24.040 sees

00:30:24.580 there is

00:30:25.240 something

00:30:25.580 peculiar

00:30:26.260 about the Jews

00:30:27.240 maybe it

00:30:27.920 maybe it's

00:30:29.120 related to

00:30:30.000 their ethnicity

00:30:30.520 maybe it's

00:30:31.020 related to

00:30:31.440 their monotheistic

00:30:32.200 faith

00:30:32.700 that leads

00:30:34.880 them to

00:30:36.120 seek to

00:30:37.740 revalue

00:30:38.600 the values

00:30:40.380 of their

00:30:40.840 neighbors

00:30:41.880 and their

00:30:42.220 host communities

00:30:42.900 do you think

00:30:43.440 Nietzsche saw

00:30:44.060 it like that

00:30:44.540 or is that

00:30:45.600 am I maybe

00:30:46.700 reading a little

00:30:47.840 too much into

00:30:48.540 it with

00:30:48.840 MacDonald

00:30:49.280 or is there

00:30:50.160 a basis

00:30:50.640 for this

00:30:51.200 in monotheism

00:30:52.360 their general

00:30:53.140 religion

00:30:53.560 yes I think

00:30:55.520 that's largely

00:30:56.180 true what

00:30:56.780 you said

00:30:57.440 whether

00:30:58.280 Nietzsche

00:30:58.660 would have

00:30:59.080 had he lived

00:31:00.320 subscribed

00:31:00.980 to the sort

00:31:01.720 of MacDonald

00:31:02.300 axioms

00:31:02.960 one can never

00:31:03.680 say

00:31:04.180 but he

00:31:05.040 certainly

00:31:05.420 believes

00:31:06.080 in this

00:31:06.700 monotheistic

00:31:07.780 identitarianism

00:31:10.360 this sort

00:31:10.860 of belief

00:31:11.380 that unique

00:31:12.280 people

00:31:12.800 is set

00:31:13.240 on one

00:31:13.640 side

00:31:14.140 to re-evaluate

00:31:15.500 the world

00:31:16.000 morally

00:31:16.480 but also

00:31:17.480 seize the

00:31:18.120 re-evaluation

00:31:18.920 and transvaluation

00:31:20.240 of morals

00:31:21.080 from its own

00:31:22.220 perspective

00:31:22.740 to be part

00:31:23.880 of a group

00:31:24.400 analogy

00:31:24.920 of hostility

00:31:26.040 and defense

00:31:26.820 towards others

00:31:28.080 so that ideas

00:31:29.480 tend to be

00:31:30.040 dual track

00:31:30.900 on the one

00:31:31.980 hand you have

00:31:32.520 them because

00:31:32.980 they are

00:31:33.480 your ideas

00:31:34.540 but on the

00:31:35.420 other hand

00:31:35.900 they serve

00:31:36.500 a destiny

00:31:36.960 greater than

00:31:37.640 themselves

00:31:38.260 and can

00:31:39.280 be

00:31:39.460 particularly

00:31:40.020 for a

00:31:40.380 community

00:31:40.700 that isn't

00:31:41.240 militarily

00:31:41.860 defended

00:31:42.400 and can

00:31:43.220 only defend

00:31:43.840 itself

00:31:44.380 in exile

00:31:45.180 through the

00:31:45.960 notion

00:31:46.280 of what

00:31:46.640 it says

00:31:47.420 and how

00:31:48.440 it can

00:31:48.700 get others

00:31:49.120 to behave

00:31:49.740 in relation

00:31:50.800 to what

00:31:51.180 it is

00:31:51.760 or is

00:31:52.580 felt to be

00:31:53.340 so I

00:31:54.800 think

00:31:55.020 that

00:31:55.280 the

00:31:56.240 uniqueness

00:31:58.720 of this

00:32:00.240 monotheistic

00:32:01.060 cult

00:32:01.720 and the

00:32:02.420 uniqueness

00:32:02.940 of

00:32:03.520 monotheism

00:32:05.060 as a

00:32:05.460 doctrine

00:32:05.800 totally

00:32:06.300 contrary

00:32:06.720 to the

00:32:07.080 plurality

00:32:07.680 of gods

00:32:08.180 and goddesses

00:32:09.000 that's part

00:32:09.880 and part

00:32:10.320 of the

00:32:10.640 pagan

00:32:11.060 pantheon

00:32:12.060 and world

00:32:12.500 view

00:32:12.940 in all

00:32:13.860 pre-existent

00:32:14.580 societies

00:32:15.500 is cardinal

00:32:18.460 for understanding

00:32:19.620 the way in

00:32:20.700 which modern

00:32:21.360 morality

00:32:21.840 works

00:32:22.600 particularly

00:32:23.480 in universal

00:32:24.520 faiths

00:32:25.300 unlike

00:32:25.660 judaism 0.99

00:32:26.220 which are

00:32:27.280 monotheistic

00:32:28.020 the difference

00:32:29.220 between

00:32:29.560 christianity

00:32:30.120 and islam

00:32:30.620 and judaism

00:32:31.200 of course

00:32:31.680 is that

00:32:32.540 jews don't 1.00

00:32:33.320 really seek

00:32:34.040 apart from

00:32:34.540 the odd

00:32:34.800 individual

00:32:35.420 converts

00:32:36.460 and even

00:32:37.240 that's

00:32:38.080 plausibly

00:32:38.720 deniable

00:32:39.440 and is on

00:32:39.940 the liberal

00:32:40.340 end of

00:32:40.780 their faith

00:32:41.500 whereas

00:32:42.720 judaism 0.99

00:32:43.360 oh sorry

00:32:44.060 judeo-christianity

00:32:45.240 and islam

00:32:45.960 rely on

00:32:46.920 conversion

00:32:47.560 as the

00:32:48.360 very sort

00:32:48.900 of blood

00:32:49.880 and bone

00:32:50.860 marrow

00:32:51.240 of the

00:32:51.700 dispensation

00:32:53.080 so this

00:32:54.420 conversion

00:32:55.160 of the

00:32:55.760 rest of

00:32:56.180 the world

00:32:56.640 or large

00:32:57.200 stretches

00:32:57.580 of it

00:32:58.060 certainly

00:32:58.740 of the

00:32:59.040 western

00:32:59.380 and near

00:32:59.840 eastern

00:33:00.120 worlds

00:33:00.820 to

00:33:01.720 enormous

00:33:02.400 stand-alone

00:33:03.340 monotheistic

00:33:04.140 structures

00:33:04.740 the morality

00:33:05.900 of which

00:33:06.500 favors

00:33:07.140 the morality

00:33:09.000 of suffering

00:33:09.780 the efficacy

00:33:10.840 of pity

00:33:11.580 the sanctimony

00:33:13.200 of in some

00:33:13.920 respects

00:33:14.460 the feminine

00:33:15.020 over the

00:33:15.540 masculine

00:33:15.980 the adoption

00:33:18.700 of pacifism

00:33:19.660 as a

00:33:20.480 moral standard

00:33:21.800 even though

00:33:22.640 pacifism itself

00:33:23.660 may be

00:33:24.240 eschewed as

00:33:25.200 an overall

00:33:26.560 morality

00:33:27.140 and the

00:33:28.420 belief that

00:33:28.960 the last

00:33:29.440 shall be

00:33:29.800 first

00:33:30.360 and the

00:33:31.240 first

00:33:31.520 shall be

00:33:31.880 last

00:33:32.480 in almost

00:33:33.540 all areas

00:33:34.500 whether before

00:33:35.540 or after

00:33:36.080 death

00:33:36.600 and however

00:33:37.380 otherwise

00:33:37.980 put

00:33:38.560 is part

00:33:40.100 and parcel

00:33:40.680 of these

00:33:41.840 faiths

00:33:42.820 and he

00:33:43.280 considers

00:33:43.720 this to

00:33:44.340 be

00:33:44.740 uniquely

00:33:45.740 jewish

00:33:46.260 in origin

00:33:46.820 the

00:33:47.800 notion of

00:33:49.300 anti-semitism

00:33:50.020 in relation

00:33:50.500 to nietzsche

00:33:51.020 which is

00:33:51.400 nearly always

00:33:52.160 non-existent

00:33:53.860 or extremely

00:33:54.500 dormant

00:33:55.200 in comparison

00:33:56.180 to much

00:33:56.760 more traditional

00:33:57.480 germanic

00:33:58.080 discourses

00:33:58.900 of the time

00:33:59.860 in which

00:34:00.160 he wrote

00:34:00.820 always surfaces

00:34:02.140 in relation

00:34:02.740 to the

00:34:03.100 genealogy

00:34:03.680 of morals

00:34:04.300 but it's

00:34:05.220 basically

00:34:05.600 because he

00:34:06.380 holds

00:34:07.000 this particular

00:34:08.020 group

00:34:08.420 responsible

00:34:09.000 for an

00:34:10.060 original

00:34:10.500 transvaluation

00:34:11.260 of values

00:34:12.140 but the

00:34:13.100 ultimate

00:34:13.520 recrudescence

00:34:14.700 of spiritual

00:34:15.480 Judaism

00:34:16.160 is in

00:34:17.380 Christianity

00:34:17.900 right

00:34:19.060 also

00:34:20.160 it's worth

00:34:21.240 pointing out

00:34:21.860 that nietzsche

00:34:22.480 was no

00:34:23.100 mere

00:34:23.560 might makes

00:34:24.640 right

00:34:25.080 philosopher

00:34:25.820 he wasn't

00:34:27.000 just going

00:34:28.340 to unequivocally

00:34:29.480 endorse

00:34:30.260 the vikings

00:34:31.720 as the

00:34:32.340 ultimate

00:34:33.180 expression

00:34:33.780 of values

00:34:35.600 because he

00:34:36.340 says in

00:34:36.680 other places

00:34:37.280 that yes

00:34:38.740 it's true

00:34:39.580 that the

00:34:40.740 Christian

00:34:41.220 revolution

00:34:41.940 the Judeo-Christian

00:34:42.960 revolution

00:34:43.660 knocked the

00:34:46.680 legs out

00:34:47.920 from under

00:34:48.520 aristocratic

00:34:49.160 values

00:34:49.740 at the same

00:34:50.840 time it

00:34:51.560 offered

00:34:51.920 western

00:34:52.400 man

00:34:53.120 death

00:34:53.700 and it

00:34:55.000 made him

00:34:55.880 it changed

00:34:57.800 him in a way

00:34:58.500 that in some

00:34:59.320 ways are

00:34:59.920 productive

00:35:00.480 it made him

00:35:01.560 it at least

00:35:03.120 gave him a

00:35:03.660 sense that he

00:35:04.100 should begin

00:35:05.020 examining himself

00:35:06.200 it gave him

00:35:06.800 a

00:35:07.000 conscience

00:35:08.560 a conscience

00:35:09.440 which of

00:35:10.140 course led

00:35:10.500 to a

00:35:10.860 whole host

00:35:12.080 of different

00:35:13.080 philosophies

00:35:13.680 and so forth

00:35:14.240 so in many

00:35:15.220 ways Nietzsche

00:35:15.780 is never

00:35:16.240 a philosopher

00:35:17.540 who is a

00:35:18.820 kind of let's

00:35:19.300 say a

00:35:19.540 reactionary or

00:35:20.500 someone who

00:35:20.880 thinks of

00:35:21.380 well you know

00:35:22.860 the Jews are 1.00

00:35:23.340 bad let's just 1.00

00:35:24.040 go back

00:35:24.540 I mean I

00:35:24.980 think Nietzsche

00:35:25.700 thinks that we

00:35:26.360 need to

00:35:26.900 in some ways

00:35:27.920 the whole

00:35:28.320 west and all

00:35:29.300 of Europe

00:35:29.940 needed to

00:35:30.660 have actually

00:35:31.440 experienced

00:35:32.440 the Judeo-Christian

00:35:34.460 revolution in

00:35:35.380 order to

00:35:35.820 move on to

00:35:36.820 something higher

00:35:37.620 do you agree

00:35:39.440 with my

00:35:39.900 kind of

00:35:40.600 dialectical

00:35:41.600 reading of

00:35:42.720 Nietzsche

00:35:42.980 yes

00:35:43.480 Nietzsche is

00:35:44.500 deeply

00:35:44.760 dialectical

00:35:45.600 and also

00:35:46.600 always draws

00:35:47.740 a positive

00:35:48.260 from a

00:35:48.820 negative

00:35:49.180 so that he

00:35:50.260 doesn't end

00:35:50.780 up with a

00:35:51.200 pessimistic

00:35:51.680 position

00:35:52.340 because Nietzsche

00:35:53.280 is contrary

00:35:54.240 to many people

00:35:54.940 who are

00:35:55.260 metapolitically

00:35:56.020 of the right

00:35:57.400 in so far

00:35:57.960 as Nietzsche

00:35:58.280 can be

00:35:58.620 described as

00:35:59.200 on it

00:35:59.780 Nietzsche

00:36:01.620 is non

00:36:02.140 pessimistic

00:36:03.040 and is

00:36:04.480 a fabulous

00:36:05.300 optimist

00:36:05.920 in his

00:36:06.300 way

00:36:06.740 even when

00:36:07.680 there seems

00:36:08.100 to be no

00:36:08.560 real grounds

00:36:09.300 for it

00:36:09.800 his bias

00:36:10.760 his optimism

00:36:11.580 and heroic

00:36:12.780 optimism

00:36:13.340 so he will

00:36:14.440 take from

00:36:15.060 Christianity

00:36:15.520 all sorts

00:36:16.240 of positive

00:36:16.720 things

00:36:17.480 particularly

00:36:18.300 the

00:36:18.820 depth

00:36:19.620 of its

00:36:21.180 psychologism

00:36:22.780 and this

00:36:23.620 is part

00:36:24.140 and parcel

00:36:24.520 of his

00:36:25.740 fascination

00:36:26.280 with the

00:36:26.560 figure of

00:36:26.960 Pascal

00:36:27.340 who is

00:36:28.800 the originator

00:36:29.700 of Jansenism

00:36:30.580 the small

00:36:31.840 p Protestant 0.94

00:36:32.580 discourse

00:36:33.260 within French

00:36:34.060 Catholicism

00:36:34.900 and

00:36:36.160 he was

00:36:37.120 one of

00:36:37.340 the most

00:36:37.740 extraordinary

00:36:39.120 for a

00:36:39.520 psychologist

00:36:40.000 that there

00:36:40.460 has been

00:36:40.840 in the

00:36:41.120 Western

00:36:41.400 historical

00:36:42.000 and philosophical

00:36:43.160 tradition

00:36:43.780 and yet

00:36:44.640 like a lot

00:36:45.080 of Puritans

00:36:45.940 of various

00:36:46.660 sorts

00:36:47.200 he tormented

00:36:48.260 himself

00:36:48.940 in relation

00:36:49.960 to his

00:36:50.380 faith

00:36:50.860 but he

00:36:51.560 achieved

00:36:52.120 greatness

00:36:52.740 out of

00:36:53.720 that sort

00:36:54.180 of aesthetic

00:36:54.700 struggle

00:36:55.320 and of course

00:36:56.500 Nietzschean

00:36:57.140 morality

00:36:57.660 is about

00:36:58.320 the struggle

00:36:58.800 that one

00:36:59.160 has with

00:36:59.600 oneself

00:37:00.220 in order

00:37:01.500 less to

00:37:02.500 be human

00:37:03.040 than to

00:37:03.520 possibly

00:37:04.160 rise above

00:37:04.920 that

00:37:05.420 so

00:37:06.700 morality

00:37:08.660 one is

00:37:09.240 one's own

00:37:09.720 anvil

00:37:10.200 and life

00:37:10.960 hammers down

00:37:11.760 upon it

00:37:12.340 in order to

00:37:13.660 raise a man

00:37:15.060 from what he

00:37:15.840 might have been

00:37:16.420 to what he

00:37:16.880 could be

00:37:17.520 so Nietzsche

00:37:18.500 will always

00:37:19.060 see in

00:37:20.220 almost everything

00:37:20.840 that occurs

00:37:21.640 a positive

00:37:22.880 or a positive

00:37:24.280 splinter

00:37:24.920 that might

00:37:25.860 fire off

00:37:26.580 to create

00:37:27.040 a fire

00:37:27.580 that can

00:37:28.380 warm the

00:37:28.800 hands of

00:37:29.260 the children

00:37:29.660 tomorrow

00:37:30.240 to bring

00:37:32.520 the conversation

00:37:33.240 to a close

00:37:33.900 I want to

00:37:34.460 ask you

00:37:35.180 two questions

00:37:36.140 that are

00:37:36.880 speculative

00:37:37.480 in nature

00:37:38.420 again I

00:37:40.300 focused on

00:37:41.040 book one

00:37:41.640 I think

00:37:42.080 that's really

00:37:42.500 the keystone

00:37:43.760 there are a lot

00:37:44.600 of certainly

00:37:45.420 treasures to be

00:37:46.140 found in

00:37:46.620 the second

00:37:47.860 and third

00:37:48.340 books of

00:37:49.140 genealogy

00:37:49.700 morals

00:37:50.000 but in

00:37:51.060 book one

00:37:51.660 he mentions

00:37:52.860 that everything

00:37:54.220 is visibly

00:37:55.520 becoming

00:37:56.200 judaized 0.99

00:37:57.180 christianized

00:37:58.060 mobized

00:37:59.100 and then

00:38:00.580 he goes on

00:38:01.140 to say

00:38:01.480 and this is

00:38:01.880 a very

00:38:02.320 ironic

00:38:02.900 passage

00:38:03.400 and I

00:38:03.980 think it's

00:38:04.360 worth

00:38:04.800 speculating

00:38:06.220 on this

00:38:06.920 passage

00:38:08.000 to this

00:38:09.200 end

00:38:09.540 does the

00:38:10.020 church

00:38:10.360 today

00:38:10.680 still have

00:38:11.260 any

00:38:11.540 necessary

00:38:12.320 role

00:38:12.800 to play

00:38:13.320 does it

00:38:13.920 still have

00:38:14.260 the right

00:38:14.620 to exist

00:38:15.300 or could

00:38:16.240 one do

00:38:16.760 without

00:38:17.160 it

00:38:17.440 it seems

00:38:18.600 to hinder

00:38:19.320 rather than

00:38:20.160 hasten

00:38:20.680 this progress

00:38:21.540 but perhaps

00:38:22.920 that is

00:38:23.220 its usefulness

00:38:24.080 and this

00:38:25.340 is obviously

00:38:25.840 Nietzschean

00:38:27.340 in the sense

00:38:27.800 that it's

00:38:28.280 very playful

00:38:29.240 and it looks

00:38:30.500 at an idea

00:38:31.240 from all these

00:38:31.920 different angles

00:38:32.600 but if I were

00:38:33.740 to sum up

00:38:34.340 what he said

00:38:35.200 in that passage

00:38:35.820 I would say

00:38:36.360 that we live

00:38:38.260 in a world

00:38:38.960 in which

00:38:39.600 judeo-christian

00:38:41.700 egalitarianism

00:38:42.960 dominates

00:38:44.000 even or

00:38:45.120 perhaps even

00:38:45.840 especially

00:38:46.460 amongst those

00:38:47.280 people who

00:38:48.240 have gone

00:38:48.980 beyond the

00:38:49.640 faith

00:38:49.940 and I'm

00:38:50.360 thinking of

00:38:50.840 just to choose

00:38:51.880 an example

00:38:52.460 for the sake

00:38:53.200 of usefulness

00:38:53.820 someone like

00:38:54.260 Christopher

00:38:54.680 Hitchens 0.98

00:38:55.100 who of course

00:38:56.140 thinks God

00:38:56.980 is the worst 0.94

00:38:57.480 thing that ever

00:38:57.880 happened

00:38:58.220 hates all

00:38:58.740 religion 0.72

00:38:59.060 so on and so

00:38:59.520 forth

00:38:59.720 but at the

00:39:01.180 end of the

00:39:01.660 day

00:39:02.020 fundamentally

00:39:03.040 reaffirms

00:39:04.300 universalism

00:39:05.780 egalitarianism

00:39:07.140 human rights

00:39:08.460 the last

00:39:10.080 shall be

00:39:10.340 first

00:39:10.780 first shall

00:39:11.280 be last

00:39:11.700 so on and

00:39:12.160 so forth

00:39:12.500 he is

00:39:13.000 Christopher

00:39:13.620 Hitchens 0.98

00:39:13.940 is deeply

00:39:14.840 judeo-christian

00:39:15.960 from a

00:39:17.760 Nietzschean

00:39:18.460 point of view

00:39:19.440 and I

00:39:20.080 think

00:39:20.220 Nietzsche

00:39:20.480 is kind

00:39:20.780 of asking

00:39:21.220 in some

00:39:21.560 ways

00:39:21.760 what usefulness

00:39:22.960 does the

00:39:23.300 church play

00:39:23.920 and you

00:39:25.160 know one

00:39:25.680 could say

00:39:26.140 that in

00:39:27.460 some way

00:39:27.800 as Nietzsche

00:39:28.320 does that the

00:39:28.840 church is

00:39:29.140 actually holding

00:39:29.980 back judeo-christianity

00:39:32.140 from dominating

00:39:33.020 and some of the

00:39:34.400 truly devotional

00:39:36.520 and ceremonial

00:39:37.760 aspects of say

00:39:38.640 catholicism or

00:39:39.600 episcopalianism

00:39:40.460 or some of the

00:39:41.520 quite serious

00:39:42.780 and almost

00:39:43.400 monkish

00:39:44.140 aspects of

00:39:45.380 the lutheran

00:39:47.120 faith

00:39:47.720 that these

00:39:48.760 are almost

00:39:49.220 reactionary

00:39:49.920 throwbacks

00:39:50.660 to an era

00:39:51.280 when one

00:39:52.780 you know

00:39:53.580 when one

00:39:55.380 lived in the

00:39:56.120 world like

00:39:56.920 the Borgia's

00:39:57.820 Rome or

00:39:58.660 something like

00:39:59.160 this or

00:39:59.800 one you

00:40:01.980 know went

00:40:02.300 to a

00:40:02.740 cathedral and

00:40:03.620 set about

00:40:04.100 you know

00:40:04.420 hours upon

00:40:05.000 hours of

00:40:05.440 study that

00:40:06.100 in some

00:40:06.860 ways those

00:40:07.880 these aspects

00:40:09.640 are holding

00:40:10.400 back the

00:40:11.280 ultimate

00:40:11.740 triumph of

00:40:12.920 the judeo-christian

00:40:13.800 message and

00:40:15.300 you know

00:40:15.760 Jonathan what I

00:40:16.600 want to ask

00:40:17.120 is maybe

00:40:17.620 if you can

00:40:18.100 take that

00:40:19.040 idea and

00:40:21.000 speculate about

00:40:21.780 the future

00:40:22.540 of christianity

00:40:24.020 and I'm

00:40:24.920 thinking here

00:40:25.460 I recently

00:40:26.120 saw a

00:40:26.960 youtube video

00:40:27.840 which I

00:40:28.800 could link

00:40:29.140 to in

00:40:29.840 the in

00:40:31.060 our on

00:40:32.000 the website

00:40:32.480 and it

00:40:33.700 was basically

00:40:34.220 this person

00:40:34.920 and this

00:40:35.240 youtube video

00:40:35.960 had millions

00:40:36.700 of hits

00:40:37.220 it became

00:40:37.580 probably went

00:40:38.160 viral it

00:40:38.700 became popular

00:40:39.340 really quickly

00:40:40.380 and what this

00:40:41.500 person was saying

00:40:42.260 is essentially

00:40:42.980 I hate

00:40:43.940 religion I 1.00

00:40:44.760 hate the 0.87

00:40:45.220 church but

00:40:46.000 I love

00:40:46.560 Jesus and

00:40:47.840 his message

00:40:48.340 was essentially

00:40:49.000 the church

00:40:49.500 is corrupt 0.99

00:40:50.300 it's

00:40:51.060 hierarchical

00:40:51.980 it has all

00:40:53.020 these funny

00:40:53.960 things from

00:40:54.580 the european

00:40:55.180 past you

00:40:56.060 know all

00:40:56.520 it's connected

00:40:57.140 with old

00:40:59.120 old costumes

00:41:00.160 and old

00:41:00.580 paintings and

00:41:01.200 so on and

00:41:01.400 so forth but

00:41:02.160 I truly love

00:41:02.980 the message

00:41:03.400 of jesus

00:41:04.100 which of

00:41:04.820 course is

00:41:05.480 the leftist

00:41:06.780 message that

00:41:07.740 everyone seems

00:41:09.060 to agree with

00:41:09.760 which is you

00:41:10.200 know we

00:41:10.740 should tolerate

00:41:11.340 everyone everyone's

00:41:12.380 wonderful we're

00:41:13.080 all the same and

00:41:13.860 interchangeable so

00:41:14.640 and so forth and

00:41:16.080 in many ways when

00:41:17.200 I looked at this I

00:41:18.400 thought it was kind

00:41:18.900 of tragic in a

00:41:19.860 way in the sense

00:41:20.800 that he this

00:41:22.820 person is deeply

00:41:23.980 christian yet

00:41:25.000 he's imagining a

00:41:27.180 world perhaps

00:41:28.220 prophesying a

00:41:29.180 world where

00:41:30.020 there's really no

00:41:30.800 need for any kind

00:41:31.860 of christian church

00:41:32.880 or structure in

00:41:34.500 this way so

00:41:35.720 jonathan taking

00:41:37.000 all these things

00:41:37.720 that I've just

00:41:38.800 mentioned what

00:41:40.040 do you speculate

00:41:40.660 on the future of

00:41:42.240 christianity or

00:41:43.340 or does it

00:41:44.100 have a future

00:41:44.840 yes I think it

00:41:47.320 does have a

00:41:47.800 future it's

00:41:49.460 probably along

00:41:50.740 slightly different

00:41:51.360 lines for those

00:41:52.320 that hitchens and

00:41:53.680 this viral youtube

00:41:56.140 person profess and

00:41:58.360 it's history over

00:41:59.280 the last century has

00:42:01.020 been the gradual

00:42:02.020 deflation in the

00:42:03.940 importance of

00:42:04.700 christian structures

00:42:05.640 the catholic church

00:42:08.020 less so than some

00:42:08.940 of the others the

00:42:09.760 orthodox church is

00:42:10.780 slightly less so than

00:42:12.500 their protestant

00:42:13.120 equivalents but

00:42:14.300 certainly you've seen

00:42:15.000 a collapse in the

00:42:16.740 importance socially

00:42:17.840 that protestantism

00:42:18.800 had maybe outside the

00:42:20.040 united states but

00:42:21.400 you have seen a

00:42:22.180 collapse in the

00:42:24.060 importance of the

00:42:24.960 church of england in

00:42:25.760 the society like

00:42:26.740 britain or england

00:42:27.940 um and yet christian

00:42:30.360 values and post

00:42:31.780 christian values are

00:42:33.440 more entrenched than

00:42:34.240 ever before right

00:42:35.540 um iris murdoch the

00:42:37.000 english novelist was

00:42:38.140 a quaker which is a

00:42:39.720 particular type of

00:42:40.820 edge edgy sort of

00:42:43.000 christian adherence and

00:42:45.520 she once said that she

00:42:46.560 would like to forgo the

00:42:47.740 religious trappings of 0.95

00:42:48.800 christianity and keep

00:42:50.280 its ethics and

00:42:51.740 certainly its ethics are

00:42:53.380 as strong now as they

00:42:55.400 ever have been and the

00:42:57.140 conservatism that was

00:42:58.560 part of those ethics has

00:43:00.320 largely been a feud or

00:43:02.140 done away with so you

00:43:03.860 now have a large secular

00:43:05.380 liberal humanism

00:43:06.560 seizing upon christian

00:43:08.140 ethics without the 0.61

00:43:09.800 christian faith and

00:43:11.380 yet you still have the

00:43:12.400 trappings of the

00:43:13.080 christian faith coexisting

00:43:14.900 with this large spread

00:43:16.980 and widespread

00:43:17.620 secularization i think

00:43:20.460 that christianity has a

00:43:22.020 long way to go

00:43:23.040 particularly in the third

00:43:24.460 world and the second

00:43:26.120 world and the fourth

00:43:27.100 world and however one

00:43:29.140 chooses to divide those

00:43:30.400 up and i believe that

00:43:32.800 christianity still will

00:43:34.740 be the dominant religion

00:43:35.840 not islam a hundred to 0.88

00:43:37.760 two hundred years from

00:43:38.800 now because it has so

00:43:40.340 much fodder so much to

00:43:42.960 feed on in the third

00:43:44.040 world because there is it

00:43:46.580 is a religion for all who

00:43:48.160 suffer it is a religion

00:43:49.880 who all for all who know

00:43:51.640 outsider status no matter

00:43:53.560 however defined it is a

00:43:55.700 religion for all those who

00:43:56.900 feel they're not in the

00:43:57.860 inner circle it's a religion

00:44:00.060 for all those who are not

00:44:01.300 necessarily at the top or

00:44:03.160 would conceive themselves

00:44:04.260 to be near the top of

00:44:06.160 their own group or their

00:44:07.220 own society or have a

00:44:09.060 reason for looking at

00:44:10.060 those things in a way

00:44:11.820 which um would lead them

00:44:14.160 not to identify with the

00:44:15.280 bottom even if they

00:44:16.460 weren't technically at the

00:44:17.460 top and it in some ways

00:44:21.140 spreads that part of islam 1.00

00:44:23.640 which is itself christian that

00:44:26.260 preaches love peace and

00:44:27.900 tolerance which nestles up

00:44:29.940 uneasily with the

00:44:31.420 militarized masculine heroic

00:44:33.740 more pagan elements that

00:44:35.260 coexist in islam at this

00:44:37.280 particular time but islam

00:44:39.500 without the hardism and

00:44:40.980 without sadrism and without

00:44:43.120 uh that which springs forth

00:44:46.280 into sort of terrorist

00:44:47.680 outrages perceived from a

00:44:49.080 western point of view would be

00:44:50.760 very close to christianity

00:44:52.280 so if the islam will be very

00:44:54.180 close ethically uh to

00:44:56.760 christianity indeed would be an 0.97

00:44:58.420 extension of the same thing by

00:44:59.900 other means essentially and

00:45:01.860 it's a religiosity of

00:45:03.400 brotherhood and love and uh

00:45:06.160 without strict adherence to

00:45:08.300 form as well because you make

00:45:10.480 up the form as you go along

00:45:12.140 indeed christianity may have a

00:45:13.640 future that's rather like islam 1.00

00:45:15.220 because there is no islamic pope

00:45:17.120 there is no although there's mecca

00:45:19.040 and medina and there's a center to

00:45:20.560 turn to

00:45:21.300 there's no clarity for the whole

00:45:24.180 of islam there's just localized

00:45:26.380 priesthoods and semi-priesthoods and

00:45:30.160 holy men who go about preaching

00:45:31.780 who know something about what

00:45:33.300 they're talking about

00:45:34.360 sheikhs those who are moved upon to 0.99

00:45:36.940 speak so islam's always had this

00:45:39.200 devolved and rather libertarian

00:45:41.020 structure it's a very authoritarian

00:45:43.140 religion but it's very non-authoritarian

00:45:45.960 in the way in which it operates any

00:45:48.220 house can be turned into a mosque 0.74

00:45:49.860 just by doing a few simple things

00:45:52.060 and putting down a few carpets and

00:45:54.180 segregating the believers when they 1.00

00:45:56.220 pray along gender lines and so on

00:45:58.260 it's very homely in that sense and

00:46:01.980 many of the values of christianity can

00:46:04.160 and are being spread by islam 1.00

00:46:05.840 paradoxically and vice versa if you

00:46:10.500 see these things on a universal level

00:46:12.360 rather than on a parochial one and so

00:46:15.920 i think christianity's got quite a

00:46:17.300 lively future but it's not

00:46:19.380 necessarily in the west where it's

00:46:21.760 in the west it is being overtaken by

00:46:24.440 the secular humanism that's eating it

00:46:26.180 alive and yet in terms of values to

00:46:28.840 which it is given rise

00:46:30.140 i think that nietzsche was not entirely

00:46:34.900 right about the fact that if

00:46:36.200 christianity disappears in its 0.54

00:46:38.380 observational form and in its churches

00:46:42.220 and its structures and its civic

00:46:44.520 adornments that it can eat that it's

00:46:46.920 really achieving a triumph as another

00:46:49.180 remove

00:46:49.860 theoretically you could say that but i

00:46:53.360 think that once it goes it goes and

00:46:55.760 the number of people who live in the

00:46:57.140 west now without any fixed adherence to

00:47:00.000 christianity at all is quite startling 0.98

00:47:02.980 from a christian point of view you also

00:47:05.700 have the paradox of mass immigration into

00:47:07.800 the western world

00:47:08.760 that consists of people from much more

00:47:10.820 conservative and religious societies

00:47:12.600 and you have the replenishing of

00:47:14.920 christianity in its observating manner

00:47:17.720 by many of these immigrants who wish

00:47:19.800 to cling to

00:47:20.720 the prior adherence of faith partly in

00:47:24.020 relation to the alienation they feel

00:47:25.680 from societies which are not their own

00:47:27.920 christianity is a great source of comfort

00:47:29.900 to many immigrants in the west and

00:47:32.820 that's why many of them adopt a quite

00:47:35.400 conservative type of christianity

00:47:37.940 either catholic or evangelical

00:47:40.900 so i feel that christianity has still

00:47:44.480 got quite a lot of kick in it but it

00:47:46.580 will be third world immigration into 0.96

00:47:48.940 western societies it will be the 0.98

00:47:51.100 extension of christianity's strength in

00:47:53.740 the outside the west and it will be the

00:47:56.780 growing

00:47:57.400 totalizing of liberal humanist values

00:48:02.640 within the west as a surrogate for

00:48:06.440 christian norms at least in the area of

00:48:08.700 ethics so i think these three areas

00:48:11.120 are the areas where the egalitarian

00:48:13.900 impulses of christianity will continue

00:48:15.940 to grow

00:48:16.600 even as the religion faces near collapse

00:48:19.380 in countries like norway and sweden and

00:48:22.080 finland and england

00:48:23.400 in closing let me ask you about the

00:48:26.500 possibilities of something one might call

00:48:29.940 anti-christianity and and that is the the

00:48:32.560 popular the possibility for a revival of

00:48:35.460 aristocratic ideals which nietzsche admired in

00:48:39.360 the europe that he envisioned and let me read

00:48:43.940 uh just one more passage and that is uh with the french

00:48:47.920 revolution judea once again triumphed over the

00:48:51.820 classical ideal in this time in an even more

00:48:55.060 profound and decisive sense uh and then he goes on and he

00:49:00.060 talks about again dialectically he talks about how

00:49:02.840 this triumph of the french revolution kind of turned into its

00:49:06.460 opposite and did it rather quickly uh like a like a last signpost to the

00:49:11.880 other path napoleon appeared the most isolated and late born man there has

00:49:17.880 ever been and in him the problem of the noble ideal as such made flesh one

00:49:24.640 might well ponder what kind of problem it is

00:49:27.400 napoleon the synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman

00:49:31.940 uh so obviously it's a a mesmerizing passage uh it's one that i i i find

00:49:37.360 inspiring um what do you think jonathan just

00:49:40.480 to um uh let's say you you have the uh you you you you you're now allowed to let

00:49:46.500 your hair down a little bit uh what do you think of the

00:49:50.240 possibilities of uh this new world historical

00:49:55.160 antichrist like uh like nietzsche viewed napoleon as

00:49:59.980 as as arising um in the in the ruins of the old christian world

00:50:04.560 yes so there's a similar spirit at the end of spengler's the decline of the west

00:50:10.560 when in 1918 he preaches the fact that there will be a new caesarism abroad

00:50:15.620 in europe uh something that was sort of well around the way and discernible

00:50:20.360 at the margins even when he was speaking

00:50:23.220 uh at that time it's difficult to see it now at the moment but whenever chaos and radical

00:50:32.020 revolutionary change comes abroad these ideas inevitably return um the sort of uh the left

00:50:41.200 wing version of dictatorial tyrannists the red czars that were thrown up by certain social and

00:50:47.980 political revolutions on the european continent themselves increasingly came to resemble often in

00:50:54.260 a sort of um macabrely comic way the aristocratic noblesse of the past and it was even more

00:51:02.680 pronounced in authoritarian structures which were on the other side yet as of this moment in time

00:51:08.180 it's difficult to see where the napoleons of this world will come from yet napoleon of course

00:51:14.160 conquered most of europe and on the flags of his armies uh was the slogan liberty equality fraternity

00:51:20.420 and yet conquest is what was happening and uh they were flying a revolutionary flag the tricolor

00:51:27.660 uh tricolor which consists of three colors the blue and the red of paris and the white of versailles

00:51:34.280 the red and the blue having captured the old monarchical dispensation at versailles when the monarch

00:51:40.780 was forcibly dragged back from versailles to the capital paris where traditionally the bourbons had 1.00

00:51:46.480 never felt particularly comfortable um i don't know if you've ever seen gonze's enormous five to

00:51:52.740 seven hour film napoleon which is a silent film from the 1920s no i haven't where napoleon is depicted

00:51:59.540 as a sort of superman and the film's been restored several times and it was

00:52:05.760 the concept was an admirer of mussolini and there's a strong element of um

00:52:13.060 restorationist imperial aristocracy about the nature of the film and it's quite funny in some ways

00:52:21.400 because napoleon's depicted as very thin and aesthetic he's not the sort of portly dictator

00:52:26.900 that uh the later portraits by david and that sort of thing and that napoleon's most remembered in

00:52:33.720 in image but napoleons will always emerge in a period of radical and absolute change

00:52:41.060 and that can only occur if there's socioeconomic breakdown uh of a sort threatened by the implosion

00:52:48.020 of the european union over its economic difficulties um however i i personally think the very fact that

00:52:54.940 nietzsche remains so important intellectually and theoretically is the harbinger of the fact

00:53:02.220 that such ideas are not dead um the fact that if you go into the philosophy dissection of any

00:53:08.420 bookshop in the western world nietzsche will be there and all sorts of other philosophers will not

00:53:14.180 be there indeed even marx will not be there his children may be there uh theoretically speaking but

00:53:20.820 he may not be and the very fact that the genealogy morals and the similar texts are widely on sale

00:53:27.140 you don't have to go very far to get them if you're interested um indicates to me that there's part of the

00:53:35.100 spectrum part of the human brain scan is still uh out there and still open towards these sorts of

00:53:43.780 opinions opinions which are elitist and which are inegalitarian and which uh have a streak of hubris

00:53:51.680 about them in the ancient sense and uh aristo-oriented and are morally aristocratic without necessarily

00:53:59.240 being sociologically so and the very fact that these ideas are still there despite the fact that the

00:54:05.680 valency is against them on every other respect in every other respect they're crowded from the spectrum

00:54:11.480 or shouted down and yet nietzsche's complicated enough virile enough uh epigrammatic enough

00:54:20.320 not really to have escaped the census mark and to still be there um arguing for views which at one

00:54:30.040 level of reckoning are two thousand years old jonathan i think we just scratched the surface

00:54:37.360 of the genealogy of morals and he's just not in general but thank you for being with us once again

00:54:42.920 on vancom thanks for having me

00:54:45.920 you

00:55:07.360 you

00:55:16.920 you

00:55:18.920 you

00:55:20.920 you

00:55:22.920 you

RadixJournal - January 08, 2018

Bowden! - 8 - On the Genealogy of Morals

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