I flipped through The Gay Science the other day and came across a few aphorisms, more or less at random; and I found myself fascinated with trying to explain them to someone, because they were all so…crazy. It’s aphorisms #134, #140, and #141; and all of them apply kind of vaguely racist perspectives to the critique of God that Nietzsche develops in this book. The core idea of the book—that God is dead and we have killed him—is that God stopped existing because we stopped believing in Him; and if our lack of belief was enough to kill God (deicide), then that means the converse is true, that our belief is what created God. God was invented by human will—and human will is not really such a great thing. So Nietzsche probes the concept of God for traces of human weakness, and builds his critique of God from that.
In these three short aphorisms, titled Pessimists as Victims (speculating about why Buddhism spread so successfully); Too Jewish, and Too Oriental, Nietzsche mercilessly critiques mankind, as a means of critiquing God. Since God is a human invention, and Nietzsche wants to critique God more sharply than anyone has ever done, it follows that he has to critique mankind as sharply as possible. He does this for what, in his view, is a good aim—freeing mankind from the spell that God and religion have had over it for thousands of years. He critiques mankind because he loves us, and wants better for us (kind of sounds like Jesus actually). In these aphorisms he really leans into his own unique perspective, revealing his own prejudices and biases—so this critique of God (and of the different aspects of mankind that have produced God), ends up also being a self-critique. He presents his own worst nature, as a way of fully engaging with the worst nature of mankind that has produced God—so that it may be understand and overcome. (Either that, or he was just fucking around).
Here are the aphorisms:
Aphorism 134—Pessimists as Victims. “When a profound dislike of existence gets the upper hand, the after-effect of a great error in diet of which a people has been long guilty comes to light. The spread of Buddhism (not its origin) is thus to a considerable extent dependent on the excessive and almost exclusive reliance of the Indians on rice which led to a general lack of vigor…”
-This is absolute classic Nietzsche— making an insane generalization, that Buddhism spread widely because Indians ate a lot of rice and got tired so they made a religion about being tired—but is sure to add in parentheses (this is not the origin of Buddhism just why it spread) so it’s reasonable. You could almost call this his special dialectic—couching an insane thing in rational language. It might seem absurd, but world history since he wrote has proven his perspective, his dialectic, correct, and the most reliable way of producing insight into the world, understanding it, and having fun with it. But despite the absurd dialectic he uses, he is aiming for a world-changing effect—he wants to help clear God away, so that mankind can finally realize its full potential, without the world-historical burden of God clouding the way.
Aphorism 140—Too Jewish. “If God had wanted to become an object of love, he should have given up judging and justice first of all: - a judge, and even a gracious judge, is no object of love. The founder of Christianity was not refined enough in his feelings at this point—being a Jew.”
-In this aphorism Nietzsche critiques God as failing to embody love—we grow up learning that God loves us, and we need to love God; that God exists primarily as an object of love. Yet it doesn’t work—we don’t feel it, and when we love God, nothing happens, so eventually most people stop doing it. Why has it failed? The answer is pretty obvious—God wants to be an object of love, but He is first and foremost our judge. Why would you love something/someone who exists almost solely to judge you? All God does it watch you and judge you—and we’re supposed to love this? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.
-So far, this aphorism is perfectly reasonable, insightful, and full of common sense. But, as its title “Too Jewish” suggests…it won’t be that neat and easy. And it ends by tying all this—the weakness of the Christian God being based in the belief that people would love their judge—on Jesus, the founding god of Christianity, being a Jew. Nietzsche says that Jesus, being a Jew, was not refined enough in his feelings on this point—meaning that Jews somehow think that people will love their judges, their superiors; that you can control society and not have it lead to any backlash; that this is their blindspot.
-So as we can see, this aphorism, that starts so solidly and with such refreshing common sense…ends up with some stinging antisemitism. Ending a solid insight with a little dose of evil…nothing more Nietzsche than that.
Aphorism 141—Too Oriental. “What? A God who loves men, provided they believe in him and who hurls frightful glances and threatenings at him who does not believe in this love! What? A conditioned love as the feeling of an almighty God! A love which has not even become master of the sentiment of honour and of the irritable desire for vengeance! How Oriental is all that!”
-This aphorism gets at another glaring, obvious weakness of the Christian idea of God—that you have to love God, or else God will get mad and send you to Hell for an eternity of damnation. God should be above all that bullshit—it seems very cheap, and insecure; that almighty God has such petty conditions on His love, which is supposed to be the most valuable, expansive, grand thing in the universe—it’s absurd. For some reason, Nietzsche calls this “Oriental”—a term which in itself is “offensive” now, and not really used. I don’t even really know how or why he would connect this critique of God he develops here to that…but there you go.
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I love these nibbles of reflection.
Assumptions should constantly be challenged to check for where revision might be needed. I've Kaufmann’s Nietzche, who assures that Nietzche was in no way an antisemite. Princeton University has published Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem, which I've not read. It argues that Nietzsche’s “anti-anti-Semitism” more likely stemmed from Nietzsche’s aversion to German nationalism than the anti-Jewish prejudices of the day. Could it be that Nietzsche harboured anti-Jewish sentiment but loathed German nationalism even more? This wouldn't be too surprising, but I'd have to read that book to see how well that point is argued.
If I’m correct, Nietzsche regards Buddhism as a nihilistic and decadent religion. The remark about rice-dependent Indians was probably his way of mocking how Buddha wouldn’t suffer any scarcity of food, but what did the practitioners of Buddhism achieve with all their asceticism, nothing but a denial of life (profound dislike of existence)?
About the Too Oriental aphorism, is Nietzsche contrasting the Old with the New Testament? Is the New Testament too oriental in its metaphysics by being too concerned with correct inward motivations and inclinations, like how modern-day Bible teachers emphasise that one must have the right emotional attitude to God? The Old Testament is more blunt with its honour codes, vindictiveness and punishment, and, therefore, more “Western” in its emphasis on human dealings and practice. It could be a snarky remark that the Christian religion simply evolved and became more mystical, hence the term oriental.