Monday, February 22, 2010

Walter Kaufmann -- Nietzsche's Repudiation of Christ

Excerpt --
Walter Kaufmann's Nietzsche
Chapter 12 Nietzsche's Repudiation of Christ, pg. 288 
In a now famous conversation, Goethe retorted: "I pagan? Well, after all I let Gretchen be executed and Ottilie [in the Elective Affinities] starve to death; don't people find that Christan enough?  What do they want that would be more Christian?"  The sarcasm of this brief rebuttal crystallizes--more clearly than Nietzsche's excessive polemics--the contrast between the original "glad tidings" (evangel) and the resentful bourgeois morality which purports to be Christian even while it insists on throwing the first stone.  This distinction must, of course, be kept in mind if one wants to understand Nietzsche's repudiation of Christ.  His position cannot be understood--any more than can Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom--unless one distinguishes between contemporary Christianity and the original gospel: and Nietzsche further differentiates between Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of the creeds.  Discrimination between these conceptions makes possible a clear and systematic exposition of Nietzsche's views.   And such an account cannot be eschewed here: for Nietzsche's position is  so intimately related to the rest of his thought that his philosophy cannot be understood fully apart from it.
 

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