Before he went on his shooting rampage Steven Kazmierczak sent a package to his girlfriend. In the package was: a textbook for her class about serial killers; a package with a gun holster and bullets; a new cell phone that she had told him she wanted; about $100 in cash.; and a copy of Friedrich Nietzsche's book "The Antichrist."
I think that, if one were immersed in and bought into the nihilism and atheism of Nietzsche, it could support the kind of thing Kazmierczak did, especially if Nietzsche were read selectively.
Let us assume Kazmierczak read "The Antichrist." Look at how it begins.
"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... "
After this follows an extended Nietzsche-style diatribe on the evils of Judeo-Christian religion.
When Nietzsche's madman cried out that God is dead, it's the Judeo-Christian concept he had in mind. The madman was a prophet, and the world was not yet ready for him. Theoretical God-deniers did not understand the moral implications of the death of God; viz., that the metaphysical foundation for their values had been taken from underneath them, and they were now cast adrift to make their own way. Personally, I feel that, were I an atheist, I would find Nietzsche's logic persuasive.
If one reads The Antichrist will one become a killer? No, that doesn't follow. Could a Nietzschean philosophy support what happened at NIU a few days ago? I think so. Because Jesus' ideas of loving one's enemies are seen as "weak," "sick," and "idiotic." (Nietzsche at times seems to admire Christ, separating this from his hatred towards "Christians.") Judeo-Christian ideas of "good" are to be rejected as weak. On Nietzsche's atheism (see above) "good" = "power." But of course, if there is no God.
NOTE: A scholar named Zbigniew Kazmierczak is a member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society. Is there any connection here? (See also here.)
1 comments:
'Because Jesus' ideas of loving one's enemies are seen as "weak," "sick," and "idiotic."'
Just because Nietzsche rejected Jesus' way of loving doesn't mean he rejected love. Nietzsche seemed to have a higher value for his enemies than any Christian I know. N had a lot of respect for his enemies. In fact, the ones he is the most virulent against are the ones he was devoted to in the past (Wagner, Schopenhauer, and I suspect also the Christian God).
Nietzsche would never have supported a shooting because he did not believe in permanently destroying one's enemies, but in a constant perpetuation of struggle between enemies so that each party could grow stronger from their competition. He may have severely goaded Christians but I believe it was an attempt to provoke them and hopefully stir them to action.
He refers to this as the spiritualization of enmity in Twilight of the Idols. This sort of attitude can also be seen in his criticism of the Socratic dialectic in Twilight.
I believe that Nietzsche was a very violent philosopher/writer but I think he believed in intellectual and spiritual violence all towards the mutual growth of the two parties.
N's writing can be interpreted in so many different ways, it was meant to be like this. N's own philosophy would say that the killer brought a will to "The Antichrist" that interpreted it as "murder the weak."
N hated pity, not love. There's a lot in Zarathustra, Book 3 about love by the way.
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