Misplaced Pages

#783216

118-580: (Redirected from Blond Beast ) The Blond Beast or The Blonde Beast may refer to: A metaphor used in On the Genealogy of Morality by Friedrich Nietzsche A nickname for Reinhard Heydrich , a German Nazi official Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title The blond beast . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

236-404: A Berakah is said also at evil tidings. Hence, although the experience of God is like none other, the occasions for experiencing Him, for having a consciousness of Him, are manifold, even if we consider only those that call for Berakot. Whereas Jewish philosophers often debate whether God is immanent or transcendent , and whether people have free will or their lives are determined, halakha

354-435: A "morality of customs" to establish itself, and through it man becomes calculable, regular, and predictable. Its "ripest fruit" is 'the sovereign individual', a human being whose 'social responsibility' has become flesh and blood, an individual with such hard-won mastery over himself that he is capable of determining and guaranteeing his own future actions. Such an individual has a free will : by virtue of his self-mastery he has

472-615: A centralized authority that would dictate an exact religious dogma. Because of this, many different variations on the basic beliefs are considered within the scope of Judaism. Even so, all Jewish religious movements are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on the principles of the Hebrew Bible or various commentaries such as the Talmud and Midrash . Judaism also universally recognizes the Biblical Covenant between God and

590-423: A community's security and self-confidence increases, the harm of one individual's transgressions decreases correspondingly, and the continuance of the more harmonious state requires that excessively violent responses be controlled and regulated. The nature of such a community's penal law will involve a compromise between this requirement and the angry forces seeking blood and violence. Its principal way of achieving it

708-606: A deep and venomous hatred for the powerful. Thus originates what Nietzsche calls the "slave revolt in morality", which, according to him, begins with Judaism (§7), for it is the bridge that led to the slave revolt, via Christian morality, of the alienated, oppressed masses of the Roman Empire (a dominant theme in The Antichrist , written the following year). To the noble life, justice is immediate, real, and good, necessarily requiring enemies. To slave morality, justice

826-437: A firm form was not only instituted by an act of violence but carried to its conclusion by nothing but acts of violence"(§17). Thus the human animal became subjected , enclosed within a system of externally imposed functions and purposes, and its outward-pressing drives and impulses were turned inward: "the instinct for freedom pushed back and incarcerated within and finally able to discharge and vent itself only on itself".(§16) It

944-619: A general term that refers to any Jewish text that expands or elaborates on the original Five Books of Moses . Representing the core of the Jewish spiritual and religious tradition, the Torah is a term and a set of teachings that are explicitly self-positioned as encompassing at least seventy, and potentially infinite, facets and interpretations. Judaism's texts, traditions, and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam . Hebraism , like Hellenism , played

1062-464: A means of experiencing God". Reflecting on the contribution of the Amoraim and Tanaim to contemporary Judaism, Professor Jacob Neusner observed: The rabbi's logical and rational inquiry is not mere logic-chopping. It is a most serious and substantive effort to locate in trivialities the fundamental principles of the revealed will of God to guide and sanctify the most specific and concrete actions in

1180-528: A means to learn the contents of God's revelation, but an end in itself. According to the Talmud: These are the things for which a person enjoys the dividends in this world while the principal remains for the person to enjoy in the world to come; they are: honoring parents, loving deeds of kindness, and making peace between one person and another. But the study of the Torah is equal to them all. (Talmud Shabbat 127a). In Judaism, "the study of Torah can be

1298-549: A number of causes for widespread physiological inhibition: (i) the crossing of races; (ii) emigration of a race to an unsuitable environment (e.g. the Indians to India ); (iii) the exhaustion of a race (e.g. Parisian pessimism from 1850); (iv) bad diet (e.g. vegetarianism ); (v) diseases of various kinds, including malaria and syphilis (e.g. German depression after the Thirty Years' War ) (§17). The ascetic priest has

SECTION 10

#1732773083784

1416-523: A parallel oral tradition, illustrating the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the details from other, i.e., oral, sources. Halakha , the rabbinic Jewish way of life, then, is based on a combined reading of the Torah, and the oral tradition—the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries. The halakha has developed slowly, through a precedent-based system. The literature of questions to rabbis, and their considered answers,

1534-523: A permanent king, and Samuel appointed Saul the king. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to appoint David in his stead. Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the Law, called the Oral Torah or "Oral Law," were originally unwritten traditions based on the Law given to Moses at Sinai. However, as the persecutions of

1652-555: A positive commandment is to be fulfilled: The ordinary, familiar, everyday things and occurrences we have, constitute occasions for the experience of God. Such things as one's daily sustenance, the very day itself, are felt as manifestations of God's loving-kindness, calling for the Berakhot . Kedushah , holiness, which is nothing else than the imitation of God, is concerned with daily conduct, with being gracious and merciful, with keeping oneself from defilement by idolatry, adultery, and

1770-406: A range of strategies for anesthetizing the continuous, low-level pain of the weak. Four of these are innocent in the sense that they do the patient no further harm: (1) a general deadening of the feeling of life; (2) mechanical activity; (3) "small joys", especially love of one's neighbour; (4) the awakening of the communal feeling of power. He further has a number of strategies which are guilty in

1888-701: A reward for his act of faith in one God, he was promised that Isaac , his second son, would inherit the Land of Israel (then called Canaan ). Later, the descendants of Isaac's son Jacob were enslaved in Egypt , and God commanded Moses to lead the Exodus from Egypt. The Law was given at Sinai —the Torah , or five books of Moses. These books, together with the Nevi'im and Ketuvim , are known as Torah Shebikhtav , as opposed to

2006-530: A seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity . Within Judaism, there are a variety of religious movements , most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism , which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. Historically, all or part of this assertion

2124-399: A work of sustained brilliance and power as well as his masterpiece. Since its publication, it has influenced many authors and philosophers. Nietzsche's treatise outlines his thoughts "on the origin of our moral prejudices" previously given brief expression in his Human, All Too Human (1878) and Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Nietzsche attributes the desire to publish his "hypotheses" on

2242-483: Is Maimonides ' thirteen principles of faith , developed in the 12th century. According to Maimonides, any Jew who rejects even one of these principles would be considered an apostate and a heretic. Jewish scholars have held points of view diverging in various ways from Maimonides' principles. Thus, within Reform Judaism only the first five principles are endorsed. In Maimonides' time, his list of tenets

2360-454: Is a deferred event, ultimately taking the form of an imagined revenge that will result in everlasting life for the weak and punishment for the strong. Slave morality grows out of impotence, world-weariness, indignation and envy; it purports to speak for the oppressed masses who have been wronged, deprived of the power to act with immediacy by the masters, who thrive on their subjugation. The men of ressentiment , in an inversion of values, redefine

2478-487: Is a system through which any Jew acts to bring God into the world. Ethical monotheism is central in all sacred or normative texts of Judaism. However, monotheism has not always been followed in practice. The Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh ) records and repeatedly condemns the widespread worship of other gods in ancient Israel . In the Greco-Roman era, many different interpretations of monotheism existed in Judaism, including

SECTION 20

#1732773083784

2596-597: Is also the source of the Hebrew term for Judaism, יַהֲדוּת Yahaḏuṯ . The term Ἰουδαϊσμός first appears in the Koine Greek book of 2 Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE (i.e. 2 Maccabees 2:21, 8:1 and 14:38) . In the context of the age and period it meant "seeking or forming part of a cultural entity". It resembled its antonym hellenismos , a word signifying people's submission to Hellenistic cultural norms. The conflict between iudaismos and hellenismos lay behind

2714-550: Is an esoteric tradition in Judaism in Kabbalah , Rabbinic scholar Max Kadushin has characterized normative Judaism as "normal mysticism", because it involves everyday personal experiences of God through ways or modes that are common to all Jews. This is played out through the observance of the halakha , or Jewish law, and given verbal expression in the Birkat Ha-Mizvot , the short blessings that are spoken every time

2832-541: Is an expression of the basic fact of the human will: "its horror vacui [horror of a vacuum]: it needs a goal —and it will rather will nothingness than not will." (a) For the artist, the ascetic ideal means "nothing or too many things". Nietzsche selects the composer Richard Wagner as example. Artists, he concludes, always require some ideology to prop themselves up. Wagner, we are told, relied on Schopenhauer to provide this underpinning; therefore we should look to philosophers if we are to get closer to finding out what

2950-439: Is awakening remorse. The psychology of prisoners shows that punishment "makes hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation" (§14). The feeling of guilt, the bad conscience , had quite different origins and had no place whatsoever in the institutions of crime and punishment for the greater part of their history. The criminal was dealt with merely as something harmful, as an "irresponsible piece of fate", and

3068-684: Is called the Jerusalem Talmud . It was compiled sometime during the 4th century in Palestine. According to critical scholars , the Torah consists of inconsistent texts edited together in a way that calls attention to divergent accounts. Several of these scholars, such as Professor Martin Rose and John Bright , suggest that during the First Temple period the people of Israel believed that each nation had its own god, but that their god

3186-463: Is heavily associated with and most often thought of as Orthodox Judaism . 13 Principles of Faith: — Maimonides In the strict sense, in Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, there are no fixed universally binding articles of faith, due to their incorporation into the liturgy. Scholars throughout Jewish history have proposed numerous formulations of Judaism's core tenets, all of which have met with criticism. The most popular formulation

3304-403: Is made possible, according to Nietzsche, by pleasure in cruelty . Its logic is not related in any way to considerations about the free will, moral accountability etc, of the wrong-doer: it is nothing more than a special form of compensation for the injured party. The creditor receives recompense "in the form of a kind of pleasure —the pleasure of being allowed to vent his power freely upon one who

3422-428: Is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.(§13) The "subject" (or soul) is only necessary for slave morality. It enables the impotent man to sanctify the qualities of his impotence by making them into "good" qualities, chosen for moral reasons, and the actions of his oppressor into morally "evil" choices. Nietzsche concludes his First Treatise by hypothesizing a tremendous historical struggle between

3540-447: Is no "subject" separate from the action: A quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of drive, will, effect—more, it is nothing other than precisely this very driving, willing, effecting, and only owing to the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it) which conceives and misconceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a "subject", can it appear otherwise. For just as

3658-414: Is powerless" (§5). Such punishment was a legally enforceable right of the creditor, and some law books had exact quantifications of what could be done to the debtor's body relative to the debt. It was in this civil law validation of cruelty that 'guilt' first became intertwined with 'suffering'. In criminal law, punishment and the debtor/creditor relationship have been transferred onto the relation in which

The blond beast - Misplaced Pages Continue

3776-726: Is premundane and has no peer or associate; (3) the whole universe is created; (4) God called Moses and the other Prophets of the Biblical canon; (5) the Law of Moses alone is true; (6) to know the language of the Bible is a religious duty; (7) the Temple at Jerusalem is the palace of the world's Ruler; (8) belief in Resurrection contemporaneous with the advent of the Messiah; (9) final judgment; (10) retribution. In modern times, Judaism lacks

3894-606: Is referred to as responsa (Hebrew Sheelot U-Teshuvot ). Over time, as practices develop, codes of halakha are written that are based on the responsa; the most important code, the Shulchan Aruch , largely determines Orthodox religious practice today. Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. Major Jewish philosophers include Philo of Alexandria , Solomon ibn Gabirol , Saadia Gaon , Judah Halevi , Maimonides , and Gersonides . Major changes occurred in response to

4012-600: Is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora . Later, many of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylon by the Persian Achaemenid Empire seventy years later, an event known as the Return to Zion . A Second Temple was constructed and old religious practices were resumed. During the early years of the Second Temple, the highest religious authority was a council known as

4130-482: Is responsible for the fact that what we experience and absorb enters our consciousness as little while we are digesting it (one might call the process 'inpsychation') as does the thousandfold process involved in physical nourishment – so-called incorporation"(§1). But social existence, to the extent that the social organism must function as a unity to survive and prosper, requires that certain things be not forgotten, that individuals must remember their place relative to

4248-483: Is subsequently forgotten as such actions become the norm. But the judgment "good", according to Nietzsche, originates not with the beneficiaries of altruistic actions. Rather, the good themselves (the powerful) coined the term "good". Further, Nietzsche sees it as psychologically absurd that altruism derives from a utility that is forgotten : if it is useful, what is the incentive to forget it? Such meaningless value-judgment gains currency by expectations repeatedly shaping

4366-418: Is that halakha should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced halakha ; today, these courts still exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts and

4484-824: Is the Torah , the first five books of the Hebrew Bible , a collection of ancient Hebrew scriptures. The Tanakh, known in English as the Hebrew Bible, has the same contents as the Old Testament in Christianity . In addition to the original written scripture, the supplemental Oral Torah is represented by later texts, such as the Midrash and the Talmud . The Hebrew-language word torah can mean "teaching", "law", or "instruction", although "Torah" can also be used as

4602-495: Is the will to power , the same active force that is at work in the artists of violence and builders of states, but deprived of its object and turned upon itself. This inner world of "self-ravishment" and "artists' cruelty", became "the womb of all ideal and imaginative phenomena", the soul of man.(§18) To understand how the bad conscience became bound up with guilt and punishment, it is necessary to examine how these concepts acquired religious significance. Nietzsche accounts for

4720-425: Is the primal ancestor who becomes the perpetrator of "original sin", or "nature", the mother, who becomes characterized as evil or shameful, or existence in general, which is now considered " worthless as such ". Christianity's expedient, its "stroke of genius" in the shadow of this looming eternal nightmare, was to proclaim that God himself, in the person of Jesus, sacrificed himself for the guilt of mankind. God pays

4838-405: Is thus a vital factor in determining individual social status. The concepts of guilt and punishment likewise have their origins in the contractual relationship. Here 'guilt' ( schuld ) simply meant 'debt' ( schulden ): the guilty person was simply the person who was unable to discharge their debt. In punishment, the creditor acquires the right to inflict harm on the guilty person. Such a transaction

The blond beast - Misplaced Pages Continue

4956-402: Is to separate the deed from the doer via the concept of 'the crime', a transformation of the actual deed into an abstract legal category implying a 'debt to society', a debt that is ultimately dischargeable through an appropriate 'punishment'. According to Nietzsche, one must not equate the origin of a thing and its utility. The origin of punishment, for example, is in a procedure that predates

5074-503: Is what Nietzsche calls the "contemplatives": self-satisfied armchair hedonists who have arrogated to themselves the praise of contemplation (Nietzsche gives Ernest Renan as an example). Europe is full of such "comedians of the Christian-moral ideal." In a sense, if anyone is inimical to the ideal it is they, because they at least "arouse mistrust" (§27). The will to truth that is bred by the ascetic ideal has in its turn led to

5192-602: The Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy ), 2 Macc. ii. 21: "Those that behaved themselves manfully to their honour for Iudaisme." At its core, the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh is an account of the Israelites ' relationship with God from their earliest history until the building of the Second Temple ( c.  535 BCE ). Abraham is hailed as the first Hebrew and the father of the Jewish people. As

5310-481: The Darwinian investigations of the evolution of ethics". Stephen Greenblatt has said in an interview that On The Genealogy of Morality was the most important influence on his life and work. Judaism Judaism ( Hebrew : יַהֲדוּת ‎ , romanized :  Yahăḏūṯ ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of

5428-716: The Enlightenment (late 18th to early 19th century) leading to the post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers. Modern Jewish philosophy consists of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox oriented philosophy. Notable among Orthodox Jewish philosophers are Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler , Joseph B. Soloveitchik , and Yitzchok Hutner . Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber , Franz Rosenzweig , Mordecai Kaplan , Abraham Joshua Heschel , Will Herberg , and Emmanuel Lévinas . 13 Principles of Hermeneutics: — R. Ishmael Orthodox and many other Jews do not believe that

5546-790: The Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Later, Roman emperor Hadrian built a pagan idol on the Temple Mount and prohibited circumcision; these acts of ethnocide provoked the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE), after which the Romans banned the study of the Torah and the celebration of Jewish holidays, and forcibly removed virtually all Jews from Judea. In 200 CE, however, Jews were granted Roman citizenship and Judaism

5664-518: The Jewish people . Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant , which was established between God and the Israelites , their ancestors. The religion is considered one of the earliest monotheistic religions in the world. Jewish religious doctrine encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. Among Judaism's core texts

5782-738: The Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the tribe of Levi ), some only to farmers within the Land of Israel. Many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed, and only 369 of these commandments are still applicable today. While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were based on the written text of the Torah alone (e.g., the Sadducees , and the Karaites ), most Jews believe in

5900-688: The Maccabean Revolt and hence the invention of the term iudaismos . Shaye J. D. Cohen writes in his book The Beginnings of Jewishness : We are tempted, of course, to translate [ Ioudaïsmós ] as "Judaism," but this translation is too narrow, because in this first occurrence of the term, Ioudaïsmós has not yet been reduced to the designation of a religion. It means rather "the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish)." Among these characteristics, to be sure, are practices and beliefs that we would today call "religious," but these practices and beliefs are not

6018-748: The Oxford English Dictionary the earliest citation in English where the term was used to mean "the profession or practice of the Jewish religion; the religious system or polity of the Jews" is Robert Fabyan's The newe cronycles of Englande and of Fraunce (1516). "Judaism" as a direct translation of the Latin Iudaismus first occurred in a 1611 English translation of the Biblical apocrypha (the Deuterocanonical books in

SECTION 50

#1732773083784

6136-698: The Patriarch Abraham as well as the additional aspects of the Covenant revealed to Moses , who is considered Judaism's greatest prophet . In the Mishnah , a core text of Rabbinic Judaism , acceptance of the Divine origins of this covenant is considered an essential aspect of Judaism and those who reject the Covenant forfeit their share in the World to Come . Establishing the core tenets of Judaism in

6254-639: The St Vitus ' and St John 's dancers of the Middle Ages, witch-hunt hysteria , somnambulism (of which there were eight epidemics between 1564 and 1605), and the delirium characterized by the widespread cry of evviva la morte! ("long live death!"). Given the extraordinary success of the ascetic ideal in imposing itself on our entire culture, what can we look to oppose it? "Where is the counterpart to this closed system of will, goal, and interpretation?" (§23) Nietzsche considers as possible opponents of

6372-467: The aim now is to turn the concepts "guilt" and "duty" back—back against whom?… against the "debtor" first of all, in whom from now on the bad conscience is firmly rooted, eating into him and spreading within him like a polyp, until at last the irredeemable debt gives rise to the conception of irredeemable penance, the idea that it cannot be discharged (" eternal punishment"). (§21) The entire condition of mankind becomes guilt-ridden, whether that condition

6490-504: The halakha whereas its ultimate goal is to bring the holiness down to the world. Mordecai Kaplan , the founder of the Reconstructionist Judaism , abandons the idea of religion for the sake of identifying Judaism with civilization and by means of the latter term and secular translation of the core ideas, he tries to embrace as many Jewish denominations as possible. In turn, Solomon Schechter 's Conservative Judaism

6608-535: The oral law . These oral traditions were transmitted by the Pharisee school of thought of ancient Judaism and were later recorded in written form and expanded upon by the rabbis. According to Rabbinical Jewish tradition, God gave both the Written Law (the Torah ) and the Oral Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai . The Oral law is the oral tradition as relayed by God to Moses and from him, transmitted and taught to

6726-465: The rabbis and scholars who interpret them. Jews are an ethnoreligious group including those born Jewish, in addition to converts to Judaism . In 2021, the world Jewish population was estimated at 15.2 million, or roughly 0.195% of the total world population, although religious observance varies from strict to none. In 2021, about 45.6% of all Jews resided in Israel and another 42.1% resided in

6844-581: The "Third Treatise" is "to bring to light, not what [the ascetic] ideal has done , but simply what it means ; what it indicates; what lies hidden behind it, beneath it, in it; of what it is the provisional, indistinct expression, overlaid with question marks and misunderstandings" (§23). As Nietzsche tells us in the Preface, the Third Treatise is a commentary on the aphorism prefixed to it. Textual studies have shown that this aphorism consists of §1 of

6962-534: The "blond beast". He had previously employed this expression to represent the lion, an image that is central to his philosophy and made its first appearance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Beyond the metaphorical lion, Nietzsche expressively associates the "blond beast" with the Aryan race of Celts and Gaels which he states were all fair skinned and fair-haired and constituted the collective aristocracy of

7080-418: The "good" in their own image. They say: "he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just."(§13) According to Nietzsche, this is merely a transformation of the effects and qualities of impotence into virtues , as if these effects and qualities were chosen –

7198-593: The Conservative movement. The following is a basic, structured list of the central works of Jewish practice and thought: The basis of halakha and tradition is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses). According to rabbinic tradition, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or to women, some only to the ancient priestly groups,

SECTION 60

#1732773083784

7316-550: The Great Assembly, led by Ezra the Scribe . Among other accomplishments of the Great Assembly, the last books of the Bible were written at this time and the canon sealed . Hellenistic Judaism spread to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BCE, and its creation sparked widespread controversy in Jewish communities, starting "conflicts within Jewish communities about accommodating the cultures of occupying powers." During

7434-609: The Japanese and Arabic nobilities of antiquity (§11), suggesting that being a blond beast has more to do with one's morality than one's race. Peter Sloterdijk asserts: "There is no 'eugenics' in Nietzsche." Nietzsche insists that it is a mistake to hold beasts of prey to be "evil", for their actions stem from their inherent strength, rather than any malicious intent. One can not blame them for their "thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs" because, according to Nietzsche, there

7552-517: The Jews increased and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by Judah ha-Nasi in the Mishnah , redacted c.  200 CE . The Talmud was a compilation of the Mishnah and Gemara , rabbinic commentaries redacted over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia ( Lower Mesopotamia ). Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation

7670-557: The Oral Torah, which refers to the Mishnah and the Talmud . Eventually, God led them to the land of Israel where the tabernacle was planted in the city of Shiloh for over 300 years to rally the nation against attacking enemies. As time passed, the nation's spiritual level declined to the point that God allowed the Philistines to capture the tabernacle. The people of Israel then told Samuel that they needed to be governed by

7788-725: The Roman dualism of "good/bad" and that of the Judaic "good/evil", with the latter eventually achieving a victory for ressentiment, broken temporarily by the Renaissance, but then reasserted by the Reformation, and finally confirmed by the French Revolution when the " ressentiment instincts of the rabble" triumphed. The First Treatise concludes with a note calling for further examination of the history of moral concepts and

7906-413: The Treatise (not the epigraph to the Treatise, which is a quotation from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra ). This opening aphorism confronts us with the multiplicity of meanings that the ascetic ideal has for different groups: (a) artists, (b) philosophers, (c) women, (d) physiological casualties, (e) priests, and (f) saints. That the ascetic ideal has been so powerful and meant so many different things

8024-452: The United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The term Judaism derives from Iudaismus , a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek Ioudaismos ( Koinē Greek : Ἰουδαϊσμός , from the verb ἰουδαΐζειν , "to side with or imitate the [Judeans]"). Its ultimate source was Hebrew : יהודה , romanized :  Yehudah Judah ", which

8142-455: The advance toward monotheistic religions, and it was with Christianity that the feeling of guilty indebtedness achieved its non plus ultra . Christianity is the religion that has sought, successfully, to permanently bind the concept of 'guilt' to the bad conscience: the aim now is to preclude pessimistically, once and for all, the prospect of a final discharge; the aim now is to make the glance recoil disconsolately from an iron impossibility;

8260-400: The aristocratic way of thinking, "good" is synonymous with nobility and everything that is powerful and life-affirming; "bad" has no inculpatory implication and simply refers to the "common" or the "low" and the qualities and values associated with them, in contradistinction to the warrior ethos of the ruling nobility (§3). In the "good/evil" distinction, which Nietzsche calls " slave morality ",

8378-403: The ascetic ideal means. (b) For the philosopher, it means a "sense and instinct for the most favorable conditions of higher spirituality", which is to satisfy his desire for independence. It is only in the guise of the ascetic priest that the philosopher is first able to make his appearance without attracting suspicion of his overweening will to power. As yet, every "true" philosopher has retained

8496-504: The authority of the rabbinic tradition , and the significance of the State of Israel . Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and halakha are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position

8614-400: The bad conscience was the serious illness that the animal man was bound to contract when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of a politically organized society. It begins with the institution of the 'state', in its original form a violent subjugation of a people by a highly organized and remorseless military machine: "the wielding of a hitherto unchecked and shapeless populace into

8732-467: The bad conscience: this is to "wed to bad conscience the unnatural inclinations", i.e. to use the self-destructive tendency encapsulated in bad conscience to attack the symptoms of sickness themselves. It is much too early for the kind of free spirit—a Zarathustra -figure—who could bring this about, although he will come one day: he will emerge only in a time of emboldening conflict, not in the "decaying, self-doubting present" (§24). Nietzsche's purpose in

8850-483: The basis of the Talmud. According to Abraham ben David , the Mishnah was compiled by Rabbi Judah haNasi after the destruction of Jerusalem, in anno mundi 3949, which corresponds to 189 CE. Over the next four centuries, the Mishnah underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's major Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylonia ). The commentaries from each of these communities were eventually compiled into

8968-471: The belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of mankind. According to the Hebrew Bible, God promised Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation. Many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God; that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate God's concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to love one another; that is, Jews are to imitate God's love for people. Thus, although there

9086-523: The commonly understood emergence of various philosophical and social beliefs by attempting to account for the scope, breadth or totality of ideology within the time period in question, as opposed to focusing on a singular or dominant ideology. In epistemology , it has been first used by Nietzsche and later by Michel Foucault , who tried to expand and apply the concept of genealogy as a novel method of research in sociology (evinced principally in "histories" of sexuality and punishment). In this aspect Foucault

9204-434: The consciousness. From the aristocratic mode of valuation, another mode of valuation branches off, which develops into its opposite: the priestly mode. Nietzsche proposes that longstanding confrontation between the priestly caste and the warrior caste fuels this splitting of meaning. The priests, and all those who feel disenfranchised and powerless in a lowly state of subjugation and physical impotence (e.g., slavery), develop

9322-498: The earliest thinking of man to so great an extent that in a certain sense they constitute thinking as such " (§8). 'Law' and 'justice', a society's codes, judgements and commands in relation to individual and inter-personal rights and obligations, are formed in the context of this contractual-evaluating conceptual paradigm. The strength of one's 'conscience', one's ability to make promises and not break them, to personally guarantee one's future actions, to fulfil ones obligations to others,

9440-462: The establishment of the authority of rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern gods, the Hebrew God is portrayed as unitary and solitary; consequently, the Hebrew God's principal relationships are not with other gods, but with the world, and more specifically, with the people he created. Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism :

9558-414: The genesis of the concept "God" by considering what happens when a tribe becomes ever more powerful. Each successive generation maintains an ethos of indebtedness (guilt) to the original founders of the tribe, the ancestors. The tribe's very existence is thought to depend on a continued acknowledgement and repayment of the ancestor, whose powerful spirit is still present in all customs and daily activities. As

9676-399: The hierarchy of values. According to Nietzsche, what we call "the conscience" is the end product of a long and painful socio-historical process that began with the need to create a memory in the human animal. For its own psychic health and functionality, the human organism is naturally forgetful . Forgetfulness is "an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression, which

9794-520: The ideal's "outworks, sheathing, play of masks, ... its temporary solidification, lignification, dogmatization" (§25). By dismantling church claims to the theological importance of man, scientists substitute their self-contempt [cynicism] as the ideal of science. (b) Modern historians, in trying to hold up a mirror to ultimate reality, are not only ascetic but highly nihilistic. As deniers of teleology , their "last crowings" are "To what end?," "In vain!," " Nada!" (§26) (c) An even worse kind of historian

9912-401: The ideal: (a) modern science; (b) modern historians; (c) "comedians of the ideal" (§27). (a) Science is in fact the "most recent and noblest form" of the ascetic ideal. It has no faith in itself, and acts only as a means of self-anesthetization for sufferers (scientists) who do not want to admit they suffer. In apparent opposition to the ascetic ideal, science has succeeded merely in demolishing

10030-514: The individual stands to the community. The individual enjoys a number of benefits from communal life, the most obvious of which is protection from the hostile world outside the community: a pledge is made to the community and its mores and laws in return for this protection. If that pledge is broken the community, as the offended creditor, demands repayment. A warlike and survival-based community, dealing constantly with danger or scarcity, will be violent and merciless in its treatment of law-breakers. As

10148-476: The interpretations that gave rise to Christianity. Moreover, some have argued that Judaism is a non-creedal religion that does not require one to believe in God. For some, observance of halakha is more important than belief in God per se . The debate about whether one can speak of authentic or normative Judaism is not only a debate among religious Jews but also among historians. In continental Europe , Judaism

10266-439: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_blond_beast&oldid=1056135297 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages On the Genealogy of Morality Some Nietzschean scholars consider Genealogy to be

10384-420: The many possible uses and interpretations of it. Punishment has not just one purpose, but a whole range of "meanings" which "finally crystallizes into a kind of unity that is difficult to dissolve, difficult to analyze and ... completely and utterly undefinable" (§13). Nietzsche lists eleven different uses (or "meanings") of punishment, and suggests that there are many more. One utility it does not possess, however,

10502-404: The meaning of "good" is made the antithesis of the original aristocratic "good", which itself is re-labelled "evil". This inversion of values develops out of the ressentiment felt by the weak towards the powerful. Nietzsche rebukes the "English psychologists" for lacking historical sense. They seek to do moral genealogy by explaining altruism in terms of the utility of altruistic actions, which

10620-487: The meritorious deeds of the "good" man. The deeds of the powerful man, known to themselves as "good", are re-cast by the men of ressentiment as "evil", taking on a mystical moral-judgemental element entirely absent from the aristocratic "bad", which to the noble was simply a descriptor for the inferior qualities of the lower classes. In the First Treatise, Nietzsche introduces one of his most controversial images,

10738-504: The modern era is even more difficult, given the number and diversity of the contemporary Jewish denominations . Even if to restrict the problem to the most influential intellectual trends of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the matter remains complicated. Thus, for instance, Joseph Soloveitchik's (associated with the Modern Orthodox movement ) answer to modernity is constituted upon the identification of Judaism with following

10856-489: The next few centuries. Later, two poetic restatements of these principles (" Ani Ma'amin " and " Yigdal ") became integrated into many Jewish liturgies, leading to their eventual near-universal acceptance. The oldest non-Rabbinic instance of articles of faith were formulated, under Islamic influence, by the 12th century Karaite figure Judah ben Elijah Hadassi : (1) God is the Creator of all created beings; (2) He

10974-590: The one that perhaps comes closest to a systematic and sustained exposition of his ideas. Some of the contents and many symbols and metaphors portrayed in On the Genealogy of Morality , together with its tripartite structure, seem to be based on and influenced by Heinrich Heine 's On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany . In philosophy, the genealogical method is a historical technique in which one questions

11092-478: The origins of morality to reading his friend Paul Rée 's book The Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877) and finding the "genealogical hypotheses" offered there unsatisfactory. Nietzsche decided that "a critique of moral values" was needed, that "the value of these values themselves must be called into question". To this end Nietzsche provides a history of morality, rather than a hypothetical account in

11210-420: The person upon whom punishment was administered, though his body encountered something shocking and violent, was entirely unacquainted with 'moral' pain. The only 'lesson' learned from punishment was that of prudence and memory. Punishment produces "an increase in fear, a heightening of prudence, mastery of the desires: thus punishment tames men, but it does not make them "better"."(§15) In Nietzsche's theory,

11328-427: The popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action , for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not do so. But there is no such substratum; there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer"

11446-463: The power of the tribe grows, the debt to the ancestor likewise increases. The invisible yet omnipresent figure of the ancestor takes on an ever-increasing power and mystique, until eventually, in the paranoid imaginations of his debtors, he begins to "recede into the darkness of the divinely uncanny and unimaginable: in the end the ancestor must necessarily be transfigured into a god ." (§19) The historical advance toward universal empires brought with it

11564-455: The revealed Torah consists solely of its written contents, but of its interpretations as well. The study of Torah (in its widest sense, to include both poetry, narrative, and law, and both the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud) is in Judaism itself a sacred act of central importance. For the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, and for their successors today, the study of Torah was therefore not merely

11682-501: The right to make promises . The conscience in this sense is the self-discipline of social responsibility made into a dominating instinct; to such an individual all other individuals, things and circumstances are evaluated from the perspective of this instinct.(§2) It was in the contractual relationship, a relationship based on mutual promises, that one person first " measured himself against another... setting prices, determining values, contriving equivalences, exchanging – these preoccupied

11800-431: The sages ( rabbinic leaders) of each subsequent generation. For centuries, the Torah appeared only as a written text transmitted in parallel with the oral tradition. Fearing that the oral teachings might be forgotten, Rabbi Judah haNasi undertook the mission of consolidating the various opinions into one body of law which became known as the Mishnah . The Mishnah consists of 63 tractates codifying halakha , which are

11918-447: The sense that they have the effect of making the sick sicker (although the priest applies them with a good conscience); they work by inducing an "orgy of feeling" ( Gefühls-Ausschweifung ). He does this by "altering the direction of ressentiment ," i.e. telling the weak to look for the causes of their unhappiness in themselves (in "sin"), not in others. Such training in repentance is responsible, according to Nietzsche, for phenomena such as

12036-419: The shedding of blood. The Birkat Ha-Mitzwot evokes the consciousness of holiness at a rabbinic rite, but the objects employed in the majority of these rites are non-holy and of general character, while the several holy objects are non-theurgic. And not only do ordinary things and occurrences bring with them the experience of God. Everything that happens to a man evokes that experience, evil as well as good, for

12154-637: The sole content of the term. Thus Ioudaïsmós should be translated not as "Judaism" but as Judaeanness. Daniel R. Schwartz, however, argues that "Judaism", especially in the context of the Book of Maccabees, refers to the religion, as opposed to the culture and politics of the Judean state. He believes it reflected the ideological divide between the Pharisees and Sadducees and, implicitly, anti-Hasmonean and pro-Hasmonean factions in Judean society. According to

12272-520: The spread of a truthfulness the pursuit of which has brought the will to truth itself in peril. What is thus now required, Nietzsche concludes, is a critique of the value of truth itself (§24). The work has received a multitude of citations and references from subsequent philosophical books as well as literary articles, works of fiction, and the like. On the Genealogy of Morality is considered by many academics to be Nietzsche's most important work, and, despite its polemical content, out of all of his works

12390-409: The style of Rée, whom Nietzsche classifies as an "English psychologist" (using "English" to designate an intellectual temperament, as distinct from a nationality). In the "First Treatise", Nietzsche demonstrates that the two pairs of opposites "good/evil" and "good/bad" have very different origins, and that the word "good" itself came to represent two opposed meanings. In the "good/bad" distinction of

12508-411: The time. Thus, he associates the "good, noble, pure, as originally a blond person in contrast to dark-skinned, dark-haired native inhabitants" (the embodiment of the "bad"). Here he introduces the concept of the original blond beasts as the "master race" which has lost its dominance over humanity but not necessarily permanently. Though, at the same time, his examples of blond beasts include such peoples as

12626-404: The trappings of the ascetic priest; his slogans have been "poverty, chastity, humility." (e) For the priest, its meaning is the "'supreme' license for power". He sets himself up as the "saviour" of (d) the physiologically deformed, offering them a cure for their exhaustion and listlessness (which is in reality only a therapy which does not tackle the roots of their suffering). Nietzsche suggests

12744-578: The two Talmuds, the Jerusalem Talmud ( Talmud Yerushalmi ) and the Babylonian Talmud ( Talmud Bavli ). These have been further expounded by commentaries of various Torah scholars during the ages. In the text of the Torah, many words are left undefined, and many procedures are mentioned without explanation or instructions. Such phenomena are sometimes offered to validate the viewpoint that the Written Law has always been transmitted with

12862-482: The unpayable debt, the new religion teaches, out of love —love for his debtor. Thus guilt, which originally merely signified debt in a contractual sense, attained an essential moral-metaphysical significance in mankind’s understanding of itself and its relation to God. Nietzsche ends the Treatise with a positive suggestion for a counter-movement to the "conscience-vivisection and cruelty to the animal-self" imposed by

12980-399: The whole. Memory in this sense, the social conscience in its rudimentary form, was forged with great difficulty over a long period of time, by what Nietzsche refers to as man's mnemotechnics , the underlying principle of which is "If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory"(§3). This long pre-historic process allows

13098-593: Was centered on a pantheon of gods much like in Greek mythology . According to the Hebrew Bible , a United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued under King David and Solomon with its capital in Jerusalem . After Solomon's reign, the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it

13216-602: Was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period ; the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Some modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be considered secular or nontheistic . Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism ( Haredi and Modern Orthodox ), Conservative Judaism , and Reform Judaism . Major sources of difference between these groups are their approaches to halakha (Jewish law),

13334-716: Was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire ; many people were taken captive from the capital Samaria to Media and the Khabur River valley. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple , which was at the center of ancient Jewish worship. The Judeans were exiled to Babylon , in what

13452-599: Was criticized by Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo . Albo and the Raavad argued that Maimonides' principles contained too many items that, while true, were not fundamentals of the faith Along these lines, the ancient historian Josephus emphasized practices and observances rather than religious beliefs, associating apostasy with a failure to observe halakha and maintaining that the requirements for conversion to Judaism included circumcision and adherence to traditional customs. Maimonides' principles were largely ignored over

13570-470: Was heavily influenced by Nietzsche. Others have adapted "genealogy" in a looser sense to inform their work. An example is the attempt by the British philosopher Bernard Williams to vindicate the value of truthfulness using lines of argument derived from genealogy in his book Truth and Truthfulness (2002). Daniel Dennett wrote that On The Genealogy of Morality is "one of the first and still subtlest of

13688-455: Was identical with the tradition understood as the interpretation of Torah, in itself being the history of the constant updates and adjustment of the Law performed by means of the creative interpretation. Finally, David Philipson draws the outlines of the Reform movement in Judaism by opposing it to the strict and traditional rabbinical approach and thus comes to the conclusions similar to that of

13806-410: Was recognized as a religio licita ("legitimate religion") until the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity in the fourth century. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around the community (represented by a minimum of ten adult men) and

13924-627: Was superior to other gods. Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, perhaps in reaction to Zoroastrian dualism. In this view, it was only by the Hellenistic period that most Jews came to believe that their god was the only god and that the notion of a bounded Jewish nation identical with the Jewish religion formed. John Day argues that the origins of biblical Yahweh , El , Asherah , and Ba'al , may be rooted in earlier Canaanite religion , which

#783216