Christ vs. Plato, Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx

NewsMax.com ^ | Dec. 25, Christmas Day | Lev Navrozov

[JoeSchem]

While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been, that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?" --Thomas Jefferson

This may have been the hidden poison in Western civilization. In the West, conservative and traditionalist Christians have long held the notion that 'classical education' consists of sending their children to universities to learn Plato and Socrates. Then they're surprised when their children come home espousing socialism and homosexuality.

[cornelis]

Then they're surprised when their children come home espousing socialism and homosexuality.

Heck, you can do that with the Bible. Get wid' it, JoeSchem.

[NutCrackerBoy]

Minds that absorb Plato, Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx and not Christ, can only excrete that which is suitable for the sewer.

Scatalogically put. Since I am not a believer, I have a different take; though somewhat in agreement.

The likes of Molly Ivins and Richard Dawkins are so utterly wrong in their condemnation of religion, the Judeo-Christian in particular since its positive importance to the development of our culture can hardly be overestimated.

I don't find the emanations of these two to be evil on account of their ridiculous prejudices and blindness to the nature of life in front of them. But it is true IMO that each of the thinkers mentioned - Plato, Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx have conveyed certain ideas which can be dangerous if used incorrectly.

[Federalist 78]

Then they're surprised when their children come home espousing socialism and homosexuality.

Jefferson didn't need the Greeks for a solution to homosexuality.

Amendment VIII: Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Proportioning Crimes ...

Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.

[NutCrackerBoy]

The likes of Molly Ivins and Richard Dawkins are so utterly wrong in their condemnation of religion.

I've posted the Christmas essay State of the Faith Anno Domini, 2003 (Michael Novak) that references Richard Dawkins. Y'all come.

[PGalt]

Interesting...bump for later read.

[Federalist 78]

Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx have conveyed certain ideas which can be dangerous if used incorrectly.

January 2003 issue Cardozo Law Review is still effervescing over Nietzsche…determined, no doubt, to create a 1000 year Reich here.

[JudgemAll]

What has been called in the United States "social benefits," "social security," "welfare," etc., can also be called socialism, which sprang from the same Judaic-Christian notion of charity. The manifesto that Marx and Engels published in 1848 was entitled "The Communist [not Socialist!] Manifesto" and proclaimed a world proletarian revolution – that is, a world class war to seize power all over the world. They condemned peaceful socialism, stemming from the Christian notion of charity, and Christianity itself as enemy devices to delay a world proletarian revolution.

Ahem, I am sorry but socialism is not related to Christianity, but a distortion and an evil extention of charity through government. As this communist would say: " I do not want charity business but social justice."

1. Charity in Christianity is handed out to those who are charitable to themselves: i.e. help those who want to do good, i.e. but do not help those who ask you to help them party or sniff drugs. Socialism makes no difference as to whom receives the help. Government is not about sanctioning morality but productivity at best, and, then, not even so, because the productive tax payer is not encouraged by the welfare system it views with suspicion and on which it has little control.

2. When the socialist government owns the means of production, how can one distinguish a punishing government from one who hands out jobs? If a felon wants to revenge against government, then, as an employee of government, the felon can sabotage the workplace. On the other hand, if private and public are separated, if the punishing entity differs from the job handing entity, we do not have such criminal Marxist subversion of government possible. One becomes his own government and jurisdiction with his own private and local public means to oppose government in legal checks and balances. In Judeo-Christianity this is called "let my people go" or the "crucifiction", all selfinsulation from sin and taking the fall for future generations' sake and salvation, as opposed to a socialism which enslaves and destroys any hope of slavation, separation and washing of past sins and evils, a new improved world at every generation. The way the socialists plan things for everything precludes people from learning from their mistakes. People only make mistakes that the state views as mistakes and live in a world completely disconected from reality and real mistakes, but mistakes as seen by the state.

3. Also the planification nature of socialism implies the same deal as Plato, whereby the state of life is enforced philosophicaly and can only be argued philosophicaly through superliterate "proofs" in all virtuality that are not related to reality. Compare that to Christ's more optionable and market oriented idea of a virtualy private government you choose, who said "you will know them by their fruits", and one sees quickly how results and free choice beats any proof or any enforced philosophy that precludes choice and real life testing of those choices - if ever those choices are difficult and may lead one to personal catastrophy, taking the fall is the idea. Compare the tenured professor who has no respect for the poor with gut instincts and no education but who through goodness and instinct is able to survive and build an empire of his own to become rich. This is the result of true charity vs. philosophical self defeating alibis and human laboratory experiments to do harm to others. One is responsible for himself and is his own lab, let not others be involved with such experiments against their will or through "scientific" deceptions and alibis.

[JudgemAll]

I will add that that said, a free society is almost dead in the US. Nowadays you have Marxist Democrats vs. Socialist Republicans (who are more similar to Kenedy Democrats). While the latter is somewhat honorable in that it seeks to have the state earn the respect it promotes through hand outs, the former encourage bratty behaviors and dishonoring behavior from those receiving the handouts from the government and taxpayers, a total disgrace.

[JudgemAll]

Plato, Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx have conveyed certain ideas which can be dangerous if used incorrectly.

The problem with tenured philosphers and philosophies is that one has no option but to apply them thoroughly and dangerously in order to "prove" their validity. One cannot deviate for them even if they lead to disaster. There is no option out of the classroom of a professor who insists you deserve a bad grade because your methods are new or not approved. However there is plenty of options in the market to make your ideas work and people choose the man with the right idea, even if this idea is latter seen as ridiculous and has evolved.

[cornelis]

Jefferson didn't need the Greeks for a solution to homosexuality.

This is getting quite sexual, 78. Electrical Engineers do it fine without Poincaré.

[Helms]

Both "Reckless Minds" and "The Closing of the American Mind" take Heidegger to task and much scholarship has been performed re Heidegger over the last 50 years and which has cast a huge black cloud over him.

I read Rudiger Safranski's book on Heidegger which in the end gave me a sense of his dark side and made me rather ill. There is no doubt whatsoever that Heidegger was anti-enlightenment and consulted with Faustian Principalities and Powers.

My reading of Postmodernism and Nihilism places Heidegger and his children (Marcuse, Arhendt, and a few others)at the epicenter of Postmodernism and Nihilism.

In conclusion I consider Heidegger a reckless mind and philo-tyrannical.

Nietzsche is in a class of his own and falls within the highest ranks of human philosophy. Those who deny his importance and effects on 20-21st century thought are either willfully disregarding that truth or just do not know.

It seems that Critical Theory and Consciousness Studies have supplanted old fashioned Philosophy.

We have been betrayed by most of the so-called intellectuals. Postmodernism has overrun American Academia where Foucault and Derrida still live on.

I live in Raleigh, NC where Duke University has become one of the beachheads of Postmodernism.

[JudgemAll]

I will add that there are several sciences and the one science of the individual who through his choice makes the market is an important science. Sure, advertisements and a general moral decay of society into consumerism can manipulate this science, but in the end the boom and bust cycle changes all that to reorient people toward more reasonable approaches and businesses.

In addition, European style socialism is more akin to a pharisean catholic church cult enforcement, seeking to replace the late Temple Mount priestly extortions with its own anarchic antigod and pro-priests anarchic schemes, alibis and "criss-cross" evil bonds in the Vatican. It has little to do with the traditional Juedo-christian trend as portrayed in the Dead Sea scrolls, for example.

Christianity is merely, IMO, an extention of Judaism, as the flight from Egypt is a flight from the oppression and sins of gentiles against Jews, Christ going to the cross can also be interpreted as a Jew escaping oppression from fellow Jews. The man accepts banishment. That said the crucifiction also as many other added significances, such as God taking the fall for us, and kind of thanking us for choosing Him and allowing the final fall of the antichrist.

[JudgemAll]

Nietzsche is in a class of his own and falls within the highest ranks of human philosophy. Those who deny his importance and effects on 20-21st century thought are either willfully disregarding that truth or just do not know.

Nietzsche did make many correct predictions about the softening nature of man. Unlike Marx's "predictions" which are corrupting and based into this utopia of a masterless society through the submission of a single master, Nietzsche's was more an observer than a charlatan like Marx who makes people believe his prediction of a masterless society through the reality of a masterful world plantation type scheme. Marxists always mix lies with truth to make the lies believed, and the lie of the masterless society is believed in the scheme of the obvious trend toward a single masterful world society.

Except that while Nietzsche's super men do rely on other supermen of lower ranks. With Marx, no such thing exists, as the lower and middle class ranks are all destroyed to make us all slaves under a single master man behind the curtain whose lower level masters are only slaves doing his bidding and not real lords or scholars thinking for themselves. Under Marxism, the destruction of current masters is appealing but indeed a faustian deal in which only one master remains and profits from the downfalls of the competition at the hands of a manipulated proletaria which is urged to carry on the destruction. Master and slaves hence share something in common: they both distrust mid-level masters.

[stripes1776]

We do indeed have all of the writings of Jesus.

And which writings of Jesus are those? Could you please supply a list.

[JudgemAll]

Darwin completely neglected something fundamental for the survival of man, and it is the adaptation of man to man. He also failed to mention that man does not adapt to the environment. Man does not grow hair when it gets cold, man computes temperatures and manufactures clothing. Man does not need to feel the Moon's environment to end up living and surviving on the Moon, as would have to do a primitive microbial organism. So animal adaptation is a measly, weak and insufficient tool to provide for survival and development of survival.

Last but not least, Darwin forgot to see that there is some contradictions between Darwin's evolving generations through a spontaneous genetic modification with Pasteur's own hard work at proving that spontaneous generations simply do not exist. Infection is the main mean of adaptation and multiplication and diversity, not spontaneity of life. Proving the spontaneity of life on Earth has been attempted, but it has been less than convincing. In fact this all important subject is completely ignored by Darwinists, who instead emphasis genetic modification of things already existing, and who ignore D'Embricourt's work on the existence of a strange attractor in Chaotic type Darwinist evolution.

Darwin was an anarchist pre-communist who promoted full Brownian type chaos to explain evolution, while the existence of design and chaos with strange attractor has been reversed engineered in many processes and good matching models of evolution.

[Helms]

"Nietzsche's was more an observer than a charlatan like Marx"

Agreed and why they refer to Nietzsche as the first Psychologist (and before Frued). Hegel was a charlatan according to Schopenhauer who educated Nietzsche. I accord both men allot of respect although it amazes me how much a philosophers own temperment, in addition to his/her times effects his/her philosophy.

[cornelis]

Arendt with Marcuse, eh? Voegelin reviewed Arendt's book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Voegelin respect the level of her insight, to a point. His response seems to be elicited by the following:

"Human nature as such is at stake, and even though it seems that these experiments succeed not in changing man but only in destroying him . . . one should bear in mind the necessary limitations to an experiment which requires global control in order to show conlcusive results."

When I read this sentence, I could hardly believe my eyes. "nature" is a philosophical concept; it denotes that which identifies a thing as a thing of this kind and not of another one. A "nature" cannot be changed or transformed; a "change of nature" is a contradiction of terms; tampering with the "nature" of a thing means destroying the thing. To coneive the idea of "changing the nature" of man (or of anything) is a symptom of the intellectual breakdown of Western civilization. The author, in fact adopts the immanentist ideology; she keeps an "open mind" with regard to the totalitarian atrocities; she considers the question of a "change of a nature" a matter that will have to be settled by "trial and error"; and since the "trial" could not yet avail itself of the opportunities afforded by a global laboratory, the quesiton must remain in suspense for the time being . . . These sentences . . . reflect a typically liberal, progressive, pragmatist attitude toward philosophical problems. We suggested previously that the author's derailments are sometimes more interesting than her insights. And this attitude is, indeed, of general importance because it reveals how much ground liberals and totalitarians have in common; the essential immanentism that unites them overrides the differences of ethos that separate them. The true dividing line in the contemporary crisis does not run between liberals and totalitarians, but between the religious and philosophical transcendentalists [Plato, Jesus] on the one side and the liberal and totalitarian immanentist sectarians on the other side [Comte, Freud, Darwin, Marx].

It is sad, but it must be reported, that the author herself draws this line. The argument starts from her confusion about the "nature of man": "Only the criminal attempt to change the nature of man is adequate to our trembling insight that no nature, not even the nature of man, can any longer be considered to be the measure of all things"--a sentence that, if it has any sense at all, can only mean that the nature of man ceases to be the measure, when some imbecile conceives the notion of changing it. The author seems to be impressed by the imbecile and is ready to forget about the nature of man, as well as about all human civilization that has been built on its understanding.

The "mob," she concedes, has correctly seen "that the whole of nearly three thousand years of Western civilization . . .has broken down." Out go the philosophers of Greece, the prophets of Israel, Christ, not to mention the patres and scholastics; for man has come of age, and that means "that from now on man is the only possible creator of his own laws and the only possible maker of his own history."

This coming-of-age has to be accepted; man is the new lawmaker; and on the tablets wiped clean of the past he will inscribe the "new discoveries in morality," which Edmund Burke had still considered impossible.

It sounds like a nihilistic nightmare

[cornelis]

because your methods are new or not approved.

You make a slight point. But most often this is reactive fallout from hippie griping or media reverberation. To the dismay of the anything-goes crowd and the Cartesian "I knew that" there is a tradition, there are ways of doing things, and protocol, and rules of civility. Either you adopt the procedure or join FR ;)

[Helms]

"Arendt with Marcuse, eh? Voegelin reviewed Arendt's book, The Origins of Totalitarianism."

Arhendt- allot of it having to do with her love affair with Heidegger in her late teens and admiration until his dying days.

The Origins of Totalitarianism is considered by many to be a masterwork on Totalitarianism in the 20th century. Ortega y Gasset also mention the mob in Revolt of the Masses.

Passive Nihilism becomes a nightmare when intellectuals are like children or adolescent youths who fail to realize that 2500-3000 year's of cultural evolution has taken us to this point and they want to trash traditional values without creating new ones or accepting these values as evolved from much struggle.

You need only watch MYV, E Entertainment and many other platforms which actually make money by undermining the intellectual and cultural capital that Western civilization has amassed.

Foucault died of AIDS and likely carried this disease to many homosexual frequenters of bathhouses and orgiastic encounters in California. He died a pitiable death which I hope will apply to the Postmodern project we see ourselves exposed to.

I will always cast my lot with a C S Lewis rather than Foucault.