Nietzsche's View of Jesus

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I'm currently reading Anthony M. Ludovici's translation of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Antichrist, and it might be interesting to discuss Nietzsche's view of Jesus. In this book, Nietzsche applies his dichotomy of master and slave (i.e., "Chandala," referring to the Indian untouchable caste who dispose of corpses) morality to peoples and moreover religions. Nietzsche attacks Christianity as being Judaism thrice over—an extension of what he considers to be Judaism's Chandala morality. He opposes this kind of morality because he considers it to be rejecting of all the things good or life-affirming about the world: beauty, intelligence, wisdom, and of course power. Christianity instead relies on a soul, the afterlife, and hell as an imagined revenge against worldly power. He sees St. Paul as being the archetype of the priestly class of Judaism and Christianity that introduces concepts of sin, guilt, and eternal salvation to give control to the priests. In contrast to Judaism, Christianity, and a briefly mentioned Islam, Nietzsche praises ancient paganism, Buddhism, and most of all Zoroastrianism.

Of Jesus himself, Nietzsche sees him as an oversensitive type who thus must turn away from the world and live in an inner world that becomes his "Kingdom of God." It sounds like gnosticism to me. Regardless, Nietzsche sees Jesus' beliefs as having died with him on the cross and largely misunderstood by his apostles and more so by St. Paul and the later church.

Nietzsche prefers a religion, like Zoroastrianism, that codifies a people's hard-won wisdom and life-affirming best practices. In this regard, he does sound rather conservative. He also sounds conservative in his dividing society into a three-class unequal society along the lines of Plato in his Republic, rejecting thoroughly democracy, socialism, and liberalism, all of which he sees as ideological outgrowths of Christianity's focus on equality before God and emphasis on the poor, weak, and sick.

Nietzsche may be a proponent of unconventional individualism, but when it comes down to it, I think Nietzsche is just a power-oriented conservative with flashy book titles.

I think your interpretation of Nietzsche as a conservative is false.

Nietzsche doesn't support the status quo but rather supports overturning status quos.(a major theme in Thus Spake Zarathustra) Nietzsche doesn't support universal laws on what is good for human beings, but rather supports the notion that what is good for each person is relative to who they are.(a theme in Thus Spake Zarathustra, but also made clear in Nietzsche's criticism of traditional ethics in Twilight of the Idols) Nietzsche actually doesn't believe guilt and responsibility exist. (Position found in Twilight of the Idols, where Nietzsche claims guilt was invented by the church) All of these positions, which are clearly Nietzschean, are complete anathemas to conservativism.

It's probably best to say that Nietzsche is unorthodox. I mean, classifying him may be like classifying Marquis de Sade who wanted laws for the privilege of mankind to violate those laws in acts of defiance.

I think that Nietzsche's view of Jesus is also probably mixed. Although he hated the ideal of Jesus. I get the feeling that he admired Jesus as a person who overthrew the cultural ethos with his new creed. But... I cannot find any explicit quote at the moment, so this might not be correct.

If not conservative, which would indeed be an oversimplification, Nietzsche fits into the Right, broadly defined. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche argues strongly for tradition, where that tradition represents the accumulated wisdom of a powerful and noble people, illustrating the point with the Manu. Nietzsche sees Christianity as having weakened European and German society and thus seeks to upend rather than preserve it. Nietzsche looks farther back to the Romans, the Greeks, and the Indo-Aryans.

For Nietzsche, good law and tradition preserve the rule of the powerful and flourishing over the weak and mediocre. Nietzsche could be thought to have a high social-dominance orientation, an actual preference for social inequality, something I consider essential to the political right, especially far right. It is thus not surprising that Ayn Rand considered Nietzsche to be one of her primary philosophical inspirations. Indirectly then, Nietzsche inspires aspects of today's Tea Partying right wing.
And actually, the Christianity of Fundamentalism is, in many respects, quite different from the Christianity Nietzsche chastises as idolizing wretchedness. Fundamentalist Christianity, though, does maintain the concept of sin that Nietzsche strongly rejects.

Despite his inegalitarian and anti-democratic philosophy, Nietzsche has also inspired elements of the New Left—largely because of his rejection of society's orthodoxies, as you have stated.
Still, I think Nietzsche would have been more disgusted than awed by the peace-loving, egalitarian, collectivist, "free-spirited" ethos of the 1960s' New Left. Nietzsche's freespiritedness seems to go more hand-in-hand with a seriousness of the will than a sort of ironic, postmodern playfulness.

I'll agree with your analysis there.

Easter is canceled this year. They've found the body...( I found that quite funny.)

Which reminds me of a dogrel verse:

An odd archeologist, Thostle
Found an intriguing fossil.
From the way it was bent
and the knot in the end
'twas the penis of Paul the Apostle.

ruveyn