Nietzsche doesn’t “speculate” that slave morality kicked off with the Jews because they were a particularly oppressed group, and really got going under Christianity. He states it outright, and he doesn’t care whether any oppressed group could have done the same. He interprets the known history of Christian and Jewish morality as being the history of “slave morality” and calls it “genealogy” - it isn’t an economic argument.
It is really fucking maddening how people like Scott won’t think of morality, or politics, or economics, or really any kind of social or philosophical question, outside of the realm of the psychological. The history of the world can only be about overcoming bias.
But that’s just the thing! Nietzche’s fundamental innovation is to view all of these things: morality, politics, economics, indeed any kind of social or philosophical question through an incredibly narrowly psychological lens. It’s his obsessive persistence in this, and his excessive sensitivity to the deep irrationality in human nature (I hesitate to go with many people in saying “brilliance”, because what’s “brilliance”?), which makes him such a powerful critic of Western culture. For Nietzsche, the entire history of the world is nothing more than the history of individual sick people working out their issues, and generally doing badly.
But Siskind doesn’t have any of that, because he can only think in terms of a shallow combination of overcoming bias and his own unexamined prejudices. Siskind’s problem is that he doesn’t even view the psychological psychologically.
Nietzsche doesn’t “speculate” that slave morality kicked off with the Jews because they were a particularly oppressed group, and really got going under Christianity. He states it outright, and he doesn’t care whether any oppressed group could have done the same. He interprets the known history of Christian and Jewish morality as being the history of “slave morality” and calls it “genealogy” - it isn’t an economic argument.
That’s all I’ve got, I don’t care.
It is really fucking maddening how people like Scott won’t think of morality, or politics, or economics, or really any kind of social or philosophical question, outside of the realm of the psychological. The history of the world can only be about overcoming bias.
But that’s just the thing! Nietzche’s fundamental innovation is to view all of these things: morality, politics, economics, indeed any kind of social or philosophical question through an incredibly narrowly psychological lens. It’s his obsessive persistence in this, and his excessive sensitivity to the deep irrationality in human nature (I hesitate to go with many people in saying “brilliance”, because what’s “brilliance”?), which makes him such a powerful critic of Western culture. For Nietzsche, the entire history of the world is nothing more than the history of individual sick people working out their issues, and generally doing badly.
But Siskind doesn’t have any of that, because he can only think in terms of a shallow combination of overcoming bias and his own unexamined prejudices. Siskind’s problem is that he doesn’t even view the psychological psychologically.