#good that many christians have become less antisemitic and support Jews more than past

[withlibertyandjusticeforall]

I almost told a family member about the riots against Jews in Dagestan, then I realized their reaction would be "all Muslims are terrorists".

We have got to stop this cycle.

Hate the ones who have actually hurt. Don't hate every member of a group.

Fear distorts reality. Everyone (or many, perhaps most) has the potential for violence under the right conditions--if they let a mob mentality take over, for instance. Focusing on "it's only Them" obscures the truth: we all have good and evil inside us. We have the capacity to choose what's good-- to see truth, that not every member of a certain group will choose evil, only evil, all the time, "thus they need erasing" (demonizing people when they're actually only human). And we have to take responsibility for our own feelings and actions-- divert our feelings toward the right sources, don't attack innocent people just because they're of the same group as someone who has attacked you.

#or in this case sort of adjacent #good that many christians have become less antisemitic and support Jews more than past #but it can blind thm #and we have seen Muslims as enemies since 9/11 #by we i mean many in usa #makig blanket statements #thats never been me #i see the complexity #i see people as people #not monsters #russia #palestine #israel #jews #islam #war #hate #truth #i m just. stop. #if i were closer to it i might ive in to hate #so i have to have empathy in that way #while also seeig its wrong. #i have never seen muslims as enemies. #terrorists yes #i judge by actions not group membership #esp when its so broad like race #religion #pl be rational and kind.

[perkwunos]

I want to start off by saying I am not uncritical of Nietzsche, am Most surely not a Nietzschian (I also agree many academics get very defensive when you criticize him and his work. I would however argue there are far more critical readers of his work that aren't people mouthing uncritically someone like Deleuze without having even read a single one of Nietzsche's own words.) , and I abhor Pound. My problem is the amount of charity you are able to extend to men like Kant and Whitehead. A.N. Whitehead may very well been a liberal Englishman of his time but credit where credit's due because despite your thoughts on the man (and to reiterate there are many very real problems in Nietszche who I think is a nerd) surely what's impressive about someone like Nietzsche growing up in his specific context was his ability to distance himself from his own previous anti-semitism (which again I agree with you that people tend to blame this on Wagner rather than N. himself) to both very explicitly openly mocking and proclaiming that all anti-semites should be quite literally shot. Have you seen the letters he sent out from when he went "mad" ?

I agree there are things in his work and subsequently in his general thought that get far too charitable readings by many leftists. Mostly men. Mostly white. I also believe that on much of the same note Holub's own scholarship and specific readings can (and have been) criticized for the same overreaching and inconsistent arguments that let us say someone like Deleuze is often criticized for making in support of Nietzsche.

I would also like to clarify Whitehead's problematic views on Jews and Jewishness are in fact not just in the Price book but also in places like Process and Reality and I believe Science and the Modern World (it might actually be Adventures of Ideas). These passages have been quite literally criticized by Jewish philosophers and theologians who themselves are critical but inspired by Whitehead's thought. Surely these implicit Christian biases of a Victorian Anglican man (no matter how heterodox) make his ideas and system just as easy for prodding as someone like Nietzsche (who let us not forget was brought up Lutheran and never fully escaped the way he had hoped). I frankly do not want to prop up a bunch of dead men and their ideas uncritically nor do I want to be just as uncritically puritanical about the work of a bunch of dead men and shut down open discussion (and which again as an aside I've noticed has increasingly become very white, male and circular. which is a bit ironic given the topics and men discussed. for instance I find it odd that you say you just don't see a lot of critical scholarship on Nietzsche which is quite literally untrue as there are many women and poc who have written work that is very critical of Nietzsche and his ideas. but I digress.) And again I think what bothers people (past the usual reflexive Nietzsche defenders on and off this site) is less that they feel you're playing games about Nietzsche than that you're willing to be more charitable to thinkers who have their own problems (Not just personally but also systematically. Such as Whitehead) who you yourself are more sympathetic and biased towards.

When I identify people like Whitehead and Kant as liberal that’s not supposed to be a good thing, it’s at least a mild insult and more me indicating that there are aspects of their social/political thought I find seriously, systematically wrong and incoherent. Of course, at the same time it’s important to distinguish types of anti-liberal stances: Nietzsche opposes Kant because he’s specifically an anti-liberal reactionary, and he supports aristocratic hierarchies. But I understand that all that probably doesn’t come across in a lot of what I say and it can seem like I’m just accepting them unproblematically as “normal liberals.” I’ve said before on here that Whitehead was eurocentric and naive in his sociological/historical accounts and am pretty open to that kind of criticism. I don’t begrudge you for wanting to bring this up in reference to Whitehead because I do think it’s a very worthwhile scrutiny; obviously, I myself think Whitehead’s main concepts in his philosophy survive this scrutiny, but it’s always worth looking at critically. Also, full identity cards on the table, I am jewish and my concern with antisemitism in philosophy is not a mere academic exercise, the reason I focus on this in relation to Nietzsche is pretty personal, and I have no desire to excuse or ignore its appearance in any thinkers.

I think you and I fundamentally disagree on what it meant for Nietzsche to disagree with the antisemites of his day. He disagreed with antisemites because he thought they were too much like Jews; that’s just what he himself says. My whole point is that he never really critically distanced himself from wagnerian antisemitism, he just adopted it and arguably took it even further, but in his own distinctive form. When I say antisemitism is a constitutive element of Nietzsche’s philosophy I mean when you want to understand his own thoughts on master/slave morality and how he uses that to critique Christianity, this requires understanding his antisemitism. Slave morality, so Nietzsche says, became an important force in history because it was unleashed by the Jews. Christianity is a manifestation of slave morality for Nietzsche because it is Jewish in origin and in character. It is central to his thought here.

So this isn’t comparable to Whitehead. If, in order to explain something like Whitehead’s concept of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” the main works that I would have to cite and reference included extensive passages of him going, “And this fallacy of misplaced concreteness is specifically Jewish in origin and character and is part of how they’ve gained control over modern society...” then it would be comparable.

As to me not having an exhaustive knowledge of different critiques of Nietzsche, I’m not an academic scholar and I’ll admit as much, so yes I’m still likely ignorant of many of the lesser known critiques that have been put out there. I wish you’d mentioned some of who these people and their writings are so I could check them out! Finding all the different scholarly work being done isn’t always an easy process. And you have to admit it’s a bit ironic that you still refrained from actually naming any of these women or people of color who end up getting ignored in these discussions.