Friedrich Nietzsche Wasn’t an Anti-Semite. Or Was He?

Having called Jews “a people gifted with the very strongest vitality” while heaping all sorts of insults on them, and having been given to attacking anti-Semites even more vociferously than he attacked Jews, the notoriously hard-to-pin-down philosopher did not make it easy for historians trying to make sense of his views in this area. Robert Holub, in Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem, presents a thorough evaluation of Nietzsche’s attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, based primarily on his private writings. Benjamin Silver writes in his review:

Nietzsche, Holub concludes, was not an anti-Semite in the late-19th-century sense of the term. After briefly flirting with that ideology during his years [of friendship with Richard Wagner], Nietzsche “recoil[ed] from the crude excesses” of such political anti-Semitism, finding it vulgar and, probably, unphilosophical. But Nietzsche, Holub is quick to qualify, was no friend to the Jews, ether. Even his seemingly positive remarks “often amount to a validation of existing stereotypes.” Moreover, Nietzsche held views that “we would categorize today as biased and perhaps even racist.” Contextualizing Nietzsche turns out to mean that he was not an anti-Semite then, but that he would be now. . . .

While Silver calls this persuasive, he finds lacking Holub’s analysis of the role Judaism played in Nietzsche’s mature thought:

Biblical Judaism, according to Nietzsche, slowly developed “slavish” values and, in so doing, eventually launched a Christian revolution. The significance of Nietzsche’s schema here must not be overlooked. At first blush, Nietzsche’s view would seem to put him just as much at odds with Jews as he was with Christians. For him, Christianity was the one great curse visited upon humanity, and it was visited upon humanity by the Jews. . . .

[Thus] Nietzsche’s philosophy is itself of interest, and his project of . . . tearing down the “slave morality” of Christendom is necessarily connected to Judaism. But for those concerned with that issue, Holub’s study is of little help. It’s very hard to see how Nietzsche’s refusal to remain within the Wagnerian fold, in combination with his employment of certain anti-Jewish stereotypes, helps us make sense of his philosophical-historical understanding of the Jews as “gain[ing] satisfaction from [their] enemies and conquerors only through radical revaluation of their values, . . . in an act of the most deliberate revenge.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Anti-Semitism, Friedrich Nietzsche, History & Ideas, Philosophy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF