Was Friedrich Nietzsche an Anti-Semite?

The late-19th-century German philosopher made his fair share of disparaging remarks about Jews and Judaism in his published and unpublished writings; far harsher, however, were his judgments about anti-Semites, Germans, and Christians. In a review of Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem, by Robert Holub, Brian Leiter defends the philosopher against the charge that anti-Semitism was integral to his thought:

Nietzsche’s target is obviously not the [Jewish or Christian] religion or the adherents [of either], but the values they embrace—the “ascetic” moralities . . . that denounce lust for sex, wealth, cruelty, and power, moralities characteristic of all the world’s major religions but unfamiliar in the ancient Greek and Roman world with which Nietzsche was deeply familiar. . . . Nietzsche, in fact, uses Judaism and Christianity interchangeably throughout the Genealogy of Morality: “everything is being made appreciably Jewish, Christian, or plebian (never mind the words!).”

He equates the “slave revolt” in morality—the overturning of the values of Greek and Roman antiquity with the values we now associate with “Judeo-Christian” morality—with the New Testament, with the Reformation, and with the triumph of the Catholic Pope in Rome. . . .

In his concluding chapter, Holub acknowledges that the real question is whether Nietzsche’s alleged Judeophobic comments are “concerned with issues of philosophical import” and thus should affect how we understand his philosophy. To answer this question, though, we need to be clearer . . . about what counts as objectionable Judeophobia. Surely it is wrongful to attack certain people based on negative stereotypes related to the religion they practice. . . . But is it similarly objectionable to be critical of a morality associated with Judaism (and Christianity, Islam etc.)? If so, then Nietzsche is not only a Judeophobe but a Christophobe, an Islamophobe, and so on. His entire corpus is an attack on values endorsed by the world’s major religions that he argues have pernicious psychological effects.

Read more at New Rambler Review

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