/lit/ - Literature

nope, that would be peter hitchens

>>6227038
Isn't Chris' brother Pete already the Hitchens of christianity?

>>6227053 how is peters writing

he's way better than Hitchens
his criticism of Nietzsche is a complete BTFO

>>6227161
>Nietzsche, who represents most prominently this pretentious claim of the fastidious, has a description somewhere—a very powerful description in the purely literary sense—of the disgust and disdain which consume him at the sight of the common people with their common faces, their common voices, and their common minds. As I have said, this attitude is almost beautiful if we may regard it as pathetic. Nietzsche's aristocracy has about it all the sacredness that belongs to the weak. When he makes us feel that he cannot endure the innumerable faces, the incessant voices, the overpowering omnipresence which belongs to the mob, he will have the sympathy of anybody who has ever been sick on a steamer or tired in a crowded omnibus. Every man has hated mankind when he was less than a man. Every man has had humanity in his eyes like a blinding fog, humanity in his nostrils like a suffocating smell. But when Nietzsche has the incredible lack of humour and lack of imagination to ask us to believe that his aristocracy is an aristocracy of strong muscles or an aristocracy of strong wills, it is necessary to point out the truth. It is an aristocracy of weak nerves.

>Of the case of Nietzsche I am confessedly more doubtful. Nietzsche and the Bow Bells Novelettes have both obviously the same fundamental character; they both worship the tall man with curling moustaches and herculean bodily power, and they both worship him in a manner which is somewhat feminine and hysterical. Even here, however, the Novelette easily maintains its philosophical superiority, because it does attribute to the strong man those virtues which do commonly belong to him, such virtues as laziness and kindliness and a rather reckless benevolence, and a great dislike of hurting the weak. Nietzsche, on the other hand, attributes to the strong man that scorn against weakness which only exists among invalids.

these two quotes are from Chesterton's "Heretics", but the main BTFO is coming from his "Orthodoxy":

>All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson, are really quite empty of volition. They cannot will, they can hardly wish. And if any one wants a proof of this, it can be found quite easily. It can be found in this fact: that they always talk of will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite. Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon. It is the existence of this negative or limiting side of will that makes most of the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little better than nonsense. For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with "Thou shalt not"; but it is surely obvious that "Thou shalt not" is only one of the necessary corollaries of "I will." "I will go to the Lord Mayor's Show, and thou shalt not stop me." Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the THING he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.

>>6227168
>[...] It may be added that the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed in all fierce and terrible types of literature, especially in satire. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard. When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture. They are appealing to the marble Apollo. And the curious disappearance of satire from our literature is an instance of the fierce things fading for want of any principle to be fierce about. Nietzsche had some natural talent for sarcasm: he could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not any mass of common morality behind it. He is himself more preposterous than anything he denounces. But, indeed, Nietzsche will stand very well as the type of the whole of this failure of abstract violence. The softening of the brain which ultimately overtook him was not a physical accident. If Nietzsche had not ended in imbecility, Nietzscheism would end in imbecility. Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.

>This last attempt to evade intellectualism ends in intellectualism, and therefore in death. The sortie has failed. The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless—one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is—well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.

>>6227172

>[...] Here I end (thank God) the first and dullest business of this book—the rough review of recent thought. After this I begin to sketch a view of life which may not interest my reader, but which, at any rate, interests me. In front of me, as I close this page, is a pile of modern books that I have been turning over for the purpose—a pile of ingenuity, a pile of futility. By the accident of my present detachment, I can see the inevitable smash of the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw, as clearly as an inevitable railway smash could be seen from a balloon. They are all on the road to the emptiness of the asylum. For madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it. He who thinks he is made of glass, thinks to the destruction of thought; for glass cannot think. So he who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything. And as I turn and tumble over the clever, wonderful, tiresome, and useless modern books, the title of one of them rivets my eye.

>>6227178

>It is called "Jeanne d'Arc," by Anatole France. I have only glanced at it, but a glance was enough to remind me of Renan's "Vie de Jesus." It has the same strange method of the reverent sceptic. It discredits supernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no foundation. Because we cannot believe in what a saint did, we are to pretend that we know exactly what he felt. But I do not mention either book in order to criticise it, but because the accidental combination of the names called up two startling images of Sanity which blasted all the books before me. Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We KNOW that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other.

But THIS is the best part and the complete BTFO of all of Nietzsche's thought:

>Some fall back simply on the clock: they talk as if mere passage through time brought some superiority; so that even a man of the first mental calibre carelessly uses the phrase that human morality is never up to date. How can anything be up to date?— a date has no character. How can one say that Christmas celebrations are not suitable to the twenty-fifth of a month? What the writer meant, of course, was that the majority is behind his favourite minority—or in front of it. Other vague modern people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief mark of vague modern people. Not daring to define their doctrine of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint or shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality. Thus they think it intellectual to talk about things being "high." It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase from a steeple or a weathercock. "Tommy was a good boy" is a pure philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas. "Tommy lived the higher life" is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.

>This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, "beyond good and evil," because he had not the courage to say, "more good than good and evil," or, "more evil than good and evil." Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, "the purer man," or "the happier man," or "the sadder man," for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says "the upper man," or "over man," a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being "higher," do not know either.

BTFO

>>6227038
He actually had the ability to argument and think, his style was great and his thoughts sound, even if not as explored as they should have been.

>>6227168
I don't quite agree with that art thing. I don't think that a hump is necessary for camelness, And it would be interesting to see a picture of a giraffe which uses a odd perspective to suggest a long neck from a short neck, or a short from a long.

>>6227184
>evolutionists
I wonder if he means real men of science, or the eugenecists.

>>6227249
Back in the early 20th century is was fair to group them into one. It's only after that the "scientific evolutionists" wanted to distance themselves from "social evolutionists" for political reasons.

>>6227269
although he is mainly talking about the social evolutionists

sounds like a bunch of garbage from a fat anglo

>>6227164
>>6227168
>>6227172
>>6227178
>>6227183
>>6227184

B T F O
T
F
O

>>6227053
Peter is a right-wing piece of shit

>>6227161
No he doesn't, he's just angry

>>6227164
>>6227168
>>6227172
>>6227178
>>6227183
>>6227184
>>6227491
Great posts anon, thank you.
I have always been curious about this writer, now these thoughts have made him a priority. I gather that everything he wrote was superb but in any case could you recommend a collection or a novel in particular?

>>6227184
He is literally just too stupid to comprehend basic poetical language. Higher men, such as Caesar, compared to a peasant. Caesar is called higher, not happier or purer, because higher is what he fucking is. If you don't understand how Caesar is a higher man, you are too relativistic for words, and you're wish is for, as Nietzsche would say, one herd and no herdsman.

>>6228751
your*

Neetskee and Chesterton are the same damn thing

Neetskee just a smidge more honest

Chesterton is a social construct.

>>6228751
No, Nietzsche really is equivocating, his use of higher really is vague to the point of meaninglessness. In what sense is Caesar higher than a peasant? Social standing? Fame? Military strength? Nietzsche says none of these. He doesn't say the Famous Man or the Militarily Powerful Man, for example.

>>6227168
>I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.

>>6228799
and there have been writers who have exhorted men to seek fame or military power, and these are the ones Chesterton is considering as genuine thinkers with a genuine idea. Exhorting men to live the higher life is babble.

>>6228751

He is not saying that he is not higher

He is asking you why the fuck he is higher... Because he is more powerfull, more capable of doing whatever-the-fuck-he-wants?

Then Nietzsche could have said that he didn't wanted the higher man, but the powerful one (in a influential sense). (there are powerful man that are very low standards on others things, for example)

>>6228864
maybe nietzsche isn't for autistical sperglords who can't read between the goddamn lines

>>6228878

it's a shame that you actually read Nietzsche as a self-help philosopher

>>6228878
maybe philosophical texts shouldn't have to make you read between the lines to be taken seriously
maybe your just a cuck for Nietzsche

>>6228885
I don't think Nietzsche cared about your strict standards on philosophy
>>6228882
ok mr chesterton fan lol

you know why they call him chesterton
because his chest weighs a ton
because he's fat as shit
jesus christ someone delete that OP image I'm vomiting over here

>>6228911

lel you went full retard and you aren't even pretending it

stop

>>6228864
Haha, oh okay, then what does "good" mean, or "happy" or "pure"? All of those words are ten degrees more empty than "higher" is. Nietzsche doesn't tell people to be higher -- that's impossible. He tells men to recognize higher men and to serve the higher men, and do what they can to provide an environment in which a higher man can be made.

Caesar is a higher man because he seized his goal, conquered massive amounts of land for himself, and held his own law above his head. He is a higher man because he allowed civilization to spread further, he is a higher man because he created, created the Roman empire, which in turn made it possible for a Northern European pantshitting barbarian to have access to physicians and culture, allowing him to, down the line, give birth to a civilized, toilet-using, (yet still bored and moping) Chesterton.

>>6227038
He was a real non-warmongering socialist and an actual good journalist unlike that neocon atheist shill.

>>6228934

If your point is that higher men can achieve a lot of things in history through influence, then their tales are recognized when they are dead and thus it's impossible to see what's going on.

I like to think that Nietzsche was like Quixote all along

>>6228911
I don't know what you're talking about. He looks like a cute little baby.

Waaa waaa jesus change my nappy. Waaa waaa I need a sky daddy to tell me how to behave. Waaa waaa I'm a useless human being without a functioning bwain.

>>6228934

>Caesar is a higher man because he seized his goal, conquered massive amounts of land for himself, and held his own law above his head.

>seized his goal
everyone does that all the time
>conquered massive amounts of land for himself
so the higher man is a conqueror of land? why didn't Nietzsche just say, "I advocate the man who can conquer land"?
>held his own law above his head
just like your average criminal

> He is a higher man because he allowed civilization to spread further,
I allow it too.
>he is a higher man because he created,
I created this post.
>created the Roman empire,
So the higher man is an emperor?
. . .

>>6227038

Chesterton was the greatest "man of letters" of the 20th century hands down.

Joyce and Faulkner were better novelists.

Yeats and Eliot were better poets.

Barth and Bonhoeffer were better theologians.

But no writer could writer so successfully in so many different ways better than Chesterton could. He is without question one of the great minds of the 20th century.

He's also the undisputed master of wit. No one comes close to him. Not Wilde, not Twain, not anyone.

He's one of the GOAT and hugely influential to a lot of important 20th century writers for good reason.

>>6228971
No, that was just rhetorical game. It was pretty obvious to see what Caesar what had done during his time.

Regardless of his quixotism, Nietzsche inspires an enthusiasm for life which Christianity, no matter how hard it tries, cannot match. That's all I care about. Not if all his ideas were right.

>>6228959
>He was a real non-warmongering socialist

He was a distributist. He abhorred the economic and social failures of socialism, communism, and capitalism with equal disdain.

>>6228994
>Nietzsche inspires an enthusiasm for life which Christianity, no matter how hard it tries, cannot match.

What a fucking lie.
Show me the Nietzschean saints. Show me the Nietzschean saints who spent entire nights in freezing cold lakes praying. Show me the Nietzschean saints who stood up to kings and emperors.

>>6228985
I have to ask you, are you retarded? I am serious, are you retarded? Do you truly not grasp what is being said here?

>>6229001
>What a fucking lie.
>Show me the Nietzschean saints. Show me the Nietzschean saints who spent entire nights in freezing cold lakes praying. Show me the Nietzschean saints who stood up to kings and emperors.

BTFO

>>6229001
if freezing in lakes is your idea as an enthusiam for life then you are a diseased creature and need be put down

>>6229002
I know exactly what is going on. Nietzsche was a rhetorician and his use of higher is extremely vague. It conjures up images of worldly glory/fame, but it does not explicitly refer to that and is in fact much more vague. You are refusing to acknowledge this ambiguity.

>>6229006
>if freezing in lakes is your idea as an enthusiam for life then you are a diseased creature and need be put down

Wow. How inspiring! What great appreciation of life!

>>6229006
Yeah, so who are the Nietzschean saints? I heard of those teenagers who thought it was edgy to murder someone because they had read Nietzsche.

>if freezing in lakes is your idea as an enthusiam for life then you are a diseased creature and need be put down

How is a creature that can endure freezing lakes diseased? It's obviously extremely strong if it can withstand it. Why don't you go try it lmao

>>6229008
It's not very vague at all. He doesn't want the West to give up its will and become lazy, which is what he saw in socialism. That is all. There is no system here. He was a polemicist. He never claimed to be a systematicist or a planner.

>>6229016
>who are the Nietzschean saints?

http://youtu.be/Y406qX6BwdE

But if i follow Nietzsche advice and go full retard to the senate and start speaking about truth and how degeneracy is fault of the jewish career through history i'm pretty sure that everybody would smirk and i wouldn't get anywhere

And if i start from the bottom up i have to play a lot of flutes of other powerful beings to start scaling the ladder but in the end i will become a right wing republican

either way i'm fucked up and Nietzsche doesn't help me in my political ideas (assuming that a higher man is the one that influences history through politics or power)

A Nietzschean would be an artist or a leader so I don't know why you're asking for saints.

>>6229052

>autism

>>6229035
>muh degeneracy
that's pretty un-nietzsche

>>6229014
slaying a world-slanderer is pretty appreciative towards life

>>6228911
never go full potato

>>6228695
Novel:
The Man Who Was Thursday

Non-fiction:
Heretics
Orthodoxy

>>6229083

Read Genealogy of the morals and the part of jewish transform of ideals through resentment

that's pretty much muh degeneracy

>>6229176
>The Man Who Was Thursday
Five chapters in and I'm already loving this, thanks anon I have been missing out.

>My belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidence as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism—the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence—it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence, being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediæval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred.

>>6227184
This guy is just criticizing Nietzsche based on his unwillingness to put people within categories he already demolished. There is no good or evil, happiness is not an intrinsic good and sadness is not an intrinsic evil.

All the world is an expression of will, thus things like higher and lower describe the intensity and differences between a set of wills that constitute a phenomenon. The higher man is constituted by an active will and the lower man is one composed of wills that are reactive (ressentiment). The reason Nietzsche terms everything in physical metaphors is the entire fucking point of his philosophy, not a failing of it.

>>6229001
I'm pretty sure you are trolling at this point and don't even understand the core concepts of Nietzsche. There are tons of Nietzschean saints: Hitler, the Columbine shooters, etc...

>>6229959
WOW that is some twisted reasoning

Accepting anecdotes is not accepting evidence. Doing receiving clues in the case of murder, and doing experiments in the case of nature, is evidence.

How could anyone take this shit seriously

I guess scientific education was lacking in England back then. Absolutely absurd for someone from this day to find truth in that passage.

>>6229959
>peasant woman claims that God appeared before her and told her that she needs to end your life
>well okay sure I'm a democratic christian I believe you I guess it's time for me to go

>>6228751
Thinking of Caesar as anything more than a man, even if he was historically important, is more relativistic than thinking of him as nothing more than a man.

The only way for Neetch to be coherent was to use aphorisms. He knew that analytic philosophers would tear him a new asshole when they came along, so he didn't even bother to use logical argument forms to put forth his arguments. Nor did he use a set of definitions or axioms. IMO, he could learn a lot from Quine, Ryle, Rorty, etc.

>he could learn a lot from Quine, Ryle, Rorty, etc.
he's dead now, so i don't think he will be doing any learning
le smile meem

>>6227056
Peter is Christian but he's not super religious. It only appears that way because the people he debates tend to be loud critics of Christianity.

>>6229959
Jesus christ, what a moron.

>>6230233
True. Nietzsche didn't even know about truth tables, so how could he be right?

>>6230233
>he didn't even bother to use logical argument forms to put forth his arguments
And how do you know that there is not a single argument in the entire philosophical corpus of Nietzsche that's not valid or sound or both?

>Nor did he use a set of definitions or axioms
Pretty sure he used a ton of (informal) definitions; he was a philologist after all. Axioms? Both axioms and definitions are two special kinds of statement; nevertheless, both express statements. It takes practice to spot an indirectly expressed informal (there can be no talk of formal axioms (except for, say, Euclid's, but why the hell would Nietzsche speak of geometry), since analytic philosophy wasn't alive at the time) axiom; but I am convinced that you know nothing about that.

>Quine, Ryle, Rorty,
And this just blows your cover. Rorty? Wow. What can anyone possibly learn from Richard Rorty?

>>6229959
>faglords ITT take this guy seriously
please just leave /lit/ or sth

>>6227038
I'm a raging atheist and even I like Chesterton. The PROSE, my friends, oh my GOD the PROSE.

MUH ACRE AND A COW

>>6232995
yeah, I love Chesterton even though I disagree with his views.

Partly the prose, but a lot of it is that he just seems like a really cheerful warm guy and getting to spend time with him (via the proxy of his writing) is really enjoyable

idk

also his books are hella comfy

>>6230075
This diction is straight from Reddit. Head on back there.

Why was Chesterton so ignored by philosophers and Nietzsche so important to philosophers if Chesterton was so grand an author?

>>6233666

Liberal University and Public Education system.

Chesterton is largely derided because he was a staunch defender of Orthodoxy and Christianity in general. He was also really fucking good at it too, despite his protests that he never was a formal theologian and never claimed to be an expert on the subject.

One thing everyone seems to admire about Chesterton is, even if he disagreed with someone's stance, he never let the debate or disagreement cloud his judgement of the person holding the stance. Say what you will about the guy but he was a true christian, through and through, and loved humanity, humans, and western civilization with a zeal that, quite frankly, the world could use right now.

He's comfy as fuck, and makes people (or me, at least) appreciate life and all that it can offer.

Back to the original point, liberal faggots don't like his message so they keep him out of critical circles mostly.

He's also based as fuck and a huge influence on a lot of really important 20th century writers (Borges, Eliot, O'Connor, Tolkien, Wolfe, Etc.)

>>6233693
Yes, this. His influence as a writer is largely ignored, even if a lot of great authors praise him a lot.
But he is a very well known author in the Catholic circles so he has at least some respect and has survived the test of time.

>>6233693
>Say what you will about the guy but he was a true christian, through and through, and loved humanity, humans, and western civilization with a zeal that, quite frankly, the world could use right now.
he hated jews though
>inb4 jews arent human

>>6233693
>Liberal University and Public Education system.
But Neat-o is way more offensive to liberal sensibilities than some feel-good christian

>>6233836
Like he said,True Christian.

>>6233836
But he didn't show dislike of jews anywhere in his works, if I remember clearly he was quite fond of some.
>>6233853
Not really since there is nothing more offensive to liberals than christianity.

>>6233693
Time to read him

>>6233836

This is a common lie. People like to nit-pick one fucking phrase he used. He said something to the effect of "the jewish problem" which, on the surface level, seems like a Nazi propoganda term (it was).

What he was referring to was the sociologically and cultural problem Jews faced in Europe, mainly discussing how the Jews maintain their own unique culture which sometimes is radically different than most western european cultures. The main problem was that Jews (at the time) did not have an autonomous state to practice their culture and tradition and as a result did not and could not assimilate into western European society as easily.

There's a fuck ton more of his writings which shows he defended the Jews far more than he criticized them, even going so far as to say something to the effect of how he was not "blessed enough to be counted as part of that special race". (I'm too lazy to look up the direct quote atm).

>>6233864
I've read Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man, I liked the first better. But both are quality reads for sure.

>>6233693
>loved humanity, humans, and western civilization
HA

>>6230075
>>6230092
>>6232556
>>6232660
In all likelihood this is taken out of context from some semi-satirical piece made solely for the sake of argument.

I hope.

>>6229959

>there are actually people on /lit/ right now who take the man who wrote this shitty drivel seriously

Ayyy

>>6233890
It makes more sense when you read it as a whole, but the reasoning is very odd, I can't dispute that. I'm Catholic, but the iffy reasoning is my main criticism of his philosophy.

>>6233943
He was a big influence on a lot of great writers, so why is it so bad that some random no one who posts here also takes him seriously?

>>6233957

>big influence
>great writers

Your opinion, not a fact

>>6233995
Elliot wasn't a great writer and chesterton wasn't a big influence?

>>6233856
lol but
>and love humanity

>>6233863
>>6233870
yeah I just read wikipedia and I realize I'm wrong. I think a quote in the article put it well though: Chesterton was never "a man who was seriously anti-semitic." But as the article shows, he did have a lot of casual anti-semitic assumptions, which to be fair, everyone at the time had.

also:
>sociologically and cultural problem Jews faced in Europe, mainly discussing how the Jews maintain their own unique culture which sometimes is radically different than most western european cultures.
He was addressing the flood of eastern european Jews to the west during the time, so it was a reasonable concern at the time.

But its still an unfair generalization considering that Jewish communities established in western Europe were highly assimilated by this time.

Also these same arguments Chesterton uses resemble the charges of conspiracy made against Dreyfus in France, who ended up being the loyal soldier at the end of the day and not to some international jewish cabal centered in Germany. Its not surprising though cause Chesterton was was an anti-Dreyfusard.

Also although this article has a pro-jewish slant, I think its pretty relevant to the discussion cause it just happened yesterday. I think the board had fair concerns, but it support of:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/us/debate-on-a-jewish-student-at-ucla.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

>>6234006

No, Elliot wrote nothing but dogshit and Chesterton was an overrated hysterical hack. They were both whiny reactionaries

>>6234014
This is an 18+ board, you might want to try r/books, they don't like reactionaries there also.

>>6234014

>>6234026
>>6234032

>reactionary babbys get criticized
>they counter with dank maymays

As expected from an intellectually empty movement like neo-reactionism. I bet you dumb shits worship Evola and think that Spengler is a great writer as well0

>>6234014

So you don't like one person he influenced. It doesn't discount the rest (and there are a lot). Besides the aforementioned writers, Chesterton was a huge influence and highly respected by Ghandi, MLK, Hemingway, Solzhenitsyn, Waugh, Shaw, H.G. Wells, Hitchcock, Fitzgerald, Orson Welles, and George Orwell to name a few others.

>>6234052
> Elliot wrote nothing but dogshit and Chesterton was an overrated hysterical hack
Yeah, your criticism was fucking amazing, I can't dispute that at all, I bow to your mighty enlightened intellect. Fucking idiot.

>>6233107
>>6234026
>>6234032
>edgy
>reddit
>fedora

Paper tigers, every last one of you.

>>6234086
>Paper tigers, every last one of you.

Some faggoty anon makes dumb ass remark because he doesn't like Chesterton. Other anons point out his meaningless contribution to the discussion as a whole. Then this faggot comes in and attacks the people trying to drive out the shitposters and trolls.

It's like you want the quality of /lit/ to sink to even lower levels (if that's even possible).

>>6234098
This thread was for the most part actually quite good. Happy to have gotten that much.

>>6234052
you know I don't really know my Reaction, but aren't Evola and Chesterton pretty fucking far from each other?

>>6229001
Not the guy you'r answering to, and if think Chesterton is on to something about Nietzsche, although his representation of Nietzsche's philosophy is rather unfair, but here you're not helping your case.

>Show me the Nietzschean saints who spent entire nights in freezing cold lakes praying.

That's would be a case in point of life-denying in Nietzsche's terms.
As for the Nietzschean saints, try Diogenes the Cynic (who did stand up to Alexander, in a way), Goethe, Da Vinci, Napoleon and perhaps even Cesare Borgia.

>>6230197
Nietzsche's never said Caesar was more than a man. Caesar is a man, he's perhaps one of the closest things to the superhuman (though in Nietzsche's opinion Goethe would probably be as fitting as Caesar if not more, which is something Chesterton fails or refuses to notice)

>>6229959
That could have been an interesting point if he hadn't chosen the Christian polemist route of butting heads with rationalists (it's true that a lot of self-proclaimed rationalists are ready to dismiss stories not for being irrational but for not being vraisemblable).

Also there's a confusion between events and their description here- if a peasant see a strange form in the darkness and tells you "I saw a ghost", he's not telling what he saw, he's already giving you a description that uses an idea to explain something he doesn't understand. In that sense the peasant is already using a form of dogma ("strange human-like things in the darkness are souls of dead people coming back").

>>6233693
You realized Nietzsche criticized the liberal society and the liberal mindset ? He was one of the first non-religious authors to do so.

>Chesterton is largely derided

He's not. He's underrecognized perhaps, but he isn't the butt monkey of many people seeing as most people haven't heard of him.

You need to work a bit more on your narratives. Influent authors being ignored is not always the cause of something so straightforward as an opposition to politically correct values. It's also a matter of exposure, authors don't magically become famous for being good until some evil faculty dean decides it's time to evacuate them from the canon.


>>6233863
What we call liberal mentality nowadays is quite inspired from Christianity.

>>6234136
Yeah, they have almost nothing in common. One is Catholic, the other new age bullshit, one is democratic, the other is an aristocrat and so on.

>>6234145
>What we call liberal mentality nowadays is quite inspired from Christianity.
Of course, but that doesn't stop your average liberal arts student on disliking christianity.

>>6234145
>You realized Nietzsche criticized the liberal society and the liberal mindset ? He was one of the first non-religious authors to do so.

Yes but Nietzsche is a liberal professors wet dream due to his critique of Christianity. If Nietzsche had been a devout Christian, he would not get nearly the same amount of exposure. If you were to take a philosophy class at university which covered Nietzsche, I can almost guarantee that the professor would primarily focus on Nietzsche's critique of Christianity in the majority of major universities around the world. Will to power, ubermensch, and all that other shit will be discussed, but the professors will focus mostly on the critique of Christianity. Sad but true.

Another good parallel that shows how this sort of bias is present is with Kirkegaard. Though he is discussed a lot more often than Chesterton in academia and critical circles, he's often derided or otherwise not taken as seriously as some of the other (atheist) existentialists such as Sartre, Camus, or Nietzsche. Which is really ironic considering Kirkegaard is widely regarded as the father of existentialism.

Which is the better critic: G.K. Chesterton of Atheism or Christopher Hitchens of Christianity?

>>6234229
Well Chesterton of Atheism purely because he was a great writer. But honestly his philosophy isn't all that great, neat and catchy, cheerful and somethimes very true, but not explored nearly as well as it should have been.

>but not explored nearly as well as it should have been
by himself or others?

>>6234164
that's what education does

>>6234186
Would you call this unfair? The challenges to the existing world power at the time is a seriously big deal. Further, why concentrate on the values of people whose values are based on an ideological system based on unproven metaphysical claims (God) when the important thing to come from the Enlightenment is people learning how to make sense of a world without those metaphysical claims?

So did he have any arguments for why Christianity was correct?

>>6228993
I haven't read him, but shit if he can get this much praise, I'll pick up one of his books tomorrow.

>>6227183
>Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other.

Oh yeah, I was just thinking about this line the other day. It's quite spectacular.

>>6234775
Many, largely ridiculous and impossible to take seriously

(and i say that as a huge fan of chesterton)

>>6235582
but his prose remain gold?

>>6227183
>She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxnJ0tt9uaE

>>6227168
>>6227184
There's compelling stuff in here, but these two in particular make me wonder if he ever read On Truth and Lying In A Non-Moral Sense.

>>6229001

Nietzsche himself addressed this criticism. The willingness to die for a cause is not (necessarily) a sign of love for life. It can just as easily be a sign of so-called "active nihilism" or what Freud called the "death drive."

Consider for example the ISIS lunatics. They are by all account pretty willing to die for their cause. Do you see this as a sign of higher spirituality? Yes? What about people who engage in BDSM? Is their willingness to endure pain a sign of some righteousness, or is it just a sign of masochism?

Now I know how you're going to respond: Christianity does not encourage masochism, but instead valiant self sacrifice. But I disagree. Everything about Christianity bepeaks a masochist psychology. The fact that "god" is represented as a victim who died after hours and hours of torture. The fact that its most inspired verses play up the sick and timid as an ideal, indeed THE ideal of humanity. The fact that it speaks of a "world beyond" instead of passionately affirming this one. Everything about Christianity to me bespeaks what has elsewhere been described as "masochist-narcissist" psychology, the psychology of seeking pity and significance in suffering. Also combines other vices like anti-worldliness.

>>6227038

Really bad but popular?
Yes.
Or maybe not, maybe it's Lewis.

>>6228934
This is a /pol/ distortion of Nietzsche, BTW.

>>6234186
>mfw I have a prof who thinks Kierkegaard is a full subjectivist like Sartre
>she's also a Hegelian who basically can't read anyone else without spinning one tiny aspect of their thought out in endless decontextualized circles

>>6235657
>anti-worldliness

How is this a vice when the world after this one is better than the present one?

>>6235727
Christians interpret the next world as a literal afterlife. This is not only a corruption of the original Jewish eschatology (wherein the next world is merely a better future in THIS world) it also bespeaks a fundamental world-weariness and nihilism.

Basically, OT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> NT. Nietzsche prove'd right AGAIN!

>>6235745
Christians do that because their God literally became a Jewish carpenter and told them so. In their own eyes they have perfectly valid grounds for thinking what they think.

And that's where all of Nietzsche's objections to Christianity fall apart. He's only right if God, and Christ, aren't real. If they ARE real- if the Gospels are right- there's no truth to anything Nietzsche says.

>>6235745
>>6235368

>>6235657
Anti-worldliness is a heavily Protestant view, however. The rejection of life is not representive of the core sects prior. They all teach The New Earth. Because of that its a limiting complaint that should not be thrown over Christianity as a whole.

Further, the masochism commemt makes no sense. BMSD seeks pain for its own end. A christian man who is willing to die for a cause does not seek pain but seeks a continuation of their ideals and wishes to remain true to their beliefs. There is no pleasure or painseeking involved. The comparison falls flat.

The sick and timid are not played up as an ideal in Chistianity. You misrepresent it to say such things.

And Christianity did affirm the good nature of creation. Hell, its in Genesis 1 where the creation is called good and peope listened and taught of a good world tainted by sin.

>>6235961
>Hell, its in Genesis 1 where the creation is called good and peope listened and taught of a good world tainted by sin.

Nietzsche always maintained that the Old Testament was a righteous book. His critique of Christianity is exactly that: a critique of *Christianity*. He doesn't reject the entire Abrahamic tradition.

>>6235978
And I continue in the quote you have saying they did teach that. Catholics and Orthodox teach the idea of the world being good and the renewal of the Earth. However, Nietzsche is highly influenced by Protestant Europe, supporting Martin Luther and thus basing Christianity and what it teaches officially on Protestants alone.

>>6236004

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with that. Nietzsche's father was a Lutheran pastor and Nietzsche was a student of theology before becoming a philologist, and this comes across in his writings. I've often said that Nietzsche was basically a really, really, REALLY Unorthodox Christian theologian. That sounds almost ludicrous but I see the signs of (protestant) influence breaking through everywhere in Nietzsche's writing. The Calvinist rejection of free will. The clearly messianic eschatology of the Superman. The biblical-influenced writing style of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche claimed to be rebelling against the core of Christianity but I think in the end, despite the edgy rhetoric, he was really just an *extremely* unorthodox Christian in denial.

>>6236015

I guess that's not inconceivable, but what would you say was the essence of christianity that he still accepted?

>>6236030
If he didn't accept the basic postulates such as the ressurection and salvation he didn't. But I never read him so I can't claim if he had or hadn't accepted it.

>>6236030

It's kind of hard to explain. I don't think he consciously accepted any of it except for the OT, I just think he was subconsciously influenced by a lot of it.

>>6229035
>how degeneracy is fault of the jewish career through history

wasn't that his sister?

>>6227183
>Because we cannot believe in what a saint did, we are to pretend that we know exactly what he felt.
Chestie is just another guy who applies his standards of skepticism to ideas he disagrees with, not to his own.

>>6234014
>reactionary
He is a Distributist

>>6227183

> In 1867, Nietzsche signed up for one year of voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. He was regarded as one of the finest riders among his fellow recruits, and his officers predicted that he would soon reach the rank of captain. However, in March 1868, while jumping into the saddle of his horse, Nietzsche struck his chest against the pommel and tore two muscles in his left side, leaving him exhausted and unable to walk for months.[23][24]

THE DIABOLIST

Every now and then I have introduced into my essays an element of truth. Things that really happened have been mentioned, such is meeting President Kruger or being thrown out of a cab. What I have now to relate really happened; yet there was no element in it of practical politics or of personal danger. It was simply a quiet conversation which I had with another man. But that quiet conversation was by far the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It happened so long ago that I cannot be certain of the exact words of the dialogue, only of its main questions and answers; but there is one sentence in it for which I can answer absolutely and word for word. It was a sentence so awful that I could not forget it if I would. It was the last sentence spoken; and it was not spoken to me.
* * *

The thing befell me in the days when I was at an art school. An art school is different from almost all other schools or colleges in this respect: that, being of new and crude creation and of lax discipline, it presents a specially strong contrast between the industrious and the idle. People at an art school either do an atrocious amount of work or do no work at all. I belonged, along with other charming people, to the latter class; and this threw me often into the society of men who were very different from myself, and who were idle for reasons very different from mine. I was idle because I was very much occupied; I was engaged about that time in discovering, to my own extreme and lasting astonishment, that I was not an atheist. But there were others also at loose ends who were engaged in discovering what Carlyle called (I think with needless delicacy) the fact that ginger is hot in the mouth.

I value that time, in short, because it made me acquainted with a good representative number of blackguards. In this connection there are two very curious things which the critic of human life may observe. The first is the fact that there is one real difference between men and women; that women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes. The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In these small groups devoted to a drivelling dissipation there is almost always one man who seems to have condescended to his company; one man who, while he can talk a foul triviality with his fellows, can also talk politics with a Socialist, or philosophy with a Catholic.

>>6236584
It was just such a man whom I came to know well. It was strange, perhaps, that he liked his dirty, drunken society; it was stranger still, perhaps, that he liked my society. For hours of the day he would talk with me about Milton or Gothic architecture; for hours of the night he would go where I have no wish to follow him, even in speculation. He was a man with a long, ironical face, and close and red hair; he was by class a gentleman, and could walk like one, but preferred, for some reason, to walk like a groom carrying two pails. He looked liked a sort of Super-jockey; as if some archangel had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first and the last time.

* * *

Along the front of the big building of which our school was a part ran a huge slope of stone steps, higher, I think, than those that lead up to St. Paul's Cathedral. On a black wintry evening he and I were wandering on these cold heights, which seemed as dreary as a pyramid under the stars. The one thing visible below us in the blackness was a burning and blowing fire; for some gardener (I suppose) was burning something in the grounds, and from time to time the red sparks went whirling past us like a swarm of scarlet insects in the dark. Above us also it was gloom; but if one stared long enough at that upper darkness, one saw vertical stripes of grey in the black and then became conscious of the colossal facade of the Doric building, phantasmal, yet filling the sky, as if Heaven were still filled with the gigantic ghost of Paganism.

* * *

The man asked me abruptly why I was becoming orthodox. Until he said it, I really had not known that I was; but the moment he had said it I knew it to be literally true. And the process had been so long and full that I answered him at once out of existing stores of explanation.

"I am becoming orthodox," I said, "because I have come, rightly or wrongly, after stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief that heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reckless even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible even in his longest devotion. I hate modern doubt because it is dangerous."

"You mean dangerous to morality," he said in a voice of wonderful gentleness. "I expect you are right. But why do you care about morality?"

>>6236589
I glanced at his face quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the light of the bonfire from below, like a face in the footlights. His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit. I had an unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as I paused a burst of red sparks broke past.

"Aren't those sparks splendid?" I said.

"Yes," he replied.

"That is all that I ask you to admit," said I. "Give me those few red specks and I will deduce Christian morality. Once I thought like you, that one's pleasure in a flying spark was a thing that could come and go with that spark. Once I thought that the delight was as free as the fire. Once I thought that red star we see was alone in space. But now I know that the red star is only on the apex of an invisible pyramid of virtues. That red fire is only the flower on a stalk of living habits, which you cannot see. Only because your mother made you say 'Thank you' for a bun are you now able to thank Nature or chaos for those red stars of an instant or for the white stars of all time. Only because you were humble before fireworks on the fifth of November do you now enjoy any fireworks that you chance to see. You only like them being red because you were told about the blood of the martyrs; you only like them being bright because brightness is a glory. That flame flowered out of virtues, and it will fade with virtues. Seduce a woman, and that spark will be less bright. Shed blood, and that spark will be less red. Be really bad, and they will be to you like the spots on a wall-paper."

He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me despair of his soul. A common, harmless atheist would have denied that religion produced humility or humility a simple joy: but he admitted both. He only said, "But shall I not find in evil a life of its own? Granted that for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks will go out: will not the expanding pleasure of ruin ..."

"Do you see that fire ?" I asked. "If we had a real fighting democracy, some one would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper that you are."

"Perhaps," he said, in his tired, fair way. "Only what you call evil I call good."

>>6236597
He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled: then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, "Nobody can possibly know." And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, "I tell you I have done everything else. If I do that I shan't know the difference between right and wrong." I rushed out without daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not know whether it was hell or the furious love of God.

I have since heard that he died: it may be said, I think, that he committed suicide; though he did it with tools of pleasure, not with tools of pain. God help him, I know the road he went; but I have never known, or even dared to think, what was that place at which he stopped and refrained.

>>6227164

Dear god, that was the most long-winded method of calling someone beta and a faggot that I have ever seen

>>6235727

Because it's a pretty big gamble to assume the world after this one exists when you are, in fact, living in this world for a certainty.

>>6235961
>>6236004
Christianity puts off fixing this world for fantasizing about the next.

>>6233693
>"why do academics give Nietzsche more attention than Chesterton?"

>"It's the liberal universities and their love for Friedrich Nietzsche "

Chesterton is a horrible scholar. He's a great writer and has original ideas, but he has very little grasp of history or philosophy. He attributes Christian imperialism to humility, and he uses Socratic values as a template for pagan values (and on that basis says Christianity is more life-affirming than paganism).

>>6239062
>pain, sorrow, and suffering are but the kiss of Jesus
I wish Jesus would stop making-out with me

I remember coming across Chesterton from googling a poem Gargarensis quote is Age of Mythology. Can't remember what exactly it was, something about golden gods

>>6239120

Found it, is was called Lepanto

>>6227056

Also Peter's writing, from what I've seen, isn't as good as Christopher's.

Could be completely wrong, though.

>>6239086
Christianity is a lot more life-affirming than paganism. The pagans often committed infanticide if they didn't want their child. The notion that every human life is sacred is a Christian notion.
Paganism was grisly and brutal.

>>6236584
>>6236589
>>6236597
>>6236602
This is great, which book/collection is it from?

>>6239130
Tremendous Trifles, 1909

>>6239127
Life-affirmation has nothing to due with the sacredness of life, and Christians committed infanticide in abundance, it's just a kind of abortion.

>>6239138
How is paganism more life-affirming than Christianity?

inb4 "Christians deny this life in favour of an afterlife"

nonsense, this life is considered holy and is no way less holy by its being related to an eternal afterlife; in fact, it becomes more holy because it endows it with an eternal significance, thus overcoming the pagan despair of "drink today, for tomorrow we die"

inb4 "this life is made up of pleasures that Christians deny"

Only if you accept a materialistic metaphysics can you justify this idea that sex and eating are the ultimate goods and then anyone that lowers them in favour of a spiritual good like charity is guilty of denying "life"

>>6239160
Paganism has institutionalized pederasty (inb4 Catholicism), idolization of athletes, phallic worship, religious rites of drunken revelry in which barbarians, women, children and slaves take equal part. In paganism, individual glory is a virtue, in Christianity all glory belongs to God (but all faults belong to us). In Christianity, we are born into guilt worthy of death. The Christians idolize being the victim, the Christian God is most sublime as victim, pagans idolize conquerors.

>>6239086
I bet modern pagans/heathens would hate what Chesterton had to say

>These are the myths and he who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men. But be who has most Sympathy with myths will most fully realize that they are not and never were a religion, in the sense that Christianity or even Islam is a religion. They satisfy some of the needs satis fied by a religion; and notably the need for doing certain things at certain dates; the need of the twin ideas of festivity and formality. But though they provide a man with a calendar they do not provide him with a creed. A man did not stand up and say 'I believe in Jupiter and Juno and Neptune,' etc., and she stands up and says 'I believe in God the Father Almighty' and the rest of the Apostles' Creed. Many believed in some and not in others, or more in some and less in others, or only in a very vague poetical sense in any. There was no moment when they were all collected into an orthodox order which men would fight and be tortured to keep intact. Still less did anybody ever say in that fashion: 'I believe in Odin and Thor and Freya,' for outside Olympus even the Olympian order grows cloudy and chaotic... Polytheism fades away at its fringes into fairy-tales or barbaric memories; it is not a thing like monotheism as held by serious monotheists.

>>6239127
Greek and Roman infanticide wasn't just done for kicks, it was done if the baby was not healthy enough to survive or the family could not support it.

>>6239175
how is institutionalized pederasty life affirming

>>6239175
Pederasty is life-denying because it's against the natural law.

>Paganism has institutionalized pederasty (inb4 Catholicism), idolization of athletes, phallic worship, religious rites of drunken revelry in which barbarians, women, children and slaves take equal part.

These things are not life-affirming they are savage. Worship of natural things is not the same as loving life. If you haven't noticed nature is as full of death as it is of life, so the worship of nature is as much death affirming as it is life affirming. This was Nietzsche's typical equivocation, his typical sophistry.

>The truth is that one of the weaknesses in nature-worship and mere mythology had already produced a perversion among the Greeks, due to the worst sophistry; the sophistry of simplicity. Just as they became unnatural by worshipping nature, so they actually became unmanly by worshipping man. If Greece led her conqueror, she might have misled her conqueror; but these were things he did originally wish to conquer-even in himself. It is true that in one sense there was less inhumanity even in Sodom and Gomorrah than in Tyre and Sidon. When we consider the war of the demons on the children we cannot compare even Greek decadence to Punic devil worship. But it is not true that the sincere revulsion from either need be merely pharisaical. It is not true to human nature or to common sense. Let any lad who has had the look to grow up sane and simple in his day-dreams of love hear for the first time of the cult of Ganymede; he will not be merely shocked but sickened.

>In Christianity, we are born into guilt worthy of death.

Nobody is born guilty. We simply inherit the mortal bodies of our first parents.

>The Christians idolize being the victim, the Christian God is most sublime as victim, pagans idolize conquerors

Christ is a conqueror, and the greatest of conquerors because he conquerors death itself. Christ's crucifixion, death, and resurrection is a symbol of the struggle of ALL heroes who have to undergo self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice was understood to be a principle of heroism even by the pagans.

Pagans didn't worship conquerors either. The Germans and Gauls wanted Caesar to leave them the fuck alone. And you can bet the Roman citizenry weren't all entirely convinced of Caesar's glory, just as their are cynics today in regards to their own leaders.

>>6239188
It celebrates youth and human beauty.

>>6227038
He's just some fat Brit with silly glasses and opinion

>>6239235
It defiles it.

>>6239175
>pederasty

That's an entirely made up thing.

>>6227082

He's talented at everything but rarely involves himself in an extended deliberation upon the future.

>>6239287
It's literally what the Greeks called it.

>>6239175
>phallic worship
Are you inbred?

Paganism is life affirming because the gods are based on war, harvest, the sea, beauty. You know real life stuff. They try to "rationalize" life.

>>6239323
It's literally made up.

>>6239062
>Christianity puts off fixing this world for fantasizing about the next.
You're fucking kidding me, right?
With all the work Christianity (at least Orthodox and Catholic) focuses on saying this world is good, trying to get rid of sin - what taints this good world - getting people to know love in this world, teaching people that through fixing they can achieve salvation, and visibly trying to improve it how the hell could it trying to dismiss this world for the next? Not even the Orthodox ascetics do such a thing. I'd have to agree with >>6235961 that these comments are not representative of Christianity but of Protestantism. Through a rejection of works for salvation alongside faith the Protestants allow themselves to live their lives and feel themselves alright simply by believing in the divinity of Christ rather than by actively trying to improve upon the world.


The Maria Teresa quote deals with pain not as an end, like with masochism.

>>6239374
And also quoting a person in the church does have to accurately depict anything but that one person's belief.

>>6227168
>>6227172
>>6227178
>>6227183
>>6227184
As quite the fan of Nietzsche, I thought it might be worth read through all of this. What a fucking waste of time. The man sounds like everything he has a heard about Nietzsche is second hand or he has the reading comprehension of a five year old. Between the ad hominem (which is fair enough, because Nietzsche was quite the fan of that) the gist of his argument is "Nietzsche believes in will above all. Willing everything=willing nothing like the quietists because one must sacrifice potential actions to commit actions. Acting is a denial of will because one must put every other possible action aside to pursue one. Nietzsche don't know nuttin' bout will."

Anyone who has read Nietzsche and hasn't ignored significant portions of his texts knows how ridiculous the accusation of what Nietzsche thinks is. Not to mention the argument he is positing is pretty weak IMO.

>>6239374
Christianity is about pleasing god and getting saved. God is ontologically prior to this world. So you can't say that Christianity successfully pushes people to be good, and then out of the other side of your mouth say it was out of concern for this world.

I do agree that because god is a fairy story, so its basically just humans tricking themselves into doing stuff. But the Christian worldview is incapable of taking a step back from itself and realizing this, it would destroy itself to admit god is not real.

Of course we can recognize there are a few Churches that openly admit god is made up. They are not well attended, but may be in the future. Today's atheism is tomorrow's Christianity, and all that.

>>6234186
Most radical liberals ive encountered tend to hate Nietzsche and regard him as a fascist.

>turn the other cheek, pride is sin so just take abuse and wait for heaven
yeah Christians dont deny life AT ALL
Most of em have a fuck it attitude towards the problems of this world because "muh afterlife" not to mention a complete lack of honor which plays right into the hands of capitalist society

>>6239602

Christianity states that pleasing God is impossible (all our righteousness is as filthy rags) and salvation is impossible (the entire concept of grace). Today's atheism is just the classic Unitarian Universalist heresy again, no really, look it up. In fact, go talk to a priest, you're severely undereducated.

>>6239527
Yeah. From one of the earliest aphorisms in Beyond Good and Evil (which one has to assume Chesterton never read at all):

"A man who WILLS commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. [...] we are at the same time the commanding AND the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion"

>>6239602
>turn the other cheek, pride is sin so just take abuse and wait for heaven
>just take abuse

It's this kind of shit that makes keeping biblical interpretation to theologians sound thing to do. Fuck.

http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=359564
Excerpts:
>Augustine wondered at first if Jesus meant what he said literally. So he searched the gospels and discovered that Jesus Himself did not obey the commandment literally.

>According to Saint Augustine, Jesus' command to turn the cheek points to the uniquely Christian motive: charity

>Augustine finally unveiled the fuller meaning of Christ's command to turn the cheek. The command certainly includes prohibiting revenge: you should not imitate the behavior of your assailant. However, the command includes more: not only should you forgive your assailant, but also, out of joy, out of Love, out of Holy Spirit, and without fear of any kind or for any reason, seek to make your assailant good. Seek to draw him into repentance and into receiving the ultimate Good, the Holy Spirit.

>>6227161

Doesn't Chesterton admit to not actually reading a lot of the authors he critiques?

I love his writing, and his Nietzsche criticism is interesting, but its best to bear in mind

>>6239287
are you saying that homosexual pedophilia isn't a real thing or are you saying pederastry isn't a real word?

>>6239223
>Pederasty is life-denying because it's against the natural law.
So are toilets.

>These things are not life-affirming they are savage.
Savagery is life-affirming. The Greeks, despite coining the term barbarian, were intellectual barbarians themselves, a heady concoction of Mongolian love of life and autistic obsession with academics.

>Nobody is born guilty. We simply inherit the mortal bodies of our first parents.
Yes, we inherit their guilt, that is why we must die.

>Christ is a conqueror, and the greatest of conquerors because he conquerors death itself.
Dionysus did the same thing.

>Christ's crucifixion, death, and resurrection is a symbol of the struggle of ALL heroes who have to undergo self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice was understood to be a principle of heroism even by the pagans.
But it is done considerably differently. For instance, Achilles was considered as a figure of sacrifice because he went to avenge Patroclus, even though it meant certain death for him. Achilles' sacrifice of his life is nothing like Christ's.

>Pagans didn't worship conquerors either.
They certainly did, Heracles was a worshipped as both a god and a hero.

>The Germans and Gauls wanted Caesar to leave them the fuck alone
Just because pagans had a conception of a just war (and contrary to popular conception, they certainly did, Thucydides says as much about the Spartan soldiers), doesn't mean they didn't idolize just conquerors. For the Greeks, for instance, the Trojan War was justified conquest.

>And you can bet the Roman citizenry weren't all entirely convinced of Caesar's glory, just as their are cynics today in regards to their own leaders.
No, especially not the rich. But most people liked him a lot, since for one thing he replaced debtors being sold into slavery with a bankruptcy law.

>>6239188
It was actual romantic love, which wouldn't occur again until the advent of courtly love, which was more a literary device than an actuality.

>>6239332
Penises exist in real life.

>>6239138
>Christians committed infanticide in abundance
The Teachings of the Apostles or Didache said "You shall not kill that which is born."[43] The Epistle of Barnabas stated an identical command.[44] Apologists Tertullian, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr and Lactantius also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act.[7] In 318 AD, Constantine I considered infanticide a crime, and in 374 AD, Valentinian I mandated the rearing of all children (exposing babies, especially girls, was still common). The Council of Constantinople declared that infanticide was homicide, and in 589 AD, the Third Council of Toledo took measures against the Spanish custom of killing their own children.[38]

>>6242571
Doesn't change what I said, unless you're one of those chumps who think ideology is more relevant than material reality.

>>6227172
>When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture

From Wikipedia:
>Chesterton was a large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and weighing around 286 pounds (130 kg)

topkek

>>6242625
>Chesterton was a large man

4u

>>6242444
>So are toilets.
Are you fucking retarded? Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to use that as an argument against the natural law?

>>6228993
>Bonhoeffer
Was he really a good theologian or does he get bonus points for his martyrdom?

>>6242870
The posture you assume on the toilet violate natural law, is against nature for us to shit in that position, it is perversion and misuse of our bowels that we indulge in simply to intensify rectal pleasure.

>>6239223

>death-affirming is negating life

You are wrong, when i affirm death in life, it's a life-affirming thing, killing is life-affirming, negating your life is wanting to be death and kill yourself on nihilism or something else.

>>6242890
Son, you don't even know what the natural law is.

>>6239223

>>In Christianity, we are born into guilt worthy of death.

>Nobody is born guilty. We simply inherit the mortal bodies of our first parents.

lel it's like you don't even know all the mental illnesses that come from christian guilt

>>6242908
I don't know of a single one.

>>6229001
>Show me the Nietzschean saints. Show me the Nietzschean saints who spent entire nights in freezing cold lakes praying. Show me the Nietzschean saints who stood up to kings and emperors.

You seem unfamiliar with hagiography. Enthusiasm for life is not one of the prerequisites for sainthood. A saint sacrifices his life.

The lie in the post you're responding to is the idea that Christianity is trying to inspire enthusiasm for life.

>>6242904
I certainly do, Aristotle worked a lot on it, so did Cicero. Of course, they didn't have Biblical concerns to cater to.

>>6242904

>Natural Law is the Verb of my father, God.

fuck off

>>6242927
You yourself are unfamiliar with hagiography - martyrdom isn't a prerequisite, for example, Saint Ulrich of Augsburg (the first saint) died of old age

>>6235961
>Anti-worldliness is a heavily Protestant view
That's a bad claim. Catholicism and different types of Protestantism have different approaches to worldliness. Calvin's Geneva or the Massachusetts colony of the Puritans might seem like theocracies, but their concept of church was quite different from Catholicism's collection of monastics and celibate clergy who very actively claimed a status outside and above the "secular"(literally worldly) world.

>>6236695
They didn't have the modern memes yet to just say " low test beta"

>>6242625
He was poking fun at himself "the distinguished journalist" in that passage.

>>6243120
Of course. Was just pointing out the context for those who weren't aware

>>6229019

Really quickly: define "will".

If will is something one can give up, it's something one can possess and can choose to possess. If it's something to polemicize about, one should be able to explain what it actually is.