Nietzsche's love-hate affair

                Are life-affirming Jews nearer to Superman than decadent Christians?

                                            HYAM MACCOBY

   

   Nietzsche's views on the Jews and Judaism remained contradictory. At times he extolled the
   Jews as the most vital and talented people on earth, at others he attributed all the woes of
   Western civilization to them. The contradiction, however, is only apparent. Nietzsche, in
   fact, had a consistent view about the Jews – a view that somehow managed to reconcile
   philo-Semitism with a profound kind of anti-Semitism. In Nietzsche's thought, the medieval
   demonization of the Jews, especially the picture of the Jews as subtly manipulating the
   innocent and naive Gentile world, survives in a peculiarly ambivalent form. It is an
   intellectual construction that shows a person of the highest intellect struggling, ultimately
   without success, to escape from the anti-Jewish myth that pervades his society.

   It has often been pointed out that Nietzsche divides Jewish history into three periods. The
   first is the early biblical period, comprising the story of the Judges and the Kings, a period
   which Nietzsche regards as heroic. The second is the period beginning with the fall of the
   First Temple and the Babylonian exile, when the defeated Jews turned to the leadership of
   priests and prophets. This is the period which, according to Nietzsche, produced not only
   postexilic Judaism but also Christianity, two religions which he regards as one, that is,
   Judaeo-Christianity, which he detests. The third period is that of modern times, in which the
   Jews emerged as exponents of a vibrant culture, which Nietzsche greatly admires.

   In the first heroic period, Nietzsche argues, the Jews, or Israelites, were a sovereign people
   with a proud fighting record and an ability to produce leaders of high spirit and ruthless
   courage. Nietzsche revelled in the Old Testament stories of Moses, Joshua, Samson, Samuel,
   David, Solomon, seeing these figures as analogous to the Greek heroes Achilles, Odysseus,
   Agamemnon and others. To Nietzsche, the most important thing in life was the will to survive,
   not morality, and so he saw in these stories a record of the unquenchable will. Here Nietzsche
   differed very widely from Voltaire, who saw in the Old Testament only primitive and barbarous
   cruelties, which he cited to denigrate Christianity. It was the shame of Christianity,
   Voltaire argued, that it based its claims on the belief that these savage records were
   inspired prophecies of the coming of Jesus Christ. Voltaire denounced the ancient Israelites
   and primitives, who did not make the slightest effort to conform to the polished ideals of the
   Enlightenment; while Nietzsche adored them for the very same reason.

   Nietzsche, on the other hand, saw the New Testament as a sad decline from the primitive energy
   of the Old Testament. He wrote that it was a disgrace to print the New Testament alongside the
   Old in the same volume. This was because the New Testament embodied a slave morality, as
   opposed to the aristocratic ideal of the Old. The Old Testament contained an ideal of humanity
   at its best, the New Testament was written in the interests of humanity at its feeblest. It
   represented the revenge of the weak against the strong. Whereas Christianity represented
   itself as a religion of love, in which it is the duty of the strong to help the weak,
   Nietzsche saw in this only a drag on the progress of the human spirit, which needed to develop
   to the utmost its strongest and most ambitious aspects, until it brought into existence a new
   and higher form of life, the Superman. So, far from preserving the sick and the enfeebled, it
   ought to be the aim of society to weed out its less promising elements and to use its
   healthiest and strongest members in a programme of breeding that would result in a more
   perfect race. The Old Testament, wrote Nietzsche, arose from a life-affirming, yea-saying
   outlook; the New Testament from one that was life-denying and nay-saying, and its chief
   emotions were envy, resentment and desire for revenge, camouflaged as love and pity.

   But this applied only to part of the Old Testament, that is the narrative part concerned with
   wars and martial leaders. The part that concerned the reaction of priests and prophets to the
   destruction of the Jewish state by the Babylonian conquerors is condemned as the foundation of
   the hated religion of the weak, Judaeo-Christianity. In fact, Nietzsche argues, it was the
   Jews who foisted on the world the slave religion that represented the revenge of the weak on
   the strong. They reacted to their defeat by developing a religion of defeat. Nietzsche
   recognizes no break or conflict between Judaism and Christianity; both equally are motivated
   by envy and revenge, and both have sapped the strength of Western culture, the positive
   aspects of which stem wholly from the legacy of Greece and Rome. Indeed, what is wrong with
   Christianity is precisely its continuity with Judaism.

   Yet Nietzsche vigorously asserted that the Jews of modern times were an admirable people whom
   he wished to include in his breeding scheme for producing the Superman, because their
   hereditary qualities were essential for the make-up of improved humanity. "The Jews", he
   writes, "are beyond doubt the strongest, toughest and purest race now living in Europe; they
   know how to prevail even under the worst conditions, even better than under favourable
   conditions, by means of virtues that today one would like to mark as vices – thanks above all
   to a resolute faith that need not be ashamed before 'modern ideas'." Nietzsche even believed
   that the great qualities of the modern Jews were in a way the result of Christian oppression.
   The constant suffering of the Jews had the same effect as a programme of eugenics: it weeded
   out the weak and left only the strong. Nietzsche was a convinced Darwinian, and saw the Jews
   as an illustration of Darwin's doctrine of the survival of the fittest.

   Nietzsche's idea of eugenics – the breeding of the master race – was actually very different
   from that of the Nazis. Nietzsche regarded the master race as existing in the distant future,
   not in the present. He disagreed with those, such as Eugen Dühring, who believed Aryans to be
   a pure race of superior qualities; on the contrary, purity was something to be aimed at
   through a mixture of races, each of which might contribute its own best qualities, thus
   producing a race that was "pure" in the sense of having discarded or purged the less desirable
   qualities of its constituent ingredients. He thought that the ancient Greeks were a mixed race
   of this kind. Thus, instead of decrying German-Jewish marriages on grounds of "pollution" of
   Aryan blood, Nietzsche actually welcomed them, though he did say that there was a limit to the
   extent to which Jewish blood could be absorbed. He regarded Jewish blood as a kind of powerful
   medicine which could produce excellent results in small quantities.

   The problem, however, arises of how Nietzsche conceived that the excellent qualities he
   observed in Jews had survived their long immersion in the Judaeo-Christian religion of slave
   morality which he so despised. His division of Jewish history into three stages leaves it
   difficult to understand how present-day Jews could be anything but despicable.

   This question brings us to the core of Nietzsche's peculiar conception of the nature of the
   Jews. He expressed it in the following passage:

   Psychologically considered, the Jewish people are a people endowed with the toughest vital
   energy, who, placed in impossible circumstances, voluntarily, out of the profound prudence of
   self-preservation, take sides with all the instincts of decadence – not as mastered by them,
   but because they divined a power in these instincts with which one could prevail against the
   world The Jews are the antithesis of all decadents: they have had to represent decadents to
   the point of illusion; with a ne plus ultra of historic genius they have known how to place
   themselves at the head of all movements of decadence (such as the Christianity of Paul); in
   order to create something out of them which is stronger than any Yes-saying part of life.

   Nietzsche is saying here something very surprising. He is saying that the Jews are the
   originators of Christianity, but themselves do not believe in it. They created Christianity,
   and also other creeds of decadence, such as modern liberalism, as weapons in their own fight
   for survival. 'They put forward doctrines which they knew would weaken and sap the strength
   of  their conquerors, but they themselves were far from being taken in by such doctrines. They
   retained the will to power and the primitive self-confidence which are so necessary for
   survival, but they insidiously spread a philosophy that was calculated to destroy the will and
   confidence of their conquerors.

   This charge against the Jews might be considered the ultimate in anti-Semitism, since it
   accuses them not merely of originating a pernicious view of life, but of spreading it like
   poison gas in such a way as to harm their opponents but not themselves. How did Nietzsche
   arrive at this extraordinary fantasy?

   The answer lies in a mixture of theory and personal experience. Nietzsche was strongly opposed
   to Christianity, which he regarded as anti-life, because of its emphasis on humility, its
   denigration of this world, its other-worldly orientation and its dismissal of physical vigour
   and beauty as unimportant. But Nietzsche was the heir of the Voltairean tradition that blamed
   all the defects of Christianity on Judaism, and which delighted in dismaying Christians by
   stressing their affinity to the Jews, whom they had oppressed and despised; thus saddling
   Christians with what was to them the greatest insult. Nietzsche in many of his writings
   follows this Voltairean line, attacking Christianity because it is so Jewish.

   On the other hand, Nietzsche's personal experience made it impossible for him to maintain this
   line. He found that he liked the Jews whom he came across, while he hated the anti-Semites. He
   found the Jews to be yea-sayers and life-affirmers, while the anti-Semites were nay-sayers and
   life-deniers, seeking consolation for their own inferiority feelings in hatred of the Jews. He
   began to see the members of the anti-Semitic movements, including his own sister, Elizabeth,
   as the true followers of the negative aspects of Christianity, motivated by resentment of
   others' success and desire for revenge for their own inadequacies. The Jews, on the other
   hand, such as the talented and irrepressible Heine, he saw as bursting with vitality and hope
   for the future.

   Nietzsche's solution, then, was to absolve the Jews of the taint of actual belief in the
   despised religion of Judaeo-Christianity. If they really believed in this religion of
   life-denial, they could never have retained such vitality through the centuries or displayed
   such unconquerable will to survive. They must be playing a deep game, infecting their
   opponents with the virus of life-denial so that eventually they, the Jews, would come out on
   top. Already this game was succeeding, for the Jews, as represented by the Rothschilds and
   other Jewish capitalists, were in the process of taking over power in the modern world.

   Thus a thinker who, in a way, was most appreciative of Jewish characteristics, evolved a
   theory that can claim to be the most anti-Semitic of all. The Jews, in this theory, conform to
   the stereotype of ancient Hellenistic anti-Semitism, as "the enemies of mankind". The Jews are
   plotting a terrible revenge on the Gentile world, not out of a spirit of spiteful revenge and
   resentment, but as a long-term, far-seeing strategy of survival and victory. For this,
   Nietzsche, the despiser of ordinary bourgeois morality, has the greatest admiration. This is
   the truest model of the will to power which he sees as the apex of human virtue.

   If Nietzsche had taken the trouble to examine Judaism as a religion different from
   Christianity, he might even have found qualities that had some affinity to his Nietzschean
   philosophy. The Jewish this-worldly tradition of humanism ought to have produced a response in
   a thinker whose chief polemic was against other-worldly doctrines that reduced the status of
   humanity by requiring an abject posture of guilt and self-accusation.

   If Nietzsche did not respond to Judaism, many Jews responded to Nietzsche. The first book on
   Nietzsche was written in 1890 by Georg Brandes, the Danish Jewish critic, whose original name
   was Morris Cohen. This book, published in Germany, was the beginning of Nietzsche's world-wide
   fame. Many of the Jews who embraced Nietzschean ideas were marginal Jews (Grenzjuden) who were
   seeking an identity and sense of authenticity after the loss of religious faith and severance
   from the Jewish community; but it can be argued that these Jews were enthusiastic about
   Nietzsche precisely because they found in him, in an atheistic form, qualities and values that
   were recognizable as consistent with the Jewish spirit. Among such Jews were Stefan Zweig,
   Jakob Wassermann, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Karl Kraus, Sigmund Freud, even Gershom
   Scholem.

   

   

   Zionism, mainly through Martin Buber, was strongly influenced by Nietzsche. Many young
   Zionists responded to Buber's Nietzschean call for "a transvaluation [Umwertung] of all
   aspects of the life of the people to its depth and very foundations.... We must unlock the
   vital powers of the nation and let loose its fettered instincts." Gershom Scholem, by reviving
   the Jewish tradition of mysticism, aimed also to "let loose the fettered instincts" of the
   Jewish people while anchoring them in their own tradition. Buber himself, in his later life,
   followed this path too, by his researches into Hasidism, and his poetic reconstructions of its
   teachings. Both Buber and Scholem, it might be said, were seeking to revive and foster the
   Dionysian aspect of Judaism.

   In tracing the influence of Nietzsche on Jewish individuals and movements, however, it is
   possible to lose sight of the fact that Nietzsche was also an influence on the surge of
   anti-Semitism that led up to Hitler. Nietzsche's thesis that the Jews were engaged in a plot
   against humanity by spreading ideas which they themselves did not believe, in order to
   debilitate others, is echoed in later anti-Semitic theory, but without the admiring tone with
   which Nietzsche invested it.

   What is particularly remarkable about this kind of theory is the power and centrality that it
   allots to the Jewish people. The anti-Semite believes that the Jews are a unified entity that
   co-ordinates its plans on a global scale. Nothing will disturb the anti-Semite's conviction
   that the Jews are a unified and powerful force at all times. This conviction has even worked
   occasionally to the advantage of the Jews, as in the case of the Balfour Declaration, which,
   as recent research has shown, would never have been made without the erroneous belief that the
   Jews were a formidable world power who needed to be enlisted in the cause of the Allies.

   Nietzsche's ideas about the Jews partake of this paranoid concept of the Jews as a world
   power. The Jews occupy a place in his thoughts that far transcends the actual influence of the
   Jews in the world of his day. He accepts that there is such a thing as the "Jewish problem",
   which is fateful for the future of Germany and Europe. There was actually no Jewish problem,
   but only a problem of non-Jews who saw every slight amelioration in the position of the Jews
   as a frightening threat. If a few Jews, such as the Rothschilds, achieved personal power and
   wealth, this was seen as a threat from the Jews to take over the whole world. If some Jews (or
   even ex-Jews or marginal Jews) such as Felix Mendelssohn or Heinrich Heine achieved fame in
   the cultural world, this was a takeover in which Germanic values were being swamped by a
   Jewish conspiracy. If Jews obtained places in the universities beyond what might have been
   expected statistically, this meant that Germany was being dominated by the Jews and would soon
   be a province in a Jewish world empire, unless drastic measures were taken. Already the note
   of genocide was being sounded (by Dühring and Marr) as the only solution to the threat.

   From where does this paranoia derive if not from the Christian myth about the Jews? This was
   no longer believed in its original form, but was assuming various unconscious disguises. In
   the Christian myth, the Jews are very powerful. They are the powers that be, stern father
   figures, who judge and condemn the young Jesus, who is emblematic of the helplessness of the
   young. No matter how powerless the Jews might be in reality, they remained powerful in the
   fantasy that still dominated the world that had once been Christendom. This accounts for the
   strange fact that the Nazis, in their campaign of genocide of an unarmed people, regarded
   themselves as being very brave. They were pitting themselves against the greatest and most
   dangerous world power, that of the Jews.

   Nietzsche struggled to see the Jews as they really were, and to some extent succeeded. He was
   impressed by the talent and spirit of the modern Jew. But he was still dominated by the
   Christian myth in that he saw Jews as a world power who might take over the world altogether,
   a dénouement which he half welcomed but also feared. This man who fought all his life against
   what he regarded as the negativity and life-denying quality of Christian doctrine, was himself
   still partly an unconscious believer in the Christian myth, who handed on concepts that were
   utilized by the anti-Semites whom he despised.

   

   ____________________

   

   Hyam Maccoby is Visiting Professor at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds. His
   book, Ritual and Morality: The ritual purity system and its place in Judaism, will be
   published later this year. The above article is adapted from a lecture given at the University
   of Leeds, one of a series of public lectures entitled "Anti-Semitism and Modernity".

   

   TLS, June 25 1999, pp. 14-15