Day: June 1, 2013

Throwing down the gauntletThrowing down the gauntlet

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:24 pm

“The Greeks did not see the Hellenic gods as set above them as masters, or themselves set beneath to gods as servants, as the Jews did.  They saw as it were only the reflection of the most successful exemplars of their own caste, that is to say an ideal, not an antithesis of their own nature.  They felt inter-related with them, there existed a mutual interest, a kind of symmetry.  Man thinks of himself as noble when he bestows upon himself such gods, and places himself in a relationship to them such as exists between the lower aristocracy and the higher; while the Italic peoples have a real peasant religion, with continual anxiety over evil and capricious powers and tormenting spirits.  Where the Olympian gods failed to dominate, Greek life too was gloomier and more filled with anxiety. – Christianity, on the other hand, crushed and shattered man completely and buried him as though in mud: into a feeling of total depravity it then suddenly shone a beam of divine mercy, so that, surprised and stupefied by this act of grace, man gave vent to a cry of rapture and for a moment believed he bore all heaven within him.  It is upon this pathological excess of feeling, upon the profound corruption of head and heart that was required for it, that all the psychological sensations of Christianity operate: it desires to destroy, shatter, stupefy, intoxicate, the one thing it does not desire is measure: and that is why it is in the profoundest sense barbaric, Asiatic, ignoble, un-Hellenic.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (emphasis in original; trans. Hollingdale)

Vicious circleVicious circle

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 4:35 am

“In the history of women, there is probably no matter, apart from contraception, more important than literacy.  With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, access to power required knowledge of the world.  This could not be gained without reading and writing, skills that were granted to men long before they were to women.  Deprived of them, women were condemned to stay home with the livestock, or, if they were lucky, with the servants.  (Alternatively, they may have been the servants.)  Compared with men, they led mediocre lives.  In thinking about wisdom, it helps to read about wisdom—about Solomon or Socrates or whomever.  Likewise, goodness and happiness and love.  To decide whether you have them, or want to make the sacrifices necessary to get them, it is useful to read about them.  Without such introspection, women seemed stupid; therefore, they were considered unfit for education; therefore, they weren’t given an education; therefore they seemed stupid.” – Joan Acocella, “Turning the Page”