Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Three theses about dispositions' and 'Human, All Too Human'

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9 ideas

29. Religion / A. Polytheistic Religion / 2. Greek Polytheism
The Greeks saw the gods not as their masters, but as idealised versions of themselves [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The Greeks did not see the Homeric gods above them as masters and themselves below them as servants, as did the Jews. They saw, as it were, only the reflection of the most successful specimens of their own caste - an ideal, not a contrast.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 114)
29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 1. Monotheistic Religion
Stoics teach that God is a unity, variously known as Mind, or Fate, or Jupiter [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Stoics teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind, and Fate, and Jupiter, and by many names besides.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.68
29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 4. Christianity / a. Christianity
Science rejecting the teaching of Christianity in favour of Epicurus shows the superiority of the latter [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: We can determine whether Christianity or Greek philosophy has the greater truth by noting that the awakening sciences have carried on point for point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but have rejected Christianity point for point.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 068)
The Sermon on the Mount is vanity - praying to one part of oneself, and demonising the rest [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: This shattering of oneself, this scorn of one's own nature, is actually a high degree of vanity. The whole morality of the Sermon on the Mount belongs here; in ascetic morality man prays to one part of himself as a god, and has to diabolify the rest.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 137)
     A reaction: This seems to be the core of Nietzsche's objection to Christian teaching - that it doesn't provide a direction of life for the whole human being. The modern rejection of religions agrees with Nietzsche, especially in disputes over the place of sex.
Christ was the noblest human being [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Christ was the noblest human being.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 475)
     A reaction: That one will come as a surprise to those who only know of Nietzsche's religion that 'God is dead'!
Christ seems warm hearted, and suppressed intellect in favour of the intellectually weak [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Christ, whom we like to imagine as having the warmest of hearts, furthered men's stupidity, took the side of the intellectually weak, and kept the greatest intellect from being produced: and this was consistent.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 235)
     A reaction: Thomas Aquinas was a stupendous intellect. The surest way to be swept forward on a wave of popularity is to find some reason why the uneducated are superior to the educated.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / a. Religious Belief
Religion is tempting if your life is boring, but you can't therefore impose it on the busy people [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: People who think their daily lives too empty and monotonous easily become religious: this is understandable and forgivable; however, they have no right to demand religiosity from those whose daily life does not pass in emptiness and monotony.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 115)
     A reaction: Well wicked, that Nietzsche. Richard Dawkins and the hated new atheists are a right bunch of wimps in comparison.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / b. Soul
Death can't separate soul from body, because incorporeal soul can't unite with body [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: Death is a separation of soul from body. But nothing incorporeal can be separated from a body. For neither does anything incorporeal touch a body, and the soul touches and is separated from the body. Therefore the soul is not incorporeal.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Tertullian - The Soul as an 'Astral Body' 5.3
     A reaction: This is the classic interaction difficulty for substance dualist theories of mind.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 3. Problem of Evil / d. Natural Evil
There is a rationale in terrible disasters; they are useful to the whole, and make good possible [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: The evil which occurs in terrible disasters has a rationale [logos] peculiar to itself: for in a sense it occurs in accordance with universal reason, and is not without usefulness in relation to the whole. For without it there could be no good.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.4.5
     A reaction: [a quotation from Chrysippus. Plutarch, Comm Not 1065b] A nice question about any terrible disaster is whether it is in some way 'useful', if we take a broader view of things. Almost everything has a good aspect, from that perspective.