The Moral Failings of the Sermon on the Mount: Reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil

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I needed to pause for a moment because just the audacity of what Nichch is doing here is hard to capture because um we're not German. We're not Germans of Nichch's generation is where you really need to be if you want to understand what he's doing in this passage. So, first let me start with the opening of this and then let you know why this isn't so important and then where we go from there. So, this is but this is just huge.

So, again he's been talking about the new values uh the uh values that are above uh looking down on people the elite values the outsider values all of this. So, what are the most common values of Nichzche's time? Of course they are the values of Christianity in particular of the Lutheran/Calvinist tradition of which uh Germany was the inheritors at this time and much of Europe as well as uh Nichzche Nichzche's father was a Lutheran Lutheran yes Lutheran minister. Um so this is very significant and central to him.

So it's hard for us to capture quite the sense of this because of course we don't speak German and we're not uh born in the 19th century but if we had been this would be much clearer but let me start here and he says in our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art of nuance which is the best gain of life and we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with yay and nay. Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruy befooled and abused until a man learns to introduce a little art into his sentiments and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial as do the real artists of life. So, pause there. So, this yay and nay.

So, the the claim here is clear that when we're young, literally young, but also culturally young. So, he's playing this on two levels as we'll see. um literally young when we're ...