Nietzsche on Women.

"238. (…) On the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of woman as ORIENTALS do: he must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable property, as a being predestined for service and accomplishing her mission therein. (…)
"239. The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present--this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age--what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty. And let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She is unlearning to FEAR man: but the woman who 'unlearns to fear' sacrifices her most womanly instincts." (Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil").

Although Nietzsche was infatuated with several women, and proposed to some, he never got married.

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Somehow, I'm reminded of this scene from Ron Howard's 2001 film "A Beautiful Mind", starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Ed Harris, and Christopher Plummer.




Update:
17-04-2015: Nietzsche -- unlike Schiller, his hero -- wasn't much of a "farfallone amoroso", it seems. :-)

The Two Faces of Rosie the Riveter.

It’s funny how the elites’ perceptions of the workers change over time. When they need the workers, this is how they see us:

[A]

When they don’t need the workers, this is what the elites say about us:

“How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?”

Maybe it's time for the workers to understand, as David Ruccio and Robert Paul Wolff say, that it is us who don't need the elites at all.

As Rosie said: "We can do it".

Image Credit:

[A] " ‘We Can Do It!’ poster for Westinghouse, closely associated with Rosie the Riveter, although not a depiction of the cultural icon itself. Pictured Geraldine Doyle (1924-2010), at age 17.” Author: “J. Howard Miller, artist employed by Westinghouse, poster used by the War Production Co-ordinating Committee”. This work is in the public domain. Source: Wikipedia.

The Pope and Nietzsche: An Easter Dialogue.

With cameo appearances by John Maynard Keynes, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and yours truly.

Here’s Pope Francis explaining why his social concerns (inequality, poverty, lack of solidarity, hunger in the world, the suffering of children) do not make of him a Marxist:

(With Spanish accent, in humbly conciliatory tone) “There is nothing in the Exhortation [‘Evangelii Gaudium’] that cannot be found in the social Doctrine of the Church. (…) I was not, I repeat, speaking from a technical point of view but according to the Church’s social doctrine. This does not mean being a Marxist.” (link)

Here’s Friedrich Nietzsche, prophet of those who "are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement", explaining why he’s unmoved by the Pope’s words:

(German accent, shouting rabidly) “Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence -- who make him envious and teach him revenge … Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of 'equal' rights … What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge. The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry.” (“The Antichrist”, page 58)

Here’s John Maynard Keynes:

(English aristocratic accent, smirking contemptuously) “In one respect Communism but follows other famous religions. It exalts the common man and makes him everything. (…)
“We hate Communism so much, regarded as a religion, that we exaggerate its economic inefficiency; and we are so much impressed by its economic inefficiency that we underestimate it as a religion.” (“A Short View of Russia”, link)

Rush Limbaugh:

(In barely coherent Yank English) “But, regardless, what this is -- somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.” (link)

Yours truly, in second-hand Aussie accent: Holy Father, let's try and see the bright side of this. At least Limbaugh doesn't hate you.

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Given the example of  Óscar Romero (among a great many others) and in spite of the above, readers may, nevertheless, think it prudent for Pope Francis to make it clear his distance with Marxism. The opposition to Marxism, they could add, is due to its association with the Soviet Union.

Perhaps Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would have understood the concern. But, they would have been skeptical about that solution. Marx and Engels writing in the winter of 1847-1848 (70 years before the Russian Revolution):

"Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?" ("The Communist Manifesto", Preface)

There's little point in dialogue when the other side is deaf to one's voice (this goes to you too, Robert).

Perhaps you should try the advice of David Ruccio and Robert Paul Wolff: first you need to decide on which side you are on and let the chips fall where they may. It won't stop the abuse, but at least you could sleep soundly at night.

UPDATE:
27/05/2015. Predictably, a young and psychopathic ignoramus would eventually parrot the same crap Keynes and Nietzsche penned before him, as proof of his (it's a male, trust me on that) erudition:

"Marxism and Catholicism. My first thoughts are we are seeing two denominations of the same failed religion, with both reflecting blind faith over rationality and reason. History hasn’t been kind to either over the last century or two has it?" (26 May 2015 at 2:57 pm, check the comments thread)

See also here.

A Short View of "A Short View". (and iv)

(From part iii)

Writing in a liberal democracy, presumably for the bourgeois reader, Keynes expressed with relative “political correctness” what others in different circumstances were at liberty to express with much blunter honesty:

“Slavery is of the essence of culture, a truth of course, which leaves no doubt as to the absolute value of existence. This truth is the vulture that gnaws at the liver of the Promethean promoter of culture. The misery of toiling men must still increase in order to make the production of the world of art possible to a small number of Olympian men. Here is to be found the source of that secret wrath nourished by Communists and Socialists of all times, and also by their feebler descendants, the white race of the 'Liberals', not only against the arts, but also against classical antiquity.” (Nietzsche, "The Greek State")

It’s not known whether Keynes, Clive Bell (or any of the Bloomsberries) ever read Nietzsche, but there is a clear parallel between their views (in Skidelsky’s account) and Nietzsche’s, slightly blunter ones.

Indeed, a couple of years ago, Corey Robin (associate professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College), published "Nietzsche's Marginal Children: On Friedrich Hayek" (here). Using the notion of "elective affinity" (roughly, my own "shared worldviews") Robin explains how many of Nietzsche's elitist and anti-democratic ideas, through Hayek and the Austrian school, shaped our economic reality:

"[N]o one understood better than Nietzsche the social and cultural forces that would shape the Austrians: the demise of an ancient ruling class; the raising of the labor question by trade unions and socialist parties; the inability of an ascendant bourgeoisie to crush or contain democracy in the streets; the need for a new ruling class in an age of mass politics."

Focusing on Hayek and the marginalist/subjectivist Jevons, Walras and Menger, Robin did not mention Keynes. He should have (and this is a friendly critique to his otherwise excellent essay):

"From a distance it is easy to see how many presuppositions they [Keynes and Hayek] shared. (…) Both emphasised the importance of subjectivism in economic thinking. (…) Both were inegalitarians, believing in the beneficial spillovers from pockets of wealth. Neither was an ardent democrat." (Robert Skidelsky, "Hayek versus Keynes: The Road to Reconciliation")

Coming from a similar millieu, Keynes and the Austrians had to share worldviews: they and their peers carry the world on their shoulder. Beware the day they decided to shrug. The same reasoning Robin masterfully displays in relation to the Austrians, applies to Keynes: he belongs with them.

Atlas. [A]

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Just like Keynes, or the Austrians could not claim originality in their views, as Nietzsche held similar ideas before them, neither could Nietzsche himself make that claim.

Whether he knew it or not, one can see the shade of an older author on Nietzsche's pompous ramblings:

"It would be well for those interested to reflect whether there now exists, or ever has existed, a wealthy and civilized community in which one portion did not live on the labor of another; and whether the form in which slavery exists in the South is not but one modification of this universal condition … Let those who are interested remember that labor is the only source of wealth, and how small a portion of it, in all old and civilized countries, even the best governed, is left to those by whose labor wealth is created." (John C. Calhoun, 1836 and here)

There is a terrible lucidity in Calhoun, a kind of dark nobility in refusing to hide behind hypocritical faux humanism or undergraduate philosophising. Sometimes, it seems, there is more honour and dignity in the exploiters than in their lackeys and attack poodles.

It's not the exploiters, and least of all Keynes, the Austrians and their race of arrogant parasites to the parasites. who are "are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement": it's the humble workers who carry them in their backs.

Survival of the fattest. [B]

Perhaps Calhoun's contempt for liberals (shared by Nietzsche) isn’t so hard to understand, after all.

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Just one question is left unanswered. Why has “A Short View of Russia” remained largely forgotten -- as if it were a shameful family secret -- by contemporary liberal economists?

Given Keynes' intense interest for religion, it seems appropriate to answer that question thus:

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. (Genesis, 22-23, KJV).

Image Credits:
[A] Atlas at the Rockefeller Center. This work is in the public domain. Wikipedia.
[B] "Survival of the Fattest", by Jens Galschiøt, and Lars Calmar. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. My usage of the file does not suggest their author endorses me or my use of it. Source: Wikipedia.