Having sort of dissed Pious Nietzsche earlier, I did want to say that my favourite chapter in the book was the one called “Paul’s Revenge.” I am not a Paul fan. Too much feminist religious philosophy for that ever to be the case. (Besides I like my hair and don’t see any need to hide it, and think that if it sets some dude off, then he has a problem not me, and if he makes it my problem, well, there are all kinds of ways to solve that, only some of which include non-violence.)

Having exposed some of my core concepts, let me tell you my favourite passage in the chapter. Benson says, “for Nietzsche, it (pity) is ultimately a disguised form of superiority: ‘To offer pity is as good as to offer contempt’. Precisely in the act of pitying, one places oneself above the one being pitied. thus, pity turns out to be a form of revenge, a way of retaliating against the other.”

The chapter is split into two sections. The first (and longest) is an articulation of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Paul. The main point seems to be to show that N is really trying to usurp Paul’s (purported) function in changing the ideological direction of the West. Benson says that

if  Nietzsche’s read of Paul is correct, then Nietzsche turns out to be a “second Paul,” whose kinship to Paul is actually constituted by their commonality.

The second part of the chapter is about why N is wrong in some of his interpretations about Paul and more generally about Christianity.  This seems to be centered on the idea (erroneous according to Benson) that Christianity is anti-life.

Nietzsche is certainly welcome to his “otherworldly” interpretation of the resurrection—and there have been plenty of theologians and believers throughout the past two millennia who have tended in that direction—but his interpretation clearly goes against orthodox Christianity. To say that the cross is the condemnation of life on earth is simply a gross misunderstanding.

(My eyes twirling in their sockets.)

Despite the “simply” – as if such a “gross misunderstanding” was beneath analytical notice – the articulation of Paul’s revenge tactics was interesting. The idea that he was fighting against doctrinal law because he could never live up to its dictates seems so delightfully Freudian, that I cannot help but feel a certain empathy (not pity) for a man caught in such a nasty moral and intellectual bear trap. The only “solution,” given two such poles, is to either bow to the authority/power, or to become the authority/power. It never seems to have occurred to dump authority/power as a goal (i.e. to dump the measuring stick and seek another less violent one). In this Nietzsche shares the intellectual confinement of Paul and so I agree with Benson that there are strong similarities between the two men and their projects.

I suppose given the exposure of my native rage in recent days, it is not surprising that I should find a chapter on revenge in Christian and Western philosophical history interesting. I did find that the comparison between Paul and Nietzsche useful in thinking about N’s slave morality thing. Benson quotes N:

The beginning of the Bible contains the whole psychology of the priest…” man must be made unhappy”—this was the logic of the priest in every age. It will now be clear what was introduced into the world for the first time, in accordance with this logic: “sin.” The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole “moral world order,” was invented against science, against the emancipation of man from the priest. Man shall not look outside, he shall look into himself. … And he shall suffer in such a way that he has need of the priest at all time. Away with physicians! A Savior is needed.

This quote seems to me to explain a great deal about the overall idea behind a slave morality, and thus of course, its opposite, the idea of a non-slave, or great man. But that’s the thing: a great man is really just the inversion of a slave. It doesn’t uproot the cognitive and conceptual system, it just inverts it. Which is what Benson says, and with which I agree.

What I disagree with is the fact that the overall system can be related in any meaningful way to the idea of truth. Certainly assumptions of identity equations like god = truth cannot be sustained without simple faith.

(“simple” — My eyes are now crinkled at the corners because I am grinning.)

In the last section of this chapter Benson asks to what extent the analysis of Paul is really a display of Nietzsche’s own psychology, because, according to Benson, it certainly isn’t about Paul. My question is — to what extent is this book and its core assumptions and consequent argument really about Benson?  That’s why I like the passage I opened with. Because what Benson seems to do is pity (and dismiss) those who, with Nietzsche, see the focus on non-earthly resurrection as a mark of anti-life sentiment. Now I don’t think Benson intends, as did N, to reorient the whole of the Western world. I just think he did rather hope to reorient his bit of it, that is, of Nietzschean studies.

Having followed the chain from Paul to Nietzsche to Benson, perhaps N is right, that it is about power and its uses. But what is the content of that “it?” Who is included in that “it?”  Most people seem to read that and assume that the “it” includes all people, but I rather think that the people included in that “it” is a rather small subset of the set that is “all people.” I think it’s a bit like the statement “all people are created equal.”  I rather think the original coiners of that phrase didn’t really mean all people – or what they meant by people didn’t include all those included in the term Homo sapiens.

Oh dear, it seems I have continued to diss the book. Never mind. I did read most of it, even if I couldn’t finish it, and perhaps that a mark of it’s overall power. I do wonder, however, if Benson is aware that his book has positioned himself as the third member of a triad. I also wonder if he realizes that the world that he posits with his arguments, is a minority world, and not a map of the whole of it.