{"id":73301,"date":"2012-08-13T23:56:39","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T07:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=17794"},"modified":"2012-08-13T23:56:39","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T07:56:39","slug":"against-the-ubermensch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2012\/08\/13\/against-the-ubermensch\/","title":{"rendered":"Against the \u00dcbermensch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On some occasions I have disagreed with friends who were influenced by the ideas of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Friedrich_Nietzsche\">Friedrich Nietzsche<\/a> as to the contingent role of Christianity in the introduction of a highly egalitarian moral ethos in the West. The same tendency toward valorization of spiritual equality, and an exaltation of self-sacrifice as opposed to selfishness, were elaborated in a variety of religious-ethical systems between the first Olympic Games and the rise of Islam. Nor do I think these religious-philosophical systems were particularly original. Rather, <strong>I suspect that they &#8220;hook&#8221; into deep rooted intuitions about the moral order of the universe that we already have as human beings<\/strong>. Fairness is at least as much <em>felt<\/em>\u00a0as it is taught.<\/p>\n<p>I was reflecting upon this when considering narrative fiction, in particular works of adventure with a heroic protagonist. Though some characters may have flaws, <strong>we intuitively know what is the good.<\/strong> One of the fascinating aspects of George R. R. Martin&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire\">Song of Ice and Fire<\/a> is that the author seems to take joy in shattering the sanitized perceptions of medieval chivalry many have. And yet that heroic ideal persists. We know the archetype, and it&#8217;s not some cultural creation. A hero is a &#8230;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/GeneExpressionBlog\/~4\/MzG4YIBXHwU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On some occasions I have disagreed with friends who were influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche as to the contingent role of Christianity in the introduction of a highly egalitarian moral ethos in the West. The same tendency toward valorization&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthroplogy","category-bullies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73301"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73367,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73301\/revisions\/73367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}