“The negativism which Nietzsche falsely regards as the genius of Christianity is therefore really the Schopenhauerian Buddhistic variant of Christianity.”—Reinhold Niebuhr, in The Nature and Destiny of Man (negativist, Buddhistic, and focused on the victims representing others’ destructive willfulness to themselves in a pragmatic fashion? That sounds like “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” and, “Spirituality requires courageously changing what you can and serenely accepting what you can’t.” Also, an unusual word that sure is used frequently in The Nature and Destiny of Man, is:
“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”—Helen Keller
webpage about Hitler, A Born Soldier, says, “Hitler’s favorite writer during the war was the early 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.... Hitler, like Thomas Mann, was greatly impressed by Schopenhauer’s book: The World as Will and Idea. Hitler read the book over and over again during the war and was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer’s teaching.” Another webpage, The Enigma of Hitler, from the Stormfront neo-Nazi group, says about him, “He could quote entire paragraphs of Schopenhauer from memory, and for a long time carried a pocked edition of Schopenhauer with him. Nietzsche taught him much about the willpower.”
The Stanford webpage on Nietzsche says, “Wagner and Nietzsche shared an enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche—who had been composing piano, choral and orchestral music since he was a teenager—admired Wagner for his musical genius and magnetic personality. Wagner was exactly the age Nietzsche’s father would have been, and Wagner had also attended the University of Leipzig many years before. The Nietzsche-Wagner relationship was quasi-familial, sometimes-stormy, and it affected Nietzsche deeply: twenty years later, he would still be assessing Wagner’s cultural significance.” Therefore, Schopenhauer shaped the thinking of all three super-Krauts, those most associated with the worldview known as “Wagnerian,” which, actually, is Schopenhauerian.
The title The World as Will and Idea, is usually translated as The World as Will and Representation. If you’d read this book in the 19th century and you thought that someday it would inspire the Nazi government, you would have seemed way too whiny. What this book is all about is taking aggressive as a given, and choosing to represent your own bad experiences to yourself as being as innocuous as possible. Today, that would be called “cognitive therapy.” In fact, both cognitive therapy and Schopenhauer’s philosophy were based on a Westernized version of Eastern religions such as Buddhism, one that would try to control the yin but not the yang.
Yet if you look at where that book would lead, you could see that it accepts the victimizers and corrects the victims. Both Hitler’s hero Schopenhauer, and our cultural norms, would say that if aggressive people change their own aggressive thinking, we’re lucky, but if the victims don’t change their own unserene and uncourageous thinking, they’d be unfairly burdening others with their weakness and maladjustment. Every society has its own conceptions of who has what personal rights and responsibilities. A society would tend to insist on these, since if all were free to disagree with their societies’ homeostasis norms, a lot of problems wouldn’t get solved, and a lot of people would feel imposed upon by manipulative moralists. It should be obvious how any society would treat those in it, who aren’t living up to the expectations of how people are supposed to deal with problems. A society that forgave that would fall apart. Therefore, victims who didn’t fit these expectations of personal response-ability would seem dangerous, as if they want to believe that they’re entitled to what they say they’re entitled to, and as if their insidious “victim-power” that you can’t disagree with without seeming villainous, is actually more dangerous than “honest” physical power that you’re free to disagree with. Sure, that didn’t have to lead to genocide and attempts to conquer the world, but that would have to lead to targeting the victims of anything.
Schopenhauer described the German word translated as “Idea,” and sometimes translated as “Representation,” Vorstellung, as an “exceedingly complicated physiological process in the brain of an animal, the result of which is the consciousness of a picture there,” what cognitive therapy would call an “outlook.” While some cognitive therapy for depression aims to stop distorted thinking, limiting cognitive therapy to this would be unpragmatic in those situations where reality is unreasonable. Feeling Good, by David D. Burns, MD, “The Clinically-Proven Drug-free Treatment for Depression” and copyright 1980,
says, “The problem-solving and coping techniques you learn will encompass every crisis in modern life, from minor irritations to major emotional collapse. These will include realistic problems, such as divorce, death, or failure, as well as those vague, chronic problems that seem to have no obvious external cause, such as low self-confidence, frustration, guilt, or apathy.” This is neo-Buddhism.
What we have here, could be described as both “The World as Will and Representation,” and “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” both of which are synonymous with each other. Schopenhauer called his ideal state of mind “sublime,” which is the same as an unconditional, spiritual transcendent serenity. We’re simply supposed to accept that human aggressive tendencies are ineradicable, so the best that we could do is to choose to have what Schopenhauer called a “sublime” outlook toward them. “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” doesn’t necessarily mean, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” but is necessarily that unconditional, all-or-nothing, and
If we don’t, then that could seem to be simply our expressing themselves. Schopenhauer wrote, “Wrong through violence is not so ignominious for the perpetrator as wrong through cunning, because the former is evidence of physical strength, which in all circumstances powerfully impresses the human race. The latter, on the other hand, by using the crooked way, betrays weakness, and at the same time degrades the perpetrator as a physical and moral being,” and, “The concept of good is divided into two subspecies, that of the directly present satisfaction of the will in each case, and that of its merely indirect satisfaction concerning the future, in other words, the agreeable and the useful. The concept of the opposite, so long as we are speaking of beings without knowledge, is expressed by the word bad, more rarely and abstractly by the word evil, which therefore denotes everything that is not agreeable to the striving of the will in each case.”
We must be realistic enough to remember what the threshold of human endurance is.Though Schopenhauer wrote, in The World as Will And Representation, that some wrote that his acceptance that pederasty exists all over the world implies a dangerous moral laxity, that serene acceptance of reality is a lot less dangerous than is this honoring of strength and distrusting of weakness that led to the main ideas of Nazism, as well as the current “We are all victims of victims,” thinking in self-help psychology.Though to treat an awareness of right and wrong as scary, might seem stereotypically Nazi, you could also find this in plenty of modern psychology that’s afraid of manipulation. As an “unidentified male” at a Wall Street party said in the CNN program Fall of the Fat Cats, which originally ran on October 18, 2008, said, “The fact is that the media has distorted and blown this out of proportion, because the media and the politicians are playing into people’s fears for their own self-serving purposes.” Both these fears and the supposed fostering of them, would be the sort of that Schopenhauer considered to be ignominiously cunning. Sure, we can’t prove this fostering, but since it would be cunning and crooked, we can’t afford to require that it be proven before we’d take it seriously, no presumed innocent until proven guilty here. Chances are that some media figures and politicians do figure that the more dangerous Wall Street actually is, the more that their own careers as guardians against the danger, would benefit. And while that statement might sound like what Wall Street would want us to believe, plenty of modern psychologists, too, would figure that self-empowerment self-respect and realism would mean facing whatever problems we’re helpless to change, just as that partier said we should face Wall Street. Fears and the like would seem to serve the frightened people’s own self-serving purposes, though these fears wouldn’t really do them any good, so they’re self-defeating and they should try to put a stop to them. Yang Buddhism would say that this isn’t unrealistic or unreasonable repression, since those who choose to serenely accept whatever they can’t change, could eradicate their own fears. This doesn’t sound at all Nazi, but it treats aggression as being as untouchable, and weakness as being as suspect, as Nazism did. If you took Nazi propaganda about the weak supposedly being crooked and cunning, and replaced such words with the word “manipulative,” you’d have something that sounds a lot like modern psychology.
Pat Buchanan, in a syndicated column in 1977, wrote, “...despite Hitler’s anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was an individual of great courage... Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.” The “defects of character” stressed by AA’s Big Book, resentment anger and fear in general, are the same as what Buchanan and Hitler meant by “character flaws,” i.e. not handling one’s own problems (whatever they may be) with enough stolid and self-reliant backbone. “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” as well as, “Whatever your problem is, courageously change what you can and serenely accept what you can’t,” also define “character flaws” as supposed weakness masquerading as morality.
Niebuhr was a hell-raiser, before Stalinism made him fatalistic about human nature. Yet if any organization preaches the Serenity Prayer at people, the final result would be the same, that self-reliant seems good, and weakness that tries to get persuasive strength from emotion and/or abstractions seems intolerably bad. As the history of The AA School of Self-Help Psychology shows, Nazism, minus anti-Semitism and committing outrageous aggression, equals taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as you’d have it.
Something very vital is missing. A brother of The Lawrence Welk Show’s tenor Joe Feeney, a priest named John Patrick, was found guilty in 2004 of sexually assaulting two boys. One could say that since the Feeneys no doubt try to be as square as The Lawrence Welk Show, no matter how “nice” this square quality tries to look, its patriarchal roots would still entail that we must accept the strong dominating the weak. Yet the theme of both The World as Will and Representation, and Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man, would interpret that as that no matter how much anyone, including perfectionist squares, try to live up to certain moral ideals, if one has a pedophile’s brain, then he’ll probably feel compelled to offend. Therefore, we all must serenely accept the strong dominating the weak, since this is an inevitable part of human nature. Likewise, if someone has the brain of an addict, we’ll just have to accept that that’s reality. Schopenhauer says nothing about whether pederasty occurs in those hunting-and-gathering societies that are especially cooperative or, like the Trobirand Islanders, especially free of restrictive sexual norms.
The biggest inspiration for The Nature and Destiny of Man, was the fact that Stalinism committed its atrocities despite the fact that it claimed to be fighting for what’s good. The February 1, 1997 issue of the Maoist Internationalist Movement Notes, said, “MIM opposes all rape, including the rape of children, but we also oppose the bourgeoisie’s pretensions that child sexual abuse is a problem of a few deranged individuals, rather than a problem of a society which eroticizes powerlessness.” Yet as the following says, pederasty, aimed at young teen boys so it doesn’t relish powerlessness as much as does much pedophilia, is found everywhere. The problem isn’t in who has the most influence on our culture. (And Mao’s regime were the ones who responded to the fact that greedy Britons had addicted many Chinese to opium, by executing the current addicts. Yet, at least, that didn’t involve any excitement about the strong triumphing over the weak.) François Furet’s The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century says, “[Maoism] one-upped Stalinism, but as an illusion about an illusion. It was like a child arriving at the store of the century’s ideologies after closing time...,” and such attributions of certain destructive behavior to sociological factors, is certainly childish.
This conception of who is or isn’t personally responsible for what, would look very different in a society that does have rampant depression, than in a society that doesn’t. The Learning About Depression webpage on the Zoloft website, says, “If you have depression, this sad mood along with other symptoms can last weeks, months, or even years if not treated. Depression isn’t a sign of weakness or a character flaw. It’s a real medical condition, but there are ways to successfully treat depression.... Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.” It seems that the question is whether this consists of 34,000,000 rather severe character flaws, or 34,000,000 rather severe medical conditions.
Manic-Depressive Illness, Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, by Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin and Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, says, in its chapter on personality differences, “Character has been defined as ‘personality evaluated’—that aspect of an individual which bears a moral stamp and reflects the person’s integrative and organizing functions. The concept of character is employed less frequently in the United States than in Europe, although it is often used interchangeably with that of personality.” Actually, the word character is used plenty in the United States, whether it be in comments on depression or from the likes of Pat Buchanan and Frank Buchman, to pass judgment on how integrated and organized are traumatized people. After all, such judgments aren’t moralistic. Someone absolutely has to provide our society’s homeostasis, since things simply have to remain integrated and organized.
The homepage of the Mental Illness—What a Difference a Friend Makes website, by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, says, “An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older—about one in four adults—suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.” As the title suggests, this website is about getting the friends of the 26.2% of the American adult population, to support these people rather than stigmatizing them. The ways in which one friend treats another, is one of the few sociological factors of this huge social problem, that we could honorably take seriously. If we take the other sociological factors seriously, we could seem to be trying to manipulate like untermenschen, and/or to restrict the übermenschen. Everyone knows that what’s at fault, is inside the millions of victims.
When you’ve seen ads and other guides that say things like this, you may have thought, “So how am I supposed to fit in with all this? In order to produce that much depression, that society must accept a good deal of übermensch personal shortcomings. Aggressive tendencies seem ineradicable. An acceptance of aggressive and other selfish behavior, therefore, is realistic and mature. We mustn’t be repressive or restrictive or controlling. Those who try to suppress such freedoms, look pretty scary. Strength and risky action have exciting, dynamic appeals to them, etc. The stronger you are, the more likely you are to have what’s exciting, pro-freedom, übermensch, red-blooded, self-reliant, etc., on your side. It seems that we must fear the untermenschen and their victim-power, and mustn’t fear the übermenschen and their freedoms. Yet the magnitude of this social problem, can’t just be brushed aside!
“In order to keep functioning despite that, this society must refuse to accept a good deal of untermensch personal shortcomings. Just because the behavior that would naturally cause resentment anger and fear is ineradicable doesn’t mean that the warranted resentment anger and fear must be, or that we could afford not to eradicate such hurt feelings. In each case, even the most sincere assertiveness reflects the assertive person’s and strivings, so could be called manipulative, and, therefore, insidiously dangerous. One can’t defend himself from such manipulation, without looking as if he’s re-victimizing the victims. Whining looks very unappealing, etc. Apropos of that norm, how much lowering of that unnaturally high rate of depression would seem centrist, and how much would seem radical?” It’s pretty safe to say that there’s always an out, in that if the person who has the problem wants to be well-adjusted and non-passive, then she’ll see how what caused the problem is at least excusable, and how much she plays an active role.
The above quote from Helen Keller appeared in a message from the friend of a man who died from a drug overdose, which probably had something to do with the fact that his priest repeatedly molested him when he was a teen. His aunt put The Serenity Prayer on his memorial website. His friend obviously objected to this use of the peace that passeth understanding, to cope with something this horrible. Yet the bottom line of what Schopenhauer wrote here is that no amount of understanding could stop pederasty. Therefore, the only option that we really have is the peace that passeth understanding, that we represent the consequences of pederasty to ourselves as being as innocuous as we could.
We keep hearing that since addiction is a biological disease, we should be so understanding of addicts, including recovering addicts who relapse, that we treat them as if they’re basically not guilty by reason of insanity. Dr. Mark Willenbring, on HBO’s special Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop, described addiction as, “wanting the wrong thing very, very badly.” Therapy for sex addiction usually includes promiscuity to which one had habituated oneself, and predatorial perversions, which the affected person in no way chose to have. In the case of the sexual predators, they could plead that malfunctions in their own brains had compelled them to attack. Brainscans of sexual predators feeling cravings to attack, might show just as much compulsive activity as do brainscans of recovering addicts who’ve just seen things that remind them of their drugs of choice, and this makes them really crave it. If this is the case, then if addicts plead that their own addictive cravings make them not responsible, others would have to say that therefore they’re just as irresponsible as are predators who act out their diseases. Once the cravings take over, disaster could result, but that’s reality.
The appendix of The World as Will and Representation ends, “Finally, by expounding these paradoxical ideas, I wanted to grant to the professors of philosophy a small favor, for they are very disconcerted by the ever-increasing publicization of my philosophy which they so carefully concealed. I have done so by giving them the opportunity of slandering me by saying that I defend and commend pederasty.”
So simply to say, “Thus the sense of beauty, which instinctively guides selection for sexual satisfaction, is led astray when it degenerates into a tendency to pederasty,” seemed too accepting of pedophilia. This shows both how much those of that era had a “zero tolerance” toward pedophilia, and also how an acceptance of destructive behavior could legitimately be called relatively permissive. “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it” certainly isn’t intended to defend and commend sinfulness, yet an attitude of “Oh, well, that’s human nature,” can permit sinfulness a lot more firmly than would moral relativism. One is free to disagree with it, yet one who disagrees with “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.... Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” would likely be accused of victimology, victimhood, pity-parties, melodrama, resentment, blame-finding, manipulative machinations, guilt-tripping, attempts to control, etc.
Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man regards the doctrine of “justification by faith,” as far more realistic than the doctrine of “justification by works.” “This doctrine of the ‘imputation of righteousness’ has always been offensive to moralistic interpreters of Christian faith. They have made much of the non-moral character of such imputation. But forgiveness, as a form of love which is beyond good and evil, is bound to be offensive to pure moralists.” Yet plenty of Christians who certainly aren’t permissive, call John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” “The New Testament in a nutshell.” The New Testament in a nutshell doesn’t say anything about people taking moral responsibility, only their getting a get-out-of-jail-free card.
More pertinently, justification by faith is more realistic. “But even when the definition of the human situation is more Biblical than classical, (as in the case of Augustine) the proposed solution of the situation defies the limits of human possibilities, as the Bible conceives them. It seeks for a place in history where sin is transcended and only finiteness remains. In seeking for that place it runs the danger of falling prey to the sin of spiritual pride and of illustrating in its own life that the final human pretension is made most successfully under the aegis of a religion which has overcome human pretension in principle.” Just as with what Schopenhauer wrote about pervs, it may seem that this fatalistic acceptance of the way that this sinful world ineradicably is, is permissive, but it’s actually realistic.
Dr. Burns, in Feeling Good, lists the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression as: All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental Filter, Disqualifying the Positive, Jumping to Conclusions, Magnification [of what’s wrong with yourself or right with others] or Minimization [of what’s wrong with others or right with yourself], Emotional Reasoning, Should Statements, Labeling and Mislabeling, and Personalization, which Dr. Burns defines as, “You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.” Naturally, since you absolutely can change yourself, absolutely can’t change anyone else, absolutely must accept that others’ harmful choices simply are the way that human nature is, and absolutely must focus your attention on dealing with your own problem as well as you can.
What we end up with is along the lines of what William James described, when he wrote that Americans tend to classify people as either redbloods or mollycoddles. The strong seem impressive in all circumstances, and the weak, unless they just shut up and take care of their own problems, seem ignominiously cunning, more horrifying than violence. All their talk about bad and evil seems to be just an expression of their , their victimology, victimhood, pity-parties, melodrama, resentment, blame-finding, manipulative machinations, guilt-tripping, attempts to control, etc. This sort of character defect involves mollycoddle ignominious cunning, which might be harder to defend oneself against than would be open and honest aggression, and is insidious rather than explicitly , so an untermensch-phobia could become popular. Whether the weak are labeled as mollycoddles or ignominiously cunning untermenschen, the bottom line is that their claims that their rights had been violated, are actually a manifestation of hidden human selfishness.
This could seem pro-freedom, since:
Since helpless isn’t tyranny, expecting people to serenely accept whatever they can’t change, even in a society with rampant depression, could still seem very pro-freedom.
In fact, this could seem necessary for freedom, since the only other alternative would be not to take care of your own problems well enough, to try to control others (including those who’d qualify as “sinful”), etc.
The Fine Art of Propaganda, by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, quotes Hitler’s Mein Kampf as saying, “A lie is believed because of the unconditional and insolent inflexibility with which it is propagated and because it takes advantage of the sentimental and extreme sympathies of the masses.” It should be obvious to anyone that the problems of the victims of alcoholic parents (or anything comparable) aren’t inside of themselves. Yet the sentimental and extreme sympathies of Americans tend to insist that one take personal response-ability for his own welfare. If he doesn’t, he could be insolently and inflexibly accused of having “pity parties” and the like. A stolid self-reliance with self-empowerment simply seems good, while passivity simply seems bad.
With all cognitive therapy, the more impressionable that one is, the more that he could learn to think pragmatically. Al-Anon’s approach was based on AA’s approach, in which the more impressionable a recovering alkie is, the more that he could get rid of his pathological thoughts. But Schopenhauer’s focus on how we represent the world to ourselves, wasn’t about getting rid of pathological thoughts.
Just imagine what it would look like if cognitive therapy gave equal time to re-engineering any aspect of human nature that might give us problems:
If you’re overpowered, you might think that power does matter. His having more power than you, is what determined the outcome. Yet if you act as if this fact does matter, you could seem to be playing the victim role, manipulatively using victim-power, self-defeatingly acting passive, etc.
Sure, the law doesn’t simply accept alkies’ willfulness as if they’re not guilty by reason of insanity, but alkies’ family members are to have exactly that acceptance toward them. Therefore, their family members, including their kids, should try to represent their own experiences to themselves as stoutheartedly as possible. If they don’t, their refusal to fit in with this would be treated as if it’s their ignominiously weak, possibly cunning, expecting the world to be as they’d have it. And since this would apply equally to any situation, including alkies’ kids dealing with life with the alkies, this is the world as will and representation. Telling alkies’ normal kids to look at themselves rather than blame others, doesn’t seem any different than would telling manipulative or hypochondriac blame-finders to do that.
The following is one example of what Schopenhauer regarded to be “the world as will,” that since so many men throughout history have been pedophiles, this is just one of those imperfections that we must take as a given. In a chapter near the end, he wrote, “Thus the sense of beauty, which instinctively guides selection for sexual satisfaction, is led astray when it degenerates into a tendency to pederasty.” In an appendix to that chapter, he wrote the following.
Schopenhauer was also very willing to take as a given, more literal predatorialism, such as, “But the futility and fruitlessness of the struggle of the whole phenomenon are more readily grasped in the simple and easily observable life of animals. The variety and multiplicity of the organizations, the ingenuity of the means by which each is adapted to its element and to its prey, here contrast clearly with the absence of any lasting final aim. Instead of this, we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need, and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in saecula saeculorum, or until once again the crust of the planet breaks,” and, “This universal conflict is to be seen most clearly in the animal kingdom.... But the most glaring example of this kind is afforded by the bulldog ant of Australia, for when it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail. The head attacks the tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head.”
Yet this is what “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” must mean, to varying degrees, depending on how severe the sinfulness is. As the following says, “Expel nature with a pitchfork, she still comes back.” If this means pedophilia, then that’s the tendency that we must take as a given. Sure, we could do our best to stop the actual molestations and rapes, but we’d still have to accept the aggressive tendencies. Many women and children have suddenly found their lives to be thrown into chaos and desperation, when they suddenly find out that the women’s husbands were pedophiles, and, therefore, the rest of the family simply must flee at all costs. This desperation would be characterized as the liberated approach, since the women are free of obligations that they remain good little wives. Therapists who try to lower the likelihood of each pedophile offending again, must think about the measures that the public must take to protect themselves, in terms of whether treating all pedophiles as risks might make some of them not want to try to control themselves. Sure, the needs of those hurt by this, to have more sane lives, could be called ineradicable, but they don’t have the power to effect their wills, while the sinners do have the power to effect theirs.
The following gives another example of just how much one must accept, in order to have a fatalistic acceptance of human nature. It also shows that the “zero tolerance” attitude that we now have toward pedophilia is nothing new. Some excuse the enabling of the pedo-priests, by saying that until recently many people didn’t realize how harmful pedophilia is. Though Schopenhauer didn’t write anything about the harm done, to say, “pederasty appears to be a monstrosity, not merely contrary to nature, but in the highest degree repulsive and abominable,” certainly indicates that it wasn’t thought of as just another breaking of sexual morality. (Of course, the Catholic hierarchy could always say that they could be more forgiving than that, since their spirituality transcended the willfulness of, “That’s a monstrosity, in the highest degree repulsive and abominable.” Pious people don’t use strong words like that.)
Considered in itself, pederasty appears to be a monstrosity, not merely contrary to nature, but in the highest degree repulsive and abominable; it seems an act to which only a thoroughly perverse, distorted, and degenerate nature could at any time descend, and which would be repeated in quite isolated cases at most. But if we turn to experience, we find the opposite; we see this vice fully in vogue and frequently practiced at all times and in all countries of the world, in spite of its detestable nature. We all know that it was generally widespread among the Greeks and Romans, and was publicly admitted and practiced unabashed. All the authors of antiquity give more than abundant proof of this. In particular, the poets one and all are full of this topic; not even the respectable Virgil is an exception (Eclogue 2). It is ascribed even to the poets of remote antiquity, to Orpheus (who was torn to pieces for it by the Maenads), to Thamyris, and even to the gods themselves. The philosophers also speak much more of this love than of the love of women; in particular, Plato seems to know of hardly any other, and likewise the Stoics, who mention it as worthy of the sage. (Stobaeus, Eclog. eth., bk. II, c. 7.) In the Symposium, Plato even mentions to the credit of Socrates, as an unexampled act of heroism, that he scorned Alcibiades who offered himself to him for the purpose. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socrates speaks of pederasty as a thing blameless and even praiseworthy. (Stobaeus, Florilegium, Vol. I, p. 57.) Likewise in the Memorabilia (Bk. I, cap. 3, § 8), where Socrates warns of the dangers of love, he speaks so exclusively of love of boys that one would imagine there were no women at all. Even Aristotle (Politics, ii, 9) speaks of pederasty as of a usual thing, without censuring it. He mentions that it was held in public esteem by the Celts, that the Cretans and their laws countenanced it as a means against overpopulation, and he recounts (c. 10) the male love-affair of Philolaus the legislator, and so on. Even Cicero says: Apud Graecos opprobrio juit adolescentibus, si amatores non haberent. [“Among the Greeks it was regarded as disgraceful for youths not to have lovers.”] Here in general there is no need of proofs for well-informed readers; they can recall them by the hundred, for with the ancients everything is full of it. But even among less cultured peoples, particularly the Gauls, the vice was very much in vogue. If we turn to Asia, we see all the countries of that continent permeated with the vice from the earliest times down to the present day, and likewise with no special attempt to conceal it; Hindus and Chinese, no less than the peoples of Islam, whose poets also we find much more concerned with love of boys than with love of women; for example in Sadi’s Gulistan the book “On Love” speaks exclusively of the former. Even to the Hebrews this vice was not unknown, for the Old and New Testaments mention it as punishable. Finally, in Christian Europe religion, legislation, and public opinion have had to oppose it with all their force. In the Middle Ages it was everywhere a capital offense; in France it was punishable even in the sixteenth century by burning at the stake, and in England, even up to about 1830, the death penalty for it was rigorously carried out; the punishment now is deportation for life. Such strong measures therefore were needed to put a stop to the vice; indeed, they were remarkably successful, yet they did not by any means succeed in exterminating it. On the contrary, it slinks around at all times and in all places, in all countries and among all classes, under the veil of the deepest secrecy; and it often comes to light where least expected. Even in earlier centuries it was no different, in spite of all the death penalties. The mentions of and allusions to it in the works of all those times are evidence of this. If we realize all this, and think it over carefully, we see pederasty appearing at all times and in all countries in a way very far removed from that which we had at first presupposed, when we considered it merely in itself, and hence a priori. Thus the universal nature and persistent ineradicability of the thing show that it arises in some way from human nature itself; since for this reason alone could it inevitably appear always and everywhere, as a proof of the saying:
Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret. [“Expel nature with a pitchfork, she still comes back.” [Horace, Epist. i, 10, 24. Jr.]
Therefore we cannot possibly escape this conclusion if we intend to proceed openly and honestly.
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