Christianity can have both a exuberant, healing influence on the human soul -- and a toxic, debasing one. It depends on how far we take the 'spirit' of Christianity, and to what extent religious and political leaders have tampered with its meaning.
Nietzsche's ultimate failure in life was that he could not -- or would not -- identify, care about, empathize with, show love for -- those people who he negatively stereotyped as being members of 'the herd'. (This is the same reason Romney lost the last election.)
Instead, Nietzsche chose to fly as 'Superman' or ride his 'Dionysian-Narcissistic-Dark Horse' -- until he crashed. Legend has it that Nietzsche's last 'sane' act before he became 'insane' in 1899 -- was a 'Christian Act' -- stepping between a master and his horse to take the whippings that the master was directing towards his horse. Perhaps, assuming that this legend is true, and it may not be, this was Nietzsche's 'Christian Day of Atonement' before Nietzsche fell into his 'dark abyss of insanity', to be altruistically looked after by his mother for 8 to 9 years (1889-1897) until his mother died, at which point his sister took over and looked after him altruistically for the last 3 to 4 years.
I was brought up as a Protestant-Christian, basically dissociated myself from my religion, proceeded to live a more 'narcissistic-self-serving' lifestyle....with some underlying elements of empathy, caring, loving, altruism...in effect 'Christian elements' still surfacing from time to time in my character... Other than that, I was brought up in 'the me first' generation...
Hegel's Hotel synergizes the spirit of Nietzsche with the spirit of Christianity -- not to point of self-denial or self-suppression, but with the point being the emphasis of The Christian Spirit on empathy, caring, loving, altruism, and generosity -- the flip side of Nietzschean Narcissism.
In other words, from a Hegelian-GAP-DGB perspective, Nietzschean philosophy, synergized with Christian empathy and altruism, offers a better philosophy of life than Nietzsche's Dionysian Philosphy taken alone, or for that matter, Christianity, when it is steeped in self-denial and self-suppression.
-- dgb, Dec. 10th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations, Integrations, and Creative Synergies...
-- Are Still in Process...
