Eugen Dühring: Elimination of All Judaic Elements, Chapter Four, Sixth Point
Ausscheidung alles Judäerthums, Kapitel Vier, Sechster Punkt
Source Material: German Scan | German Corrected
Editor’s Note: This work is part of a series; refer to Table of Contents.
Sixth Point:
National sense of the Gothic in ecclesiastical architecture. Corresponding sublimity of the Germanic over the nature of the chief Christian commandment. Lack of a concept of the good in the Jewish race, confirmed by Spinoza’s teachings.
The way in which the Germanic has often been superficially linked with the Israeli tradition within Christianity is vividly illustrated by ecclesiastical architecture.
What does the style of Gothic buildings inherently have to do with the foreign tradition of Christianity? Nevertheless, something has been embodied in it that, in a religious sense—or, if you will, in terms of the expression of an elevated worldview—is characteristic of modern peoples, and especially of the Germans.
The German vigor will certainly not turn against the Gothic quality of Gothic cathedrals. It would strike a piece of its own national spirit if it attacked the Gothic as such.
Admittedly, it is unfortunate that the trait of the German spirit, which prevailed in these heaven-aspiring structures, has become monumentally intertwined with foreign elements that do not concern it. Israeli Christianity is as little suited to the sublimity of Gothic architecture as the latter is to the former.
But when Jewish detractors of Christianity, such as the baptized Heinrich Heine, triumphantly predicted the eventual destruction of Gothic cathedrals by the Germans themselves, one can see what these Judaizers are truly aiming for.
When the Jewish sensibility curses the Gothic cathedrals, it is far less irritated by the cathedrals themselves or their Christian character than by the existence of Gothic structures that remind it of a nationality not remotely akin to its own.
Israeli Christianity, with the Jew on the cross, is of its own flesh, even if it has cut sharply into it; Gothic buildings, however, are witnesses to another power, one that will manifest itself in far greater deeds than merely piling stones to house a foreign religion.
It is no wonder, then, that it would be a satisfaction for the Jew if he could drive the German not against the Israeli content, but against the Germanic traits of historical Christianity.
However, with the nation’s self-awareness, this game will come to an end.
To transition from the most external to the most internal, let us examine how the German is able to relate to that teaching of Christianity which is still most reputed to be free of racial Jewishness.
I am referring to the precept of love for neighbor and enemy, already discussed in our second chapter. There, it was identified as a fundamental trait leading to the self-rejection of Judaism. Here, we will also consider it in the light of German morality.
It was already shown there how it is a characteristically Jewish twist to start from one’s behavior toward oneself—indeed, essentially from selfishness—in order to explain how one should behave toward others.
Indeed, the Jew does not understand affection for his fellow human being, and therefore something he does know must be substituted for him, namely affection for himself. Just as he cultivates his own self, so too should he nurture and promote that of his neighbor.
When self-interest is thus made the measure and model for interest in others, this is in itself neither a natural nor a morally good approach. On the contrary, this much-praised piece of morality appears as though every path to directly and positively expressing love for one’s fellow human being had been lacking.
This deficiency leads further to the realization that the path to making it recognizable was lacking only because the thing that was supposed to be made recognizable was not present among the Jews.
For the German, this poses no difficulty; for in him, sympathetic affections are significantly developed.
There is no need to appeal to selfishness, as with the Jew, to teach him how someone should behave if love for one’s fellow human being is to be present.
There are nobler models and measures for this, drawn from a natural and positive love, rather than from that inverted selfishness. Love within the family, in its various directions, can serve as an example everywhere, but especially for the Germans.
It is, of course, nobler and better to guard against even an involuntary trace of hypocrisy in words and concepts by judging the love possible between human beings in a completely direct way—that is, solely according to the different relationships and reasons in which benevolence can actually exist.
Otherwise, the word "love of humanity" becomes an empty shell. Despite its lofty sound, without that precaution, it leads to nothing but hollow notions.
To fill it with substance, certain positive relationships of mutual assistance and sympathetic joy in human well-being must become visible.
If any nationality possesses this, the German one contains enough magnanimity to reach the universal human bond of benevolence. For this reason, it least of all requires a reference to so-called self-love, which, in traditional conceptions, is identical to selfishness.
This reversal of selfishness, as a barren intellectual substitute for a lacking love of neighbor, yet presented in that famous Christian commandment as the very thing itself—this Christian reversal of selfishness is such a low moral recipe that it suits only Jews, not better national characters, let alone the German one.
Upon closer inspection, it becomes evident, moreover, that this precept also falls short of a true ideal of morality in its aim and must even come into contradiction with it.
With our finer consideration and insight, we are not accustomed to believing that it is always sufficient to treat a neighbor’s concern as we would our own.
Rather, we are morally aware that we may more readily be negligent or err against ourselves than against others. Even mere legal justice often imposes, in many cases, an obligation to exercise greater care for others’ affairs than for one’s own.
For the superior morality of nobler characters, it is undoubtedly clear that a violation of one’s own interests does not weigh as heavily as an unjust violation of a neighbor.
Furthermore, the harms one inflicts upon oneself bring only displeasure, whereas offenses committed against others cause a different, worse kind of pain in a better person.
Wherever remorse is possible—where, therefore, poorer elements in character and insight are combated by better ones, or the subsequent situation liberates the better inclinations again; where, in short, the capacity for genuine remorse exists—there, in finer, sympathetically disposed natures, it will also become evident that remorse varies greatly depending on whether it concerns the faulty and morally improper causation of harm to oneself or a wrongdoing against others.
In the one case, the person has only themselves to account for; in the other, they bear responsibility for the suffering of others.
Now, the pain arising from the relationship between human beings is, under otherwise equal circumstances, far more intense than the dejection stemming from an individual’s harmful behavior toward themselves—just as the joy derived from human mutuality surpasses the correspondingly isolated affection confined to the framework of one’s own self.
This is a fact that can easily be observed among modern peoples, so we need not specifically emphasize the German character here.
Indeed, even in the ancient world, a certain awareness of this distinction can be demonstrated.
If, therefore, every better form of humanity brings with it an independent and higher determination of interpersonal behavior than the principles that apply to one’s own self, then the Christian precept has remained at a level above which all nobler national characters are inherently elevated by their natural disposition, and above which finer development rises at an ever-growing distance.
In this way, that apparent pearl of Israeli Christianity—which, in truth, was an understandable product of illness in the self-rejection of Judaism—becomes utterly incompatible with a clear consciousness of better moral impulses.
Thus, instead of accepting this tradition as something unsurpassable and almost heavenly, we reject it not merely as morally backward, but as designed solely for the moral depths of the Jewish race.
Nor are we by any means satisfied that those people who harm their own well-being due to character flaws or lack of insight—thus loving themselves little—should, according to Christian principles, afflict others with this same measure of love.
Likewise, the coarseness that takes no offense at all sorts of things in relation to oneself—things that, in truth, must not be tolerated—cannot serve as a model that would yield good behavior toward others.
Thus, all precepts, whether from the Old or New Testament, and whether they take a negative or positive form, are morally backward as soon as they make what the self rejects or demands the measure of inaction or action toward others.
An adequate morality of a better kind requires specific, detailed determinations of what is proper, relying on absolute principles that apply equally across a wide domain to both the self and the other, and furthermore grounding the mutual relationships in empathy—not merely in the sense of pity, but also of shared joy.
This results in something more natural and nobler than those contrived formulations of the Christian kind. A common good then governs both behavior toward others and conduct with oneself.
However, that Judaism lacked the concept of the good due to its racial nature—or, what amounts to nearly the same thing, distorted it into something perverse—is still evident in modern times through the significant example of Spinoza.
This racially Jewish philosopher from the 17th century, whose personal struggle against his Jewish inclinations was respectable enough, nevertheless produced poor Jewish morality in his main work, a so-called Ethics.
For instance, he went so far as to assert that seeking one’s own advantage and being virtuous are the same thing. He is truly an example of a pure racial Jew: for when his fellow believers expelled him, he ceased to be a religious Jew.
Moreover, he rightly scorned joining another religious community. Yet inwardly, he could no more completely shed the inherited tendencies of thought than he admittedly succeeded in fully mastering the ancestral drives of greed and sensual desire.
He wrote, in part unknowingly, in the spirit of the Jewish race. Not only his morality but also his worldview bore the traits of this race, as I have shown elsewhere (in my History of Philosophy and my Jewish Question).
Yet he himself denied that nations exist by nature; there are only individual human beings, he claimed, and the peculiarities of nations stem from their laws and customs.
With this, he turned the truth on its head; for the laws and customs of nations essentially arise from their character traits and other natural facts, not the other way around.
This confusion of cause and effect is indicative of the obscurity in which Spinoza found himself regarding the concepts of race and nation.
It also testifies to the still-recurring Jewish tendency to treat the concepts of race and nation in a superficially nominalistic way—that is, to reduce them to mere names corresponding to no natural reality.
Yet how deeply the racial character is rooted in the natural foundation, and how it not only shapes customs and laws but also dominates the conceptual frameworks of individuals—including those who are highly distinguished among their peers and even thinkers striving for complete independence—is something for which Spinoza himself had to become a decisive example.