Sadler's Lectures Max Scheler, Ressentiment - Nietzsche's Errors About Christianity - Sadler's Lectures
May 26, 2025
Dive into the intriguing clash between Max Scheler and Friedrich Nietzsche as they dissect ressentiment and its implications for Christianity. Scheler argues that Nietzsche misreads Christian love, viewing it as a product of resentment. He highlights historical distortions that compromise genuine Christian morality, criticizes Nietzsche’s reduction of values to biological life, and defends love as a transcendent ideal. Explore the transformative power of love and its ties to faith in this thought-provoking discussion!
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Nietzsche's Profound Yet Flawed Discovery
- Gregory Sadler highlights that Max Scheler admires Nietzsche's discovery but calls his interpretation of Christianity mistaken.
- Scheler insists we must explain why Nietzsche erred and how his hypothesis gained plausibility rather than just rejecting it.
Explain Errors, Don't Merely Reject Them
- Don't just dismiss a profound theory as false; analyze why a brilliant thinker erred and how it seemed plausible.
- Scheler models this by reconstructing Nietzsche's errors instead of mere rejection.
Two Roots Of Nietzsche's Misreading
- Scheler locates two sources of Nietzsche's error: interpretive preconceptions and factual deformations of Christian morality.
- These lead Nietzsche to misjudge Christian love and to treat Christian asceticism as uniformly stemming from ressentiment.
