In that great fatality called Christianity,
Plato represents that ambiguity and fascination, called an ‘ideal,’
which made it possible for the nobler natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves
and to step on the bridge leading to the ‘Cross’…
And how much Plato there still is in the concept ‘church,’
in the structure, system, and practice of the church!

My recuperation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism
has always been Thucydides…
and, perhaps, The Principle of Machiavelli,
most closely related to me by the unconditional will not to delude oneself,
but not to see reason in reality — not in ‘reason,’ still less in ‘morality’…

Plato is a coward before reality,
consequently he flees into the ideal;
Thucydides has control of himself,
consequently he also maintains control over things…

The magnificent supple physique, the audacious realism and immoralism
which distinguished the Greek constituted a necessity, not ‘natural quality.’
It was an outcome, it was not there from the beginning.
And one employed festivals and the arts for no other reason
than to feel oneself dominant, to show themselves on top.
These are means of glorifying oneself, and in certain cases, of inspiring fear of oneself.

For in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the Dionysian state,
the basic fact of the Hellenic instinct finds expression
— its ‘will to life.’
What was it that the Hellene guaranteed himself by means of these mysteries?

Eternal life, the eternal recurrence of life,
the future promised and hallowed in the past;
the triumphant Yes to life beyond all death and change;
true life as the continuation of life through pro-creation,
through the mysteries of sexuality.
For the Greeks a sexual symbol was therefore the most sacred symbol,
the real profundity in the whole of ancient piety.
Every single detail in the act of procreation, of pregnancy,
and of birth aroused the highest and most solemn feelings.
In the teaching of the mysteries, pain is pronounced holy:
the pangs of the woman giving birth consecrate all pain;
and conversely all becoming and growing
—all that guarantees a future — involves pain.

…Here the most profound instinct of life,
that directed toward the future of life,
the eternity of life, is experienced religiously
— and the way to life, procreation, as the holy way.

— excerpt, Twilight of The Idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche, chapt. What I Owe to the Ancients  written in 1888

---

Not another extended obtuse quote from a dead philosopher… !  I sympathize with you.  It is not our custom to read a text with care, attending to the meaning and weight of each word.  That’s how philosophy must be read before a payoff.  These words are gold coins, your inheritance left by a brilliant, prescient, 19th century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. 

Here are my thoughts.

The covid-19 pandemic could be designated “that great fatality.”  The pandemic is global, and is now ravaging Europe and North America with a second wave of infection, and death.  Nietzsche christens Christianity as “that great fatality.”  This is the principal theme of all of Nietzsche’s work.  There is a link, strangely enough between the deadly pandemic and contemporary Christianity.  A large segment of American Christianity, the Evangelicals, lend full-throated support to the Trump administration.  The Trump administration refuses to marshal a national response to the pandemic, asserting that we must learn to live with it.

As indicated in these lines Nietzsche viewed Christianity as anti-realistic, opposed to seeing life for what it is.  Christianity is in thrall to perfectionism, valorizing ideals while viewing life sentimentally, with rose-colored glasses.  This is nothing but the idealism of Plato serving as the core principle of Christianity according to Nietzsche.  Thus Nietzsche describes the severe moralism of the Evangelicals and their allegiance to Trump, who promises to restore an idealized age of Americas greatness.

A coward flees into the ideal.

Nietzsche mentions Thucydides, his example of a stone-cold realist.  Thucydides was a resident of Athens during the plague which gripped Athens in 430 BC during the Peloponnesian War.  Thucydides contracted the plague but survived.   The plague more than anything else crippled Athens ability to defeat the Spartan forces, factoring into its defeat in the war.  Thucydides wrote in detail about the plague’s decimation in his History of the Peloponnesian War.

Nietzsche writes of golden-age Greece exemplified by the culture of Athens in its heyday.  For me Nietzsche’s words recalled the film 300 which depicts the enormous risk undertaken by the Greeks in order to defeat the Persians at Battle of Thermopylae.  Everything, their continued existence as a people was put in play in order to defeat the forces of Xerxes.  Success against great odds is bound to make one feel dominant!

Nietzsche references the role of public festivals, dramatic re-enactments, citizen participation in the great myths out of which Greek culture and achievement were cultivated.  A state-of-mind and body was fostered which promoted life, the collective continuation of life.

So….your point is?

Eternal life, is none other than procreation, a link to the past and a future.  The recurrence of life through the mysteries of sexuality is the acme of the sacred.

–*–

A grand parent witnessing the delicate stand-alone balance of a one year old child, achieving her/his first steps, recognizes a miracle.  “Miracle” is meant in the most concrete possible manner,  rather than a gossamer metaphor.

*Plague in an Ancient City by Michiel Sweets 1862