Caritas:

see above page 349

 

German mystics:

see Chapter I page 20

 

German & Spanish military Orders: * see EndNote<A>

Christian religious society of knights, originally the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of Saint James, the Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights.  They arose in the Middle Ages associated with the Crusades, in the Holy Land & the Iberian peninsula, dedicated to the protection of pilgrims  & defence of the Crusader states.  They are the predecessors of chivalric orders; most members were laymen who took religious vows (poverty, chastity, & obedience); they owned houses (commanderies) across Europe & employed a hierarchical structure of leadership with the grand master at the top.

 

Raskolnikov:

see page 309

 

ego habeo factum:

Latin, meaning “I have done”

 

Kant (on compassion):

Kant believes that morality must be rational; he models his morality on science, which seeks to discover universal laws that govern the natural world.  An action done out of love or is not fully autonomous (self-rule, a necessary condition for freedom and morality) & a such is not really morally good or bad. When people act due to their emotions, emotions are in control, not their rationality; autonomy requires action done because of reason.  

 

Kant (Categorical Imperative):

central philosophical concept in the his philosophy, introduced in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785); it may be defined as a way of evaluating motivations for action.  Kant argues moral propositions must be disconnected from the particular & act as a universal law of nature.  He divides the duties imposed by this formulation into 2 sets: duties that we have to ourselves & duties we have to others.  His categorical imperative appears similar to the Golden Rule.  In its negative form: "Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself." and in its positive form: "Treat others how you wish to be treated."

 

Nietzsche's "slave morale" & “master-morale”:

Master–slave morality is a central theme of Nietzsche, particularly On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) where he argued that there were 2 fundamental types of morality: "master morality" & "slave morality".  Master morality, that of the strong-willed values pride & power and judges actions as good or bad.  Slave morality values kindness, empathy & sympathy, good or evil intentions.  For Nietzsche, a morality is inseparable from the culture; each culture's language, codes, practices, narratives & institutions are informed by these 2 moral structures. He is a relativist claiming that "there are no moral phenomena at all, only moral interpretations of phenomena."  Masters are creators of morality; slaves respond to master morality with their slave morality.  For strong-willed men, the "good" is the noble, strong, and powerful, while the "bad" is the weak, cowardly, timid, and petty.  Slave morality is created in opposition to what master morality values as "good"; it is a reaction to oppression & vilifies its oppressors.  It is the inverse of master morality, characterized by pessimism & cynicism.  

 

Nietzsche's Borgia-mask: * see Endnote<B>

Borgia appears to be an object of praise for Nietzsche.  He considers Borgia one of the ‘great virtuosi of life’, whose ‘self-glory provides the sharpest contrast to the vicious and the “intemperate”’, he represented a higher sort of man.  In a fragment (from the period in which the Antichrist was prepared), Nietzsche observes that ‘it is believed one ought to disapprove of a Cesare Borgia: that is simply laughable’.  In Beyond Good and Evil he states: ‘the predatory animal and the predatory person (for example Cesare Borgia) are misunderstood’, and a brief note from comments in the same vein that predators are ‘very healthy like Cesare Borgia!’; they share ‘the characteristics of … hunting dogs’.  Borgia represented the de-Christianisation of Christianity, the climax, ‘transvaluation of Christian values’ initiated by the Renaissance.   

 

Nietzsche's superman:

see Chapter I page 24

 

Nietzsche: “a higher sort of man…”:  

quote taken from The Will to Power, based on unpublished notebooks, published it posthumously by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche & Peter Gast; the title derived from a work that Nietzsche himself had considered writing.

 

Shaw (Man and Superman):

4-act drama written in 1903, light comedy of manners but Shaw borrowed Nietzsche for its title, suggesting a deeper idea; only in 1915 were all 4 acts performed ; father of the female protagonist, Ann, has died, leaving her in the care of 2 men, Roebuck Ramsden & John Tanner.  Ramsden is an old man; Tanner a revolutionary anarchist youth.  Despite Ramsden’s warning she is drawn to Tanner. She challenges his revolutionary rhetoric.  Despite his reluctance, he is drawn to her & agrees to marry.  Shaw takes Nietzsche's theme that mankind is evolving, towards the "superman" but suggests that the prime mover in selection are women, an explicit, intended reversal of Da Ponte's Don Giovanni.  Ann is referred to as "the Life Force" & represents Shaw's view that in every culture, it is the women who force the men to marry them rather than the men who take the initiative. 

and see Chapter I page 35

 

Shaw (Undershaft in Major Barbara):

3-act English play written & premiered in 1905 published 1907; an idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft, a Major in the Salvation Army in London, she is estranged from her father, Andrew, who enters as a rich & successful munitions maker.  He gives money to the Salvation Army, which offends Major Barbara, who wants nothing to do with "tainted" wealth.  Undershaft argues poverty is a worse problem than munitions, claiming it provides jobs & a steady income, better than the Salvation Army’s bread and soup.

 

Malthus:

1766-1834, English cleric, scholar & economist in the fields of political economy & demography; in  book An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), he observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but this was temporary as it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level; humans tend to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, populations grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want & greater susceptibility to famine and disease, this view is the "Malthusian trap"  Malthus wrote in opposition to the 18th-century view that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.

 

Darwin:

see Chapter I page 45, Chapter III, page 105,