https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

 

LEH 355 H02W 50910 Gueswende Y Germany is a big country (357,022 square kilometers) situated in central Europe. The country has 16 states and its capital is Berlin. With 81,147,265 million inhabitants in July 2013, it has the most Europe's largest economy and is the second most populous nation (after Russia). It is the third largest exportateur from the European Union. Germany is a key member of the continents economic, political, and defense. In the following line, according to the CIA World Factbook, I will write a little summary of Germany’s Economy.   Germany was a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defense organizations. That is why European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century, left the country occupied by other countries and divided Germany in two states: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR).After these deserters, Germany has to paid money to other territories as reparation. Something that has a big impact on Germany economy. To become powerful again, Germany has to open a lot of industries specialize in machinery, vehicles, chemical, household equipment... That make Germany become the fifth largest economy in the world and Europe's largest leading exporter of machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and household equipment. One advantage of Germany economy is that the country benefits from a highly skilled labor force. Also, according to the CIA World Factbook, Germany is facing demographic challenges: Low fertility rates and declining net immigration amount. Therefore, the government has to do some actions to regulate that. For example, one solution consists for the government to increase the benefit and the amount of Germany social welfare system. Also, as a  solution for that, Chancellor Gerhard SCHROEDER (1998-2005), decide to reduced working hour scheme, declare that the government subsidized business that increase the unemployment rate during the 2008, 2009 recession making that rate the deepest since World War II. At that period there was also a crisis in Germany that lead of a low investment spending and the decreased demand for German exports from other countries. Stimulus, stabilization efforts and tax cuts initiated in 2008 and 2009 by Chancellor Angela MERKEL's permit to increased Germany's total budget deficit (federal, state, and municipal) but lower spending and higher tax revenues reduced the deficit to 0.8% in 2011. In 2012 Germany reached a budget surplus of 0.1. By 2014, the federal government is planning to balance its budget. The import partners are Netherlands, France, China, Belgium, Italy, UK, Austria and Russia. The Export partners are France, UK, Netherlands, US, Austria, Italy, China, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland. In agriculture, the main product of Germany are potatoes, wheat, barley, sugar beets, fruit, cabbages, cattle, pigs, poultry…   Germany is a developed country. Germany is known to have a rich political and cultural history. Also, the country has some great philosopher, poet, scientist, thinkers in the past. Here is my general summary about Germany according to the CIA World Factbook (2012 data).

 

 

http://www.theperspectivesofnietzsche.com/nietzsche/nchrist.html

LEH 355 H02W 50910

Gueswende Y

Destiny of Christianity. -- Christianity came into existence in order to lighten the heart; but now it has first to burden the heart so as afterwards to be able to lighten it. Consequently it shall perish.

Nietzsche

 

This quote is from Nietzsche. Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German  philosopher, cultural critic, and poet. He wrote several texts on religion, morality, culture and mention some critiques about them. Nietzsche is well known as a nihilist who is a man who judges that the real world ought not to be, and that the world as it ought to be does not exist. So he does not believe in Christians, that is why he wrote the sentence "God is dead".

According to me, by this quote, Nietzsche means the first role of Christianity was to lighten the heart, to bring people that was on the wrong track to the good one. But now, Christianity has first make our heart sad before we to make us become happy, trustfully with God, therefore we should banish it. In other words, he called Christianity “the religion of pity” in the sense that Christianity may cause us some tonic emotions which will affect vitality and can lead to a depression. This lack of strength will affect sincerely our life and get worse. Therefore to avoid suffering and getting depressed one day because of that religion, we should just banish it. So "God is dead" means "God is dead", forget about him, and let him rest in peace if you do not want to have a broken heart one day.

I specially choose that quote because this course deal about nihilist, and we all also know that Nietzsche is one nihilism. I would like by this paragraph to emphasis the relation between the nihilism character of Nietzsche and the Christians. A nihilism in other word is a person who does not believe in anything. Nietzsche exactly does not believe in Christians and claimed that the Christian faith as practiced was not a proper representation of Jesus' teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did, in particular his example of refusing to judge people, something that Christians had constantly done the opposite of. Therefore it is a religion of pity.