I have a lot of reading to do at the moment. I'm putting a lot of effort into this Senior Thesis of mine, and so I am reading a lot about it. This means that I need to take periodic short breaks or I just about go nuts becuase of the sheer quantity of reading I've been doing on one subject this weekend.
But, to take a break, I'll post about Nietzche, and tie it into some of the reading I've been doing for my thesis, which allows me to constructively work on two homework assignments at the same time, while on my blog, which provides for me a change of environment (to liven up the night!). This is: a pull question on Nietzche, which will be due at Mid Rags (I suppose that's coming closer and closer) and to process Edward Said, whose book,
Orientalism, revolutionized the discussion of Orientalism. Orientalism is the study of the East, by the Westerners, and since my thesis has to do with Byron's mission to the Greeks (a Westerner going East) it's relevant to understanding how people might think of him thinking. The sum of what this paragraph is expressing for you, the reader, is that this is going to be a very long post and most of you will not read it. But, I've also supplied (in this paragraph) justification for writing it independent of your readership and that means
you dont need to read it for me to write it! Gosh, what a great paragraph!
PQ: What is the appropriate Christian response to Nietzsche? Academically? Interpersonally?
Nietzche is fundamentally opposed to the Christian religion, reviling it continuously and explicitly with his pseudo-philosophical expressions of genius and angst. Therefore it is meet for Christians to develop a response for ministering to the minds of those people who hold to ideas put forth by Nietzche (whether or not they came to believe them through him or through modern post-modern movements) and to defend Christianity against his attacks, which means, at least for Biola students, holding up at least a foundationalist evangelical form of orthodox Christianity to be more than what he says it is.
The most fundamental assault by Nietzche on Christianity in
The Genealogy of Morals is not his explicit textual criticisms based through strange philology on a contrived history. Although he says that he views Christianity as a kind of Jewish revolt by an impotent priestly class against those that are weaker, his arguments do not hold up against careful scrutiny. This was adequately established several times during my class when we set out to understand his use of philology. For example, his appeal to philology to disprove the idea that guilt comes will-freedom intuitions. “Have these genealogists of morals had even the remotest suspicion that, for example, the major moral concept
Schuld [guilt] has its origin in the very material concept
Schulden [debts]?” (Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Section 4) This argument is not intended, according to the translator and editor Kaufmann, a famous Nietzche scholar who has worked to redeem Nietzche for academic study after his famous use in Hitler’s problems, to pull weight. But the truth is that it is the only referral to a potential concrete fact in the whole section, and philology is the only substantial evidence for his history offered. So, Kaufmann is probably incorrect in that assessment and we are free to move forward with our critique. But there is not far to go, the argument is easily refuted by examining English or any other language that does not have this philogical relationship to debt. Also, with the amount of information he gave us here, we cannot accept what he said because it appears equally plausible that
schulden is the longer form of
schuld, and the idea of debt came from an idea of responsibility stemming from moral intuitions that actually do come from our conceptions of freedom.
So, what is this genius, as he likes to consistently point out, doing? He must know this argument is invalid. This is the real puzzle in dealing with Nietzche, but it may amount to this: because power is the sum of existence, as explained in Essay 1, Section 13, with an example where he says all actions are merely actions, and do not stem from a doer, there are no ideals. Or perhaps because there are no ideals there is only material, but the point is: any ideal is not believable. Yet, remember, Nietzche is a genius. Therefore he realizes the obvious truth that “any ideal is not believable,” as I stated it above, is also an ideal! And so, he is forced also to condemn living this way. What this leaves is a totally consistent nihilist approach, expressed basically poetically throughout this work.
Here lies the challenge for Christianity, for Christianity is unavoidably an ideal. If ideals chain men, Christianity is a great means of enslaving and turning us into our own self-destroyers through an ascetic ideal.
Responding to this question is exceptionally difficult, because Nietzche leaves no common ground through which to dialogue. It demands a dishonest intellectual attitude, an accusation Nietzche himself has leveled at all idealists, in which he denies the existence of a priori propositions that he must hold. Thus, interpersonally, the only way of expressing Christianity to a Nietzchean must be by demonstrating the fruits of Christianity. There are also, I feel, still
a priori conceptions buried in the consciousness of these people, placed there by God, that might be appealed to in earnest and honest friendly discussions. If consistent, they will deny these intuitive inward pulls, but perhaps it is impossible for anything less the genius of Nietzche to hold to such a powerful belief system.
Academically, which removes the intimacy of friendship from scholarly debate, strikes a more difficult solution. There is no way, operating within a Nietzchean system, to argue against Nietzche. The only plausible solution I can see is to stand humbly on the outside and express honest incredulity. An example of a very important scholar who expresses ideas (via Foucalt) held by Nietzche was Edward Said. His book Orientalism attacked the idea of learning about the Orient as an academic discipline because it was a form of mental imperialism, and the source of political imperialism. Now, the form of Said’s argument is such that it assumes that ideas enslave (familiarly Nietzchean) those that they study. This is the bomb-blast of Said’s book, and is found in the introduction of a 200-page book. The response of intellectuals to Said was mixed. Bernard Lewis, the foremost American Orientalist, attacked it viciously four years after it was published. He claimed it was absurd, viewed common sensically, and this seems proper. But it required him standing outside of the philosophical system of Said and appealing to others’ common sense. The thrust of this defense is to prevent others from holding to Said’s belief system. It’s an unfortunately rear-guard stand, and in this way has its shortcomings. At this point, however, it seems the best response.
Said does not go so far as Nietzche, and so there is another root of criticism. It is this: his analysis of Orientalists seems as morally improper, by his own criteria, as the Orientalists' studies of the Orient.
