"Where
could I go from Thy spirit,
where could I flee from Thy face?"
- Psalms, 139
where could I flee from Thy face?"
- Psalms, 139
Abstract: The
philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is riddled by at least five minor paradoxes,
in which mutually contradictory beliefs are affirmed and denied: (1) God is
Dead; (2) Eternity in an Instant; (3) The Truth that there is no Truth; (4)
Something from Nothing; and (5) infinite Self-Overcoming. These five minor
paradoxes are mutually contradictory. The fundamental contradiction is between
Nietzschean epistemology of error theory and the ethic of the overcoming of
nihilism. This contradiction is mythically expressed in the paradox of Eternal
Recurrence and the Overman. Resolving this paradox requires the rejection of
Nietzsche’s epistemology and the re-conception of Eternal Recurrence according
to Christian theology. This rejection and reconceptualization of the core
concepts of the philosophy of Nietzsche opens the possibility for the
dialectical sublation of Nietszcheanism by Christian theology as Christian
Nietzscheanism.
I. Nietzschean Ontology and Epistemology
The greatest mystery of theism and atheism is how
these absolute judgments, of the absolute being (i.e. ontotheology) and
non-being (i.e. meontotheology) of God, may emerge from their opposite: how
might absolute being emerge from absolute non-being in the genesis of theism;
and, conversely, how might absolute non-being emerge from absolute being in the
genesis of atheism? This ontotheological
mystery of theism and atheism recapitulates the classical ontological mystery
of being itself: how can being emerge from non-being and non-being emerge from
being? Parmenides answered that only
being could be thought to be, and non-being could never be thought[1];
Heraclitus answered, to the contrary, that being could not be thought except as
the “ever-living fire” of becoming[2];
and Plato answered, contrary to both, that non-being is different from being, even
as it exists relative to being, as relative non-being.[3]
These answers are further expressed
through the historical development of Western Theology: Philo of Alexandria,
under the influence of Middle Platonism[4],
identified the God of Israel with the Parmenidean being in-itself; and, to the
contrary, Friedrich Nietzsche, under the influence of the transcendental
idealism of Immanuel Kant[5],
denied any possibility of thinking being in-itself.[6]
The
many paradoxes that have resulted from Nietzsche’s rejection of being itself continue
to await a Platonic answer.
Friedrich Nietzsche described himself as the “most
terrible opponent of Christianity”[7],
who cursed Christianity[8],
and “slew all gods... for the sake of morality.”[9]
Nietzsche seems to have imagined himself
as the heroic and prophetic opponent of Saint Paul the Apostle, whom he
described as “the greatest of all apostles of revenge” and as a “genius of
hatred.”[10] Fr.
Henri de Lubac writes:
“It must be agreed,
then, that never, before Nietzsche, had so mighty an adversary arisen, one who
had so clear, broad and explicit a conception of his destiny and who pursued it
in all domains with such systematic and deliberate zeal. Nietzsche was thoroughly
imbued with a sense of his prophetic mission.”[11]
Nietzsche’s anti-Christianity was expressed in a “persistent desire to articulate an ontology of absolute becoming”[12] in absolute opposition to the traditional Christian ontotheology of absolute being. Nietzsche believed that Christianity has absorbed absolutely all being, goodness, and truth into the imagined idea of God who is nothing. When all being, goodness, and truth is predicated of an idea that is nothing, all value and truth become absolutely annihilated. Nietzsche thus viewed Christianity as complicit in the absolutization of nothing and the genesis of modern nihilism.[13]
Christianity views Nietzscheanism as complicit in
the ‘Death of God’ and the consequent annihilation of all being, goodness, and
truth; while Nietzscheanism views Christianity as the author of modern
nihilism, through the absorption of all prior values and truths into an
imaginary idea of God that is nothing. It
must then appear tantamount to an absolute contradiction to conjoin together in
the concept of Christian Nietzscheanism the concepts of Christianity with
Nietzschianism - Christ with the Antichrist.
Socrates warns against this kind of sophistical use of dialectic to
forcibly unite unmediated and contradictory ideas: “You must not immediately
turn your eyes to the one, but must discern this or that number embracing the
multitude.”[14] Since, every conjunction of distinct concepts
and terms requires some copula (e.g. S is
P) to mediate between the distincta, and there appears to be no mediating
copula between the absolutely opposite terms of theism and atheism, it would
appear that Christianity may never be predicated of Nietzscheanism in Christian
Nietzscheanism, and any such conjunction of these concept must be “an
impossible and monstrous idea.”[15]
The apparent monstrosity of Christian
Nietzscheanism results from a forced copulation of contradictory elements which
seem to retain the full negativity of their contradictoriness, so that even the
ecstasy of divine grace and the freedom of the Will-to-Power is turned upside
down into a hideous chimera.
While Christianity and Nietzscheanism contradict
one another in many respects, they remain essentially conjoined in common awe
before the ‘Death of God’ and terror before the social proliferation of modern
nihilism: both affirm that “God himself is dead”[16];
and both purport to answer the pervasive belief in the nothingness of all
being, goodness, and truth through a philosophic ontology.[17]
Hence, the difference between
Christianity and Nietzscheanism rests principally in their respective
ontological answers to the apparent nihilism of the ‘Death of God’. If we admit the difference between being and
non-being; ontotheology and meontotheology; Christianity and Nietzscheanism to
be relative rather than absolute, then Christianity and Nietzscheanism may be
related to one another through their very ontological difference. If the distinct concepts of Christianity and
Nietzscheanism are related through the copula of ontological difference, then
it may be possible to speculatively mediate, conjoin, and predicate
Christianity of Nietzscheanism in Christian Nietzscheanism. Through the relativity of non-being
Nietzsche’s ontology of absolute becoming may be dialectically sublated within
Christian theology.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel described sublation
(aufheben) as the operation of
speculative reason through which an abstract concept is successively elevated,
negated, and preserved. [18] Sublation requires the subsumed concept to be
negated and contradicted by itself; for it is only in virtue of the
contradiction between what the concept is determined to be and what the concept
has determined for itself as its purpose to become, that the concept may open itself
to be incorporated into a superior concept to fulfill its self-determined
purpose.[19] Nietzscheanism
may, in this way, only be sublated within Christian theology if it is
determined by itself to be self-contradictory; and may only fulfill its self-determined
purpose through the rejection of one of its contradictory elements under the
determination of Christian theology.
The essential self-determined purpose of the
philosophy of Nietzsche is the overcoming of the condition of modern nihilism.[20]
Nietzsche writes:
“This man of the future will redeem us not just from the ideal held up till now, but also from the things which will have to arise from it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, from nihilism, that stroke of midday and the great decision which makes the will free again, which gives earth its purpose and man his hope again, this Antichrist and anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and nothingness – he must come one day.”[21]
Nietzsche defines nihilism epistemologically as the belief that “[e]very belief is a considering-something-true… is necessarily false because there is simply no true world.”[22] Nihilism is thus, for Nietzsche, primarily the result of the necessary epistemic falsity of every judgment, which contemporary epistemologists describe as error-theory. Error theory is the belief that every judgment is erroneous or false because all judgments fail to correspond to the facts of the world. Michael Steven Green argues that Nietzsche believed in an error theory of judgment from his earliest philosophical works.[23] Green shows, in Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, how Nietzsche’s epistemology was decisively shaped by his reading of the transcendental philosophy of Afrikan Spir (1837-1890).[24] Under the influence of Afrikan Spir’s reconceptualization of the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, Nietzsche had come to believe that all purported knowledge of mental objects consist in a contradictory mixture of the one unconditioned self-identity and the many conditioned aspects.[25] Since Nietzsche tended to identify Kant’s noumenal realm of thing-in-themselves with the static being in-itself of Parmenides that he rejected,[26] Nietzsche consequently rejected the possibility of objectively valid judgments for all objects of cognition.[27] The rejection of the truth and validity of all judgments renders all judgments invalid, erroneous and false.[28]
The philosophy of Immanuel Kant had perilously
balanced the two opposed tendencies of transcendental idealism and empirical
realism: transcendental idealism sought to establish the transcendental logical
possibility of cognition, while empirical realism sought to demonstrate the
reality of empirical scientific discoveries in nature. The tradition of German Idealism split over
this opposed legacy of Kant: Johann Gottlieb Fichte rejected the empirical
realism of the noumenal thing-in-itself, while Arthur Schopenhauer retained
this duality of the phenomenal representations and the noumenal reality of
empirical nature. Under the influence of
Afrikan Spir, Nietzsche radicalized Schopenhauer’s natural realism into a
“hypernaturalism” that reduced even the conceptual self-identity of empirical
objects to the flux of absolute becoming.[29]
Despite pretenses to empirical realism,
Nietzsche's hypernaturalistic ontology of absolute becoming remains within the
tradition of transcendental idealism because he continues to conceive of nature
according to the Kantian antinomies of aesthetic judgment: natural objects are
the composite mixture of conceptual self-identity and intuited multiplicity.[30] For this reason, Nietzsche's naturalism is a
species of transcendental idealism and Nietzsche's Heraclitean ontology of
absolute becoming is totally subsumed under Nietzsche's Kantian idealist
epistemology.
The
central theoretical contradiction of Nietzsche's idealist epistemology is the
simultaneous denial that judgments may be universally valid for all (i.e. no
judgment is valid) together with the affirmation of particularly valid
judgments for oneself (i.e. some judgment is valid). This belief in an
error-theory of judgment, in which no judgment can be valid and true, contradicts
the affirmation of the truth of any particular judgment (e.g. (No S is P) &
(Some S is P)). Nietzsche
affirmed the ontology of absolute becoming and the error-theory of judgment in
order to avoid the theological implications of Parmenidean self-identical being
in-itself. However, Nietzsche’s
error-theory of judgment contradicts his fundamental commitment to naturalism:
if no objective judgments can be true, then no judgments about nature can be
true, and any judgment that affirms naturalism to be true must also be
false. Hence, Nietzsche’s naturalistic
ontology of absolute becoming motivates the very epistemology that
inadvertently contradicts his naturalism. Nietzsche is, for this reason, compelled to
paradoxically affirm the truth of a belief in naturalism that also denies all
true judgments of naturalism.[31]
Moreover, since Nietzsche
affirms the truth of an idealist epistemology, which also denies and falsifies
this epistemology, Nietzsche is compelled to admit the paradox of affirming and
denying his epistemology. This
theoretical paradox of Nietzschean epistemology is recapitulated on the mythic
plane in the contradiction of Eternal Recurrence and the Overman: Eternal
Recurrence renders every action necessary, while the Overman is
self-determining agent of alternative contingency. Karl Löwith has famously argued that Nietzsche’s
“fundamental contradiction” was that between his doctrines of the Overman and
the Eternal Recurrence.[32] Since Nietzsche's idealist epistemology denies
the possibility of objectively valid judgments of universal and necessary
truths, Nietzsche vitiates his own doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence that
could alone motivate Nietzsche's ethic of the overcoming of nihilism in the
Overman. This contradiction between
Nietzschean epistemology and Nietzschean ethics is the fundamental paradox of
Nietzschean philosophy. To consistently realize his aim of overcoming
nihilism, Nietzscheanism must reject the idealist epistemology that entails
Nietzsche’s error theory. The rejection
of Nietzsche’s idealist epistemology opens the portal of salvation for
Nietzsche to restore a robustly Christian theological, rather than merely
socio-historical, understanding of the ‘Death of God’, which preserves the
reality, necessity, and truth of the Incarnation, Cruxifixion, and Resurrection
of Christ that alone ensures the possibility of a Christian Nietzschean ethic of
the overcoming of modern nihilism.
Download and read the Revised Third Draft here at Academia.edu: http://goo.gl/zyRE2b
[1]
Parmenides, On Nature, trans. John Burnet (1892), II:3-5 : “It is, and that it
is impossible for anything not to be, is the way of conviction… For you cannot
know what is not –that is impossible –nor utter it.”
[2]
Heraclitus, On Nature, trans. William Harris, Fragment 30
[3]
Plato, The Sophist 256-258, trans. F.M. Cornford: “[T]he nature of the
different is to be ranked among the things that exist... [with] as much reality
as existence itself: it does not mean what is contrary to ‘existent’ but only
what is different from that existent.” (258a-b)
[4]
Middle Platonism can be roughly dated beginning with Antiochus of Ascalon
(130-68BC) and ending with Plotinus (~78/9BC-200AD).
[5]
Green, Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p.7: “Kant
argues that the antinomies show that empirical reality is transcendentally
ideal. In contrast, Nietzsche, under the influence of Spir, argues that the
antinomies show that these descriptions of the world are necessarily
false."
[6]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power, p. 517: “The character of the world in
a state of becoming as incapable of formulation, as ‘false’ as
‘self-contradictory’. Knowledge and becoming exclude one another. Consequently,
‘knowledge’ must be something else: there must first of all be a will to make
knowledgeable, a kind of becoming must itself create the deception of being.”
[7]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Letter to Peter
Gast 1883, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, Trans. Anthony M. Ludovici:
“I am the most terrible opponent of Christianity, and have discovered a mode of
attack of which even Voltaire had not an inkling.”
[8]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Anti-Christ, p.62
“I condemn Christianity; bring against the Christian Church the most
terrible charge any prosecutor has ever uttered.”
[9]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science, § 153
[10]
Nietzsche, Friedrich.The Antichrist, pp. 45, 42: “On the heels of the ‘glad
tidings’, came the worst of all: those of Paul. In Paul was embodied the
antithetical type to the ‘bringer of glad tidings’, the genius of hatred, the
vision of hatred, of the inexorable logic of hatred”
[11]
De Lubac, Henri, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, 1949 p.118
[12]
Michael Steven Green, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p.93
[13]
Nietzsche, Friedrich.The Antichrist, p. 18: “[In Christianity]nothingness [is]
deified, the will to nothingness sanctified.”
[14]
Plato, Philebus, 18b
[15]
Fraser, Giles, Redeeming Nietzsche, 2002 p.3
[16]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science, § 125; Cf. Eckhart, Pascal, Boehme and
Silesius
[17]
Cf. Heidegger, Martin. The Word of Nietzsche 'God is Dead', p.61:
"Nietzsche's countermovement against metaphysics is, as the mere turning
upside down of metaphysics, also an inextricable entanglement in
metaphysics..."
[18]
Innwood Michael, Hegel Dictionary, Sublation pp. 283-285
[19]
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, §96
[20]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power, Preface: “What I am recounting is the
history of the two centuries that are going to come, the advent of nihilism.”
[21]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Genealogy of Morals, II.24
[22]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to
Power, I.15
[23]
Green, Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p.9: “I
argue that Nietzsche’s error theory is present thoughout his early period of
philosophical activity, both in his Nachlaß and his published works, from the
early 1870s to the final works of 1888.”
[24]
Green, Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p.10: “The
missing link between the two [Kant and Nietzsche] is Afrikan Spir, whose book Denken und Wirklichkeit exerted a strong
influence on Nietzsche’s epistemology.”
[25]
Green, Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p.7:
“Kant argues that the antinomies show that empirical reality is
transcendentally ideal. In contrast, Nietzsche, under the influence of Spir,
argues that the antinomies show that these descriptions of the world are
necessarily false."
[26]
Heidegger, Martin. The Word of Nietzsche ‘God is Dead’, p. 61: “[T]he terms
‘God’ and ‘Christian God’ in Nietzsche’s thinking are used to designate the
supersensory world in general. God is the name for the realm of Ideas and
ideals. This realm of the suprasensory has been considered since Plato… the suprasensory world is the metaphysical world.”
[27]
Green, Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p. 68: "Nietzsche
agrees with Spir that all empirical knowledge is contradictory and therefore
false. But he disagrees with Spir about the true nature of reality. Instead of
claiming that reality is in its essence simple and unitary, as Spir does,
Nietzsche argues that reality is becoming...Therefore the truth nature of
reality cannot be correctly described."
[28]
Green, Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002, p.10:“The
way of being is the way of Parmenides… Nietzsche takes the path of becoming
[i.e. Heraclitus]. It is for this reason that we find him vacillating between
the error theory and a noncognitivist approach.”
[29]
Green , Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p. 163:
“The first and abiding principle standing behind Nietzsche’s epistemologies and
his philosophy in general is naturalism. Nietzsche is concerned with the
philosophical consequences of situating man within nature, which means seeing
man as finite temporal and causally conditioned being."
[30]
Green , Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p. 163:
"Nietzsche offers absolute becoming as an alternative to standard
naturalistic descriptions of the world because he believes that the latter
surreptitiously posit antinaturalistic entities. Therefore Nietzsche’s theory
of absolute becoming is not an a priori alternative to naturalism. It is
instead a radically empirical theory – a type of hypernaturalism that attempts
to get at what is presented to us by the senses without the application of the
concepts of being.”
[31]
Green, Michael Steven, Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, 2002 p.7: “The
position that Nietzsche is inclined toward is, paradoxically, a form of
naturalism in which naturalism cannot be thought.”
[32]
Löwith, Karl. Nietzsche’s philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same,
Forward to the Second Edition, 1955