Bill Walker | Blog

INTRODUCTION

Friedrich Nietzsche is without question infamous for, among many other things, how much he despised Christianity.  Especially significant, as many also know, is Nietzsche’s portrayal of Jesus in contrast to the Pauline version of the faith that energized and proliferated the widespread religion of Christianity that Nietzsche knew and that people still see today.  The villain for Nietzsche is not Jesus but Paul of course.  No doubt Nietzsche’s view of both Christianity and Jesus has been substantially called into question,[i] but it simultaneously has served to correct some less than praiseworthy attributes of the Church in some cases, and to hold the faithful accountable in others.[ii]  In addition, significant attention has been given to Nietzsche’s analysis of Buddhism as compared to Christianity.  While Nietzsche’s clearly regards the former to be more realistic, he still considers both to be nihilistic and decadent.  Others have also wondered about the degree to which Nietzsche’s depiction of Buddhism is consistent with authentic Buddhism – it may depend on which Buddhist tradition is being considered.  This is partly of what will be considered in this essay.

What is discussed less often, however, is the extent to which Nietzsche’s selective picture of Jesus parallels his (mis?)characterization of the Buddhist worldview.  Hence, what will be conducted here is an overview of how Nietzsche construes Jesus of Nazareth, placed alongside of a synopsis of his appreciation and understanding of Buddhism.  A short assessment and response will follow.  Less background in Buddhism than Christianity is assumed on the reader’s part, so a very basic and pithy overview of the features of Buddhism that are related to Nietzsche’s treatment of it will be supplied in necessarily broad strokes before drawing any conclusions.  Beforehand though, it will be useful to give a short account of what Nietzsche says about two of the other great world religions.

NIETZSCHE ON HINDUISM AND ISLAM

The Law of Manu is considered to be words of Brahma recorded in the Dharmasastra tradition of Hinduism.  As such, for many it has an authoritative tone.  The Bible, as we have already seen, can only be used for bad purposes according to Nietzsche: “negation of life, hatred of the body, the degradation and self-violation of humans through the concept of sin,” but Nietzsche gets the opposite feeling when he reads the law book of Manu (AC 56).[iii]  For this reason, Nietzsche regards it as a far superior work.  The main reason for this is because it permits the noble classes to embrace and defend their privilege.  In other words, it preserves the natural order – the order that Christianity corrupts.

Via an approximate application of the cast system, Nietzsche maintains that three main levels of society should exist.  The highest class consists of those who are the most “spiritual” and therefore the “strongest,” which is essentially to say that they are the most knowledgeable (AC 57).[iv]  This group is small.  The second class is also strong, but more so in the physical sense.  This level includes the vanguards of the law – those like the king, the judges, soldiers, and anyone who works to ensure protection and security of the political order.  These actors behave in accordance with the interests of the first class – the nobility.  Lastly there is the mediocre caste, which makes up the vast majority.  It might be acceptable to name these people the laborers.  They are the farmers, traders, factory workers, and even many of the artists.  To summarize what Nietzsche means here, “Everyone finds his [or her] privilege in his [or her] own type of being . . . [m]ediocrity is needed before there can be exceptions: it is the condition for a high culture.”[v]  Said another way, rights are only privileges.  Thus, injustice – as opposed to Christianity’s notion of injustice – only arises when rights are demanded as warranting equality for all, which disrupts the necessary social ladder.  This happens, for instance, when “chandala-apostles” – those promoting Christian values (chandala refers to the lowest caste rung in some Indian societies) – challenge the otherwise happy and modest sentiments of the mediocre class by encouraging them to expect equality and act with ressentiment, or revenge and envy.

Though this might sound politically incorrect at best or like outright discrimination and prejudice to many modern readers at worst, it would perhaps be too simplistic to completely dismiss Nietzsche’s argument without further consideration.  The word “mediocre” is not meant to have the same derogatory connotation that people today typically associate with it.  It is rather simply describing the way life is for Nietzsche as he observes it.  The description coheres with what Nietzsche believes is instinctive and natural.  Religion as reflected in books like the Law of Manu merely serves to authorize or normalize what has already been true throughout human history.  It is not mean to necessarily be explicitly evaluative.  What Nietzsche judges to be misleading, however, is the extent to which such teachings are presented as having been inspired by a higher power once and for all rather than developed and superimposed after much reflection and experimentation on the part of rulers, priests, and other elites.

So while Nietzsche appreciates the more realistic philosophical underpinnings of the Indian traditions he knew, they still posed a threat to the good of European society because of what Nietzsche determined to be a renunciation of the world in their thought:  “Knowing him, the Atman, Brahmans relinquish the desire for posterity, the desire for possessions, the desire for worldly prosperity, and go forth as medicants.”[vi] According to Richard Brown, Nietzsche “falsely regarded Hinduism (Brahmanism, Vedanta), like Schopenhauer, as singularly life-denying.”[vii]  Indian philosophy in general was seen by Nietzsche as essentially pessimistic, supporting the ascetic denial of the will.  Because Nietzsche read Shopenhauer, it is likely that that he understood the text of the Bhagavad Gita as a predominately non-dualistic or Advaitic variety following Sankara.[viii]  As such, Nietzsche equates the concept of maya with the unreal and illusion in general, which is textually inaccurate.[ix]  Ironically, as what will be highlighted below concerning Buddhism, it has been suggested that maya resembles something similar to Nietzsche’s will to power.

In a similar vein, Nietzsche believes Islam to be a “lesser evil” compared to Christianity, and for analogous reasons.  Muslims assert noble values through masculine instincts, for example, and say “Yes” to life in this way (AC 60).[x]  More specifically, Nietzsche expresses admiration for Islamic culture, which Europe lost when the Moors and the Jews were expulsed from Spain.  Christians were sure to take their riches, which empowered their propagation in Europe and beyond (to the “new” world) even more than Nietzsche acknowledges.  Lastly, Nietzsche complains about how this money was used by the Church to buy German aristocratic support over the centuries.

NIETZSCHE’S JESUS

            The first issue Nietzsche addresses in this second portion of The Anti-Christ is the notion of the “psychology of the redeemer.”  Particularly problematic for Nietzsche is Renan’s concept of Jesus’ type as a “genius” or “hero,” which Nietzsche calls  “unevangelical.”  Jesus’ teachings negate struggle and immoralize the “capacity for resistance” according to Nietzsche (AC 29).[xi]  Thus the world that matters is completely internalized.  The eternal kingdom lives inside each of us.  Consequently, Nietzsche says Jesus promotes 1) a hatred for every kind of reality, and 2) an understanding of natural instincts like reluctance, aversion to pain, and self-preservation as inherently harmful.  These two principles lay the groundwork for the doctrine of redemption, which Nietzsche also describes as a “refined development of hedonism,” and somewhat related to Epicureanism (AC 30).[xii]  Pleasure or bliss then, as Nietzsche reads Jesus, can only comes by adopting love for all, even enemies.  This is the religion of love that inevitably develops as a result of the fear of pain.

In this way, Nietzsche challenges Renan’s depiction of Jesus as a “fanatic of aggression” and as a “mortal enemy” to the priests and the theologians of the day (AC 31).[xiii]  Instead, Nietzsche insists that the redeemer psychology is a “childlike” faith – not a “hard-won faith” (AC 32).[xiv]  And this respect it seems, Nietzsche associates Jesus more closely with the teachings of Buddhism, which as we’ve seen he holds in slightly higher esteem.  Hence, Nietzsche sees Jesus committing to a faith that is not formulaic, and certainly not combative.  Jesus is an anti-realist, so the Last Super, or language about the “Son of Man,” or the “Kingdom of God” for instance, only functions allegorically and is limited by the Jewish religious context.  In Nietzsche’s reading, everything Jesus believes as “true” is just an inner light – nothing solid.  He is a “free spirit.”  Thus, dogma is only symbolism, in spite of every crude ecclesiastical temptation to suggest otherwise.  Indeed, Nietzsche calls Jesus “the great symbolist” (AC 34),[xv] implying that the outer, material world is just that – a symbol, nothing more.  It’s a symbol that can tell us something about the world that truly matters, which is the inner world.

Doctrines like the Trinity, or even the personhood of God, are complete inventions and without base in “the redeemer,” according to Nietzsche.  Furthermore, Jesus’ knowledge is “stupidity” concerning worldly systems and structures like religion, culture, or the state.  Guilt, punishment, sin and hope for reward are apparently absent from the mind of the “evangel” (AC 33).[xvi]  The blessedness of the “glad tidings” announced by Jesus is not conditional by Nietzsche’s rendering – meaning, not a promise.  It’s a fully realized way of relating to the world in the present – of practicing and acting, not believing (e.g., having no enemies, not showing favoritism, letting one’s “yes be yes,” and not getting angry).  This kind of life would make a person feel divine, eternal, and perfect.  This is what Jesus means when he promises “paradise” for the thief on the cross.  To take an example, Nietzsche claims that the word “father” expresses this feeling itself, and the word “son” represents the “entrance” into that feeling (AC 34).[xvii]  Furthermore:

“Atonement and praying for forgiveness are not the way to God: only the evangelical practice leads to God, in fact it is ‘God’ – What the evangel did away with was the Judaism of the concepts of ‘sin’, ‘forgiveness of sin’, ‘faith’, ‘redemption through faith’ – the whole Jewish church doctrine was rejected in the ‘glad tidings’” (AC 33).[xviii]

In sum, the psychological reality of redemption consists solely in material and interior rather than otherworldly terms.  Jesus promises nothing about afterlife in Nietzsche’s view.  It is this life that matters – a new life, not a new faith, which is everywhere and nowhere as an experience of the heart (AC 34).[xix]  John Charles Evans has shed light on Nietzsche’s Jesus in very positive terms: “The abolition of sin in deference to conceptions of living and acting is a dramatic and critical interpretation.  It connects Nietzsche’s Jesus, not only with life affirmation, but also Nietzsche’s concept of ‘beyond good and evil.’  Nietzsche ascribes to Jesus the concept of value creation through living rather through the pursuit of a higher moral code.”[xx]  The suggestion that Nietzsche understands Jesus as life affirming might be somewhat a misinterpretation here.  It is fair on the other hand to highlight Nietzsche’s appreciation of Jesus’ value creation.  Jesus just doesn’t create the values that Nietzsche is convinced are best for people, but Nietzsche is willing to admit that Jesus’ spiritual program is a viable option.

A Christian might immediately object and reply that Jesus at least appears to directly and intentionally oppose the political powers and religious leaders of his day, but Nietzsche doubts whether Jesus was even conscience of or concerned about this at all, leaving some readers to suspicious of Nietzsche’s hermeneutical key.  It is not the concern of this essay to analyze at any length the exegetical problems posed by Nietzsche’s rendering of Jesus. Nietzsche was surely aware of the discrepancies between his construal and that found in Gospels; he just thought that the psychology of the disciples and the first followers would reconcile the differences.

NIETZSCHE AND BUDDHISM

A Very Brief Philosophical Background

“It was Nietzsche who first explicitly suggested that we drop the whole idea of ‘knowing the truth.’” – Richard Rorty[xxi]

Nietzsche rejects Hegel’s dialectical unfolding of historical progress with hierarchical stages in the world (though Nietzsche does seem to maintain that there is an inner logic at work in history, a process and a dynamism, as Hegel did).[xxii]  But his revaluation of values can be expressed in positively Hegelian terms insofar as he negates a negation, for he considers Christianity as the ‘revaluation of all the values of antiquity.’”[xxiii]  And this double negation does not lead back to the same place, but beyond – beyond pessimism and optimism, and even theism and atheism.

Nietzsche is far more concerned about the individual, however, and takes a psychological approach in his work more than that of an attempt to conduct a totalizing synthesis of history.  As Gianni Vattimo has put it, Nietzsche is convinced that “seeking metaphysical consolation in essences and the rational structure of the universe was characteristic of an enfeebled and decadent culture.”[xxiv]  In this manner, Heidegger paints a stark picture of Nietzsche:  “The suprasensory world is without effective power.  It bestows no life.  Metaphysics, i.e., for Nietzsche, Western philosophy understood as Platonism, is at an end.  Nietzsche understands his own philosophy as the countermovement to metaphysics, and that means for him a movement in opposition to Platonism.”[xxv]  Consequently, Nietzsche rejects the root idea that morality is in place with its source in something transcendent.  And even if some metaphysical reality existed, and one could somehow know it, such knowledge would be useless for Nietzsche.[xxvi]

Nietzsche criticizes Kant for drawing what Nietzsche thinks is an epistemological boundary line, but Nietzsche misunderstands Kant on this point, as Kant only means to make a limit distinction.  So Nietzsche really accepts Kant’s view of the empirical limitations of knowledge in a certain sense, but vehemently disallows for any kind of faith – a position at which Kant never arrived – as faith for Nietzsche would only reflect human misguided desire instead of anything about truth.

The trouble with the enlightened thinkers then, irreligious as they may be, is that they still conceive of reality in a two-world framework.  The Socratic pursuit of knowledge about reality is their chief objective and is presumed to lead to happiness.  Like Hume before him, Nietzsche understands reason to be a slave of the passions.[xxvii]   Bearing this in mind, once one has detected the “human, all too human” foundation of metaphysical systems, there is nothing remaining on which to stand.  Nietzsche has perhaps moved the farthest away from Descartes at this point.  And to a significant degree, Nietzsche has followed Leibniz’s awareness that human perceptions and beliefs are not always conscious, and certainly that they are not static; nor is reality dependent upon these thoughts, though on the other hand we are constantly being shaped by them.  Nietzsche “thus helps us take seriously the possibility that there is no central faculty, no central self, called ‘reason.’”[xxviii]

Nietzsche adheres to Feuerbach’s admonition that Gods are the result of a projection of unconscious human qualities,[xxix] by assuming that “religions are created by humanity according to perceived spiritual needs.”[xxx]  Nietzsche goes further than Feuerbach though, because Feuerbach is still conceiving of a common humanity.  As soon as humanity is universalized, Nietzsche is appalled.  Instead Nietzsche inverts Feuerbach by individualizing this truth.  God can no longer be the idealized objectification of the best possible human being because, not only is there no such agreed-upon human being, but the Christian God would be antithetical to the kind of God Nietzsche would idealize.  The only common nature is that some are strong and others are weak.  Epistemologically then, it begins to become clear why Nietzsche shares more with Buddhism or Hinduism than Christianity.

Nietzsche on Buddhism

Buddhism presupposes a very mild climate, extremely gentle and liberal customs, the complete absence of militarism, and the existence of higher, scholarly classes to give focus to the movement.  The highest goals are cheerfulness, quiet, and an absence of desire, and these goals are achieved.  Buddhism is not a religion where people only aspire to perfection: perfection is the norm (AC 21).[xxxi]

As mentioned above, Nietzsche does judge Buddhism to be superior to Christianity, as it is situated beyond good and evil, departs from morality and has no conception salvation from sin or sin itself for that matter: “This is the main distinction Nietzsche makes between the two nihilistic religions: Buddhism has no ground in ressentiment against life whereas Christianity – or, as we might say, Christendom – is a product of it.”[xxxii]  By confronting the reality of suffering, Buddhism is at least for Nietzsche not dishonest.  It doesn’t manipulate suffering or purport to overcome it in a Christian fashion by conjuring up a masochistic redemption or heavenly reward story a result of innocent death and sacrifice.  It has no ‘idea’ of God, and as such is phenomenological and positivistic rather than metaphysical (AC 20).[xxxiii]  Prayer, asceticism, and compulsion are absent.  Buddhists do not hope for any eschatological or judgmental triumph – unlike Christianity, whose values are otherworldly.  They concern themselves instead with living the present life.

Nietzsche cites the Buddhist maxim, ‘enmity will not bring an end to enmity,’ which illustrates well the difference between Buddhism and Nietzsche’s experience with Christian ressentiment.  On the other hand, this notion discloses some of Buddhism’s anti-instinctive tendencies in Nietzsche’s view, like the suppression of the self and the ego. Nietzsche wants to overcome resistance more so than self (AC 2).[xxxiv]  Preventing trouble by not acting – what a terrible way to live, Nietzsche might charge. It is withdrawal for Nietzsche, fatigue of civilization having grown too sensitive to pain.  Furthermore, Nietzsche is troubled by the aversion to suffering demonstrated by both religions.  Suffering for Nietzsche is not to be feared or escaped, nor sought, but utilized.  It is an opportunity (BGE 201).[xxxv]  Nietzsche gives his diagnosis of Buddhism and its perspective on suffering as follows:

Buddhism has two physiological facts that it has always kept in mind: first, an excessively acute sensitivity that is expressed as are refined susceptibility to pain, and second, having lived all too long with concepts and logical procedures, an over-spiritualization that has had the effect of promoting the ‘impersonal’ at the expense of the personal ones. These physiological conditions give rise to depression (AC 20).[xxxvi]

“According to Nietzsche, both Christianity and Buddhism define redemption as the absence of suffering.”[xxxvii] What is problematic for Nietzsche is that, like Christianity – even though it does so in a more natural way – Buddhism gives itself the disease for which it claims to be the cure.  It is too weak, Nietzsche would say, to truly welcome suffering as that which life entails.  Buddhists rightly see that the condition of suffering itself must be accepted.  But that is precisely where they stop and turn to seek Nirvana, which for Nietzsche is the life of enlightened self-interest – just not in a noble way.[xxxviii]  Nobles are not afraid.  Accordingly, the Buddha has to come up with all kinds of tricks:

The Buddha took hygienic measures against this [depression], including: living out in the open, the wandering life, moderation and a careful diet; caution as far as liquor is concerned; caution when it comes to all affects that create bile or raise the blood temperature; no worrying about either yourself or other people.  He insists on ideas that produce either calm or amusement – he comes up with methods for phasing out all the others.  He sees goodness and kindness as healthy (AC 20).[xxxix]

Nietzsche is convinced that the same process he sees happening in Europe already occurred with the Buddha five centuries before “the European calendar.” The age of idealism had reached an end there as well, leading to the depression described above.  Nietzsche is proposing an alternative solution – one that does not end with the move from “Christian conscience” to “scientific conscience,” the latter of which interpreted history with “divine reason” (GM iii. 27 – he quotes The Gay Science here).[xl]  Instead, because “all great things destroy themselves by an act of self-cancellation” – a reference to the Hegelian dialectic – the “will to truth” itself has become aware of its own problem (GM iii. 27).[xli]  And with this Nietzsche is able to conclude the following about suffering: “Man, the bravest animal, the one most accustomed to suffering, does not deny suffering in itself.  He desire it, he seeks it out in person, provided that people show him a meaning for it, the purpose of suffering.  The curse that earlier spread itself over men was not suffering, but the senselessness of suffering – and the ascetic ideal offered him a meaning!”  Thus, Buddhism for Nietzsche is exactly what he has predicted for Europe: “man will sooner will nothingness than not will . . .” (GM iii. 27).[xlii]  None of this will do for Nietzsche, since humanity is better off with “I will” rather than “thou shalt” (Zarathustra, 60-64):[xliii] “The world seen from within, the world described according to its ‘intelligible character’ – it would be ‘will to power’ and nothing else” (BGE 36).[xliv]

Nietzsche’s Alternative

Insofar as will to power relates to freedom, it is not freedom from [suffering, for instance, out of fear] but freedom to – freedom to act and realize oneself.[xlv]  This is what Nietzsche does not find in Buddhism.  Though they both have an ambition for a kind of self-overcoming, their respective motivation and means are incongruent.  And while an extensive excursus on the will to power cannot be done here, it should at minimum be clarified that the idea does not denote a superficial, corrupt idea of power that leads to ruthless evildoing, for example.  It is rather an “enobling” of the mind for Nietzsche.[xlvi]  The truly powerful as he sees it would never intentionally harm, as that would be a display of weakness.  Harm could happen, but only as a byproduct of creative enactment.[xlvii]  This is why some artists and philosophers can be considered by Nietzsche to be the most valuable, powerful people, while barbarians for him are some of the weakest, most uncultured, and least valuable.[xlviii] At the same time, the will to power is more than a “struggle for existence” as Darwin has it; it is what drives enhancement, growth, and the generation of life.[xlix]

No less important is the idea of the will itself as a type of desire for improvement and not just the fulfillment of any fleeting impulse.[l]  As Rorty has argued in his interpretation of Nietzsche, “The drama of an individual human life, or of the history of humanity as a whole, is not one in which a preexistent goal is triumphantly reached or tragically not reached.”  Self-overcoming in Nietzsche’s mind therefore is something definitely divergent from Christian redemption and Buddhist enlightenment.

BUDDHISM: ANOTHER LOOK

Whereas orthodox Indian religions claim that every person has an eternal soul (atman) as part of the metaphysical absolute of Brahman, the Buddha denied the existence of any such eternal or immutable spiritual essence.  The principle end for Buddhism is the cessation of suffering and rebirth, which is defined negatively, but the path is construed positively, aiming to fulfill humanity’s potential for goodness and happiness.  The final and highest goal is the summum bonum of Nirvana, which literally translates to “quenching” or “blowing out,”[li] but Nirvana does not have an unambiguous, fixed meaning.[lii]  Though the means by which one reaches Nirvana is often assumed to be by way of virtuosity, living morally as such is considered by some Buddhist scholars to actually be a hindrance. [liii]  This is because it reproduces karma, which binds one to the cycle of rebirth. Hence it can be explained instead that virtue and wisdom – a profound philosophical understanding of the human condition – are fused together in Buddhist thought.  The latter, however, seems to takes precedence.

Concerning wisdom, what must first be acknowledged and embraced is the truth of suffering (Dukkha).  There are different levels of suffering though ranging from sickness, pain, and grief to not getting what one wants and discovering a lack of control of one’s environment.  It’s not that pleasures and fleeting enjoyments are ignored in Buddhism, or even unappreciated, but the futility of pleasant moments is definitely underlined.  Addiction to the desire for these moments and experiences is what causes reincarnation.  Even a pain-free life can be incredibly unsatisfying.  The teaching here is not implying that all desire is bad.  It is “bad” only when excessive or perverted, described as Tanha (greed, hatred, delusion – not unlike ressentiment). Buddhist sources also speak of desire in more positive terms as chanda.[liv]  This understanding of desire, however – which evokes the idea of wanting to reach a particular goal, for instance, like Nirvana itself – departs from Nietzsche’s rendering of the primal instincts.

Cravings and thirsts are inevitable, but what must be remembered in the Buddhist universe is cyclic change, whereby everything that exists is characterized by unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), impermanence (annica), and the absence of self-essence (anata).[lv]  Thus the burning flame of these cravings and thirsts must be put out.  It should not be inferred that Buddhism is a suicidal route to annihilation, however – though one can see why this might be deduced by Nietzsche or anyone else opposed to nihilism.[lvi]

The eightfold path, which is the fourth noble truth, is intended to exhibit how a Buddhist would live, and how one would eventually become like the Buddha and reach irreversible liberation from worldly existence, or samsara.  It is comprised of three kinds of practices and categories that steer between indulgence and austerity: morality, mediation, and wisdom. Beginning with wisdom, one develops the right understanding and resolve.  In morality, right speech, action, and livelihood are cultivated.  This is achieved by right effort, mindfulness, and meditation.[lvii]

The word Mahayana specifically means the “Great Vehicle.”  It is the universal way to salvation.[lviii]  This immediately poses a problem for comparison to Nietzsche, since he would be bothered, if not scandalized by the audacity of universal and salvific claim.  As will be noted below, however, Nietzsche was primarily exposed to Theravada Buddhism and apparently was not as familiar with the role of a bodhisattva.

ASSESSING NIETZSCHE’S VIEW OF BUDDHISM

It has been argued by Jay Garfield that through the Mahayana tradition, one can see Nirvana not as an escape from the world but as an enlightened and awakened engagement with it.[lix]  Correspondingly, Garfield finds resemblance between joyful participation in the world seen as divine play in Mahayana Buddhism and the will to power.  If this is the approach one wishes to take is evaluating Nietzsche’s interpretation of Buddhism, however, the same could be said of various types of Christianity – one in which followers orient themselves around the kingdom of God as a reality to be realized here and now, for instance, rather than a personalistic focus on individual salvation for the life hereafter or evacuation to heaven.  Zen Buddhism especially, because it so stresses monism, has some equivalence with “beyond good and evil.”  Even Zen presents difficulties though, with its quasi-Kantian understanding of language itself as dualistic.  Nietzsche does not have the same confidence in a referent.  What appears is all there is.[lx]

It has been concluded that Nietzsche probably studied primarily texts from the Theravada tradition rather than the Mahayana, because the former tend to be more focused on the phenomena of Buddhism’s historical origin, which was Nietzsche’s interest, and he had access to sources for both.[lxi]  Moreover, we know that Nietzsche read Hermann Oldenberg’s book Buddha, which provides further corroboration for this theory.

In his comments noted above about Buddhism, it could be inferred that Nietzsche is submitting something like the following: “For those not strong enough to respond to this challenge of the open sea, the appeal of a cheerful and refined nihilistic and non-theistic religion like Buddhism might be irresistible.”[lxii]  It is evident from a personal letter to his friend, Carl von Gersdorff, that Nietzsche himself was perhaps tempted by and struggled with the lure of obtaining tranquility in life through the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom as the very drive for the will to live, as this ideal is comparable to Nietzsche’s comprehension of Nirvana.[lxiii]

Buddhism is a particular renounced form of nihilism for Nietzsche – a passive nihilism in fact.[lxiv]  Nietzsche thought this nihilism could be overcome.  While this overcoming eliminates the categorical imperative, utilitarianism, or any universal justice, Nietzsche was only a nihilist himself insofar as this is taken to mean that he intended to abolish the old “lies” in order to make room for creating something new and an “increased power of the spirit” (WP 22).[lxv]  The Buddha in some sense for Nietzsche may have done a noble act by coming up with the Dhamma teaching to help others not necessarily overcome their psychological despair, but relate differently to their recognition of life’s meaninglessness in such a way that cheerfulness rather than depression constitutes one’s attitude toward this perceived emptiness.  It can be and has certainly been argued that Buddhism is one feasible way of responding to existential Angst.  It serves to overcome insecurity and “incompleteness” by equipping persons to cheerfully welcome their annihilation after death.[lxvi]  Indeed, some have even posited that if Nietzsche would have had access to more profound elaborations on the depths and varieties of Buddhism, and particular its notion of citta-bhavana, which is rooted in humanity’s psychological makeup, he might have even considered the Buddha himself to be an Ubermensch.  As the argument goes, Buddha, unlike some of his followers, advocated a practical, spiritual path of which the purpose was to “become such as can see things as they really are.”  From this point of view, there is admittedly some analogy to Nietzsche’s project.  What Robert Morrison has put forth, for instance, is the explanation that transcending consciousness leads precisely to a new level instinctual being, or something like the governing nature to which Nietzsche says we must be true.

Is not this instinctual existence, however, of which Morrison speaks, more akin to what results after the Christian concept of the sanctification process has begun, whereby a person “puts on” the character of Christ and is conformed to “God’s image”?  Though with difficulty at first, a person is eventually thought to develop his or her own identity more fully, confidently, and determinately, as it should be.  And while this is obviously a different notion than that of Nietzsche’s primordial, animal nature that must be retrieved and embraced, it is not as drastically counter to Nietzsche’s idea of self-overcoming as he lets on.  But ultimately, whereas Buddhists are striving on the whole and in general to overcome selfhood, ambition, desire – that is, disentanglement from natural or default instincts (i.e., Nietzsche’s view of instinct) – doesn’t Nietzsche’s unequivocally digress from this, if not directly opposes it?  It is true that both Nietzsche and Buddhists can speak of mastering desire or instinct to a certain degree, and perhaps this is where they share some inhabitance.

The Buddhist, however, is not to be concerned with or “fettered” by the “wrong views” of other religions (or miccha-ditthis).[lxvii] Nietzsche, on the other hand, is transparently disturbed by Christianity’s “wrong views.”  In other words, one could submit that Nietzsche is much more “evangelistic” than any good Buddhist ever could be.  In the additional ending to the AntiChrist, Nietzsche even advises very coercive, legal measures that should be taken against the practice of Christianity for the greater good of society.[lxviii]

If Nietzsche had a genuine precursor in Spinoza, why not wonder whether he defended a new Dionysian, pantheistic religion much like what Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani said was similar to the standpoint of Meister Eckhart, who speaks of ‘living without why, within the Godless desert of divinity’?”[lxix]  This might seem like a stretch, but Graham Parkes makes the case that Nietzsche comes close to Mayana Buddhism, which he didn’t know as well, with ideas like amor fati and the Dionysian as the overcoming of nihilism.[lxx]  Later on in his career, however, under the influence of Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche (Nashitani studied with Heidegger), Nashitani himself was much more critical of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and in particular of the will to power, thereby problematizing Parkes’ theory.    

A bodhisattva is one who refuses to enter Nirvana until all beings have become enlightened.  This sounds remarkably like Zarathustra at the beginning of the Nietzsche’s book.  But while Zarathustra proclaims his love for humanity, he is not striving for the realization of self-emptiness through interrelatedness with all things – regardless of how naturally his existence gives way to an overflowing “generosity and re-engagement with the world.”[lxxi] In a limited respect, Nietzsche does order an outlook of the world as divine, but whether this makes him a Mahayana Buddhist is another question:

For Zarathustra, as long as human beings feel themselves subordinated to transcendent forces in the form of divinities, they will lack confidence in their own will to create.  But if they are able to face up to the impermanence of ‘becoming’ and fully engage the cycles of death and rebirth and destruction and creation that characterize the world of a deity like Dionysus, such self-overcoming will allow the force of the creative will to work at play – perhaps even dance – through them . . . atheism is merely a provisional stage in the transformations of the human spirit.[lxxii]

This argument citing Zarathustra provides perhaps the best support for identifying any parallels between Nietzsche and Buddhism.  Both Nietzsche and figures like the Daoist sage or the Zen master are unified to an extent in their alignment against anthropomorphism, in saying “Yes” to cosmic life, in underscoring the tremendous contingency of human existence, and in their affinity with the Buddhist teaching of ‘dependent arising’ (pratitya-samutpada), which emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things and the consequent ‘emptiness’ of any ‘self-nature’ to them.”[lxxiii] Furthermore, as was noted before about Nietzsche’s appreciation for the caste, the modern, secularized Christian idea of human “rights” and equality before God is absent in these philosophies.

Andre van der Braak has framed Nietzsche’s revaluation of values as a reinvention of a soteriological scheme, albeit after for a post-theistic age, in place of the perverted Christian one.[lxxiv]  The need for redemption is a sign of decadence for Nietzsche, as has been noted already.  But what if “being healed from a spirit of revenge and resentment is how Nietzsche envisions redemption, where all life is considered to be justified and worthy of ecstatic affirmation . . . embracing passionately the horrifying reality of eternal recurrence”?[lxxv]  In this light, redemption is seen as neither a static state nor endpoint but a process of functioning without the friction of the conscious ‘I’:[lxxvi]

The crucified innocent one (EH) is a condemnation of life for the sake of redemption in the afterworld.  The suffering of Dionysus on the other hand, is a natural and ecstatic expression of the fullness and richness of life, not an objection to life but its celebration.  Therefore there is no need to give it a meaning beyond itself.  It is part of life, and does not need any further justification . . . The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich and capable of deifying to do so.[lxxvii]

Thus van der Braak too tries to assimilate Nietzsche to another take on Buddhism, or visa versa.  At the same time, he points to several major weaknesses, only in this case he does so via the Christian tradition, remarking and confirming once more that Nietzsche does in fact take insist on a different outlook toward suffering.  In several places, it is apparent that van der Braak can’t help but recognize the difficult truth that Nietzsche is unable to sufficiently deal with the horror of suffering, specifically in the Nazi death camps.  Van der Braak cites an implicit reference to a theology of the cross analogous to Moltmann’s crucified God as the best Christian response.

THE ANTICHRIST: REDEMPTION, ENLIGHTENMENT OR SOMETHING ELSE?

Nietzsche is adamant about the importance and centrality of being governed by natural instincts in a way that much Eastern thought would shun.  But in the same way that Nietzsche grossly misrepresents the nature of Christianity and Jesus’ teachings on occasion, so too is there little reason to doubt that he does the same with Buddhism, and drawing attention to these mischaracterizations is a constructive and necessary exercise.  It is also probable that Buddhism and Christianity are made into straw men for Nietzsche at times.  In certain light, it can be shown that far less conflict exists between these various ideologies than Nietzsche is inclined to concede.  Is it not reasonable to suspect that Nietzsche partially fed off of this antagonism?  This notwithstanding, and while I profess no expertise on Buddhism, it is nevertheless quite speculative in my view to recommend that Nietzsche himself be understood as having elicited anything remotely congruent to the kernel of historical Buddhism or Christianity in his concepts like the will to power, eternal recurrence,[1] or the Ubermensch[2] – as vast and diverse as the Christian and Buddhist streams are.

What can be asserted, however, is something to which has already been alluded – namely, that Jesus and Buddhism mirror each other substantially in Nietzsche’s study.  It is they who are the worthy competitors with the AntiChrist, and who present plausible redemption plans.  This is a sign of respect.  Christianity on the other hand, is straightforwardly condemnable.[lxxviii]  One could summarize by delineating things thusly: About Christianity, Nietzsche abhors both its form and content, though that content as Nietzsche saw it was not spelled out in any detail here.  Regarding Jesus and Buddhism, however, it is content rather than form that troubles Nietzsche.  The form is that of which Nietzsche approves.  The reason is that both Jesus and the Buddha were more interested in incarnating practices than dogmatizing systems of belief, and concerning this very limited formulation – without saying anything more – it is perhaps safe to concede that Nietzsche is right.

Related articles

• Christianity and Tragedy: Is Something Missing? (billwalker.wordpress.com)
• Dialogue with Nietzsche (barthsnotes.wordpress.com)
• A Caution for would-be prophets and critiques from the “Fringe” (billwalker.wordpress.com)
• Some more Nietzsche aphorisms on religion & other follies (isiria.wordpress.com)
• Zarathustra Shrugged (resnikoff.wordpress.com)
• Why I Believe In Friederich Nietzsche (burningatthestake.wordpress.com)
• The Nietzschean Prophecies (whitelocust.wordpress.com)
• Nietzsche – Twilight of the Idols (scissorskick.wordpress.com)

This is one of my final essays of the semester for a class entitled, “Philosophical Interpretations of Paul.”  I don’t really recommend reading it, but if anyone is interested, the conclusion might be worth looking at.

INTRODUCTION

How does one construct a subject in a world where the subject has been deconstructed?  Why should I fight for this group or that, when history has shown all too clearly that all political projects are partial and fragmented, often birthed out of superficial identities?  Removing the mediating factors, could an event enable such a construction?  Could Paul, the alleged poet-thinker of the Event, be the “metaphysician” for such a task, after the end of metaphysics?  It has been contended that there must be something to give a common sense of solidarity for protest.  Cultural and victimist theories of humanity will not do for Alan Badiou:  “It will be objected that, in the present case, for us ‘truth’ designates a mere fable.  Granted, but what is important is the subjective gesture grasped in its founding power with respect the generic conditions of universality . . . [but] the progressive reduction of the question of truth (and hence, of thought) to a linguistic form, judgment . . . ends up in a cultural and historical relativism.”[i] On the other hand:

What is the real unifying factor behind this attempt to promote the cultural virtue of oppressed subsets, this invocation of language in order to extol communitarian particularisms (which, besides language, always ultimately refer back to race, religion, or gender)?  It is, evidently, monetary abstraction, whose false universality has absolutely no difficulty accommodating the kaleidoscope of communitarianisms.  The lengthy years of communist dictatorship will have had the merit of showing that financial globalization, the absolute sovereignty of capital’s empty universality, had as its only genuine enemy another universal project . . . and it is certainly not by renouncing the concrete universality of truths in order to affirm the rights of “minorities,” be they racial religious, national, or sexual, that the devastation will be slowed down.  No, we will not allow the rights of true-thought to have as their only instance monetarist free exchange and its mediocre political appendage, capitalist-parliamentarianism, whose squalor is even more poorly dissimulated behind he fine word ‘democracy.’[ii]

We learn of Badiou’s political concerns and critiques early on in his book on Paul in a section where he talks about the situation in France.  More generally – applying the France case writ large – Badiou describes two opposing tendencies in the globalized world.  There is on the one hand “an extension of the automatisms of capital,” which imposes the rule of abstract homogenization, and on the other hand ”a process of fragmentation into close identities, and the culturalist and relativist ideology that accompanies this fragmentation”; and Badiou argues that both processes are “perfectly intertwined.”[iii]  They are parasitic upon each other.[iv]  This is because every identity, community or territory that asserts itself becomes vulnerable to exploitation by providing the potential commercialization of itself by the market.  The more recognition a group demands, the more movie tickets, “action figures,” and the more overpriced hybrid cars will be sold.  Badiou says Deleuze put it best: “capitalist deterritorialization requires a constant reterritorialization.”[v]  For in the end, what most political subjects want is equal inclusion in and exposure to the whole with everybody else.  Accordingly, Badiou is asserting that no universalizable truth can be sustained in such a system.  Furthermore, it disallows for coalition-building and instigating revolution.

So Capitalism doesn’t recognize anything singular; it objectivizes and turns particular identities into numbers while competing identities serve the very cause of the capital they seek to undermine and oppose. Unification and fragmentation are not two different processes in this perpetual cycle.  Thus Badiou acutely identifies humanity’s natural inclination toward collective egoism.  Hence, the question arises: how to avoid oscillating between these reciprocally maintained ends, where each side subsists by discrediting the other or subsuming everything into a vacant totality?  Or, to state Badiou’s thesis question, “what are the conditions for a universal singularity?”[vi] Another way of putting it would be: how can one transcend both the general and the particular?  It is precisely at this point that Badiou engages the apostle Paul, whose foundation for universalism consists neither of the Jewish, legal, exceptional (circumcision) particular nor the general, Greek, philosophical (wise), moral universal.  Rather, Paul’s allegiance for Badiou is to the declared Event, which in Paul’s case happens to be the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

BADIOU’S EVENT

Event is not, as Badiou sees it, axiomatic or structural.[vii] The Event gives rise to a truth that “groups together all the terms of the situation which are positively connected to the event.”[viii]  In the Event, conditions of emergence are transcended and exceeded such that the conditions can be reconfigured afterwards.[ix]  It has the capacity to divide history in accordance with its own terms.[x]  Concurrently, it is essentially subjective, which is to say that the meaning and significance of the Event is dependent upon a conviction relative to it.  The Event is “what Badiou following Kierkegaard calls a ‘subjective possibility,’ without logical proof, conceptual consistency or empirical verification.”[xi] So the new discourse after the Event is proclaimed, not proven.  The Event is announced to all, and is without a historical subset; namely, no previously established community can possess it.  After the Event, there is neither Jew nor Greek, but the new.

At the same time, truth according to Badiou is not a momentary illumination so much as a process – a revolution.  So while the Event functions to disrupt, reconstitute and reformulate the duality of Jewish “election” and Greek “reason,” it is not wholly divorced from these pre-existing contexts.  Therefore fidelity to the declaration of the Event is crucial.[xii]  This fidelity is best understood as a conviction, Badiou says, which he takes from the Greek word pistis, or faith.  Slavoj Zizek helps with Badiou’s interpretation of Pauline Hope and Love in addition: “Hope is the hope that the final reconciliation announced by the Event (the Last Judgment) will actually occur; Love is the patient struggle for this to happen, that is, the long ad arduous work to assert one’s fidelity to the Event.”[xiii]

Finally, a Truth-Event is indifferent to circumstances like the Roman occupation for example.  It is subtracted and distanced from that system and as such does not compete with other opinions about the state of affairs – this would also be particular, and formulated by something like identity politics or the customs of a group such as the Judaizers in Galatia.[xiv] The declared Event cannot be domesticated because it is solid and timeless, “intelligible to us without having to resort to cumbersome historical mediations.”[xv]

In Richard Kearney’s interpretation of Badiou, the power (dunamis) of the cross that Paul speaks of “is this surplus of Spirit which defies the laws of rational understanding, represented by the Greek philosophical logos.  Invoking the language of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Badiou interprets this Christ-event in terms of the real which cuts across the law of language”:[xvi] “Interestingly, Badiou considers these aporias and paradoxes to be completely irreducible to hermeneutic mediation of any kind . . . Badiou is, it seems, an atheist of event rather than a theist of advent.”[xvii]

For this reason, it is admissible to suppose that Badiou is thinking not just about this Event, but Events for today as well.[xviii] The transcendence versus immanence distinction is replaced by a now and then distinction, whereby transcendence is historicized.  Geoffrey Holsclaw elucidates what is a crucial (and maybe injurious) feature of and Badiou’s account of the resurrection: “Badiou is against a Hegelian-Nietzschean capture of the resurrection as merely the sublimation of death, as the negation of negation (the object of Hegel’s praise and Nietzsche’s scorn).  In this way Badiou argues for a de-dialecticized Christ-event, which separates out the cross and death as merely the site for the event, and resurrection as the event itself.”[xix]  In the same vein, Badiou insists that Paul is not concerned with the resurrection as “an order fact, falsifiable or demonstrable,” but as pure event.[xx]  What concerns Badiou is form much more than content: “its genuine meaning is that it testifies to the possible victory over death, a death that Paul envisages . . . not in terms of facticity, but in terms of subjective disposition.”[xxi]  Christ’s resurrection is a type, and according to Badiou, the meaning of which is obscure for Paul.[xxii]  The gospel news is strictly evental.

Paul is the apostle who names this possibility opened up by the event.  The pure faithfulness to this possibility is not determined by knowledge.  Instead it is dependent on evental grace, characterized by “foolishness” and “weakness” in contradistinction to “wisdom” and “power.”[xxiii]  This is what constitutes Paul as the anti-philosopher.  To repeat, he relies on neither “proof” (philosophers) nor “signs” (Jews).  Badiou even goes as far to say that Paul anticipated Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology – that is, thinking of God as one supreme Being among other beings rather than beyond or “without Being”[xxiv] (Jean-Luc Marion has criticized Heidegger himself, however, for making the very same mistake).[xxv]  Zizek puts forth a similar notion, in one sense, in his reading Job, wherein he describes Job’s friends as “onto-theologians” who both Job and God ultimately dismiss.[xxvi]

The focus on the evental nature of grace in Badiou’s reading of Paul stems from the division between “flesh” and “spirit,” which is not an equivalent to the Greek or Platonic juxtaposition of body and soul.  Based on Romans 8:6, Badiou can affirm with Paul that “setting the mind” on “flesh” leads to “death,” but thinking on “spirit” brings “life.”  This usage of “life” and “death” corresponds to what was mentioned above – the hope that humanity can now vanquish death and affirm life in the contingent sense, rather than by trusting in a literal or physical promise of resurrection.  Death and life are paths that can be chosen.  So finally, the duality is taken one step further by Badiou, from life/death to grace/law, because “the pure event can be reconciled neither with the natural Whole, nor with the imperative of the letter.”[xxvii]  Stated another way, totality and place become extraneous, creating space for our adoption as “sons,” or children – not philosophical disciples – who are loyal to the event that brings “sonship” for all.

BADIOU ON NIETZSCHE AND PAUL

It’s a useful and intriguing comparison to make here – which can also be made with Zizek as will be evident below – between how Badiou reads Paul and what Nietzsche thinks about Paul, as a dishonest Jew who hijacks Christianity and formulates the Church’s sick ideology that Jesus never intended.  How surprising it is that two materialists would have such divergent sentiments about the apostle – one in praise of and the other detesting him.

When Nietzsche exclaims that Paul “could make no use at all of the redeemer’s life” (Anti-Christ, 42), Badiou concedes by at least admitting that Paul’s doctrine is certainly not historical.[xxviii]  But these two interpreters of Paul part ways when they assess the implications of Paul’s position:  “If Nietzsche is so violent toward Paul, it is because he is his rival far more than an opponent.”[xxix]  In other words, Badiou characterizes Nietzsche as an individualist and Paul as a universalist.

Nietzsche’s accusation that Paul is promoting the hatred of life is in Badiou’s understanding completely the opposite of the apostle’s teaching:

[Paul is the one] for whom it is here and now that life takes revenge on death, here and now that we can live affirmatively, according to the spirit, rather than negatively, according to the flesh, which is thought of death.  For Paul, the Resurrection is that on the basis of which life’s center of gravity resides in life, whereas previously, being situated in the Law, it organized life’s subsumption by death.[xxx]

Against a major stream of historical Christian theology, Badiou agrees with Nietzsche that suffering and death ought not be conceived as redemptive.  This is not  where Badiou and Nietzsche differ.  Badiou supports his own analysis in defense of Paul by pointing out the chronology of the Gospels and Paul’s epistles.  If there is a disparity, the Gospels cannot be said to have been the “originals,” because their authorship is dated some twenty years later.  This would seem to weaken Nietzsche’s claim that Jesus was misappropriated by Paul.  Nietzsche isn’t concerned with textual criticism though, and he admits as much.

And regarding the individualist/universalist distinction noted above, Badiou underscores Nietzsche’s disgust with Paul’s rebellion against “everything privileged” (Anti-Christ, 46).  But unlike Nietzsche, Badiou welcomes this aspect of Paul – as should be expected based on his philosophy of the Event – by holding tightly to the belief that “God shows no partiality” (Rom 2.10):

“[T]he Christ-event establishes the authority of a new subjective path over future eras.  The fact that we must serve a truth procedure is not to be confused with slavery [something Nietzsche seems to project onto Paul, according to Badiou], which is precisely that from which we are forever released insofar as we all become son of what has happened to us.  The relation between lord and servant differs absolutely between master and disciple, as well as from that between owner and slave.  It is not a relation of personal, or legal, dependence.  It is a community of destiny in that moment in which we have to become a “new creator.”  That is why we need retain of Christ only what ordains this destiny, which is indifferent to the particularities of the living person: Jesus is resurrected; nothing else matters, so that Jesus becomes like an anonymous variable, a “someone” devoid of predicative traits, entirely absorbed by his resurrection.”[xxxi]

Paul emphasizes rupture rather than continuity with Judaism in Badiou’s reading.  Contrarily, despite the fact that both Badiou and Agamben wish to employ Paul for contemporary political purposes, Agamben locates in Paul’s writing a concept of “messianic time,” which is a way of relating to time in the now, irrespective of the evental truth proclaimed by Badiou.  Moreover, identity is not subordinated for Agamben to the degree that it is for Badiou.  It is suspended, rather than directly overcome, and certainly not erased.  Without giving a satisfactory overview of Agamben’s position, and hopefully in spite of his bias, Zizek’s rhetoric can perhaps further illuminate some of the differences between Badiou and Agamben:

“What if the way to found a new religion is precisely through bringing the preceding logic (in this case, of Jewish messianism) to its end?  What if the only way to invent a new universality is precisely through overcoming the old divisions with a new, more radical division which introduces an indivisible remainder into the social body?  What if the proclamation of a new identity and of a new vocation can take place only if it functions as the revoking of every identity and every vocation?  What if the truly radical critique of the Law equals its opening toward a se beyond every system of law?  Furthermore, when Agamben introduces the triad of Whole, Part, and Remainder, is he not following the Hegelian paradox of a genus which has only one species, the other species being the genus itself?  The remainder is nothing other than the excessive element which gives body to the genus itself, the Hegelian “reflexive determination” in the guise of which the genus encounters itself within its species.”[xxxii]

Accordingly, Badiou’s view depends on the singular (again, not particular) Christ-event from which a universal declaration has been made, which abolishes the law and makes possible the traversing (not ignoring or eliminating) of all differences on the grounds of loyalty and commitment to the Resurrection, or to life, and the immanent distribution of revolutionary doing.[xxxiii]

ZIZEK ON BADIOU

Zizek sees that for Badiou the Event emerges ex nihilo, as an intervention from Outside or Beyond.[xxxiv]  Said differently, “the subject is strictly correlative with the ontological gap between the universal and the particular.”[xxxv]  What is left is not mere subjective faithfulness in response, however – as if the subject determines the event itself – but rather, because the Event transcends the subject, a quest of sorts is initiated to discern the “signs of Truth” amidst the finite multiple of a situation, and the resurrection Event is the situational example par excellence.[xxxvi]  According to Zizek, Badiou is after a “politics of Truth” in the modern state of global contingency that avoids subjugation to the postmodern dogma that would regard any reference to the transcendent or metaphysical as destined for totalitarianism.[xxxvii]  Zizek highlights one of Badiou’s brilliant theses – namely, that infinite complexity fails to provide the dignity of a proper object of thought.[xxxviii]  Badiou and Zizek both reject the supposed imperative that “the principal ethico-political duty is to maintain the gap between the Void of the central impossibility and every positive content giving body to it – that is, to never fully succumb to the enthusiasm of hasty identification of a positive Event with the redemptive Promise that is always ‘to come’” (a reference to Derrida).[xxxix]

The Event possesses a certain undecidability because it lacks an ontological guarantee.[xl]  It includes its own referent, which is a Void, until its goal is reached.  The Event must be understood on its own terms and not as just a semblance determined by a subjective vantage point: “Badiou insists on the immanence of the Truth-Event . . . for the agents themselves, as opposed to external observers.”[xli]  Thus the evental quality is solidified by the community that has been held together by the Event and engaged on its behalf.  There needs to be a group of believers!  But because Badiou and Zizek accept the modernized “rules of science,” the resurrection Truth-Event itself can only be a semblance after all.[xlii]

Like Badiou, Zizek finds Paul to be:

[U]nexpectedly close to his great detractor Nietzsche, whose problem was also how to break away from the vicious cycle of the self-mortifying morbid denial of Life: for him the Christian ‘way of the Spirit’ is precisely the magic break, the New Beginning that delivers us from this debilitating morbid deadlock and enables us to open ourselves to the Eternal Life of Love without Sin (i.e., Law and the guilt the Law induces).[xliii]

From here Zizek inverts the famous Dostoevsky quote about God’s existence and declares that for Paul, “since there is the God of Love, everything is permitted” (emphasis added) – a statement that might cause Nietzsche role over in his grave.[xliv]

ZIZEK AGAINST BADIOU

Zizek, following Lacan, does differ from Badiou in at least one important respect.  Unlike Badiou, Zizek considers conceiving of the subject as the act and gesture that both creates and heals the ontological gap to be a fatal trap.[xlv]  As Zizek has it, by collapsing the two (the Event and the naming of the Event), Badiou’s subject becomes the very Void or Gap itself, and “by means of a short circuit between the Universal and the Particular,” the subject fills or heals the Void at the same time by its fidelity to the Void.[xlvi]  In this sense, the subject is a ‘vanishing mediator’ between being and the event[xlvii] (it is also an invisible third term between Judaism and Christianity).[xlviii] Because the subject becomes an entity that is consubstantial with the structure – in its faithfulness to the Event that makes the Gap – the result is a new hegemony and as the subject’s act to fill the Gap retroactively preserves and maintains it.[xlix]

Zizek, on the other hand, along with Lacan, wishes to make the point that “‘subject’ designates the contingency of an Act that sustains the very ontological order of being,” rather than causing the subject to be “inscribed into the ontological structure of the universe as its constitutive Void.”[l]  Act is only a negative category for Lacan and Zizek, so the Gap or Void is supposed to be transposed from their point of view, not healed.  This is why Zizek focuses more on death, while Badiou emphasizes the resurrection. As Geoffrey Holsclaw frames it, “Rather than the reactionary approach of hostility instituting a new order around the truth-event of resurrection [a la Badiou], Zizek sees in Lacan the truly radical and perpetual gesture of death, a death escaping the dialectic of law and desire.”[li] This gets back to the critical Lacanian distinction between the act as object and the naming of it in a positive Truth-procedure, the latter of which is only a negative gesture of discontinuity.[lii]

SOME CRITICAL RESPONSES CONSIDERED

Writing from a Christian point of view, I echo Stephen Fowl and welcome these philosophers with hospitality to an encounter with the Christian faith and its Scripture.[liii]  Moreover, I confess upfront my limited familiarity with Badiou’s expansive work outside of his brief book on Paul, and certainly do not mean to apply any criticism to him as a philosopher or to his exceptional scholarship in general.  Lastly, it’s worth underscoring once more that Badiou is explicit and transparent about the extent to which he is demythologizing Paul and Christianity in general, so he should not be accused of any covert attempt to usurp the epistles or the tradition.  But as Paula Fredriksen put it, this is tolerable “if only they would confess that it is they who speak, not the apostle.”[liv]

While it is clear that Badiou does not intend to completely discount or subsume Paul’s context,[lv] Caputo says it well when he describes events: “Events are like metaphors; they have to differ from their existing discourse while having enough purchase in the existing discourse to be recognized as a metaphor.  They must have enough of a an anchor in the existing usage for their novelty to be felt or for them to have any bite; otherwise, they are just gibberish.”[lvi]  Another fair critique of both Badiou and Zizek’s construal of Paul is brought by Dale Martin when he says the following:

[S]o many of Paul’s current philosophical readers get him wrong on one very important point: their desire to see in him the founder of a new people, a new ethnicity, a new religion.  For not only is Paul constrained by his eschatology from announcing the establishment of the kingdom of God in the Church, he is also prohibited from proclaiming a new people or a new religion because of his faithfulness to Israel and the God of Israel.[lvii]

First, this constraint Martin speaks of on the eschatological announcement is critical.  One finds it in Paul here:

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it m own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil 3:10-12, NRSV).

We see that salvation is not something possessed or achieved in the past for Paul – the issue of justification notwithstanding – but rather that it has not yet been obtained.  It is a future hope to which Paul orients himself in the process of transformation, and Badiou does recognize this.  What problematizes his reading of Paul further, however, is extent to which Badiou cannot reconcile Paul’s discussion of suffering with this very process – a process that has always been central to the Christian tradition’s understanding of discipleship.

Concerning the separation that Badiou and Zizek make between Judaism and Christainity, the feminist Pauline scholar Davina Lopez agrees, but not without qualification: “assimilation into one stereotype will not accomplish the goal of solidarity among the defeated.”[lviii]  She goes on to say, however, that even from the Christian viewpoint, Judaism for Paul was not necessarily meant to be overcome.  In this regard, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, religion, and so on (Gal 3:28) are not irrelevant, but the contemporary, “progressive” reduction of the truth question to a linguistic form must likewise be withstood.[lix]   Both can be upheld, in other words, without such a violent break.  Collapsing differences leads to silence, so one still needs to hold the two in tension.[lx] The philosophy of the Event tends to praise the novel, and this can easily be taken too far.  At the same time, while one should wonder how much rupture there really was between Paul and the Jerusalem church as recorded in Acts, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Daniel Boyarin for instance have commented on this issue with respect to the Jewish-Christian context, and in their critiques, they might be subtracting Paul from his Christianity too much.[lxi]

What is more, one can get the impression from Badiou that the Law is something bad, which Paul fervently wants to supersede, but this is not entirely accurate.  There is nothing “wrong” with the law as far as Paul is concerned.  It does however hold people in bondage; therefore it is the separation from God that must be overcome – not the law as such.

It is along similar lines that Gordon Zerbe charges Badiou with seriously misunderstanding Paul’s talk about the interrelationship between the cross, resurrection, and suffering.  Zerbe argues that Badiou is preoccupied with “the specter of some Nietzschean resentment, hatred of life, as a driving force in Paul’s life and thought.”[lxii]  Zerbe goes on to say that Badiou, “unlike Taubes . . . cannot appreciate Paul’s emphasis on true solidarity with the world’s outcasts as the prime mode of messianic existence,” because for Badiou, “evental truth declaration in the [formal] modality of weakness does not correspond to one of lived weakness.”[lxiii] Any embrace of the cross as a model of messianic existence in Badiou’s mind is collapsed into a masochistic embrace of suffering, and this is Badiou’s grave mistake in Zerbe’s view.  Zerbe instead understands Paul’s counter-imperialism not to be derived from some kind hunger for revenge or from envy, as Nietzsche would have it, but from “his articulation of the messianic glad tidings.”[lxiv]

In response to Badiou and others, Richard Kearney has proposed instead what he calls a  “micro-eschatology of the possible:

[God’s power] clearly is not the imperial power of a sovereign; it is a dynamic call to love that possibilizes and enables humans with to transform their world by giving itself to the least of these, by empathizing with the disinherited and the dispossessed, by refusing the path of might and violence, by transfiguring the mustard seed into the kingdom, each moment at a time, one act after an other, each step of the way.  This is the path heralded by the Pauline God of ‘nothings and nobodies” (ta me onto) excluded from the triumphal pre-eminence of totality (ta onta) – kenotic, self-emptying, crucified God whose weakness is stronger than human strength (1 Cor 1:25). It signals the option for the poor, for non-violent resistance and revolution taken by peacemakers and dissenting “holy fools” from ancient to modern times.  It is the message of suffering rather than doing evil, of loving one’s adversaries, of no enemies, of soul force (satyagraha) . . . the God witnessed here goes beyond the will to power.”[lxv]

Kearney’s understanding of God disallows for his intervention in situations like the Holocaust, because if ever there was a time for God to act, it was then.  Drawing on Psuedo-Dionysius and Nicholas of Cusa, Kearney asserts that God is not omnipotent in the traditional metaphysical sense, nor responsible for evil.  Thus he concludes: “[I]f God’s loving is indeed unconditional, the realization of that loving posse in this world is conditioned upon our response.  If we are waiting for God, God is waiting for us.  Waiting for us to say yes, to hear the call and to act, to bear witness, to answer the posse with esse, to make the world flesh – even in the darkest moments.”[lxvi]  This approach has some resonance with Badiou and Zizek, which Caputo notes by point out a connection between Zizek and Bonhoeffer: “God expects us to assume the responsibility for direction of our lives and not wait for him to show up in the nick of time to bail us out . . . [and for Zizek] the death of Christ is the beginning of the kingdom of God on earth, which we are responsible to realize.”[lxvii] Nonetheless, what Kearney has in mind would likely not permit coercion or revolution, but rather consistent in an eschatology of “little things” like the mustard seed, the coin, and the buried treasure.[lxviii]

Stephen Fowl submits that if one were to summarize Paul’s message in one phrase, it should be that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” instead of “Jesus is resurrected” as Badiou contends.  Taking this beyond what Fowl deduces, however, the former announcement is arguably much more subversive in the Roman context – a context about which Badiou is fairly silent.  If followers are so bold to declare that it is not Caesar that commands real power, but Christ, wouldn’t this sanction the most fervent confrontation with the rulers of the known-world?  But as is the general consensus in contemporary Pauline scholarship, Paul does not intend a revolution in the sense that Badiou imagines, if for no other reason than because of his expectation of the imminent parousia of Christ.

And is it not the case that “for Paul, the character of love, which is the fulfilling of the law (Rom 13:10), is inseparably bound to the other-regarding, self-offering death of Christ, who is the telos of the law (Rom 10:4)”?[lxix] As Douglas Harink has said, this is the part of Paul’s thought which Badiou eschews.  And is indifference to difference really what Paul means by love?  Does Badiou successfully conceive of difference in terms of non-competitive relationships, as he wants to claim?[lxx]

Badiou’s eradication of differences diminishes the role that reconciliation must play, not only between God and humanity – granting that this is a relationship Badiou is not addressing – but between individuals and groups of people.  “Slave vs. free,” for instance, is not a disparity that can be easily resolved.  This propels the discussion into another realm that Badiou unsatisfactorily considers.  How does Badiou’s Event offer a path through which the victim and victimizer may become equally filiated to the Truth?[lxxi]  It is hard to imagine how these “sins” committed against human beings by other human beings can merely be forgotten without a more robust notion of reconciliation.  This is partly why Christians find so compelling the belief that it is God who must act and has acted.

One can still sympathize strongly with Badiou’s concerns – particular regarding capitalism and its empty promises, as well as with respect to the paralyzing nature of identity politics in its feeble attempts at resistance to the ever-adapting free market.  Moreover, some impatience and frustration with the theological pushback against Badiou’s appropriation of Paul from guardians of the tradition is indeed justified, especially in view of the complacent, if not complicit and comfortable stance most churches in the United States for instance have taken toward the reign of global capital.  At best, these churches might lament the misfortunes of the marginalized and give petty alms to assuage their own conflicted consciences, but rarely is real change ever made.  It is no wonder then where the incentive comes from for the very militant employment of Paul’s evental structure by Badiou, who is obviously impressed by the apostle’s community organizing skills.

A look at Neil Elliot’s feedback, who writes to represent the Marxist perspective and with similar convictions to Badiou’s, is fitting at this juncture:

Capitalism’s universalism is hollow because it enfranchises only those who submit themselves to the inexorable logic of the market.  Law becomes a device for distinguishing those to whom material resources may be allocated, for a price, from those who must be excluded.  Human wellbeing is not the measure of economic health; rather it is the free flow of capital, which requires increasing restriction on the movements of human beings.[lxxii]

In the present day United States, we face a comparable quandary to that of Paul’s congregations living in Roman territory, in which the interests of the elites of the “private sector” are privileged and promoted over and against the popular will, all under the guise of ‘The Republic’:  “For Paul to proclaim that just such a body [that of a slave/conquered subject], inscribed in death . . . by the power of the Empire, had been raised from the dead by God, and that this divine act established the true filiation of a free people regardless of their ascribed status in the Roman symbolic economy – this was inherently and irreducibly subversive.”[lxxiii]

Not wanting to completely disqualify Badiou’s deployment of Paul, Elliot does link what Badious does to Jon Sobrino’s theological effort through a political creatio ex nihilo of no salvation outside (or apart from) the poor.[lxxiv]  Elliot suggests that Sobrino’s distillation of Paul to the start of a new, alternative community of solidarity with a civilization of poverty is more historically defensible.  Zizek on the other hand might receive a more favorable review from those concerned about subaltern geopolitics of knowledge.  Geoffrey Holsclaw shows how for Zizek the void in between God and humanity is internal to God on the cross of Christ, which is in himself.  But Holsclaw goes on to say that “rather than the death of God leading to our freedom from him, Zizek claims that the death of God, and our participation in that death, allows us to suspend the symbolic law, just as Christ did.”[lxxv]  Because Zizek invokes God’s self-emptying in Jesus’ as a radical immanentization that confirms the Void and empowers a community to live “as if not” in some sense, liberationists and Marxists are more likely to welcome and benefit from this reading, as there is noticeable overlap between them.[lxxvi]

CONCLUSION

So while Christian exegetes are faulting Badiou for not giving due diligence to the Jewish theological context that was inextricably linked to Paul’s talk of the Christ-event (especially those aligned with the “New Perspective”), post-colonial theorists and/or Marxists readers of Paul will censure Badiou for not accounting for the political dimensions and ideologies at play in the Roman setting.  Both reproaches appear to have their merit, and thus it seems appropriate to unite them and render a fairly synthesized conclusion.

Insofar as anyone defending a traditional view of Paul’s discussion of the death and resurrection of Jesus has failed to diagnose the pathology of the local churches in the imperial West and their assimilation to colonial culture, such a conservationist position should be severely scrutinized, but necessarily without letting the proverbial baby be thrown out with the bath water.  Those like Elliot who call attention to the importance of cultural symbolism, rhetoric, and the political climate in Rome for grasping the meaning of Paul’s resurrection-talk and lordship language about Jesus are doing traditional interpreters an indispensable service.  What is perhaps a mistake, however, on this side, is the degree to which militantly-charged, would-be revolutionaries like Badiou, Zizek, Agamben, or anyone else, still reference Paul in such a way as to diminish his reliance on Christ’s relationship to God as authorizing justification and initiating a redemptive, salvific act that somehow atones for humanity’s sin and opens up the possibility for reconciliation between individuals and different people groups.  Additionally, properly doing justice to Pauline exegesis at minimum requires the acknowledgment – which is to say nothing about one’s own confession – of the promise of resurrection in which Paul and his congregations hoped would come for those who believe (hoi pisteuentes).

And so to finish by highlighting an alternative political project:  though he is primarily responding to Agamben and the notion of the messianic “now” (non) time, in light of everything mentioned thus far, I submit that what Paul Griffiths has aptly called “quietist” political action is a fitting Christian politic.  In my judgment it seems to capture a piece of each aforementioned criticism above.   And to be sure, what is being insinuating by such a phrase is not the promotion of anything “quiet” or “inactive,” but instead a political outlook that is indifferent to outcomes – not indifferent to action itself:

Political advocacy that is quietist with respect to interest requires of us a good deal of work . . . [but work in which we] are likely to have a more accurate understanding of the limits of our capacity to make accurate prospective judgments about the results of enacting one political proposal rather than another, than do those whose thinking hews to the ordinary consequentialist line.[lxxvii]

From a Pauline eschatological standpoint, it could be stated that while Badiou’s accent of the resurrection tends toward an overly realized eschatology, Zizek’s is under-realized.[lxxviii]  What Griffiths outlines here cuts right between these two extremes, prohibiting inactivity and apathetic inertia on the one hand, while precluding over-involvement that could taint the witness to the alternative, evental Christian community on the other hand.  The former behavior is energized by Paul’s discourse on love; the latter is constituted by faith and hope.  Such a balance is not dissimilar to what Paul himself commissioned.

Related Articles

• An open letter from Alain Badiou to Jean-Luc Nancy (cengizerdem.wordpress.com)
• A Caution for would-be prophets and critiques from the “Fringe” (billwalker.wordpress.com)
• Review Symposium: “Paul’s New Moment” (churchandpomo.typepad.com)
• Alain Badiou on Tunisia, riots and revolution (via wrong+arithmetic) (cengizerdem.wordpress.com)
• Alain Badiou: “Tunisie, Egypte : quand un vent d’est balaie l’arrogance de l’Occident” (cengizerdem.wordpress.com)
• Alain Badiou replies to Nancy’s Support for Libyan Intervention (philosophyinatimeoferror.wordpress.com)
• Alain Badiou: “Πολιτιστική Επανάσταση: Η Τελευταία Επανάσταση;” (kourelarios.wordpress.com)

FOUR VARIETIES OF ATHEISM

“The god-less thinking which must abandon the god of philosophy, god as causa sui, is thus perhaps closer to the divine God. Here this means only: god-less thinking is more open to Him than onto-theo-logic would like to admit.” – Martin Heidegger

MODERN ATHEISM

In the first place, and probably most common to mainstream Western culture, atheism can result from the standpoint of an apparent “negligible yield of evidence”[i] for God (already here we have already assumed a certain kind of God, and this issue will be taken up below). That is, one decides the classical and/or contemporary arguments for God’s existence to be less than convincing.  For now, it might be fitting to term this particular brand of atheism as “narrow,” but not “narrow” in a derogatory sense – quite the opposite, in fact, atheists would say.  Rather, it implies the disbelief in a specific variety of theism (the Christian, omniscient, omnipotent sort). Examples of classical theistic arguments include the ontological (of which there are many versions, but the most famous is likely that of St. Anselm), cosmological (specifically championed by Thomas Aquinas or in the form of the Kalam argument of the medieval Islamic philosophers embraced recently by the evangelical Christian William Lane Craig), teological (maintains the substantiation for intelligent design or agency behind the universe), and the mystical experience arguments.  Though he interacts with and claims to refute each argument in fair detail, it is sufficient for our purposes to summarize that Richard M. Gale is one atheist who contests these classical theories by amply underscoring a number of their weaknesses, gaps, and even potentially fundamental shortcomings.

Modern atheists are often reacting to theistic philosophers like Richard Swinburne for example who argues from an evidential position for the existence of God, and this typically entails accepting that the burden of proof be placed on the one who would argue for belief in God rather than the reverse.  A counterexample, however, from the theistic perspective, would be someone like Alvin Plantiga who rejects the epistemology of classical foundationalism and contends instead that faith in God need not be bolstered by arguments or empirical verification in order to be deemed reasonable.  In response to the postulations of the above-mentioned theologians, atheist Keith Parsons carefully examines and refutes in defensible fashion the case made by both thinkers.  Giving full credit to their brilliant minds, Parson nonetheless is respectfully “forced to conclude”[ii] that the best support theistic belief has found is unwarranted.  It is as if Parson echoes a complaint made by Richard Dawkins about the Christian theologian Alister McGrath: All theists seem to furnish is “the undeniable but ignominiously weak point that you cannot disprove the existence of God.”[iii] Even if this argument is granted (which for Dawkins it hardly is), it falls well short of inducing faith.

There are of course other legitimate grounds for atheism besides from the foundation of supposedly failed, classical theistic theories.  Some are satisfied with disbelief immediately following the theodicy problem set out by Epicurus.  Additional alternatives might involve atheism deduced from conclusions in the natural sciences (evolution, anthropology) leading to worldviews like physicalism/materialism or naturalism.  Interestingly enough though, some forms of naturalism can remain open to new information that would at least hypothetically permit a kind of gradually acquired supernaturalism; but such rare situations would tend to eventually be conformed to or incorporated into a quasi-enlarged natural landscape.  So while something like a mystical experience might provide prima facia grounds for belief, it would not be rational grounds.[iv] Sociologically speaking, Emil Durkheim typifies well what could be called one expression of naturalism.  Hence, Evan Fales cites Durkheim so as to reason that the “supernatural” can be super insofar as it is a product of “human artifice, not nature.”[v]

Challenging the view that morality requires a religious foundation, David Brink successfully (I think) shows that “voluntarism is subjectivism at the highest level,”[vi] and thus undermines the autonomy of ethics (ironically, Kierkegaard’s comprehension of faith in Christianity might concede to this).[vii] Brink then presents a list of natural, secular, or commonsense morality models like utilitarianism, the aggregate conception of impartiality, and reciprocity or the mutual advantage theory.

The chief shortcoming in my view with any theistic argument tends to be not so much in the method or starting point, however copious the presumptions therein might be, but rather in what tends to be asserted as conceivably attainable by the arguments themselves.  In other words, more headway might be made if less audacious projects were undertaken in what one sets out to prove or demonstrate.  The plausibility of assigning omniscience and omni-benevolence to the Christian God, for instance, is highly disputed even from within the faith tradition itself.

ATHEISTIC RELIGION

An important question to consider with regard to atheism and world religions is whether or not atheism is necessarily an antireligious position.  Michael Martin investigates the matter in an illuminating way.  In order to begin talking about this subject, one must first roughly define the concept of religion.  Whereas traditionally in the West is has been assumed that religion presupposes supernatural beings, a moral code, and distinction between the sacred and the profane, Martin is quick to point out that already this point of view, in this case espoused by William Alston, presumes too much.[viii] Indeed, such parameters as those laid out by Alston do typically constitute the nature of religions like Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism or Islam, but there are a number of exceptions to this paradigm, especially in the East.

In his very helpful little book on Buddhism, Damien Keown seems to agree with Martin and insists in a similar manor on the notion that “the categories of ‘theistic’ and ‘atheistic’ are not really appropriate here.”[ix] Keown continues by asking if it could be that “the idea of a creator-God, while a central feature of one religion – or family of religions – is not the defining characteristic of all religions.”[x] So with Buddhism then, while differing from say Christianity in part because it denies the existence of a supreme, transcendent being, some Buddhists do believe in spirits or gods, which would distinguish Buddhism significantly from an other kinds of atheistic or non-theistic worldviews like Marxism.

Thus, it becomes essential to redefine what characterizes religion altogether.  Relying on the work of Monroe and Elizabeth Beardsley, Martin suggests, in place of the old framework put forth above, that religions in general seek to answer one of five major questions in life: (1) What are human being and the “chief problems they face,” (2) “What are the characteristics of non-human reality that are of greatest significance for human life,” (3) Given these things, how should human live, (4) “Given the answers to the first three questions, what practices will best develop and sustain in humanity an understanding” of these things, and (5) “what method should be used” in seeking answers to all of these questions?[xi] Ninian Smart has argued for something similar in his book The World’s Religions, only he describes seven different dimensions of religion, but the outcome corresponds closely with what is outlined by Martin.[xii]

Martin explains how this new structure expands the horizon of religion to include a much wider range of religious traditions comprised of Eastern faiths like Jainism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, but it would also contain Taoism, Shintoism and various Hindu traditions that are not explicitly discussed in his article.  Therefore, some of these religions referred to above are indeed atheistic in the “narrow” sense, but this does not make them utterly atheistic.  It follows then that atheism, while probably renouncing most theological content within the various world religions, does not require the refusal of certain moral or aesthetic qualities and components within these great traditions.  In sum, what Martin means to illustrate is that “atheism and religion do not necessarily stand in [total] opposition to one another.”[xiii]

“CHRISTIAN” ATHEISM

Thomas Altizer, in perhaps the most original form ever constructed from without of the Christian tradition, authors and calls for an atheism that is genuinely unlike any other. Drawing heavily upon Paul, Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard, and Barth, all of whom are shockingly and paradoxically allied with Altizer somehow, it is finally Nietzsche, Blake and Hegel who open the way for Altizer’s imaginative and inimitable scheme.

In Altizer’s consideration, God became a universal Godhead by the sacrifice that made God human and absolutely emptied.[xiv] Indeed, this was God’s self-annihilation and death invoking the age of the immanence of the absolute Spirit in history (Hegel).  And yet, Christianity nonetheless was born and lived on for centuries proclaiming that which for Nietzsche is the real nihilism[xv] – the founding of a religion based on the absolutely eternal, static, and changeless, heavenly realm, and such an affirmation of the endless “robbed life of its fragile, fleeting beauty.”[xvi] For Altizer, Nietzsche is also the most profound thinker of the weight of the forgiveness of sin because he purely explores our deepest darkness.[xvii] Therefore, Altizer’s Jesus is experienced in eternal recurrence, continually enacting a total forgiveness.

Altizer blames Constantine for introducing the hypostatic union into the Church at the Nicene Council and thereby empowering a hierarchical and imperial institution.[xviii] This Christianity does not speak to the modern world, and all otherworldly, Platonic notions of religion must be rejected.  Altizer’s gospel is an apocalyptic, dialectical theology of how in the present age we might live toward a totally new humanity without praising the ascended or kingly Jesus.  Affirming the enthroned Christ is in fact what causes Jesus to be most deeply forgotten.[xix] In place of the unprecedented turn to the past that exemplifies today’s fundamentalist theology, Altizer solicits an absolute future that is the reversal of all things past – a “negation of the negation,” like the prophetic period of Israel after the Babylonian destruction of Judah.[xx]

ATHEISM, A/THEOLOGY AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION

Not to his discredit, Bonhoeffer incorrectly predicted that the “world come of age” had no apparent need for God, which led to his account of “Religionless Christianity.”[xxi] Many others later extended this forecast with him.  Mark C. Taylor on the other hand exclaims boldly that, “you cannot understand the world today if you do not understand religion.”[xxii] He thereafter goes on to declare that religion and secularity are not enemies and alternatively proposes that secularity itself is a religious phenomenon.  Consequently, the two are always misinterpreting one another.  Furthermore, Taylor makes the controversial statement that the modern, supposedly secular world can locate its origin in Protestantism, or more particularly, in Luther – a Luther who gave birth to privatization, deregulation, decentering, and the reign of the human subject.

Just as atheists before him have expanded, or even blurred the boundary lines that encompass or divide theism and atheism, the key to Taylor’s analysis is a drastic augmentation of what delimits religion on the whole.  In this regard he follows Paul Tillich’s definition of faith or religion to some degree, as merely that which is the focus of our “ultimate concern.”[xxiii] This permits him to proclaim for instance that the counterculture of the sixties was a very religious movement and that so-called secularism is rooted in the same kind of dogma, resulting from the constant oscillation or “altaration” between structure and emergence, order and ambiguity, and location and dislocation.[xxiv]

Taylor is not alone in taking this course.  In his book On Religion, John Caputo does not “confine religion to something confessional or sectarian, like being a Muslim or a Hindu, a Catholic or Protestant.”[xxv] Going even further, for Taylor this means that religion in all its common appearances as an “emergent, complex, adaptive network of symbols, myths, and rituals” not only serves to add meaning and significance to life, but it also functions to destabilize and disturb structures.[xxvi] Correspondingly, Taylor collapses the sacred into the secular and visa versa, and he endeavors to do this descriptively rather than prescriptively.  Whether or not he succeeds is maybe debatable.  To make the claim though, he needs only to draw attention to history, especially that of politics, culture, and religion in the United States for the last two centuries wherein the vacillation between immanence and transcendence has perpetuated (e.g., the liberal theology after Ritschl and Schleiermacher or the American religious right).

Taylor notices how people increasingly gravitate toward firm foundations promising security and certainty in a world gone mad.  From his perspective, however, uncertainty and instability foster the territory from which creative emergence can arise “at the edge of chaos in a surprising moment of creative disruption that can be endlessly productive.”[xxvii] Thus Taylor advocates risking a faith that embraces the unknown by re-appropriating (and yet moving beyond) the absolutely paradoxical faith of Luther, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and finally Barth before him – though each in their own unique and restructured way.  He departs from Altizer’s last modern grasp for a structure of pure immanence, as it too, not unlike Barth’s absolute transcendence, remains totalized and therefore excessively stable, however radical.  Taylor accuses Altizer of serving up yet another “metaphysics of presence.”[xxviii]

Taylor subverts the oppositional logic of religiosity, which is differentiated from religion, such that neither the either/or dualism of neo-orthodoxy in Barth nor the both/and immanent monism of Altizer (Nietzsche and a version of Hegel) are sufficient to comprehend the complexities of emerging network culture.  Any faith as absolute or foundational is unsuitable, and only a new, ever-unfinished, creative “schemata” will do.  In short, modern atheists don’t go far enough.  Belief is not managed but adapted.  Better, it is adaptive, and in this manor discovers mystery but never possesses it.  One must come to “the end of the end to be ‘right,’” to be certain she holds the whole truth.[xxix] That’s why Caputo can decree the age of “incredulity toward grand narratives” (Lyotard) to be “not a particularly friendly environment” for any metaphysical, fixed, or decisive affirmations or rejections of God.[xxx] Such a worldview allows someone like Derrida to state that he can’t ever really know if he’s an atheist or not.[xxxi] But something about Taylor’s a/theology is nevertheless incongruent with deconstruction.  He recognizes well the common criticism of deconstruction as a framework that tends to paralyze us in the face of the world’s problems.  So in its place, rather than the undeconstructable ideal of justice, Taylor posits a cooperative, vitalizing environmental ethic for a tenuous, volatile world.[xxxii]

Because, however, the great religions tend to name their God or gods in particular ways and trust authorized revelation in some measure thereof, it remains to be seen how one could integrate these traditions into the postmodern matrix without doing them serious harm.  I wonder uncertainly, for example, how much residue of absolutism from modernity might be sneaking in the backdoor as it were of the postmodern critique with respect to the rules governing truth claims.  It is at least safe to conclude that a thread of separation lies between hope and despair After God, solidifying Wittgenstein’s analogy that “an honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker.”[xxxiii] If what Taylor describes is really an a/theology, it must also be ir/religious, un/known, and a/theistic.  Even the God-denier cannot avoid hermeneutics concerning the God she denies.

First Response Paper for Existentialism and Atheism: Kierkegaard among the other Existentialists

THE RELEVANCE OF EXISTENTIALISM TODAY

In order to respond affirmatively to the question raised in class recently of whether or not existentialism is relevant to the contemporary situation, one need only look to recent motion pictures like The Dark Night.   Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent states rather despondently in the film, “Either you die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”  Thomas Hibbs rightly insists that, “the Joker espouses a nihilist philosophy concerning the arbitrariness of the code of morality in civilized society; it is but a thin veneer, a construct intended for our consolation.”[i]

For starters, reading someone like Fyodor Dostoevsky, one would notice the brutal honesty, the disgust for hypocrisy,[ii] and even further his indulgence in the freedom to defy reason with remarks such as the following: “I know better than any one that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else.  But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite.  My liver is bad, well – let it get worse!”[iii] It’s almost as if one can hear Jim Carey in these words as Truman in the Truman Show mocking the “God” of his world and saying, “Is that the best you can do?”  One could also call attention to the movie Fight Club to find an embodiment of Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Brad Pitt who plays the character Tyler Durden commented that the major theme running throughout underlined “the need to push through the walls we put around ourselves and just go for it, so for the first time we can experience the pain.”[iv] It’s like when Dostoevsky says, “corporal punishment is better than nothing.”[v] The protagonist and nameless narrator played by Edward Norton observes that “the fighting between the men strips away the fear of pain and the reliance on material signifiers of their self-worth, leaving them to experience something valuable.”[vi] The final message in Fight Club is deliberately ambiguous in nature and intended to leave the interpretation open for the viewers.[vii] Amidst the ambiguity, however, one might discover such themes highlighted as the critique of image-management, the deceptive nature of advertisement, the exposure of materialism’s empty promise to provide happiness, and the failure of human beings in general to live vigorously as a consequence of fear.

THE EXISTENTIALISTS TOGETHER

Like the aforementioned films, what each of the authors surveyed in the course thus far share in common is not just their coming to a point of despair, but the explicit realization of this despair.  Beyond that, there are of course other themes held in common between Jaspers, Sartre, Ortega, Rilke, Kafka, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Camus and Kierkegaard: a tendency “to stress the freedom, precariousness, and even absurdity of the human situation, along with the responsibility of the individual to define herself or himself through action.”[viii] In their work Walter Kaufman locates the heart of existentialism as “the refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life.”[ix]

An overwhelming experience of uncertainty leads Rilke’s character in The Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge for example to take refuge by reciting a poem monotonously just to become fixated on something stable.[x] Kafka’s parable “Before the Law” reveals his sentiment that something can be accepted as necessary without inevitably being true.  In other words, the individual defines what is valuable.  Ortega would say that a person “has to make his own existence at every single moment,”[xi] and that “man is what has happened to him, what he has done.”[xii] This is because, as free beings, humans live in “constitutive instability.”[xiii] Maybe most emblematically, the state and behavior of the character Pablo at the end of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Wall” is a far cry from any noble adherence to a traditional religious or moral system, as Pablo has reached a point at once of impenetrable apathy and arbitrary obstinacy.[xiv] The only valor for him from this moment onward (indeed, after, and presumably in all subsequent moments) is derived from the nerve of pure, self-willed and independent individuo-determination.

KIERKEGAARD AMONG THE OTHERS

In what could be more than a slight contrast, with Kierkegaard the reader might detect a trace of idiosyncrasy.  Is he the anomaly of the group?  While it is rightly put forth that those whom are deemed existentialists hold widely divergent doctrines and worldviews, is it possible for these doctrines and worldviews to be so easily filtered out, leaving such a pure, collective existentialist dogma to designate all of these writers and thinkers as unified and distinguished?  There appears to be something very foundational about Kierkegaard’s absurd postulations, which would count him in the ranks of a far removed camp from the vein of Nietzsche and some of the others.  While Kierkegaard’s thought is obviously foreshadowing and consistent with some of the chief concerns of modern existentialism delineated above, it seems that Kierkegaard is at the same time offering a radical critique of the notion of existentialism as it is demonstrated, for instance, by Jim Carey in the movie The Truman Show; namely in his suggestion that, to use Kierkegaard’s language, defiance of relationship with the Author, despite the appeal, leads to the highest despair – expressly, an inauthentic relationship to self because of a refusal/protest to be oneself, or otherwise said, an impossible demand to be oneself (to be absolute ruler of self, which actually results in ruling nothing).[xv] It is as if Truman is saying in the words of Kierkegaard, “No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against you, a witness to the fact that you are a second-rate author.”[xvi] Truman as the one who defies “does not want to don his own self, does not want to see his task in his given self, he wants by virtue of being in the infinite form [his own God], to construct it himself.”[xvii] According to Kierkegaard with regard to Truman, “What is required of him is to let go of this torment, that is, to humble himself under it in faith and take it on him as part of the self.”[xviii]

DESPAIR

When Kierkegaard distinguishes between a less mature stage of despair as unawareness of despair or unconsciousness of the self, and the higher form despair as “before God,” he implies that the higher form of despair, though it might be seen as “blessedness,” almost makes the person in despair more culpable.  In this more culpable stage, the person is either constituted by a posture toward God of reluctance or refusal.  In the former case, the self does not wish to be oneself.  In the latter, and dialectically, the self decides exactly to be oneself – only here “being oneself” implies a refusal to stand before God and acknowledge complete dependence.  This highest state of despair is characterized by defiance (Truman).

The toil is only beginning once despair is brought into the light, and the despair is even worse when one comes to understand it as her real condition.  One can never just be.  Everyone is either becoming more or less of a self, says Kierkegaard.  Becoming more of a self (by the self relating correctly to the potential self) is a tremendous struggle.  It requires death to self, another absurd facet of the proposal.  Merold Westphal notes that Kierkegaard “is not the individualist he has often been taken to be.  He has a dialectical concept of the self as essentially relational.”[xix] The self, according to his definition, is “a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself to another.”[xx] The “another” aspect of the relationship is what becomes so focal.

DESPAIR IN THE CHRISTIAN AND NON-CHRISTIAN SENSE

In the analysis of Kristen Johnson, she is concerned that “though one can understand the proclivity of existentialism to draw upon the work of Kierkegaard, given his concern for selfhood and existence, it is unclear that those philosophers and thinkers who have invoked him have adequately accounted for the foundational role of sin in his thought.”[xxi] Obviously for Jaspers, as Kaufman states, the differences between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are far less important than the similarities.[xxii] In fact, as Kaufman also points out, Jaspers “dismisses Kierkegaard’s “forced Christianity” no less than Nietzsche’s “forced anti-Christianity” as relatively unimportant.”[xxiii] But is this the most appropriate rendering?  Certainly the extent to which these two major figures write from such a seemingly shared existential experience is fascinating, and clearly there is a remarkable correspondence provided the fact that they did so independently, but can one so quickly draw the conclusion that their resemblance rather than their distinction is most noteworthy?

It is critical for the reader to remember Kierkegaard’s statement: “how infinitely silly is the behavior of those who have defended Christianity by removing the offense.”[xxiv] Hence, it should follow that the interpreter of Kierkegaard likewise take special caution not to remove the offensiveness in Kierkegaard’s claim that, while anyone might come to knowledge of despair, only the Christian (the one before God and Christ) can, because of revelation, know despair as sin.[xxv] It is precisely this imperative feature that is so influential for later, modern reformed thinkers like Karl Barth.  This absolute paradox, however unthinkable, is still the reason Kierkegaard is so dissimilar to the others.  While he aspires to reject rationality at one level, this move is nonetheless permissible; for that which one cannot think can still be the subject of one’s thought.[xxvi] There are those like Stephen C. Evans who see this step by Kierkegaard as falling short of fideism, but others sharply criticize this view and accuse Evans of being unfaithful to Kierkegaard and his radical “leap of faith” postulation.[xxvii] Westphal for instance, and perhaps somewhat offensively as well, considers Kierkegaard’s distinction between the Christian and non-Christian experience of despair to be “illuminating”[xxviii] and “bold in freeing us from intimidation by secular appeals to reason.”[xxix]

At least from the perspective of a Christian in Kierkegaard’s case, could there be a more significant point of departure than from that point which separates the Christian from the non-Christian?  This is not to neglect of course the unique and authentic manor with which Kierkegaard and Nietzsche each represent their respective positions as Christian and non-Christian.  Furthermore, Kierkegaard might be the first to criticize such a simplistic disparity as the one just mentioned (between Christian and non-Christian), as he himself admits elsewhere that the worship of a pagan might be more faithful than the worship of a given Danish Christian.[xxx] Nevertheless, is not the critical gap evident between the leap of faith that Kierkegaard says one must take to obtain true selfhood and the divergent, albeit equally decided path of Nietzsche’s nihilism?  Indeed, it may very well be true that even for Kierkegaard, what Nietzsche achieves for himself is no less than some substantial degree of authentic selfhood compared to those who find themselves (or don’t “find” themselves) in a less developed stage of despair.  Would this be to say very much about Nietzsche’s accomplishments, however, at least from the point of view of Kierkegaard, when one considers how sharply Kierkegaard criticized his society full of supposed Christians?  Kierkegaard might even say of Nietzsche’s thinking that, “just because it is very close to the truth, it is infinitely far away”[xxxi] (italics added).

IS THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE?

Kierkegaard explains that someone who is in love would not feel the need to “defend” the reason why, or prove that he or she is in love, and so it should be with the Christian.[xxxii] Instead of relying on proof or reason, faith comes as a result of a revelation from God.  But several inquiries might be raised this point.  Firstly, what Kierkegaard has described thus far begs the question of what kind of knowledge or state exactly is necessary to receive this revelation and move from a stage of unawareness of self to a stage of awareness of self.  Indeed, he says that only the Christian can understand sin.  And yet paradoxically it is entirely the responsibility of the individual to realize this sin.  For Kierkegaard, and by extension, for traditional Christian faith, sin is not merely ignorance of the good, as Socrates suggests.  This is the lie of the world according to Kierkegaard.  At the same time, sin in the unaware self is hardly sin in the strictest Christian sense of the term.  This person does not knowingly stand before God.  Theologically speaking, then, are there any soteriological conclusions to be drawn from this text?  What is the phenomenology for the reception of this revelation?

Even without looking to other works of Kierkegaard, there are implicit hints here of what might be considered an early expression of inclusivism toward the non-Christian on the basis of some kind of existential realization or self-actualization.  It might even be tempting to read into Kierkegaard a prefiguring of the Rahnerian “anonymous Christian” doctrine, but based on this text alone, that would perhaps be premature.  One mustn’t criticize, however, Kierkegaard’s limited horizon given the context within which he wrote, for his mission was primarily to challenge Danish Christendom and evoke repentance therein.  His historical setting could hardly be labeled pluralistic in any present-day sense of the term.  So while the material in The Sickness Unto Death is inconclusive, the possibility remains, however speculative, of conducting an explicitly Kierkegaardian and existential soteriology of the non-Christian from the Christian perspective.

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[i] Thomas S. Hibbs, “Christopher Nolan’s Achievement: The Dark Night,” On the Square, July 22, 2008, http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2008/07/christopher-nolans-achievement.

 

[ii] Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (Plume, 1975), 81.

[iii] Ibid., 54.

[iv] “’Club’ fighting for a respectful place in life,” Post-Tribune, March 15, 2001.

[v] Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 78.

[vi] Stephen Schaefer, “Brad Pitt & Edward Norton,” MrShowbiz.com (October 1999), http://web.archive.org/web/20010417125217/http://mrshowbiz.go.com/celebrities/interviews/509_1.html.

[vii] Graham Fuller, D Eidelman, and JG Thomson, “Fighting Talk,” [[Interview (magazine)|Interview]] 24, no. 5 (November 1999): 1071–7.

[viii] C. Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Intervarsity Press, 2010).

[ix] Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 12.

[x] Ibid., 141.

[xi] Ibid., 153.

[xii] Ibid., 157.

[xiii] Ibid., 156.

[xiv] Ibid., 298.

[xv] Louis H. Mackey, “Deconstructing the self : Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto death.,” Anglican Theological Review 71, no. 2 (March 1, 1989): 158.

[xvi] Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition of Edification & Awakening by Anti-Climacus (Penguin Classics, 1989), 105.

[xvii] Ibid., 99.

[xviii] Ibid., 110.

[xix] Merold Westphal, “Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the theological task.,” Modern Theology 8, no. 3 (July 1, 1992): 252.

[xx] Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, 43.

[xxi] Kristen Deede Johnson, “The infinite qualitative difference: sin, the self, and revelation in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 53, no. 1 (February 1, 2003): 43.

[xxii] Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 23.

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, 116.

[xxv] Johnson, “The infinite qualitative difference,” 42.

[xxvi] Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: Hors-Texte (University Of Chicago Press, 1995), 46.

[xxvii] William N A Greenway, “Faith beyond reason: a Kierkegaardian account,” Christian Century 117, no. 25 (S  -20  2000 13, 2000): 922-924; Douglas Hedley, “Faith beyond reason: a Kierkegaardian account,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 2, no. 2 (July 1, 2000): 233-234.

[xxviii] M. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus,” Reformed Journal 34, no. 10 (October 1, 1984): 22.

[xxix] Ibid.

[xxx] Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript 1 : Kierkegaard’s Writings, Vol 12.1 (Princeton University Press, 1992), 559.

[xxxi] Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, 98.

[xxxii] Ibid., 134.

Disclaimer: these words selected do not necessarily reflect my own views, but I did find that they were all thought provoking and useful for faith-based discussion.

 

“Anxiety and despair simply bring one before a decision, and this decision filled with pathos, requires a “leap” to a new stage.”

 

“The aim of the ethical life, therefore, is not simply to know but to transform one’s subject self.”

 

“Therefore dogmatics must not explain hereditary sin but rather explain it by presupposing it  . . . something that no science can grasp.”

 

“Incidental truths of history can never furnish the proof of necessary truths of reason.”

 

“The coming of the Eternal into time is the wonder or miracle and, as such, lies outside the realm of objective proof.  The relationship between the discipline and the paradox is always that of faith . . . It is frequently assumed that the original disciples were in a more favorable position than the believer of today.  But such is not the case.  It is true that a contemporary of Jesus may have been an historical eyewitness, but historical knowledge does not make the eyewitness a disciple.  On the contrary, it may well make discipleship more difficult.  The belief that God is incarnate in the rabbi of Nazareth walking around in the city of Jerusalem is an absurdity and an offense to reason.  The eyewitness has no advantage.”

 

“Where there is undisputed evidence there is no passion, hence no faith, and therefore “whereas up to now faith ha had a beneficial taskmaster in uncertainty, it would have its worst enemy in this certainty.”

 

“All existence-issues are passionate, because existence, if one become conscious of it, involves passion.  To think about them so as to leave out passion is not to think about them at all, is to forget the point that one indeed is oneself an existing person.”

 

“If someone who lives in the midst of Christianity enters, with knowledge of the true idea of God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting upon he image of an idol – where, then, is there more truth?  The one prays in truth to God although he is worshipping an idol; the other prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshipping an idol.”

 

“An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person.”

 

“In other words, if Christianity were a doctrine, then the relation to it would not be one of faith, since there is only an intellectual relation to a doctrine. . . . What holds as the maximum in the sphere of intellectuality, to remain completely indifferent to the actuality of the teacher, holds in just the opposite way in the sphere of faith – its maximum is the infinite interestedness in the actuality of the teacher.”

 

“The leap of faith is neither a blind act of the will nor a movement based solely on the heteronomous and extrinsic act of God, despite the fact that the “leap” does convey graphically both the decisiveness and the transformative character of religious faith.”

 

“’The leap of faith’ is opposed to all dualistic notions of the will and knowledge, or of divine prevenience and human choice.  The divine gift of grace and the human decision are not mutually exclusive.  Coming to faith is like undergoing a radical reenvisionment of the world or like a moral transformation that is irresistible and yet is not coerced.”