The Enduring Challenge of Nietzsche

When teaching Introduction to Philosophy, we often end with a discussion of the "Masters of Suspicion": Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. These thinkers mark the so-called "Interpretive Turn" (or "Hermeneutic Turn") into what is often called "Postmodern" Philosophy*. What this means is that ideas and beliefs are no longer what they seem to be about, but must be interpreted to see what values or commitments are REALLY motivating these convictions. All three of these "Masters of Suspicion" insisted that surface readings of our ideologies-- ideas about God, ethics, beauty, social order-- missed the true deep intent of the discussion. The deep, structural insight is this: Our ideas are always about something other than what we represent them as:

• For Marx what things were REALLY about was economics: An ideological system to justify why some get more material resources than they could ever use, while most do not get enough to live on. 
• For Freud what things were REALLY about was desire: The psychodynamics of repressed and denied drives for eros (sex) and thanatos (death, or control of death). 
• For Nietzsche what things were REALLY about was power: The "ressentiment" of the under-dogs against superior people, which manifests in "the herd" using their social power to stunt the growth of the übermensch.

It goes without saying that no member of this Trinity of Suspicion was religious. Quite the opposite. They opposed belief in God, and the practice of religion, because they saw both the belief and the practice as degrading to full human flourishing. And we can easily see how some (but not all) forms of religion can be used as a tool to keep people under control (Marx), to fill them with neuroses and guilt (Freud), and to validate their resentments and hatred (Nietzsche). This has always been the function of fashionable, conformist religions, which invert the radical liberationist vision of their founders (compare much of Christianity with what Christ taught, or much of Judaism with what the Prophets taught, or much of Buddhism with what Buddha taught). 

And yet, fashionable religious conformity was not the only target of the "Masters of Suspicion". They were equally suspicious of, and abrasive to, a kind of bland secularism, as practiced by fashionable elites, which was used as an excuse to justify the current social system as "progress". Nietzsche in particular thought that the fashionable atheist, who believed in the myth of social "progress" through technology, was just as inauthentic and conventional as the traditionalist believer who looked to conserve the old ways through outdated traditions. Nowhere is this more evident than in Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman", in which both the effete elites in the marketplace, and the bumbling believers in the churches, are both portrayed as equally deluded and unaware of the real dilemma humanity finds itself in. 

These insights bring up an enduring challenge for all of us, Secular and Religious alike. On one hand, I find belief in God, as revealed through Christ, to be the most probable explanation of the Reality we live in. And I find the practice of Christocentric Religion to be the very foundation of inclusion and liberation, as well as the gateway to full human flourishing. But, on the other hand, I don't think we can affirm these ideas naively. I think we have to be suspicious not only of these ideas, but also why we hold them, and how we practice them, and who gets demeaned and excluded in the process of doing this. 

And this is the most profound challenge Nietzsche holds for us: It is not enough to know what we think and why. We must go further and unearth the values implicit in these ideas, and how they lead us to act. Underneath all our affirmations and affectations, what are we REALLY trying to get at? What is our motive, our purpose, our Ultimate Value, in all our thinking and doing? 

Here it is worth encountering the Mad Prophet of Atheism in his own words. Because most of us only know three words from Nietzsche: "God is Dead". We may have never read the original source of the quote in context to understand the deep anguish and perplexity from which it pours forth. So here is the entire "Parable of the Madman" from which the infamous quote comes:

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? 

"Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" 

[Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.] 

Nietzsche’s Philosophy, especially as expressed in this Parable, calls upon us to be the radical creators and choosers of our own values to guide our own lives. Like the Madman: We are our own lamps, without any other horizon, or sun, or stars, to orient ourselves toward. We alone choose the purpose, meaning, and values that guide our lives. This raises the question: What Ultimate Value(s) do you serve? What motive and meaning guides your life? 

Whatever your Ultimate Value it is-- whether it is pleasure or power or pride or possessions or success, or Love or Justice or Compassion or Truth or Beauty, or Family or Tribe or Nation or Race or Religion or the Market or Self-gratification-- it becomes what you serve, what you sacrifice for, what forms the basis for your decisions, what you think about, and what you worship. In other words, your Ultimate Value is your God, even though you have chosen that Ultimate Value yourself. 

And this is true, even if we don’t think there is a “God” in a metaphysical sense. And we don’t get to NOT have an Ultimate Value. We will serve some value, even if that value is passively chosen, and as mundane as being as comfortable as possible. Even Nietzsche had a God in this existential sense, even if he denied God in a metaphysical sense. Nietzsche’s God was the Ultimate Value of radical creative freedom, expressed in the will to power, by which one could overcome the world, and become the übermensch. And we could choose his God as our own, but this would be our choice, not him choosing for us. So, for Nietzsche when we kill the traditional “God”, we must choose or invent our own “God”-- our own Ultimate Value-- to fill the void. 

But, the trick is this: Every person in every generation already does this (we just may not have the courage to admit it). We all have Values and Traditions and even Religions that are handed down to us. And at some point, we have to decide to take them as our own, or reject them, or adapt them. In the process of doing this, we kill the old God-- the Ultimate Values of our ancestors-- and we accept or create a new God to guide our lives. In doing so, we may rely on religion, or tradition, or philosophy, or science, or experience, to justify why we choose the God we choose. We may even choose the same basic God that our ancestors chose. But we still choose: And in that act of choosing, of consciously making this Value our own, we kill the old God, to make place for our God. 

The Secular person may scoff at the idea that they really have a God. But any honest evaluation of one’s life will reveal that our decisions serve some value or purpose. We are not animals that operate on instinct (or at least, we do not experience ourselves this way). We choose some things over others because of the value we place on certain outcomes and actions, people and things. Those values control our lives. Those values are our God. And we have chosen them. 

The Religious person may take offense at this, since they see themselves as followers of God, not killers of God. But we may ask: How did they get to this God they serve? Did they not have to first kill childlike understandings of God, to choose a more adult image of God? Did they not have to first kill all the other visions of God-- to consider them dead gods-- in order to align themselves with their vision of the living God? To follow the living God is to kill every god that is not our own. And for followers of Christ, this may just be the very secret of the Christian Path: The God who dies on our behalf, so that the Living God may overcome death, and raise us into a life of Divine Love in Christ. 

So, Nietzsche's enduring challenge to us is to choose which gods we will kill, and which Ultimate Value will function as God in our lives. The Secular Person kills all the gods to make space for their chosen God of Ultimate Value. The Religious Person kills all the gods to make space for a Living God who subsumes, includes, and transcends all lesser gods. Thus, in a lived, practical, existential sense, we do not chose IF we have a God, but what KIND of God we will serve. So, as we kill off all the gods we reject as “not God”, and as we choose an Ultimate Value to guide our lives, we must all ask ourselves: 

What God will we serve? What gods will we kill? And why do we choose this Ultimate Value out of all the values open to us?

*As an ending note: Yes, I know the "hermeneutic turn" is usually marked by Heidegger, and yes, I know "postmodern" philosophy usually starts in the second half of the 20th century, and yes, I know "postmodern" is so wide of a term as to be vacuous. But every discussion of all of these trends and thinkers always roots them in the seminal work of these three "Masters of Suspicion", and the revolution of "suspicion" they unleashed in the late 1800's. While there are antecedents for Western suspicion in thinkers like the Greek cynics and Abelard, I think Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche did focus and popularize a trend we are still working through in late-modern, consumer capitalist culture up to this day. The nihilism, cynicism, irony, satire, and endless deconstruction we deal with today were birthed by these three Masters and those who work in their shadow.