Before we can begin fleshing out our role as the bearers of the imago Dei, one more detour seems merited. Not everyone, of course, agrees with what we have laid out so far. Many deny that Christianity addresses these subjects, and even fewer believe that the account of early man contained in Genesis is any more than a quaint story. It should not come as a surprise, then, when others use their God-given imagination for purposes that fail to acknowledge him, especially when it concerns their pocket book. The human imagination represents both the very best and the very worst of our species. It enables us to think deeply, to create and enjoy the arts, to improve society, and to solve problems. But our imagination is also limited. Without a firm grounding in the way things are, we are bound to misunderstand the way things will or should be. Our imagination can limit our vision to our own two eyes, to rely only on our own opinions, and to believe and pass on only half-truths. And so we are warned by the mother of our Lord, who sang that the Father, “has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, And exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, And the rich He has sent away empty” (Luke 1:51-53 NKJV). These positive and negative aspects of the human psyche are well represented by the second of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous essays, Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (see our first post for Works Cited). In his work, Rousseau denies traditional interpretations of human origins and history, and presents an alternative view that is more in line with the rational, naturalistic approach typical of the Enlightenment. Yet while many find such a revision of our history refreshing, others are less persuaded. Though several of Rousseau’s views are problematic on their own, my greatest concern is to be found in his general approach to his subject. In denying the value of historical fact and experience, Rousseau relies too heavily on his own thoughts and judgments. In other words, while we may agree with particular aspects of Rousseau’s thought, we come to distrust his “idyllic imagination.” I borrow this term from the late Russell Kirk (which he, in turn, borrows from Irving Babbitt), who discusses the vital role of imagination in human society as well as its proper development through the normative function of great literature. Kirk laments recent trends in the writing and enjoyment of books, not only because they are often bad writing, but that they are also prone to encourage improper modes of thought. Like imagination, writing has the potential to be either good or bad, and the two factors go hand in hand: just as good writing has a supporting role in the development of good people; bad people are never challenged by bad books. To clarify these trends and their effects, Kirk sets forth three types of imagination: the moral imagination (“that power of ethical perception which strides beyond the barriers of private experience and momentary events”), the idyllic imagination (“which rejects old dogmas and old manners and rejoices in the notion of emancipation from duty and convention”) and the diabolic imagination (“which delights in the perverse and subhuman”; Kirk, “Moral”). The first of these types is clearly the goal of humane letters, and represents the peak of human thought and creativity. When we deny the value of historical experience and go our own way, however, we are just as likely to be led astray by mere illusions, viewing reality through a darkly lit mirror, and eventually arriving at a point where we have forgotten what humanity looks like, satisfied with a mere shadow of the imago Dei, if even that. So while the role of culture in general (and literature specifically) is to cultivate the best in human nature while reforming our worst features, the idyllic imagination takes us one step further from a realistic view of character and community and moves us one step closer to pure ignorance.
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But man is also unique, having been created in “the image of God,” and therefore possessing a spiritual nature that is not shared by other members of God’s creation (1:26). As Delitzsch notes, “Man, who is to ‘have dominion’ over the rest of these creatures, ‘does not come into being by a fiat addressed to the earth’” (in Collins 831; see our first post for Works Cited). Humans, then, exist “as a unique interface embracing those two creaturely worlds, ‘a sort of connecting link between the visible and invisible natures’” (Oden 1.1.6, quoting William Temple). As Lewis explains, we are Creatures with Chests: As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’. The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alamus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. (Lewis 24-25) Because of this spiritual identity, man is uniquely endowed with the ability to reason and act morally (2:16-17), to speak (2:19-20, 23), and to appreciate and cultivate beauty (2:5, 9, 15). As a result, humans reflect both the glory and the authority of God as his stewards over the natural world, that we might “order the world rightly under the permission and command of God . . . in a fitting response to God’s unpurchasable gift of life” (Oden 1.1.6; see Genesis 1:28-30; 2:19-20). Man is therefore more than flesh and blood; he is first and foremost a living soul stamped with God’s own image.
Even more, though, as God’s image-bearers we are called to participate in God’s own creativity. This is exactly what is meant by the Lord’s command to, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” over our fellow creatures (Gen 1:28). Just as creativity is inherent to God’s very being, creativity is part of what makes us human. As Tolkien once said, “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in a derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker” (371). Humans therefore have the ability not only to perceive, grasp or control an image in art, but to create it. “Art,” then, is “the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation” (Tolkien 362). Reflecting this union of created flesh and creative spirit is the inherently social nature of the first humans and their search for companionship as a natural part of life. Adam is only alone for a brief period of time before God allows him to experience the longing a man has for human company, which God then remedies though his creation of Eve (1:27; 2:18-25). So while individuals are inherently valuable, they are also incomplete without the relationships that arise directly from a shared nature and complementary strengths. The family is therefore the essential building block of human society. From the moment of birth one is not merely a human being, but a child and perhaps a sibling, and when one leaves home, it is to attach himself to another, not to withdraw from society altogether (2:24). Yet man is not without his faults. Though God was able to call his creation “very good” (1:31), Adam and Eve’s violation of God’s sole command introduced sin, thereby intertwining the fate of nature to the fate of fallen man (ch. 3; see too Rom 5:12; 6:23; 8:18-25). Sin leads to (1) oppression, as the strong exploit the weak (see ch. 4; 10:8) and (2) judgment, as God returns misfortune on those who deal it, either through nature (chs. 6-8) or other men (9:6). Thus, man remains accountable to both the unchanging character of the One who created us and to our common identity as fellow creatures in his image (Heb 13:8; Jam 3:9). As Ericson states, “Because human beings are at one and the same time both grand (via creation) and miserable (via the fall), our lives are open to high drama, even to heroism.” So while God’s image remains essential to human nature, it has been distorted by the power of sin, only to be restored through one’s reception of Christ as Savior, and consummated on the last day (Rom 8:29; 2Co 3:18; 5:17; Eph 4:20-24; Col 3:9-10; 1Co 15:49). The inherent dignity of human life, however, remains the foundation of Christian ethics, because “No gift we are given is more remarkable than the extraordinary gift of simply being given anything at all, the unpurchasable gift of living as free human beings” (Oden 1.1.6). Man is not merely a “political animal” or “economic man,” but is primarily a created, spiritual, moral, creative and social being, called to reflect God, to represent God, and to relate to God and others. Economics is therefore made for man, and not man for economics. At this point in our series, an apologia of sorts seems to be merited. After all, since we have already stated the biblical principles on civics and economics, what more could we have to say? Well, much. If God merely told us to memorize his word and apply each precept directly to our lives, then perhaps our study would now be at its conclusion. But principles (such as the ones we’ve stated before) cry out for application, and the more timeless the principle, the more contextual our application of it. In a way, this question deals directly with our very focus at In His Image. Stated succinctly: human nature, created in God’s likeness calls us to engage with and enjoy fellowship with God, employing our created potentialities of character, being, mind and strength for his glory and the joy of our existence. So even in a seemingly unrelated subject like economics, submission to our Creator King and his divine wisdom remains the center of our views, even when he has not commanded specific applications. But what does this nature look like, and what does it have to do with economics? In approaching the opening chapters of Genesis we begin to understand that our discussion of human nature takes place on a much grander scale than merely human discourse. God is the first actor and the first speaker in the book that bears his name, creating everything that exists out of nothing (Latin ex nihilo), and therefore declaring his power and authority as Lord of heaven and earth (Gen 1:1-2; see Heb 11:3). He begins his work by forming the physical environment for his creation (light and dark; sea and sky; the land) and then filling these environments with their respective inhabitants (heavenly bodies; fish and birds; and land animals) before resting from his work. Time too is therefore subject to God’s design for humanity, both for labor and worship, in that his actions provide an example and a parallel to our own efforts each week (Gen 2:9, 15; see Exo 20:11, the ESVSB, and our first post for Works Cited). Yet God’s purpose is not merely to create his own mortal minions (a common belief in the ancient Near East). Instead, “God made the material world as a place for mankind to live: to love, to work, to enjoy and to worship God” (Collins 908). But they are not worshipping him from a distance: he dwells with, walks and talks among them in the garden of his temple complex (2:1-3; 3:8ff). To emphasize this view, Moses is led to describe man’s work in the garden using the same terms he later uses to discuss the work of priests in the temple (compare the phrases “work” and “keep” in Gen 2:15 and “keep/guard” and “minister/serve” in Num 3:7-8 and 18:7 ESV; see ESVSB). Recognizing the presence and power of the divine is therefore essential to understanding the original state of human nature. Man’s (adam) constitution therefore reflects man’s close connection to the ground (adamah). He therefore shares many biological features with other animals: both man and beasts are (1) “formed from the ground” as (2) living souls (3) who possess the “breath of life” (2:7, 19; 1:20, 24, 28-30). As Oden points out, “Humanity is not made ‘out of nothing’ (as is God) but out of ‘the dust of the ground’, just as wild animals and birds were ‘formed out of the ground’ by God” (1.1.6, internal citations omitted). The word authority is not often associated with literature because it is often expressed in terms of canonicity: what makes a writer worth reading. In an age that inundates our minds with the diverting effects of our multifaceted media, the question naturally arises of whom Americans living in the twenty-first century should read and why. The concept of a uniquely American canon is not new, but neither is it a matter of accepted wisdom. Instead, the discussion of literature in America is one that is as varied and political as much of our society has become. Harold Bloom and Lawrence Levine have contributed to this conversation for much of the last half-century. In his book The Western Canon, Bloom employs his own lifelong love of reading to survey several writers whom he believes represent both the epitome of aesthetic value and their respective period and nation. Levine, on the other hand, seeks to place our discussion in its historical context by tracing the development of the American university and its curriculum in his work, The Opening of the American Mind. Together, they present two distinct yet occasionally converging streams of thought concerning our national canon. Though the debate over canonicity has taken various forms over time, the basic criterion has always remained the same. Bloom states in his “Elegiac Conclusion” that the “only pragmatic test for the canonical” is what “I have read and think worthy of rereading” (484). Though simple, Bloom’s definition captures perfectly the nature of the canon from the perspective of readers. A truly “great” book cannot be fully grasped in a single encounter; it only grows deeper the more we dig. The true work of canonization, however, is accomplished by, “Writers, artists, composers themselves . . . by bridging between strong precursors and strong successors” (487). Canonization, then, is always an essentially elite activity undertaken by those with canonical qualities and potential themselves. To Bloom, then, the canon is about reading and remembering, precursors and successors, emulation and competition. Our primary concern, then, is not the content of the canon as much as the process of canonization, as Levine states in his chapter, “Canons and Culture,” “What we . . . need to do is worry less about what any specific canon contains and more about the nature of canons themselves: how they are constituted, what they represent, and how and why they change” (101). So what does the American canon look like or does it even exist? One answer is this: “There has never been an official American literary canon, and there never can be, for the aesthetic in America always exists as a lonely, idiosyncratic, isolated stance” (Bloom 484). On this point, Bloom seems to have the history of the American academy on his side, whose curricula has changed with each generation. “The rise of industrial America finally led to the demise of the classical curriculum and the adoption of the elective system; World War I promoted a sense of Western civilization; World War II and the Cold War heightened the sense of Americanness and a concern with things American” (Levine 99-100). In other words, though it may be true that certain works have typically been viewed as canonical throughout our history, “The canon changes constantly because historical circumstances and stimuli change and people therefore approach it in myriad ways, bringing different perspectives and needs to it, reading it in ways distinctive to the times in which they live, and emerging with different satisfactions and revelations” (Levine 93). Though it would at first seem that both Bloom and Levine are in agreement, it must be realized that such agreement is limited to the specific question of the fluctuating content of the American canon. The assumptions on which these views have been expressed, however, are in reality quite opposed. Whereas Bloom views canonization as the product of a literary elite (and perhaps therefore non-American, though not un-American), Levine presents it as an essentially public affair more commensurate with his own view on American identity (a theme that he deals with later in his work). The logical conclusions of each author’s approach to the canon then become clear. While Levine could not fathom a canon that ignored the contemporary works of our multicultural society, Bloom recommends withholding judgment on a writer until “about two generations” after his death, to verify the extent of his influence (487). While Bloom would agree with Levine’s claim that, “The debate over the canon is now, and has always been, a debate over the culture and over the course that culture should take” (Levine 100), he denies that literature ever had the power to change the world. He also agrees that “the debate over multiculturalism is an old one that has occupied us from early in our existence as a people” (Levine 101), but does believe this implies a march toward multiculturalism. This is not to say Bloom does not see the full potential of other national literatures, since he and “the social changers . . . seem to agree on the canonical status of Pynchon, Merrill, and Ashbery as three American presences of our moment” (Bloom 492). He simply does not believe that we “benefit the insulted and injured by reading someone of their own origins rather than reading Shakespeare,” especially if they are poor writers (Bloom 487). On the question of our national canon, then, Bloom and Levine present fundamentally distinct views that agree substantially on American literary and academic history – both understand the historical development of the curriculum in our universities but provide starkly different interpretations of the facts. Bloom views the canon as the creation of writers as they chose their influences; Levine sees it as an extension of popular culture. Bloom denies the social import of literature; Levine sees possibilities because of his identification of “Americanness.” Bloom looks for greatness in a diversity of places, but Levine sees greatness only in diversity. In the end, however, both can agree on one thing: since the inception of our nation as a republic, we have never had an authoritative body of writings for which all Americans were expected to read. Whether that situation is to be lauded or lamented is another question entirely. Works Cited
Reading is a dying art. In previous generations, it could be assumed that there were a few great works you read as a student. Early on this experience may have consisted of nursery rhymes, fairy tales and other “imaginative literature.” By the middle years, one may have been introduced to Twain, Cooper and Emerson. Those lucky few whose family situation allowed them to continue on to a secondary education may remember the words of Dickens, Hawthorne, Homer or Shakespeare. Greater awareness of “literacy education” and “reading skills,” however has done little to improve the situation in which we find ourselves. At first, this may seem strange. After all, isn’t this the “Information Age;” the age in which technology continues to make our access to knowledge freer and faster? We begin to remember that like leading the proverbial horse to the water of life, we cannot make the reader drink. It is into this literary void that Harold Bloom steps with his work, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. In his first chapter, “An Elegy for the Canon,” Bloom laments the assault upon the Western Canon of great literature: “Unfortunately, nothing ever will be the same because the art and passion of reading well and deeply, which was the foundation of our enterprise, depended upon people who were fanatical readers when they were still small children. Even devoted and solitary readers are now necessarily beleaguered, because they cannot be certain that fresh generations will rise up to prefer Shakespeare and Dante to all other writers” (16). But why bother with a canon in the first place? The first reason is, simply, because we are short on time. “We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while there is more to read than ever was before” (29). The second reason for the canon is the increasing number of literary works. As implied in the above statement, thinking in terms of literary canonicity is a fairly recent conception introduced out of sheer necessity. Greater access to education and the technological progress of publishing led to increases in both writers and works, therefore, “The secular canon . . . does not actually begin until the middle of the eighteenth century” (19). In Bloom’s view, however, such lamentation is not a social concern. In his mind we cannot “read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values” because the canon is not built upon such a foundation (28). Instead, “aesthetic choice has always guided every secular aspect of canon formation” (21). This dichotomy between aesthetics and ethics depends primarily on the author’s view of the former as an entirely subjective enterprise. “I myself insist that the individual self is the only method and the whole standard for apprehending aesthetic value” (22). Since literary excellence is a matter of personal preference, no text can be seen as beautiful in and of itself. Instead, literary beauty is only manifested in comparison to other works. In other words, “aesthetic value emanates from the struggle between texts” (36). Since the majority of avid readers will read only a certain number of works, the primary concern of the author becomes “the mortality or immortality” of his labors (36). This literary phenomenon is what Bloom calls the “anxiety of influence.” According to this view, every author recognizes that there are certain predecessors who are worthy of emulation. Soon, however, this emulation produces an anxiety on the part of the more recent author when he realizes that he is in fact in competition with his forbearers for a place in the canon. The canon is ratified then, not by critics but by “late-coming authors who feel themselves chosen by particular ancestral figures” (19). It is this “interaction between artists,” this tension between interpretation and competition, that “engender[s]” “aesthetic value” (23). The “strongest test for canonicity,” then, is when a work has “simply overwhelmed the tradition and subsumed it” (27). Memory and originality then become essential prerequisites to canonical status. Indeed, rather than the traditional religious connotation, a literary canon “will be seen as identical with the literary Art of Memory” (17). To Bloom, then, a work is immortal not because of any innate moral superiority, but its ability to sink into our ears and stick in our minds throughout a lifetime of reading. What we are looking for is originality – something that sets a work apart from all others, including those that inspired it in the first place. Rather than viewing the canon as a list of required reading, the canon becomes “a memory system” (37). Providing himself as his example, Bloom continues, that “the principle pragmatic function of the Canon” becomes “the remembering and ordering of a lifetime’s reading” (37). The canon as our collective memory then begins to take a more important place in our way of thinking about the world. For, “Cognition cannot proceed without memory, and the Canon is the true art of memory, the authentic foundation for cultural thinking” (34). There is a great deal of truth in Bloom’s approach to literature, especially his emphasis on memory and its literary and cultural significance. One wonders, however, why Bloom’s affection for the canon and its cultural effects does not lead him to see literature as an inherently social phenomenon. He states that, “movement from within the tradition cannot be ideological or place itself in the service of any social aims, however morally admirable” (27). Though we could perhaps commend Bloom in his desire for a neutral canon, Bloom’s own works and words seem to imply another, more enduring standard. First, if the literary critic has no responsibilities to society, why write a national bestseller explaining the importance of aesthetics to our inherited literary tradition? Secondly, while explicitly denying the moral foundation of the canon, Bloom notes certain psychological effects of great literature on the reader that sound more moral than he perhaps intended. Note Bloom’s description of the effect of great writers in general and then the specific effect Shakespeare has had on later generations of readers: The reception of aesthetic power enables us to learn how to talk to ourselves and how to endure ourselves. The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one’s own growing inner self. Reading deeply in the Canon will not make one a better or a worse person, a more useful or more harmful citizen. The mind’s dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confrontation with one’s own mortality. . . . Without Shakespeare, no canon, because without Shakespeare, no recognizable selves in us, whoever we are. We owe to Shakespeare not only our representation of cognition but much of our capacity for cognition. (38, 39) Self-discovery. Introspection. Mortality. These are indeed great reasons for reading each of these authors, but such reasons are far from the merely aesthetic.
It is hard to imagine a world with more books, and yet if the Lord allows technology and education to push us through another millennium of human history, undoubtedly more books will be written, more authors will struggle for eternal fame and more readers will come face to face with our same situation: too much to read and too little time to read it. Harold Bloom presents one way of viewing the choices every reader will have to make, namely, what he will read and for what purpose. On the first question, Bloom’s answer is clear: we ought to read what we find to reflect our own desires and visions of beauty. On the second, however, Bloom himself is unsure. While viewing aesthetics as the “all in all” of literature, he himself seems to struggle with what the inherently ethical side of literary excellence. The Western Canon will aid us through our own experiences in Western literature, but in the end Bloom’s theory asks a question that it is unable to answer. Works Cited
Unfortunately for Nietzsche, in expanding on his polemic he also provides the soundest arguments against his line of thinking, of which we will now deal with three. The first concerns his views of truth as a farce and reason as all-too-fallible for ultimate understanding. The paradox of such an epistemology is that if his conclusions are correct, he is just as influenced by his instincts, not capable of independent thought, and therefore not to be trusted, as any one of us. And herein lies the chief fallacy of his new philosophy, the free spirits, and the arrogance of his thoroughgoing post-modernism. The second concerns his treatment of religion in general (as a pious fraud that can at times be an effective control over the masses) and Christianity in particular. Here again, Nietzsche provides his own best refutation. In seeking to displace theistic narratives of Creation, Fall and Redemption, he finds that success means creating his own. His story “has its roots in the Jewish and Christian slave rebellion in morals” and far from rejoicing with his precious pagans “in the face of nature, Christians are suspicious of nature, seeing it as deceptive, tempting, and infected with sin” (Hibbs). Men have fallen, then, by accepting the Fall, and redemption is found in the denial of redemption. Thus as Stephen Mulhall points out, Nietzsche “turns out to reproduce rather than transcend a paradoxical structure of Christian thought” (in Hibbs). His views are therefore a kind of unintentional parody of a Christianity without a resurrection. The third criticism concerns his stated object of seeking to go “beyond good and evil” and to establish a new framework for ethical thought in which, strictly speaking, there is no longer anything to call by those terms. Yet Nietzsche’s ideal of nobility as seen in both the historical narrative discussed above and its implications for the future of humanity, would seem to argue to the contrary. “At the very least, it seems obvious that despite Nietzsche’s incessant denial of any possible foundation for a higher good in the order of things, he could not help but presuppose that such a good exists and that it has been violated by the rise of social and political equality” (Linker). It is quite possible, then, that Nietzsche too fell prey to the very neo-Platonism that he found so distasteful in other thinkers, and therefore it is hard to take seriously one who so hastily criticizes others while being blind when he makes the same mistakes himself. “One cannot help but conclude that Nietzsche—the man who gleefully proclaimed in a book titled Beyond Good and Evil that it was his goal to ‘sail right over morality’—was himself a perverse kind of moralist concerned above all about the injustice of shallowness and mediocrity” (Linker). So while he sought to transcend morality and referred to “We immoralists” (226), he was in fact, nothing of the sort. When Nietzsche’s work arrived on the scene, he wanted to make a statement that others would remember, and he “was indeed explosive” (Linker). Unfortunately, however, even today, we are still suffering the consequences of his thinking. “Western culture has yet to come to terms with the fallout produced by the detonation of his most volatile ideas” (Linker). And thus as Wiker points out throughout his chapter on Beyond Good and Evil, our author falls within a steady continuum that leads from bad to worse, through Rousseau, Mill and Darwin and continuing through Hitler, Sanger and only God knows who else. There is something of the last century that tells us that things are not as they should be, nor should we seek to fulfill Nietzsche’s dreary vision for the future. We have witnessed the horrors of two world wars, a cold war that at certain times and in certain places was anything but cold, the worst kinds of tyranny and genocide, and the calculating cowardliness of terrorism. And yet throughout these experiences we have also seen heroes rise to the occasion, some from prominence and others from obscurity, and demonstrate that there is not only something worth fighting for, but something within man that still points to a sort of sacrificial greatness that Nietzsche could never understand. It is something that at times seems even beyond human capacity, and gives us an impression of something perhaps divine. “Yet, being something godlike, we are not, as Nietzsche would have it, gods ourselves, but something far less, a faint but glowing resemblance to Someone else infinitely more resplendent” (Wiker 231). The possibility yet remains, then, that Nietzsche was correct, but only partly so. That “God did indeed die, but rose again, an übermensch of a very different kind, one that can save us from the madness of our own making” (Wiker 231). And so we are faced with the choice between Nietzsche’s darkness, chaos, and “might makes right” morality, or we can trust these natural inclinations toward sacrifice and honor, “allowing the good that is reflected in common opinion and experience to serve as an indication—however tentative, ambiguous, or elusive—of what is likely to be true” (Linker). So while Nietzsche sought to overcome the traditional and modern conceptions of truth and morality through a post-modern pragmatism, he instead points us back to our heads, and our hearts. Nietzsche’s interpretation of the past was inextricably connected with his vision for the future. Just as Marx saw communism as the synthesis of preexisting thought and practice, Nietzsche saw in the future of European thought a change that would finally reverse what he saw as the ill effects of centuries of classical Christianity. Judaism and Christianity had turned the natural values of strength and nobility on their head, but modernism provided no real challenge to this reversal based on its commitment to moralism. It would be the task of the next generation of philosophers would set this inverted world back on its proper foundation. Throughout his work, Nietzsche lamented that “the philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated man” (205; see our first post for Works Cited). In his view, of course, neither is to be trusted, the modernist because of his view of objective truth, and the religious because of his belief in a transcendent God. Having therefore dismissed both rationalism and Christianity (see Nietzsche 188), the philosophers of the future would need to develop a new system of thought that was consistent with his interpretation of history and the development of moral principles. It is in this sense that one can rightfully speak of Nietzsche’s post-modernism. Built in to his rejection of Enlightenment and Christian morality is his rejection of Enlightenment and Christian epistemology. His goal, then, was a complete revolution in morals, rejecting the bulk of both schools, but forging a third way that was substantially different from either. While modernism is relatively recent and trusts entirely too much in the human mind, pre-modern traditionalism is old and fantastic and relies too much on ‘divine revelation.’ Nietzsche therefore seeks to overcome both approaches by adopting the method of the first (independent reasoning) and the confidence of the second (faith), while rejecting any of their qualifications (particularly a logical and moral framework accountable to both God and the community). What results is a new, post-modern, amoral pragmatism. To Nietzsche, “it is high time to replace the Kantian question, “How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?” by another question, “Why is belief in such judgments necessary?” Instead, modern man “should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments” (11)! Nietzsche, of course, bases such a conclusion on his view of human nature as revealed through history, as well as his conviction that “the psychological demands of humanity lie beyond the indifference of nature” (Kirkland 604). The path to ‘free’ thought is therefore partly a return to the glorious ancients (insofar as they differ from dogmatic moralists), and partly a progressive plan for the future of philosophy. Nietzsche therefore seeks to free pessimism from “the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity” that he believes characterize it (56) by pointing out the glorious historical and moral reality of the will to power. For true philosophy rid of the prejudiced search for “truth,” “one must await the new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent—philosophers of the dangerous ‘Perhaps’ in every sense of the term” (Nietzsche 2). Not only would such a world finally rid itself of the feigned existence of objective truth, it would even defy the gregarious, utilitarian conception of moral relativism, declaring that, “My opinion is my opinion: another person has not easily a right to it” (Nietzsche 43). Nietzsche therefore found he and his peers “standing on the threshold of a period,” “which would be distinguished negatively as ultra-moral,” in which he and his “immoralists” reassert that “the decisive value of an action lies precisely in that which is not intentional” but instead draws its authority from the simple fact that it has been asserted (32). The concept of nobility is at the heart of both Nietzsche’s historical interpretation and his hopes for the future. Though most recognize that only a few people will ever be truly ‘great’, Nietzsche gives this fact ethical weight and therefore finds two separate laws for human behavior, which he dubs “master-morality and slave-morality” (260). “It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong” (Nietzsche 29). In Nietzsche’s mind, greatness is defined not by the truthfulness of one’s ideas or his strength of character, but in the recognition that “egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul” and must be employed in exploiting the weakness of others (265; see 259). In other words, “All claims will be understood not according to their correspondence with truth, but according to what seeks to gain power by making that claim” (Kirkland 587). True greatness, then, will only be attained when these elites “gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us” (Nietzsche 116). It is on this basis, that Nietzsche condemns the European rulers of his day, who “know of no other way of protecting themselves from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older and higher orders . . . by maxims from the current opinions of the herd, as ‘first servants of their people,’ or ‘instruments of the public weal’” (199). He therefore sees “gradations of rank” as an essential prerequisite for true philosophy, and the goal of his own work as the development of “a new ruling caste for Europe” (219, 251). Nietzsche’s elitist views, then, were more than a mere historical ideal or philosophical abstraction. In fact, he viewed “the rearing of a new ruling cast for Europe” as his most “serious topic,” which he referred to in a proto-National Socialist manner as “the ‘European problem” (251). Nietzsche sought to “galvanize the dormant aristocratic element and revive Europe” by recasting their moral thought, so that when “a great danger” presented itself, it “would awaken men from their utilitarian slumber and call forth the desire to fight and conquer” (Wiker 111). The true leader would therefore rediscover that “he is a creator of values” and philosophers of the past would be overthrown by “commanders and law-givers,” who say, “Thus shall it be” (Nietzsche 260, 211)! As Kirkland states, “Once the illusory task of positioning oneself beyond mere illusions is abandoned in the face of nihilism, the task of philosophy becomes that of ‘great politics,’ transforming humanity by legislating values” (581). Surprisingly, Nietzsche still finds a role for religion in this new world order. As he himself states, “Modern philosophy, as epistemological skepticism, is secretly or openly anti-Christian, although . . . by no means anti-religious” (54). In other words, though Christianity is impossible in a world without divine revelation, objective truth or the classical sensus communis, religions based on the same foundation of his new amoral pragmatism will remain vital to social vitality—that is, when all things are subjected to the powerful and the powerful realize that they themselves have become gods. “The philosopher . . . will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions” (Nietzsche 61). As Kirkland states, then, Nietzsche tears down one cosmic story in order to prepare “the future for new myths” thereby demonstrating in reality what had only existed before as theory, that “the untruth of mythological interpretations . . . is wholly subordinate to the question of their service to a noble way of life” (600-601). Nietzsche the great man has therefore become what he feared the most: a pragmatic utilitarian. Nietzsche, though, did not merely disdain Christianity because of what it is, but because of what it had given birth to. In his view, Christianity had not only brought with it a new god and a new form of godliness, it instead changed the way those in the West viewed religion and morality entirely. So successful was the leavening influence of Christianity, that even those Enlightenment thinkers who could no longer bring themselves to believe in God, could not help but seek the same fundamental goals in their own naively-contrived moral and political systems. On this count, Nietzsche directs most of his barrages at the utilitarians of his day. As a self-styled “free spirit,” he could not bear the thought of someone using such a noble name for purposes so unlike his own, particularly levelers of all stripes, “glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its ‘modern ideas’” (44; see our first post for Works Cited). If Nietzsche is the father of cynics, surely the utilitarians were our first hippies, seeking “the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one,” while chanting their twin anthems of “Equality of Rights” and “Sympathy with All Sufferers” (Nietzsche 44). He therefore dismisses all “systems of morals which address themselves to the ‘happiness’” of individuals – such as “hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudaemonism” (225) – in that they place each person on an equal footing with every other and therefore encourage a sort of mediocrity that does nothing to temper passions, correct improper tendencies or encourage nobility (198). Since he has removed objective truth as a proper standard for judgment, Nietzsche bases his criticism of utilitarianism in the historical framework outlined above, as well as the psychological weakness implied by its exaltation of the low throughout all areas of life. “Nietzsche demonstrates how psychological strength rather than truthfulness may be used to evaluate competing interpretations of the world and the ways of life they spawn” (Kirkland 598). Thus in his view, utilitarians suffer from a sort of identity crisis due to their blending of secular skepticism and Christian morality. Such a person’s “fundamental desire” is that “the war which is in him should come to an end” by means of “a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean or Christian)” in which one may find rest in “the happiness of repose, of undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity,” a unity, however, that is impossible within such a framework (Nietzsche 200). Instead, the utilitarian must live with such a crisis unresolved, in a sort of moral mediocrity. Thus, he sees around him the exaltation and propagation of the average, and mourns that “they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; ‘be like them! become mediocre!’ is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.—But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity” (262)! Aside from his complete terror at the thought of Europe being surrendered to such sissies, Nietzsche rebukes utilitarian thought for the same kind of self-contradiction and inversion of nobility found previously in Christianity. “Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the utile only as a vehicle for your inclinations,—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable” (Nietzsche 174)! Both schools of thought, based as they are primarily on principle rather than precept, are exploitable through either personal abuse through mere selfishness or systemically by the strong and cunning. Nietzsche therefore sees in the weakness of Aristotelian, Spinozan and utilitarian thought an opportunity for those who “have the Will to Power” to “play the master” (198). Utilitarianism is merely the latest development in modern political thought, and since “the democratic movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement,” utilitarianism is merely a modern, democratic Christianity without the Christ as king (Nietzsche 202). So while in Nietzsche’s view, Christianity was bad enough, the sinking of Christianity to a mere moral philosophy resulted in a transformation that is even more to be regretted, in which, “all . . . the absolute demands . . . the difficult virtues . . . and the saintly heroic struggle were degraded . . . into a kind of charity of softness that demanded nothing while it provided every earthly comfort” (Wiker 110-111). Although an atheist, Nietzsche had no room for such soft atheism. As Wiker puts it, “The bestseller atheists around now (like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) are pussycat atheists, not lions like Nietzsche who, if he were still around, would chew them up and spit them out in disgust” (100). Linker points out that this is due in part to the fact that Nietzsche recognized a sad truth that others have not yet brought themselves to realize: “Whereas most modern atheists viewed their lack of piety as an unambiguous good—as a mark of their liberation from the dead weight of authority and tradition—Nietzsche responded to his insight into the amoral chaos at the heart of the world with considerable pathos.” So while other non-believers may still seek some measure of joy in a world without purpose, “All of Nietzsche’s work begins from the assumption that, viewed in itself, the world is a meaningless and purposeless chaos,” and one in which happiness is to be found only in a purpose of our own making (Linker). His atheism was one that “wanted nothing less than to make us totally at home in the world, and he understood that this monumental task could be accomplished only by convincing us that we possess the power to redeem it, all by ourselves, without God” (Linker). Nietzsche therefore called on philosophy to do as it had always done: to reflect “the most spiritual Will to Power” by creating “the world in its own image” (9), to convince others “that all of human experience and history had to be reconceived” in order to make “sense of the world in terms of its intrinsic meaninglessness” (Linker). He is therefore unique among atheists, in that he was “brutally honest about what atheism really meant . . . . No up or down; no good or evil; just sheer human will swimming in an indifferent, if not hostile, chaos” (Wiker 100). But the progress of human history seemed to him to be heading in exactly the opposite direction, killing God, but still mourning his loss, and therefore looking for his resurrection and second coming (a resurrection that so frightens Nietzsche he does not mention it even once in his text). Thus he wondered whether moral thought would ever find freedom in the realization that its ideals were merely “an arbitrary valuation projected onto reality in order to derive a sense of purpose in the face of chaos” and in that realization “kill the Christian God” to which such a search for purpose had given birth (Linker). He therefore “eventually became disillusioned with his own early proposals to cure modern disillusionment. . . . As before, modern man had fallen into meaninglessness, but now there was no possible redemption from it—and this we were supposed to accept as good news” (Linker). But if the modern age was characterized by this struggle between philosophies partly Christian and partly skeptical, a new age was dawning in Western thought. He “detected in Enlightenment secularists the residues of Christian morality, the extirpation of which would require a direct confrontation with nihilism,” and such a confrontation is exactly what he achieved (Hibbs). Though Nietzsche’s overall intent is to drive home to his readers this epistemological view and its implications for religious, moral, and social thought, he also recognizes that such would be impossible without discussing more specifically the faults of previous systems, as well as how things got to be the way they are. Because of this, the vast majority of his work serves as a post-modern critique of classical Christianity. Nietzsche bases the majority of his case against faith on his interpretation of the historical development of civilizations. His narrative begins with the fundamental assumption that, “In the beginning, there was chaos” (Linker; see our first post for Works Cited). The governing force of the world was not a god, gods, or a universal sense of fellowship, but raw power. In fact, to Nietzsche, it was only through naked force that morality even came to be. “The pointless, anarchistic violence that characterized the prehistoric world [only] came to an end when certain individuals began to focus their will to power on the goal of decisively triumphing over others.” Linker continues, that having achieved their material and perhaps financial conquest, this new elite then sought to do the same ethically and religiously and therefore “foisted the first ‘moral valuation’ onto mankind” (Linker). Thus strength did not arise from moral principles, but moral principles from the strong (see Nietzsche 32). When most speak of the oppression of the ruling class, they do so in quite a different vein – following Rousseau, Locke, Marx, etc. – that is, to criticize if not to condemn outright. Nietzsche, however, while believing oppression to be the historical norm, views this as an affirmation of human nature and history rather than an attack on it. Since the acts of the powerful are based on their natural superiority, their behavior is not to be condemned, but rather embraced. To Nietzsche, then, “the good is nothing other than an expression of what the members of the victorious class do and what they affirm. And what they do is triumph ruthlessly over the weak by violence” (Linker). In this narrative, religion, too, rose from the foundations of this strong-man society, as the strong of each culture formed their own creation and founding myths (complete with divine ancestors) in order to both justify the use of their power and to keep the people under the illusion that this was simply the way the gods wanted things to be. Thus in the Nietzschean state of nature, “All human greatness demanded great suffering, harsh discipline, renunciation of comfort, courage against pain, and even cruelty in its use and elimination of the weak” (Wiker 103). Writing within a few decades of The Origin of Species Nietzsche therefore believed strongly in the harshness of a Darwinian world ruled by ‘survival of the fittest’, and made full use of its darkest implications. Yet he went even further in his understanding than Darwin himself dared to go. As one writer put it, “Darwin focused on survival and Nietzsche focused on the fittest” (Wiker 108). Thus in Nietzsche’s world, the natural and historical foundation of both church and state is that of naked force, and true religion and statesmanship have never forgotten it. It is in reading Nietzsche’s version of this history that the reader begins to see why the author places most of the blame for European faults on Christianity. The presence of Judeo-Christian values like faith, hope and love turned all natural religion and morality on its head, inverting the values to which most humans had subscribed and reinventing the idea of God as transcendentally perfect, rather than a mere projection of human nature into the heavens. Nietzsche not only dismisses Israel’s claim as God’s “chosen people among the nations,” but also regards the Jews as “a people ‘born for slavery’” (195, quoting Tacitus). Their crime is the tendency of their prophets to reject all things high (wealth, virtue, vice and pleasure) and to exalt all things low (poverty, piety and compassion). In other words, if “the significance of the Jewish people is to be found,” it is that “with them that the slave-insurrection in morals commences” (Nietzsche 195). Nietzsche more than likely did not understand just how right he was, nor how wrong. While Nietzsche’s thought begins and ends in chaos, Judaism has quite a different approach: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1 ESV). Thus, while this does indeed imply a certain “slave morality” among mankind, it is a slavery in which the weak, fallible and finite is subjected to the truly Powerful, Perfect and Infinite. The rub for Nietzsche comes in the fact that he is grouped among the former, rather than praised among the latter. But Judaism is also more than this. Jewish morality is rooted both in the character of God himself and in their unique historical encounters with him, particularly in their divinely led exodus from slavery in Egypt. Moses captures this balance of faith and faithfulness perfectly: “For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:45). The more humans witnessed of God’s power and goodness, the more they realized their own need for his steadfast love and providential care. This same emphasis is seen when Yahweh reveals the covenant to Moses on Sinai: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. . . . You shall not make for yourself a carved image . . . . You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain . . . . Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Exo 20:2-11) Each of these provisions points to God as Creator and Redeemer, to their deliverance out of Egypt, to his uniqueness and transcendence, to his divine character and sacred nature. This relationship between faith and faithfulness is preserved, too, when we move to the moral aspects of the covenant. He is all loyalty, life, faithfulness, integrity, truth and satisfaction (vv. 12-17). Nietzsche takes special exception to the seventh commandment: “You shall not commit adultery” (Exo 20:14). “Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence” (Nietzsche 47). And not to be outdone by such pithy and forthright statements as those of the Decalogue, he adds later: “Even concubinage has been corrupted—by marriage” (123). Yet there is something is this account that is so striking that even Nietzsche (especially the power-monger he is) cannot fail to be impressed with. This divine-human encounter is not all love and happiness (at least as most would understand it). Upon seeing “the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off” (Exo 20:18). Reverent fear is therefore a vital part to the Jewish faith. Christian morality maintains this same basic framework of faith and faithfulness, but with a strong emphasis on the condition of the inner man as a prerequisite to right action (as we have pointed out before). Because of this, the concept of love, though ever-present throughout the Old Testament, plays a more prominent role as the guiding theme of Christian morality. So while incorporating Judaism’s emphasis on imitating God (Eph 5:1) and holy living (1Pe 1:15, quoting our passage above), greater emphasis is placed on God’s love, mercy and forgiveness. Thus, “We love because he first loved us” (1Jo 4:19), Christians are to “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36), and are to “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph 4:32). Jesus himself initiated this shift in thought in the first chapter of his Sermon on the Mount (Mat 5). He says concerning the Hebrew Scriptures, “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (v. 17). So while murder, adultery, illicit sex and perjury all remain sins, he also condemns hatred, lust, divorce and oaths (vv. 21-37). And while other commands remain equally in force, like the lex talionis (“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” v. 38; see Rom 13:1-7) and the second greatest command (“You shall love your neighbor,” v. 43; see 22:39), both are further clarified in the command to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (v. 44). Thus, to employ the words of the Apostle John, “There is no fear in love,” but the perfect love of the New Covenant casts out the fear of the Old (1Jo 4:18). This shift in emphasis, however, is an even farther cry from the harsh realties Nietzsche “found” and glorified in the pre-moral age, and the reason why such a religion found him as an ever-ready enemy. Thus while most within the Western tradition view Christian charity as one of the greatest enlightening (though unfortunately inconsistent) influences in history, to Nietzsche it is a sort of cultural blindness, an outright ignorance of what true nobility is. “Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also” (Nietzsche 67; see too our discussion of this among his contemporaries)! Prior to the rise of such an ideal, ‘love’ merely represented the feelings of affection and passion, yet “Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it certainly, but degenerated to Vice” (Nietzsche 168). This same tendency can be seen in the Christian’s expected treatment of his personal enemies. In Nietzsche’s mind, such was wrong-headed on several counts. First, it is self-evidently false, as he implies by asking rhetorically: “To love one’s enemies” (Nietzsche 206)? Secondly, it is a denial of human nature: “It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed” (Nietzsche 181). And thirdly, it contradicts even its own standard of morality in that, “There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness” (Nietzsche 184). Perhaps Nietzsche’s greatest concern is the role of the incarnation and passion of Jesus Christ himself is sealing this inversion and perpetuating indefinitely into the future. As individuals living in a society literally permeated with Christian values and assumptions, it is almost impossible to imagine things coming into being in any different way. Yet, historically, such an inversion hardly seemed likely, and has required centuries to scratch the surface of its ethical significance. Paul points out the power of the Christ: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Php 2:5-8) While the faithful may point this out in order to instruct, Nietzsche does so in order to condemn. “Modern men . . . have no longer the sense for the terrible superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula, ‘God on the Cross’” (46). Yet, if Nietzsche is wrong, it is precisely this event that is most important in understanding the will of heaven. Just as Judaism discovers itself and its mores in its unique history with God and the Jews’ unique deliverance from bondage, Christianity is defined by the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ, and thereby commemorates a new and deeper deliverance. What so terrifies Nietzsche is not so much that God might have saved us, but that he did so at complete personal cost to himself, and requiring precious little in return. It is the “boldness” of this inversion, more than any other, that has secured the perpetual progress of that dreadful promise: “a transvaluation of all ancient values” (46).
Here we return briefly to our opening theme: the ubiquitous (and in his eyes, terrifying) union of classic philosophy with orthodox Christianity. While he discusses many past and contemporary thinkers, artists and movements that many would regard as great, he sees in them only despair, all of them “finally shattering and sinking down at the Christian cross” because none “would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an anti-Christian philosophy” (256). Though faith and reason have long been viewed as compatible (see Isa 1:18, Heb 11:1), to Nietzsche, faith “resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow” (46). Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is not nearly as controversial as he ought to be. When Beyond Good and Evil appeared on the European scene in the late 1800s the work was a bombshell. On one hand, the Enlightenment counter-establishment regarded him as a prophet, while on the other conservative liberals and traditional Christians immediately branded him as a heretic. It does not take long to make up one’s mind about him even today, and yet commentary on his work is relatively sparse, while what does exist seems to either praise him or sand down some of his rougher edges. Part of what draws readers to him today – in an age where candor is often mistaken for truth – is his out-spoken rejection of virtually everything now held dear in the West, particularly those Westerners who began jumping off the liberal Enlightenment bandwagon somewhere around the turn of century—the nineteenth century. While couched in philosophical terms and presented as a philosophical treatise, Beyond Good and Evil is therefore primarily a rhetorical and polemical attack on practically every previous thinker in Western history (though, as we will soon see, he too has his favorite villains), particularly those associated with Christianity, democracy, utilitarianism and socialism. Particularly blameworthy is that philosophers too often fall prey to their own prejudices and are therefore untrustworthy. He sees as particularly problematic the dominant Western view of truth and philosophy, and seeks to provide a more noble interpretation by reinterpreting the history of society’s development. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Nietszche’s criticisms as well as his proposed course of action is in fact an early form of post-modernism that has rejected both pre- and post-Enlightenment philosophy and that has sought and failed to transcend the dichotomy of good and evil. The strongest argument for identifying Nietzsche among the first post-modernists arises from his own explicit statements on the subject. As Kirkland points out, Nietzsche himself later describes Beyond Good and Evil as a “critique of modernity,” and demonstrates this throughout the work itself by employing rhetoric in a way that draws attention to other popular thinkers in his own day (578). Epistemology (how one comes to know) is fundamental to philosophy (how one comes to view the world). Nietzsche therefore directs his first assault on the modern project by striking at its view of truth. Modern thought, beginning with the Enlightenment, developed an ever-increasing trust in the abilities of the human mind for rational thought. Nietzsche, however, seeks to point out the inconsistencies with such thinking in order to establish a new way of viewing the world. The rhetorical purpose of Beyond Good and Evil, then, is to interact with his contemporaries in a way that provides his own “self-overcoming of modernity and the enlightenment prejudice in favor of truthfulness” as an example to which he may call others, and therefore to “provoke the experience of self-overcoming in its readers” (Kirkland 578). He introduces this concept in the first line of his work by comparing Truth to a woman whom humanity has unsuccessfully courted (Preface). Three possible explanations arise concerning the illusive nature of truth: (a) we are simply bad lovers, (b) she is playing “hard to get” or (c) we are seeking an ideal that does not in fact exist. Nietzsche, however (a better rhetorician than philosopher), blends all three responses. His primary criticism of both his predecessors and his contemporaries is that while many purport to rely on reason alone as their guide, “the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instinct” (paragraph 3). So while reason is useful in many situations (in fact, human life could not continue without it) to employ such reasoning in establishing absolutes and moral imperatives is in its own way irrational. Later in his work, he asks similarly, “‘Why knowledge at all?’ Every one will ask us about this. And thus pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have not found and cannot find any better answer” (230). So while granting tentative concurrence to those who refer to philosophy as ‘a search for truth’ he also asks, “why not rather untruth” (1)? This he views as an essential, but unasked question and therefore a perpetual blind spot in all modern thought. Thus even a seemingly objective field like natural philosophy is itself a fallible human endeavor “based on belief in the senses” and following the false canon of “eternal popular sensualism” (14). And thus Nietzsche asks: If one’s eyes cannot be trusted, how can his mind? He couples his concern about feigned objectivity with the ubiquity of neo-Platonism, even amongst otherwise secular thinkers. In his preface he refers to “Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself” as “the most dangerous of errors,” while also stating that “Christianity is Platonism for the ‘People.’” Thus, while many Enlightenment thinkers no longer believe in God, their belief in the Good “is at the back of all their logical procedure” and therefore discloses their metaphysical prejudice and the resulting futility of their efforts, as “they exert themselves for their ‘knowledge,’ for something that is in the end solemnly christened ‘the Truth’” (Nietzsche 2). Though Kant often receives the brunt of these attacks, Nietzsche generally laments that “for centuries European thinkers only thought to prove something” (188), and were therefore mistaken in their conclusions because of faulty assumptions. He later continues this attack on the Platonic Good as well as its connection to Christian morality: Plato . . . without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself . . . that reason and instinct lead spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to “God”; and since Plato, all theologians and philosophers have followed the same path—which means that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it, “Faith,” or as I call it, “the herd”) has hitherto triumphed. (191) Nietzsche therefore criticizes modernism for both its naïveté concerning the limits of human reasoning and its unquestioned acceptance of traditional philosophy’s purposes and assumptions. He instead asserts that the common conception of truth as objective and transcendent is “in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world” and that truth is not seen in black and white, but instead “lighter and darker shades and tones of semblance” (34). He therefore goes beyond merely outlining the limits of human reason and seeks to point out that in a world in which we are so severely limited, objective thought (however laudable a goal it may be) is simply impossible. As Kirkland points out: “His critique of objectivity not only raises questions about the possibility or desirability of truthfulness and demonstrates the self-contradiction of the enlightenment: it calls for a new responsibility for the effects of offering interpretations” (575; see Nietzsche 33).
Works Cited
In this series, we have surveyed some general trends in the history of ethics, beginning with the lex talionis (an eye for an eye), moving on to three versions of the Golden Rule, noting subtle shifts in these principles throughout the Renaissance, and recognizing the end of both secular reason and morality in the late Enlightenment. In surveying these trends, three lessons become apparent. The first is that humans are inherently moral beings. Since the beginning, man has pondered what God meant when he said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26 NKJV). At least one aspect of this is that, like him, we have a capacity for reasoning on things moral and spiritual that is unique among his creatures. As Elihu well knew, “But there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding” (Job 32:8). Paul, however, probably says it most clearly: though it was the Jews who had received direct revelation on true morality, by their good behavior even the Gentiles were able to “show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Romans 2:15, emphasis added). As C.S. Lewis wrote, then, human morality is not only universal; it also implies a higher source for such a capacity: If we are to continue to make moral judgements (and whatever we say we shall in fact continue) then we must believe that the conscience of man is not a product of Nature. It can be valid only if it is an offshoot of some absolute moral wisdom, a moral wisdom which exists absolutely ‘on its own’ and is not a product of non-moral, non-rational Nature. (Lewis, Miracles 60) The second lesson is that while understanding the humanities is essential for a true Christian engagement of the world, they are not sufficient in defining this worldview. That such works are useful for Christian witness is evident in the fact that Paul himself quotes pagan poets three times in his works, twice in his sermon in Acts 17:28 and once writing to Titus in 1:12. Jude did the same by pointing out valid truths from the popular religious literature of his day (see Jude 1:9, 14-15). Human thought, then, is not inherently wrong, but must be redeemed in order to be effective for theoretical and practical use. In other words, human wisdom must be judged as true or false by the wisdom of God, not the other way around. And even then, it can only be accepted tentatively, lest we too closely associate such human thoughts with “the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10). As Paul reminded Timothy, it is “the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus;” a reminder well heeded in our post-modern (or any!) age (2 Timothy 3:15, emphasis added). Finally, the culmination of human morality is the Christ-like ideal of the Golden Rule. Man is not inherently a sex-driven and violent animal, though we often fall prey to such temptations (see Ecclesiastes 7:29; Isaiah 59:1-2). Lewis must have been thinking of the likes of Freud and Nietzsche while writing the radio talks that later became Mere Christianity: I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid down in the Christian rule, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’ includes ‘thy enemy’, and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies. (Lewis, Mere Christianity 115) We have, of course, heard this before. But as Lewis goes on to say, loving our enemies does not mean loving or even tolerating “cruelty and treachery,” as many seem to believe (MC 117). It merely means that we should hate such evil traits “in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is possible, that . . . he can be cured and made human again” (MC 117). Love, then, is more than a mere emotion, much less the satisfaction of carnal appetites; it is “that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about” another person, “wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying that he is nice when he is not” (MC 129, 120).
The principles of Christian ethics have never fully disappeared from the Western Canon. The Golden Rule (though often misunderstood) at least remains a part of our moral discourse. But such acceptance is not universal. By looking to the critics of virtuous love we begin to see the cold consistency and selfishness of the alternative. The scars of human aggression are borne by every age of human history, but such aggression is neither natural to man nor essential to human society. And though many have tried to explain it, virtue and love are better demonstrated than defended. As the Apostle John once wrote, “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The true end of human morality, then, is to understand the vicarious suffering and death of Christ our Lord and Savior, and to lovingly die to self each day. As Christ himself stated, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). Works Cited
In this series, we have surveyed the general trends in the history of ethics, beginning with the lex talionis (an eye for an eye), moving on to three versions of the Golden Rule, and noting subtle shifts in these principles throughout the Renaissance. This week, we continue this survey by tracing these shifts further through the Enlightenment. Edward Gibbon is commonly regarded as the world’s first modern historian. Gibbon begins our Enlightenment survey for the simple reason that, more than any other herein discussed, he looks to the past in order to shed light on human nature and the lessons to be gained by the experiences of man down through the centuries. But while Gibbon’s work clearly has some traditional value as a window into our shared cultural memory, the author’s own opinion often shines through in ways that reflect a shift in historical thought. Consider, for example, his treatment of the virtuous pagans, particularly Marcus Aurelius. While most Christian thinkers treated the Emperor with either ambivalence or disdain, Gibbon’s account is practically glowing. He sees in him a virtue that was the “well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration,” one, “which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent.” And while at times the Emperor was too candid concerning his views, his life serves as “the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno [the founder of the Stoics]. He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind,” and for this, he was respected by his enemies and revered by his people (Gibbon 1.3.2). Such an account serves two clear purposes. The first is to redeem Aurelius’ character and to place him amidst the great civic leaders of ancient Rome, while the second is to establish him as a working model for the statesmen and citizens of Gibbon’s own day for rational, virtuous living apart from the teachings and traditions of the Christian faith. Thus, in Gibbon we see objective historiography united to early post-Christian commentary, no longer (with Aquinas) baptizing the virtuous pagans or even (with Dante) placing them in Purgatory, but instead exulting in the fact that they remain unwashed. In Thomas Paine we turn back to a few decades prior to Gibbon, but find one who understood what the waning influence of classical Christian thought meant for the primacy of reason in faith, ethics and politics. Gibbon later reflected the change, but it is in Paine that it is most clearly spelled out. Paine is mostly known today for his pamphlet Common Sense, but in his own generation he was better remembered as the out-spoken author of The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. Paine was one of the few thoroughgoing Enlightenment Americans of his day, and therefore one of the few to openly avow the rejection of Christianity in favor of a deistic religion based on human rationality and natural virtue (which not even Jefferson dared to do). Though never denying the possibility of divine revelation, he limited its authority and applicability to the one to whom it was given and instead founded his faith upon the natural world (Age 1.2, 9). The “gift of reason,” therefore, remained in his mind “the choicest gift of God to man,” and the tool by which nature and experience were to be understood and marshaled for the interest of humanity at large (Age 1.8; see too Rights 2.3, 4). Paine’s natural religion of human rationality therefore directly inspired his political views. Thus in the regeneration, “the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world” (Rights 2.5). While Gibbon therefore critiqued the inherited wisdom of many Christian practices and historical judgments, Paine broke with Christianity completely while still intending to do so for the common good. Though chronologically later than our next thinker (Nietzsche), Freud is perhaps the next logical stepping-stone in our survey. While Paine lamented the irrationality of Christianity, Freud tied this perceived irrationally to the Christian view of love, which combined love with holiness and led to cultural prohibitions on the exercise of human sexuality. In his view, “The demand for a uniform sexual life for all . . . ignores all the disparities, innate and acquired, in the sexual constitution of human beings, thereby depriving fairly large numbers of sexual enjoyment and becoming a source of grave injustice” (52). True love, then, is only possible when we recognize that our communal conscience (including our views on love and sex) is not rooted in human nature, but is instead, “the result of the primordial emotional ambivalence” of some archetypal sons, who murdered their father only to manifest “their love . . . in the remorse they felt for the deed” (Freud 88; see 89). The true paradigm of human love, then, is Oedipus—not Jesus, Moses or even Confucius. Freud’s chief criticism of the Golden Rule is that it is irrational, unnatural, and therefore unacceptable. He asks, both hypothetically and rhetorically: “But if [one] is a stranger to me and cannot attract me by any merit of his own or by any importance he has acquired in my emotional life, it would be hard for me to love him. . . . What is the point of such a portentous precept if its fulfillment cannot commend itself as reasonable” (Freud 58)? Love, then, is unable to serve as the foundation of human society, because “human beings are not gentle creatures in need of love” but instead “count a powerful share of aggression among their instinctual endowments” (Freud 60). So while he finds sex to be vitally important to human nature and happiness, there is simply no place for love. Even where love appears to reign (he points especially to nominal ‘Christian’ applications of the Rule), it does so only because “others are left out as targets for aggression” (Freud 64). So while he admits that, “‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is the strongest defence against human aggression,” it is irrational and impractical, leading to the very aggression it seeks to suppress (Freud 103). Nietzsche’s criticism of the Rule is even stronger. In Beyond Good and Evil, he launches a sustained rhetorical attack on the commonly held notions of virtue and nobility. In Nietzsche’s mind, greatness is defined not by the truthfulness of one’s ideas or the strength of his character, but in the awareness of his own ego and his willingness to exploit others in order to assert it (see paragraphs 265, 259). Though most recognize that only a few people will ever be truly ‘great’, Nietzsche gives this fact ethical weight and therefore finds two separate laws for human behavior, which he dubs “master-morality and slave-morality” (260). He therefore sees “gradations of rank” as an essential prerequisite for true philosophy, and the goal of his own work as the development of “a new ruling caste for Europe” (219, 251). True greatness, however, will only be attained when these elites “gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us” (Nietzsche 116). So five decades before Freud, Nietzsche not only sees in every man an aggression that is both antisocial and anti-moral—a tyrant in waiting—he encourages these Titans to take up arms and storm Olympus. As others before him, Nietzsche also condemns the same culprit for such a dearth of true greatness: the union of classic philosophy with orthodox Christianity. While Nietzsche discusses many thinkers, artists and movements that many would regard as great, he sees in them only despair, “finally shattering and sinking down at the Christian cross,” because none “would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an anti-Christian philosophy” (Nietzsche 256). Nietzsche therefore laments the Christian union of faith, hope and love, which to him, “resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow” (46). And not even sex escaped unscathed: “Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice” because, “It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed” (168, 181; see also ch. 3; 67, 123, 216). To Nietzsche, then, sex and violence are completely human, and should be embraced, not mitigated by something so foolish as love. Fyodor Dostoevsky is the only of our Enlightenment writers herein surveyed to challenge this assertion and to point out the inevitable consequences of this mode of thought. Even more important is the fact that Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment preceded Beyond Good and Evil by twenty years. The relationship between these two works is more than coincidental. Dostoevsky’s translator points out that “Nietzsche referred to Dostoevsky as ‘the only psychologist from whom I have something to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life, happier even than the discovery of Stendhal’” (Dostoevsky, “Biography”). We only wish that Nietzsche had learned much more from Dostoevsky than he did. The psychological struggle within Crime and Punishment’s protagonist (Raskolnikov) is clear enough, but while Nietzsche appears to have seen Raskolnikov as a sort of nihilist hero, Dostoevsky’s epilogue to the work appears to point in another direction entirely. As the young man ponders the fate common to most criminals, he discusses it in terms of practicality, not acceptability. “Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential” (Dostoevsky Part 1, Ch 6). Thus this disease (a lack of Nietzsche’s “will to power”) consumes the criminal, both motivating the crime and destroying one’s rationality. His solution, then, is perfectly simple: “One has but to keep all one’s will-power and reason to deal with them, and they will all be overcome at the time when one has familiarised oneself with the minutest details of the business” (Dostoevsky 1.6). What Raskolnikov fails to see, however, is that the disease has already set in and his true motives already concealed; a fact that reveals itself only after the murder. “No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself, or else better not live at all. . . . I am putting my little brick into the happiness of all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha” (3.6)! And yet it is the selfless, sacrificial, Christian love of Sonia that brings Rodion back to life. Alexandre Dumas sees much of the same problem as Dostoevsky but without the latter’s clarity and conviction. Dumas struggles with the logical conclusions of pragmatic and utilitarian thinking, but is unable to completely renounce its ability to effect change for the better (at least for the short-term). In The Count of Monte Cristo, we therefore encounter Edmond Dantes, an innocent sailor whose life turns bitter and vengeful when he is falsely accused out of envy for his social and professional prospects. When Dantes becomes the self-made Count, however, he uses all of his newly discovered means (rational and financial) to right the wrongs committed against him and his closest friends (a Nietzschean “free spirit” asserting his “master-morality”). Yet he is not only willing to murder, but also to induce others to do so, inflicting even greater harm than he himself had intended. So while he candidly discusses the subtle art of poisoning with Madame de Villefort (Ch 52), the reader cannot but help agree with her assessment: “‘Do you know, my dear count,’ she said, ‘that you are a very terrible reasoner, and that you look at the world through a somewhat distempered medium?’” As with Raskolnikov the discussion is all a “how to” rather than a “why not,” and as with Nietzsche, not even the conscience is enough to stop what is rationally concluded. “After every action requiring exertion, it is conscience that saves us, for it supplies us with a thousand good excuses, of which we alone are judges; and these reasons, howsoever excellent in producing sleep, would avail us but very little before a tribunal, when we were tried for our lives” (Dumas 52). And yet in the end, even the Count finds opportunity to repent. During the Enlightenment a profound shift took place in the relationship of reason to morality. While the Western fountainheads of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian thought were either consistent with or based on revealed religion, these views became increasingly unlikely and then impossible to find among Enlightenment thinkers. Our brief survey of these writers has demonstrated this shift and its consequences. It began with the increasing importance of the virtuous pagans in the historical work of Gibbon. Paine took this one step further by denying all beliefs not verifiable through nature and reason. And Nietzsche rejected both religion and morality to establish a rational “master-morality.” Dostoevsky and Dumas, however, both saw potential problems in this scheme; the former pointing us back to orthodox Christianity and the latter struggling with the implications of utilitarian thought while accepting its effectiveness when placed within a certain moral framework. In the end, we come to see reason as an integral part of faith, morality and politics, but unable on its own to motivate humanity to virtue. Works Cited Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Constance Garnett. MobileReference. iBooks. Dumas, Alexander. The Count of Monte Cristo. Project Gutenberg. iBooks. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. 1930. Trans. David McLintock. New York: Penguin, 2004. Kindle. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed. H.H. Milman. iBooks. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Beyond Good and Evil. 1886. Trans. Helen Zimmern. iBooks. Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete. iBooks. ---. The Age of Reason. The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete. iBooks. ---. The Rights of Man. The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete. iBooks. In our first two parts, we have surveyed the ancient ideals of the lex talionis (an eye for an eye) and the Golden Rule. The tension between these two principles form the core of the threefold medieval ideal of virtue mentioned previously – martial valor, civic virtue and moral excellence – and imply the unaffected meaning of the word as simply strength or ability (as is seen especially in Boethius). We turn now, then, to our Renaissance thinkers to determine the extent of their shift in usage. We begin with the French essayist Montaigne. Like many men of his age, Montaigne rarely uses the word virtue but often addresses issues of morality using other, equally ethical words. The seventh essay of his first book discusses the extent to which “our actions should be judged by our intentions,” as the title in our current edition reads. As the circumstances for his discussion, he chooses the common belief that “Death . . . releases us from all our obligations” (Montaigne I.7). Certainly we cannot be blamed for everything that happens after our death, but contemporary practice went much further than this by seeking to reverse promises made in life through the terms provided in wills and the circumstances of one’s death. Montaigne condemns this breach of faith as a violation of our freedom to voluntarily enter into such compacts. “We cannot be held responsible beyond our strength and means, since the resulting events are quite outside of our control and, in fact, we have power over nothing except our will; which is the basis upon which all rules concerning man’s duty must of necessity be founded” (Montaigne I.7). By breaking faith with others, we violate the most fundamental principle of human relationships, trust, and try to pass responsibility for the breach onto others. In other words, it is wrong to make and break a promise that you never intended to keep. Good intentions (“the right motive,” “whatever is honorable”) must be followed up with right action and at the right time (at the very least, while one is living). Yet, intention alone does not make an action right. Montaigne again cites as his example those who abuse the terms of wills, but in this case it is those who seek to redress grievances in life by passing responsibility for justice onto one’s heirs: But it will not help them to fix a term in so urgent a matter; no attempt to redeem an injury at so small a cost and sacrifice to themselves will be of any avail. They owe something of what is really their own. And the more distressing and inconvenient the payment, the more just and meritorious is the restitution. Penitence must be felt as a weight. (Montaigne I.7) Restitution after death is no restitution at all; it entails no sacrifice, no burden. Payment is certainly made, but at no cost to oneself and with possessions that now belong to another. The departed one has simply robbed Peter to pay Paul. One final example from Montaigne will complete our survey of his work here. In his essay “On the Education of Children” he condemns those students who refrain from evil not out of a desire to do what is good, but out of a lack of ability to do wrong in the first place. He quotes Seneca’s Letters on the subject: “There is a great difference between a man who does not want to sin and one who does not know how to” (Montaigne I.26). The man who does not want to sin (that is, the virtuous man) does not sin because it is truly contrary to his character, trained as he is to take pleasure in what is good and to feel pain at the mere mention of evil. A man may be wicked, however, not because he does wicked things but because he is intent on doing so, he merely lacks the means to achieve his dire purpose. The former is truly virtuous, the latter merely a tyrant-in-waiting. Montaigne therefore upholds the traditional ideal of virtue, but emphasizes the voluntary nature of such a character without necessarily excluding its other connotations. A similar view of virtue can be seen in Rabelais’ work Gargantua. The novel relates the upbringing of a young giant, first at the unskilled hands of the Scholastics, then under the more enlightened leadership of the humanists, and then recounts Gargantua’s noble behavior in service of king (who is his father) and country when his land is attacked by a neighboring power. At the end of this war, the prince seeks to reward a particularly courageous monk by allotting him the land and resources to build a new monastery. While humanists of the day viewed monasteries as out of touch (literally and figuratively) with the world around them and well-intentioned but seriously flawed examples of education, this new monastery was to be different, and consciously so. As opposed to the plethora of rules typical to most such enclaves, “There was but one clause in their Rule: Do what thou wilt, because people who are free, well bred, well taught and conversant with honourable company have by nature an instinct – a goad – which always pricks them towards virtuous acts and withdraws them from vice. They call it Honour” (Rabelais LVII). Here we have all the trappings of classical virtue. Virtue is not simply a character trait; it is an instinct or “noble disposition” (compare Aristotle’s “fixed and permanent disposition”) that leads them to seek what is honorable. Through their education and companionship, these brothers would know both themselves and what they should be doing. It is because of this, and because virtue must be chosen, that no other rules are thought necessary for their governance. To such men, freedom is not license to do what one wants, but the liberty to do what one ought to do. Like Montaigne, then, Rabelais accepts the general definition of virtue while emphasizing its requisite freedom of choice. We move now to Machiavelli, whose views on virtue in The Prince are at once notorious yet also rather misunderstood. Of the writers mentioned here, he uses virtue more than any other (save perhaps Aristotle) but his use of the word is also the most foreign to our usage. This may, however, have more to do with the relationship of Italian to Latin than to any real break in the continuity of Western thought on the subject. As mentioned previously, the form of our English word virtue comes primarily from the Latin virtus, but our English definition comes more from the Greek arête. When we read virtue, then, we tend to read it as moral excellence, rather than the unaffected Latin meaning of strength or ability implied above by Lady Philosophy. Yet for Machiavelli, both the form and function of the Italian virtú are descended from the Latin with little to no influence from the Greek (which he could not read). In translations of his work, then, we see virtú translated not only as virtue, but energy, strength, ability, talent, character, effort, skill, courage, custom, prowess, valor and manhood. Machiavelli therefore tends to use the unaffected meaning of the word as a “certain power of bringing something about” (Whitfield 197) without necessarily downplaying the moral connotation the word has in classical and medieval texts. So what might be made of Machiavelli’s definition of virtue? Given our discussion of his Italian above, as well as his general content elsewhere, it would seem that he places the emphasis concerning virtue on the importance of one’s own actions in achieving the desired ends, regardless of fortune or social mores. Though both fortune and (at least the appearance of) morality remain important parts of a prince’s (and a state’s) overall success, the greatest factor is his own strength and valor. Fortune, exerts all her power where there is no strength [virtú] prepared to oppose her, and turns to smashing things up wherever there are no dikes and restraining dams. And if you look at Italy, which is the seat of all these tremendous changes, where they all began, you will see that she is an open country without any dikes or ditches. If she were protected by forces of proper valor [virtú], as are Germany, Spain, and France, either this flood would never have wrought such destruction as it has, or it might not have occurred at all. (Machiavelli XXV) Just as Montaigne quotes Seneca to elucidate one sense of virtue as moral action, Machiavelli views a reliance on fortune or providence as a weak substitute for bold action, whether it is strictly moral or otherwise. We can therefore conclude with Whitfield that, “Machiavelli is in reasonable company”: firstly, that it never occurred to him that there was a theory of virtú, so that he is innocent of any systematic use of the word itself, as of any systematic exclusion of the idea of virtue; and secondly, that in following Dante and the rest who prefer energy to the lack of it, he still, with them, prefers a good use of it to a bad one. (Whitfield 205) Our final Renaissance thinker is Cervantes, particularly in his most famous novel, Don Quixote. Though Cervantes wrote in the same era as our foregoing writers, his thoughts concerning virtue were somewhat different. His novel begins as a satire of medieval chivalric romances, entertaining for both the title character and the reader, but ends in sorrow, as our disenchanted hero retires while his squire picks up his dreams and sallies forth on his own adventures. By book’s end, the reader begins to see the work as much more than a satire. Yes, Quixote is deluded and perhaps even insane, but when he comes to and sees reality for what it is, we despair with him, hopeless in the onslaught of change he confronts. We are reminded of the nobility and purity of his motives. In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that every madman in the world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honor as for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself, roaming the world over in full armor and on horseback in quest of adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the issue, he was to reap eternal renown and fame. (Cervantes 264) Here again, we see many traits of the sort of traditional virtue discussed above. Though this is obviously Cervantes’ intent (hence his use of satire), the end of his tale makes us look back on the description with a more sympathetic eye. We no longer focus on Quixote’s lost wits, nor his strange notions, but his sense of honor, his desire to serve and gain renown, and his willingness to go into harm’s way to do so. Yet Quixote’s virtue is only as real as his perception of reality. He certainly knows what to do in a given situation and he chooses to do so because it is simply the right thing to do, but he also does not quite understand who he is, or what is actually transpiring around him. Cervantes therefore recognizes that virtue must now take on a different form in his age, but he also mourns the loss of certain qualities that will not only be more difficult to maintain, but perhaps even impossible.
From ancient philosophers and poets to inspired writers, the thinkers of the Middle Ages inherited a vibrant tradition on classical virtue and love and its importance for the individual and the community. Writers of the Renaissance inherited this same tradition, primarily through the influence of Thomism, and reflected this tradition in their own writings. Yet there is also a distinct shift in their treatment of the subject; it is implied by Montaigne but brought to the surface by Rabelais and taken to its logical conclusion by Machiavelli. Free will is central to each of the views of virtue discussed above, but for these Renaissance thinkers, this freedom is nearly absolute. For Aristotle, ethics is a subset of politics, emphasizing individual responsibility to the community and making moral education of first importance to the city, supported by the force of law—themes stressed by the Bible as well. Montaigne, however, emphasizes the volitional aspect of virtue, which tends toward a more private form of morality. Rabelais takes this ethics of individualism and goes one step further, maintaining the outward trappings of virtue, while internalizing all of its rules. And Machiavelli consummates this view by replacing moral virtue with practical skill at the heart of the prince. Only Cervantes seems to realize that something good has been lost. Though he begins his tale mocking such medieval sensibilities, in the end he too has come to mourn the loss of nobility, honor and courage; in short, the loss of virtue. Writers of the Renaissance are certainly within linguistic limits in their shift in the usage of virtue, but in doing so have changed the emphasis from the medieval ideal to one of a more pragmatic and less moral meaning. Works Cited Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Ed. Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1992. Print. Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Trans. J.M. Cohen. London: Penguin, 1993. Print. Rabelais, Francois. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Trans. and ed. M.A. Screech. London: Penguin, 2006. 195-379. Print. Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote. Trans. John Ormsby. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Book 3: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650. Ed. Paul Davis, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. Print. 262-383. Whitfield, J.H. “Big Words, Exact Meanings.” The Prince. Ed. Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1992. Print. 193-206. Last week we began our survey with the ancient and classical view of the lex talionis (an eye for an eye). It is this understanding of justice that haunts expressions of justice in the Ancient World. Simply put, the principle states that the form and severity of a punishment should approximate the form and severity of the crime itself. The Hebrew version of this precept has come down to us as follows: “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out . . . [and] . . . there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth . . . ” (Exodus 21:22-25 ESV, emphasis added). While the vast majority of legal cases could be handled on this basis with simple justice, the paradigm was often invoked in personal matters as well (especially in areas lacking lawfully-constituted authorities), and therefore lent itself to an ethic of vengeance that often proved fatal for the perpetrator, and at times the avenger (well demonstrated in The Oresteia). Various schools of thought, in various places therefore sought a more perfect guide to social behavior, often arriving at something akin to what we refer to as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. One of the oldest forms of the Golden Rule comes down to us in the words of Moses: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:18). Though the emphasis in the lex talionis is on individual rights and complete reciprocity, the Golden Rule stresses the identification of another’s interest with one’s own, so that one’s sense of justice is qualified by the same right to justice as one’s neighbor. The Rule, however, is not merely sound thinking or prudent politics, it is rooted in the character of God himself: “I am the LORD.” Yahweh commands such behavior from Israel, because they have experienced such behavior at his hands. This connection between love and the identity, character and nature of God is later emphasized in the well-known Hebrew Shema (which in Hebrew means to hear). In his second of three final addresses to the children of Israel Moses exhorts them: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:4-6). Yahweh therefore connects the ideal of human character with the reality of divine perfection, and thus expresses the core of the covenant in terms of love, both for God (religion) and man (morality). The Hebrew principle of love not only qualified and mitigated the effects of the lex talionis; it also engaged with other Eastern traditions, both Far and Near. The best-known statement of this principle in the Far East was elucidated and emphasized by Confucius. In his Analects we read, “Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no feelings of opposition to you, whether it is the affairs of a State . . . or . . . of a Family” (XII.2). Two things stand out immediately to Western readers, the first of which is the statement of the Rule in the negative (Do not do to others) rather than the better known affirmative. The second is the pragmatic rationale employed in the Rule’s favor: “there will be no feelings of opposition to you.” Taken together, the Confucian form of the Rule emphasizes non-action versus wrong action, for the sake of blamelessness and harmony. As in Judaism such is not peripheral to Confucian teachings, but instead forms their center, as we later read: “Is there any single saying that one can act upon all day and every day? The Master said, Perhaps the saying about consideration: ‘Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you’” (Analects XV.23). In fact, the Rule can even be said to stand for the entirety of Confucius’ thought: “Our Master’s Way is simply this: Loyalty, consideration” (IV.15). Self-interest is therefore subordinate to the common good, for the happiness of both the individual and the community. Christianity combined the Aristotelian ideal of virtue with the Golden Rule, transforming both by the life of Christ himself. The New Testament essentially assumes the same meaning of arête (which occurs only four times) assigned by Aristotle. Twice the word is used in reference to God (1 Peter 2:9; 2 Peter 1:3), and twice in reference to the character of the individual believer. As with Aristotle, virtue begins with the mind, therefore one who is truly spiritual will fill his mind with thoughts consistent with the gospel. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any [virtue], if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). But there is also an active side of this virtue, a refining influence that seeks to excel through consistent application of current beliefs and the desire to know all the more. “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). Virtue is therefore an early and essential step on the Christian path to Christ-like love. The Christian understanding of the Golden Rule combines the theological reflection of Judaism with the Confucius-like turn of the phrase, to establish the Rule in its most familiar form: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). Christ incorporates the Hebrew ideal of love into Christianity by quoting the words of the Pentateuch above, and then adding, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). The real difference in Christian teaching on the subject is the power of Christ’s own example, especially his death on the cross. If the Son of God humbled himself, became flesh, was crucified as a wrongfully-condemned criminal, and is our example in all things, how else would the believer emulate Christ than as a living sacrifice (see Philippians 2:1-11; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 5:14; Romans 5:6-8)? So (as Aristotle knew well), Christians (at least, at their best) seek not only to do good things or to have a positive impact on the world, but also to be good—in fact, to live like Christ. They are commanded, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16), “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36), forgive “one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32), and love, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). These twin fountainheads of Western thought – Greek philosophy and Christian theology – merge into a single stream during the fourth and last century of the Roman period, as is seen especially in the writings of Boethius. Throughout the Middle Ages, this emphasis on charitable virtue maintained a strong hold on the minds of many European thinkers, due especially to the influence of Aristotle on the Scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas. In a discussion of the triumph of the righteous over the wicked, Lady Philosophy explains to Boethius that his role in life is one of endurance in faith. Moreover, virtue (virtus) is so-called because it relies on its strength (vires) not to be overcome by adversity. Those of you who are in the course of attaining virtue have not travelled this road merely to wallow in luxury or to languish in pleasure. You join battle keenly in mind with every kind of fortune, to ensure that when it is harsh it does not overthrow you, or when it is pleasant it does not corrupt you. Maintain the middle ground with steadfast strength. Whatever falls short of it or goes beyond it holds happiness in contempt, and gains no reward for its toil. (Boethius IV.7.19-21) Like Aristotle, then, Boethius takes a primarily etymological approach to defining virtue, but via its Latin form and in the overall context of God’s providential ordering of the universe. Rhetorically, however, the emphasis remains on the goodness of the action itself, rather than the eternal reward it brings. “Therefore just as goodness itself becomes the reward for good men, so wickedness itself is the punishment for bad men” (Boethius IV.3.12). This provides a sense of meaning to the suffering that we encounter on earth, and even sets suffering as a necessary forerunner to full virtue, reminding us once more of the martial origins of the word. Boethius also maintains Aristotle’s emphasis on the golden mean between two equally undesirable extremes, reminding us to neither fall short nor go beyond the dictates of the divine will.
Works Cited Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1979. iBooks. Boethius, Anicius Manlius Serverinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. P.G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford, 2000. Print. Confucius. The Analects. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Book 1: The Ancient World, Beginnings-100 C.E. Ed. Paul Davis, et al. Boston: Bedford, 2004. 1591-1601. Print. The ESV Study Bible. Ed. Lane T. Dennis & Wayne Grudem. Wheaton: Crossway, 2008. Bible Study with Accordance. Throughout history the relationship of reason to morality and its consequences has occupied more volumes than perhaps any other subject. This is in part because of the nature of the topics themselves; reason is at the heart of how we come to know things, and morality is the basis for how we view our rights and responsibilities toward one’s self and others. Prior to the Enlightenment, this discussion was largely conducted within two broad traditions (at least, within Western civilization): (1) Greco-Roman thought and (2) Judeo-Christian theology. In both traditions, the discussion of these subjects was expressed largely in terms of the logos (reason, Word), ethos (habit, custom, mores) and arête (excellence, virtue), emphasizing an ethics that balanced the roles of nature, habit and reason, while also tempering the demands of both the individual and the community. And yet the Enlightenment was not the first indication of change. The shift away from traditional ethics began during the Renaissance, as writers began emphasizing a more pragmatic approach to ethics, education and politics. In this series, we will briefly (and selectively!) survey the history of this shift from its classical roots, through the Renaissance and Enlightenment, before concluding with a brief look at their legacy today. In the Ancient Greek mind, it was “a lawgiver’s prime duty to arrange for the education of the young,” so much, in fact, that any new constitution required a system of education as the basis for its very existence (Politics 1337a). The purpose, however, was not the development of a good worker or a good citizen, but rather a good person. For Aristotle, such a conclusion followed naturally from his view of human nature. In his Nicomachean Ethics, he refers to the ultimate good of humanity as happiness, and defines such as, “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue . . . in a complete lifetime” (NE 1098a). He formed, then, an integral connection between nature, activity and character, which he inferred from the very meaning of the word ethics: “Moral goodness [Gk. ethikos], on the other hand, is the result of habit [Gk. ethos], from which it has actually got its name, being a slight modification of the word ethos” (NE 1103a). Human nature therefore pointed to happiness as the end of human existence and to ethics as the true subject of education. The etymology and uses of the words usually translated virtue (in Hebrew, Greek and Latin) suggest at least three meanings: martial valor, civic virtue and moral excellence. Aristotle tends to lean toward the last of these three meanings, without losing the sense of praiseworthy public service that is to be equally inferred from his works. “But virtuous acts are not done in a just or temperate way merely because they have a certain quality, but only if the agent also acts in a certain state, that is, (1) if he knows what he is doing, (2) if he chooses it, and chooses it for its own sake, and (3) if he does it from a fixed and permanent disposition” (NE 1105a, emphasis in original). Virtue therefore is character rooted in the knowledge of moral principles and expressed through conscious moral choice. Each of these parts is equally important, as is seen in his discussion on emotions. No emotion is inherently wrong or right, “But to have these feelings at the right times on the right grounds towards the right people for the right motive and in the right way is to feel them to an intermediate, that is to the best, degree; and this is the mark of virtue” (NE 1106b). No action should be judged, then, without a proper understanding of the context in which it was performed. Virtue without prudence is not virtue at all; “virtue ensures the correctness of the end at which we aim, and prudence that of the means towards it” (NE 1144a). Though Aristotle could have pointed to historical examples of such virtue, he was more apt to recommend artistic representations, particularly in the form of drama. In his view, “A tragedy . . . is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself . . . with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions” (Poetics 1449b). For this reason, tragedians do not deal with unrealistic characters that are either wholly good or wholly bad, but instead prefer characters we meet daily in the street and in the mirror: an “intermediate kind of personage, a man not preeminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgement” (Poetics 1453a). So, through no seeming fault of his own, the tragic hero becomes entangled in a situation that can only lead to a messy end, made possible dramatically through reversal and recognition (see Poetics 1452a). Thus, as Aristotle points out in his definition, the audience is overcome with a sense of pity or fear (and at times, both) in order to refocus his moral compass. A strong example of this sort of tragedy and its affective and ethical power is found in Aeschylus’ trilogy, The Oresteia. Though modern readers are separated from the poet and his work by over two thousand years, the attraction of the plays and the tragedy of Atreus’ sons remains strong, as pointed out by Fagles and Stanford in their Introduction, “It is as if crime were contagious – and perhaps it is – the dead pursued the living for revenge, and revenge could only breed more guilt” (Fagles & Stanford 22). For both the poet and the reader, then, fate and justice become the unifying themes of the plays, drawing together horror after horror, and forming one tremendous train of tragedies. One of the earliest examples of this in The Oresteia is Agamemnon’s deliberation of whether to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia: “Obey, obey, or a heavy doom will crush me! – Oh but doom will crush me once I rend my child, the glory of my house – a father’s hands are stained, blood of a young girl streaks the altar. Pain both ways and what is worse” (Agamemnon 190)? The choice is clearly tragic (either road leads to disaster), but the reader tends to agree with Clytemnestra that the only just response to the king’s choice is his own death at her hands: the mother of the slain, and the wife of the adulterer. In The Libation Bearers, this bond between fate and justice grows even stronger. Electra and Orestes are convinced that natural justice now demands the death of their mother. Electra cries to the gods: “Both fists at once come down, come down – Zeus, crush their skulls! Kill! Kill! Now give the land some faith, I beg you, from these ancient wrongs bring forth our rights” (Libation 256). But in the Chorus’ response there is both hope and caution: “It is the law: when the blood of slaughter wets the ground it wants more blood. Slaughter cries for the Fury of those long dead to bring destruction on destruction churning in its wake” (Libation 256-7; see too 253). Legal rights, then, while spurring on the siblings to avenge their father’s death, work both ways: perpetuating the tragic chain of killings and bringing Orestes himself under the penalty of the curse. He comes to recognize this doom before he commits the act – “I dread to kill my mother!” (Libation 285) – but spurred on by the reminder of his oaths, he fulfills Apollo’s command. The pain is felt immediately: “So [Zeus] may come, my witness when the day of judgement comes, that I pursued this bloody death with justice, mother’s death . [. . .] I must escape this blood . . . it is my own” (Libation 292, 295). Fate and justice thus unite to bring down first Agamemnon, then Clytemnestra and finally Orestes. Though by this point the reader has long pitied the family, it is the Furies who demonstrate the cruel consistency of this natural form of justice, thereby ensuring that their ideas of justice will never win the day. In their exchange with Athena they point out the antiquity of their powers and, therefore, the superiority of their cause: “Young god, you have ridden down the powers proud with age. . . . No, you’ll give me blood for blood, you must” (Eumenides 307, 378)! For them, the lex talionis is justice, plain and simple. Athena, however, recognizes that while this complies with the letter of the law, this is not the same as complete or divine justice: “And you are set on the name of justice rather than the act” (Eumenides 388). Apollo agrees, exhorting the goddess: “You know the rules, now turn them into justice” (Eumenides 397). So just as fate demands fulfillment, true justice demands consideration of mercy (Gk. eleos): only eleos will end the cycle of death. By uniting his plays by these themes, and then overturning them, Aeschylus demonstrates to his audience (both then and now) the ethical intent of his work. First, there is a sense of purpose in this world, whether we call it fate, predestination, or telos. Fate, however, controls only human action, thus one of the chief issues throughout the trilogy is how each individual – Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes – will be held responsible for their crimes, or whether, in fact, a crime in each case was committed. So while Agamemnon’s choice was, “predetermined supernaturally by the gods and genetically by Agamemnon’s nature,” he is “more than a victim of his fate, he is its agent with a vengeance” (Fagles & Stanford 25-26). Clytemnestra, too, by acting primarily for herself and her lover is condemned to death by Apollo. And in the end, it is only Orestes who finds purging and relief from the curse, having acted only at the prompting of the gods rather than a mere desire for revenge. And yet, he is acquitted by only one vote, that of Athena herself. Killing is still killing, but is not always murder. So ethical decisions, though made within an environment that is largely not chosen by the character, still demands a decision on their part, a decision for which they are responsible. But in the end, they and we both still hope for mercy. Works Cited Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1979. iBooks. Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Hugh Treddenick. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print. ---. Poetics. Trans. Ingram Bywater. The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle. New York: Random House, 1984. Print. ---. The Politics. Trans. Trevor J. Saunders. London: Penguin, 1992. Print. Fagles, Robert & W.B. Stanford. Introduction. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1979. iBooks. |
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