Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1976
The God of Death and the God of Life: A Study of Nietzsche J E F F R E Y G. S O B O S A N , C.S.C.
Introduction T h e period beginning around 1750 and e n c o m p a s s i n g most of the n i n e t e e n t h century has been described as an age in which m e n tried to sever all relations with God. Rationalism in philosophy and e n l i g h t e n m e n t in the physical sciences were its d o m i n a n t characteristics. So, too, was its o p t i m i s m . For it was an age in which m a n declared himself i n d e p e n d e n t of the Deity and sought to s h a t t e r the old religious m y t h s in order to create in their place a new m y t h of his own. Best stated in Nietzschean terms, it was an age in which God was d e a d and the new S u p e r m a n would soon reign. T h e new m y t h with which the old ones were replaced was not just a n o t h e r religious m y t h ; it was a m y t h of m a n himself. T h r o u g h it men thought themselves c a p a b l e of far greater security, freedom, and peace of mind t h a n the old m y t h s h a d ever provided.
The god of death and the god of life Friedrich Nietzsche believed t h a t in the course of history m e n h a d created death, and t h a t the future of h u m a n i t y thus d e p e n d e d upon their a s s u m p t i o n of the power to create life. B u t he also believed t h a t the only way they could do this was by a p p r o p r i a t i n g the t a s k of m a k i n g themselves, which for centuries they h a d surrendered to the pitiful God of Jesus. His p r o p h e t of the future, Z a r a t h u s t r a , embodies the yearnings of every m a n who wishes to b u r y forever t h e Christianity t h a t he believes has enslaved m e n to suffering, self-loathing, a n d death. T h a t strangely moving and poetic journal of his, whose purpose it was to herald b o t h Christianity's d e a t h a n d the resurrection of m a n , thus carries its author to the heights of both indignation and o p t i m i s m . For despite claims to the contrary, Nietzsche did indeed m e a n his philosophy to be optimistic. H e foresaw the future as a t i m e of rebirth and renewal when m e n would free t h e m s e l v e s from self-imposed m e n t a l shackles a n d misery. In Ecce Homo he calls himself a " d i o n y s i a n " philosopher who desires for m a n k i n d the rebirth of a tragedy t h a t is The Rev. Jeffrey G. Sobosan, C.S.C., M.Th., a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, is engaged in research at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has written articles published in periodicals concerned with religious and philosophical thought in this country and abroad. 48
The God of Death and the God of Life: A Study of Nietzsche
49
hard and manly and life-affirming. It would stand in opposition to the life-denying religion of pity that he thought Christianity had foisted upon humanity and that had substituted "the mere shadow of a man for a man of flesh and blood."1 The struggle of man for ascendancy over himself is epitomized by Nietzsche in the conflict he sets up between Christ and Dionysius. The former has reigned, we are told, in the name of death and is opposed by the resurrected Dionysius, who will some day celebrate with free men the future of life. But this is possible, we are also told, only if the god of death is killed once and for all on the cross. F o r only in this way can man raise himself to his rightful position as sovereign of the universe, joyfully existing and eternally recurring. In Dionysius, Nietzsche has chosen an apt figure for his purpose, one that reveals not only the optimistic life-affirmation that his philosophy stresses, but also the chaos of self-destruction that underlies it. According to the most ancient sources of the myth, Dionysius had been savagely torn to pieces by the Titans after his first birth, only to be reborn as the son of Zeus and his human lover Semele. As such, he was held to possess the dual nature of god and man, thus coming to be characterized as both a reveler and an avenger, an author of joyful life and a perpetrator of ruthless destruction. Through Orphism, he also became a central figure in later beliefs in immortality and a mythical assurance that death does not end all. Though it could be objected at this point that according to the New Testament Jesus also died and rose again, Nietzsche is convinced that he was the product of a self-immolating and life-denying impulse that belief in his resurrection only perpetuates. Rather it is Dionysius alone who invites men to join him in song and dance and the celebration of life. He alone is strong, whereas Christ is weak. He revels in his youthful power of creating and destroying, whereas Christ teaches a doctrine of shame, resentment, and negation. His followers seek the joys of life because they are in love with it, whereas the followers of Christ seek escape from life because they are afraid of it. They are afraid of the freedom of life's affirmation, and like the followers of Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor prefer slavery in its place. All this is to say that what passes for virtue in Christianity is only the creation of the sick and perishing, and that new values that will expose and overcome it by reaffirming faith in this world are needed. In other words, men must learn to will to be themselves, to create and be what they are becoming by giving a "holy Yea unto life," or in the words of Camus, "to reproduce it, to become its great artist. ''2 The spirit of gravity as the spirit of Christianity represents all that weighs man down. And the god whom Christians worship is the principle of death incarnate, the ball and chain bound to the legs of a humanity enslaved to life-denying hopes for another, better world. By condemning these hopes, by sanctifying the possibilities of humanity and the latent joyfulness of earthly existence, Nietzsche hoped to hail the rebirth of the human aspiration to live. For the nihilism of the Christian life and the resentment by which it dams the sources of life's powers imply nothing less than
50
Journal of Religion and Health
a resentment of life itself, and therefore are like unto death. " T h i s hate of the h u man ," he writes, "and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring--all this means--let us have the courage to grasp i t - - a will for Nothingness, a will opposed t o life, a renunciation of the most fundamental conditions of life,' '3 In other words, whereas the Christian will say , I suffer, it must be somebody's fault" and with it create the notion of a bad conscience to vent his weakness on, Nietzsche's dionysian man simply accepts his suffering for what it is, without seeking explanations or escapes from it. For unlike the Christian, he has mastered himself, his false hopes and impossible dreams, and can, therefore, joyfully embrace life's suffering, and even its death. In B e y o n d Good and Evil, Nietzsche blames this life-negating attitude of Christians on~ the Christian church, particularly when it assumed the task of converting all desire for earthly existence into contempt for it. It would be somewhat naive, of course, to deny that this is a fairly accurate appraisal of the church's intent at certain times in history. It would be equally naive, therefore, to condemn Nietzsche for looking at such moments and thinking the worse of what he saw. Nor was he alone in this. Along with many others, William Blake had done the same, especially in such works as "London" and "T he Garden of Love." This last in particular ends with a summary of Christianity's restrictiveness with which Nietzsche would have heartily agreed: "And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,/And binding with briars my joys and desires." Like Nietzsche, Blake had also rejected Christianity as he often found i t ; i t s condemnation by both may be justly ascribed to the repugnant encounters each had with those who professed to be Christians. However, one must also ask if they were not unwittingly confusing Christianity with certain widespread, though inaccurate caricatures. To put it differently: Is Christianity in fact a religion of pity, or a religion of love? And are not the two essentially different? Our answers to these questions will determine the degree to which any man's historical surroundings and personal biases must be considered in evaluating his position on Christianity. Our answers to them will also determine whether or not the deity Nietzsche attacked and sought to bury does indeed deserve to be forgotten by men. It would be unrealistic, of course, for anyone to christen Nietzsche as some sort of covert Christian reformer, and thus to disregard the overtly destructive and unchristian aspects of his thought. To be sure, his Zarathustra praises life and heralds the attainment of a humanly realizable paradise on earth. But while we can admit that a man must take responsibility for his own actions, it is not at all clear that the Nietzschean autonomous man is sufficient unto himself, Not so confidently as he do we look forward to the "Great Noontide" of man, when the sun is at its peak and life has been affirmed. Nietzsche's way no longer appears to be a totally desirable one, especially since we have so recently in this century witnessed the annihilating results of an unbridled and self-serving will to power. Behind the faCade of his optimism and creative will power there lurks a tremendous capacity for destruction, w hi ch becomes all the more real and
The God of Death and the God o[ Life: A Study of Nietzsche
51
terrifying now that men have the tools to carry out a systematic plan of human eradication. Of course, we cannot possibly attribute to Nietzsche all the major war-sins of our century. But we can point out that his philosophy bears the seeds of dual and contradictory strains. For the god t h a t men like Hitler have sought to erect in place of the dead God of Christians is not a god of life, but of death itself. Nietzsche had rejected the Christian God because he seemed to justify death in life and the total extinction of human nobility. But one wonders if he ever really and conscientiously considered the forces of death and suffering within his own god Dionysius. We need only recall Euripedes's play The Bacchae, in which Dionysius causes Pentheus to be torn to pieces because he does not recognize the god's divinity. It is Pentheus who in this instance becomes the tragic hero, not Dionysius. Through the play, in fact, our admiration of the savage god grows smaller and smaller, until we can well say with the messenger: "This exultation in disaster--it is not right." The god can no longer expect worship from men because their righteous suffering has raised them above his level. To be sure, they had once owed him honor because of his creative powers, but his annihilation of Pentheus has negated this obligation and thus freed them from their bond of fidelity to him. What was it, then, that Nietzsche desired in a rebirth of tragedy? It seems he hoped for a regeneration of the human capacity to endure suffering without giving in to pity, and to face death without hope of heaven. He wanted men to become divine-like by hardening themselves and usurping the power of the gods who held the key to death. But what god, we may rightly ask, presides over death today if not that of ideologies committed to this very task of making men absolute masters over life and death? And what god has caused men to suffer so horribly that by Nietzsche's own teaching we can no longer afford to pay him reverence? Tragedy has indeed been reborn, but now a different god of death must die, so that once again men may seek the God of life. If men will become divine-like today, if they will become truly free, they will have to rediscover the Christian God. There are certainly no easy or lasting solutions to the mysteries of suffering and death. In fact, perhaps there are only questions. But questions, if asked with the proper spirit of openness, can lead men to ascribe a different significance to the facts of existence than did Nietzsche. He asked Christianity what it had to offer him, and received only pity, weakness, and hypocrisy in response. And in the context of his own experience he may have been somewhat justified in that estimation. But it could also be argued that his estimation was too narrow-minded; that in a broader perspective Christ can be seen as bringing a strong, positive love to the world, a "yea-saying" love that transcends any weakness. In this we can even turn Nietzsche's own arguments from history against him. For whereas his Dionysius, along with Zarathustra and his destructive message of power, are now things of the past; Jesus has remained present, along with his disturbing message of love. To be sure, men in every age react to him differently: some with acceptance, others with indifference, a few with overt hostility, and some with intense hatred.
52
Journal of Religion and Health
Perhaps he may again be killed in our own age. But his death will only be followed by another resurrection, once again exhibiting the triumph of love over power, of life over death. Nietzsche was indeed correct in saying in the Genealogy of Morals that men need a god and a goal and that they will choose nothingness rather than no t choose at all. But he failed to realize that the new god in whose image he wished to fashion mankind was nothing less than that god of nothingness whom he despised. Fortunately, however, the choice does not rest solely between Nietzsche's Dionysius on the one hand and a god of pity on the other. For as men confront the problems of becoming more human and more divine, they als0 have accessible to them the God of life of whom Christ spoke. We cannot deny, of course, that although some of his thinking has been mistranslated into horrible reality in this century, many of Nietzsche's insights into life, death, and suffering still do lend themselves to a solid affirmation of life. For we can admire the spirit with which he yearned for life to be held sacred rather than merely tolerated, or worse, denied. And we can appreciate his insight that men may well have to deny their own gods in order to discover the one God who is the author and sustenance of life. So, too, can we agree with his conviction that it should never again be said of men that they do not know how to love God except by crucifying m an2 For we yearn for life, for happiness, for freedom from death. And from the many times that we will suffer, the many times that we will die, and the many times we will rise again before death actually comes, we must learn what it really means to die to death in order to create life. We cannot afford to create death again. Conclusion
By substituting his own ideal for that of Christianity and by denying the transcendent divine in favor of the earthly human, Nietzsche had in effect attempted to divinize man by giving him the power to divinize himself. If we are to believe Carl Jufig, however, this attempt is neither peculiar to nor unique with Nietzsche; it is rather the only acceptable psychic result. "For if we want to know," he writes, "what happens when the idea of God is no longer projected as an autonomous ei~tity, this is the answer of the unconscious psyche: the unconscious produces the idea of a deified or divine man. ''s Unfortunately, though, when God dies, man discovers that despite this psychic activity he is in fact not only no more divine, but usually far less good than when God was alive and influential. In thisway, the appalling truth that Nietzsche's doctrines of the Superman, the will to power, and the Master Race did not work left the modern myth of autonomous man without any reference to the divine and left existentialism as the heir to his collapsed dreams. The failure of the divinized man still leaves man in a state of revolt against God. It does not necessarily reinstate a healthy tensiola between man and the transcendent ground of his existence; that is, the tension between the amor sui and amor Dei, which is faith. In short, the self that could not recognize the gods without wanting to be one discovers that this is impossible, but is not able to rectify the harm that has been done.
The God of Death and the God of Life: A Study of Nietzsche
53
References 1. Camus, A., The Rebel, Anthony Bower, trans. New York, Vintage Books, 1956, p. 67. 2. Ibid., p. 74. Rilke expresses a similar sentiment when he writes: "To think that once I was among those who suspect life and distrust its power. Now ! would love it at all events. Whatever of it is mine I would love with tenderness, and would bring to ripeness within myself all possibilities." Cited in Heller, E., The Disinherited Mind. New York, Farrar, Strauss, 1957, p. 132. 3. Nietzsche, F. W., "Genealogy of Morals," H. B. Samuels, trans. In The Philosophy of Nietzsche. New York, Modern Library, 1952, p. 178. 4. , "Thus Spake Zarathrusta," Thomas Common, trans. In The Philosophy of Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 91. 5. Jung, C. G., "Psychology and Religion: West and East." In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 11. Bollingen Series XX, New York, Pantheon Books, 1958, p. 96.
The God of Death and the God of Life: A Study of Nietzsche J E F F R E Y G. S O B O S A N , C.S.C.
Introduction T h e period beginning around 1750 and e n c o m p a s s i n g most of the n i n e t e e n t h century has been described as an age in which m e n tried to sever all relations with God. Rationalism in philosophy and e n l i g h t e n m e n t in the physical sciences were its d o m i n a n t characteristics. So, too, was its o p t i m i s m . For it was an age in which m a n declared himself i n d e p e n d e n t of the Deity and sought to s h a t t e r the old religious m y t h s in order to create in their place a new m y t h of his own. Best stated in Nietzschean terms, it was an age in which God was d e a d and the new S u p e r m a n would soon reign. T h e new m y t h with which the old ones were replaced was not just a n o t h e r religious m y t h ; it was a m y t h of m a n himself. T h r o u g h it men thought themselves c a p a b l e of far greater security, freedom, and peace of mind t h a n the old m y t h s h a d ever provided.
The god of death and the god of life Friedrich Nietzsche believed t h a t in the course of history m e n h a d created death, and t h a t the future of h u m a n i t y thus d e p e n d e d upon their a s s u m p t i o n of the power to create life. B u t he also believed t h a t the only way they could do this was by a p p r o p r i a t i n g the t a s k of m a k i n g themselves, which for centuries they h a d surrendered to the pitiful God of Jesus. His p r o p h e t of the future, Z a r a t h u s t r a , embodies the yearnings of every m a n who wishes to b u r y forever t h e Christianity t h a t he believes has enslaved m e n to suffering, self-loathing, a n d death. T h a t strangely moving and poetic journal of his, whose purpose it was to herald b o t h Christianity's d e a t h a n d the resurrection of m a n , thus carries its author to the heights of both indignation and o p t i m i s m . For despite claims to the contrary, Nietzsche did indeed m e a n his philosophy to be optimistic. H e foresaw the future as a t i m e of rebirth and renewal when m e n would free t h e m s e l v e s from self-imposed m e n t a l shackles a n d misery. In Ecce Homo he calls himself a " d i o n y s i a n " philosopher who desires for m a n k i n d the rebirth of a tragedy t h a t is The Rev. Jeffrey G. Sobosan, C.S.C., M.Th., a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, is engaged in research at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has written articles published in periodicals concerned with religious and philosophical thought in this country and abroad. 48
The God of Death and the God of Life: A Study of Nietzsche
49
hard and manly and life-affirming. It would stand in opposition to the life-denying religion of pity that he thought Christianity had foisted upon humanity and that had substituted "the mere shadow of a man for a man of flesh and blood."1 The struggle of man for ascendancy over himself is epitomized by Nietzsche in the conflict he sets up between Christ and Dionysius. The former has reigned, we are told, in the name of death and is opposed by the resurrected Dionysius, who will some day celebrate with free men the future of life. But this is possible, we are also told, only if the god of death is killed once and for all on the cross. F o r only in this way can man raise himself to his rightful position as sovereign of the universe, joyfully existing and eternally recurring. In Dionysius, Nietzsche has chosen an apt figure for his purpose, one that reveals not only the optimistic life-affirmation that his philosophy stresses, but also the chaos of self-destruction that underlies it. According to the most ancient sources of the myth, Dionysius had been savagely torn to pieces by the Titans after his first birth, only to be reborn as the son of Zeus and his human lover Semele. As such, he was held to possess the dual nature of god and man, thus coming to be characterized as both a reveler and an avenger, an author of joyful life and a perpetrator of ruthless destruction. Through Orphism, he also became a central figure in later beliefs in immortality and a mythical assurance that death does not end all. Though it could be objected at this point that according to the New Testament Jesus also died and rose again, Nietzsche is convinced that he was the product of a self-immolating and life-denying impulse that belief in his resurrection only perpetuates. Rather it is Dionysius alone who invites men to join him in song and dance and the celebration of life. He alone is strong, whereas Christ is weak. He revels in his youthful power of creating and destroying, whereas Christ teaches a doctrine of shame, resentment, and negation. His followers seek the joys of life because they are in love with it, whereas the followers of Christ seek escape from life because they are afraid of it. They are afraid of the freedom of life's affirmation, and like the followers of Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor prefer slavery in its place. All this is to say that what passes for virtue in Christianity is only the creation of the sick and perishing, and that new values that will expose and overcome it by reaffirming faith in this world are needed. In other words, men must learn to will to be themselves, to create and be what they are becoming by giving a "holy Yea unto life," or in the words of Camus, "to reproduce it, to become its great artist. ''2 The spirit of gravity as the spirit of Christianity represents all that weighs man down. And the god whom Christians worship is the principle of death incarnate, the ball and chain bound to the legs of a humanity enslaved to life-denying hopes for another, better world. By condemning these hopes, by sanctifying the possibilities of humanity and the latent joyfulness of earthly existence, Nietzsche hoped to hail the rebirth of the human aspiration to live. For the nihilism of the Christian life and the resentment by which it dams the sources of life's powers imply nothing less than
50
Journal of Religion and Health
a resentment of life itself, and therefore are like unto death. " T h i s hate of the h u man ," he writes, "and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring--all this means--let us have the courage to grasp i t - - a will for Nothingness, a will opposed t o life, a renunciation of the most fundamental conditions of life,' '3 In other words, whereas the Christian will say , I suffer, it must be somebody's fault" and with it create the notion of a bad conscience to vent his weakness on, Nietzsche's dionysian man simply accepts his suffering for what it is, without seeking explanations or escapes from it. For unlike the Christian, he has mastered himself, his false hopes and impossible dreams, and can, therefore, joyfully embrace life's suffering, and even its death. In B e y o n d Good and Evil, Nietzsche blames this life-negating attitude of Christians on~ the Christian church, particularly when it assumed the task of converting all desire for earthly existence into contempt for it. It would be somewhat naive, of course, to deny that this is a fairly accurate appraisal of the church's intent at certain times in history. It would be equally naive, therefore, to condemn Nietzsche for looking at such moments and thinking the worse of what he saw. Nor was he alone in this. Along with many others, William Blake had done the same, especially in such works as "London" and "T he Garden of Love." This last in particular ends with a summary of Christianity's restrictiveness with which Nietzsche would have heartily agreed: "And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,/And binding with briars my joys and desires." Like Nietzsche, Blake had also rejected Christianity as he often found i t ; i t s condemnation by both may be justly ascribed to the repugnant encounters each had with those who professed to be Christians. However, one must also ask if they were not unwittingly confusing Christianity with certain widespread, though inaccurate caricatures. To put it differently: Is Christianity in fact a religion of pity, or a religion of love? And are not the two essentially different? Our answers to these questions will determine the degree to which any man's historical surroundings and personal biases must be considered in evaluating his position on Christianity. Our answers to them will also determine whether or not the deity Nietzsche attacked and sought to bury does indeed deserve to be forgotten by men. It would be unrealistic, of course, for anyone to christen Nietzsche as some sort of covert Christian reformer, and thus to disregard the overtly destructive and unchristian aspects of his thought. To be sure, his Zarathustra praises life and heralds the attainment of a humanly realizable paradise on earth. But while we can admit that a man must take responsibility for his own actions, it is not at all clear that the Nietzschean autonomous man is sufficient unto himself, Not so confidently as he do we look forward to the "Great Noontide" of man, when the sun is at its peak and life has been affirmed. Nietzsche's way no longer appears to be a totally desirable one, especially since we have so recently in this century witnessed the annihilating results of an unbridled and self-serving will to power. Behind the faCade of his optimism and creative will power there lurks a tremendous capacity for destruction, w hi ch becomes all the more real and
The God of Death and the God o[ Life: A Study of Nietzsche
51
terrifying now that men have the tools to carry out a systematic plan of human eradication. Of course, we cannot possibly attribute to Nietzsche all the major war-sins of our century. But we can point out that his philosophy bears the seeds of dual and contradictory strains. For the god t h a t men like Hitler have sought to erect in place of the dead God of Christians is not a god of life, but of death itself. Nietzsche had rejected the Christian God because he seemed to justify death in life and the total extinction of human nobility. But one wonders if he ever really and conscientiously considered the forces of death and suffering within his own god Dionysius. We need only recall Euripedes's play The Bacchae, in which Dionysius causes Pentheus to be torn to pieces because he does not recognize the god's divinity. It is Pentheus who in this instance becomes the tragic hero, not Dionysius. Through the play, in fact, our admiration of the savage god grows smaller and smaller, until we can well say with the messenger: "This exultation in disaster--it is not right." The god can no longer expect worship from men because their righteous suffering has raised them above his level. To be sure, they had once owed him honor because of his creative powers, but his annihilation of Pentheus has negated this obligation and thus freed them from their bond of fidelity to him. What was it, then, that Nietzsche desired in a rebirth of tragedy? It seems he hoped for a regeneration of the human capacity to endure suffering without giving in to pity, and to face death without hope of heaven. He wanted men to become divine-like by hardening themselves and usurping the power of the gods who held the key to death. But what god, we may rightly ask, presides over death today if not that of ideologies committed to this very task of making men absolute masters over life and death? And what god has caused men to suffer so horribly that by Nietzsche's own teaching we can no longer afford to pay him reverence? Tragedy has indeed been reborn, but now a different god of death must die, so that once again men may seek the God of life. If men will become divine-like today, if they will become truly free, they will have to rediscover the Christian God. There are certainly no easy or lasting solutions to the mysteries of suffering and death. In fact, perhaps there are only questions. But questions, if asked with the proper spirit of openness, can lead men to ascribe a different significance to the facts of existence than did Nietzsche. He asked Christianity what it had to offer him, and received only pity, weakness, and hypocrisy in response. And in the context of his own experience he may have been somewhat justified in that estimation. But it could also be argued that his estimation was too narrow-minded; that in a broader perspective Christ can be seen as bringing a strong, positive love to the world, a "yea-saying" love that transcends any weakness. In this we can even turn Nietzsche's own arguments from history against him. For whereas his Dionysius, along with Zarathustra and his destructive message of power, are now things of the past; Jesus has remained present, along with his disturbing message of love. To be sure, men in every age react to him differently: some with acceptance, others with indifference, a few with overt hostility, and some with intense hatred.
52
Journal of Religion and Health
Perhaps he may again be killed in our own age. But his death will only be followed by another resurrection, once again exhibiting the triumph of love over power, of life over death. Nietzsche was indeed correct in saying in the Genealogy of Morals that men need a god and a goal and that they will choose nothingness rather than no t choose at all. But he failed to realize that the new god in whose image he wished to fashion mankind was nothing less than that god of nothingness whom he despised. Fortunately, however, the choice does not rest solely between Nietzsche's Dionysius on the one hand and a god of pity on the other. For as men confront the problems of becoming more human and more divine, they als0 have accessible to them the God of life of whom Christ spoke. We cannot deny, of course, that although some of his thinking has been mistranslated into horrible reality in this century, many of Nietzsche's insights into life, death, and suffering still do lend themselves to a solid affirmation of life. For we can admire the spirit with which he yearned for life to be held sacred rather than merely tolerated, or worse, denied. And we can appreciate his insight that men may well have to deny their own gods in order to discover the one God who is the author and sustenance of life. So, too, can we agree with his conviction that it should never again be said of men that they do not know how to love God except by crucifying m an2 For we yearn for life, for happiness, for freedom from death. And from the many times that we will suffer, the many times that we will die, and the many times we will rise again before death actually comes, we must learn what it really means to die to death in order to create life. We cannot afford to create death again. Conclusion
By substituting his own ideal for that of Christianity and by denying the transcendent divine in favor of the earthly human, Nietzsche had in effect attempted to divinize man by giving him the power to divinize himself. If we are to believe Carl Jufig, however, this attempt is neither peculiar to nor unique with Nietzsche; it is rather the only acceptable psychic result. "For if we want to know," he writes, "what happens when the idea of God is no longer projected as an autonomous ei~tity, this is the answer of the unconscious psyche: the unconscious produces the idea of a deified or divine man. ''s Unfortunately, though, when God dies, man discovers that despite this psychic activity he is in fact not only no more divine, but usually far less good than when God was alive and influential. In thisway, the appalling truth that Nietzsche's doctrines of the Superman, the will to power, and the Master Race did not work left the modern myth of autonomous man without any reference to the divine and left existentialism as the heir to his collapsed dreams. The failure of the divinized man still leaves man in a state of revolt against God. It does not necessarily reinstate a healthy tensiola between man and the transcendent ground of his existence; that is, the tension between the amor sui and amor Dei, which is faith. In short, the self that could not recognize the gods without wanting to be one discovers that this is impossible, but is not able to rectify the harm that has been done.
The God of Death and the God of Life: A Study of Nietzsche
53
References 1. Camus, A., The Rebel, Anthony Bower, trans. New York, Vintage Books, 1956, p. 67. 2. Ibid., p. 74. Rilke expresses a similar sentiment when he writes: "To think that once I was among those who suspect life and distrust its power. Now ! would love it at all events. Whatever of it is mine I would love with tenderness, and would bring to ripeness within myself all possibilities." Cited in Heller, E., The Disinherited Mind. New York, Farrar, Strauss, 1957, p. 132. 3. Nietzsche, F. W., "Genealogy of Morals," H. B. Samuels, trans. In The Philosophy of Nietzsche. New York, Modern Library, 1952, p. 178. 4. , "Thus Spake Zarathrusta," Thomas Common, trans. In The Philosophy of Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 91. 5. Jung, C. G., "Psychology and Religion: West and East." In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 11. Bollingen Series XX, New York, Pantheon Books, 1958, p. 96.
