"Do we ever find our Quaker identity in conflict with our academic-philosophy identity, and if so, how do we respond to such conflicts?"
I mentioned my own struggle with this question during the roundtable at FAHE, but wasn't too specific about it. My AOS is 19th century continental, and although I make gestures towards Kierkegaard and even Hegel on occasion, my heart lies closer to Marx and especially Nietzsche--both serious critics of Christianity and religion in general. Right now I'm finishing my manuscript for a book on Nietzsche, so I'll be done in time for classes--both the classes I'm teaching and the classes I'm taking at ESR. I mention that because I'm immersed in an atmosphere where the question of Quaker identity, and more generally Christian identity, is a constant topic. What I find as I read Nietzsche is, more often than not, he's right on target. For instance,
"It is not their love for humanity but rather the impotence of their love for humanity that keeps today's Christians from--burning us." Beyond Good and Evil, 104.
I'll offer some exegesis on that if necessary--exactly how I see this aphorism instantiated in a contemporary seminary--and I could easily point to many other similar passages in Nietzsche, but the short version is that I find Nietzsche's comments resonate with me in a way that I find disconcerting. Other than making a lot of jokes about it, I'm not sure how to reconcile these two parts of my identity.
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2 comments:
Craig,
I am looking forward to your book, to learning from you how to read Nietzsche better, and to interacting with you around some of the material.
I would say, to begin, that I too often find Nietzsche to be “right on target.” Nietzsche’s criticisms of religion (as those of Marx) are often frighteningly perceptive, and have the power to bring us up short in our often too-confident and insufficiently-self-conscious religiosity. But if we are serious about our religious lives, if we are more interested in being religiously responsible than we are in being right, perhaps we should welcome such criticisms - take them to heart, and even take them on board. Such challenges are disconcerting, but this can be a blessing, the possibility of a deepening, rather than a call to polemics, on the one hand, or a capitulation in the face of doubt, on the other. So, I am pleased to have Nietzsche among my teachers, philosophically and religiously speaking.
But Nietzsche’s keen perceptions with respect to much of what needs to be criticized in religion is not at all - on my view - a recommendation of his own “positive” program. While I find his criticisms compelling and often convicting, I do not find “life” (either for myself or for my neighbours, especially for the least among these) in the most important sense in that which Nietzsche advocates (even when that is “cleaned up” by his more “politically correct” readers), i.e., I do not find that I could really “live” in a Nietzschean universe. I do not think there are “final arguments” on either side (only competing descriptions), but - for my part - I am more attracted to the Untermensch (Christ as suffering servant) than I am to the Ubermensch. So, strangely perhaps, on my reading, Nietzsche, while most often “right,” is, on the whole, still mostly “wrong” (though perhaps we need to get past “right” and “wrong” as the categories that we allow to govern our considerations of such matters). But, I still need to think more on these matters.
Please keep us posted on the progress of your ms. through the channels toward publication!
Jeff Dudiak
I have not studied Nietzsche in depth (I was mostly trained in the analytic tradition, but my own philosophical instincts are more with continental approaches -- why I chose analytic philosophy for my graduate studies is a long story...), but from what I have read, I think I can relate to Craig's and Jeffrey's ambivalent attraction to Nietzsche!
Because much of what I appreciate and agree with is probably similar to what others appreciate, let me zero in on my own big problem with Nietzsche: he mistakes some attitudes towards Christianity and/or some social uses of Christianity for Christianity itself.
It's not that I'm essentialist about Christianity. But what I am getting at is that I find it really frustrating when a thinker advocates abandoning Paradigm X on the basis of some one problematic interpretation of X.
Doing this is almost a straw man argument, but not quite, if there really are advocates of the problematic interpretation of X. Then it can be a successful refutation of that problematic interpretation. (This is why we admire Nietzsche -- we recognize that he argues compellingly against a problematic way of thinking/being that is not just a straw man.)
But if he does in fact, on this basis, conclude that all of X (in this case Christianity) is fatally flawed, that is going too far. There are other ways of understanding (and living) Christianity that are not subject to his argument.
Again, I haven't read enough of Nietzsche to know for sure whether he himself makes this mistake of overgeneralizing his conclusion (though I do know that he gets interpreted that way), and so I would be interested in hearing back from others on this point. I don't myself want to be harder on Nietzsche than he deserves!
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