Abstract
In Book Two, ‘Critique of the Highest Values Hitherto’ of The Will to Power, Nietzsche introduced his ‘Critique of Religion’ with an aphorism which recalls Emerson’s assessment of human nature as well as the ambiguity he saw embedded in human experience. He wrote:
On the one hand, these sentiments celebrate the primacy of the individual as creator. On the other, their irony recollects the human capacity to deny its most fundamental and praiseworthy capacity — its creative will.All the beauty and sublimity we have bestowed upon real and imaginary things I will reclaim as the property and product of man: as his fairest apology. Man as poet, as thinker, as God, as lover, as power: with what regal liberality has he lavished gifts upon things so as to impoverish himself and make himself feel wretched! His most unselfish act hitherto has been to admire and worship and to know how to conceal from himself that it was he who created what he admired.1
Keywords
Eternal Life Christian Morality Free Spirit Western Metaphysic Religious Imagination
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Notes
- 1.Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p. 85. Hereafter cited parenthetically as WP. Numbers in all other citations refer to sections.Google Scholar
- 2.Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Viking Penguin, 1990). Hereafter cited parenthetically as A with numbers referring to sections.Google Scholar
- 3.Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1982), §35. Hereafter cited parenthetically as D with numbers referring to sections.Google Scholar
- 11.J. P. Stern, ‘Introduction,’ Untimely Meditations trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. xiii. Stern noted that ‘…: some of Strauss’s views must have found instant and spontaneous response in Nietzsche’s mind. Among them are the subverting of all ideas of the supernatural and of a compensatory transcendence, the attacks on the Church and the hierarchy of organized religion, and above all the idea of a myth born of the living need of a people, a poetic ‘reality’ that comes into being as a socially sanctioned lie.’Google Scholar
- 12.Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,’ in Untimely Meditations trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 97. Hereafter cited parenthetically as UDH with numbers referring to pages.Google Scholar
- 15.Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1980), Pt. 1 ‘Of the Gift-Giving Virtue,’ p. 79. Hereafter cited as Z with numbers referring to pages.Google Scholar
- 16.Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 29.Google Scholar
- 20.Friedrich Nietzsche, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 7. Also: Mandel, ‘Introduction’ in Salomé, Nietzsche, p. xvi; and Hayman, Nietzsche, p. 66.Google Scholar
- 21.Lou Andreas-Salome, Lebensrückblick: Grundriβ einiger Lebenserinnerungen, ed. Ernst Pfeiffer (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1968). Cited in and translated by Martin, Woman and Modernity, p. 80. See also: Salomé, Nietzsche, pp. 29–30. She wrote, ‘In Nietzsche’s spiritual nature was something — in heightened dimension — that was feminine.’ To support her argument she noted: ‘Animals think differently than men do about females; they consider the female as a productive being. … Pregnancy has made females milder, more patient, more fearful, more joyfully submissive; and just so does spiritual pregnancy produce the character of the contemplative types asking to the female character: they are male mothers (GS 72).’ It is also useful to consider Nietzsche’s description of Dionysus as the primordial mother (BT 16).Google Scholar
- 24.Martin Heidegger, ‘Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?’ trans. Bernd Magnus in The New Nietzsche ed. David B. Allison (New York: Dell Publishing, 1967), p. 68.Google Scholar
- 25.Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), §125. Hereafter cited as GS with numbers referring to sections.Google Scholar
- 26.Michael Tanner, ‘Introduction; in Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ,’ trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Viking Penguin, 1990), p. 15.Google Scholar
- 31.Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). Hereafter cited parenthetically as BT with numbers referring to sections.Google Scholar
- 32.Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. Marion Faber, with Stephen Lehmann (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), § 235. Hereafter cited parenthetically as HATH with numbers referring to sections.Google Scholar
- 33.Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist in Sämliche Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, eds. 15 vols. (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–80), vol 6, pt. 3.Google Scholar
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© Irena S. M. Makarushka 1994