I have a terrible fear I shall one day be pronounced holy…
I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon.
May your name be holy to future generations
An important premise for this work is that Nietzsche has important things to say about religion. Second, that Nietzsche has his own ‘religiosity’ that stems from his deep understanding of religious belief. Third, that although he wrote little about Islam, his attack upon Christianity is particularly relevant to the crisis of modernity facing Islam. In this latter respect, Nietzsche's philosophy is perhaps even more relevant and urgent for Islam than it is for Christianity in that Nietzsche is essentially a product of the German Reformation, and Islam, as will be argued, is at the point of its own ‘Reformation’.
Tertullian was noted for his hostility towards the incursion of philosophy into theology. Philosophy, he held, was pagan in its outlook, and its intrusion into theology could only lead to heresy within the church. In his de praescriptione haereticorum (On the Rule of the Heretics) the one-time pagan famously asked the question: ‘What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? Between the Academy and church?’3 To an even greater extent than the Christian tradition, Islam has been suspicious of philosophy, of the uneasy relationship between Falsafah (philosophy) and Kalam (which can be broadly translated as ‘theology’), for what has Athens to do with Mecca? The assumption is made that philosophy does make a valuable contribution to theological issues, and this is a point that I am pushing forward. However, the more pertinent question must be justified: what has Nietzsche to do with Islam?
It is certainly not the intention here to declare Nietzsche ‘holy’, despite his friend Peter Gast's request or the trend since Nietzsche's death amongst many to canonise the German philosopher. What is argued here is that Nietzsche's primary philosophical aim is not that far removed from what the American theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965) considered the aim of theology; that is to deal with what he called ‘ultimate concern’.4 For Tillich, existential questions are thrown up and revealed by human culture. Modern philosophy, literature and the other creative arts point to questions which concern humans. Theology then formulates answers to these questions, and then correlates the gospel teachings to that of modern culture. The gospel must speak to culture, and it can do so only if the questions that are raised by culture are heard. Such a view of religion, as dealing with ‘ultimate concern’, need not limit itself to liberal Protestantism or, for that matter, Christianity. Can we talk of Islam as also being concerned with matters of ‘ultimate concern’?
Tillich's conception of religion has suffered considerable criticism, of course. His apologetic liberalism has been seen by many theologians as placing too great an emphasis upon transient cultural developments, with the consequence that it often appears to be uncritically driven by the forces of secularisation. Even if it is the case that Tillich is a symptom of the secular agenda, rather than being independent of it, his views are important here to the degree that he is at least prepared to address the problem of secularisation. It is important for this discussion because Islam is also now confronted by the forces of secularisation and, likewise, attempts by Islamic scholars to respond positively to this growing force—a force that will not go away—are frequently rebuffed by orthodox Muslim scholars as being too ‘apologetic’.
This is not a work of apologetics and nor are the views of the Muslim scholars that are focussed upon. It is, rather, a bid to address the fundamental question of religion, to get at the heart of what religion is here for, to get at its ‘ultimate concern’ and this is also where Nietzsche comes in. A quote from Tillich at this point will highlight Nietzsche's relevance to the debate:
The answers implied in the event of revelation are meaningful only in so far as they are in correlation with questions concerning the whole of our existence, with existential questions. Only those who have experienced the shock of transitoriness, the anxiety in which they are aware of their finitude, the threat of nonbeing, can understand what the notion of God means. Only those who have experienced the tragic ambiguities of our historical existence and have totally questioned the meaning of existence can understand what the symbol of the Kingdom of God means.5
Many have experienced the ‘shock of transitoriness’, the ‘threat of nonbeing’ and so on, but Nietzsche took such human experiences to their very limits. Further, Nietzsche realised the importance of culture, of the creative arts as expressions of what it is to be human. More than this, however, is his religious concern; with, in Tillich's terms, what is ultimate. For Nietzsche, religion is the highest form of art. He is concerned with the human situation, with the very fact that humans exist in the world. As Tillich points out:
The analysis of existence, including the development of the questions implicit in existence, is a philosophical task, even if it is performed by a theologian, and even if the theologian is a reformer like Calvin.6
Yet it might strike the reader as curious that Nietzsche, the ‘great atheist’, should be recruited to defend religion. Nietzsche is still, however, in the process of being better understood as scholars brush away the dust of many years of misunderstanding. It is in the light of more recent scholarship that allows me to confidently declare Nietzsche a ‘religious’ man of the highest order. There have certainly been a number of intimations of this in the past, for example Heidegger who called him ‘that passionate seeker after God and the last German philosopher’,7 or, more recently, Erich Heller who says of him that, ‘He is, by the very texture of his soul and mind, one of the most radically religious natures that the nineteenth century brought forth’.8
An example of a ‘Nietzschean Christian’ is the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45). In 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo for his alleged involvement in a plot against Adolf Hitler. During the eighteen months that he was imprisoned in Berlin's Tegel prison, he wrote his Letters and Papers from Prison,9 in which he reflected on the question of the identity of Jesus Christ within the cultural situation of the modern world, and argued for a ‘religionless Christianity’: ‘We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more.’10 Bonhoeffer, a keen Nietzsche reader, saw in his phrase ‘beyond good and evil’ an approach to ethics that he believed was central to Protestant theology:
The Christian gospel stands beyond good and evil. Nor could it be otherwise; for, were the grace of God to be subordinated to human criteria of good and evil, this would establish a human claim on God incompatible with the uniqueness of God's power and honour.11
For Bonhoeffer, the free spirit that is the Übermensch is similar to the freedom of the Christian, with Christ as the paradigm. Nietzsche himself made a clear distinction between Christianity and the figure of Christ, the latter he regarded as a'higher man’ who questioned the morals of his time. Jesus, according to Nietzsche, challenged priestly authority and attacked the ‘Jewish church’ as a corrupt and self-preserving organisation whose theology was geared to enhance its own power, whereas the message Jesus decreed was that the kingdom of heaven was not some distant possibility, but rather a present reality:
What are the ‘glad tidings’? True life, eternal life is found—it is not promised, it is here, it is within you: as life lived in love, in love without deduction or exclusion, without distance.12
The real architect of Christianity is not Jesus, but St. Paul. Whereas Nietzsche is keen to find in Jesus a kindred spirit, Paul represents all that Nietzsche despises in Christianity:
On the heels of the ‘glad tidings’ came the worst of all: those of Paul. In Paul was embodied the antithetical type to the ‘bringer of glad tidings’, the genius of hatred, of the vision of hatred, of the inexorable logic of hatred. What did this dysangelist not sacrifice to his hatred! The redeemer above all: he nailed him to his Cross. The life, the example, the teaching, the death, the meaning and the right of the entire Gospel—nothing was left once this hate-obsessed false-coiner had grasped what alone he could make use of.13
It should be noted at this point, incidentally, that Nietzsche regarded Muhammad as highly as Jesus.14 However, keeping to Christianity at present, Bonhoeffer considers the very essence of Lutheranism to be salvation through freedom, and that this salvation is only possible ‘beyond good and evil’; that is, beyond the delusions of ethical self- righteousness. In the same way as Nietzsche, Bonhoeffer believed that all ethics (including what is called Christian ethics) to be dangerous corruptions that take us away from God: that which is beyond good and evil: ‘The knowledge of good and evil shows that he [humanity] is no longer one with his origin.’15 In The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche recounts the history of Israel that begins when it 'stood in a correct, that is to say natural relationship to all things. Their Yahweh was the expression of their consciousness of power, of their delight in themselves, their hopes of themselves.’16 However, the ‘fall’ occurred when they ‘altered the conception’17 of their God and turned Him into ‘the God of justice’.18 Therefore, both Nietzsche and Bonhoeffer conceive of 'salvation’ as a reversal of this moral ‘fall’ and a return to a time beyond good and evil.
Bonhoeffer's ‘religionless Christianity’ should not be confused with Karl Earth's phrase ‘the abolition of religion’.19 Bonhoeffer directed his criticisms against forms of Christianity based on the assumption that human beings were naturally religious; an assumption that Bonhoeffer considered unsustainable, given the increase in the secularism of his time. A ‘religionless Christianity’ is a faith which is based not on the view that humans are naturally religious, but rather upon God's self-revelation in Christ. An appeal to metaphysics especially was to be avoided as it led to a distorted concept of God. For both Nietzsche and Bonhoeffer, metaphysics degrades and disparages life on this earth because it attempts to locate human value in a realm beyond earth. This is Nietzsche's ‘Platonism for the masses’, a phrase particularly significant for this discussion. Nietzsche, of course, argued that Christianity is responsible for the emphasis on the metaphysical realm. However, Bonhoeffer believes Nietzsche has misunderstood Christianity here:
It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored. What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropological sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.20
Mention has already been made of the Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968), and he is relevant in this context here for the undoubted influence of Nietzsche upon his theology. Barth's contribution, developed in the second edition of his Roemerbrief (1921), was to reject the possibility of human knowledge of God. God is so completely ‘other’ that any attempt to know God is destined to failure. Knowledge of God is only possible by a miracle. In a lecture of 1916 entitled ‘The Righteousness of God’, Barth stated that human religiosity was little more than a Tower of Babel; a purely human construction erected in defiance of God. Religion, for Barth, is an obstacle which has to be eliminated if God is to be discerned in Christ. Barth does not go so far as to declare the death of God, and the ambiguity of the German word for ‘abolition’ (Aufhebung, which has two root meanings: ‘to remove’ and ‘to exalt’), as well as Earth's mellowing with age, points towards a more ‘neutral’ view of ‘religion’ than a negative one. Nonetheless, like Bonhoeffer, his writings can be seen as a theological response to the crisis of faith that Nietzsche propounded.
In Redeeming Nietzsche, Giles Fraser argues that Nietzsche is ‘obsessed with the question of human salvation’21 and that his writings are ‘a series of experiments in redemption. That is, Nietzsche's work is primarily soteriology: experiments to design a form of redemption that would work for a post-theistic age.’22 In fact, Fraser concludes that these experiments fail but, nonetheless, this is such an interesting and highly relevant work it is important to summarise its main arguments here.
Fraser begins by tracing early appropriations of Nietzsche's ‘religiosity’, quoting Steven Aschheim who says that some of these attempts had ‘a crackpot, fringe quality about them’.23 It is unclear which of these appropriations are ‘crackpot’, as Fraser then goes on to cite examples such as the Protestant pastor of Bremen Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906) who gave a series of ‘Zarathustra Sermons’ in which he contrasted a Nietzschean Christianity that is life-affirming with an analysis of the sterile and life-denying theology of the Church. He quotes Kalthoff when he presents a vision of the world ‘in which everything unloving, unfree, dying, weakly and sick in man is eliminated’.24 Fraser, however, is quick to condemn Kalthoff for using 'such clearly eugenic language’ which ‘weakened the capacity of Christianity to resist the holocaust which was to come’.25 Fraser describes ‘Nietzscheanised Christianity’ as an attempt at ‘re-invigorating what they perceived as a religion in decline’26 which suggests that Fraser is assuming here that these attempts are entirely misguided.
After an account of the influence of Nietzsche on Bonhoeffer and Barth, Fraser then explores the ‘death of God’ theologians, notably Thomas Altizer. Altizer developed ‘the idea of the kenotic, self-emptying God; a God who transcends His transcendence by becoming wholly immanent in the person of Jesus’.27 Thus, the ‘death of God’ is when the transcendent is self-annihilated and then reborn with human beings in the person of Jesus. Fraser rightly points out that this theology, apart from the phrase ‘death of God’, bears little relation to Nietzsche's philosophy, and is rather more the influence of Hegel and Blake. In terms of this discussion, however, the more conservative theologians, such as Eberhard Jüngel and Helmut Thielicke, are more relevant in their response to Nietzsche's philosophy in that they recognise that there is a theological crisis and that Nietzsche should be appreciated for bringing this to our attention: a recognition that the traditional view of God, the God of the metaphysicians, is no longer viable and that this should lead to a more personal concept, specifically through the person of Jesus Christ. Nietzsche's attack on God, then, is really an attack on metaphysics. This raises the important question of whether religion can really be a religion without metaphysics—an important point that is just as relevant for Islam of course—and also whether Nietzsche was really against metaphysics. Fraser is right that theologians such as Jüngel have misread Nietzsche by actually reading Heidegger's writings on Nietzsche and:
Consequently the ‘theological’ Nietzsche is very often the Heideggerian Nietzsche: the problem being that it is now generally accepted that Heidegger's Nietzsche, specifically the lecture series Heidegger gave in the late 1930s and the subsequent four-volume work on Nietzsche, is a great deal more about Heidegger than it is about Nietzsche.28
A more accurate reading of Nietzsche is, in fact, that he is attacking Christianity with at least two prongs. First of all, that its metaphysics is degenerate and results in corrupt and corrupting values. The second prong, however, is the inability of Christianity to present a fresh and life-affirming outlook. By agreeing with Nietzsche that the traditional, metaphysical God is no longer viable, theologians are actually impaling themselves on Nietzsche's second prong. Nietzsche is not attacking metaphysics as such, but rather how it is used. Likewise, he sees nothing life-affirming about a philosophy or theology that is so negative, so ‘a-theism’ in its outlook. In terms of the crisis facing Islam, there is much that can be learnt from the Christian response to Nietzsche in this respect. Fraser notes that the Heideggerian concept of Nietzsche began to break under the pressure of those who read him as a forerunner to deconstruction, for example Derrida:
It is important in this context to take Heidegger's Nietzsche and show that there are other possibilities in Nietzsche which are not programmed by a history of metaphysics, that there are moves which are stronger, which go further than what Heidegger calls the history of the completion of metaphysics: moves which actually put in question Heidegger himself: his reading of Nietzsche in particular and his philosophical orientation in general.29
While Heidegger criticised Nietzsche because of his perceived attempt to destroy metaphysics while failing to be non-metaphysical himself, deconstructionists such as Derrida see these internal contradictions as central to Nietzsche's critical discourse. For Nietzsche, the problem with metaphysicians is that the ‘fundamental belief is the belief in the opposition of values… For may there not be doubt, first of all, whether opposites even exist?’30 It is not, then, a direct attack on metaphysics so much as the consequences of metaphysics. The deconstructionist, then, breaks down the faith in antithetical values in order to liberate. In theological terms, we have Mark Taylor's ‘a/theology’ in which the ‘/’ is ‘a permeable membrane [which] forms a border where fixed boundaries disintegrate. Along this boundary the traditional polarities between which Western theology has been suspended are inverted and subverted’.31 Taylor describes deconstruction as the ‘hermeneutic’ of the ‘death of God’, with his a/theology for those who are 'suspended between the loss of old certainties and the discovery of new beliefs, these marginal people constantly live on the border that joins and separates belief and unbelief’.32 If we apply this to the Muslim psyche, we have an Islamic a/theology for the postmodern world which is not torn by the seeming ‘Otherness’ of the secular, but rather does not recognise an opposition between religious and secular. The problem does, then, become an existential one in that the believer has to accommodate his beliefs on this ‘border’ that Taylor refers to. Such a predicament can be seen in negative terms, leading to a ‘death of God’ theology or, in Nietzschean terms, as liberating.
The difficulty seems to be in having a belief in God and, therefore, a metaphysical commitment, while also not believing in antithetical values. Is this possible? Nietzsche is concerned that the consequences of a metaphysical belief are that it is corrupting, in that the individual lives in one world while craving the hereafter.33 However, the very fact that a common criticism levelled against Nietzsche is that he presents a metaphysics of his own suggests that he does not see it as necessarily corrupting. Again, the importance is whether a belief is life-affirming, not whether it is ‘metaphysical’ or not. Nietzsche's ‘metaphysics’ rests in his deep monism, but he also plays with opposites as part of his process of critical discourse, not unlike a form of Socratic dialectic. This is part and parcel of Nietzsche's provocative, playful writing style: attacking opposites whilst using opposites, attacking metaphysics while introducing his own metaphysics. As Jaspers notes, 'self-contradiction is the fundamental ingredient in Nietzsche's thought’.34 Further, Maudemarie Clark observes that:
Nietzsche's apparent nihilism in regard to truth thus threatens the coherence of his critique of morality, and of his entire philosophy—in so far as the latter commits Nietzsche to certain truths while at the same time it denies that there are any truths.35
One can sense Clark's frustration here, but Nietzsche is the first to admit that, ‘This thinker needs no one to refute him: he does that for himself’.36 Nietzsche was therefore aware of his contradictions, and they are too frequent to suppose they are accidental. Rather, it is a part of his project, his style of philosophising.
Fraser acknowledges that any approach to understanding Nietzsche needs to take account of his style and that any attempt at reductionism, to seek to determine his ‘philosophy’ separate from his style, would be to misunderstand Nietzsche's project. In particular his constant use of Christian imagery, ideas and concepts, as well as the gospel style adopted in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, indicates a certain religiosity, which leads Fraser to address his purpose:
I will want to argue that Nietzsche's atheism is not premised, either intellectually or emotionally, upon a denial of the existence of God. This is not to say I believe Nietzsche did after all believe in God. Clearly he didn't. Nietzsche was unquestionably an atheist—my question is going to be: of what sort?37
What does Fraser mean by what 'sort’ of atheist? Fraser notes that early Christians were persecuted in Rome because they did not worship the Roman gods and, therefore, declared atheoi, the deniers of the gods. Likewise, he notes that Nietzsche declared himself to be a devotee of the god Dionysus. However this ‘discipleship’ is difficult to define, for whereas Nietzsche could not quite bring himself to the point of becoming an idealist, for whom there is no world outside of the mind, neither could he entirely commit himself to phenomenalism, believing that whatever is finally meaningful can be expressed in terms of our own experience. In this respect, Nietzsche does not differ from Kant or Spinoza, in that there is a world left over, but a world of blackness and incomprehensibility: a world without distinctions.38 Here Nietzsche is accepting of the limitations of language for, if there is such a world, we can not sensibly say anything about it. The best we can do is use the language of riddles and paradoxes, which Nietzsche does so frequently and cleverly:
I believe sometimes that his frenzied employment of poetic diction, his intentionally paradoxical utterances, and his deliberately perverted use of terms might be taken in the spirit of the Zen koan, calculated to crack the shell which linguistic habit has erected between ourselves and to expose us to open seas… At best or, if you wish, at worst, Nietzsche's view of the world verges on a mystical, ineffable vision of a primal, undifferentiated Ur-Eine, a Dionysiac depth.39
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche articulates a version of Schopenhauer's appearance/reality distinction. Apollo is the divinity of appearances, so Nietzsche explains that, ‘we might apply to Apollo the words of Schopenhauer when he speaks of the man wrapped in the veil of māyā’.40 Dionysus, on the other hand, represents the ability to puncture mere appearances and to lead one into communion with ultimate reality. As Paul De Man notes:
There is little difficulty in matching the two mythological poles, Dionysus and Apollo, with the categories of appearance [i.e. ‘phenomenon’] and its antithesis [the ‘noumenal’]… From its first characterisation as dream, Apollo exists entirely within the world of appearances. The dream…is mere surface. This state of illusion happens to coincide with what is usually called ‘reality’ in everyday speech, the empirical reality in which we live
… All appearances, as the concept implies, is appearance of something that, in the last analysis, no longer seems to be but actually is. This something can only be Dionysus…the origin of things. As such, the Dionysian condition is an insight into things as they are… The Apollonian appearance is the metaphorical statement of this truth.41
Dionysus was one of the most popular Greek gods, and the festivals at which he was celebrated were characterised by drinking, frenzied dancing and collective hysteria. In Dionysus the irrational was celebrated and enacted. Giles Fraser argues that Nietzsche's invocation of Dionysus is, on one level, an echo of Schopenhauer's desire to liberate the individual from individuation. In the Dionysian frenzy, the participants experience an intoxicated reality, a form of salvation that Fraser compares with modern culture of the taking of the drug ecstasy or within the Christian charismatic movements such as the Toronto Blessing.42 In this respect, Nietzsche places Dionysus at the centre of a soteriological drama.
By ‘atheist’, then, Fraser does not mean someone who has no religious belief. Of crucial importance to this study is Fraser's assertion that Nietzsche's ‘atheism’ follows the instincts of his Lutheran Pietistic upbringing. Nietzsche is not so much concerned with the philosophical question of ‘Does God exist?’, but rather with ‘How are we saved?’ Nietzsche, Fraser argues, is ‘obsessed with the question of salvation’43 and that his work is driven by an attempt to create a soteriological scheme that is life-affirming to replace what he saw as a sick, pathological Christian soteriology. An important reason why Nietzsche uses Christian imagery and ideas even though ‘God is dead’ is because the death of God does not bring theology to an end, rather to a fresh beginning: the death of God is what makes salvation possible. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche remarks, ‘We deny God; in denying God we deny accountability: only by doing that do we redeem the world.’44 To do this Nietzsche reaches for Christian imagery. Fraser argues that Nietzsche's religious language is crucial to understanding his philosophy, and is critical of works such as the study of Nietzsche's philosophy by Richard Schacht.45 Schacht, argues Fraser, ‘is not unlike one of those whom Nietzsche writes: “They no longer have any idea what religions are supposed to be for and as it were merely register their existence in the world with a kind of dumb amazement”’,46 That is, he is concerned with a reductionist approach to Nietzsche, leaving aside the religious imagery as if it didn't matter: ‘For his part Nietzsche has little but scorn for those who seek to weigh up the question of God from the perspective of philosophical neutrality.’47 Likewise, Alistair Kee in Nietzsche Against the Crucified states that:
Nietzsche came to describe himself as an atheist, but we should not try to understand him within that long tradition of philosophers who have joined battle with theologians over the traditional proofs for the existence of God …his position is so much more profound and complex that to describe him as an atheist, while not false, is liable to mislead.48
It was only out of the soil of the German Reformation that there could grow a Nietzsche.
Fraser argues well for the importance of Nietzsche's religious upbringing on his philosophical enterprise, and his argument is pertinent to one of the aims of this work: that is to show that Nietzsche's religiosity is imbued with Reformation theology which results in a unique hybrid philosophy of ‘postmodern Reformation theology’ and, therefore, particularly applicable to a religion that is undergoing a form of ‘reformation’ in the postmodern world. As Nietzsche himself stresses the importance of environment upon one's 'soul’, the German philosopher's upbringing reveals much about his religiosity. A number of factors contribute to Nietzsche's religious outlook: the tight-knit Lutheran background, the influence of his father, a pastor, his piety as a child, the key places of his upbringing all being at the geographical centre of Lutheranism, and enrolment to study theology at the University of Bonn. Fraser is right to see Luther as a ‘key background figure’50 for Nietzsche, who saw Luther as one of his heroes until separating from him at the same time as the split with Wagner. More than this, Nietzsche is also deeply indebted to Lutheran Pietism, the movement that was prevalent in the time and place of Nietzsche's upbringing. Pietism is essentially anti-rationalist, indifferent to theological speculation and concerned more with ‘instinct’, with engaging with Christ on a personal rather than an intellectual level. This emphasis upon instinct is central to Nietzsche's philosophy, as this quote from The Anti-Christ highlights:
It is false to the point of absurdity to see in a ‘belief’…the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian: only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian… Even today such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine primitive Christianity will be possible at all times… Not a belief but a doing.51
Here Nietzsche shows his suspicion for Scholasticism. More important is to trust your instincts, to have passion. For example, Nietzsche sent a letter to Peter Gast which said, ‘I have a taste, but it rests upon no reasons, no logic, and no imperative.’52 Karl Jaspers notes that ‘taste’, for Nietzsche, is something which precedes thought or value- judgement.53 In the case of religion, it is our taste that decides whether we participate or not, rather than our reason. Nietzsche was living at a time when the culture in which he lived still had this ‘taste’ for religion, but he was anticipating a time when the balance would tip in the favour of secularisation.
R.J.Hollingdale, in his introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, even goes so far as to associate Nietzsche's Pietism with his Amor Fati:
Amor Fati: Lutheran acceptance of the events of life as divinely willed, with the consequent affirmation of life as such as divine, as a product of divine will, and the implication that to hate life is blasphemous.54
Nietzsche's soteriology, his quest for human salvation, rests ultimately in philosophy. As Fraser notes:
Nietzsche's target is not God per se but rather patterns of thought inscribed into European culture by Christian soteriology. For a culture that retains a basic belief in the necessity of some saving agency external to human life, the loss of belief in God prompts one of two responses: either it responds in despair at the meaningless of life, or it simply replaces the God idea with another agency, another false idol, which, though it may not look anything much like God, performs the same role.55
Nietzsche sees Christian soteriology as nihilist, as life-denying and depraved in which life can only have meaning by reference to some other-worldly realm. With the death of God, this nihilism is unmasked and Europe is faced with apparent hopelessness, devoid of salvation. At this point, the point at which Nietzsche believed existed in Europe during his time, the post-moral period, Nietzsche sees the opportunity to address the question of whether humanity really needs redemption from the divine: cannot human life be self- affirming? Throughout Nietzsche's philosophy there is a sense of urgency, a recognition that there existed in his time a very brief window of opportunity, for the power of ressentiment, of self-hatred, is a potent use of the will-to-power and would quickly regroup under another guise with new prophets. One reason why Nietzsche is so widely read today must be due to the recognition that these new salvations have come under such brands as communism, nationalism, capitalism, and so on. Also, one reason why Nietzsche is so very relevant to the issue of Islam and modernity, is that the very same sense of urgency applies to the Islamic world today in the same way it did to Europe one hundred years ago. Indeed, in writing on terrorism in the name of Islam, the philosopher Roger Scruton sees ressentiment as a motivating force behind terrorist acts:
Success breeds resentment, and resentment breeds hate. This simple observation was made into the root of his political psychology by Nietzsche, who identified ressentiment, as he called it, as the distinguishing social emotion of modern societies: an emotion once ordered and managed by Christianity, now let loose across the world. I don't say that Nietzsche's analysis was correct. But surely he was right to identify this peculiar motive in human beings, right to emphasise its overwhelming importance, and right to point out that it lies deeper than the springs of rational discussion. In dealing with terrorism you are confronting a resentment that is not concerned to improve the lot of anyone, but only to destroy the thing it hates… And when the object of hatred is a group, a race, a class or a nation, we can furnish from our hatred a comprehensive stance towards the world. That way hatred brings order out of chaos, and decision out of uncertainty—the perfect solution to the alienated Muslim, lost in a world that denies his religion, and which his religion in turn denies.56
For Nietzsche, salvation is a form of internal transcendence, a healing process to cure humanity of the disease brought about by a misplaced attempt to ameliorate suffering by Christian redemption. Christianity, rather than healing, has made the patient worse, as humanity has also become dependent upon its medicine. Nietzsche's conception of health is not that of a pain-free state, for he believed pain to be a prerequisite of health. Christianity does not cure, it anaesthetises: it blocks pain and persuades the people that the absence of pain is the same as salvation.57 Fraser's central criticism of Nietzsche's soteriology is that it is incapable of facing the full horror of human suffering. Fraser sees Nietzsche's views of suffering as belonging to ‘the imaginings of a more comfortable and innocent age’,58 especially in the light of such horrors as Auschwitz. Here, Fraser is echoing the criticisms made by Martha Nussbaum:
We might say, simplifying things a bit, that there are two sorts of vulnerability: what we might call bourgeois vulnerability—for example, the pains of solitude, loneliness, bad reputation, some ill health, pains that are painful enough but still compatible with thinking and doing philosophy—and what we might call basic vulnerability, which is the deprivation of resources so central to human functioning that thought and character are themselves impaired and not developed. Nietzsche focuses on the first sort of vulnerability, holds that it is not so bad; it may even be good for the philosopher. The second sort, I claim, he merely neglects… Who provides basic welfare support for Zarathustra? What are the ‘higher men’ doing all the day long? The reader does not know and the author does not seem to care… Nietzsche is…an armchair philosopher of human riskiness, living with no manual labour and three meals a day, without inner understanding of the ways in which contingency matters for virtue.59
Fraser readily acknowledges Nietzsche's own life of pain and suffering, of his debilitating headaches, his vomiting, his virtual blindness, but these would all be Nussbaum's ‘bourgeois vulnerability’, for Nietzsche is still able to do philosophy. Perhaps more to the point, is that Fraser, more broadly, questions ‘the capacity or incapacity of philosophy for thinking human suffering. For in tending towards the general and the abstract philosophy becomes intrinsically disincarnate.’60 Fraser sees Nietzsche's philosophy, then, as abstract and elitist: it does not deal with particular people at a particular time, whereas Christianity has the central paradigm of the suffering of one individual. In this case, in the ‘competition for paradigms’, Nietzsche's soteriology loses on the suffering front.
However, such a criticism seems to miss the point entirely of what Nietzsche aims to achieve through his philosophy. Nietzsche himself would be one of the first to proclaim Christ as a ‘higher man’,61 in sharp contrast to the ‘armchair philosopher of human riskiness’, and Nietzsche certainly would not consider himself as a higher man, or an Übermensch. Nietzsche's age was no more ‘comfortable and innocent’ than our own and he was only too aware of how evil people can be and how much they can suffer: one need only read Nietzsche's predecessor Dostoyevsky for accounts of the cruelty man can inflict upon man.62 It was this very awareness that inspires his attack upon Christianity, and any belief system that anaesthetises humanity against such suffering. The message is as appropriate today as it ever was when the European is able to watch the atrocities of war from the comfort of his armchair. Nietzsche, at the very least, did experience war at first hand, limited though it was. As a medical orderly he witnessed scenes of appalling suffering and destruction. In a letter to Wagner he provides a graphic account of travelling for three days and nights in a cattle truck with the wounded.63 But again, the extent of Nietzsche's own suffering relative to that of others does not weaken his philosophy: given that there is suffering in the world this should be accepted as the way nature is, rather than to create an other-worldly, pain-free existence in the next life. The importance of this observation for Islam will be evident in that its birth was in the hostile environment of the desert where suffering was only too real for most people, and it is ironic many have criticised Islam for portraying the cruelty that is man, rather than attempting to create an unachievable turn-the-other-cheek paradigm. In the same way many have wrongly accused Islam of ‘glorifying’ war. Fraser levels the same accusation against Nietzsche. However, Nietzsche does not glorify war and suffering, he accepts it. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche describes Islam as a religion for men, contemptuous of Christianity which he feels to be ‘a woman's religion.’64 Leaving aside this one example of many of Nietzsche's rather poor views on women, within context the point is made.
Alistair Kee65 pinpoints Nietzsche's religiosity in the latter's musings on the nature of ‘inspiration’. He quotes a passage from Ecce Homo, which is worth quoting in full here:
If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed—I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one's steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickling down to one's toes… Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity.66
This ‘inspiration’ is not conceived of in terms of ideas that Nietzsche himself invented, but rather it comes across as a mystical feeling ‘of power, of divinity’. In the same book, when Nietzsche talks of his ‘conception’ of Zarathustra he says, ‘It was on these two walks that the whole of the first Zarathustra came to me, above all Zarathustra himself, as a type: more accurately, he stole up on me.’67 However, as Kee notes, Zarathustra was not the only experience of inspiration which came to him. Again, in the same book, Nietzsche recounts his ‘discovery’ of the eternal recurrence:
I shall now tell the story of Zarathustra. The basic conception of the work, the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula of affirmation that can possibly be attained—belong to the August of the year 1881: it was jotted down on a piece of paper with the inscription: ‘6,000 feet beyond man and time’. I was that day walking through the woods beside the lake of Silvaplana; I stopped beside a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up not far from Surlei. Then this idea came to me.68
Nietzsche described this experience in a letter to his friend Peter Gast written in August 1881: he described his elation, and his tears: ‘Not sentimental tears, mind you, but tears of joy, to the accompaniment of which I sang and talked nonsense, filled with a new vision far superior to that of other men.’69 In explaining the experience, Kee pre-empts one possible criticism:
The description of the rock, ‘a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up’, suggests that Nietzsche had what would now be described, following Rudolf Otto, as a ‘numinous’ experience. It sounds like a mystical experience in the sense of seeing into the heart of reality. There have been those who have ‘explained’ the experience as the first symptoms of Nietzsche's final illness. How convenient! How reductionist! And does that mean that we should discount all of his works written after Daybreak?70
This leads Kee to conclude that ‘The significance of the incident at Surlei is that the idea of the eternal recurrence came to Nietzsche as a religious or metaphysical revelation, not as a scientific hypothesis.’71 Nietzsche is not against religion as such, but rather the forms of religion that have a debilitating effect upon human life. As we will discover, Islam— although not a pagan religion—need not be Platonic-Christian one either.
Preceding Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra presents us with a prophet. This prophet represents the new philosopher: one who is prepared to embrace the will to power and to call for a re-evaluation (or a transvaluation) of values. The concept of the Übermensch hardly appears in Nietzsche's writings and even in Thus Spoke Zarathustra its character is not clearly specified. It is perhaps best understood as a contrast to the ‘last man’ (der Letzte Mensch) who wishes to be like everyone else and would be happy just to be happy. Although such ‘higher men’—such as Nietzsche's own heroes (Goethe, Napoleon, Julius Caesar etc.)—may contain a high degree of will to power, they are not Übermenschen, for there have never been any in history. As Nietzsche himself states in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: ‘There has never yet been a Superman. I have seen them both naked, the greatest and the smallest man. They are still all-too-similar to one another. Truly, I found even the greatest man—all-too-human!’72 The historical Zarathustra (Zoroaster) perceived the world as a scene of conflict between the two cosmic forces of good and evil. However, as Nietzsche's philosophy went beyond good and evil, Zarathustra descends to rectify his own mistake of supposing objective moral values. He is the messenger for a new philosophy and becomes the mouthpiece for Nietzsche.73 The main point of Zarathustra as a character is, first, to demonstrate the need for a new teacher, then to elaborate on the nature of his teaching and explore the concepts of the will to power and the eternal return.
The two concepts of the will to power and the eternal return need to be considered in some detail at this point as they both relate to Nietzsche's religiosity. For Nietzsche, the Übermensch would not be achieved in some Darwinian sense as part of the natural course of events. If anything, the natural course is for the herd, the weak, to dominate at the expense of the strong. At times, Nietzsche seems to talk of a kind of human entropy, the gradual decline of the human race until it reaches what he calls the ultimate, or last, man:
Alas! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars. Alas! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, the man who can no longer despise himself. Behold! I shall show you the Ultimate Man.74
However, Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence, such as it is, suggests that there can never be a final state for mankind. As Zarathustra says:
‘Now I die and decay,’ you would say, ‘and in an instant I shall be nothingness. Souls are as mortal as bodies’.
‘But the complex of causes in which I am entangled will recur—it will create me again! I myself am part of these causes of the eternal recurrence.
‘I shall return, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent—not to a new life or a better life or a similar life:
‘I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life, in the greatest things and in the smallest, to teach once more the eternal recurrence of all things.’75
Apart from in Zarathustra, the doctrine of the eternal recurrence only gets a few mentions in his later works. However, the doctrine was hinted at in The Gay Science where Nietzsche presents a ‘what if?’ image.
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence— even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’
Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’ If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, ‘Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?76
Though not mentioned specifically, this ‘what if?’ scenario sums up the eternal recurrence: whatever in fact happens has happened an infinite number of times in the exact same detail and will continue to do so for eternity. You have lived your life an infinite number of times in the past and will do so an infinite number of times in the future. Like the doctrine of the will to power, Nietzsche presents the eternal recurrence as a thought experiment, not a provable truth.
Nietzsche considered that merely thinking of the possibility is the greatest of thoughts and would have an impact on how you perceive yourself and how you live the rest of your life. This is why he gave it such central importance in Zarathustra. Proof is not important here, only the fact that we may consider it as even a possibility is sufficient. Nietzsche's aim in presenting the eternal recurrence was to present a positive doctrine of an ‘afterlife’; one that would not devalue this life. In this way it is much more powerful than the religious view of heaven. The Christian view of the afterlife, Nietzsche thought, acts as a consolation and causes people to accept their lot in this life with the prospect of a better life when they die.
It is curious as he places greater emphasis on this doctrine in his notes and letters than any other aspect of his philosophy, yet he never elaborated upon it in his published works. When we consider what was important for Nietzsche, what stands out is his belief throughout his life that existence should be justified. That is, the true philosopher does not go through life happily in an unquestioning manner, but seeks to give meaning and value to his existence. In The Birth of Tragedy,77 Nietzsche thought life could be justified, could have value, through art, or rather ‘Art’ in the ancient Greek sense. The Greeks lived a life of ‘Dionysian joy’. Nietzsche gave a lot of importance to art as a medium through which we comprehend the world. From the influence of the composer Wagner's writings, Nietzsche, in his early work, held that there is a dualism between, on the one hand, man and nature, and, on the other hand, art and nature. He argued that man, by exercising his intellect, is actually being drawn away from nature and, therefore, his true art. The fulfilled person is one who is in touch with his true nature and can express this through the medium of the perfect art. Here Nietzsche is making parallels between the role and function of art with religion.
Nietzsche developed this dualism of art and nature under the principles of Apollo and Dionysus. These two Greek gods are presented as a metaphor for two fundamental principles. Nietzsche compares the Apollonian with dreams. In a dream you express fantasies but these are a way of forgetting the world rather than confronting the realities of the world. Apollonian art is exemplified by painting and sculpture. In the same way in which we conjure up images in dreams, so we do this in painting. But these paintings are only representations of the world; they are fantasies that allow us to turn our backs, at least for a while, from the world we live in.
Nietzsche compares Dionysian art with intoxication. Nietzsche did not necessarily mean alcoholic intoxication, but rather the kind of ecstasy that can also be caused by other means than alcohol, for example through sexual intercourse, dancing or religious activities. Like the Apollonian, the Dionysian is a mechanism for fleeing from reality, but intoxication is not the same as fantasy. Dream fantasies are an individual and private experience when you turn away from the world. Dionysian intoxication, however, is not about forgetting the world, but forgetting your self and experiences more of a mystical communal union. Dionysian art, then, is more akin to music and poetry. Nietzsche accepted that the distinction between painting and music was not always so clear. It is quite possible, for example, to have Dionysian painting and Nietzsche was aware that music had Apollo as its patron god. The more important distinction is how one responds to the work of art, rather than the work of art itself.
Nietzsche stresses that Apollo and Dionysus are not opposites, but work side by side. They complement each other, and, therefore, the perfect art is one that embodies both the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Nietzsche saw this art as existing in Greek tragedy. Nietzsche's most important contribution in The Birth of Tragedy is the attack on the view—prevalent amongst the middle classes of the time—that ancient Greece was so idyllic. Rather, Nietzsche argued, for the Greeks life was brutal, short and full of suffering. How did the Greeks cope with these facts of life? Greek art, through the fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, was such a mechanism for making life tolerable. The Apollonian element was needed to create the illusion, the fantasy, which distracted them from the horrors of everyday life. If, Nietzsche argued, the Greeks were supposed to be as happy and sunny as pictured, then there would be no need for Apollonian art, yet there is plenty of evidence of Greek tragedy to show that the Greeks suffered immensely. In Greek tragedy we are presented with the images of gods and men, of heroes and monsters, as a way of transforming their fears for such things, in the same way dreams are projections of our own fears and doubts. The Dionysian element is the tragic chorus present in the tragedy. The chorus would narrate, through song, the story. The chorus acted as an artistic substitute for the Dionysian rites by allowing the audience to identify themselves with these singing, dancing characters and therefore participating within the tragedy themselves and not be mere spectators. This was therapeutic, allowing the audience to feel a sense of unity with their fellows, with the chorus, and with the drama of the tragedy, as well as feeling themselves to be god-like.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche portrays Greek tragedy as an interactive, mystical and unifying experience that provided a therapeutic outlet for a people who were sensitive to the suffering and uncertainties of everyday life and in which man is in tune with nature. Man is no longer an artist but a work of art. Art possesses form and so by making life a work of art it gives the world a form, a structure. The greatest tragedians Nietzsche quotes are Sophocles and Aeschylus in the fifth century BC. However, the other tragedian that is often associated with these two, that of Euripides, Nietzsche sees as the enemy of great art. Nietzsche argued that Euripides rid Greek drama of the role of the chorus, of the Dionysian element. The chorus became less central to the drama, and became a matter of mere convention. Euripides, Nietzsche believed, killed tragedy. Nietzsche characterised Euripides as a rational man who could not see what the seemingly irrational function of the chorus was. The philosopher Socrates, like Euripides, emphasises the importance of reason and in the belief that, through the power of reason, we can gain access to truth. Nietzsche always placed a greater emphasis on the irrational and the instinctual and also believed that there is no such thing as ‘truth’. Great art is no ‘truer’ than science or religion but Nietzsche believed art could at least put man in touch with nature and his fellow man. It is an acceptance that there is only this life and it is full of suffering, rather than a belief that there is a better, pain-free life. Although Nietzsche admired the genius of Socrates, as well as his achievements, he saw Socrates as representative of the desire to explain, to engage in argument and counter-argument, rather than accept that ultimately there are no explanations. Nietzsche also was not against reason and science; he would be the first to praise its achievements and its role in the enhancement of life. What he condemned was the regard of reason as providing answers, as delivering man from a state of ignorance.
Nietzsche saw The Birth of Tragedy as a manifesto for change, as a call for a revolution. He believed that man had lost all sense of purpose and was clinging on to religious and philosophical views that were no longer credible. He called for a return to the principles of Greek tragedy and devotes the final third of the book to the praise of Wagner as the new tragedian.
However, Nietzsche, later in life, felt that art was not the salvation he had originally hoped and it was in August 1881, while walking amongst the high mountains in Switzerland, that the thought came to him of the eternal recurrence. With this thought came an experience, a psychological impact that, he claims, caused him to affirm life and to love it.
This feeling of joy, Nietzsche thought, is the formula for the greatness of the human being, and he is making an essential connection with the doctrine of the Übermensch. The Übermensch is one who, like Zarathustra, is able to embrace the doctrine of eternal recurrence and find redemption within it. If, before and after every action, you were to ask: ‘Do you want this action to occur in again and again for all eternity?’ and you could answer in the joyful affirmative then you are exercising the will to power in a positive manner. The weak look to the next life for hope, whereas the strong look to this life.
Between 1878, when Human, All Too Human78 was published, and 1881, when he wrote Daybreak,79 Nietzsche underwent a drastic change in life. In 1879 he resigned his professorship at Basel and spent one-third of that year confined to bed with severe migraine. Nietzsche was essentially a solitary person, and so he would certainly not wish to be pitied over his solitude (especially after his own philosophical views on pity). He no longer had a permanent address, travelling between Genoa, Nice, Venice, Turin, Switzerland and Germany. He lived in cheap hotel rooms or modest lodgings.
In terms of literature, Daybreak is a fine and clear work and yet it was almost totally ignored. It is subtitled ‘Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality’ and its main concern is the idea that morality had developed out of the desire for power and the fear of disobedience. The deprivation of power results in both fear and the will to power. Fear is the negative motive that causes us to avoid something, whereas the will to power is the positive motive that causes us to strive for something.
With Daybreak, Nietzsche has drifted from the dualism of The Birth of Tragedy, to a form of monism. There is only one substance, the will to power. It was now becoming apparent to Nietzsche that the will to power is the basic drive of all human efforts. Not only is it a psychological urge that explains forms of human behaviour, but it also detracts humanity from achieving greatness by engaging in the lust for money and power politics. Nietzsche now saw ancient Greek society—for him the height of humanity—in terms of the will to power. It is the basic drive that resulted in the development of Greek culture for they preferred power more than anything else, more than a good reputation for example. The only thing that is ‘real’ is will to power. Even our conscious processes, our rational capacity, are just an expression of this basic force. Therefore, all our problems are psychological ones, not metaphysical. In fact, philosophy, morality, politics, religion, science, all of culture and civilisation, can be explained in terms of our will to power. The will to power, therefore, is a unifying principle. It is realised in nature and history, in the rise and fall of great civilisations and religions, in the motive behind cultural and artistic activity. The will to power is behind all our philosophical views of the world and the impulse behind the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge.
Despite his pronouncements that ‘God is dead’, Zarathustra is a very religious, a very spiritual figure. As Henry David Aiken wrote in his essay ‘An Introduction to Zarathustra’:
There is…a sense of the term ‘secularism’ which, as it seems to me, has no application to Nietzsche: that is, the sense in which secularism represents a deliberate, anti-spiritual worldliness and materialism. Nietzsche is, or means to be, ‘this-worldly’, but ‘worldly’ is perhaps the last word that could justly be applied to him. In truth, the quality of Nietzsche's thought is incurably religious… Nowhere is Nietzsche's essentially religious mentality closer to the surface than in Thus Spake Zarathustra… It is apparent, above all, in the mystical doctrine of the ‘eternal recurrence’, the point of which is nothing if not religious.80
The new philosopher that Zarathustra proclaims is prepared to shatter old idols and to question the established order. To what extent can Muhammad be seen as a Nietzschean ‘higher man’? Nietzsche praises Christ as a ‘higher man’, as one who questioned the laws of authority and values it upheld. Yet the teachings of Christ were hijacked by society and twisted to suit its needs, leading to atrophy. The new philosopher, who is ‘human, all too human’ is turned into a superhuman. The obtainable becomes an unobtainable ideal, the Historical becomes Transhistorical. Can these symptoms be seen in Islam?
Nietzsche was no atheist, but his God was dead.
It has been intimated on more than one occasion in this chapter that Nietzsche's philosophy is particularly relevant to Islam. The purpose of determining Nietzsche's religiosity is to see how it parallels that of Islam. Alistair Kee has provided a useful breakdown of what he considers to be the features of Nietzsche's philosophy which gives it the character of ‘faith’ and some of these have been listed below to demonstrate its connection with Islam:82
1 ‘A faith makes a judgement against the contemporary world.’ When something has gone wrong, when things are not as they should be, a religious leader comes along to warn. Nietzsche does just this: ‘Things are far from just fine and something better be done about it. In this case it is not improvement, but restoration.’
2 ‘Faith therefore comes as bad news: it exposes the taken for granted as flawed.’
3 ‘Faith is met with resistance. People do not wish to be alienated from their nearest and dearest, from everything that has been precious to them.’
4 ‘But if faith comes as bad news it could not be justified at all unless consequent on the acceptance of the bad news, there was possibility of good news.’ For Nietzsche, this is his affirmation of life, his amor fati.
5 ‘To those who accept the logic of terror, the destruction in the dialectic, there is at last hope. Hope is a feature of faith and Nietzsche's message is one of hope.’
6 ‘Faith brings a new understanding—of the self, of the world—what the New Testament calls “repentance”.’ Nietzsche's philosophy ‘enlightens’, as does all faith.
7 ‘Faith is the affirmation of life, the new life.’
8 ‘The life of faith—religious, philosophical or ideological—is a life which requires change.’ Like Fraser, Kee sees Nietzsche as believing in human salvation, in ‘redemption’.
9 ‘As early as the Untimely Meditations Nietzsche tells us that a species which has developed to its upper limits can transcend these limits.’
10 The eternal recurrence ‘is faith, a philosophical faith which it is difficult to distinguish from religious faith’.
11 For Nietzsche, there is a redemptive class that will make way for a Redeemer. His philosophical faith also incorporates longing for the Redeemer.
12 ‘The sequence of faith…begins with anxiety, depression, even in Nietzsche's case terror, but must end in a sense of peace, well-being, happiness.’
13 ‘There is one final element which is characteristic of faith. It can be described in several ways, but it is the attitude of devotion.’ Nietzsche's philosophical faith acknowledges that there is something greater than this life, something more enduring.
Kee's attempts at parallels are a little too contrived at times, but these features have been outlined not only because of their relation to faith generally, but also to Islamic paradigms more specifically. These will become clear throughout this book, but it is evident that clear parallels can be seen:
the distinction between religious faith and philosophical faith seems less clear. Nietzsche's faith is both imbued with and influenced by the insights of religion… It is also becoming clear that his rejection of religion—in its institutional form—may have been out of his consecration to the holy itself. A truly irreligious man would not have thought the project worthwhile.83
He is, by the very texture of his soul and mind, one of the most radically religious natures that the nineteenth century brought forth.
the last German philosopher who was passionately in search of God.
We may accept that Nietzsche was a religious soul, but the image that comes across so far is of a man who identified with the ‘holy’ not unlike that of, for example, Wordsworth. This is much more a ‘nature-religion’, a paganism. Kee notes that, ‘Previously he [Nietzsche] was not offended by the man Jesus, but by the degenerate Christ as constructed by the herd. Here he is not alienated by the possibility of theism, but by “monoto-theism”, that deadly boring God who is worshipped by those who themselves have never affirmed life.’86 If Nietzsche is against ‘monoto-theism’ does this imply he is against ‘mono-theism’? In Beyond Good and Evil,87 Nietzsche praises the Old Testament, for it ‘portrays people, things and utterances in such a grand style that nothing in Greek or Indian writing can be compared with it’. As with Homer, its greatness refutes the Christian notion of ‘the good’, and it is perhaps the greatest sin to have ‘pasted’ the New Testament onto the Old. Nietzsche welcomes the death of the God of pity, but the God of the Hebrew Scripture is more worthy of worship. It is only when the priestly class emerged that morality supervenes with ‘Thou shalt not!’ It is the system of morals that become attached to God that Nietzsche is against:
God has been reduced to a supremely human, humanitarian being, having the supreme attributes of goodness and knowledge. This is not simply an anthropomorphic view of God, but a God who mirrors the interests, ethos, the sense of order and gentility of a social class… Nietzsche, who at the level of morality is promoting the noble values, at the level of affirmation of the will to power, invites us at least to conceive of a God whose attributes are not the projections of the middle class.88
The appreciation of Nietzsche's religiosity is not only evident amongst non-Muslim scholars. Muhammad Iqbal (1873–1938) received an early classical education and studied at the Scotch Mission College in Sialkot. In 1895 he went to Lahore and taught philosophy. In 1905 he travelled to Europe where he studied at Cambridge with R.A.Nicholson—the noted Sufi scholar—and the neo-Hegelian John McTaggart. Iqbal then studied in Heidelberg and Munich achieving his doctorate which was entitled The Development of Metaphysics in Persia. His heritage derives from two sources: his Islamic upbringing, and his study of Western philosophy. His writings reflect the influence of the Qur'an, hadith, Muslim thinkers like Ibn Taimiya, Wali Allah and Rumi, and Western philosophers such as Hegel, Bergson and, of course, Nietzsche.89
Iqbal's thought has been described as:
an integrated concept of the Self, fusing together the Sufi's passion for union with God, the idea of dynamism expounded by Bergson, the groping for self-assertion which was the philosophy of Nietzsche, and the Sharia of Islam.90
Like Nietzsche's Zarathustra, Iqbal sees Muhammad as the archetype for a politics of redemption: one who founded a new metaphysic of morals that consisted of courage and honesty; one who cast aside the false idols. Muhammad was the salve for the human predicament of the time: a state of Jahiliyya, of nihilism and decadence. Indeed, certain Muslim modernist scholars believed that parts of the Islamic world had returned to the state of Jahiliyya.91
Almost all of Iqbal's most significant works were written after his return from Europe, and there is undeniably a Nietzschean influence within them. In 1915 he published the poem Asrar-i-Khudi (‘Secrets of the Self’) which evidently possesses a Nietzschean signature. Other works that followed, such as Rumuz-i-Bekhudi, Javid-Nama, Piam- iMashriq, and Zarb-i-Kalim are also Nietzschean in tone. In fact, in the Piam-i-Mashriq there are three poems on Nietzsche. It is unfair, and inaccurate, to state that Iqbal derived his whole philosophy from Nietzsche, but nor is it correct to say that there is no influence at all!92 Like Nietzsche, Iqbal can be seen as both unconventional and iconoclastic in his thought and method. As Subhash Kashyap states: ‘Iqbal is a Nietzschean in being a determined enemy of conventional values.’93
It is more accurate to say that Iqbal used his extensive knowledge of Western—and especially German—thought to incorporate it within his knowledge of Islam. It would be worthwhile to examine some of his poems to show the influence. For example, in Asrar- i-Khudi the man of Khudi ('self’), the self-creative ego, smells suicide in conventionalism. A life of decadence, following the beaten track of traditionalism, is no life at all. The prophets, in true Nietzschean fashion, are the destroyers of idols and creators of new values. This attitude is reflected in the following lines:
They said, ‘Is our world agreeable to thee?’
I said, ‘No, it is not’—they said, ‘Upset it’.
Raise the self to such a height
that before destiny,
God should ask a man, ‘What dost thou desire?’
Step ever more fearlessly in the path of life, for in this whole
expanse of the
universe, there is none beside thee.94
One notices the sense of individualism here. Man is the highest of all created things, and it is his duty to say yes to life. Like Nietzsche, Iqbal saw Christianity as a religion of decadence; elevating the slave-virtues of meekness, humility, compassion, mercy and pity: both an unnatural and impossible moral system.
Piam-i-Mashriq contains a beautiful short poem on Nietzsche which expresses Iqbal's attitude towards him:
His voice is a peal of thunder. Those who desire sweet songs should fly from him. He has thrust a sword into the heart of the West, his hands are red with the blood of Christianity. He has built his house of idols on the foundations of Islam, his heart is a believer though his brain denies….’95
Iqbal talks of the three stages in the development of the self, and this corresponds closely with Nietzsche's three ‘metamorphoses of the spirit’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The first of Zarathustra's speeches96 comes soon after his new insight that he can fulfil his mission to mankind only by finding fit companions and singling them out from the ‘herd’ to which they now belong. His reference to the spirit of man, the three ‘metamorphoses of the spirit’—first the camel, second the lion, third the child—matches Iqbal's three stages of obedience to the law, self-control, and Vicegerency of God. When describing the first stage, obedience to law, Iqbal likens this to the camel, in terms of the creature's obedience, utility and hardiness. For Nietzsche, the camel spirit is the heroic spirit, that of the tightrope walker. Essentially, the individual must possess the ‘weight-bearing spirit’ in the first place to move on to the second spiritual stage in development. Although the camel, in its nature, may be perceived as being homely, obedient and domesticated, it is also able to carry the burden of the spirit. The camel already possesses what is required and can tap upon this spirit to move one to a further upward journey of the soul, giving the spirit a noble and heroic nature. Zarathustra, like all prophets, already exhibits a camel spirit; one that takes upon itself what is hardest. To create a follower, one must first be willing to bear much. Before the pursuance of this goal, one must be willing and impelled to difficult tasks.
However, the transformation from what one is now to that of the camel cannot be taught; the camel spirit is the heroic sprit, that of the tightrope walker. Zarathustra aims to teach the qualities that are required to become the Üermensch; but he must also rely upon the individual possessing the initial heroic qualities to take on the journey in the first place. For Iqbal, to become the Perfect Muslim one must first of all be brave enough to submit to the will of Allah and then face the inevitable consequences of such submission. In other words—and for both Nietzsche and Iqbal—one must first of all be spiritually inclined. The camel ‘renounces and is reverent’; important qualities for the man of faith to have. Nietzsche is not critical of reverence; to become the Übermensch you must revere the Übermensch. Thus, to become the Perfect Muslim you must revere the Perfect Muslim.
After a period of carrying the load of commandments and obligations, man—for Nietzsche—passes from the camel to the lion stage; the stage of self-determination and control. But why, asks Zarathustra, does the camel not suffice? Isn't it adequate to be reverent? Zarathustra's answer to his own question is that the camel must become a lion precisely because the spirit that would bear much must bear the heaviest burden of destroying what it has come to revere; the old values. It is a destructive act, because without those values the individual seems faced with nihilism. For Iqbal, however, it is reverence for false values that must be destroyed. While maintaining reverence in itself, this must be redirected towards the values of the Perfect Muslim, rather than a belief in the values of, for example, materialism or atheism. The quality of self-control is required for this; to resist the temptations that the Western, modernist world have to offer, simply because they are brief delights and, ultimately, undermine the spirit and lead to mediocrity and decadence. The lion, however, cannot possibly survive because of the confrontation with nihilism; how long can one resist the temptations of non-religious values if there is nothing else to revere?
This is where the third transformation, or metamorphosis, comes in: that of the child. ‘The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes. Yes, a sacred Yes is needed, my brothers, for the sport of creation: the spirit now wills its own will, the spirit sundered from the world now wins its own world.’97 This 'sacred Yes’ is highly significant, for Nietzsche often speaks of reverence and the sacred. The child is yes-saying, compared to the no-saying of the camel and the lion. The child is at the beginning of what it will become: the mature Übermensch. There are still more transformations to come, but the spirit is now at least in the right direction. This creator of new values, for Iqbal, is the Divine Vicegerent. The purpose of human life on earth is the creation of self-creative egos, the men with Khudi; the lords of creation. Iqbal's Vicegerent is his Perfect Muslim; of which the finest example is the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking of the Prophet, he says:
He is the preface to the book of two worlds,
All the people of the world are slaves and he is the master.
Mankind is the cornfield and thou the harvest,
Thou art the goal of life's caravan.98
We will come back to Iqbal and his correspondence between that of Zarathustra and Muhammad in Chapter 5. However, it is worth noting here that Giles Fraser also makes reference to ‘The Three Metamorphoses’ and sees within it a clear example of Nietzsche's religiosity. He considers the allegory to be a rendering of ‘inverted rebirth’.99 That is, Nietzsche seeks salvation in an inverted version of Lutheranism by urging his readers to undergo, in reverse, the process by which humanity came to wallow in self- hatred. For example, Luther states that ‘Whoever humiliates himself in the eyes of the world is totally exalted in the eyes of God.’ This, for Nietzsche, sums up what Christianity is all about: to love God is to hate oneself and, given that God is dead, humanity is left alone to hate itself with no salvation. However, Nietzsche argues salvation is possible through the dangerous and terrifying process of giving up any faith in the divine and to rely upon oneself for meaning to life, even though there are no guarantees that this transformation will lead to greater happiness. In fact, the attempt may destroy you, but the benefits, should you succeed, are that you will be free from self- hatred and love yourself wholeheartedly; this is the Übermensch.
Fraser quotes John Clayton, who claims that, ‘in this single parable [The Three Metamorphoses] the whole of Nietzsche's message is contained’.100 Fraser interprets the camel to symbolise humanity that is laden with the guilt of Christian morality. However it is able to become a lion and is thus in the process of becoming an autonomous individual capable of pride and self-respect. The lion symbolises strength and power, necessary qualities if the self is to be overcome, but Fraser rightly stresses that this is not the Übermensch, the ‘blond-beast’ so often misunderstood: ‘The lion is simply the nihilistic vanguard in the creation of a new humanity. In order to complete the process of spiritual transformation the lion must turn itself into a child.’101 This echoes Matthew 18:3: ‘unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’. The Übermensch is not, then, a blond warrior, but rather a child playfully recreating itself, rather like Adam and Eve before the Fall.
However, Fraser is right to say that, ‘Nietzsche's recourse to the image of the child suggests a point of fundamental weakness in his overall salvation story… It is like saying the prostitute can only be redeemed by virginity.’102 Although it can be conceived for the camel to become the lion, the possibilities of the lion, the battle-scarred warrior, reclaiming the innocence of childhood is considerably more difficult, if not impossible. As Michael Tanner points out:
That phrase ‘a new beginning’ is dangerous. For it is usually Nietzsche's distinction as a connoisseur of decadence to realise that among our options is not that of wiping the slate clean. We need to have a self to overcome, and that self will be the result of the whole Western tradition, which it will somehow manage to ‘aufheben’, a word that Nietzsche has no fondness for, because of its virtual Hegelian copyright, and which means simultaneously ‘to obliterate’, ‘to preserve’ and ‘to lift up’. Isn't that just what the Übermensch is called upon to do, or if we drop him, what we, advancing upon our present state, must do if we are to be ‘redeemed’?103
For Iqbal to make the analogy of the Perfect Muslim, of Muhammad, with the child in the Nietzschean parable, is to misunderstand Muhammad in the sense that the Prophet was not ‘wiping the slate clean’ but appealing to history, culture, environment and tradition for salvation. Muhammad can be seen as much more a deconstructionist than a proponent of tabula rasa. In the same way Tanner notes that the Nietzschean Übermensch, the ‘New European’, is the ‘result of the whole Western tradition’, the Muslims of seventh century Arabia are likely a result of their own rich tapestry of culture and tradition. They can no more ‘annihilate’ this self, this Nietzschean soul, than can the Übermensch.
Perhaps it is best to appreciate the parable as an example of Nietzsche's religiosity, and to see it as just that; a parable, in the same way Plato's simile of the line might help to illustrate what is meant by the Form of the Good but, if we examine it too closely— that is take it too literally—it is not as effective as we might like.