Timewasters

I’m afraid that I may have provoked my friend Mr. J.C. Sanders into a somewhat rash post slagging Nietzsche.  Leaving aside the opening point about the potential for “Great Books” programs to produce skepticism (a concern I find overblown, as such programs do not exist in a vacuum) there seem to be two contentions.  The first is that for the non-specialist Nietzsche is not worth reading over the many other options–better to study the Greeks or the doctors of the church.  The second is a critique of Nietzsche from which the first point derives its force.  Nietzsche, in this account, is a dangerous and anti-Christian philosopher, and a poor (though seductive) one at that.

Both of these points are pressed to an unreasonable extent.  Regarding the first, one should read other writers before Nietzsche, if only to better understand him.  That’s simply good scholarship.  And from a Christian educational standpoint it would probably be unwise to begin philosophical study with an avowed enemy of Christianity.  But Mr. Sanders takes this to ridiculous lengths, writing in a follow up comment on reading Nietzsche that “regardless of whether it is hobby, profession, or just plain entertainment, it’s not worth doing at the expense of reading Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Aristotle or even Adler (to stick to the A’s).”  This is absurd, even willfully blind.  Anslem, even Mortimer J Adler, over Nietzsche for those whose profession is philosophy?  Such dismissal can only be justified if Nietzsche’s works are so depraved and dangerous that they should be read only to be better condemned as error, a position that Mr. Sanders seems to endorse.

This brings us to the second point, which is difficult to debate because Mr. Sanders has himself read little Nietzsche and is relying on second hand accounts, all of which seem heavily biased against Nietzsche.  Still, I might begin by pointing him to another take by the same Father Schall Mr. Sanders quotes, found in a review/reflection of a book by a professor in my own department,

Walsh is quite aware of the sometimes obscure Christian overtones in German philosophy. I have always thought that something profoundly right circled about Nietzsche, whom so many would consider the end of the road. Walsh spells out what is right about him. Nietzsche’s disappointment with Christianity —“the last Christian died on the Cross”— is itself Christian in origin, however much Nietzsche underestimated the divinity’s awareness that all were sinners and in need of redemption, hence the Cross. The “will to power,” which, at first sight, is proposed as the replacement for reason, is not simply a voluntarism. It is an affirmation of being that is not confined by all that passed as unlived Christianity by the Christians themselves. Nietzsche was scandalized not by the Cross but by Christians who lived as if they did not believe it. Evidently, he would not have been scandalized by the One who died on the Cross, as we suspect most moderns would if it implied that they need to live differently.

The primary thrust of Mr. Sanders’ argument against Nietzsche is that his rejection of absolute truth is self-contradictory, an old argument that’s been used frequently (see Leo Strauss on historicism in Natural Right and History for a more professional deployment of it).  However, such an argument succeeds only by presuming the very conception of truth that it seeks to prove.  It reifies truth and treats it as objective.  But truth is not objective because neither man nor God is an object.

Once this objection is removed, the field is opened for an appreciation of Nietzsche’s greatness.  This is not to overlook his flaws, but one can appreciate his acute psychology, his artistic and cultural criticisms, and his tremendous advancement of philosophy, especially his penetrating critiques.