In the Preface, Nietzsche references his separation of theology from morality and that he stopped looking for origins of good and evil “behind the world” (5). This statement and his subsequent writing bring up two questions for me in terms of relating Nietzsche to Kierkegaard.
1. Regarding our conversations about whether or not there is a religion grounding the telos of the ethical… if theology is separated from morality of Nietzsche, how does this relate to Kierkegaard’s understandings of the groundings of the ethical. I’m sure the answer to this will arise in our readings of Nietzsche, but I generally think of lessons in theology as grounding the origins of “good” and “evil” and our rules of what are good and bad actions as being received from theological teachings.
2. Would Nietzsche consider the Abraham story to be something that is “behind the world” or part of our actual experience? If thinking of morality in terms of God is to not look at historical/anthropological evidence, how would the Abraham story classify? Would Nietzsche count it as something that is part of human history? Or something that is a “lesson” from God, something “behind the world”? In reading his later discussion on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity I would think that Nietzsche would consider the development of these religions as part of the history of people that concepts of “good” and “evil” came from, as he describes the evolutions of the language, but Nietzsche does not want to consider the story of Adam and Eve as the origin of good and evil? Nietzsche’s references to the writings of Tertullian at the end of Essay One would give me reason to believe that he would consider the actions/repercussions of the Abraham story as legitimate contributions to the evolution of “good” and “evil”, however I’m not sure that Nietzsche would agree with the way Kierkegaard describes the story. Does Kierkegaard refer to the story in a too “behind the world” way for Nietzsche?
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world looks rationally back. ~~G.W.F. Hegel
This comment's going to address your first question, without really answering it.... If you can, could you clarify what you mean by the "morality of Nietzsche"? To offer some comments on Nietzsche, by my understanding, he was always sort of an amoralist, and his concern was about how our concepts of moral judgments like good and bad came about in the first place, but from a naturalistic perspective. I think we'd be hard pressed to find Nietzsche advocating any sort of moral position as inherent in the world, but I certainly do think he would say that "good" and "evil" come from theological teachings as a sort of slavish expression of resentiment. Good and bad, however -- I think he mentions this in the Preface -- were assigned to people by the same people who performed the action. For example, the good person called him- or herself good (in the sense of strong, healthy, etc.); it was not the case that the person TO WHOM the action was performed called the action good. (Apologies for extremely awkward syntax.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting post Kelly. I'm not sure exactly what you (or Nietzsche for that matter) are getting at when you use the phrase 'behind the world'. It seems like there is the possibility for this phrase to mean a lot of different things for Nietzsche, so could you unpack what you mean by it? What is the 'world' of the 'behind the world'? What exactly is there behind the world? Or should we even talk about what is behind it? If he stopped looking behind the world, where did he start looking instead? In the world? In front of the world? beside the world? Under the world? Over the world?
ReplyDeleteBen, I think you'd look here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/daftpunk/aroundtheworld.html
ReplyDeleteOn a more serious note, isn't the notion of looking 'behind the world' contrary to Nietzsche's assertion that quality expressed (and de facto) equals quality intrinsic? Isn't it the case that looking behind the world is no different than looking at the world?
ReplyDeleteMaybe I interpreted this completely wrong, but I guess I was conceptualizing the meaning of "behind" the world as implying that there is something "behind" the actions and values of the world that inform them, and (really basically) Nietzsche is arguing that there is not some fundamental set of truths or something, there are simply our actions, maybe that which you would see when looking "at" the world, as Adam suggests?
ReplyDeleteAdam: Brilliant, I forgot that one.
ReplyDeleteKelly: I think your interpretation is good, I was just looking for some clarification. I think that you are right to say that Nietzsche would want to reject an appeal to anything 'behind' the world. I think that your most interesting question is whether or not Abraham's experience offers evidence in support of or against this refusal to look behind the world. What do you think?