The key point that Nietzsche's Antichrist does not address is what is to fill the cultural space left by the removal of Christianity. This may seem an odd way to put it, as the metaphor of space may not be quite what is needed. Humanity itself does not allow for an empty space, but for conditions of relative well being or unhealth. So, the quite obvious answer is that good health replaces bad health.
It's not so easy as all that, though. There are so many traps for the unwary. People tend to gravitate towards ideas that are polarised as sets of opposite values, as Nietzsche, in this book, so joyously celebrates. Thinking in opposites, he seems to imply, is the opposite of Christianity, which can think only in terms of sameness.
Watch out though with your opposites! To divide the world up into stark polarities, and think only in terms of these, is a sign of a pre-Oedipal disorder. Contrary to Nietzsche, the childish temperament does not think in an undifferentiated fashion at all, but in terms of good and evil, hot and cold, man and woman. The childish temperament -- which is very often a Christian one -- is unable to think in shades of grey. Rather, everything must be cut and dried for him, prechewed and predigested, and preferably bestowed from "above" according to the Führer principle. Perhaps it is because his own mind is indeed unable to differentiate right from wrong that such firm moral delineations are required to be imposed from outside or "above".
The Nietzschean, if there is such a thing, who takes his marching orders from a book, is as likely to fall into a trap of seeing things in opposite ways as his fellow Christian does. He doesn't want to be womanly, after all. He is undergoing his special training by the book, in order that he might be perceived as being a man. By careful practice and appropriation of the words of wisdom, he hopes to derive his being from a book. What he leaves behind, and casts off, is after all the opposite side of his polarity, the part he doesn't like, the part he would rather identify with somebody or something else. Having undergone this purification by the Word, he feels redeemed of his originatory sin, and now demands to be treated as a Man. He is, indeed, the Son of Nietzsche, come to give a redemptory message: "Thou shalt cast off that which is womanly; and be men."
Such a fellow is as likely to cast off green in order to be red, or high spiritedness in order to be sombre. He wants to occupy only one part of the rainbow -- and it is not the gay end.
IN the end, the Nietzschean and the Christian are pretty much alike. Having cast off his complexity, in order to become simple, this one-dimensional entity which is all masculinity and yet has nowhere to go with it, is in much the same position as the Christian, who loves his God but has nothing to show for it. That is how life ends up when one sits in a one-dimensional spot, as pure as can be. The variable and gradated qualities of life are not permitted to enter into this dimension, which must be kept pure at all costs. Noli me tangere, says the redeemed Son of Nietzsche.
Do not touch me.
2 comments:
I imagine that would happen in some form or fashion, whenever any learning is turned into a personal dogma.
Yeah, there is that aspect.
There are all sorts of injunctions, too, not to turn Christianity into a dogma -- but there it is.
And surely untold damage has been done to unwitting victims by turning Freud into a dogma.
However, it also appears that Nietzsche was actually setting up darwinism against Christianity, as if it were its polar opposite, so it is not surprising that so many who became his followers stuck to the creed of social darwinism as if their lives depending on it.
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