Quote:
Originally Posted by nguirado
Nietzsche tried to find a motivator besides God. He came up with power, conquest, etc. In many ways, Christianity is the opposite of this so he attacked it. The modern equivalent to this type of atheism is Ayn Rand, with capitalist success taking the place of warfare.
Since you're an atheist, you can come up with another motivation on your own. Many atheists are socialists which is like Christianity in many ways, except for the theism. Some are communists, but that has a bad reputation.
Remember, as an atheist, you can make up anything you want. You have that freedom. So, just disagree with Nietzsche and move on.
|
I don't believe I've used the word atheist here to describe my beliefs. I prefer to say I'm a secular humanist and an agnostic. Humanist in that I consider my obligations to other members of my species to be of paramount importance, secular in my outlook. In matters metaphysical, I'm an agnostic. I don't pretend to be in a position of being able to determine whether this universe has a creator, sustainer, or director. I lean towards atheism, yet there are times when it's difficult to believe that this universe is a wholly impersonal place.
In any case; none of us are free, in my opinion, to make up anything we want. We are constrained by the nature of the reality in which we are immersed and by our evolutionary biology as social animals. To ignore either is to court disaster and is a sure road to an unhappy and unfulfilled life. Nor am I completely persuaded that we have free will. Each of us
feels as if we are free in our volitions, but this may be an elaborate illusion perpetrated by nature. That we aren't always aware of the source of our thoughts and actions is no reason to assume that we are that source. If we are indeed free from the laws of cause and effect, that certainly makes us unique from the entire rest of the known universe.
From what I've read of Ayn Rand, I feel her position is indeed close to that of Nietzsche's, and is one of the reasons why I take issue with her unbridled Libertarianism. While I admit that most Libertarians are perhaps more consistent than most those of other political persuasions in their beliefs; they also tend to be ideologues, and pure ideology of any stripe is not always a good way to conduct business in the very complicated real world in which we live. Despite my admiration for the atheistic writings of people like George H. Smith, I part issue with him on his Libertarianism for much the same reason I take issue with Nietzsche's attack on Christianity. Not everyone is cut out to be an
overman, and such philosophies appear to me to tend to minimize the plight of the weak and needy in their celebration of strength.
As for Nietzsche, deep down I suspect he didn't fully subscribe to his own doctrines. When his breakdown occurred, it was said that he witnessed the beating of a horse by a coachman and ran out to throw his arms around the animal in an attempt to protect it. In his
Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition course prepared for
The Teaching Company, Professor Daniel N. Robinson said that this is how he likes to think of Nietzsche; not as the one who railed against all conventions, but as the one who ran out to protect the helpless against an oppressor. To quote Robinson, "He must have found in the suffering of that innocent animal just the sort of authentic experience that human nature sets out to deny itself; and in denying itself, that it inflicts on another and on the innocent. The picture I have of Nietzsche is the picture of Nietzsche caressing an innocent who has been the subject of abuse; and that picture forgets almost all the rest." Nietzsche did, after all, say that his practical aim was to become artist (creating), saint (loving), and philosopher (knowing) all in the same person (
Werke, XXII, page 213); and as Will Durant writes in
The Story of Philosophy:
.....Nevertheless, his father was a minister; a long line of clergymen lay behind each of his parents; and he himself remained a preacher to the end. He attacked Christianity because there was so much of its moral spirit in him; his philosophy was an attempt to balance and correct, by violent contradiction, an irresistible tendency to gentleness and kindness and peace; was it not the final insult that the good people of Genoa should call him Il Santo—"the Saint"? His mother was a pious and Puritan lady, of the same sort that had fostered Immanuel Kant; and, with perhaps one disastrous exception, Nietzsche remained pious and Puritan, chaste as a statue, to the last; therefore his assault on Puritanism and piety. How he longed to be a sinner, this incorrigible saint!