Part Eight -Atheism and Salvation
Futile Attempt to Exonerate Nietzsche from the Accusation of Inspiring Nazism
It is interesting to note how many followers of Nietzsche today, on one hand, express dismay at the horrors committed by the Nazis but, on the other hand, are seduced by Nietzsche's atheistic, anti-theistic, and anti-Christian stance [1]. They would like to argue that Nazism does not draw inspiration from Nietzsche's thinking or, at least, cannot be equated with his ideas. They claim that it is in contrast to his philosophy. This dual stance allows them to assert their atheism while simultaneously condemning Nazism, unaware of how ridiculous or perhaps pathetic they appear with this feeble attempt.
I won't delve into refuting their theses in detail, as the unsustainability, forced nature, and hypocrisy are evident to anyone even superficially familiar with Nietzsche's ideas and those of Nazism. Indeed, the defenders of Nietzsche's attempt are clear: they want to adopt his anti-theistic and anti-Christian stance while, at the same time, appearing to disapprove of the horrific practical consequences, entirely logical, resulting from Nietzsche's anti-theistic and anti-Christian views, consequences demonstrated by the history of Nazism.
Firstly, I observe how Nietzsche's well-known hatred for mercy and compassion, signs of a hardened, selfish, and oppressive heart, as the hearts of the Nazis were, is a clear sign of a cruel and wicked spirit, especially when even animals show pity and tenderness for their offspring. In Nietzsche, it is abundantly clear how hatred for God is associated with hatred for one's neighbor.
Even a false conception of mercy, unfortunately, widespread today, serves as a perfect complement to Nietzsche's oppression and anti-theism. True mercy is not a sly endorsement or tolerance or connivance of sin but rather tolerance toward the sinner, forgiveness of sin to the repentant sinner. It is not justification but the removal of sin and liberation of the sinner from sin, justification, and forgiveness of the sinner.
That mercy, detached from justice and contrary to justice, mercy that allows sin to pass, pretends not to see it and does not condemn or punish sin, is not true mercy but permission to sin and act oppressively. Therefore, one, believing oneself forgiven and tolerated, will think they can get away with it, continuing calmly to sin, heading towards the abyss.
Mercifulness is the hidden face of oppression and overbearing behavior.
True mercy is the bending of the strong and rich with love and understanding for their fragility, over the miserable, the poor, the suffering, the needy, and the repentant, to uplift, heal, console, comfort, heal, correct, and enrich them.
The will to power, if it is a desire to increase one's power in doing good and avoiding evil, is a precise duty for everyone. The evil lies in the will to overpower, that is, to dominate and oppress and exploit others or to possess a power that belongs only to God, such as establishing moral law.
It is not clear, or rather, it is rather sinister what Nietzsche means by "will to power." Power is a quality of the act of the will, which aims to achieve some good or some end. What end does Nietzsche propose with his will to power? Will power in doing what? Increase one's power by doing what? Prevail over others? Indulge in our passions? Commit violence against others? Invade the territory of others, as the Nazis did to obtain "living space" (Lebensraum)? Power in killing humanity inferior to us, as the Nazis did with the Jews? Destroy Christianity, as the Nazis attempted?
And is it possible that the Nazis were true theists, despite using the word God, or rather anti-theists, making Germany the divine people, as the Nazis wanted, supported and preceded by Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Heidegger, Hegel, and Fichte, to dominate humanity?
Nietzsche's will to power, arbitrary, without rules and limits, is rebellion against God, sacrilege and impiety, pride and violence, plunder, destruction, murder, cruelty, and hatred for God, oneself, and others.
Nietzsche divides humanity into masters and slaves. The former is the Übermenschen, represented by the German people, strong, healthy, free, beautiful, and joyful, lovers of life, anti-theists, made to dominate the Unter-menschen, who are the weak, sick, ugly, despicable, old, abject, self-harmers, pain-lovers, frustrated, theists, religious, Christians.
Nietzsche's atheism, with his famous phrase "God is dead," would like to argue that God no longer makes Himself felt today as the goal of our journey and hopes, legislator and rule of our morality, the reason for our joy, the spring, and principle of our actions, the object of our interests, the consoler of our sufferings, the criterion of our judgments.
Nietzsche formulates his doctrine of the Übermensch, collecting and exaggerating the atheistic inclination of today's man to consider himself self-sufficient, not subservient to anyone, created by himself, not bound to absolute values but a free creator of values, aspiring to surpass himself, to excel in everything as an individual, people, or nation – he thinks of the German people – determined to assert himself and his power individually and collectively, ready to eliminate with violence and war the enemy forces, that is, the sick, inferior, deformed, mean, vile, and abject humanity that opposes his will to power, his desire for expansion, and enjoyment of this life, a man who accepts everything in this life, the true and the false, joy and pain, virtue and sin, oriented not to an afterlife beyond death but only to the conquest and enjoyment of the present material world. Not God but man, indeed the Übermensch, is the id quo nihil maius cogitari potest. Marx said: that man is God to man.
However, in Nietzsche's famous proclamation of the death of God, he probably does not mean that God does not exist but only that He is no longer felt. However, we could ask: how does Nietzsche imagine a God who can die? He may have died in our eyes in the sense mentioned, but certainly not in Himself. "We have killed him," Nietzsche says.
What does that mean? He does not mean that we have killed the Immortal but that we have removed Him from our thoughts and interests. The questions that Nietzsche then poses, such as: How will we manage without Him? What will we lean on, and where will we find a foundation? These are rhetorical questions because Nietzsche already has the answer ready: now that we are free from God, we lean on ourselves, and this is atheism as we replace God.
The True Qualities of the German People
Nietzsche has done immense damage to the reputation of the German people, driving them into mad Promethean designs that led to the tragedy of World War II and a horrible catastrophe. He leveraged the murky aspects of their magnanimous and powerful nature while overshadowing their good sides, which had given excellent evidence in the previous Middle Ages to Luther. Luther, believing he was bringing glory to Christian Germany, instead awakened ancient pagan demons, humiliated but not defeated by the light of the Cross of Christ. It is not difficult to trace in the storm unleashed by Luther, the "Sturm und Drang" of ancient Germanic mythology under Christian guise. This is said without taking away anything from the positive aspects of the Lutheran Reformation.
The essence of German spirituality, as Maritain and Fabro have rightly identified, lies in its "need for immanence," its need for a God-in-me and for me, not so much understood in the concept but rather felt in the ‘Gemüt’, an untranslatable term that simultaneously conveys intellect-emotion-sense-instinct-will-love and is commonly translated as "feeling."
Ignited by this inner-burning fire, the German dedicates himself enthusiastically and plunges into the most heroic warlike enterprises, to the extreme consequences, erasing his individuality in the collective whole of ‘Gattungswswesen’, being-from-the-genus, in the Totality of the Spirit, in the ‘Gemeinschaft’, the Community, in zusammenmarschieren, in marching together. Gott mit uns was the motto of the Nazis themselves. But which God was it? Even Hitler, Hegel, and even Fichte appealed to God.
Therefore, if God is truly in the heart if the impulse is truly that of the Holy Spirit, here is the most generous heroism and mystic dedication. But if, unfortunately, God is mistaken for the demon, here is the unleashing of the subterranean telluric powers of Odin [2] and Thor [3], in the furious acts of the wildest and cruelest of homicidal and destructive madness. The term "war" comes from the German War, and this says it all.
The splendor of German spirituality occurred in the Middle Ages, in the 13th-14th centuries, when Germany, evangelized by Saint Boniface in the 8th century, softened by the gentleness of Christ and moved by His sacrifice, after the contemplative light and mystic warmth spread by Saint Bruno in the 11th century, felt a need for purification and inner discipline, a burning desire for union with Christ, fraternal communion in Him, witness of faith, and generous service to others.
In the 13th century, touched by Benedictine, Dominican, and Franciscan evangelization, Germany began to express the feminine dimension of its spirituality with a prodigious flourishing of female monasteries. Thanks to these monasteries, the originality of Christian female spirituality made its public appearance in spiritual literature after Saint Hildegard in the 12th century, with Saint Gertrude the Great, Gertrude of Hackeborn, Matilda of Helfta, and Matilda of Magdeburg in the 13th century.
In the 13th century, the very bright light of Saint Albert the Great, Bishop, philosopher, scientist, theologian, and mystic shone. In the 15th century, Dominican mysticism flourished with Suso, Eckhart, and Tauler [4].
In the 15th century, an anonymous booklet called The Theology of the Germans [5] appeared, where, starting from Luther, the fierce desire of the Germans to possess their excellent theology among all, in conflict with Catholic theology, was first expressed. Thus, gradually, the ancient Germanic Gods, dormant but not extinct, explode with Luther, and with him, the fierce German pride and the renewed will to power and dominance. Unfortunately, this continued with German idealism up to Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hitler.
The Nazis failed to dominate Europe with weapons, but German idealism dominates today through philosophy and theology. Modernism, revived after the Second Vatican Council, is clear evidence of the infiltration into the Church of the bestial and wild form of the German soul, we would like to say the Nietzschean form. The recovery of the humble, gentle, delicate, sweet, generous, devout, and mystical soul of the medieval German Saints, enriched by all the progress made since then, is urgently needed, including the good aspects of Lutheran spirituality.
Sartre
We are born by chance, and afterward, we will be
as if we had never been.
Our existence is the passing of a shadow
and there is no return to our death.
Wisdom 2:2,5
Atheism is also connected with nihilism, that is, Sartre's doctrine, for which existence has no meaning, it is nauseating. Sensists, positivists, and empiricists, on the other hand, like Hobbes and Hume, say that metaphysical discourse has no meaning, but what has meaning is mathematics, physics, sex, money, or food, and in any case, what is seen and touched.
For the nihilist Sartre, being, entity does not exist. This is a thesis of clear Hegelian derivation when Hegel says that being and non-being are the same thing. Being does not have an identity but is contradictory, in conflict with itself. For Hegel, this also applies to God, but it is clear that this is a false God, and it is like saying that God does not exist.
It is obvious that in such a conception, where not only nothing makes sense, but nothing exists as it is annulled or denied by its contradiction, God does not exist either. One wonders, however, what the object of thought is in such a view if it is true that it naturally thinks of being. So, not even thought exists. But then, how does the nihilist think about his system if he does not even think, or rather does not exist? Or is there a thinking without being? When Gentile says that everything is thought, is he a nihilist?
The nihilist says that even physics doesn't make sense: nothing makes sense, but everything is contradictory, absurd, and senseless. It's not worth thinking because there's nothing to think about, given that nothing exists. We object that at least the concept of nothing must exist; otherwise, how could the nihilist talk about it?
However, the nihilist, following Sartre, believes that there's nothing more in something for the fact of existing rather than not existing. To exist or not to exist is the same thing. Being is nothing or, as Severino rightly denounces to define nihilism, being is non-being.
Husserl
Husserl also talks about God. But how does he conceive it? Nothing more than an intentional correlate of consciousness placed and constituted by transcendental Subjectivity, within the same Subjectivity, which in Husserl is nothing but a development of the transcendental Ego of the idealists, itself an explication of Descartes' ego. Therefore, for Husserl, God is not an ontological reality external to consciousness and the creator of consciousness, since Husserl performs the well-known epochè of extramental being.
He does not deny its existence but says that it does not interest him because he has discovered a new boundless region of being, hitherto unknown, which presents itself as the object of a new science, phenomenology. This science is irrefutable, with boundless horizons, supreme and radical, solving and definitive of all the enigmas and problems of life and existence. We are facing a typical phenomenon of Gnosticism.
In this immense framework, theism plays the role of one of the many interior contents, and not even the most important ones, constituted by transcendental Subjectivity, of which Husserl's empirical ego is a contingent sensible manifestation.
Heidegger
A group of thinkers, frequent, deep, acute, but tormented and tormenting, on the one hand, unpleasant and on the other compassionate, especially German heirs of the Lutheran drama, facing the theological question, do not openly deny God. However, they tergiversate, approach and move away, take one step forward and one back, say and do not say, advance and retreat without ever understanding how they think, without ever concluding.
They revolve around the question of God without clearly affirming the existence of God and without denying it. They are interested in metaphysical or moral values that touch on the concept of God, such as being, truth, science, spirit, consciousness, mysticism, the sacred, silence, the word, the divine, the absolute, the mystery, the transcendent, the original, the foundation, the incomprehensible, the hidden, the ineffable, without ever succeeding or wanting to take the step that leads to the explicit affirmation of God, without ever clearly demonstrating its existence, without, therefore, dealing with divine attributes, without doing theology, even if they do not make an explicit profession of atheism. On the one hand, they wink at atheists, but on the other hand, they arouse the interest of theists. But when pressed, they evade. If interpreted in a theistic sense, they claim to be misunderstood.
Accused of atheism, they feel offended. Asked to clarify, they spin around the issue like a computer wheel waiting for the image to appear. A typical case of this kind is Heidegger [6], undoubtedly a profound and stimulating thinker but subtly narcissistic and a consummate actor. He is also suffering, having achieved enormous success by presenting himself as the prophet of being, the one who brought the light of being after a 2600-year oblivion since Parmenides [7]. He connects being with Hölderlin's "sacred" [8] and Nietzsche's will to power [9], to the point of assuming sinister Hitlerian resonances [10]. A highly learned scholar in the history of philosophy, a prolific and suggestive writer, a poet's temperament, and seemingly mystical, with the paradoxical expressive darkness typical of Germans. He has sparked endless discussions and contradictory interpretations, while he seems to be laughing under his mustache (he indeed has a mustache!), pleased that people talk about him despite the anguish of being and with a taste for keeping souls in religious anticipation of his oracle, exploiting the interest that the millennia-long and never-ending debate on such a serious problem as the meaning of existence and the problem of the existence of God arouses.
Heidegger's Style
Heidegger has a way of presenting his thoughts that is not so much based on the method of reasoning, argumentation, or deduction from incontrovertible principles or primary sensory or intelligible evidence, accessible to all. Instead, he tends to contradict them as if they were naive simplicities, promising to reveal a higher and supreme philosophical truth, "beyond metaphysics," expressing himself in an oracular and esoteric tone. It's as if he were delivering a secret prophecy reserved for a few chosen or initiated ones, rather than presenting a rational thesis or doctrine to be proven with rational evidence, as is customary in philosophy.
For this reason, his discourse seems more like poetry than philosophy; there's more glimpsing than seeing, more indicating through metaphors than expressing concepts, describing than defining, more prophesying than teaching, more evoking than presenting in a clear, logical, and explicit manner. He does not demonstrate but indicates; there's more allusion than assertion, what he tells us does not shine but glimmers, and does not unfold but only hints. He gives the impression of trying to stammer out something indescribable. So far, these things do not create difficulties for us.
The difficulty, or rather the repugnance and the feeling of being misled, arises when it seems that he wants to position himself as a philosopher not only above metaphysics – which leaves us very perplexed – but even above Christian revelation or the doctrine of the Church as if he possessed a higher and deeper truth or mode of expression, a truth in which he reveals mysteries higher than those of Christianity.
Now, this is pure Gnosticism and pure misleading, because no philosophy allows us to know the truth about God and what concerns Him, or leads to His knowledge, better than the Word of God preserved and interpreted by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
This Gnostic tone then warns us, disappoints us, and makes us suspect imposture and exhibitionism. That said, we cannot help but recognize some interesting and profound themes that draw us to God, and that make us believe that, despite many discouraging expressions, Heidegger believed in God.
Reading Heidegger puts our spirit at unease due to the unnaturalness and strangeness of his expressive forms, the convoluted and tormented style that seems to express and immerse us in that anguish (Angst) for our precariousness and "being-towards-death" (sein-zum-Tode), concern (Sorge), thrownness (Geworfenheit), guilt feeling (schuldig), forgetfulness of being (Vergassenheit des seins), which characterize the human situation, not illuminated by the truth of being. Because man, who is that being whose essence is to inquire about being, to be a shepherd and a house of being, fulfills his destiny only in openness to the presence of being.
It is not immediately clear whether Heidegger, with this approach, wants to evoke in us the sense of incomprehensibility, nothingness, and ineffability of the sacred mystery or if he delights in grabbing us and making us waver inwardly to disconcert and disorient us.
In any case, reading Heidegger puts us in a spiritual atmosphere quite different from that of Thomas Aquinas, who starts from what is evident and experiential, guides us by hand, makes us reason, persuades us with compelling arguments, illuminates, composes, harmonizes, and pacifies.
Heidegger, instead, with his oracular tone and his terms understood by him in a strange sense, different from the usual one, ultimately appears to us as someone who drops it from above onto us poor and coarse profane, victims of "Romanity" and scholastic philosophy, to be educated into his superior esoteric wisdom.
Yet, despite everything, we must not succumb to the feeling of being humiliated. We must recognize that there are occasional suggestive and insightful accents in Heidegger that truly give us a sense of the sacred, the mysterious, and the ineffable, and thus effectively of the divine. However, it remains doubtful whether this divine is demonic or God Himself.
Heidegger urges us to proceed in darkness along a forest path that suddenly breaks off when, in a "clearing" (Lichtung), the hidden being suddenly appears and presents itself in a brief dazzling flash of light.
The Language of the German
Heidegger has completed and, at the same time, secularized an essential aspect of Luther's work: building a German Christianity that would take precedence over Roman Catholicism based on the Bible. Instead of the Bible and Christian sacredness as the original inspiring thought, Heidegger places ancient Greek thought and the deities of Germanic mythology. However, the idea of the primacy of the German people as a guiding people, a light to all nations, remains. Only this time, the message to be conveyed is no longer the Gospel but ancient Greek thought and Germanic mythology.
At this point, Heidegger introduces an additional component, an element or factor of this German primacy: the German language itself, which ascends in Heidegger to an excellent and unparalleled expression of the highest thinking, although inherently untranslatable into other languages. Thus, the Hölderlinian prophecy of the land, the people, and the German language combines with Nietzsche's dream of the blond beast, the Übermensch, the people of lords, with the concept of being as German philosophy developed by Heidegger, and finally, with Hitler's political and state realization of German greatness over all nations.
In this way, Heidegger, echoing Luther's anti-Roman sentiment – Luther continued to express himself in Latin but detested medieval Latin Catholic theology – aims to construct, using German thought and language of which he believes himself to be the embodiment, the true highest philosophy. It is the work of the German people and language, reinterpreting Greek philosophy and even Aristotle, also hated by Luther because of his adoption by medieval scholasticism, bypassing the Roman-Latin mediation and interpretation of Greek culture carried out by Roman Catholicism.
Heidegger states:
"It would be good if one took seriously and on a large scale... and finally reflected on what a transformation, rich in consequences, Greek thought underwent through the Latin translation by the Romans, an event that still prevents us from sufficiently rethinking the basic words of Greek thought today" [11].
End of the Eighth Part (8/10)
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, November 3, 2023
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/ateismo-e-salvezza-ottava-parte-810.html
[1] See my article "Nietzsche's Antichrist and the Bible" in Sacra Doctrina, 6, 1998, pp. 77-134; Gustave Thibon, Nietzsche or the Decline of the Spirit. Paoline Editions, Alba 1964.
[2] In pre-Christian Germanic mythology, Odin, the wise Father of the gods and knower of every secret of the universe, reigned over the pre-Christian Germanic deities. He had many children – the most famous being Thor, the god of lightning, and Loki, the god of deceit – whose task was to maintain balance in the universe and watch over the worlds of the cosmos.
Odin is the supreme God of ancient Norse religion, equivalent to the Saxon Wodan and Old High German Wuotan. The etymology of his name connects him to the concept of "fury" (Ger. ‘Wut’), which is also the basis of divinatory and poetic inspiration (Lat. ‘vates’). While Odin holds a dominant position in the Germanic pantheon as the 'universal father,' 'ruler of heaven and earth,' and 'creator,' he lacks the Olympian characteristics of the supreme deities of other Indo-European peoples, such as the Greek Zeus or the Roman Jupiter. The Germanic god whose name etymologically corresponds to the latter is a different one (Tyr, Ziu). Odin is associated with ominous characteristics: he leads the 'wild hunt,' a procession of the souls of the dead, and is the god of war, wielding the infallible spear (Gungnir) that hits the mark and returns to him. His power, limited only by fate (at the 'twilight of the gods,' Odin will be devoured by the Wolf Fenrir), stems from supreme magical wisdom, drawing it from the source of Mimir. To acquire this wisdom, he sacrificed an eye, obtained a monocle, and gained knowledge of rune magic by hanging on Yggdrasil for nine nights. Odin exercises his power for good and evil, violating women, stealing the magical mead from Skattung, but also creating, together with the brothers Vili and Vé, the world and the first human couple, and founding human civilization. Wandering through the world, he knows everything (two ravens inform him of distant matters).
The Romans identified him, not without reason (connections with the dead, cultural inventions), with Mercury. Hence the English word Wednesday, Wodan's day, for Wednesday (Latin Mercurii dies): Germanic mythology gives Odin Borr and Bestla as parents, Frigg as his wife, and Baldr as his son (source: Google, ODIN entry).
[3] According to mythology, Thor is Odin's son, the father of the gods. He (in Swedish, Tórr, meaning "Lightning") is one of the main Germanic deities, embodying lightning, thunder, and storms. Norse mythology is rich in stories about his exploits and perpetual struggle against the Jǫtnar. Theologically, Thor represents the god (and man) who possesses or is wholly identified with the divine "weapon," "virtue," that is, the "sight" of the cosmic principle (Mjollnir, equivalent to the Vedic-Tibetan Vajra). He is also considered the protector of humanity (source: Google, THOR entry).
[4] G. Faggin, Meister Eckhart and Pre-Protestant German Mysticism, Fratelli Bocca Publisher, Milan 1946.
[5] Edited by G. Faggin, Esperienze Publisher, Fossano (Cuneo) 1969.
[6] Carlo Mazzantini, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Arca Cooperative, Turin 1991.
[7] Parmenides, Adelphi Editions, Milan 1999.
[8] Hölderlin's Poetry, Adelphi Editions, Milan 1988.
[9] Heidegger was an explicit admirer of Hitler and Nazism, outlining its essential characteristics. Hence his admiration for Nietzsche's idea of being as the will to power. For this reason, Heidegger considered Nazism as the practical and political application of his ontology. It is worth noting that Nazism was based on Hegel's conception of the State, derived from his pantheism, founded on the identity of thought and being, which is a principle of Heideggerian ontology. Those who wish to absolve Nietzsche from the accusation of preparing for the advent of Nazism, with its horrific consequences, would like to accept his principles while rejecting their consequences.
[10] Nietzsche, Adelphi Editions, Milan 2013.
[11] Quoted by Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, Bollati Boringhieri Editions, Turin 1988, p. 321.