Zadok Paper S95 Autumn 1998
Nietzsche: insight and immorality
by Greg Restall

Beyond cheap shots

WHY IS NIETZSCHE INTERESTING? Why should we consider the writings of someone who wrote nearly a hundred years ago, to a community very different from ours? There are a number of reasons: First, there is a revival of interest in him from a number of quarters. Postmodern and post-structuralist theorists take Nietzsche to be a forerunner of many of their concerns. Nietzsche is a precursor to other important modern theorists like Michel Foucault. Furthermore, Nietzsche was aware that the 'death of God' had many important consequences, which were not realised at the time he was writing.11

Nietzsche could see that societal and intellectual changes made it possible to re-evaluate the place of traditional morality and traditional Christian belief. Now, society obviously mirrors these changes he was talking about. Many are making the same sorts of judgments as Nietzsche. Nietzsche's ethic is one which many people share. Nietzsche was not a moralist of the kind that many despise, but his feelings for integrity and honesty are obviously of great concern to many today. If we have nothing to say to Nietzsche, then we have precious little to say to today's world.

Christian approaches to Nietzsche have, as one would expect, been critical. This is understandable, as his thought is radically opposed to Christian faith. Many have thought that the task of the Christian apologist is to demolish the criticisms. This has the function of bolstering the faith of the Christians who are worried by the criticism (this might be a worthwhile task) and it is hoped also to see to it that the nasty heathens who bring such criticisms are converted when they see the error of their ways. This might also be a worthwhile task-however, there seems to be no chance of converting Nietzsche now that he's dead.

How might such a demolition job go? Well, we could say: All of this suspicion applied to Christians and to morality? Why not apply it to atheists like Nietzsche? We can wield suspicion in just the same sort of way as Nietzsche. He says Christians invent the notion of God to get revenge against those in power? Well, atheists like Nietzsche reject the notion of God because they have an ingrained hate for authority figures or they never liked their own fathers or any of a number of reasons. Or you could say that Nietzschean concerns naturally lead to the Nazism and the extermination of the Jews. So the message is tainted because of these sorts of consequences. You could try to show that Nietzsche's own position is self-defeating because of the more 'relativist' sorts of things he says, so he has no foundation on which to base his own criticism. Or of course you could just point out that, after all, Nietzsche went mad.

This is all too easy. Cheap shots are there to be made, but a Nietzschean critic will rightly point out that this is all too defensive and an unwillingness to address his actual concerns. And this is right. None of those demolition jobs actually address his concerns. That kind of ad hominem attack (playing the 'man' and not the 'ball') simply leaves the ideas unaddressed. Just because there may (or may not) be problems with Nietzsche's own beliefs, it doesn't follow that there's nothing of worth in his ideas. The problem for Christians is that his criticisms can be mounted on our ground.
Nietzsche alleges that Christian belief and practice is inconsistent by its own lights. Christianity itself thinks that human flourishing is a worthwhile end. If Christianity is inconsistent with human flourishing, then this is extremely problematic. Nietzsche claims that Christian morality is used for selfish purposes, and has its roots in revenge. As Christianity takes selfishness and revenge to be bad things, if that claim is right, then Christianity itself is a bad thing. This is a problem, whether or not Nietzsche went mad, or motivates Nazis, or whatever else. We can't fend him off by name-calling.

What about positive Christian responses to Nietzsche? First, there has been precious little appropriation of Nietzsche by Christians. Marx was just as violent an opponent of Christianity, but he has been appropriated by liberation theologians and others for particular ends. Nietzsche hasn't seemed to be as susceptible to this kind of appropriation. Perhaps one reason for this is that masters of suspicion like Marx and Freud constructed systems of belief which can be appropriated and given a Christian gloss. Nietzsche was not a systematist. There is no systematic body of theory or practice which can be baptised into the Christian community. However, some have tried.

The 'death of God' movement in the 1960s, championed by William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer, tried to reconceptualise Christian theology in the absence of God. Hamilton writes, "we do not know, do not adore, do not possess, do not believe in God. It is not just that a capacity has dried up within us; we do not take all this as merely a statement about our frail psyches, we take it as a statement about the nature of the world and we try to convince others. God is dead. We are not talking about the absence of the experience of God, but about the experience of the absence of God."12

It is unclear to what extent this is properly called a movement of Christian theology-perhaps it is appropriately called a Christian a-theology. However you describe it, it doesn't appear to address Nietzsche's concerns. Nietzsche's criticism doesn't point to the need for a reconceptualised theology. Theology is not Nietzsche's first line of criticism. And it's not clear that the a-theology of the death of God movement, with its 'standing with Jesus on the side of the poor and oppressed against the oppressive, dominating concept "God"' will particularly impress Nietzsche or address his concerns. The death of God movement seems to be a way to get rid of the thought-to-be-problematic concept 'God' without taking away the moral concerns which come with it. Unfortunately, for Nietzsche, it is the morality and the practice which is the primary problem, not the concept 'God'.

The only real example I can find of a prominent mainstream theology which takes on Nietzschean concerns about morality and Christian practice is the later work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Anthony Thistleton shows that Bonhoeffer's later thinking, involving the notions of cheap grace, the anonymous Christian and living without God, was influenced by his reading of Nietzsche. For Bonhoeffer, the questions raised by Nietzsche were a motivation to reconceive what it is to live as a Christian.

For Bonhoeffer, whenever I use Christian faith or practice as a means to establish my own position, then I am not truly worshipping or serving God-I am practicing idolatry. "If it is I who say where God will be, I will always find there a God who in some way corresponds to me, is agreeable to me, fits in with my nature. But if it is God who says where He will be . . . that place is the cross of Christ."13

Now much more can be said here about Bonhoeffer's response to Nietzsche, but that would take us too far afield. Bonhoeffer focused primarily on the ethical problems raised in a Nietzschean critique. However, as I hope to show, there are problems also when it comes to the epistemology or rationality of Christian faith, which Bonhoeffer did consider so much. So, in the rest of this paper I will not so much be simply reiterating Bonhoeffer's later theology, but developing a similar kind of response to a wider range of Nietzschean criticisms.

What I plan to do is to not appropriate Nietzsche for my own use (in the way the death-of-God theologians tried), nor to simply treat him as an opponent to defeat, but instead, to treat him as a partner in dialogue. He is someone who raises concerns which deserve to be thought about and deserve a response. It is this kind of response which I will attempt to give in the rest of this paper.

To: Numbed to evil

Greg Restall lectures at the School of History, Philosophy and Politics, Macquarie University, Sydney. He is not a Nietzchian scholar, rather his disciplines are logic, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of religion. The author wishes to thank Fernando Gros and to Christine Parker for their thoughtful comments and encouragement.