FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE An Introduction to Modernism and Postmodernism

recap  Early Enlightenment  mid 1600’s to early 1700’s  Deist Rationalism  The God of Natural Reason  The Scientific Revolution  Late Enlightenment  mid to late 1700’s (and beginning of 19 th c.)  Hume’s skepticism: miracles and design  Kant’s God of “practical reason,” not “pure reason”

recap  Hegel  God comes “into being” through history.  Truth = Dialectic of the Infinite becoming Finite  History is the story of Spirit (God) coming into harmony with the world through man. Christ is paradigmatic, but the Trinity is metaphor. Philosophy surpasses theology/religion.  Schleiermacher  Religion = “the feeling of absolute dependence”

Ludwig Feuerbach German philosopher “Left Wing Hegelian” Anthropology of Religion

Ludwig Feuerbach ( )  Studied at the University of Berlin for two years under Hegel  Initially came to Berlin to study under Schleiermacher  Becomes a lecturer in philosophy at Erlangen  delivers lecture, “Thoughts on Death and Immortality”  controversial materialism  leaves Erlangen, never advances to academic posts supported by wife’s share in a porcelain business

Ludwig Feuerbach ( )  Hegel: The establishment of Christianity upon a philosophical basis. (Trinity-in-history)  Feuerbach removes the Christianity so that the philosophy alone remains.  The “Left Hegelians” or the “Young Hegelians”  inspired by Hegel to study history as the key to discovering truth  rejected Hegel’s Christian framework Against the “Right Hegelians”

Ludwig Feuerbach ( )  Critique of Hegel  The study of philosophy is “being” (existence)  For Hegel, Being = Thought (Spirit) = God  For Feuerbach, Being = Nature Thus, history without metaphysics  “Hegelian philosophy is the last refuge, the last rationalistic support of theology. …Hegelian philosophy is the last ambitious attempt to reestablish lost, defeated Christianity by means of philosophy.” (Sämtliche Werke II, p. 277)

Ludwig Feuerbach ( )  The Essence of Christianity (1841)  very influential for 19 th / 20 th century Marx, Engels, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault, etc.  translated by novelist George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)  foundational work in atheist philosophy  “I deny God. But that means for me that I deny the negation of man.”

Ludwig Feuerbach ( )  The Essence of Christianity (1841)  God is the negation of man. Why?  Man created God. God is “man” writ large across the sky. All of man’s ideals and aspiration are “God.”  The true object of religion is man, not God. This is a historical claim.

Ludwig Feuerbach ( )  The Essence of Christianity (1841)  Christian beliefs, like all religious beliefs, reveal man’s desires, fears, needs, hopes, etc.  “God” is the objectification or projection of man’s own infinite self-consciousness.  Today, modern man must keep “God” by rejecting God and keeping what “God” signifies.

Feuerbach on the Resurrection “Man, at least in a state of ordinary well-being, has the wish not to die. This wish is originally identical with the instinct of self-preservation. Whatever lives seeks to maintain itself, to continue alive, and consequently not to die. …The resurrection of Christ is therefore the satisfied desire of man for an immediate certainty of his personal existence after death.” (The Essence of Christianity, p. 135)

The path to Feuerbach What are the precedents to Feuerbach?  Descartes’ “subjective turn”  Hume’s rejection of design (and miracles)  Kant’s “critique of pure reason”  Hegel’s historicizing of truth/God  Schleiermacher’s “feeling of absolute dependence”  In particular, note the similarities between Schleiermacher’s “feeling” and Feuerbach’s anthropology of religion.

Heidelberg Catechism Q. 129 What is a Reformed response to Feuerbach?  Heidelberg: What is the meaning of the little word, “Amen”?  A: Amen means, this shall truly and certainly be. For my prayer is much more certainly heard by God than I am persuaded in my heart that I desire such things from him.”

Calvin’s definition of faith Faith is “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (Institutes, III.2.1)

Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher Chair of Classical Philology, University of Basel (age 24) Poet / Composer

Friedrich Nietzsche ( )  Influenced by Feuerbach’s atheism  theology is anthropology  religion is psychologized  Extends Feuerbach  severe moral criticism of Christianity “slave morality”

Friedrich Nietzsche ( ) “The Madman” parable (1882) “Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? …Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it? …”

Friedrich Nietzsche ( ) “The Madman” parable (1882) “…There has never been a greater deed; and whoever will be born after us – for the sake of this deed he will be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.” How did God die?

Friedrich Nietzsche ( ) The death of God  For Nietzsche, this is not a philosophical statement, as if something he concluded.  Rather, this is a cultural and historical fact.  History has progressed beyond God. Culture has matured beyond God. We killed God by our progress (cultural and intellectual).

Friedrich Nietzsche ( ) The death of God  The reality of God’s nonexistence has imposed itself upon the West (and will do so eventually everywhere).  But what about morality?  Culture has derived its morality from God’s “thou shall” and “thou shall not” commands.  Will a culture without God collapse into nihilism and decadence?

Friedrich Nietzsche ( ) The “slave morality” of Christianity  The morality of Christianity is anti-human, unlike the best of classical Greece and Rome.  Christianity is not merely irrational but morally repugnant.  a battle between values (Christian vs. Modern Man)  The “will to power” alternative  the courage to exist without God  to live without reference to another world