Kierkegaard and Nietzsche: Faith and Eternal Acceptance

161 Pages·1997·1.16 MB·English

by  J. Kellenberg

KIERKEGAARD AND NIETZSCHE
Also by ). Kellenberger
GOD-RELATIONSHIPS WITH AND WITHOUT GOD
INTER-RELIGIOUS MODELS AND CRITERIA (editor)
RELATIONSHIP MORALITY
RELIGIOUS DISCOVERY, FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE
THE COGNIVITY OF RELIGION: Three Perspectives
Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche
Faith and Eternal Acceptance
J. Kellenberger
Professor of Philosophy
California State Unixxrsily
Northridge
California
First published in Great Britain 1997 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and represenlatives ihroughoul the world
This book is published in Macmillan's Library of Philosophy and Religion
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General editor: John Hick
Series ISBN 0-333-69996-3
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-67656-4
First published in the United States of America 1997 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-17347-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kellenberger, James.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche : faith and eternal acceptance / J.
Kellenberger
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-312-17347-4 (cloth)
I. Kierkegaard, S0ren, 1813-1855—Religion. 2. Nietzsche.
Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900—Religion. I. Title.
B4378.R44K45 1997
198'.9—dc21 96-46722
CIP
© J. Kellenberger 1997
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To Anne

Contents
Preface viii
Introduction 1
Parti
1 Abraham, the Knight of Faith 9
2 The Joyfulness of Faith 20
3 The Ethical, Infinite Resignation, and the Demonic 29
4 Knights of Faith 45
Part II
5 Nietzsche as the Antichrist 59
6 Zarathustra, the Prophet of the Ubermensch, and the
Death-of-God Theme 70
7 Transvaluation 80
8 Eternal Recurrence and Joyful Acceptance 89
Part III
9 The Joy of Faith and the Joy of Zarathustra's Acceptance 107
10 Kierkegaard and Nietzsche 116
Notes 130
Bibliography 143
Index 147
vn
Preface
In the middle of the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold saw
himself as 'Wandering between two worlds, one dead, / The other
powerless to be born.' The world that was dead to Arnold was the
world of faith. The new world struggling to be born was a world
without faith. In the nineteenth century, against the background of
urbanization, industrialization, scientific discovery, and expanding
technology, the secularization of Europe, already some centuries
old, continued to grow. It was not merely a social phenomenon.
What Arnold refers to is a change, or a confrontation, in his deepest
sensibilities.
Arnold, like many Victorians, cannot believe in God and is
agitated by his lack of belief. The old world is dying or dead, and
he mourns his loss of faith even while he recognizes that he cannot
go back to the world of faith. At the same time he cannot bring into
being the new world with its new meaning. He can but 'wander'
between the two worlds.
The poem by Arnold from which these lines are taken, 'Stanzas
from the Grande Chartreuse', was published in 1855, the year in
which Soren Kierkegaard died and eleven years after the birth of
Friedrich Nietzsche. Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were acutely
aware of the dying of faith that invites Arnold's mournful senti-
ment. But, unlike Arnold, neither stands passively before it.
Nietzsche, Matthew Arnold's later contemporary, does not mourn
the passing of the old world, nor does he concede that the new
world is powerless to be born; he exhorts his contemporaries to
create the new world of value and meaning. Kierkegaard, Arnold's
early contemporary, does not concede that the old world, the world
of faith, is dead; rather, he sees his contemporaries as turning from
the life-giving demands of the passion of faith, he sees his contem-
poraries as themselves dying away from faith; and he sets about
making them aware of the true character of faith, so that they may
reclaim it in their lives. In this way Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
embody two active but opposite reactions to the dying of faith in
Europe in the nineteenth century. However, these two authors
speak to our own time, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as
well; and though they are both Christian, or, in the case of
vm
Preface ix
Nietzsche, of Christian background, both speak to other religious
traditions that face the growing secularization of our sensibilities.
The nineteenth century has ended, but the social and religious
phenomenon of secularization, in both its exterior and interior
manifestations, continues. One hundred years later, at the end of
the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first,
beneath the brittle evolution of information technology and the
general increase in the hubbub of life, this process is, if anything,
growing in strength and influence. Now, though, it is not an ex-
clusively European phenomenon. It is global, affecting all the
religious traditions of the world. In this century Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche are as relevant as they were in their century; in fact more
so, for now their precocious voices are being heard in a way that
they were never heard in their own time.
Each author offers to his and to our age a hope, a vision of accept-
ance of the world. But their visions are utterly different.
Kierkegaard's flows from and is vivified by faith. Nietzsche's gains
its sustenance from a rejection of the tradition of faith. This book is
not an endeavour to canvas the full spectrum of Kierkegaard's
thought, or of Nietzsche's, let alone the thought of both. It does,
however, put into graphic and dialectical opposition two compet-
ing visions of joyful acceptance that we find in the works of these
two thinkers - one profoundly religious, the other profoundly anti-
religious - and it poses the question: Which vision of acceptance of
life has, not only more relevance for us, but more truth?
Some material in Chapter 10 originally appeared as 'Three
Models of Faith', International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion,
vol. 12 (1981). Copyright © 1981 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
The Hague. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
I am grateful for support in the form of reassigned time provided
by the School of Humanities and the Department of Philosophy at
California State University, Northridge. As in the past, the chair of
the Philosophy Department, Daniel Sedey, aided my research and
writing by giving me helpful teaching schedules. I also thank
Annabelle Buckley for her editorial assistance and John M. Smith
for his help in preparing the typescript for publication.
J. KELLENBERGER