1. Descripción del perfil
1.2 Descripción de Elementos de Competencia
Can the subject’s relation to the Absolute go awry? Is the very positing of the Absolute a kind of sickness? These questions were at the forefront of nineteenth- and twentieth- century Continental thought. While the two questions are different, they are inter- related in important ways. It was Hegel who first identified the theme of the “unhappy consciousness,” an idea explored by figures such as Kierkegaard and Feuerbach, and then transformed and enriched in significant ways by Nietzsche, for whom it formed the basis of his devastating critique of theism. In this section I briefly discuss its introduction by Hegel and development by Kierkegaard, and then look at the role the idea plays in Nietzsche’s atheism.
Hegel identified a key moment in the development of self-consciousness where the self is alienated from itself; this he calls the unhappy consciousness. In an earlier version of the story, the misery of human life leads the individual to project all happiness into a future estate, thereby dulling the pain of the present condition, but also devaluing its significance as well. In his later, more sophisticated account, the very appearance of self-consciousness brings with it the unhappy consciousness, for self-consciousness implies consciousness of the antithesis between self and world. The self then comes to understand itself as finite subjectivity, and as such as standing in opposition to the Absolute and Universal. Here the finite subject finds her finite existence bereft of value. All value is, instead, projected onto an Absolute that is other than and beyond both self and world. This subject is not at home in this world; she is constantly longing for God. These sentiments, notes Hegel, “we find expressed most purely and beautifully in the Psalms of David, and in the Prophets; the chief burden of whose utterances is the thirst of the soul after God, its profound sorrow for its transgressions, and the desire for right- eousness and holiness” (Hegel 1944 [1837]: 321). Moreover, insofar as the individual is self-conscious of his or her self-assertion in the struggle to exist, she grasps herself at odds with the universal, and thereby comes to understand herself as evil. Hence Hegel notes that “this existence for self, this consciousness, is at the same time separation from the Universal and Divine Spirit. If I hold to my abstract Freedom, in contraposition to the Good, I adopt the standpoint of evil” (ibid.: 321–2).
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1985 [1843]) is a vivid portrayal of the unhappy consciousness made sick by its longing for the Absolute. Both the knights of infinite resignation and of faith give up that which they most love in the world for God. This resignation is symbolic of a resignation of the value of finite existence in general, in particular of the finite self and its temporally conditioned desires. But once the knight of infinite resignation resigns the finite she is never at home in the world again; the re- valuation of the finite becomes a problem. Kiekegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silen- tio, himself a knight of infinite resignation, cannot understand how the knight of faith is able to be at home in the world, to desire earthly things and to take delight in them, once the movement of infinite resignation has been achieved. Kierkegaard uses the beautiful image of the dancer to make his point:
It is said that the dancer’s hardest task is to leap straight into a definite position, so that not for a second does he have to catch at the position but stands there in it in the leap itself . . . The knights of infinity are dancers too and they have elevation. They make the upward movement and fall down again . . . But when they come down they cannot assume the position straightaway, they waver an instant and the wavering shows they are nevertheless strangers in the world.
(Kierkegaard 1985 [1843]: 70) On the other hand, says Silentio, the knight of faith accepts the finite back again in such a way that she cannot be distinguished from a Philistine: “to express the sublime in the pedestrian absolutely—that is something only the knight of faith can do” (ibid.: 70). For Kierkegaard, the movement of the knight of faith is not only a real possibility, but it is only through faith in God that genuine love of another is possible. For only the self that accepts its true selfhood, thereby acknowledging the Power that grounds it, is capable of truly loving another in and through this Power.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s bad consciousness is also a close relative of Hegel’s unhappy consciousness; however, his recommendations are diametrically opposed to those of Kierkegaard. According to Nietzsche, the very nature of self-assertion, of life itself, “operates essentially, that is in its basic functions, through injury, assault, exploitation, destruction, and simply cannot be thought of at all without this character” (Nietzsche 2000 [1887]: 512). However, the requirement that humans live harmoniously amongst themselves in society required the bridling of these instincts. They were not, however, obliterated, but redirected inward: “Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in change in destruction—all this turned against the possessors of such instincts: that is the origin of the bad conscience” (ibid.: 521). While this bad conscience is a sickness, it is “an illness as pregnancy is an illness” (ibid.: 524). Out of it is born the entire inner life of human beings; the bad conscience is the “womb of all ideal and imaginative phenom- ena” (ibid.: 523); it is, as such, the cradle of the soul. Hence Nietzsche notes that “the entire inner world, originally as thin as if it were stretched between two membranes, expanded and extended itself, acquired depth, breadth, and height, in the same measure as outward discharge was inhibited” (ibid.: 520). Through the bad conscience the indi- vidual becomes conscious of himself as a subject; it is, as such, a necessary moment in the development of self-consciousness.
The priests, however, turned this necessary illness into something much worse and more difficult to overcome: they turned the bad conscience into the consciousness of sin and guilt. Hence the religious individual “apprehends in ‘God’ the ultimate antithesis of his own ineluctable animal instincts,” and in doing so “ejects from himself all his denial of himself . . . in the form of an affirmation” (Nietzsche 2000 [1887]: 528); that is, he projects his denial of himself onto something absolute and outside himself—God— thereby gaining an absolute foothold for the rejection of all his finite drives! Nihil- ism—the nihilation of all finite drives—thus arrives at its acme through the affirmation of God.
In rejecting theism Nietzsche does much more than reject the idea of God: he ques- tions the value of the idea of truth itself, the affirmation of which he believes requires an impossible view from nowhere: the ideal of objective knowledge demands “that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking” (ibid.: 555). Insofar as the enterprise of science
requires the positing of objective truth, science too, requires the abnegation of life and an asceticism based on “our longest lie” (ibid.: 588). The person who has faith in sci- ence “affirms another world than that of life, nature and history” and must “deny its antithesis, this world, our world,” for “it is still a metaphysical faith that underlies our faith in science” (ibid.: 588). Hence the positing of the Absolute, according to Nietzsche, whether it be in the guise of an absolute, objective truth, or the absolute ground of exist- ence (God) cannot but lead to an alienation of the individual from himself. The indi- vidual is finite, and has only his or her perspective and desires at their disposal. To try to move beyond this finitude with respect to knowledge is a “castration of the intellect” (ibid.: 555), a new kind of nihilism achieving in the realm of knowledge what religion had achieved in the realm of desire.
Nietzsche’s critiques of theism, and others making similar points (for instance, Feuer- bach and Marx), had a large impact on Western thought. Two critiques discussed above especially stand out: first, theism provides a totalizing discourse undergirded by an abso- lute standpoint—that of God. Of course, this “view from nowhere” is a mere fiction, since all standpoints are finite. Nevertheless, this God’s eye view is invoked by those in power to legitimize and absolutize their own finite claims, and to invalidate those of the powerless. Second, theism promotes guilt and suffering—a sick “unhappy conscious- ness” that denies validity to earthly human desires and standpoints insofar as they are recognized as the desires and standpoints of merely finite individuals. Theism thereby leads to a this-worldly nihilism and the projection of all meaning and value, and indeed the very possibility of happiness, into another world.
These criticisms were especially devastating to a particular kind of theistic discourse, one that tended to understand God in simplistic terms, as an object for a subject. Other kinds of theistic discourse, in particular of the kind promoted by some of the figures explored in this essay such as Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard and Tillich, were much more resilient to these kinds of attacks. Beginning their approach to theism from an investiga- tion of the nature of the existent subject, their systems had built into them the insight that all human knowledge and willing express only finite and partial points of view. This is as it should be. As Tillich warned it is the mis-taking of what is merely finite as if it were absolute that is both idolatrous and demonic (Tillich 1961: 216). Moreover, locating access to the divine at the heart of subjectivity itself, these thinkers had strong arguments showing that true religion overcomes the sickness of the unhappy conscious- ness. God does not stand over against the subject in such a way that God is wholly other and apart from the subject, so that the self must project all value outside of itself. Rather, for these figures, God dwells in the depths of the human heart, transforming—not oblit- erating—human desire into an expression of divine love.
Related Topics
Chapter 1: Western Philosophy; Chapter 3: The God of the Jews and the Jewish God; Chapter 21: Historical Inquiry; Chapter 24: Religious Studies and Theology; Chapter 25: Moral Inquiry
References
Adams, R. M. (2005) “Faith and Religious Knowledge,” in J. Mariña (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Allison, H. (2004) Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Boethius (1957 [524]) The Consolation of Philosophy, edited by J. T. Buchanan, New York: Frederick Ungar. Crouter, R. (2005) Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Frank, M. (2005) “Metaphysical Foundations,” in J. Mariña (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich
Schleiermacher, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–34.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1944 [1837]) The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree, New York: Willey Book Co. Kierkegaard, S. (1941 [1849]) The Sickness Unto Death, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (1985 [1843]) Fear and Trembling, trans. A. Hannay, London: Penguin.
—— (1992 [1846]) Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, edited and trans. by H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Nietzsche, F. (2000 [1887]) The Geneology of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. by W. Kaufmann, New York: Random House.
Rahner, K. (1984) Foundations of Christian Faith, New York: Crossroads.
Russell, B. (1997 [1952]) “Is there a God?” in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 11, edited by J. C. Slater and P. Kollner, London: Routledge, pp. 542–8.
Schleiermacher, F. (1999 [1830]) The Christian Faith, trans. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
—— (2002) Kritische Gesamtausgabe II/10.2., edited by A. Arndt, Berlin: De Gruyter. Tillich, P. (1961) Systematic Theology, vol. 1, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Recommended Reading
Beiser, F. (ed.), (1993) The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Covers all major aspects of the thought of Hegel and written by leading scholars in the field.
Hannay, A. and G. Marino (eds), (1997) The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Covers all major aspects of the thought of Kierkegaard and written by leading scholars in the field.
Higgins, K. M. and B. Magnus (eds), (1996) The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Covers all major aspects of the thought of Nietzsche and written by leading scholars in the field.
Mariña, J. (ed.), (2005) The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Covers all major aspects of the thought of Schleiermacher and written by leading scholars in the field.
Marmion, D. and M. Hines (eds), (2005) The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Covers all major aspects of the thought of Rahner and written by leading scholars in the field.