Death of God/Eternal Return

Christian Atheism (Pre-Course: 5)

The next Philosophy Portal course starts October 20th and focuses on the concept of Christian Atheism. The course will feature classes on German Idealism, Hegelo-Marxism, Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis, Altizer’s Gospel, Žižek’s Philosophy, and Rollins’ Theology. The course will also feature guest lectures from Slavoj Žižek, Peter Rollins, Barry Taylor, and Mark Gerard Murphy. To find out more, or to get involved, see: Christian Atheism.

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The video below is part of pre-course material for the course on Christian Atheism:

In this video:

1. We start with a focus on Nietzsche’s relationship to the ancient world, with a specific focus on distinctions between Ancient Greece, Jerusalem, and Rome, and with a specific emphasis on Nietzsche’s Roman style ideals

2. Nietzsche was distinctly and definitively anti-Christian in both his relationship to the idea of the “Father God” as well as Christian institutions, which he sees as stylised after the weak, however his relation to Christ is more ambiguous

3. While Nietzsche admired Christ and thinks we can learn much from Christ, in the end does not follow Christ because sees Christ’s embodiment of love as both anti-life and anti-nature, draining oneself an inner struggle with desire

4. Nietzsche’s idea of the Death of God was both preceded by and different from Hegel’s idea of the Death of God: while Hegel was looking to salvage Christianity internal to Christianity, Nietzsche looks for tragic path outside of Christ

5. To fully understand Nietzsche’s response to Death of God theology, we have to understand the challenge of the resurrected body, and specifically the idea that we live a life unto death in the faith that we may experience a life after death

6. The idea of the eternal return was Nietzsche’s ultimate response to the Death of God, which functions as a counterweight emphasising the principle “will only that which we can will to be repeated eternally”

7. The idea of the eternal return functions to preserve the subjective foundation of values in freedom after the Death of God, while at the same time overcoming a form of nihilism that manifests in a resentment of both life and the body

Note: in the course itself, this pre-course material will not only be further developed, but also provide us with a foundation for further discussion.