This article addresses the role and meaning of prayer as well as the language of piety and praise in Nietzsche’s writings, notably in Zarathustra. This essay was first presented as a talk in German at the 2017 Nietzsche colloquium in Sils Maria, the theme of which was “Zarathustra und Dionysos”. In preparing it for a publication in English, the argument has been reworked and expanded and references have been added, while partly preserving the tone and structure of the oral delivery. (...) I am grateful to the instructive comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers for Nietzsche-Studien. Nietzsche can be read as an uncompromising critic of religion but also as the initiator of a new form of faith, described by some scholars as a “Dionysian piety”. The analysis takes its lead from the way in which Z refers to his yes-saying as also saying “amen”, exploring how Nietzsche explicitly incorporates the language of religious discourse into his writing. Examining passages where he explicitly questions the adoption of confessional language and prayer, it criticizes as overly simplistic the view of his thinking as seeking a new piety. The discussion of the significance of prayer from a psychological, linguistic, and poetological perspective highlights the experience of “inspiration” as a key to the adoption of confessional language in Z. In an interpretation of the last part of this book, it shows how its concluding scenes coalesce precisely around the role and possibility of prayer and piety, and how a crisis in the narrative is triggered by the inability of Zarathustra’s visitors to properly understand his message in this regard. A concluding interpretation of the section “Before Sunrise” in the third part of the book shows how it gathers the philosophical stakes involved in Nietzsche’s understanding of prayer, piety, and confessional praise. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper identifies two central paradoxes threatening the notion of amor fati [love of fate]: it requires us to love a potentially repellent object (as fate entails significant negativity for us) and this, in the knowledge that our love will not modify our fate. Thus such love may seem impossible or pointless. I analyse the distinction between two different sorts of love (eros and agape) and the type of valuation they involve (in the first case, the object is loved (...) because we value it; in the second, we value the object because we love it). I use this as a lens to interpret Nietzsche's cryptic pronouncements on amor fati and show that while an erotic reading is, up to a point, plausible, an agapic interpretation is preferable both for its own sake and because it allows for a resolution of the paradoxes initially identified. In doing so, I clarify the relation of amor fati to the eternal return on the one hand, and to Nietzsche's autobiographical remarks about suffering on the other. Finally, I examine a set of objections pertaining both to the sustainability and limits of amor fati, and to its status as an ideal. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s name has become almost synonymous with militant atheism. Born into a pious Christian family, this son of a Lutheran pastor declared himself the Antichrist. But could this have been yet another of his masks of hardness? Nietzsche rarely revealed his innermost self in the published writings, and this can be gleaned mainly from his private letters and the accounts of friends. These sources bring to light the philosopher’s inner struggle with his own, deeply religious nature.Losing his father at a (...) young age was a calamity from which Nietzsche never recovered, and I argue that his famous thought-image “God is dead” was a transfiguration of the painful memory of this loss. In this essay, I trace Nietzsche’s tortuous path from an ardent devotee of God to a vociferous critic of Christianity, a path that was punctuated with veiled longings for a loving deity. Deep in his heart, he remained faithful to Christian ideals. Rather like Cordelia, the only truly loving daughter of King Lear, Nietzsche refused to utter words of intense affection and reverence, as these had been blatantly devalued and corrupted. Instead, he adopted a mask of a wrongdoer and a blasphemer who took not the punishment but the guilt.Nietzsche’s attitude to religion is discussed from the perspective of his life, his personality, and his mental condition. The discussion draws on psychoanalytical concepts of Freud, Erikson, Winnicott and Kohut. This is not an exclusive reading, but complementary to other studies in this field. (shrink)

It is common in accounts of the secularization of Western thought to make reference to the name of Nietzsche. Nietzsche is undeniably a critic of religion, but he is equally a critic of the secular. It is for this reason that I propose thinking about Nietzsche’s philosophy as postsecular. This term is one that has evolved over the last couple decades in response to the so-called “return of the religious” in society, social theory, and philosophy and suggests that secularity and (...) religiosity are not antithetical and therefore that we must move beyond the forms of thinking that would regard them as such. First, I focus on his concepts of will to power, interpretation, perspectivism, and history, and sketch how they are all interrelated and how these ground his interpretation of religion. Based on this view, I show, second, that while religion is, for Nietzsche, a historical perspective, it is also, for him, part of the historical genealogy of secularity. This point leads to my final one on the relationship between secularity and religion in Nietzsche’s thought, where I argue that, on his own terms, Nietzsche’s anti-Christianity is a hyper-Christianity, even while rejecting facets of Christianity. (shrink)

The relationship between Epicurus and Nietzsche is an increasingly popular research topic. There are a number of publications that attempt to detail the nature of this relationship by investigating specific aspects of their writings that interrelate. Such research is valuable because it reveals an otherwise hidden dynamic to Nietzsche studies, however, all previous discourse on Epicurus and Nietzsche are limited because they fail to recognise both thinkers as philosophers of immanence. This thesis proposes that ‘immanence’ is the central concept that (...) allows the influence of Epicurus upon Nietzsche’s thought to be revealed most appropriately. Furthermore, it proposes to account for the development of ‘immanence’ within the works of Epicurus and Nietzsche in order to disclose the nature of immanence itself. By following Nietzsche’s genealogical method, this thesis will demonstrate that Epicurean immanence emerged through the conceptualisation of all existence within the cosmos and nature. Moreover, immanence developed as an atomistic response to the transcendent philosophies of Socrates and Aristotle which opposed Democritean materialism. Nietzsche recognised that the increasing popularity of Platonism in late antiquity led to the event of Christianity, which dominated Western thought until its success eventually destroyed the conditions that maintained it. Nietzsche predicted that in the light of Christianity’s demise, mankind would be plunged into a state of crisis and unparalleled nihilism. In response, he proposed that the body and spirit must be reunited in an act of overcoming, and those capable of that act would ‘inherit the earth’. Immanence for Nietzsche is this unifying act and inheritance, and he demonstrates that redemptive doctrines such as Epicurus’ ataraxia, modelled on nihilism, must be rejected and overcome by a philosophy modelled on ‘cheerfulness’. It is in this respect that his philosophy from The Gay Science onwards can be recognised as a discourse on immanence. (shrink)

Beckett’s philosophical indebtedness has long been recognised – especially in conjunction with Dante, Descartes and Geulincx. In this article, I examine Beckettian universal values of Enlightenment, which will be exposed as self-serving mystifications that rationalize and instrumentalize the meaning of life. In this context, the awareness of the Enlightenment nature of Beckett’s writing in Waiting for Godot will be analysed along with the freedom appeal of his reader as he strives to attain the enlightenment.