The text recounts a story of a madman who runs into a market place, crying, “I seek God, I seek God.”  The people mock him, asking whether God has gotten lost or perhaps has emigrated.  The madman then stands among them and says,

Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him -you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?

The text continues in a similar vein with the madman clearly lamenting the fact that “God is dead” and acknowledging that “we have killed him.“  In what sense have we killed God?  Does he mean this literally?  Of course not.  Rather, he means that we have come to a place in history where we no longer believe that we need God.  We now believe in the progress of science, and we have given up on the possibility of knowing reality in itself.  We now see ourselves as the creators, the constructors of reality.  In short, we have made ourselves gods.  In such a situation there is no “space” for recognition of the divine.  In this sense, God is dead to us and we have killed him.  Understood in this way, Nietzsche’s text has a profoundly prophetic dimension to it, as contemporary society exhibits all the symptoms of Nietzsche’s diagnosis.

On a close, non-literal reading of the text, Nietzsche’s madman is not rejoicing in the death of God but is deeply troubled by it.  As he says, “We have killed him-you and I.  All of us are his murders. But how did we do this?  How could we drink up the sea?  Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?’”  What does Nietzsche mean by horizon, and what happens when the horizon is erased?  A horizon carves out a space for vision.  Or you might say the horizon creates a space within which we can live because it sets a boundary of sorts for what we can see.  So what happens when I “wipe away the entire horizon?” I destroy the very boundaries that define human existence.  Again, the madman does not take joy in this situation.  Rather, he is describing where we are in history, what we’ve become as a society.  We are a people who think we don’t need God; we’ve become, as Nietzsche says explicitly, a prideful people.  In fact, pride characterizes modern life (and a good bit of postmodern life as well).  As Nietzsche explains,

It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate and ephemeral beings, merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence.  For without this addition, they would have every reason to flee this existence as quickly as Lessing’s son.  The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence.  For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing (italics added).

According to Nietzsche, we’ve become prideful in a number of ways.  First of all, we built grander and grander conceptual edifices (what Nietzsche poetically calls, “columbaria”) that lead us away from the forces of life and toward a culture of death.  We forget that our metaphors have lowly origins and believe that our columbaria are impenetrable.  Having such great confidence in the progress of modern science, we believe that with enough time we can even overcome death.  In such an environment, Nietzsche asks, who needs faith?  We have denied our finitude, have made ourselves gods; thus, practically speaking God is dead.  The madman laments this situation.  Do we?  Or do we continue by the way we live our lives to confirm Nietzsche’s prophetic judgment?   Я виновна, as the Russians say.

Notes

Surely a philosophical theory that is to be comprehended and speculatively understood is one thing, and a doctrine that is to be actualized in existence is something else. If there is to be any question of understanding with regard to this latter doctrine, then this understanding must be:  to understand that it is to be existed in, to understand the difficulty of existing in it, what a prodigious existence-task [Existents-Opgave] this doctrine assigns to the learner (VII, 329; p. 379).

Because the Christianity of Climacus’ day had become overly speculative, he purposely distances himself from the word “doctrine,” as he fears that by employing the word, Christianity will continue to be categorized and understood as a philosophical theory instead of way of existence.  Thus, he comes up with a new term, “existence-communication.”  In no way is Climacus denying that Christianity has intellectual content; rather, he wants to make sure that this content is set forth in such a way that the uniqueness of Christianity as a transcendent (as opposed to an immanent) religion is upheld.  As Climacus explains,

If Christianity were a doctrine, it would eo ipso not constitute the opposite of speculative thought but would be an element within it.  Christianity pertains to existence, to existing, but existence and existing are the very opposite of speculation.  The Eleatic doctrine, for example, is not related to existing but to speculation; therefore it must be assigned its place within speculation.  Precisely because Christianity is not a doctrine, it holds true, as developed previously, that there is an enormous difference between knowing what Christianity is and being a Christian.  With regard to a doctrine, this distinction is unthinkable, because the doctrine is not related to existing.  I cannot help it that our age has reversed the relation and changed Christianity into a philosophical theory that is to be comprehended and being a Christian into something negligible.  Furthermore, to say that Christianity is empty of content because it is not a doctrine is only chicanery.  When a believer exists in faith, his existence has enormous content, but not in the sense of a yield in the paragraphs (VII, 329; p. 380).

The content of Christianity is dialectical; it is the “absolute paradox” and as such, it differentiates Christianity from immanent religions in which in principle all doctrines can be penetrated rationally, making revelation superfluous.  Climacus is firmly committed to what the orthodox Christian tradition calls the “mysteries of the faith”-the Incarnation, the Trinity and other doctrines which are both central to the Christian faith and can only be known through revelation.  In addition and related to the previous passage, Climacus believes that the content of Christianity has the potential to actually transform a person’s existence, giving him/her a new passion-”it is relating to the pathos-filled as an impetus for a new pathos” (VII, 488; p. 559).  Christian belief then is intimated related to action.  As Evans explains,

Climacus understands Christian belief as not merely accompanied by action but as essentially expressing itself in action.  Because of this he attempts to rethink the nature of that belief in such a way that it does not exclude belief as an intellectual act but does exclude even the possibility of belief being only an intellectual act.  This conception of Christian belief is itself demanded by “existential appropriation” that is Christianity and the content of Christianity, which is the absolute paradox, can be seen to correspond exactly to each other [VII, 532; pp. 610-611].  Both the content of Christianity and the appropriation of Christianity become “specifically different” from everything else (Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript, p. 210).

If Jesus’ life is merely a collection of stories or myths, or if Jesus is merely a creation of the early church (so that it is considered unimportant whether or not what the early Christians believed is literally true), then Christianity is essentially transformed into its opposite, and no “advance” on Socrates has been made at all.  For in such a case Jesus’ life would merely represent a possibility that man must be assumed to be able to know.  What distinguishes Christianity, according to Climacus, is that man is assumed to really lack the truth, and therefore must acquire it in existence in a genuinely historical relation to the God as he actually appeared (Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript, p. 249).

Of course Plato is not giving us a blueprint for an actual city (contra Popper); however, Socrates’ “building plans” strike a similar chord with modern racist projects.  (There are, no doubt, significant differences between the two projects; I’m not claiming that a one-to-one correspondence exists.  Nonetheless, the commonalities are worth pondering).   Drawing from the insights of historian Kenneth Stampp, Floyd W. Hayes III describes the ways in which slave-owners in the American ant-bellum south attempted to “create a good slave.”[2] The following are five common strategies employed by slave-owners in the process of making and managing a slave class.

First, those who managed the slaves had to maintain strict discipline.  One slave-owner said, “Unconditional submission is the only footing upon which slavery should be placed.”  Another said, “the slave must know that his master is to govern absolutely and he is to obey implicitly, that he is never, for a moment, to exercise either his will or judgment in opposition to a positive order” [Stampp, The Peculiar Institution:  Slavery and the Ante-Bellum South, p. 145].  Second, slave-owners thought that they had to implant in the slave a consciousness of personal inferiority.  They deliberately extended this sense of personal inferiority to the slave’s past.  Slave-owners believed that in order to control black people, the slaves “had to feel that African ancestry tainted them, that their color was a badge of degradation” [to use Socrates' language, they needed to feel that they were mere "bronze" souls] (ibid.).  The third step in the training process was to awe the slaves with a sense of the slave-owner’s enormous power.  It was essential, various slave-owners declared, “to make them stand in fear” (p. 146) [following the Republic, to show them the force of the warrior class/silver-souls if they decide to overstep class boundaries].  The fourth aspect was the attempt to “persuade the bondsman to take an interest in the master’s enterprise and to accept his standards of ‘good conduct’” (p. 147) [you must believe our "noble lie" and embrace the solidarity and customs of the city-after all, it's for the good of the city, which is our Mother].  Thus the slave-owner sought to train slaves to accept unquestionably his criteria of what was good and true and beautiful.  The final step, according to Stampp’s documents was “to impress Negroes with their helplessness:  to create in them a habit of perfect dependence upon their masters (ibid.)”[3]

Notes

[2] Hayes, Floyd W. III.  “Fanon, Oppression, and Resentment  The Black Experience in the United States,”  in Fanon:  A Critical Reader.  Gordon, Lewis R., Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean, and White, Renee T. eds., (Cambridge:  Blackwell, 1996), p. 16.

[3] Hayes, p. 16.

[h]er relation to God [...] consists primarily not in self-confident action but in repentance.  Her task is not primarily to achieve a God-relationship herself by positively realizing her moral duty, but to achieve a sate of inward obedience to God by allowing God to transform her character.  This is well illustrated by Fear and Trembling where Johannes de Silentio claims that “an ethic which ignores sin is an absolutely idle science, but if it acknowledge sin, then it eo ipso transcends itself” (III, 146; p. 108).  The reason for this is given in a footnote attached to the same paragraph:  “As soon as sin appears, ethics perishes, precisely because of repentance; for repentance is the highest ethical expression, but precisely as such the deepest ethical self-contradiction” (III, 146n, p. 108n).[1]

Notes

In book VII of the Republic, Socrates describes life immersed in the visible realm as a life of slavery.  For example, the people who are in bonds in the cave are lovers of sights and sound.  So we have a critique of lovers of sights and sounds, and the implication that freedom comes in the study of essences.  Hence, only the philosopher is truly “free.”  The philosopher, because he knows “true” reality, the essences, must then go back into the cave (the polis) and rule.  However, there are a number of tensions with this account.  Does knowing the essences of x make you better at doing x? Or is it that knowing the particular x makes you better at doing x?  For example, someone could have an excellent grasp of the essence of music theory, yet be tone deaf and completely unable to make music.   Glaucon, whose shortcomings we often highlight, actually seems to have an insight on this point.  In other words, Glaucon’s attempts to bring Socrates down to the visible world seems reasonable because he sees correctly that Socrates is setting up an educational system that produces people who are not comfortable in the cave or the city; they don’t like it; they want to be contemplating the essences.  Some scholars attempt to resolve this tension by appealing to the ancients’ communal sense over against a more modern, individualistic leaning, which makes what “I” want more important than the needs of the city.  However, that doesn’t seem to solve the issue, because I’m suggesting that it would not be better for the city for the philosopher to rule, as knowing x does not necessarily make one better at doing x.

Plato’s Socrates is of course incredibly subtle and often leads us in one direction simply to show us that that particular path is a dead end.  Perhaps that is what he is doing here.  For example, Socrates is aware that the philosophers who have come out of the cave and glimpsed the light of the Sun (the Form of the Good) will not want to go back down (just as Socrates didn’t want to go down to the Piraeus at the beginning of book I).  At 520d Socrates intimates that a democracy would not be the best regime because the leaders all want to rule and are power-grabbers. Later in the Republic in his discussion of the different regimes, he shows how each character type is conflicted and deficient in his erotic attachments (e.g., oligarch is a money-lover).  Since the philosopher is also erotic-a lover of wisdom (Cephalus’ being the foil, as his lack of eros disqualifies him as a potential philosopher), to rule would cause him to live in a disordered state, as he would have to (at least part of the time) turn away from his love of contemplation.  In other words, the philosopher would be conflicted.  This confliction is not exactly parallel with the internal tension experienced by the oligarch or timocrat; yet, it is a genuine tension because he is pulled away from what he loves and does best and is forced to engage in something for which he has no erotic attraction.

Though Plato’s Socrates makes several critical statements concerning the democratic regime, it just might be the case that he is actually ambivalent to democracies.  For example at 557, he states, “It [the democratic regime] is probably the fairest, the most beautiful of all regimes.”  Then at 557d, he says, “It is probably necessary for the man who wishes to organize a city, as we were just doing, to go to a city under a democracy.”  Here in effect Socrates is saying, if we want to do what we are doing right now (i.e. engaging in philosophy), then maybe we have live in a democratic regime.  Consider the “clues” that we’ve been given that his might be the case.  A basic feature of democracy is the protection of privacy.  With regard to our present concern this means there is no compulsion or obligation to be political.  This is the opposite of what we find in the parable of the cave, where the philosopher is forced to return to the cave; hence, he is forced to be political.  We see this mimicked at the very beginning of the Republic when Socrates is “forced” metaphorically to stay in the Piraeus.  Thus, in contrast to Socrates’ supposed perfectly just city, in a democracy, because privacy is assured, a person could pursue philosophy, as there is no compulsion to be political.  If, as I believe it is, the city in thought is a failure, a purposed reductio ad absurdum, and eros is constitutive of humans and cannot be controlled by mathematics (which has a kind of necessity to it), then a democracy is in fact the best (although imperfect human-all-too-human) regime for the politician and the philosopher.  Why?  It allows the eros of the politician to be satisfied because s/he is doing what s/he is best suited to do.  The same thing goes for the philosopher.  Whether this works out for the artisans (and for their ultimate good) is another question, which will have to wait for another time.

Husserl also utilizes the concept of “horizon”; however, his focus is not on horizon as a limiting concept, locking us into our diverse cultural-historical frameworks.  Instead, Husserl’s understanding of horizon is much more fluid, and his focus is on the inner experience of time-consciousness, where “the horizons of one experience flow into those of another so that in the continuum of experiences there is a constant flux of horizons” (494).   Gadamer comes along, takes the insights of Nietzsche and Husserl, and formulates his own notion of horizon for the purposes of his  hermeneutical project.  Rejecting what he understands as Nietzsche’s closed-horizon view and accepting Husserl’s less-staticized conception, Gadamer, in essence, offers a fundamental critique of Nietzsche (or what he understands as Nietzsche’s position), while de-subjectivizing Husserl.  As Lammi explains,

On the one hand Gadamer, like Nietzsche, understands “horizon” to denote the finite limitations of any particular perspective at any particular time [TM, 269].  However, he interprets Nietzsche as believing that a horizon can be simply “closed,” which in Gadamer’s judgment constitutes a “romantic reflection, a kind of Robinson Crusoe dream,” [Ibid., 271] because just as no individual exists without others, no cultural or historical horizon exists in static and total isolation from others.[2] Horizons, most particularly the horizon of the past that we call “tradition,” are always in motion just as human life is always in motion [Ibid., 217].  There is no historical consciousness in the sense of Nietzsche’s “historicist insight” that sets the horizons into motion; all historical consciousness does is make that motion aware of itself [Ibid., 271].  The awareness that our horizons are fluid, rather than teaching that nothing is true, makes it possible to find new truths-to “expand our horizons,” as the saying has it. Thus the self-awareness of historical consciousness, far from being a “deadly truth” about the relativity of all values, is for Gadamer the key for reaching beyond or behind a given horizon to confront the possibility that there is truth to be learned from the past. “I am convinced of the fact that, quite simply, we can learn from the classics,” Gadamer concludes [Ibid.,490] (494-95).

Gadamer wholeheartedly agrees with the aspect of Nietzsche’s historicist claim which emphasizes our finitude and the fact that our knowledge of our world and ourselves always remains partial and limited.  Yet, Gadamer believes that Nietzsche’s historicism “fails to understand temporal distance as a positive aid to discovering which is the way Gadamer understands the interpreter’s hermeneutical situation once it is brought to self-consciousness”  (495).

Notes

[2] Gadamer’s interpretation of Nietzsche is problematic on this point. Whether or not his critique is on target, however, Gadamer’s positive argument for the dynamic concept of “horizon” remains cogent.

The warriors, the mothers, the servants, the truck drivers, the children-these are not ghosts, they are not specters, they are not images in our heads.  These are bodies, black bodies; bodies of black men seen as inherently criminal; bodies of black women unseen, commodities of exchange, objects, things, toys, subjectless receptacles; children seen as already damned and irredeemable”  (Fanon:  A Criticial Reader, xvii).

A person who is trying to understand a text has to keep something at a distance-namely everything that suggests itself, on the basis of his own prejudices, as the meaning expected-as soon as it is rejected by the sense of the text itself.  Even the experience of reversal (which happens unceasingly in talking, and which is the real experience of dialectic) has its equivalent here.  Explicating the whole of meaning towards which understanding is directed forces us to make interpretative conjectures and to take them back again.  The self-cancellation of the interpretation is dialectical not primarily because the one-sidedness of every statement can be balanced by another side-this is, as we shall see, a secondary phenomenon in interpretation-but because the word that interpretatively fits the meaning of the text expresses the whole of this meaning-i.e., allows an infinity of meaning to be represented within it in a finite way (Truth and Method, p. 465).

The latter part of the passage introduces the idea of a “self-cancellation” involved in a hermeneutical exchange.  As Gadamer explains, the dialectic involved here is not simply an attempt to present the opposing viewpoint to balance out the perspective given.  Rather, (I think) he means something analogous to the following.  In a symphony, one has a meaningful whole, which consists of various particular parts organized in a very complex way.  Each instrument group (brass, strings, woodwinds etc.) plays a different melodic line (melodic lines are analogous to sentences).  These horizontal melodic lines, when considered vertically, constitute the various harmonies of the symphony (analogous to words).  If we zero in on one particular harmonic moment in say the third movement of the symphony, we might find, for example, a C major triad.  That C major triad can be abstracted and identified as a C major triad consisting of the notes C, E, G.  However, within the larger meaning of the symphony, that C major triad, because of its function at that particular place within the whole, cannot be understand as merely a C major triad (though technically it is that); rather, it must be seen as integrally connected with all the notes that precede it, as well as all the notes that follow it.  In a sense, the C major triad is both a one and a many-it is a C major triad and thus has an integral unity of meaning; yet, it is a many because of its intimate connection to and function within the symphony itself-that place where it lives and moves and has its being.  The dialectical self-cancelling movement occurs due to the fact that as the C major triad emerges from the background of the whole, it must “cancel” part of itself (the whole) in order to do so.  (This sounds very Heideggerian, which is no surprise given the latter’s influence on Gadamer).  Yet, to avoid mis-interpretation, it must not become completely severed from the whole, lest in a very real sense it die.  If this is a correct understanding of Gadamer on this point, there are some interesting Christian connections to be made.

Hegel isn’t the only one who falls prey to Foucault’s critique.  It seems that any philosophical or theological position that advocates a suprahistorical principle which guides history teleologically would likewise be guilty.  As Foucault explains, genealogy “rejects the metahistorical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite teleologies”[1] (”Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 242).   In other words, Foucault’s genealogical approach to history rejects any factors or principles that come from outside of history or that are not rooted in history.  One the one hand, Foucault’s critique is absolutely valid and makes excellent sense.  For example, Hegel’s account of the unfolding of Spirit in history, his ridiculous (not to mention racist) accounts of Africans and other people groups and the ultimate realization of absolute Spirit in modern Prussia fails to do justice to the complexity of history and historical events.  On the other hand, is it not possible to incorporate Foucault’s warnings against contorting history into our theoretical molds while still allowing for a suprahistorical principle, or as Christians claim, a God who transcends the historical process (yet who also entered into that process in the Incarnation) and guides history to end?  In other words, perhaps the complexity and contrapuntal nature of our in-time, historical existence can be acknowledged without having to deny God’s involvement in and providential guidance over the course of history.  Is it the case that every aspect of both positions are mutually exclusive?  That is, from a Christian point of view, can we not mine some of Foucault’s “Egyptian gold”, while leaving the “dross” behind?  Of course Foucault would say, “no, you cannot and that is just my point.”

Yet, perhaps this mining activity is what biblical theology attempts to do by distinguishing between first (diachronic) and second (synchronic or synthesizing) readings of Scripture.  That is, Christian exegetes must to be careful not to allow second reading synthetic conclusions to flatten unduly the terrain of the first reading material.  In other words, we shouldn’t be too quick to harmonize the tensions in Scripture, as the diachronic dissonances might themselves be revelatory and instructive.  For example, as some scholars suggest, the NT itself shows us that there were differing and competing theologies among Christians (Paul and the Jewish Christians come to mind, also the different emphases in the synoptics); yet, these different and even opposing groups and theologies still found unity in the Christ-event (his death and resurrection) and were unified by means of the rituals connected with these events (as it the case for the Church throughout history).  If this is the case, then perhaps those communal tensions and differing doctrinal emphases have something important to teach us today not only about the nature of Scripture itself but also about the difficulties of ecclesial existence.  If dissonances existed then among God’s people and were not fully resolved (as the NT itself suggests) and in fact were needed as mutual correctives to one another, then why should we think that something analogous should not be the case today as we continue to struggle to “translate” the Gospel and all its implications for this-world-living in contemporary society?  This is not to say that we should not make every effort to pursue ecumenical unity (which also involves acknowledging genuine differences) and to pray that the Church would be one.  However, it is to suggest that jumping too quickly to resolves the tensions and harmonize the discordant voices of Scripture might be to miss the fact that God has purposed a-tonal moments in his symphony and that these aspects of revelation speak to us as well.  Reading Scripture diachronically (as well as eschatologically)[2] and connecting its time to our time and seeing ourselves as part of the narrative of salvation history, may, as Rowan Williams puts it,

encourage us to take historical responsibility for arranging and exploring how the gospel is going to be heard in our day.  It can do this because it shows us a history (inside and outside the text) of real and harsh divisions that is both taken up and “overtaken” by grace.  It suggests that what matters is not our ability to finish our business or to secure consensus, as if Christ would be “audible” only in this mode, but our readiness to decide, to take sides, as adult persons, and to live with the consequence and cost of that within the disciplines we share with other Christians of openness to the judgement of the Easter mystery.  These disciplines we share with both past and present, with those near and distant, those we agree with and those we resist, those who are congenial and those who are not”  (On Christian Theology, 59).

Notes

[2] None of this is meant to suggest that synthesizing should be done away with as something inherently evil.  The Church needs great minds like those of Thomas Aquinas and others who have helped move the Church forward by engaging in great synthesizing projects.  So too the  Church today must be willing to cautiously re-synthesize as history unfolds and new challenges arise.