Lost and Profound

“What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.” (Baruch Spinoza, 1632--1677)

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”  (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844--1900)

“. . . the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means.”  (William James, 1842—1910)

 

I enjoy philosophy, thinking about “what life honestly and deeply means.”  Recently, I have read biographies about two philosophers that intrigue me, Spinoza and Nietzsche.

On the surface they seem to have little in common.  Two centuries separated their lives.  Spinoza lived in the Netherlands, Nietzsche in Germany.  Spinoza was born and raised with a traditional Jewish education.  Nietzsche’s father was a Lutheran pastor.  Temperamentally, they were quite different.  Spinoza lived a quiet, modest life of contemplation.  Nietzsche was a wanderer, often tormented by a plethora of physical ailments.  Spinoza declared that his philosophic task was to seek a path escaping the ‘human bondage’ of unwanted emotions while finding sustainable happiness through reason.  Nietzsche approached the trials and torments of existence as our fate to embrace, amor fati . . . and to rise above. We must transcend suffering in order to be the overcoming person, the ubermensch.

Though in many ways different, there are similarities. Both Spinoza and Nietzsche rejected their religious upbringings.  Both were harshly critical of established religious institutions.  Both questioned the nature and existence of God.

For Spinoza, there was no personal God.  God does not observe, judge, or intervene in the world.  For Spinoza, God is nature and the world, and we exist within God.  Spinoza was a rationalist, meaning he believed that for everything in the world there is an explanation.  Our human capacity to explain is finite and limited.  God alone encompasses the totality of order and rationality. Spinoza believed that morality can be discerned within the logic of nature.  Skipping the many intermediate steps that led him to his conclusions, I can report that Spinoza advocated for a society that cares for those in need, a religiously tolerant society, and a society that protects free thought.

Nietzsche famously announced, “God is dead,” meaning that we, who in our need had once created God, had now outgrown and killed God.  Whereas before, the belief in God was the basis of traditional morality, we were now adrift, both compelled and free to define a new morality. Nietzsche’s focus was not political.  He disdained nationalism.  His interest focused on the individual’s capacity to overcome, to rise above the ordinary, achieve greatness, and say yes to life.

I was talking to my wife about Spinoza and Nietzsche, trying to explain their philosophic systems.  She immediately wanted to know more about their lives.  Did they marry?  Did they have children?  No . . . neither of them ever married or had children.  She thought both of them sounded somewhat narcissistic and self-serving. She found it ironic that two men, uncommitted in relationships, detached from children, and professing to know about God, should presume to understand “what life honestly and deeply means.”  I think she heard their stories and judged them to be more lost than profound.