A God Torn to Pieces: The Nietzsche Case

Chapter 1. The Hunt for the Whale

1 CHAPTER 1 The Hunt for the Whale The drama’s done. Why then here does anyone step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck. —Ishmael in Moby Dick1 T he figure of Nietzsche is of fundamental importance for a better understanding of Christianity and its uniqueness; this is the conclusion that can be reached from a careful and objective examination of his writings.2 It is an unusual conclusion since, while the role of religion in Nietzsche’s thought has been stressed by several commentators, as much cannot be said for the uniqueness that he attributes to Christianity. This uniqueness is certainly of a negative order in Nietzsche’s view but it carries so much weight with him that he is compelled to return to it again and again with increased intensity, up to the illusory catharsis of The Antichrist, which will require our particular attention. Nietzsche’s absolutely extra-ordinary vision of Christianity was first stressed by René Girard, who also stresses the singular collective blindness —as in the case of Poe’s Purloined Letter or rather of Andersen’s naked emperor—that has afflicted nearly all of Nietzsche’s interpreters. As always 2 Chapter One with Girard, his comments debunk and give a fresh direction, exploding so many commonplaces about Christianity and about Nietzsche that he has been largely ignored, and the situation at present can hardly be said to have entirely changed. Thus there is a double censorship—of the real Christian message and of the real significance of Nietzsche—and it is the more difficult to overcome because Nietzsche himself plays an active part in it in all respects. Girard’s interpretation is far from being complete or completely satisfactory , however it sets out along a highly arduous path but one of great fascination , a real challenge to exegesis that the present essay intends to take up in the hope that someone may notice its force, its pure and simple capacity to explain facts that have been systematically ignored because they are hard to deny. It is true that the entire corpus of Nietzsche’s writings seems to oppose itself to any attempt of the kind, and to mock every effort to reduce it to an unambiguous message, to a real and recognizable content, the more so if the attempt is accompanied by something like cognitive and ethical motivation. And what is it that Nietzsche proposes if not to go beyond all ethics and every normative and objective vision of reality, expressed in a consciously scintillating style, a siren song that appeals to so many readers? The bewildering variety of guises and attitudes adopted by Nietzsche would seem to justify not only the definition given by Gianni Vattimo of “thinking of difference” [pensiero della differenza]3 but also the systematizing reaction of Martin Heidegger, who peremptorily declared that Nietzsche’s philosophy was “no less consistent and rigorous than Aristotle’s.”4 The two positions are not in fact mutually exclusive; indeed, they are cross-referential, sharing a desire to remain in the philosophical sphere (no matter whether ‘postmetaphysical ’ or ‘postmodern’), and hold that the answers to the questions raised by Nietzsche cannot, in any case, be formulated in different language. The religious problem and the problem of the Christian anomaly that Nietzsche raises are passed over in silence.5 The idea of an essential comparison of Nietzsche’s work with religion and with Christianity is still further counter to the main stream if we apply it not only to his thinking but to his life as well. Despite, or rather because of, the masquerading, not to say histrionics, of the author of Zarathustra, few other thinkers reveal such a close and even catastrophic connection between The Hunt for the Whale 3 their life and their ideas. The multiplying of disguises, posturings, and statements of intent are evidence of a systematic attempt to flee from identity rather than of having overcome any prejudice about identity. Disguises are adopted, above all, by people with something to hide. Besides taking an author’s texts as a whole or trying to fit them into the procrustean bed of a personal philosophy, there exists another possibility, supremely hermeneutic and well-known to real psychologists and real readers : to choose only those elements in a text or set of texts that appear as a sign or indication of what lies beneath. This is a more perilous strategy and requires having a nose for the hunt and long...