(In my analysis of Christ’s Commandment to love your enemy I have combined two aspects of love coming from two reliable sources, myself and Nietzsche: love as a general extroverted attitude, and love as respect for those worthy of respect, which, in Nietzsche’s example, is respect for your enemy. Unfortunately, neither of these two aspects of love are being practiced by the rich and powerful of this world (not that the poor and powerless are practicing love either!), to the effect that today’s world order has become a horrific mess, leaving no hope for a turnaround, unless a most improbable philosophical revolution takes place, a dramatic revaluation of modern values, to which Love Your Enemy, not in some sugary-pseudoliberal, but in a deeply philosophical and enlightened sense, is the most tangible pointer.)
Christ’s Great Command to love your enemy has caused tremendous difficulty for interpretation. “Are we commanded to love a Hitler?” many are asking, without finding the obvious answer: this is a question of attitude! “Love” in this case does not signify a specific reaction to our circumstances, but the spontaneous and inevitable projection of our naturally sunny, loving disposition. It is, indeed, like the sun, that rises for the benefit of all: the good and the evil alike, just because God made it this way, and saw that it was good.
There is yet another aspect of “loving your enemy.” And, not surprisingly, it is raised by Nietzsche.
Nietzsche’s scorching attack on the unnoble morality of Christianity as the "crown of love of the very same tree whose roots were deep in hatred," is a powerful metaphor, although an unkind one. But just as he hits hard, his superb insight into the question of loving your enemy should outweigh all the criticisms of his holier than thou critics put together, in helping us understand the great Christian Commandment.
Here is that extraordinary passage (from his Genealogy of Morals, First Essay #10), which approaches the question of loving your enemy from a somewhat different angle than mine:
“How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! And such reverence is a bridge to love. (!) For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture “the enemy” as the man of ressentiment conceives him: he has conceived the ‘evil enemy,’ ‘the Evil One,’ and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a ‘good one’ -- himself!”
The distinctive Christian precept of ‘loving your enemy’ gets a tremendous boost from Nietzsche’s insight, no matter what his personal attitude toward Christianity may have been. The remarkable distinction made here between the noble character and the slavish character, shows their different attitudes toward the enemy. The noble man loves his enemy, the slave hates him. When Christ commands, “Love your enemy!” what else, but the nobility of such a virtue comes to mind? I should recommend to every Christian who is privately shocked and confounded by this Commandment to take some time to study this passage in Nietzsche! Maybe those Christians are having a little difficulty with the nobility in their own ,which causes the difficulty in understanding, but it is perhaps just as wrong for Nietzsche himself to issue a wholesale condemnation of the morality of Christianity in principle, with its comprehensive timelessness and unhistoricity, just on the basis of a historical analysis of its origin-in-time and of its practical manifestations.
Incidentally, I am not singling out Christian morality here as some kind of "superior’ morality," which would be wrong to say, considering that each great world culture has its own historical religion, and its own “homegrown” morality, and these culturally differing, but ethically identical, moralities must under all circumstances be treated as equals.
Christ’s Great Command to love your enemy has caused tremendous difficulty for interpretation. “Are we commanded to love a Hitler?” many are asking, without finding the obvious answer: this is a question of attitude! “Love” in this case does not signify a specific reaction to our circumstances, but the spontaneous and inevitable projection of our naturally sunny, loving disposition. It is, indeed, like the sun, that rises for the benefit of all: the good and the evil alike, just because God made it this way, and saw that it was good.
There is yet another aspect of “loving your enemy.” And, not surprisingly, it is raised by Nietzsche.
Nietzsche’s scorching attack on the unnoble morality of Christianity as the "crown of love of the very same tree whose roots were deep in hatred," is a powerful metaphor, although an unkind one. But just as he hits hard, his superb insight into the question of loving your enemy should outweigh all the criticisms of his holier than thou critics put together, in helping us understand the great Christian Commandment.
Here is that extraordinary passage (from his Genealogy of Morals, First Essay #10), which approaches the question of loving your enemy from a somewhat different angle than mine:
“How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! And such reverence is a bridge to love. (!) For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture “the enemy” as the man of ressentiment conceives him: he has conceived the ‘evil enemy,’ ‘the Evil One,’ and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a ‘good one’ -- himself!”
The distinctive Christian precept of ‘loving your enemy’ gets a tremendous boost from Nietzsche’s insight, no matter what his personal attitude toward Christianity may have been. The remarkable distinction made here between the noble character and the slavish character, shows their different attitudes toward the enemy. The noble man loves his enemy, the slave hates him. When Christ commands, “Love your enemy!” what else, but the nobility of such a virtue comes to mind? I should recommend to every Christian who is privately shocked and confounded by this Commandment to take some time to study this passage in Nietzsche! Maybe those Christians are having a little difficulty with the nobility in their own ,which causes the difficulty in understanding, but it is perhaps just as wrong for Nietzsche himself to issue a wholesale condemnation of the morality of Christianity in principle, with its comprehensive timelessness and unhistoricity, just on the basis of a historical analysis of its origin-in-time and of its practical manifestations.
Incidentally, I am not singling out Christian morality here as some kind of "superior’ morality," which would be wrong to say, considering that each great world culture has its own historical religion, and its own “homegrown” morality, and these culturally differing, but ethically identical, moralities must under all circumstances be treated as equals.
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