I really appreciate the fact that for both of us that upload was a synchronicity moment. On Sunday evening, I was talking over my back-and-forth with you with my dad, and we _specifically_ had to halt the conversation [as I had to take a train home] right during talking about Nietzsche's perspective on the bodily resurrection (i.e. close-reading Nietzsche's _Antichrist_ §43), and seeing the announcement for that upload the next day...
33:35 Re-incarnation is the Charybdis from a Christian point of view because of what you just said: it's de-personalizing. And it is so precisely because it undermines the uniqueness of the human experience and because it ultimately turns human freedom into a pantomime. The uniqueness of the human person hinges on identity, and identity is built upon and developed along relationships. I am who I am, first of all, because I am the second child of Jorge and Martha and the first brother of Santiago: these are the relationships pre-established for me that made me unique, that gave me my basic identity, as the foundation on which to build my ultimate identity. The Christian program is utterly dependent upon the possibility of establishing an eternal and unbreakable relationship of love with our Creator (the one relationship that constitutes the end in the building of our identities, or our ultimate identity). This final destination is pre-figured and signaled by the Sacrament of Marriage. This is why the Christian wedding ceremony puts so much emphasis on the personal identities of the spouses: they are unique and irreplaceable, just as each one of us is unique and irreplaceable to God. The marriage symbol is also very keen in preserving personal freedom, and the Catholic Church declares null any liason where the freedom of the assent has been compromised. Freedom, understood as the full ownership of the self, is indispensable insofar as this relationship of love between creature and Creator requires the total mutual self-giving, and nobody can give what is not theirs. Indeed, the capacity of fully disposing of something is the hallmark of ownership: only the owner can sell the house, only the owner can make the decision to irrevocably cede his/her right. Re- Incarnation, or the allowance for an infinite number of tries before the sale of the house is considered irrevocable, is incompatible with true ownership. If the sale is only valid when the seller fulfills the conditions set by another, he was never the true owner of the house. An infinite number of chances till you get it right and give your life to God would effectively cancel your freedom. And it would jeopardize the legitimacy of all those who get it right at first try. You can't possibly be truly free if only one decision will be accepted. Are you really free to marry your wife if you know you will not be allowed to marry anybody else?
Thanks for that profound comment, Xavier. Those are interesting links to the Sacrament of Marriage: both the necessity for freedom and (in Catholic thought, at least; if freely chosen) irrevocability. I still think that, in the context of Fr. De Young's talk, reincarnation isn't the 'Charybdis,' because it isn't the opposite to the 'Scylla' of gnosticism-Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return of all things is, because it preserves everything just as it is.
I shared with you the fact of feeling less engaged later in the talk as opposed to earlier in the talk. Thank you for the valuable analysis. It seems to me that it's conceivable, still, to interpret Fr. Stephen DeYoung more charitably by e.g. distinguishing between necessary and unnecessary suffering? So (this is not meant as a "gotcha" at all, I'm genuinely curious): In the business of affirming the whole of sin too, do you affirm the r*ping of the r*pist, child p*rn*gr*phy, eternally? If not, why not?
It's a good question. The truest but perhaps least helpful answer is: no, because I don't currently affirm anything eternally, because I'm not a convinced Nietzschean and haven't yet tried in any really deep way to live that worldview. But to inhabit it for a moment, at least in imagination: the answer has to be yes. There is horror there, sure-perhaps enough to drive one mad, if one really dwells on it. Likewise, I know that there are forms of affliction I could directly suffer that would effectively destroy me, just as there are uncountable things that could happen to destroy me physically. But if the only alternative is eternal nonbeing, the universe never arising-do you choose that instead? If to say say yes to existence is to say yes to all that is possible, those are the options we have (or refusing to choose). I would take some solace in the fact that literal eternal return is no longer cosmologically viable. Lives as 4D objects in spacetime is perhaps the best way of expressing the same idea in current physics, but it's subtly different in the sense that these lives aren't really occurring again and again, they just are, they happen 'once' and then they 'end'-from 'within' that life everything happens once and then ends, even though objectively they remain, if you will, timelessly real. Finally, we must be careful to distinguish the kind of affirmation we can apply to existence itself from the kinds of affirmation we can apply within existence (or particular domains of existence). Affirming everything need not be to morally affirm it. I think that one can morally deny something at the same time that, on a deeper level, one affirms it as a possible manifestation of being.
@@gpxavier Thank you! Clear. Now I believe we are moving closer to understanding each other. Your last two sentences articulate what I tried to convey previously (also using the DBH quotations), and I believe that's more or less the potentially Christian way of looking at ultimate reality, i.e. _"Affirming everything need not be to morally affirm it. I think that one can morally deny something at the same time that, on a deeper level, one affirms it as a possible manifestation of being."_ - Where we differ is that you think that on a deeper level Christianity does not affirm it, I take it? Something to discuss.
@@gpxavier I love what you said about living the worldview. I think that is a key to this conversation. These are more than just ideas; they are meant to be lived and that is really the only way to test them. I really appreciate that Nietzsche from what I understand of him really experienced his ideas and lived with them in some sense. I wanted to say that but I also have a question and consideration. You said you take solace in knowing the eternal return is not possible, and that you do not currently affirm anything eternally. What do you think about the idea existentially, though? Is one moment or perhaps a few moments in your life enough to justify whatever has or ever could happen to you? In my case I find the question challenging, and enlightening. If it is something that I can say yes to without having experienced it, then I find myself agreeing with Nietzsche. There are things in my life that I would not trade anything for, even with the uncertainty of the future. Ironically, it is why I could sing Gods praise for ten thousand years. There are moments in my life like Nietzsche described that make eternal life worth living.
@@arono9304 Thanks for that, Aron-I suspect we really do agree far more than we seem to disagree 🙂 To your question, though: yes, it seems that way to me.
@@sirasksalot8282 Thanks for sharing that, Rex. I think on the existential level the thought of eternal return is incredibly powerful and helpful. It's a challenge to see your life in a different light (if you're resentful, for instance) and a challenge to relate to it and act in it in a way you could genuinely affirm eternally-though without introducing all the problems of eternal duration (after all, it is the finite, definite, delimited life that returns again and again). I think the sense that 'this moment justifies all the others' is just a starting point-ideally, life is a whole and must be affirmed as a whole. One can move from that perspective to seeing all the other moments, even the more banal or 'bad' as having both a unique and interconnected worth, rather than just being necessary prerequisites for the good moments. Of course, there may be moments and lives (let's assume, for sake of argument, through no fault of one's own) so horrible that an actual human being could never affirm them for eternity. I don't think the thought of eternal return is some foolproof means of existential salvation. Rather than leading me to reject being, though, this gives me a sense of trembling awe while deepening my gratitude. So much is beyond my control; what is in my control I will seize and use for the utmost good. What you say resonates with me. I'll concede that in moments of vast joy, love, vitality, and gratitude-in these moments one feels like one could live forever, could sing God's praises forever.
I'm curious if you also wonder (part of me does) whether all this talk about what exactly happens after we die (I'm including Fr. Stephen DeYoung's comments) is rather left-brained in McGilchrist's sense? As this thought occurred to me, I became curious to see if McGilchrist himself stated anything about it. I think you'll find this rare occasion of him writing on it from _The Matter with Things_ interesting, I certainly did: _"But if, whatever that strange thing one calls one’s consciousness may be, it does not end at death - and nobody can be certain that it does - but persists in some form at which we can only guess, there is a real chance that an afterlife might be worse, not just better. I have experienced places in the universe that are real, but not reassuring. Faith is not simply comforting, but puts before one the full tremendousness of being, its meaning and its consequences. If one is a materialist, then there is no meaning in death, apart from the negation of life. Such people live in the comforting thought that life is meaningless, and has only personal consequences or none; then death, too, must be meaningless, and the quicker its acknowledgment is over, and the less grief there is, the better. But if life has meaning, death has meaning, and if death has meaning, so does life. They interpenetrate one another, and to be anaesthetised to this is to be deceived. ‘The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfil it’, wrote Viktor Frankl. And he continued:_ "Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place. Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, and the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it - or fail to fill it - that give significance to our existence." _It may, actually, matter how one lives one’s life, because we may play a part in the coming into Being of whatever is, and we cannot separate ourselves from whatever is, perhaps for ever._ Something depends on our way of being, and it is not just we ourselves. _In a world where no-one can avoid the experience of suffering we know that it is a real part of consciousness: suffering is a central element, not just in Christianity, but in Buddhism, and no doubt in most, if not all, religions. So the how of life, not just the what - its mere existence or non-existence, huge as that is - matters: it has a value and price we cannot fully conceive. Similarly one life and all life are reflected in one another, as we would see if we looked into the gems of Indra’s net. Life requires death; death is the friend of life, not its foe. Goethe wrote: ‘all that is to persist in being must dissolve to nothing’. According to historian of religion Mircea Eliade, myths from all over the world convey the mutual sustenance of death and life: ‘in countless variants’, there is a widespread myth that ‘the world and life could not come to birth except by the slaying of an amorphous Being.’ In one of Goethe’s greatest poems, he writes: ‘“Die - and so continue into being!” As long as you fail to see this, you are no more than a forlorn guest on the dark earth.’ The Latin word_ homo _is related to_ humus, _the earth, and to_ humilis, _humble; and man is ‘made of the dust of the earth’. Another ancient word for man is the Sanskrit_ marta, _‘he who dies’, cognate with Latin_ mortalis. _I understand the Christian belief in the redemption of death through God’s own suffering to mean that death is not an end, but plays a part - like the intermediate phase of destruction, of fragmentation, of the shattering of the vessels - in the greater story of repair and restoration; a story that is both mine and not mine, taking place in the immensity of a living cosmos where the part and the whole are as one, yet without the loss of the meaning of the part that is each one of us. Or so it seems to me."_
That's a great quotation even though it is wordy. Eric Weinstein talks a lot about what he calls portals. The idea is that there is a period of transition an growth that is difficult and in some sense violent, especially if you refuse to pass through willingly. He uses the Exodus as an example. I find that idea useful hear. Death is, as far as we can see, our greatest portal. It connects also with Jesus words "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." I appreciate your thoughts.
That's a beautiful quote; I don't think there's anything in it I'd disagree with. What's the chapter/page number, by the way? I do think exploring the question of what happens after we die is important, however. The existence and nature of an afterlife can have tremendous practical effects in this life, positive or negative. In relation to the specific subject I'm wrestling with: the belief in a life after death devoid of suffering and violence is important because it grounds an ethic (the Christian ethic) in which suffering and violence are ultimately evil (note the 'ultimately'). The Nietzschean contention is that this has tremendously negative practical effects, over time, because it is misaligned with the basic nature of life and reality. Even if we forego an analytic exploration of the afterlife, we're still left with the question of values. I would say the exploration of the question of eternal life can illuminate the the question of values-of how to act in and relate to this life. My current hunch is that the Christian belief in life after death is an abstraction of certain elements of this life, which can't actually be separated from the complex, temporal, temporary, morally ambivalent whole which is this life. Likewise, Christian values... Thus it may be valuable to indulge in some left-brained critical analysis (as McGilchrist does) of a left-brained abstracted view precisely in order to put it back in its proper right-brained place.
@@sirasksalot8282 I think there are problems identifying the individual subject with our individual sense of self; in this I am in sympathy with Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. And because of this, I think I can agree with you that we should treat death as our greatest portal, though without believing in an individual afterlife. It is perhaps the life (or Life, or 'God') that lives through 'me' that grows through my individual life and death.
@@gpxavier Thank you! Just to refer you to the correct page number: I have the e-book version, but this should probably be clear enough: Vol. II / Part III "THE UNFORESEEN NATURE OF REALITY" - Chapter 28 of _The Matter with Things_ "The Sense of the Sacred," (pp. 1193-1304) under "WHY IT MATTERS" (specifically the last two pages of the subsection "Religion or spirituality: a matter of societal flourishing?") right before the final subsection of the chapter (on "EVIL") Footnotes 341-344 are relevant for this quote.
While I'm not yet convinced Christianity grounds existence moralistically, it is worth asking how Nietzsche grounds existence, and whether he really affirms it all, or is also "selective" in his own way. We've already been discussing psychological theodicy and his "aesthetic justification for life," but consider also _Antichrist_ §2: _"What is good?-Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness?-The feeling that power increases-that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid). The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?-Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak-Christianity...."_ Something to discuss with you later perhaps!
Nietzsche is certainly selective for power and against 'the weak and the botched'. I think he wrestles with and overcomes the poisonous emotional force of that on a personal level (or at least, goes some way toward this) in Zarathustra: on the deepest level he affirms all that is weak and botched, inasmuch as they exist and are part of the whole picture of life. Yet he still expresses these strong sentiments in later writing. I think we have to see this particular selectivity as reflecting his view of life itself: life affirms all that is while, at exactly the same time, it ruthlessly selects-and precisely on the basis of power, energy, efficiency, fitness, etc. Because life's nature selects based on power, while at the same time affirming all that is-so does the individual Nietzsche. It's not an arbitrary view or preference, but grounded in the nature of things. Likewise, if the nature of life or reality is self-sacrificial love... so with Christ and the individual Christian.
I really appreciate the fact that for both of us that upload was a synchronicity moment. On Sunday evening, I was talking over my back-and-forth with you with my dad, and we _specifically_ had to halt the conversation [as I had to take a train home] right during talking about Nietzsche's perspective on the bodily resurrection (i.e. close-reading Nietzsche's _Antichrist_ §43), and seeing the announcement for that upload the next day...
33:35 Re-incarnation is the Charybdis from a Christian point of view because of what you just said: it's de-personalizing. And it is so precisely because it undermines the uniqueness of the human experience and because it ultimately turns human freedom into a pantomime. The uniqueness of the human person hinges on identity, and identity is built upon and developed along relationships. I am who I am, first of all, because I am the second child of Jorge and Martha and the first brother of Santiago: these are the relationships pre-established for me that made me unique, that gave me my basic identity, as the foundation on which to build my ultimate identity.
The Christian program is utterly dependent upon the possibility of establishing an eternal and unbreakable relationship of love with our Creator (the one relationship that constitutes the end in the building of our identities, or our ultimate identity). This final destination is pre-figured and signaled by the Sacrament of Marriage. This is why the Christian wedding ceremony puts so much emphasis on the personal identities of the spouses: they are unique and irreplaceable, just as each one of us is unique and irreplaceable to God.
The marriage symbol is also very keen in preserving personal freedom, and the Catholic Church declares null any liason where the freedom of the assent has been compromised.
Freedom, understood as the full ownership of the self, is indispensable insofar as this relationship of love between creature and Creator requires the total mutual self-giving, and nobody can give what is not theirs. Indeed, the capacity of fully disposing of something is the hallmark of ownership: only the owner can sell the house, only the owner can make the decision to irrevocably cede his/her right. Re- Incarnation, or the allowance for an infinite number of tries before the sale of the house is considered irrevocable, is incompatible with true ownership. If the sale is only valid when the seller fulfills the conditions set by another, he was never the true owner of the house. An infinite number of chances till you get it right and give your life to God would effectively cancel your freedom. And it would jeopardize the legitimacy of all those who get it right at first try. You can't possibly be truly free if only one decision will be accepted. Are you really free to marry your wife if you know you will not be allowed to marry anybody else?
Thanks for that profound comment, Xavier. Those are interesting links to the Sacrament of Marriage: both the necessity for freedom and (in Catholic thought, at least; if freely chosen) irrevocability. I still think that, in the context of Fr. De Young's talk, reincarnation isn't the 'Charybdis,' because it isn't the opposite to the 'Scylla' of gnosticism-Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return of all things is, because it preserves everything just as it is.
I shared with you the fact of feeling less engaged later in the talk as opposed to earlier in the talk. Thank you for the valuable analysis. It seems to me that it's conceivable, still, to interpret Fr. Stephen DeYoung more charitably by e.g. distinguishing between necessary and unnecessary suffering?
So (this is not meant as a "gotcha" at all, I'm genuinely curious): In the business of affirming the whole of sin too, do you affirm the r*ping of the r*pist, child p*rn*gr*phy, eternally? If not, why not?
It's a good question. The truest but perhaps least helpful answer is: no, because I don't currently affirm anything eternally, because I'm not a convinced Nietzschean and haven't yet tried in any really deep way to live that worldview. But to inhabit it for a moment, at least in imagination: the answer has to be yes. There is horror there, sure-perhaps enough to drive one mad, if one really dwells on it. Likewise, I know that there are forms of affliction I could directly suffer that would effectively destroy me, just as there are uncountable things that could happen to destroy me physically. But if the only alternative is eternal nonbeing, the universe never arising-do you choose that instead? If to say say yes to existence is to say yes to all that is possible, those are the options we have (or refusing to choose).
I would take some solace in the fact that literal eternal return is no longer cosmologically viable. Lives as 4D objects in spacetime is perhaps the best way of expressing the same idea in current physics, but it's subtly different in the sense that these lives aren't really occurring again and again, they just are, they happen 'once' and then they 'end'-from 'within' that life everything happens once and then ends, even though objectively they remain, if you will, timelessly real. Finally, we must be careful to distinguish the kind of affirmation we can apply to existence itself from the kinds of affirmation we can apply within existence (or particular domains of existence). Affirming everything need not be to morally affirm it. I think that one can morally deny something at the same time that, on a deeper level, one affirms it as a possible manifestation of being.
@@gpxavier Thank you! Clear. Now I believe we are moving closer to understanding each other. Your last two sentences articulate what I tried to convey previously (also using the DBH quotations), and I believe that's more or less the potentially Christian way of looking at ultimate reality, i.e. _"Affirming everything need not be to morally affirm it. I think that one can morally deny something at the same time that, on a deeper level, one affirms it as a possible manifestation of being."_ - Where we differ is that you think that on a deeper level Christianity does not affirm it, I take it?
Something to discuss.
@@gpxavier I love what you said about living the worldview. I think that is a key to this conversation. These are more than just ideas; they are meant to be lived and that is really the only way to test them. I really appreciate that Nietzsche from what I understand of him really experienced his ideas and lived with them in some sense.
I wanted to say that but I also have a question and consideration. You said you take solace in knowing the eternal return is not possible, and that you do not currently affirm anything eternally. What do you think about the idea existentially, though? Is one moment or perhaps a few moments in your life enough to justify whatever has or ever could happen to you?
In my case I find the question challenging, and enlightening. If it is something that I can say yes to without having experienced it, then I find myself agreeing with Nietzsche. There are things in my life that I would not trade anything for, even with the uncertainty of the future. Ironically, it is why I could sing Gods praise for ten thousand years. There are moments in my life like Nietzsche described that make eternal life worth living.
@@arono9304 Thanks for that, Aron-I suspect we really do agree far more than we seem to disagree 🙂
To your question, though: yes, it seems that way to me.
@@sirasksalot8282 Thanks for sharing that, Rex. I think on the existential level the thought of eternal return is incredibly powerful and helpful. It's a challenge to see your life in a different light (if you're resentful, for instance) and a challenge to relate to it and act in it in a way you could genuinely affirm eternally-though without introducing all the problems of eternal duration (after all, it is the finite, definite, delimited life that returns again and again).
I think the sense that 'this moment justifies all the others' is just a starting point-ideally, life is a whole and must be affirmed as a whole. One can move from that perspective to seeing all the other moments, even the more banal or 'bad' as having both a unique and interconnected worth, rather than just being necessary prerequisites for the good moments.
Of course, there may be moments and lives (let's assume, for sake of argument, through no fault of one's own) so horrible that an actual human being could never affirm them for eternity. I don't think the thought of eternal return is some foolproof means of existential salvation. Rather than leading me to reject being, though, this gives me a sense of trembling awe while deepening my gratitude. So much is beyond my control; what is in my control I will seize and use for the utmost good.
What you say resonates with me. I'll concede that in moments of vast joy, love, vitality, and gratitude-in these moments one feels like one could live forever, could sing God's praises forever.
I'm curious if you also wonder (part of me does) whether all this talk about what exactly happens after we die (I'm including Fr. Stephen DeYoung's comments) is rather left-brained in McGilchrist's sense?
As this thought occurred to me, I became curious to see if McGilchrist himself stated anything about it. I think you'll find this rare occasion of him writing on it from _The Matter with Things_ interesting, I certainly did:
_"But if, whatever that strange thing one calls one’s consciousness may be, it does not end at death - and nobody can be certain that it does - but persists in some form at which we can only guess, there is a real chance that an afterlife might be worse, not just better. I have experienced places in the universe that are real, but not reassuring. Faith is not simply comforting, but puts before one the full tremendousness of being, its meaning and its consequences. If one is a materialist, then there is no meaning in death, apart from the negation of life. Such people live in the comforting thought that life is meaningless, and has only personal consequences or none; then death, too, must be meaningless, and the quicker its acknowledgment is over, and the less grief there is, the better. But if life has meaning, death has meaning, and if death has meaning, so does life. They interpenetrate one another, and to be anaesthetised to this is to be deceived. ‘The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfil it’, wrote Viktor Frankl. And he continued:_ "Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place. Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, and the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it - or fail to fill it - that give significance to our existence." _It may, actually, matter how one lives one’s life, because we may play a part in the coming into Being of whatever is, and we cannot separate ourselves from whatever is, perhaps for ever._ Something depends on our way of being, and it is not just we ourselves. _In a world where no-one can avoid the experience of suffering we know that it is a real part of consciousness: suffering is a central element, not just in Christianity, but in Buddhism, and no doubt in most, if not all, religions. So the how of life, not just the what - its mere existence or non-existence, huge as that is - matters: it has a value and price we cannot fully conceive. Similarly one life and all life are reflected in one another, as we would see if we looked into the gems of Indra’s net. Life requires death; death is the friend of life, not its foe. Goethe wrote: ‘all that is to persist in being must dissolve to nothing’. According to historian of religion Mircea Eliade, myths from all over the world convey the mutual sustenance of death and life: ‘in countless variants’, there is a widespread myth that ‘the world and life could not come to birth except by the slaying of an amorphous Being.’ In one of Goethe’s greatest poems, he writes: ‘“Die - and so continue into being!” As long as you fail to see this, you are no more than a forlorn guest on the dark earth.’ The Latin word_ homo _is related to_ humus, _the earth, and to_ humilis, _humble; and man is ‘made of the dust of the earth’. Another ancient word for man is the Sanskrit_ marta, _‘he who dies’, cognate with Latin_ mortalis. _I understand the Christian belief in the redemption of death through God’s own suffering to mean that death is not an end, but plays a part - like the intermediate phase of destruction, of fragmentation, of the shattering of the vessels - in the greater story of repair and restoration; a story that is both mine and not mine, taking place in the immensity of a living cosmos where the part and the whole are as one, yet without the loss of the meaning of the part that is each one of us. Or so it seems to me."_
That's a great quotation even though it is wordy.
Eric Weinstein talks a lot about what he calls portals. The idea is that there is a period of transition an growth that is difficult and in some sense violent, especially if you refuse to pass through willingly. He uses the Exodus as an example. I find that idea useful hear. Death is, as far as we can see, our greatest portal. It connects also with Jesus words "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."
I appreciate your thoughts.
That's a beautiful quote; I don't think there's anything in it I'd disagree with. What's the chapter/page number, by the way?
I do think exploring the question of what happens after we die is important, however. The existence and nature of an afterlife can have tremendous practical effects in this life, positive or negative. In relation to the specific subject I'm wrestling with: the belief in a life after death devoid of suffering and violence is important because it grounds an ethic (the Christian ethic) in which suffering and violence are ultimately evil (note the 'ultimately'). The Nietzschean contention is that this has tremendously negative practical effects, over time, because it is misaligned with the basic nature of life and reality. Even if we forego an analytic exploration of the afterlife, we're still left with the question of values. I would say the exploration of the question of eternal life can illuminate the the question of values-of how to act in and relate to this life.
My current hunch is that the Christian belief in life after death is an abstraction of certain elements of this life, which can't actually be separated from the complex, temporal, temporary, morally ambivalent whole which is this life. Likewise, Christian values... Thus it may be valuable to indulge in some left-brained critical analysis (as McGilchrist does) of a left-brained abstracted view precisely in order to put it back in its proper right-brained place.
@@sirasksalot8282 I think there are problems identifying the individual subject with our individual sense of self; in this I am in sympathy with Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. And because of this, I think I can agree with you that we should treat death as our greatest portal, though without believing in an individual afterlife. It is perhaps the life (or Life, or 'God') that lives through 'me' that grows through my individual life and death.
@@gpxavier Thank you!
Just to refer you to the correct page number: I have the e-book version, but this should probably be clear enough: Vol. II / Part III "THE UNFORESEEN NATURE OF REALITY" - Chapter 28 of _The Matter with Things_ "The Sense of the Sacred," (pp. 1193-1304) under "WHY IT MATTERS" (specifically the last two pages of the subsection "Religion or spirituality: a matter of societal flourishing?") right before the final subsection of the chapter (on "EVIL")
Footnotes 341-344 are relevant for this quote.
While I'm not yet convinced Christianity grounds existence moralistically, it is worth asking how Nietzsche grounds existence, and whether he really affirms it all, or is also "selective" in his own way. We've already been discussing psychological theodicy and his "aesthetic justification for life," but consider also _Antichrist_ §2:
_"What is good?-Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness?-The feeling that power increases-that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid). The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?-Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak-Christianity...."_
Something to discuss with you later perhaps!
Nietzsche is certainly selective for power and against 'the weak and the botched'. I think he wrestles with and overcomes the poisonous emotional force of that on a personal level (or at least, goes some way toward this) in Zarathustra: on the deepest level he affirms all that is weak and botched, inasmuch as they exist and are part of the whole picture of life. Yet he still expresses these strong sentiments in later writing. I think we have to see this particular selectivity as reflecting his view of life itself: life affirms all that is while, at exactly the same time, it ruthlessly selects-and precisely on the basis of power, energy, efficiency, fitness, etc. Because life's nature selects based on power, while at the same time affirming all that is-so does the individual Nietzsche. It's not an arbitrary view or preference, but grounded in the nature of things. Likewise, if the nature of life or reality is self-sacrificial love... so with Christ and the individual Christian.