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    Charles A. Cunningham

    Philosophy & Scripture

    Professor Tinker

    Messenger College, Joplin, Missouri

    Extended Annotated Bibliography (In Place of 3X5 Cards)

    Brown, Colin. Philosophy & the Christian Faith.A Historical Sketch from the MiddleAges to the Present

    Day. Illinois: Intervarsity Press. Copywrite 1968. ISBN 0-877784-712-6. Pp. 137-141,

    142, 145, 183, 218ff., 233.

    Colin Brown discusses Friedrich Nietzsche on the pages listed above. He

    says of Nietzsche, that he was bitterly opposed to religion and whose thought hasalso been utilized in the twentieth century for political purposes(p.137).

    Nietzsche is being feted as the founder-member of the Death of God school in

    theology(p.138), but in the footnotes he notes that the romantic poet Jean Paul

    (1762-1825) had already sounded the death-knell in his Siebenks (1796-97) whichcontained a Discourse of the dead Christ from atop the cosmos: there is not

    God(p.139). Nietzsches superman (German: bermensch)is the man whorealizes the human predicament, who creates his own values, and who fashions his

    life accordingly(p.140).

    Robinson, Daniel N. Ph.D. The Great Ideas of Philosophy. Part V. Lecture 41. Dark

    Corners of the Soul:Nietzsche at the Twilight.

    Nietzsches world is not a world of sweetness and light, it is a world of light

    and dark, of opposing polarities and tendencies. Nietzsche believed mankind was

    in a very dark tunnel. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Men must simply

    accept their dark existence and recognize it for what it is. From this place then one

    can create their own values and passions and character. One sets the standard for

    their integrity. It is a superman who excels in working this out. Regarding which

    Greek Nietzsche would truly appreciate, perhaps Media, the mother that poisoned

    all her children and Dionysus. (This is an excellent lecture that lasts almost an hour.Dr. Robinson speaks on the psychological mores of Nietzsche and how he was a

    very learned man, translating both great Greek and great Latin works into German

    and English).

    URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche

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    Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844. He was a German Philologist andPhilosopher. Nietzsches key ideas include interpreting tragedy as an affirmation of life. Thewikipedia.org online article goes on and on for several pages, but then it lands on something veryimportant especially to the idea of Philosophy and the Christian Faith. It is his concept ofmaster/slave-morality:

    Slave-morality, in contrast, can only come about as a reaction tomaster-morality. Nietzsche associates slave-morality with theJewish and Christian traditions. Here, value emerges from thecontrast between good and evil: good associated with charity,piety, restraint, meekness, and subservience; evil seen in the cruel,selfish, wealthy, indulgent, and aggressive. Nietzsche sees slave-morality as an ingenious ploy among the slaves and the weak (suchas the Jewish slaves in Egypt or the Christians dominated byRome) to overturn the values of their masters and to gain value forthemselves: explaining their situation, and at the same time fixingthemselves in a slave-like life.

    Whatever its cleverness, Nietzsche sees slave-morality as asickness which has overtaken Europe a derivative and resentfulsort of value, which can only work by condemning others as evil.In Nietzsche's eyes, Christianity exists in a hypocritical state wherepeople preach love and kindness but find their real enjoyment incondemning others for enjoying the impulses they themselves arenot allowed to act on. Nietzsche calls for the strong in the world tobreak their self-imposed chains and assert their own power, health,and vitality on the world.

    The Nietzsche Reader. Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large Editors. Maryland:

    Blackwell.

    Copywrite 2006. ISBN-13: 978-0-631-22653-6. (570+ pagesincluding writings, index and prefix).

    This book is a reasonable compilation of many English translations of

    Nietzsches writings and many of those which were originally written by him in

    English. Not everything that Nietzsche wrote is in this reader, but enough to fully

    comprehend the scope of his writing and his thought processes throughout his

    lifetime. One of the editors noted that during the early part of the nineteenth

    century he was widely taken as a modern master of suspicion (a phrase coined by

    Paul Ricoeur). Not everything that Nietzsche wrote was totally about darkness, but

    even what seems to speak of good is under laced with a belief in no real God. Page

    360, later writings, #295:

    The genius of the heart, a heart of the kind belonging to

    that great secretive one, the tempter god and born Pied

    Piper of the conscience whose voice knows how to

    descend into the underworld of every soul, who does not

    utter a word or send a glance without its having a crease

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    and aspect that entices, whose mastery consists in part in

    knowing how to seem and seem not what he is, but

    rather what those who follow him take as one more

    coercion to press ever closer to him, to follow him ever

    more inwardly and completely: the genius of the heart

    that silences everything loud and self-satisfied andteaches it how to listen; that smoothes out rough souls

    and gives them a taste of a new longing (to lie still like a

    mirror so that the deep sky can mirror itself upon them);

    the genius of the heart, that teaches the foolish and over-

    hasty hand to hesitate and to grasp more daintily; that

    guesses the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of

    kindness and sweet spirituality lying under thick, turbid

    ice and is a divining rod for every speck of gold that has

    long lain buried in some dungeon of great mud and sand;

    I the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus

    Notice - here the god Dionysus is the same as that great secretive

    one, the tempter god. Nietzsche does not equal him to the devil but

    to his own self and to the philosopher Dionysus (perhaps one in the

    same for Nietzsche). A fully human tempter and a fully human god in

    terms of man in general as gods/philosopher or at least as the creative

    thought process for the basis for the idea of the Greek god Dionysus.

    Reading on it seems that he does not actually believe in this Greek

    god, but rather sees in the attributes attributed to and struggles

    attributed to this Greek god his own human condition.

    The Nietzsche Reader. Page 236. #340 is quoted from The Gay

    Science (1882) Book IV.

    The dying Socrates.

    Nietzsche derides Socrates dying words and says that what he

    said was blasphemous: O Crito, I owe Asclepius a rooster (Socrates).Nietzsche said, O Crito means life is a disease. He then says,Alas, my friends, we must overcome even the Greeks.

    URL http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/deathgod.htm

    These URL web blog pages discuss the history and outcomes of the Death

    of God school of Theology that seemed to sprout and die off itself in the

    1960-70s. Under the subtitle HISTORYthere is a sentence dedicated toNietzsche, which reads: Such atheistic existentialist philosophers as

    Nietzsche despaired even of the search of God; it was he who coined the

    phrase "God is dead" almost a century before the death of God

    http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/deathgod.htmhttp://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/deathgod.htm
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    theologians. The rest of the article is fairly good, but departs from what I

    am looking for on Nietzsche.

    URL

    http://www.malaspina.edu/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil5.ht

    m

    The following information is a direct quote from this website, which in

    turn is a quote of Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil:

    192

    Anyone who has followed the history of a particularscience finds in its development a textbook case forunderstanding the oldest and commonest events inall knowing and perceiving. There, as here, therash hypotheses, the fabrications, the good, stupidwill to believe, the lack of suspicion and ofpatience develop first of all our senses learn late

    and never learn completely to be subtle, true, andcautious organs of discovery. With a given stimulus,our eye finds it more comfortable to produce oncemore an image which has already been producedfrequently than to capture something different andnew in an impression. To do the latter requires morepower, more morality. To listen to something newis embarrassing and hard on our ears; we hearstrange music badly. When we hear some differentlanguage, we spontaneously try to reshape thesounds we hear into words which sound morefamiliar and native to us: thats how, for example, inearlier times, when the German heard the word

    arcubalista he changed it intoArmbrust[arcubalista .. . Armbrust: crossbow].

    Something new finds our senses hostile andreluctant, and in general, even with the simplestperceptual processes, the emotions like fear, love,hate, including the passive feeling of idleness, are incontrol. Just as a reader nowadays hardly readsthe individual words (let alone the syllables) on apage hes much more likely to take about fivewords out of twenty at random and guess on thebasis of these five words the presumed sense theycontain so we hardly look at a tree precisely and

    completely, considering the leaves, branches, colour,and shape; we find it so very much easier to imaginean approximation of the tree.

    Even in the midst of the most peculiar experienceswe still act in exactly the same way: we make up thegreatest part of experience for ourselves and arehardly ever compelled notto look upon any event asinventors. What all this adds up to is that basicallyfrom time immemorial we have been accustomed to

    http://www.malaspina.edu/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil5.htmhttp://www.malaspina.edu/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil5.htmhttp://www.malaspina.edu/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil5.htmhttp://www.malaspina.edu/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil5.htm
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    lie. Or to express the matter more virtuously andhypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: we aremuch more the artist than we realize.

    In a lively conversation I often see in front of me theface of the person with whom I am speaking soclearly and subtly determined according to the idea

    which he expresses or which I think has beenbrought out in him that this degree of clarity farexceeds thepowerof my ability to see: thus, thedelicacy of the play of muscles and of the expressionin his eyes mustbe something I have made up out ofmy own head. The person probably had a totallydifferent expression or none at all.

    I found this section of Nietzsches writings on Good and Evil enlightening as

    he is discussing the whole issue of the science of morality. I find it interesting that

    Nietzsche thinks that he is fully capable of challenging every thought process of

    mankind from the dawn of time throughout history on any subject, which he has a

    right to do, but is it right to do? He challenges the idea that morality can bethought of in scientific terms. He sees morality as an allusive, changing with times

    and societal structures and acceptability. The idea that one group of people can

    claim authority over what is or is not morally acceptable and enforce this in any way

    shape or form on another group of individuals or an individual is offensive to

    Nietzsche. He recognizes the influence on his own mind and psyche of this, but

    chooses to reject those influences. He desires the raw artistic roughness of the

    discovery of his own path over restrictions that might protect him from

    consequences. He does not mind discovering pain; in fact he looks forward to it.

    He runs roughshod over anyone who would fall in line with any moral acceptability

    modalities and calls them uneducated or badly educated because they are not

    thinking for themselves and experiencing for themselves.

    Nietzsche. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings. Aaron

    Ridley and Judith

    Norman Editors. New York: Cambridge University Press. Copyright 2005.

    ISBN-13

    978-0-521-81659-5. (298 pages).

    This book is a compilation of some of Nietzsches writings, which was

    translated into English by Judith Norman, who was also one of the editors.

    In the preface of The Anti Christ Nietzsche writes,

    The conditions required to understand me, and which in

    turn require me to be understood, - I know them only too

    well. When it comes to spiritual matters, you need to be

    honest to the point of hardness just to be able to tolerate

    my seriousness, my passion. You need to be used to

    living on mountains to seeing the miserable, ephemeral

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    little gossip of politics and national self-interest beneath

    you. You need to have become indifferent; you need

    never to ask whether truth does any good, whether it will

    be our undoing . . . The sort of predilection strength has

    for questions that require more courage than anyone

    possesses today; a courage for the forbidden; apredestination for the labyrinth. An experience from out

    of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes

    for the most distant things. A new conscience for truths

    that have kept silent until now. And the will to the

    economy of the great style: holding together is strength,

    its enthusiasm . . . Respect for yourself; love for yourself;

    and unconditional freedom over yourself . . .

    I think most interesting when someone takes him up on this artistic

    experimentation that he in turn derides on them for having done it. He says in

    Nietzsche contra Wagener, of Wagners music: Everything about Wagners musicthat has become popular, even outside the theatre, is in questionable taste and

    ruins the taste (p.246). He mentions this, strongly appreciating Wagner himself

    I just hate what he does to music (p.247) (This last is extremely interesting sense

    he wrote many derisive remarks towards Wagner and not just about his music for

    several years before this writing, and seeing that he already had said, you need

    New ears for new music (p.3), which is exactly what Wagner was doing by

    stretching the boundaries of music so that it effected the senses and seem to cause

    specific reactions from the audience that Wagner was intending it to do.

    Since beginning this research subject, I found it extremely interesting to

    begin to recognize the influence of Nietzsche on our modern culture. I heard a song

    being sung by a rather unknown, but growing in popularity singer on Good Morning

    Americas Spring Concert Series on Friday, April 25, 2008. I did not catch the

    singers name unfortunately, but I did hear the lyrics of his song. He was singing

    Nietzsches philosophy of life: No one is going to come to save you, you are

    completely on your own, everything in this world is horrible and dark, once you

    accept your condition then you can begin to shine, you can overcome where you

    are. Then while listening to the song being sung by Minnie Driver, the actress who

    played Carlotta (Phantom of the Opera), during the ending credits of that movie, her

    words are child of the wilderness, born into emptiness, learn to be lonely, learn to

    find your way in darkness. Who will be there for you, comfort and care for you,learn to be lonely, learn to be your one companion, never dreamed out in the world

    there are arms to hold you, youve always known your heart was on its own, so

    laugh in your loneliness, child of the wilderness, learn to be lonely, learn how to love

    life that is lived alone, life can be lived, life can be loved alone. The Nietzsche

    Reader, quoting from The Gay Science Book I, #26: What is life? Life that is:

    continually shedding something that wants to die. Life- that is: being cruel and

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    inexorable against everything about us that is growing old and weak and not only

    about us. Life that is, then: being without reverence for those who are dying, who

    are wretched, who are ancient? Constantly being a murderer? (The Nazis used

    that thought process as their position for doing what they did to the Jews and to

    Europe a subject for further study) And yet old Moses said: Thou shalt not kill.

    Nietzsche certainly believes that suffering is the best thing that can happen to us;accepting it in its rawest forms is coming to grips with reality. He believes that this

    is where the human is, lonely, without a Saviour, without true friendships or true

    relationships. He believes everyone is simply self-centered and lying to each other.

    If and when they do anything for each other it is in order to force the other to be

    obliged to them, or to have some power over them. He recognizes political

    authority, but mocks the fools that follow their leaders blindly and without question

    (in this case the Nazis did the opposite of what Nietzsche taught).

    The Nietzsche Reader. Page 137. On The Utility and Liability of History. #9.

    He believes all the leaders of history and of every religion simply created forthemselves their own right and wrong, good and evil. He feels that the human

    thought process has always accepted the old as good and anything new as evil. He

    feels evil is simply another word for new and changing. Then reading on you find

    that he thinks of sin and debauchery as simply something untried and new,

    something to try because you dont want to allow someone else to dictate the

    morals that are or are not acceptable to you. If these activities come with

    consequences this is ok, because one had the opportunity to experience.

    The Niezsche Reader. Pages 42-46. The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music

    (1872)

    Nietzsche had no problem with the Greek god Bacchus and Dionysian

    impulses. He believed in the party and in the acceptability of the sexual freedoms

    that the river god promoted in its dances and drinking. I wonder if he also believed

    that the babies produced in these sexual orgies should have been thrown into the

    river in an act of freedom from responsibility. He had to know that this is also part

    of that religious practice. Perhaps this is why Dr. Robinson mentioned that

    Nietzsche would have promoted the Greek god Media, who poisoned all of her

    children. Perhaps that is what Nietzsche was promoting when he quoted Silenus to

    king Midas, Why do you force me to tell you what it is best for you not to hear?

    The very best of all things is completely beyond your reach: not to have been born,

    not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you is to meet an early

    death (page 49). Nietzsche also talks about this ritual as a time of excruciating

    pain and suffering as well as one of pleasure and sexual freedom. Was he

    recognizing that many of these people were willingly throwing their babies into the

    river so that they would drown; the sounds of the screaming and crying for the

    innocent dead babies was heard from earth to heaven. That thought did not bother

    Nietzsche. He embraced it as easily as he would a pricked finger on a rose bush.

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    Life is simply a path leading to death. The quicker death comes to humans the

    better, because life is harsh and lived in suffering and loneliness. With God dead,

    Nietzsche does not have to worry about the eternal consequences of murder and

    sexual immorality. He does not have to face eternity in hell. He believes that God

    is a fantasy created by human thought and in fact he believes all the gods are

    equally a creation of human thought. He believes that what we live here and now isit. For him there is nothing more after this life. No eternal life or eternal

    consequences. Therefore whatever pain or pleasure can be acquired (or inflicted)

    during this lifetime is to be experienced and appreciated to the fullest.

    (From URL: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/bambach.htm):

    Bambach, Charles. Heideggers Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks. Ithaca

    and London: Cornell University Press. 2003. XXVI + 350 pages and

    notes. ISBN 0-8014-4072-6. Reviewed by: Roderick Stackelberg,

    Department of History, Gonzaga University. Published by: H-German

    (October, 2004) The Politics of Bodenstaendigkeit : Heideggers

    NationalSocialism.

    At the heart of this book is Heidegger's (mis)reading of

    Nietzsche in his Nietzsche lectures from 1936 to 1943, later

    published in two massive volumes in 1961.[4] His encounter

    with Nietzsche had been decisive for Heidegger's philosophical

    turn toward rethinking the essence of truth in 1929-30 (by

    recovering the originary pre-Socratic, pre-rational experience of

    truth as disclosure or unconcealment of being, not as logical

    certainty or correspondence with reality) as well as for his

    political commitment to National Socialism in 1933. Readagainst the background of the Great War as a metaphysical

    struggle about the meaning of history, Nietzsche's critique of

    Platonic values and their post-Christian "enlightened" offshoots

    served as Heidegger's guide to what had gone wrong in the

    Western tradition. Heidegger enthusiastically embraced

    National Socialism as the Nietzschean counter-movement to the

    nihilism and vulgarization of modern life (liberal democracy,

    technical-rational dominion, mass consciousness, the

    rootlessness of urban life) that appeared to have triumphed in

    the Great War. Only a Volk committed to its roots could provide

    a bulwark against the forces of nihilism and reawaken the

    power of philosophy. But Heidegger's ambitious goal was not

    shared by Nazi officialdom, with whom he frequently clashed

    after 1934, not least in his capacity as a member of the

    commission overseeing the Historisch- Kritische Ausgabe of

    Nietzsche's works. As Heidegger became increasingly

    disenchanted with the Nazis in the mid-1930s, he again turned

    to Nietzsche for inspiration in his efforts to bring about the more

    profound spiritual and metaphysical revolution that he had

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    hoped for and expected. Until 1938 Heidegger read Nietzsche

    as a comrade in arms against the Nazis for a more authentic

    form of National Socialism; thereafter, he saw him as "merely a

    forerunner of the fallen and inessential versions of National

    Socialism" put forward by the Party and its subservient

    intellectuals (p. 266). Nietzsche's diagnosis of the modern crisis

    remained valid, but his prescribed cure no longer promised a

    way out. If Nietzschean will to power had previously appeared

    to Heidegger as the appropriate formula to reverse the course

    of modern degeneration, it now seemed hopelessly entangled in

    the very degeneration it was meant to combat. He now came to

    see Nietzsche not as the herald of the future who had decisively

    broken with the Platonic tradition, but as the last metaphysician

    whose doctrine of will to power had merely brought the Western

    tradition of nihilism (the metaphysical legacy of

    Seinsvergessenheit) to a catastrophic dead end. An ever more

    critical reading of Nietzsche eventually turned into a polemic

    against Nietzsche. Heidegger's rejection of Nietzsche mirroredhis disappointment with the Nazis. As the fortunes of war turned

    against Germany, Heidegger came to see the Nazi movement

    not as the counter-movement to modern nihilism, but as its

    quintessential expression. Even more than communism or

    Americanism it now embodied for Heidegger the destructive will

    to technological control and dominion that was the legacy of

    Western metaphysics and the ultimate source of the modern

    crisis.

    There are a lot of arguments as to what level of actual influence Nietzsches

    philosophy had on German Nazi thought processes, especially that of Hitler, himself.

    But the connection is not denied by any scholar, just questions arise by nature of

    Nietzsches actual philosophy or a less than perfect understanding of his writings.

    The above book being discussed is an attempt at understanding the influence from

    someone named Heidegger, who was there and would have known by nature of his

    position as official historian. Certainly Nietzsche had a profound influence on the

    Nazis whether or not he willingly would have admitted this or not is another issue.

    Having even cursory reading of the writings of Nietzsche I have recognized

    the heart of a true fool. He is incredibly smart, but incredibly stupid. He is so full of

    himself that he mocks everyone around him and everyone throughout history. He is

    absolutely the most arrogant person that I have ever read about or studied thewritings of. I love to read, but I have found that most of his words are like putrid

    regurgitation. I feel as if they truly arent worth the paper they are printed on. His

    writings are barely worth using for the paper that dogs use for urine and stool to

    protect the floor and then being carefully thrown into the trash; recognizing the fact

    that they have a stench that immediately needs removed from the house. He is

    utterly vile and revels in his vileness. He utterly enjoys being evil. He makes his

    lifes purpose to be full of ruin and arrogance. The more I read his writings the

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