Nietzsche in 90 Minutes: Two Interesting Topics
“Man is the cruelest animal.”
Fredrick Nietzsche might be the most solitary and lonely man with the greatest renown in modern history. He will be baffling admirers and critics for the rest of our finite time on this earth.
This is the 42 of 52 books in the Tim Challies 2020 reading challenge, and for my task to read a short book, I chose Nietzsche in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern.
If you have ever wondered about the great philosophers, or are like me, and need a reminder of all those philosophy classes at University some years ago, then the 90 Minute series written by Paul Strathern is a helpful primer. However, this series should be considered just that, a primer. Stathern’s summaries of the great thinkers have received considerable backlash as having significant over-generalizations and entertaining historical gossip rather than sticking to majority agreed-upon fact to entertain an audience. If you approach these books realizing it was written to be more entertaining than scholastic, you will enjoy the read and perhaps even spark your interest in its subject for further inquiry.
Our current subject is the polarizing and widely unagreeable Fredrick Nietzsche. Since this book has received a significant amount of reviews, I will just share the top two things that piqued my interest while engaging with its contents:
Nietzsche’s Fatherlessness
“When one does not have a good father, one must create one” – Nietzsche
I have little ground to presume this, so please allow an uneducated supposition, but I cannot help but draw parallels between "great" thinkers and "influential" individuals and their raw relationships with their fathers, or a complete lack thereof.
Intriguing enough, Nietzsche’s father was a pastor who died when he was only five years old. He was then raised by his mother and sisters. Many commentators and investigators into his life believe that his early years were spent yearning for a father figure to which he could gain approval and validation.
It is pure speculation, and perhaps someone more educated can enlighten me, but Nietzsche must have been filled with some sort of emotion as he read in the scriptures that God is Father. Especially seeing as God allowed his earthly father to be taken from him at an early age, even while serving as a minister. Perhaps, again pure unsupported conjecture, this motivated him to see Christianity the way that he did, and to announce that “God is Dead.”
The Will to Power & The Superman
“Behold, I bring you the Superman! The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beg of you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!”
After the assertion that “God is Dead”, Nietzsche gives his readers the hope in the Superman (Overman), the one who has the will to power.
Strathern believes there is a tie to Nietzsche's war experiences and his writings on the Will to Power. However, there are multiple different opinions on the matter and I am in no position to weigh in.
What does seem clear, is that Nietzsche doesn’t view the will to power as either a good or bad thing. It is somewhat morally neutral. It is rather merely a commentary on observations that humans have a propensity to seek to dominate each other. What he does favor, is that inner human drive to manipulate power to create something spectacular and beautiful.
While in no way was this 90 Minute refresher a scholastic treatise, it was enough to remind me of the verses in Romans that I thought of the first time I was introduced to Nietzsche's writings.
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” – Romans 1:21-23.;
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John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.