Existentialism: An Alternative.
Nietzsche is famous for his critique of modern, intellect-oriented accounts of ethics. However, his critique focuses on systems of religious ethics that are divorced from their pre-modern worldview. What is needed, therefore, is not a postmodern advance beyond these systems, but rather a reunification between theological ethics and the metaphysics which ground them. While Nietzsche’s critique of modern moral theory is correct, his subsequent pursuit of subjective desires faces similar grounding problems. Thus, what is needed is an account of the existence which synthesizes Nietzsche’s emphasis on the will and Christian metaphysics. I argue that Augustine’s account of the desires of the will best achieves such a synthesis.
In the Gay Science, Nietzsche simultaneously critiques both the notion of basing morality on one’s moral sentiments, that is, on one’s conscience, and on the categorical imperative. Here he dispenses with the universal, rationalization of moral imperatives to which modern philosophy had been building since Descartes. First, he identifies the reduction of moral judgements to judgements of faith, asking, “Why do you listen to the voice of your conscience? And what gives you the right to consider such a judgement true and infallible?...Your judgement ‘this is right’ has a prehistory in your instincts, likes, dislikes, experiences, and lack of experiences…The firmness of your moral judgements could be mere evidence of your personal abjectness.”[1] Notably, such a critique of conscience depends on the assumption of human fallibility, something foreign from Nietzsche’s Overman, but central to the religious environment of Nietzsche’s upbringing. Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor both pin this emphasis on the reformers, particularly John Calvin.[2] According to this account, reason cannot supply an adequate understanding of the human good because it is fallen. For Nietzsche, the problem lies not in one’s depravity, but in the Christian’s contradictory adherence to fallibility and conscience. In the Will to Power he laments, “The Christian gloominess which extracted egoism from everything and thereby reduced the value of things and virtues… brings with it a universal doubt, precisely among the most valuable men, who might otherwise trust their ego.”[3] Nietzsche’s first step to transcend the protestant emphasis on depravity is to show that it renders their moral judgements themselves, dishonest.
His second critique is of Kant’s categorical imperative. Here he again identifies the selfishness of Kant’s project in its methodology and application. Regarding methodology he notes, “there neither are nor can be actions that are the same; every action that has ever been done was done in an altogether unique and irretrievable way.”[4] Such critiques of Kant were not new even in Nietzsche’s time. Kant’s argument for universal moral laws leaves one endlessly specifying the conditions of one’s actions until the law is no longer universal. Further, regarding it application, Nietzsche identifies the “selfishness” in feeling that “everyone must do as I do.”[5] Here he identifies an innate subjectivity to the categorical imperative: if any rational agent can construct universal moral commands, there is no need for its universal nature. If, however, universal moral commands must be formulated by the most rational moral agent, one must first articulate, from pure reason, why one person is entitled to “the thing in itself,” while others are not.
Nietzsche’s aim in this passage is not to move beyond the subjectivity he identifies, but rather to expose it as inevitable. Macintyre summarizes his argument as follows: “If there is nothing to morality but the expressions of the will, my morality can only be what my will creates.”[6] Nietzsche critiques the false objectivity of both conscience and rationality to embrace subjective moral desires. “We want to become those we are – human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves.” Considering the failures of modern religion, he advocates honest subjectivity.
As such, analytic critique of Nietzsche’s subsequent ethics becomes necessarily impossible, since Nietzsche identifies any rational critique as a subjective pseudo-rationality. One imagines Nietzsche as a school-yard child replying, “that’s your opinion” to his bully’s insults.[7] However, I suggest that Nietzsche critiques Christianity and Kant in their weakest forms. His relentless deconstruction is warranted, not because reason and moral judgements are inherently flawed, but because their modern forms have become detached from the metaphysics which ground their authority and their subsequent turn to individuality.
In the centuries following Aquinas, scholastic philosophers laid the foundation for the modern project by reconfiguring theories of individuation which led to a dismissal of theological metaphysics. From Plato to Thomas Aquinas, theological ethicists emphasized the act of being in relation to God. Whether in Augustinian participatory accounts or more Thomistic theories of the analogy of being, reality centered on a thing’s subjective being (existence) in relation to God’s pure act of being.[8] In the late scholastics, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan, however, one sees instead an emphasis on haecceity, a property or quality of a thing, by virtue of which it is unique or describable as an individual.[9] In presenting notions of haecceity, Scotus unhinges individuation from being, claiming, a thing is a thing “in itself,” independent of its relation to God’s being. Consequently, Scotus distinguishes between a thing’s essence and existence, which had previously been united in the simplicity of God and the hylomorphism of Aquinas.[10] He locates a particular formalism by elevating the formality of a thing’s essence over and above a thing’s existence. This provides a shift of individuation away from a thing’s existence and participation in God toward an emphasis on its individual essence independent of God.[11] Where one had before found identity in one’s relation to God and others, one now finds their identity in their own individuality, or haecceity.
In Aquinas as in Aristotle, metaphysics is a study of a thing’s being (existence) in relation to a higher cause. In Scotus, metaphysics is a study of an essence independent of relations. This shift away from relational metaphysics thus prioritizes philosophy over theology. If relation to God, and his subsequent gifts of wisdom, become secondary to oneself, then they become unnecessary for understanding the self.[12] Modern metaphysics becomes detached from cosmology and nature, and becomes subordinate to physics, the new methodology for studying what is, in its essence and individuality. Nietzsche would continue this trend, noting “all becoming is emancipation from eternal being,”[13] He argues, “we must become physicists to be able to be creators [of ourselves] – hitherto all valuations have been based on ignorance of physics… long live physics!”[14] Aristotle and Aquinas seek metaphysics to complete and inform physics, Scotus separates them, and Nietzsche disregards metaphysics for pure physics.
Scotus further preludes Nietzsche by his insistence that in his present condition, the human intellect only has an approximate grasp of individuality through intuitive knowledge, the immediate intuition of things in themselves, in their essence and existence.[15] Because he severs the qualification of individuals and likenesses from their relation to God, Scotus identifies similarities between like-things in their essence, prior to their existence. The nature of a thing is indifferent to its existence as that thing. Thus, he differs from the Christian Neo-Platonists to separate the essence of likeness from the actuality of its existence. This essence of a thing is not grounded in the divine mind, but rather in its haecceity, or “this-ness.”[16] Scotus denies that a thing can possess characteristics both substantially and relationally; things are absolute in their essence, independent of any action or connection to God.[17] This split between creation and God consequently rejects the consideration of divine intervention or relation, both in metaphysics and ethics. As a result, it establishes the primacy of the individual over the universal and provides the foundation for subjective individual identity in secular modern ethics.[18]
Perhaps the most important heirloom Nietzsche inherits from the late scholastics is Ockham’s theory of sovereignty and actualization. Where Augustine and Aquinas connect actualization and individualization to God’s pure and eternal act of creation in the world, Ockham contends that individuals are free to craft their own ethics independent of divine commands or natural law.[19] Following Scotus’s emphasis on a thing’s essence independent of God’s relations, Ockham contends that a creature’s will and freedom are likewise independent. Though Scotus had favored free choice, divinely ordained, in “the best of all worlds,” his separation of the material world from the act of God renders this contention purely dogmatic. Ockham thus suggests that like essence, the right to exercise free choice in innate within the individual, and not mediated by God or any community. Following Scotus, Ockham severs the connection between God’s act and the operation of the natural world, as well as between the community and the individual in (self-) actualization. In this, Ockham foreshadows the primacy of individual rights in modern ethical and political theory.
I have attempted to briefly trace the foundations of modern moral theory in the Scotus and Ockham. In bifurcating the relation between divine being and human existence, Scotus prioritizes a thing’s identity as an internal, unchanging, individual, essence, which precedes the things existence. Consequently, Scotus prioritizes physics and philosophy over and above theology. Following Scotus, Ockham furthers the schism by identifying the independence of human freedom from divine action and argues that the will to one’s self actualization is an innate right of the individual. This break of the late scholastics establishes the deistic worldview of modern philosophy: while Descartes, Hume, and Kant all claim Christian faith, their projects attempt to integrate the philosophical truth first articulated by neo-platonic Christians into this new world devoid of metaphysics.[20]
Thus, Nietzsche inherits a world dominated by a Lutheran-Christian worldview which claims dependence on moral tradition, but is devoid of the underlying commitments which ground its theories. As such, his critique of moral judgements and the categorical imperative in The Gay Science, is not unfounded. He critiques these methods for their subjectivity and is correct. Until Scotus, theistic moral judgements were predicated on an interaction with the divine that imparted wisdom and formed the will toward right action.[21] Following Aristotle, man had three means of knowledge: physics, metaphysics (theology), and physics. If, however, following Calvin and Scotus, man is both fallible in his reason and independent of theology in his pursuits of truth, then only physics remains. Thus, Nietzsche declares, “Long live physics! And even more so that which compels us to physics – our honesty!” If metaphysics and philosophy are divorced from participation in divine objectivity, Nietzsche is right to identify them as subjective and fallible.
Interestingly, Nietzsche does not disagree with Scotus and Ockham in their arguments for subjective independence, only with the religion that remains. He follows Ockham in the pursuit of the individual’s right to a free will independent of the divine. However, he rejects the scholastic conception of essence preceding existence. Unlike Scotus, who claims that a man’s essence is static and independent of his actions, Nietzsche urges us to “Become who we are.” For Nietzsche, God is not an independent source of one’s pre-existent essence; God is dead.[22] If God is dead, there is no pre-existing essence, on Dostoevsky’s terms, “If God does not exist, anything is possible.”[23] What Dostoevsky sees as a curse, Nietzsche sees as liberation; without a preceding essence, men are free to become “gods themselves.”[24] He suggests that one can create for themselves who they are, actualizing their existence as free humans. For this reason, the will to power becomes central to Nietzsche’s thought; the one in power is free at any time to be whomever he desires to become.[25]
Since a metaphysical critique of Nietzsche’s existentialism necessarily excludes his own claims of metaphysics, I instead turn my attention to an alternative to Nietzsche’s subjective existentialism. Rather than proceeding past the modern project, I suggest returning to a Platonic and premodern account of existentialism, not grounding one’s identity in the subjective will, but instead in divine participation. Such an account is best articulated in the existential metaphysics of Augustine.
The Christianization of Platonism, or rather, Neo-Platonism, occurs most famously through Augustine of Hippo. Augustine comes to Plato through the writings of the Neo-Platonist, Plotinus. He describes Plotinus as “Plato, born again.”[26] He adapts from Plotinus, over Plato, the conviction that the various Platonic forms are various articulations or perceptions of the One.[27] Notably, the One is the source of existence, from which all things come and thus, are like. Augustine further associates the One, or God, with both the unity of divine essence and also material existences. Unlike Aristotle’s distant first mover, God both creates and sustains all beings.[28] In his anti-Manichean writings, Augustine draws on Plotinus to develop an account of participation. He argues for both the infinite supremacy of God, foreshadowing Anselm’s ontological argument, as well as for the immanence of God to particulars because of his creation ex-nihilo. Existing outside of time, as the cause of all reality, and as pure act, Augustine depicts God as eternally creating and sustaining creation.[29] Further, Augustine’s emphasis on creation ex-nihilo, God freely creates out of nothing but himself, and thus, creation is like God in existence and participates in his likeness as he images God.
Augustine’s account of participation emphasizes man’s likeness to the trinity and his being as image of God. He argues that all forms find their likeness in God himself, and the various forms are various expression of Goodness, while that which is evil is an absence or disorder of Goodness. Like a prism reflecting different colors from one white light, creation images different displays of God’s goodness. For instance, a horse expresses the form of strength, while a dog expresses the form of loyalty. Both, however, are expressions of something found in God’s character, which is goodness. Likewise, the dog who is disloyal does not express the form of a defect, but merely fails to express loyalty in the right way.[30] Augustine’s emphasis on the ordering of the loves, rather than on proper essence or substance, reveals his priority of relationality over substance. He does not argue for a constituent ontology, nor for a hylomorphism like Aristotle.[31] Rather, he articulates the existence of basic parts such as the soul, matter, the will, the love, etc. and emphasizes the proper ordering of relations between these parts, which occurs through participation with the divine.[32] A thing’s existence thus precedes its essence, for Augustine. Terms like “essence” or “identity” refer to a thing’s relation to the divine, rather than a property intrinsic to the being.[33] His ontology focuses on the existence of created things ex nihilo, which necessarily share likeness to God, and the proper ordering of those things in relation to God.
Notably, while Augustine argues for a likeness to God in material things, his emphasis on the fall demands a great disparity between God and matter. His description of the Fall is that of a disordering.[34] The fall does not affect “being” itself, but the way in which being relates to God and itself. If I am right, and Augustine’s ontology is relational, the Fall does not remove or add constituents to being things, but disorders the relation between their being, and the cause of that being. Erich Przywara describes Augustine’s sacramental theology as “night.” Creation has existence or being, as it did at creation, but does not properly participate in the light which sustains and gives distinction to its being. The fall has disordered our loves. Existence remains, but the participation lies in the shadows.[35] This is not to say that without the Fall creation would be exactly like God in essence, extension, and character, but that it would be like God in proportion to its being: God, who is pure being freely causes all else to share in the nature of being[36] Creation ex nihilo means that all being bears resemblance to God’s being; yet the Fall means creation does not resemble God in the ways it should.
Notably, Augustine precedes Nietzsche in emphasizing the will. He identifies three functions within the soul: being, knowledge, and will. While knowledge sets man apart from other living things, full human activity requires all three functions working together, directed at a single aim. Thus the most important function of the soul is the will, since it directs the soul toward participation with God.
Accepting both man’s inability practice virtue and the necessity of grace in this life, he emphases contemplation and prayer as the means to a rightly ordered will; in contemplation one seek union with the divine.[37] In this participation in the divine, man properly knows himself as creature and reaches beyond oneself to the realm of true being above.[38] The wisdom one finds in the contemplation of the divine is a gift to man, a love of God. For Augustine, it is love, not knowledge that directs ones will. Participation in God reorients one’s soul to the properly ordered love of the world of the divine; since the will follows the loves, proper loves result in a proper will. For Augustine, it is participation in God, not moral actions direct the will and establish one’s identity.
One must shift from Scotus’ emphasis on essence and return to considering participation as the grounds for considering that which is like God. If a thing exists independent a subjective essence, it can share in the likeness of God on the basis of its existence, prior to its essence. Moreover, a relational ontology grounds the identity of a particular in its relations. That which exists actualizes its potential essence in its relation to various aspect of God, perceived as various forms.[39] Existence bears likeness to God in its very act of being, while essence bears likeness to God in relation. If existence precedes essence, essence is not something had or not had in a static and binary way, but something participated in and grown in as one grows in relation to the God.
A thing’s identity and likeness then are not determined by their properties or preceding essence, but by their relation to God. However, this raises a further concern: if one’s essence is not intrinsic to the oneself, nor a constituent property, how does a being maintain identity through change in relations? If one’s identity, X is contingent on relation Y, then any change in relations is a change of identity. If, however, God is pure and eternal act, then a thing’s essence could endure in the mind of God. As eternal act, God is present to all time.[40] He is aware of the individual’s relation to himself throughout time. One’s entire relation through time is immediate to God as a whole, and such relation cannot change. Thus, the above objection might be reformulated “if one’s identity X is contingent on relation Y [at time A], then any change in relation is a change of identity.” But X’s identity is not contingent on Y [at time A], but rather on Y as known to God in eternity, what we might call [time E]. Being in the mind of God, Y [at time E] cannot change, and thus, neither can identity X. God’s pure act of creation both sustains a thing’s existence, but also identity. Identity as humans understand it then, is not true identity, but rather identity-in-progress. It is a temporal illusion of an already complete whole self. Man and God have different perspectives of time, and consequently, identity.
The individual is present to God who is present to their past and future self, and thus, the individual is present to God as sinner and as their fully redeemed self. It is not a static constituent, nor an emergent property dependent on a things matter or form. Rather, it is defined by one’s proper relations and sustained in the mind of God. Such an identity is a composite of an eternity of relations, which endures beyond time. One’s experience of relations is present, but one’s essence is present to the eternal mind of God. While existence is temporal and particular relations occur at particular times, one’s relations to God transcends current time.[41]
In this essay I have attempted to locate Nietzsche’s critiques of modern morality as a rejection of the scholastic emphasis on essence over existence, and the incongruency of theological ethics devoid of theological metaphysics. Scotus divorces the relation between divine being and human existence, prioritizing a preceding individual essence. As a result, he separates physics and philosophy from theology. Likewise, Ockham advocates the independence of human desire as an innate right of the individual. This schism foreshadows the deistic ethics of Descartes, Hume, and Kant which Nietzsche critiques.
Nietzsche criticizes both moral sentiments and the categorical imperative. He rejects the authority of subjective moral judgements and the objectivity of Kantian rationalization of moral imperatives. I suggest his critique of such theories is valid, but find his justification for subjective morality circular. While Nietzsche hopes that exposing the subjectivity of the modern project will lay the foundation for his account of morality as an expression of the subjective will, I propose a richer account of existentialism which returns to premodern existentialism, shifting the contention back to metaphysics. An Augustinian account of participation both resolves Nietzsche’s critique and provides an account of will-oriented existentialism.
[1] Fredrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 3336. [2] Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 56-58. [3] Fredrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 362 [4] The Gay Science, 335. [5] Ibid. [6] After Virtue, 115. [7] Thoughtful criticism of Nietzsche’s ethics must not focus on the ethical system itself, since it is subjective, but rather on his deconstruction of metaphysics or by considering richer alternatives to his will to power. Reading Nietzsche in his context, I find his deconstruction of modern morality valid, and thus focus on presenting a rival theory. See “Nietzsche or Aristotle” in Alasdair ManIntyre, After Virtue. [8] Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. John R. Betz and David Bently Hart, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 225; 518. [9] Ibid. 227 [10] Hylomorphists claim that every object is a compound of matter and from. Such compounds cannot be broken down into smaller parts and retain their existence or essence. For Thomas, the human soul is the form which shapes matter, and the soul is previo.usly shaped by God. See John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000). [11] Louis Dupre, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) 83-102. [12] This shift is exemplified in the comparison of Descartes’ Cogito to Augustine’s analogous argument in On Trinity. Augustine reasons that from his existence that he participates in God’s existence, and is like God, a thinking thing. Descartes reasons that from his essence as a thinking thing, that he exists. See Augustine On The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, (New York: New City Press, 2010), 10.10.14; Renee Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. F.E. Sutcliffe, (New York: Penguin Books, 1968). [13] Fredrich Nietzsche, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, ed. G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven ,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 177. [14] The Gay Science, 335. [15] Duns Scotus, The Ordination of Blessed John Duns Scotus, trans. John Van der Bercken. (New York: Fordham Press, 2015), II, d.3, q.6, n.16; III, d.14, q.3, n.14. [16] Duns Scotus, The Examined Report of the Paris Lecture: Reportatio 1-A, Volume II, trans. Allan B. Wolter, (Francisan Institute Publications, 2016), D.3, pars 1, q.1, n.34. [17] Scotus, Ord. II, d.1, q.5, nn.189, 276-50 [18] Scotus is, of course, not alone in his precession of modern philosophy. Notably, Ockham’s emphasis on the ideas and his abandonment of universals previews David Hume’s theories of causality and phenomenology in general. Likewise, Buridan’s emphasis on meaning and linguistic reference structures forshadow Nietzsche’s philological philosophy, Wittgenstein’s logic, and the analytic movement as a whole. See Adrian Pabst, Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmands Press, 2012), 280-300. [19] Pabst, 299. [20] The extent of the modern philosopher’s faith is clearly beyond the scope of this paper, as is the debate concerning to what extent they forsake theistic metaphysics for pure rationality. John E. Hare, for example, suggests an atypically theistic read of Kant in God and Morality, (Cambridge: Wiley Blackwell, 2007). [21] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. in vol. 3. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. (Westminster. MD: Christian Classics, 1981), II-II, q.45, a.3. [22] The Gay Science, 108, 125, 343. [23] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brother’s Karamazov, trans. Bratia Karamazovy, (New York: Norton & Company, 1976),240. One must note that Dostoevsky articulates, and better so, in three pages what takes Nietzsche a lifetime. [24] The Gay Science, 343. [25] See Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, (London: Penguin Books, 1975). [26] Augustine, Against the Academicians in Cassicaiacum Dialogues vol. 1 trans. Michael P. Foley, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), III, xviii, 41. [27] R. O’Connell, Saint Augustine’s Platonism (Villanova, Villanova University Press, 1984). [28] Augustine, On the Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill. (New York: New City Press, 2015), XIV.iv.15. [29] Confessions VII, xi, 17; XII.vii.7; XII, xv, 20; XIII, xi, 12. [30] Ibid. VII.xvii.23; On the Trinity, XIV, iii, 13. [31] By constituent ontology I refer to the notion that essences have all their characteristics or properties as dependent parts. This is distinct from a bundle theory in which an essence is a collection of properties. Rather Thomistic constituent ontology is mereological in that an essence is composed of form and matter, and that essence then possesses constituent and relational properties which do not effect the nature of one’s essence. [32] Augustine, On Order, trans. Silvano Burruso, (South Bend: Saint Augustine’s Press, 1974), II, xi, 33-35. [33] Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, (Oxford: Oxford University Press., 1998), XIV, 22. [34] Augustine, Sermons on the New Testament, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 6, ed. Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), 47, 14, 23. [35] Erich Pzywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. John R. Betz and David Bently Hart, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 518. [36] Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, trans. Boniface Ramsey, (New York: New City Press, 2008. IV, 5, 69. [37] Wayne J. Hankey, “Mind” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Press. 2001). [38] Augustine The Confessions, 7.9.10; On the Trinity, 12. [39] Pabst 49. [40] English Standard Version, Wheaton: Crossway Press, 2010. (ESV), John 8:58, “Jesus declared, before Abraham was, ‘I am’” (ESV). [41] Such an account has been proposed by Elenore Stump and Noman Kretzmann. See Elenore Stump and Norman Kretzmann. (1981). “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy 78: 429-458. Reprinted in The Concept of God, edited by Thomas V. Morris. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987: 219-252.
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