| Love is not seen as a spiritual activity which SERVES life, nor as life's "strongest and deepest concentration" (Guyau). It is the activity and movement of love which embues life with its HIGHEST MEANING AND VALUE. Therefore we can very well be asked to renounce life- and not only to sacrifice individual life for collective life, one's own life for somebody else's, or lower forms for higher forms of life: we can be asked to sacrifice life as such, in its very essence, if such an act would further the values of the kindom of God, whose mystic bond and whose spiritual source of strength is love. Nietzsche interprets Christianity from the outset as a mere "morality" with a religious "justification" not primarily as a "religion," and he applies to Christian values a standard which they themselves refuse consciously: the standard of the maximum quantity of life. Naturally he must conclude that the very postulation of a level of being and value which transcends life and is not relative to it must be the sign of a morality of decadence. This procedure, however, is completely arbitrary, philosophically wrong, and strictly refutable. The idea of goodness cannot be reduced to a biological value, just as little as the idea of truth. We must take this for granted here- the proof would lead too far. For the same reason, Nietzsche necessarily erred in another respect. If the Christian precepts and imperatives, especially those which refer to love, are detached from the kindom of God and from man's spiritual personality by which he participates in this kingdom (not to be mistaken for his "soul," which is natural), there is another serious consequence: those postulates must enter in constitutive (not only accidental) conflict with all the laws which govern the development, growth, and expansion of life.
- Max Scheler "Christian Morality and Ressentiment"
this is from a chapter that explores the relation between the human condition of ressentiment (a french word that is something like the english resentment, perhaps with stronger meaning)and christianity. it is Nietzsche's claim that the essence of christianity lies entirely in ressentiment and that the idea of true christian love is an illusion. Scheler is able to give an accurate account of christian morality that refutes Nietsche's christianity that leads to nihilism. for christianity, it is love that is the ultimate value and an end in itself. it does not depend on the response of the object (the loved), i.e. i do not love for something in return or so that the loved might change; but i love because love is the highest valuation of human action, god is love, for love's sake. this is what scheler means when he says we can renounce life, for love is greater. this directly conflicts with Nietzsche's assumption that life is the highest value. He attempts to force christianity into this principle which reduces christian morality to petty acts done out of guilt, fear, and ultimately ressentiment and reduces christianity to weak self-preservation. It is Scheler's distinction of a christianity with love as the greatest strength and value over that of life that is able to overcome Nietzsche quite clearly. Scheler uses the example of St. Francis Assisi to illustrate this love: " When Francis Assisi kisses festering wounds and does not even kill the bugs that bite him, but leaves his body to them as a hospitable home, these acts (if seen from the outside) could be signs of perverted instincts and of a perverted valuation. But that is not actually the case. It is not a lack of nausea or a delight in the pus which makes St. Francis act in this way. He has overcome his nausea through a deeper feeling of life and vigor! This attitude is completely different from that of recent modern realism in art and lterature, the exposure of social misery, the description of the little people, the wallowing in the morbid- a typical ressentiment phenomenon. Those people saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the holiness of "life" even in bug."
it is not that we should love the bugs and wounds, the poverty and sickness, but love what is beyond those things in spite of them. The goal of christianity should not be social justice, equal distribution of wealth, nor getting people out of poverty, but to love in spite of these things. A major criticism of Mother Teresa is that she did little to help the poor get out of poverty and i dont think she would disagree. but she would say that she lived among the poor and loved them. it is not that positive movements in the social and political realm are not good or desirable, but they should be results of our abundant love, and it is our love that is the measure of goodness, not the success of welfare and social justice. This is the difference between christian morality and modern humanitarian morality. the modern humanitarian is the one that sees everything bug-like in the world and sees St. Francis as perverted. he holds life (like nietzsche) as the highest value and i believe it is his love that is rooted in ressentiment. in order to maintain true christianity we need the agape (the divine love) as our end-in-itself, valued higher than life as the greatest strength. When this happens we truly forgive and live in love beyond ressentiment.
this entry is very josh deatonesque i know. i found this reading to be very exciting (which is good because i have to write a paper on it) and i hope i can do it some justice with my thoughts and interpretations. |
