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UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Between the Prophets and Nihilism: Nietzsche Responds to Apocalyptic Thought Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05d4g496 Author O'Mara IV, William Edward Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California University of California, Irvine Between the Prophets and Nihilism: Nietzsche Responds to Apocalyptic Thought DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History by William Edward O’Mara IV Dissertation Committee: Professor Mark A. LeVine, Chair Professor John H. Smith Professor Touraj Daryaee 2017 Table of Contents Acknowledgements v Curriculum Vitae vi Abstract of the Dissertation vii Chapter One Introduction: A Prophet Against the End-Times 1 Chapter Two Friedrich Nietzsche and the Prophet Zarathushtra 6 Religion and Nietzsche, Only Partly at Odds 7 The Rôle of Myth in Human Life 13 Zarathushtra and the “Original Errors of Religion” 18 Nietzsche’s Exposure to the Historical Zarathushtra 22 The Aryan Roots of Zoroastrianism 27 A Fateful Split: The Indo-Aryans and the Iranians 32 The Iranian Religion of Zoroastrianism 35 From Zoroastrianism to Judaism, Christianity, and Beyond 43 Chapter Three The Legacies of Zoroastrianism for the West 44 The Earliest Hebrew Religion 45 The Hebrews Just Before Babylon 54 The Persians and Ending the Babylonian Captivity 61 ii Judaism in Persia’s Shadow 65 The Impact of the Gnostic Understanding of the World 75 Zoroastrianism and the Gospel of Matthew 78 Chapter Four The Secularization of Progress in the Enlightenment 82 Kant and Teleology: Naturalizing Progress 83 Living Things as “Natural Purposes”, and Nature as a System 85 Vitalism and the Moral Law 90 Progress and Perfection, in Culture and in Nature 97 Hegel and Marx – the Dialectic, Materialism, and Progress 105 Hegel’s Progressive Dialectic & the Myth of Purposive History 105 Marx and the Secularization of Hegel’s Progressive Teleology 110 Materialism, Progress, and the “Darwinians” 114 Herbert Spencer: The Siren of Progress 115 Progress and Natural Selection: Darwin and Wallace 121 Ernst Haeckel and German Materialism 127 Chapter Five Naturalism Between the Ancient Greeks and Modern Biology 135 Nietzsche Contra Progress: The Scientific Roots of Nietzsche’s Critique 136 Encountering Nietzsche’s Scientific and Philosophical Naturalism 147 Darwinism Between Idealism & Materialism, Teleology & Mechanism 151 Progress and Nature from the Greeks to the Darwinians 161 iii Greek Roots of Nietzsche’s Naturalistic & Existential Imperatives 171 Materialism & the Greeks: From Homer to Thales to Aristotle & Beyond 172 A Most Inescapable Influence: Heraclitus and Becoming 175 The Stoic Influence on Nietzsche: Conflagration & Eternal Recurrence 180 Chapter Six Overturning Eschatology: Nietzsche’s Alternative to Apocalypticism 193 “The Greatest Weight”: Willing the Eternal Recurrence of the Same 195 On the Truth of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence 198 “The Meaning of the Earth”: Willing the Coming of Overhumanity 201 The Appearance, Meaning, and Purpose of Overhumanity 204 On the Necessary Qualities of Overhumanity 206 Closing Thoughts 211 Bibliography 213 iv Acknowledgements I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to committee chair Mark LeVine, whose patience and understanding have made it possible for me to stick this out to the end. He remained calm and encouraging through near-constant financial hardship, and the need to abandon my first topic and begin a new one, and I am grateful for the faith he has shown in me as a scholar and as a human being. I would like also to express heartfelt appreciation for the close reading and comments that John Smith has given to my work over the years. His encyclopaedic knowledge of German philosophy has been a great help to me in formulating my arguments, and I have learnt much from his critiques and suggestions. And I would like to thank Touraj Daryaee for the conversations we had about Zoroastrianism, without which this project might never have been born. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to the family and friends who stuck by me through a long and difficult road to the doctorate. You all know who you are. Your love and encouragement have made me what I am, and for that gift I will ever remain grateful. Liam O’Mara IV Spring, 2017 v Curriculum Vitae William E. “Liam” O’Mara IV Academic & Work Experience 2006 Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in History Chapman University 2007-2014 Teaching Assistant University of California, Irvine 2009 Master of Arts (M.A.) in History University of California, Irvine 2009-2017 Adjunct Professor of History Chapman University 2012-2017 Adjunct Professor of History California State University, Dominguez Hills 2014-2017 Adjunct Professor of History San Diego Mesa College 2017 Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in History University of California, Irvine Teaching Fields Middle East History Modern European History Research Emphases Intellectual & Cultural History Philosophy, Religion, & Science Israel/Palestine & the Arab World Major Publications • ‘Religion in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: From Obstacle to Peace to Force for Reconciliation?’ — a book chapter in One Land, Two States, edited by Mark LeVine & Mathias Mossberg, published 2014 by University of California Press. • ‘Decolonizing the West’. Review of John Collins, Global Palestine. H-Net Reviews. July 2012. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php? id=35646 vi Abstract of the Dissertation Between the Prophets and Nihilism: Nietzsche Responds to Apocalyptic Thought by William Edward O’Mara IV Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Irvine, 2017 Professor Mark LeVine, Committee Chair The problem addressed in this study is nihilism. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche traced its origin to the long history of apocalyptic and eschatological thought in Western religions, and to the survival of the linear and universalizing aspects of their theology in modern secular thought. Nietzsche saw this unconscious legacy affecting everything from Enlightenment philosophes, to the natural and biological sciences, to politics and economics. An existential crisis in European civilization – the advent of nihilism – thus came about because of the “death of God”, i.e., the loss of unshakeable objective faith amongst Europeans in the truth of the Abrahamic faiths. I take seriously Nietzsche’s suggestion in Thus Spoke Zarathustra of a genealogical relationship between the ancient Iranians and the ancient Hebrews, which Nietzsche scholars have neglected. Exploring that historical interchange allows us to establish that Zoroastrian concepts of universal time and absolute morality entered Judaism, and thus the West, at a formative stage. I then discuss some key modern thinkers to which Nietzsche’s project responded, and vii show that apocalyptic eschatology lived on in the work of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the Darwinians. Having established for himself that modernity was tainted at its origin by this kernel of religious dogma, Nietzsche saw no need to save modernity from itself, and thus looked beyond it, and beyond the naïve worship of reason that underpinned it. The solution to the problem of nihilism, in Nietzsche’s view, was not to overcome religion, but to transform it. What was needed was a new mythology – one consistent with the natural sciences, and one which glorified the world as it is, and not an ideal world to come. His challenging notions of Eternal Recurrence and Overhumanity were contributions to this new, life-affirming mythology. I make use of an extensive body of primary sources, ranging from the works of philosophers and scientists of the nineteenth century, to that of the ancient Greeks whom Nietzsche so admired, to the scriptural traditions of Zoroastrianism and Judaism. The work involves close reading and historical contextualization, seeking to establish contingent relationships as ideas moved and were transformed over time. viii 1.0 Introduction: A Prophet Against the End-Times In the horizon of the infinite. – We have forsaken the land and gone to sea! We have destroyed the bridge behind us – more so, we have demolished the land behind us! Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean; it is true, it does not always roar, and at times it lies there like silk and gold and dreams of goodness. But there will be hours when you realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that has felt free and now strikes against the walls of this cage! Woe, when homesickness for the land overcomes you, as if there had been more freedom there – and there is no more ‘land’!1 Famous around the world for proclaiming the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche is not commonly approached as a religious thinker. In the following pages, I will not only address Nietzsche’s explicit critique of some key features of modern religious life, but will characterise Nietzsche’s overall project as a kind of religious revival, intended to return myth to its originally life-affirming rôle by helping to restore our sense of awe and wonder about nature. Strongly influenced by the pantheist thinker Baruch Spinoza, Nietzsche comes occasionally close to similar sentiments, but ultimately he wishes to do something quite opposite what his monist predecessor sought. Rather than deifying nature, Nietzsche seeks something of how the ancient Greeks viewed nature – as a primal and unpredictable force to be feared and respected, perhaps even loved, but in 1 Friedrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science. 124. Bernard Williams (ed.). Josefine Nauckhoff (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 119. 1 no way personified. In fact, Nietzsche flips Spinoza’s famous equation of God with nature (Deus Sive Natura) by positing instead Chaos Sive Natura, chaos or nature.2 Rather than deify the natural world in place of a metaphysical one (Nietzsche rejects that option even more forcefully), he wishes us to understand the world as unfolding chaos – utterly without plans or intrinsic meaning.
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