Thursday, November 6, 2014

God and Abraham as Noble Moralists

2014
Meryem Rabia Tasbilek

For the first time, when I read Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil’s section about the “noble man” and the distinction between noble and herd/base morality, he made me think about God as a noble moralist. The description of the noble people and their morality seemed to me similar with most of the God specialties in many religions. I started to think about how I can link this prototype with Abraham’s God who creates some base morality for common people and then ask from Abraham to sacrifice his son. Then I continued to place Kierkegaard’s Abraham on Nietzsche's dialectic morality. Where could I locate him and his God on this moral scale? If the God is the biggest noble morality, how can he help us to go beyond good and evil? Can he? These are my first trigger questions that I produced even spontaneously when I re-read the “What is noble?” section for this assignment. In this paper, I will try to answers these questions by the help of Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s arguments. I will try to link Abraham’s and indirectly Kierkegaard’s god with Nietzsche's noble man argument.

            In the Fear and Trembling, Abraham’s god asked from him to sacrifice his son and as a part of his spiritual test, he has to not only sacrifice his son Isaac, but also fully desire to do it and paradoxically by the result of his faith, he has to believe that he would not be deprived from him. These requirements make us to question the profile of Abraham’s god. Such as: Who is he? He commanded not to kill for countless centuries with various prophets and then creates different moralities and have expectations from different types of people and social groups such as Abraham. For common people he stays at a distance like a noble person, but when he find or choose some noble people from that society, suddenly it seems like he alters his expectations and invite some of them to switch their morality from base to noble. Nietzsche supports my argument by saying: “...great things are left for the great, abysses for the profound, delicacy and trembling for the subtle, and, all in all, everything rare for those who are rare themselves”.[1] I think; Abraham’s god is agree with Nietzsche at some point when he creates different levels of tests for different types of people.

Moreover, Nietzsche argues that “...egoism belongs to essence of the noble soul”.[2] Based on this description, we surely can link this specialty with Abraham’s god. His god is able to know everything, but still test him and ask him to sacrifice his son. Theologians argue that this test is not for the god, but for the person especially who is chosen by the god. We may also say that the sacrifice test is the sour fruit of the paradoxical nature of the faith. But, still it is very egoistic. Nietzsche argues that “People used to make human sacrifice to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best...”[3]  These practices and godly request are not a new thing. For some people, this sacrificial test is not enough, so to reach a higher noble point, they even sacrifice their gods as Nietzsche argues that “Didn’t people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves? To sacrifice God for nothingness.”[4] At that point, maybe their ego became higher, more powerful than their gods. They decide to create their own nobleness. I wonder if Abraham’s position in this argument. If he could refuse to sacrifice Isaac, could he be nobler by losing his faith or this refinement could make him to be a part of the base morality and eliminate all of his differences from the herd. I think, his position could be very similar with the devil. His refinement would not equalize him with the base, because his refutation would make him disobedient in front of the god. It would be different types of noble answer to God’s test. Ironically, on the other hand, by attempting to sacrifice his son, he became a different type of disobedient against the herd morality. If Abraham was refused to do sacrifice by reminding the previous moral rules to his God, it would be telling to the god, do not be paradoxical and this could be very sarcastic. But instead of mentioning the paradox to the god, he accepted and practiced the requirement of the paradox,[5] his faith and because of this for the base he is valuable, he is a prophet. On the one hand, Abraham could have refused his God’s command by emphasizing his egoism and tried to be noble by his own way in front of the god. Both ways, the result would be different than the base practices. Even if he sacrificed his son, because of his nobleness, his religious status could make his action different than others, but by this way his story would lose its power of being a paradoxical example. As Nietzsche argues: “It is obvious that moral expressions everywhere were first applied to people and then, only later and derivatively, to actions…”[6]

Since Abraham had enough strength to experience this type of test, more than his different choices, his experiences by being tested made him extremely separated from the herd. Nietzsche support my argument by mentioning that “...the trembling certainty that sutures and colors him entirely, a certainty that his suffering have given him a greater knowledge than the cleverest and wisest can have, that he knows his way around and was once at home” in many distant and terrifying words that “you do know anything about!”... Profound suffering makes you noble; it separates”.[7] I think, because of this, we can include Abraham and the Devil to the noble group together. Even though their experiences and tests were different, because they were both experienced the trembling in front of God, I think they meet at one point. In my opinion, all of these differences are masks to tell similar stories to different types of characters in the world. Noble people are different from each other’s, so their sources to shape their minds could be different tastes. I can invite Nietzsche again to support me in this argument: “Every philosophy conceals a philosophy too: every opinion is also a hiding place, every word is also a mask”.[8]

If I come back to my argument about God as an prototype of the noble man and the producer of morality, “...base person attributes to himself is the one his masters have attributed to him (creating value is the true right of masters).[9] Base people’s reactions to the noble humans are very similar with their relations to the god/s. As Nietzsche crates the frame for slave morality: “Slave morality is essentially a morality of utility. Here we have the point of origin for that famous opposition between “good” and “evil.”...According to the slave morality then, “evil” inspires and wants to inspire fear, while the “bad” man is seen as contemptible”.[10] The people, who worship a god, have similar specialties. For them like the d/evil, god is fearful, too. They inspire both, but cannot pass the other side of the fence. However, the noble people can manage to do that and test back the god’s limitations and if the god is a type of a noble, this try would not hurt them. I think we can link Nietzsche's base and noble comparison with Kierkegaard’s hero argument, too. He mentioned that “The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is very obvious. The tragic hero is still within the ethical… Abraham’s situation is different. By his act he transgressed the ethical altogether…”[11] Based on this argument, it is clear that the hero is still a part of the herd/base because he does not produce his own norms, but try to practice the base morality extremely to gain the heroic label. Abraham on the other hand, experiences some ebb and tide, but mostly stays in the frame of noble with his God by his attempt of the sacrifice.

Nietzsche argues that “The noble type of person feels that he determines value, he does not need anyone’s approval, he judges that “what is harmful to me is harmful in itself.” he knows that he is the one who gives honor things in the first place, he creates values.”[12] It seems like this profile matches very well the definition of many gods, especially the god of Abraham. He also argued that slave and master’s morality can exist in the same person’s soul together. Maybe Abraham is a nice example of this. In the society, he seems like he belonged to the noble group, but in front of the God that he worship, he was trying to negotiate his noble position to make it stable by being a kind of base in front of the noblest one, the God.






[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. J. Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pg. 49.
[2] Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Pg. 162.
[3] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 50.
[4] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 50.
[5] Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling. Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pg. 70.
[6] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 154.
[7] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 166.
[8] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 173.
[9] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 157.
[10] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 156.
[11] Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling. Pg. 59.
[12] Nietzsche. BGE. Pg. 154.

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