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.
