After the 'Death of God': Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Tillich

Delivered by Richard Schacht, Professor of Philosophy, Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Tillich Lecture took place on May 9, 2005, in Emerson Hall, and was co-sponsored by Harvard Divinity School and the Department of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

[@TheWhitehiker]

Starts at 7:40.

[@Three-Chord-Trick]

Very helpful. But why didn’t Tillich take the obvious next step, and accept the hint from Ockham?

[@unusualpond]

Wonderful. Thank you

[@lizgichora6472]

Brilliant! Various concepts of God; I think Tillich, Spinoza may have been on to the truth as God being a being, ' God as Spirit' and The Courage to be. Thank you very much.

[@timothynelson5684]

NOT God being a being but GOD AS BEING ITSELF. Are you suggesting God marshalled his courage to create?

[@trainerd1]

WTF?! Did everyone in the room want to do an introduction? How about “ladies and gentlemen, I give you yada yada”?

[@thomaseubank1503]

Thank you for saving my time, skip to 6:12

[@tbillyjoeroth]

And finally the speaker begins with a history of his entire academic career.

[@iancampbell1494]

The introductions though dull and overextended are needed, that add credibility those discussing the topic.

[@JLizard]

One can't complain because Q&A was available at the end but still has to wonder how the most influential forces the concept and relevance of Being were not mentioned. Nietzsche said one had to have long legs to climb tall mountains but not that long where it could be interpolated that his Death of God had to do with the End of God as a Being.

[@geoffreynhill2833]

Starts at 6:00.😉

[@bull1234]

Conception and perception will create things.

[@alexdavinci9533]

Richard Schacht wrote an excellent book on Nietzsche's philosophy. I only wish more authors of Schacht's caliber would publish critical books on individual books by Nietzsche. I would love to read a book on Nietzsche's Antichrist(s). I would like to read everything that's *wrong* about that book. I can see a plethora of errors in some of Nietzsche's books, but I'm not a philosopher, a theologian, or a philologist (Nietzsche's perfect reader!). Hopefully, those books are on their way.

[@richardcrossman3892]

Clear, informative presentation until the last minute! Answering the third and final question, he says he would rather place Nietzsche in the analytic tradition than the continental one, because Nietzsche prizes painstaking rationality in reasoning. I find it staggering that such a respected commentator on Nietzsche can so lackadaisically join others in the absurd misrepresentation of the programme of deconstruction as compromising on philosophical rigour.

[@theyeking7023]

Stfu deconstruction is for pussies

[@thameswrites]

@@theyeking7023 is that really how you talk and start a discussion with people? You think you’re on the internet and you could just say whatever you want, but I’m sure you realized that talking in real life as such is going to get you no friends and risk getting punch in the face

[@SteinarIBergo]

Interesting!

[@bull1234]

We are a phenomenon; transitory, illusionary and beyond our own control

[@brucekern7083]

Why can't they edit out the nearly 20 minute preface on videos like this? We want to see/hear the substance. The prefatory remarks are so in the way 🙄

[@hotstixx]

Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy was scathing in his chapter on Nietzsche, calling his work the "mere power-phantasies of an invalid" and referring to Nietzsche as a "megalomaniac". Russell is here depicting the "hard Nietzsche" very few today would recognize. Russell's psychological daggers against Nietzsche are unbalanced, but worth considering. In one particularly harsh section, he says: It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is a warrior, not a professor; all of the men he admires were military. His opinion of women, like every man's, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear. "Forget not thy whip"-- but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks. [...] [H]e is so full of fear and hatred that spontaneous love of mankind seems to him impossible. He has never conceived of the man who, with all the fearlessness and stubborn pride of the superman, nevertheless does not inflict pain because he has no wish to do so. Does any one suppose that Lincoln acted as he did from fear of hell? Yet to Nietzsche, Lincoln is abject, Napoleon magnificent. [...] I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-conscious ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end. - Russell, History of Western Philosophy

[@jonathanmorgan1596]

When Russell was writing HoWP he wouldn't have had access to translations of Nietzsche which hadn't been corrupted by his sister. I like both Nietzsche and Russell, I think the issue with Nietzsche was he was naive to think his philosophy wouldn't be taken up as a means to justify the rise to and abuse of power. That said I think he raises questions still pertinant and not answered in society today; such as morality without a God. I'm not convinced by Grayling, Singers and others arguments for objective morality without a God - the problem of existentialism, as it would seem to me, is one mans good is another mans evil and thus is Nietzsche not correct that whatever passes as "right" at a particular time is whom possess the power If you follow?

[@Biyer11]

Jonathan Morgan Russell knew German very well.

[@ED-lt1vc]

hotstixx, thanks for the insightful quote. There is a lot to digest there.

[@JLizard]

@@ED-lt1vc He needed money

[@jksjksjks3339]

Bertrand Russell is the most logically miserable old man I ever suffered to read. I am shocked that anyone still reads his ranting and raving. What a insufferable man he must have been. If that is the man his thinking produced, that alone would tell me his thinking was severely flawed just based on the bitterness it created within him.

[@daverichardson8563]

Did anyone understand any of this?

[@AL_THOMAS_777]

[@hanskung3278]

I'm not sure you should thank someone that encourages you to be a professional philosopher.

[@KeskinCookin]

What Matters Most.

[@ac-twig]

Paul Tillich: “God cannot be an object of faith without also being the subject of man's faith.” Am I misunderstanding the speaker’s representation of Tillich’s thought on the person of God, the divine being? The quotes by other responders makes this clear.

[@ac-twig]

@@Spinozasghost Alex, I was alarmed that the speaker would misrepresent Tillich’s under-stated but solid premise that the goal of his quest was to be brought into sharing a living with the Divine being (see lesson 4, minute 6:30), and that the point of his deep philosophical discussion have this context. Your statement/question can stand alone as you have poised.

[@bon12121]

34:48 I sort of feel like, as soon as you read that in someones work, you put the work down, and you don't look at it again.

[@bon12121]

One of the other quotes earlier on was something like 'it is just as atheistic to deny the existence of God as to affirm his existence.' Could If someone else noted this (paraphrased) quote, could they explain it?

[@spiralsone]

This is how church sermons ought to be in the modern, civilized world.

[@rickpandolfi7860]

the volume of introductions and preambles in this video is preposterous and laughed at.

[@trainerd1]

If I wanted to be read to I would buy the fucking book myself

[@James-ll3jb]

Cheery bunch!😅

[@jmarti48]

The introductions end at 6 minutes. Start there. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qJuWcqGqd7F1h7s

[@stanleykubrick8786]

1:17:50 of repetitive gibberish. Nice suit though. Thank you. Next time I’ll watch Peter Sellers in, Being There.

[@jksjksjks3339]

When you have come to certain dead end that is left-brained, visually-based, language-based logic and rational existentialism, you confront the great chasm, the great Nothingness, the total meaninglessness, a void of hope and purpose, the belly of the whale, the emptiness of all meaning and purpose and the edge of sanity. At that point of existentialist despair, I step off the cliff, a bold and pure step of faith, in spite of all my left brain linguistic logic saying the is no God, there is no purpose for life or living - in that moment of pure psychic nothingness, I step into pure being, and a God of mystical meaning and compassion materializes before me and builds a bridge beneath my feet, with each step as I blindly am led forward by heart (cor Latin) courage. Not logic but pure courage to lean into despair and emptiness and all the logic against existence of either myself or God. But I will believe in spite of all the logic against it, through an act of pure faith alone, and The experience of God and pure being materializes within me. God is not a thing or a noun, but an intimate encounter with pure being, life and love simultaneously. Heaven is in the present moment. The present moment is eternal and miraculous Presence...the encounter IS God, born from faith alone, in the face of a all the logic that says it is not, I believe in it anyway, and my pure irrational faith opens the doorway to pure connection with mystical reality, mystical God, mystical experience of God-Being. That is my proof. I lived it and God built a bridge beneath my feet as I stepped into the insanity of Nothingness and meaninglessness with only Pure Faith and I will never be the same. I stepped into nothingness in pure faith and was filled with Sacred Presence...that is God beyond God...an experience - a profound, life-giving moment of eternity and pure being. Behold and be held in the rapture of God beyond God.

[@richardjames6087]

Beautiful. Are these your words or those of Tillich?

[@ac-twig]

“God is…an encounter with the divine being.” Beautiful description that is Tillich’s own words. Biblically it fits when persons encounter God, like Paul say “who are you Lord!”; an answer follows “I am…..”.

[@AL_THOMAS_777]

@@richardjames6087

[@davidyoung1164]

Great talk, but I don't see a problem with God being the one being encompassing all. We extrapolate the term from ourselves, and when we talk of our self, we talk primarily of our "self", and of our body, which our self rises from and images, secondarily. As selves, we desire the most perfect, most powerful, most encompassing one, and that desire rises from our experience of being in the All, and reaches out in love to encompass it. Paul, the apostle, and Spinoza had it right: The Universe is our body, and we are a being.

[@TheGuiltsOfUs]

"When sophisticated theologians talk about god, one quickly finds oneself wandering around in a rhetorical fog in which god becomes a constantly shape-shifting entity described by metaphors whose meanings are always just beyond one’s grasp. One has to struggle to understand what they are talking about because what these sophisticated thinkers imagine to be god is so far removed from what any ordinary person thinks that I have long suspected that they are actually atheists struggling to find a way to salvage belief in something transcendental that would not be seen as manifestly anti-science or otherwise ridiculous in the circle of intellectuals amongst whom they move." - Mano Singham

[@hanskung3278]

My first impressions, Tillich is like Heidegger, Hegel, Kant, full off abstractions, full of gobbledygook, using words in special ways, therefore incomprehensibility and therefore must contain deep,deep, profound insights.

[@smallscreentv1204]

This is hard to listen to. The reference to God being dead is a reference to the death of the thing in itself. The death of absolutism born out of Plato’s forms. Nietzsche denied the thing in itself and praised the sophists, those people who also denied absolutism and praised relativism. The death of God is the death of the Good (Plato’s Republic)

[@hanskung3278]

Tillich made you feel like you understood him but that was a illusion? You got punked!

[@MrJamesdryable]

An*

[@stevenyourke7901]

Christianity is based on belief in a personal God. The God of the Old Testament and Jesus the Christ, the Savior. Plus the Holy Spirit. If you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus and the reality of the personal God, you’re simply not a Christian. Tillich can hardly be considered a Christian at all if he conceived God as Being or “the ground of Being”. Or some vague life-force. Or “the power of being, itself”.

[@matthewkopp2391]

it was God who said „I am that I am“ you are worshiping something other than the God of the Bible.

[@mcosu1]

The $64,000 question of whether Tillich was a Christian. Maybe there isn't a black and white answer though. Was Paul the Apostle a Christian? Unlike Paul the Apostle, Tillich actually considered himself a Christian.

[@coahuiltejano]

Nietzsche would have laughed at being discussed alongside a theologian....LOL

[@matthewkopp2391]

No he wouldn’t. You obviously don’t understand what Nietzche wrote. Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith as practised was not a proper representation of Jesus' teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did. It became a hollowed out ethics and ontology. And advocated for a revaluation of all values. Which is precisely what Tillich or Jung did. The Nietzche sophists are those who don’t re-valuate values, and have no idea what ancient ontological ideas were about. Nietzsche admired Jesus, but criticized Christianity. But the problem is larger than just Christianity. It’s any intellectually lazy attitude. Where people think what others think, believe what others believe, in a completely conformist way. Some comments here say „Tillich wasn’t a Christian“. That is the voice that Nietzsche was criticizing. Those who follow and repeat a creed and have a thousand heresy accusation but have no idea of the underlying philosophical issues of their own religion.

[@AL_THOMAS_777]

[@hofmannwaves1525]

You haven't been reading your Gnostic classics Professor Schacht! God above god is obviously the Monad, above the god of this universe, who you would know under a different name - had you done your reading...

[@albanbokshi4818]

If you stretch it that far, you might as well relate Nietzsche's ideas with St. Paul's, or even Mother Theresa's. Let alone that this talk is a huge misinterpretation of Nietzsche's ideas and completely failing to see and recognize the subtleties of his thought. Third, has this Tillich had anything original to say? For all I heard was Heidegger's idea of being. Nietzsche rightly foresaw that after the death of god there will still be some churches left, sepulchers of god. I suspect one might find Tillich there.

[@hanskung3278]

Analytical philosophy? Boooo!