In his fifth chapter, Grenz introduces us to the forerunner of postmodernism, to the voice crying in the wilderness — Fredrich Nietzsche. The philosophers of modernity (who bookended that age when rationalistic charismata were still being given to men) were Descartes and Kant (p. 84), and this gives us the approximate dates of 1650 to 1800. After this, modernity toodled along under the power of inertia, but there were lonely voices saying that all was not well. Nietzsche was one of them. He was not only one of the lonely voices, he was also one of the things that was not well.
In what follows I will be dealing with the Grenzian Nietzsche, Nietzsche the nihilist. It is a common view, and I am not necessarily denying it. But neither am I affirming it. The two alternatives, as I see them, are that Nietzsche was a nihilist, and believed in nothing, or that Nietzsche believed in something really, really bad. But Grenz takes the nihilist line, and so I will temporarily abandon all interest in Nietzsche-in-himself, and concentrate on Nietzsche-in-this-particular-language-game. That one is a nihilist, and a toad to boot.
“Postmoderns conclude that all attempts to describe an objective, unifying center — a single real world — behind the flux of experience are doomed; in the end they produce only fictions, creations of the human mind” (p. 83). This is quite true of all autonomous attempts to describe a single real world. Autonomous man, as Cornelius Van Til once memorably put it, “don’t know nuttin.” But to conclude from this, as postmoderns do, that a single real world cannot be given to us by a gracious and self-revealing God is to allow your argument to develop a little urban sprawl, with SUVs honking everywhere. After all, Genesis does not say, “In the beginning, God created a large number of local communities, each with their independant thought forms and language games.” As I say, it does not say that.
These developments in philosophy cut us off from things and leave us only with words (pp. 83-84). But if I have only words, and not things, am I allowed to have the things that bring me the words? And are words things? And where is the line of demarcation between thingyness and wordyness?
According to Grenz, Nietzsche made one foray into botany, or perhaps it was a foray into missing the point. “Although all leaves may share certain characteristics, each leaf differs from every other leaf. We can form the concept ‘leaf’ only by overlooking these differences. Nietzsche held that the concept ‘leaf’ is thus a falsification of the reality of leaves” (p. 89). And I hold that Nietzsche’s use of the concept concept means that he is falsifying this particular concept of leaf. And if I can keep this up, I can start talking about the particular concept of genus. No, not that genus.
Nietzsche “claims that what we view as ‘knowledge’ is a purely human creation, on the grounds that the process of fabricating reality is an arbitrary and individual matter” (p. 90). Okay. Let me see. So reality as I fabricate it means that I will be typing away on my laptop. Whoa. Look at that.
“This makes Nietzsche a nihilist. In the end he contends that we have no access to reality whatsoever” (p. 91). Unless, of course, not having access is part of that reality. Then of course, if I have access to the door that says “no access,” I should be able to read the sign on it. But if I have no access to the no access door, then maybe I am in the stairwell, and have found a way out. Or maybe not. No telling, actually. Maybe I should change my major from philosophy over to business.
“According to Nietzsche, our world is a work of art that is continually being created and recreated. But nothing lies either ‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ this web of illusion. The whole elaborate ‘work of art’ is in a sense self-creating: in some way, it gives birth to itself” (p. 91). Ohhh.
“This critique, which Nietzsche whispered softly within the pages of his literary corpus, would eventually be shouted from the rooftops by his postmodern heirs” (p. 92). And it still doesn’t make any sense.
In the Enlightenment, it was thought that we discovered truth as opposed to the postmodernists who think we create it (p. 92). And part of this creation is the “will to power” (p. 92). Or, depending on how you feel, the famous Nietzschean doppelganger shadow might show up, the less-famous “will to weakness.” There are no standards anymore, so who cares if we go right or left, hard or limp?
“The demise of a transcendent grounding for morality opened the way for the ‘transvaluation of values,’ the development of an authentic ‘will to power.’ The ideal of this new order is the Superhuman (Ubermensch)” (p. 94). Of course, we saw how that worked out in Nazi Germany. To which it will be replied that that venture was not an authentic will to power. It was a phoney will to power. Ohhh. You can’t be too careful about these things. If you go for some kind of cut-rate CostCo will to power, you wind up with squadrons of postmodernists with iPods, distressed jeans, funny rims on the glasses, and spikey hair with frosty tips. What you wind up with is the uber-goober.
This no doubt was why Nietzsche “calls for an active, aesthetic nihilism” (p. 95). “In their wholesale efforts to destroy myth, says Nietzsche, modern philosophers robbed Western culture of an ordering myth and thereby inadvertantly fostered an unwholesome nihilism” (p. 96). And in my book, there is nothing worse than these unwholesome nihilisms. Not like the old days of wholesome nihilism, when a man’s word was his bond, and mom used to bake apple pies instead of picking up dinner at Boston Market. Unwholesome nihilism is nothing but the devil’s work. Must be the last days.
“Nietzsche views ‘truth’ as a function of the internal workings of language itself . . . [Pomo deconstructionists] concluded that there is no such thing as a thing” (p. 97). Which means, of course, that there is no such thing pomo deconstructionists, and I am feeling better already.
Grenz doesn’t actually go up the ladder three rungs at a time like this — he does talk about some of the others involved in this tumble down the basement stairs of philosophy. That would include Dilthey, Gadamer, Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Huey, Dewey, and Louie — but I want to keep within my appointed limits. But I am willing to talk about Heidegger the Nazi, or HTN for short. “After the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, Heidegger was dismissed from his post because of alleged Nazi sympathies during the war” (p. 104). It is hard to tell what tipped people off to his alleged Nazi sympathies, what started the rumors circulating. You know how tongues wag. It may have been something as trivial as his dues-paying membership in the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945, at which time the party decided, under some pressure, to assume a posture of repose. To his credit, he had nothing whatever to do with the Nazis throughout the 1950s.
Anyhow, Nazi or not, Heidegger was a bona fide Deep Thinker. His words were turgidity itself, and would flow across the page, like rapidly cooling magma. “Truth is not absolute and autonomous, he argues; it is relational. The dominant view is inadmissible simply because the concept of an external world is itself nonsensical” (p. 106). Ohhh. My wife’s chair over there, for instance, is a little bit of nonsense in a vast ocean of nonsense. I don’t know why I didn’t realize this before.
Heidegger even goes further than Nietzsche. “He asserts that we do not so much create language as move within it” (p. 107). Ohhh. I get it now. I can move through language itself . . . like a ninja.
We cannot take our leave without saying hey to Wittgenstein. “In his later works, Wittgenstein explicitly abandons the concept of truth as correspondence with reality” (pp. 113-114). He was out taking a space walk, working on one of the seals of our space station. And one day he just unclipped himself and floated away.
The cherry on top is of course Foucoult. “Foucault demands that scholars leave behind all pretence of neutrality and accept the fact that it is their task to bring to light the authorless, subjectless, anonymous system of thought present within the language of an epoch. This is the way in which the postmodern critic seeks to gain freedom from the faith of rationality” (p. 121). Okay. I hereby leave behind all pretence of neutrality. I am a situated Idahoan who believes in Jesus. Now what?