Abstract
Friedrich Nietzsche’s vision for humanity after he declares the death of God is both atheistic and aesthetic, the freedom to live life as it comes (amor fati). Therefore, we can call his existential vision aesthetic atheism. Maude, in the movie Harold and Maude, has a different take on living without God. Rather than take down Christianity, she tries to reform it. She lives freely but is not the intellectual free spirit that Nietzsche hoped would emerge after his proclamation. Rather, her way of existence we can call aesthetic hedonism. She understands that life is contingent, but she loves life for what it is and tries to free others, including animals, saints, and Harold, to experience the same. She does not urge the atheistic turn. I turn to Quentin Meillassoux’s notion of cosmological necessary contingency that, while he agrees with Nietzsche that God is at present inexistent, a necessary contingent cosmology cannot rule out the emergence of a divinity. He wonders just what kind of divinity might emerge. I argue that the divinity that might emerge, using Meillassoux’s term ‘divinology’, would depend upon the prevailing attitude, and consider this through both aesthetic atheism and aesthetic hedonism attitudes towards the world.
Highlights
Friedrich Nietzsche thought it necessary to announce the death of God to gain human freedom from oppressive Christian morality (Nietzsche 1974, p. 167, A108)
Buddha nature gives every sentient creature the power to awaken. What if this power to create a divinology is within each of us? I suggest that Maude’s brand of amor fati, aesthetic hedonism, is just such a space between atheism and theism that accepts the contingency of life
The results begin with a summary of the movie, an analysis of Nietzsche’s free spirit and Maude as a different kind of free spirit
Summary
Friedrich Nietzsche thought it necessary to announce the death of God to gain human freedom from oppressive Christian morality (Nietzsche 1974, p. 167, A108). Nietzsche conjured free spirits as virtual companions who were good conversationalists, but disrupters, intellects like himself His vision of this intellectual successor to humanity culminated with Zarathustra, the prophet of amor fati and the intellectual successor to humanity. Contingency as necessity opens the possibility for a divinity emerging in the future, even if we agree with someone like Nietzsche that God does not presently exist. I suggest that Maude’s brand of amor fati, aesthetic hedonism, is just such a space between atheism and theism that accepts the contingency of life. Agreeing with Nietzsche, Maude’s aesthetic hedonism embraces life to the fullest without requiring a God, but at the same time does not require Nietzsche’s atheism.
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