Abstract
A century of scholarship has shed countless photons of light on the reception of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas in numerous countries. Still largely unilluminated, however, are South African reactions to his scepticism and moral pessimism. The present article explores how Joseph Doke, a scholarly, transplanted Englishman who served as a Baptist pastor in Johannesburg and elsewhere and wrote the first biography of Gandhi, used fiction to criticise Nietzsche early in the twentieth century. His novel The queen of the secret city (1916) embodies an explicit rejection of this German philosopher’s pivotal notion of Wille zur Macht (will to power). It is further suggested that Doke was probably indebted to G.K. Chesterton’s confrontation with that idea in Orthodoxy (1908). In Doke’s critique of Nietzsche, he also described ethnic and religious clashes and implicitly argued for the moral superiority of Christianity and the ethical need for missionary endeavours.
Highlights
Produced by SUN MeDIA Bloemfontein Acta Theologica 2017 37(1)semi-popular literature of African Christianity.1 Much less appreciated, and given very scant attention in Cursons’ serviceable if too brief biography is Doke’s brief career as a novelist
After describing foundational aspects of Nietzsche’s thought, which Doke found objectionable, the focus will be on how Doke constructed the impact of Nietzschean “will to power” (Wille zur Macht) and its incompatibility with both Christian spirituality and Christian ethics in his posthumously published novel The queen of the secret city (1916)
The followers of Jesus in the Roman Empire were a “cowardly, effeminate and sugarcoated gang” who alienated all “souls” from all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own price (Nietzsche 1920:169-170). This criticism of effeminacy would echo in The queen of the secret city
Summary
Semi-popular literature of African Christianity. Much less appreciated, and given very scant attention in Cursons’ serviceable if too brief biography is Doke’s brief career as a novelist. After describing foundational aspects of Nietzsche’s thought, which Doke found objectionable, the focus will be on how Doke constructed the impact of Nietzschean “will to power” (Wille zur Macht) and its incompatibility with both Christian spirituality and Christian ethics in his posthumously published novel The queen of the secret city (1916). This is a topic almost completely ignored in the extensive scholarly literature about Nietzsche, which has rarely touched on the reception of his provocative ideas in South Africa
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