The SPCK Introduction to Nietzsche

by Lucy Huskinson

Publisher:

SPCK

, 2009

Overview

This is the first introductory book on Nietzsche to engage explicitly with his affirmative religious perspective and highlight what exactly Christians can learn from it. Friedrich Nietzsche, a key figure of modern and postmodern Western thought, is associated with many slogans and buzzwords—perhaps most famously, “God is Dead.” This introduction rescues Nietzsche’s religious project from the murky misunderstandings that surround his confusing work. By engaging with his affirmative religious perspective and highlighting what exactly can be learned from it, this book makes his often complex and difficult thinking accessible to a wide audience.

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Key Features

• Introduces the life and ideas of this key figure in postmodern and Western thought
• Analyzes Nietzsche’s thinking from a Christian perspective
• Discusses the lasting effect of this influential individual

Contents

• Antichrist Versus Anti-Life
• The Death of God
• Nietzsche’s Faith: The Revaluation of Values
• Testing Faith: Redeeming Christians from Themselves

Top Highlights

“Nietzsche takes issue with the idea that there are objective truths, which tell us how things really are, and imperatives, which tell us how we ought to behave. According to Nietzsche, truth is contingent and a matter of perspective—so that what is true for you may not be true for me.” (Page 2)

“Likewise, the value of life cannot be discovered through the rational contemplation of Platonic Forms or of God’s enduring love. Rather, the value of life for Nietzsche is discovered at every moment in which it is experienced here and now, and as an end in itself. The value of life is in the living of it. The meaning of life cannot be encapsulated in thought, but in body. Life isn’t determined in its abstract contemplation, it is an ever-present, ceaseless activity. Indeed, as we saw in the introduction to this book, Nietzsche claims that there is no ‘meaning’ or ‘truth’ of life to discover, for ‘our most sacred convictions, the unchanging elements in our supreme values, are judgements of our muscles’ (WP 314).” (Pages 8–9)

“Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity that expose problems within Christian discipleship, such as the common inability among Christians to comprehend the meaning of faith, and to realize how excruciatingly difficult and ‘serious’ it is both to live an authentically Christian life and to facilitate the life-enhancing force of Christianity.” (Page xvii)

“No one is free to become a Christian or not to do so; one is not ‘converted’ to Christianity—one must be sufficiently sick for it’” (Page 9)

“Nietzsche, a ‘moral duty’ to affirm life and enhance its nature. Furthermore, life seems to take on divine status for Nietzsche, in the pantheistic sense that life is inescapably here, within us and our world, and should not be worshipped or regarded as something transcendent and beyond us.” (Page 2)

Praise for the Print Edition

Finally, an introduction to Nietzsche from a Christian perspective that presents the reader with a thoughtful, charitable, and reliable interpretation! While Huskinson rightly realizes that Nietzsche is a thinker who calls out to be read on one’s own and that all interpretations of his thought are partially reflections of the reader, her introduction is without doubt an excellent entrée to Nietzsche.

—Bruce Ellis Benson, professor, Wheaton College

To produce a brief introduction to Nietzsche’s thought, given its breadth, depth, and complexity, is an almost impossible task—especially when writing for a Christian audience. Lucy Huskinson has managed it intelligently and with tact, yet without weakening the force of Nietzsche’s trenchant criticisms.

—Graham Parkes, professor, University College Cork

For a philosopher who proclaimed he was dead, Nietzsche has much to say about God. This crisp and clear account is an ideal introduction for students and the general reader to this important—and controversial—figure.

—Paul Bishop, professor, University of Glasgow

Product Details

• Title: The SPCK Introduction to Nietzsche
• Author: Lucy Huskinson
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 128

About Lucy Huskinson

Lucy Huskinson is lecturer in philosophy of religion at Bangor University. She is also a qualified psychodynamic counselor and a visiting fellow at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex. She is the author of Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites and the editor of Dreaming the Myth Onwards: New Directions in Jungian Therapy and Thought.