Through the reading assignment the professor gave us Monday, I figured he was giving a clue to his own philosophical leanings. He had us read a section about Plato and his allegory of the cave, then skip forward 400 pages to the Nietzschean philosophy of the overman (Übermensch) and slave versus master mentality.
Sure enough, the prof told the class upfront that his favorite philosophers are Nietzsche and Heidegger (curiously, both are strongly committed to Nazism...creepy!) He said he views himself as the overman and the rest of society as the underman to be taken advantage of and dominated. The overman is supposed to be an enlightened person with his own created purpose. God is dead and so man is left to create his own fate.
Is it just me or does this guy sound completely full of himself? The sad thing is that many of the guys in class have no real foundation on which to stand and so they follow the prof's (misguided) authority. He is challenging us to be better thinkers but has a nihilistic view that offers little hope to his audience.
For me, the class has forced me to dig deeper into my faith and find out what I believe and why. Of course, I will always have doubts, but everyone has doubts every now and then, no matter what philosophy you ascribe to. I recognize that my faith is fragmentary and can't explain everything because - would you believe it? - my finite mind can't comprehend the infinite. That's why it's called faith.
"In contemplation, if a man begins with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." - Francis Bacon
No comments:
Post a Comment