Philosophers Do the Tango and Happy Meals

I cannot figure who would be more fun to watch trying to dance, Nietzsche with his bouncing mustache or me with clumsy feet. Regardless, the two of us, no matter how hard we tried, could never do the tango. Freud and Nietzsche, however, might get along much better. I always imagine Freud as a tall, pretentious Austrian and Nietzsche as a short, pretentious German. The effeminate Nietzsche, overly sensitive and excitable, would swoon in the arms of a well-organized doctor of Psychiatry. Whether that’s a bit anachronistic I leave to the historians, so far as a read of their books go, implicit in Nietzsche’s words is a small man complex while implicit Freud’s confidence are signs of the next ubermench. (If you didn’t catch that last joke, don’t worry: on a 10 point dork scale that’s a 8.5.)

After rummaging through each gentlemen’s respective yard-sale, I find myself dissatisfied. Usually the post-shopping spree moments consist in sighs of relief and happiness at what one has acquired. Of course, part of the problem derives from not fully understanding their systems. And it might even be that I am projecting some criteria prior to reading their works, expecting what neither man intended to give. But there was a lack of rigor and clarity found, say, in William James that left me a bit miffed. Freud employs some pretty shoddy logic—or rather avoids it altogether, and Nietzsche rarely, if ever, achieves clarity.

I do not say these things because I do not think they have important things to say. On the contrary, I have never read a book that gave me more insight into inert question within myself till last week in Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism.” Likewise, after reading Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy” I finally have material to make sense of etiological (causal) questions surrounding mythology. A brief report of my last two weeks would be “Wow, really, awesome, huh, seriously, I like it, marry me, never mind, lame, false, where’d you pull that crap from? That’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard.” My goal here is not to express what positive elements I took away from the two, nor really the negative.

In other words, I am not concerned with the parts but with the whole. And in particular the whole compared with the whole of individuals like Augustine, or to be more contemporary, Plantinga. Nietzsche as I would express it caused post-modernity. In effect, he demolished what remained of Western Christianity in one fell swoop of brilliant insanity. His influence cannot be denied; nor can Freud’s. Projection, repression, complex, unconscious, etc etc are words and concepts entirely absent from the world until this freak genius rose out of the shambles of the world wars to construct psychoanalysis, and in my readings, the pages of “Moses and Monotheism.”

But in an act of apologetics, I think it’s equally important to note the influence of others. Plantinga is singlehandedly, or so I think, responsible for the destruction of epistemological internalism. To put that in lay terms, the destruction of Descartes, Hume, and Kant—three equally important individuals. And Augustine, God bless him, dominated the entirety of the Medieval era, and still, to this day remains the founding church father.

I am not trying to make any argument other than this. In the same way that I would not go to the uneducated atheists to argue for the existence of God and the objectivity of values, it is unfair to treat uneducated Christians as if they are naïve because they have not studied and rejected Kierkegaardian fideism. God knows I have not studied him, though, I suspect I would probably not reject him.

Let me be clear that I am not talking about a moment of human contact and conversation. As usual, I am concerned with the psychological process. I am talking about a vague sense of ‘atheist’ or a vague sense of ‘Christian’ as present in someone’s particular psychology. The atheist in my mind is the compilation of actual people I’ve known and books I’ve read that are atheist. (And the atheist, in my experience, is much sillier, and less of a threat than the agnostic.) But that ‘atheist’ is not AN atheist: it is a projection of my accumulated experience. When I say ‘atheist’ I am never referring to someone. The same goes for Muslim, Hindu, or Christian. The label contains the meaning, and the meaning is dependent on my view.

And it’s that view that I want to repair in the mind of the Atheist as well as the Christian. Billy-Bob, my psychological atheist, as well as his brother Billy-Bud, my psychological Christian, posses an intellectually weak, incoherent, and sloppy philosophy. But we must not commit the uncharitable sin of treating Billy-Bob as if he represented Hume or Billy-Bud as if he represented Aquinas. Who they do represent, who these psychological ‘people’ represent most of all is most people. So if in an argumentative scenario played out in my head, my metaphysical construct of the sensus divinitatis rattles Billy-Bob’s atheistic construct, isn’t it because the poor man doesn’t have a construct? If from here I intuit that the majority of atheists have no constructs—which is true— therefore all atheists are unintelligent and atheism is false, haven’t I played a trick on myself? Yes, in logic it’s called a hasty generalization, and it turns out to be nonsense.

But why, dear sweet me, are atheists allowed to pull exactly this psychological bit of balderdash? For in effect, those external arguments they produce are the result of these internal sophistries. If most Christians don’t concern themselves with rigorous philosophical principles—which is true— it doesn’t follow that Christianity doesn’t have rigorous philosophical principles. God knows if a professional artist judged a child’s drawings by contemporary artistic standards, the giraffe/camel/animal/thing on the refrigerator door would get some rather harsh and inappropriate criticism. That artist would get a stern look and a stiff fist in the face—and not a one of us would protest.

The truth is that if one has intellectual questions, he must go to the specialist, the intellectual. If you want a happy meal, you don’t go to Burger King. Though you may be happier for it, you never got the real thing, and can never make a valid judgment concerning a happy meal. For all you know, you aren’t happier for it, and a happy meal claims to make you happy for a reason.