From Nihilism to Kingdom Come :: Philosophy Theology Religion Papers

The Final Stage of Mankind’s Education — From Nihilism to Kingdom Come ABSTRACT: I give reasons to believe that our present situation is not as bleak as some would have it. I show how the historical process can be understood in terms of a Premodernity (Aquinas), Modernity (Hegel), and Postmodernity (Nietzsche) division of human history. I argue that both Hegel and Nietzsche were fully aware that Modernity was over and that a negative Postmodern condition was to necessarily precede a consummatory positive one. Also since history may be taken to have reached its goal at the end of Modernity (with Reasons grasp of Christianity’s principle), Postmodernity can best be understood in terms of its central task of elevating all humanity into absolute knowing (the knowing of the God within)—an elevation via Reason and Faith achievable only by the abolition of the God outside, i.e., by a negative followed by a positive period of history, which Schelling refers to as the Church of John, a synthesis of Catholicism and Protestantism, the perfected Churc h. Introduction My thesis, in brief, is that the painful "God is dead" period of history we are presently going through can best be understood as a necessary "transitional period"— the immediate consequence of mankind’s intellectual advance, in the preceding period, viz., the Modern or Age of Reason, beyond the Middle Ages, the Age of Belief. With the apotheosis of the development of the principle of subjectivity in Modern philosophy, i.e., with the attainmeUnprioritized— SDO meetingnt of "absolute knowing," or Reason’s "knowing of the absolute," humanity had outgrown its former manner of relating to substance, the divine: — its eyes opened, it could not go backwards but only forward. From the highest standpoint, it can be said that the movement of history is from the God "outside" to the God "inside"— an inversion process involving three distinct and necessary phases: Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity, to be correlated with Thomas Aquinas, Hegel, a nd Nietzsche, respectively. It appears that as a result of Modernity’s, i.e. Hegel’s, intellectual achievement— in which religion was superseded by philosophy, i.e., Wissenschaft or Science— religion had of necessity to undergo a major crisis. That is, a "God is dead" period of (post-) history had to supervene. However this "negative" period is in no way to be regarded as final or terminal, but instead as the necessary precondition for a "positive," consummatory period of human history, its finale, a period in which, in Schelling’s words, the unification of philosophy, science, and religion will be realized.