Daniel Williams: Nietszche's Critique of Pure Fiction; 2/11/12

In yet another of the readings from my Existentialist philosophy class, I took notice of an interesting comment by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which expressed an idea fundamentally opposed to the ideas of Lewis we have been discussing in class.

Nietzsche writes, "In Christianity neither morality nor religion has even a single point of contact with reality . . . This world of pure fiction is vastly inferior to the world of dreams insofar as the latter mirrors reality, whereas the former falsifies, devalues, and negates reality," (Nietzsche, 132). Here Nietzsche is arguing that religion (and therefore myth, too) creates a world that is wholly disconnected from reality. He even argues that it "is rooted in hatred of the natural (of reality!)" (Nietzsche, 132). For Nietzsche, the Secondary World of myth and story takes one further away from what is real, a sentiment that reminds me of our brief discussion of Plato's belief that the poetic takes one further away from the true reality, which he called the Forms. Whereas Lewis believes that myth actually connects reality and truth, here the opposing view is represented: the more one invests oneself in religious mythology, the less one is rooted in reality, and in fact the more one comes to hate what is real.

Obviously Lewis would have disagreed here with Nietzsche, but not merely on the subject of myth. Lewis expressed a love of nature, a fact which is evident in his Narnia series, among other writings. Nietzsche's criticism that pure fiction is characterized by and results in a hatred of the natural seems wholly inapplicable to Lewis, as well as some of his contemporaries, like Tolkien. On the contrary, it seems that Lewis' love of myth and his religious belief directly influenced his love of nature, i.e. of the physical world. It is true, however, that Lewis would have valued the Supernatural more than the Natural, and perhaps it is this at which Nietzsche's criticism is directed. Considering that for Nietzsche there was only the Natural world, anything that directed attention away from that world was false and even nonsensical. No truths could lie outside the Natural world. Or, since Nietzsche was nihilistic in his philosophy, truth itself was a meaningless concept. There existed only reality, only the concrete, Natural world, and any musings beyond that were exercises in ignorance.

I would not consider it surprising to learn that some of Lewis' arguments are directed against ideas that Nietzsche himself propounded. The views each of these men expressed are diametrically opposed: for Lewis, myth contains a great deal of reality in it; for Nietzsche, myth and all religion contain nothing of the sort, only delusion. I think that it is highly probable that Lewis engaged in discussion with philosophers who would have represented Nietzsche's ideas, just as he was writing "Myth Became Fact" in response to a philosopher who discounted the value of mythology. Myth and story were fundamental to Lewis' thought, and therefore the ideas expressed by Nietzsche represented the type of thought against which Lewis was reacting.

Work Cited: Nietzsche, Friedrich: "Human, All Too Human" in L. Nathan Oaklander's Existentialist Philosophy: An Introduction. 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1996. pp. 128-135.