October 2nd 2008 Letter to Dr. Money

Hello Dr. Money,

I know your busy, but I just wanted to give you a quick update of where I am right now. Firstly, I want to thank you again for the recent letter you wrote for me. Thanks in part to your letter, I was awarded a graduate assistantship in the master's program in comparative religion here at western michigan university and am currently one month into this new program, working on my second master's degree. I finished up my master of arts degree in philosophy, with an emphasis in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, this past august and got my degree in the mail a few weeks ago. I also had the opportunity to meet Peter van Inwagen, who attended my metaphysics class, and both Dean Zimmerman and Alvin Plantinga, this past spring semester when they were giving talks at calvin college. i also read an awesome book called the problem of existence by arthur witherall in my metaphysics class as well, that i highly recomend if you want to do a class on the fundamental queston of metaphysics, why is there something rather than nothing.

i took an independent study on the shinto religion this summer and am currently taking a class on Daoism and a philosophy class on aesthetics this semester, since i was never able to take the one that dr. jacob's teaches at millikin and have no knowledge of aesthetics other than what i am learning this semster. i also need to decide if i'm going to learn latin or greek as well pretty soon, as this comparative religion program has a language requirement. any suggestions here perhaps?

other than that, life is good for me right now, i'm enjoying this new program while taking some classes from the old one, i think i met the girl i'm going to marry this summer who lives a few minutes away from my dad, i have lots of school loan debt, and i still think about doing some sort of thesis on nietzsche even to this day. i've found some books that i definitely want to read in regard to this and thought i would share them with you, as they all look very very interesting. they are listed below

Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion: Julian Young

The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism by Bernard Reginster

Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion by Tyler T. Roberts

i think that nietzsche, in his writings, was working with a distinction that i think has only been around this past century, a distinction between what is spiritual vs what is religious. i think that he endorses lots' of what is spiritual (a book for free spirits, etc., etc.) but degrades lots, if not all, of what is religious. i think a lot of people regard his criticizing the latter as also necessarily criticizing the former, but i don't think that is necessarily the case. i know that i mentioned mysticism before in this regard, but i think more narrowly now, after reading your past email about this over and over again, it's a kind of naturalistic or humanistic or even atheistic 'alchemy' that he is espousing in some passages. i think it's this tension, between a kind of naturalistic or even atheistic 'spirituality' if you will and his extremely negative views about religion that i want to explore further in some large work and that i think get conflated when thinking about nietzsche's views on religion. obviously, lots of further study is needed to further clarify exactly what i think about this issue. hopefully, i can do this as a master's thesis here and finally get this idea out of my head!

i've already exceeded the length i wanted to keep this at, so i'll end it here. but thanks again for everything you have done for me once again Bob. if you have some time, let me know how the little ones are doing, how millikin is doing, and any comments about any philosophy stuff would also greatly be appreciated as well. hope to talk to you soon
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