An attempt at articulating the thesis of my Nietzsche book

Hey Dr. Money,

so I got your email and I would be more than happy to answer any questions that she wants to know about my general grad school experience or about the WMU program in particular. Tell her to shoot me an email with some specific questions and I will do my best to answer them on a timely basis.

I am also writing because I had to share this insight with somebody and only you would understand what I'm talking about. I'm reading this book called Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi for my Taoism class here and I ran across these two lines in the text:

‘Rothberg argues that the spiritual path involves, in many traditions, ‘a process of progressive deconstruction of the structures of experience’ and later on Harold Roth writes that ‘Rothberg argues, “each path of deconstruction or deconditioning is itself constructed or conditioned in a certain way.’

I think that I see all, if not the majority, definitely a substantial portion, of Nietzsche's philosophy as a sustained attempt to do this. To destroy, with a philosophy hammer, all of those 'structures of experience,' like Christian theology and Western philosophy and 'Reason' in philosophy, that prevent or hinder or oppress people from going on their on individual spiritual journey. The idols that he is attempting to destroy with his philosophy hammer are all of those idols, like Christian dogma, Platonic philosphy, Kantian philosophy, an individual's very idea of God, that are preventing them starting on their spiritual journey. That is why God must be murdered, because God represents all of those things, religious and philosophical dogma's, that are preventing you from finding the truth about existence, the truth about God, inside of yourself. That is why all must resist Zarathustra and seek themselves before Zarathustra returns to them, because they had not yet sought themselves they are living a disingenous, false life by living by these dogma's instead of finding the truth inside of themselves. This is how a statue can slay you. The plucking at zarathustra’s wreath is the desire on the part of the seeker to go on one’s own spiritual journey, the murdering of God, or your image or idea or dogma about God, is the first step on your spiritual journey, where you will find the God inside of you, or the Universal Self that is common to all mystic traditions. Nietzsche may or may not believe this last part here, but I do see in his writings this kind of mystical methodology in his comments about religion and free spirits. Once a person's God is murdered, then they are off on their own spiritual journey and truly for this once oppressed but now truly free spirits, there has never ever in the history of civilization been so many open sea's to find yourselves on.

I think that this is what I think about some of Nietzschean philosophy and would like to write a book to explore this idea to see if there is any validity to it or to see of other of Nietzsche's ideas would be in contradiction to it. I need to get this idea out of my head!

Thanks for your reply, hope to talk to you soon

Dr. Money's response:

I AGREE! With the one caveat that I believe Nietzsche is a naturalist
through and through...hence, if you want to continue employing
"religious" or "spiritual" in a naturalistic worldview, you would need
to make it clear that THAT is the context. After all, the words continue
to seep with meanings and connotations that have been attached to it
under very different conditions. I might employ the concept "witch," but
I do not mean to suggest women with supernatural powers, flying on
broomsticks, etc. Perhaps to avoid confusion, I should give up that
concept and use or invent another? Or if there are some connections that
I want to continue using, perhaps I use the older concept and try to
shift its meaning. This, itself, is destructive-constructive
interaction! And it is a more general philosophical issue on
individuation of concepts, meaning, etc. But I think it is related to
what you say.

Perhaps the deification of man that N is often charged with simply
amounts to the elimination (destruction) of community as the guide for
"spiritual journey" and the assertion and elevation of the individual?

Perhaps the connection between spiritual pre-N and spiritual post-N
(naturalistically construed) is the element of meaning or value. In the
end, I think N is an ethical philosopher, thinking about how to
understand ethics (broadly construed) in a new (and I would submit
"truer") worldview--naturalism.
.

I should write a paper about this

Total artificial heart to be ready by 2011: research team

Mon Oct 27, 11:54 am ET

PARIS (AFP) – A fully implantable artificial heart designed to overcome the worldwide shortage of transplant donors will be ready for clinical trial by 2011, the French professor behind the prototype said Monday.

Leading heart transplant specialist Alain Carpentier, head of the European research team behind the project, said the prosthetic heart was ready to be manufactured and should be ready for human use "within two and half years".

Biomedical firm Carmat, a start-up funded by the European space and defence group EADS, France's state innovation agency, venture capital firm Truffle and Carpentier himself, is to produce the heart at a site near Paris.

"We are moving from pure research to clinical applications. After 15 years of work, we are handing over to industry to produce an artificial heart usable by man," Carpentier told AFP.

Several teams around the world are racing to develop a total artificial organ able to permanently replace the human heart, in answer to a worldwide shortage of heart donors estimated at 20,000 each year.

Carpentier developed his prototype in association with a team of aerospace engineers seconded to the project by EADS.

Shaped like a real heart, with the same blood flow rythms, the prototype uses the same technology as prosthetic heart valves developed by Carpentier and already used around the world.

Made from chemically treated animal tissues, these "biomaterials" are designed to avoid rejection by the patient's immune system or blood clotting, a recurrent problem with existing artificial hearts, Carpentier said.

It is aimed at patients suffering after a massive heart attack or with late-stage heart failure, for whom drug therapy, ventricular assistance or heart transplant have failed or are not available.

Up until now, the heart has been tested via digital simulation as well as on animals, with trials revealing "no complications", Carpentier said.

Today's generation of artificial heart is a thumb-sized device implanted in the chest that sucks blood from the heart and pumps it into the aorta, and which has to be recharged every four hours using an external battery.

Surgeons in the United States and Europe have implanted such ventricular assistance devices (VAD) in 220 patients since 2000.

A further type of artificial heart works as a "bridge" until a suitable donor organ can be found.

Rival prototypes for a fully implantable artificial heart include the AbioCor -- developed by US firm Abiomed -- which was used in 14 trials between 2001 and 2004, with patients surviving an average of 5.3 months.

Another US team is working on a prototype called MagScrew Total Artificial Heart, which was trialled on calves in 2005, while researchers in Japan and South Korea are working on similar projects.

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
.