that will require one’s maximum strength of will and instinct. To most people, such choices appear stupid, an invitation to disaster, or a lack of common sense. But it is necessary in this “camel” stage to take on the maximum burdens, until one decides they can no longer be accommodated. At that point, the “camel” journeys to the lonely desert and finally dumps those burdens there. Of course, he admits this process is difficult for spirit. But without challenge, one fails to grow. What are these “burdens” one willingly bears?
In Nietzsche’s own words, which are often a little opaque or cryptic, but which finally smack the reader with the worthiness of the type of courage and strength or resolve manifest in this “camel” stage, he asks about the “burdens” and novel courage of autonomy in the form of questions:
“Is it not humbling oneself to wound one’s haughtiness? Letting one’s folly shine to mock one’s wisdom?
Or is it this: parting from our cause when it triumphs? Climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter?61
Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and, for the sake of the truth, suffering hunger in one’s soul?
Or is it this: being sick and sending home the comforters and making friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want?
Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: loving those who despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us?”62
Since the primary thrust of the “three metamorphoses of the spirit” is obvious to show how difficult it is to arrive at autonomy, one’s real self, which is discernable by the way he describes the “lion” and “child” stages, the “camel” shows, as Nietzsche called it, the limits of the “beast of burden which renounces and is reverent.”63 One’s most difficult task in life is to find oneself and be oneself when one is surrounded by the plethora of heteronomous cultural forces imposing themselves on one’s psyche, all with their imaginary causes, inflated self-regard, uncontested chimeras, decadent ressentiment, and coercion—all the absolutized “religion” or other proposed absolutes.
In this quest for one’s own self through becoming truly autonomous, the “burdens” are left behind, the camel metamorphizes into a lion. But that would require another book with a very different issue. The disposition of the camel of simply reverently renouncing only serves as the first step of the required “going under” for the survival of humanity.
The specific burdens we will examine in this study are the burdens (1) of the bifurcation of humanity; (2) of inflexible faith; (3) of an inherited faith of miracles, mystery and authority; (4) of the limits of human reason; (5) of the problem of how one views death; and (6) of the question of how to verify claims that conflate the historical and mythical. We will be examining them in a Christian setting primarily, although at relevant points must show how common the burden is in other religions.
NOTES
1. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford Press, 1964). In his collected works, both in English and German, he has a variety of articles that address the negative side of “culture,” which he often called “demonic” when it pretended to be the ultimate concern but was not. In his later years, he also analyzed primarily Western art, attempting to distinguish religious style from religious form, and the latter did not have to have a religious subject in representational style, but was basically a breaking of forms, which fit his criteria of final revelation, which he found more in abstract expressionism than other forms. See his On Art and Architecture (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1987).
2. Jefferson argued that each person has been provided by his Creator with sufficient reason and also responsibility to ascertain and live by truth as he sees it, especially as pertains to his duties to his Creator, so the latter is off-limits to any government. Truth will stand on its own. Therefore, “it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.” Thomas Jefferson, “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,” June 12, 1779, Papers 2: facing 305, in The Founder’s Constitution, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, Volume Five: Amendments I–XII (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 77.
3. Madison, in his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance,” emphasized that Civil Society or government has no connection with religion, that “religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.” James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” June 20, 1785, Papers 8:298–304, in The Founder’s Constitution, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, Volume Five: Amendments I–XII, Vol. 5, p. 82.
4. Madison’s protection of individual rights as well as rights of minorities was unmatched among the Founders, as he repeatedly brought up the subject of needing to prevent the majority from trampling the rights of others, and this suggested a federal legislature composed of representatives of all states, manifesting different interests, and in reasoning together even interests that transcended peculiar state interests. See, for example, The Papers of James Madison, editor in chief, Robert Rutland (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1977), Vol. 10, pp. 25; 32–34;138–139; 205–219; 266–267; 269; 415; 478–479.
5. This assertion was made by Justices Scalia and Kennedy in the oral argument before the Supreme Court of Thomas Van Orden v. Rick Perry, No. 03-1500 on pp. 16–17, 23–26. J. Scalia emphasized that the “God” referred to by the Ten Commands, was a “unitary” god, the true God, to whom “we pray” in distinction to other religions in which people pray to gods (plural) (p. 8, and others).
6. Timothy P. Carney, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse (New York: Harper Collins, 2019). Religious communities today, as compared with the years immediately following World War II certainly reveal less social cohesiveness within the religious communities. Much of that had to do with the ending of a major war in which U.S. citizens were thankful for the result, and were more religious than typical. However, the United States’ tradition of “revivals” was successful in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (and to some degree in the twentieth) because they broke with established religious institutions and their theology, and because, especially in rural areas, the “converts” found a group to which they could belong and be important. Finally, the erosion of the traditional metaphysics by science has made much of the appeal of a religious communion less, especially if institutions or clergy have disqualifying interests.
7. This willingness to trust in the different others, to realize the necessity of compromise with those with whom we differ is illustrated graphically in Brands’ recent study of the “second generation of American giants.” See H. W. Brands, Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, The Second Generation of American Giants (New York: Doubleday, 2018). The “second generation” experienced a few decades in which “compromise” with those who differed was not only tolerated but admired, yet by 1850, divisiveness eclipsed this and the Civil War became inevitable.
8. Martin E. Marty, When Faiths Collide (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
9. E. J. Dionne’s diagnosis of the divisiveness we see in the U.S. culture “war” seems to be growing even since he wrote. See Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012).
10. One can think of many examples, for example, the Jonestown mass suicide, or of the “teleological suspension of the ethical” in Kierkegaard’s “fear and trembling,” produced by one’s encounter with the
