Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This essay is an attempt to provide a new view of Nietzsche's attitude toward the sacred. It mentions the work of a wide array of other Nietzsche scholars. But I am sorry to say that I find the article exceptionally difficult to understand. It seems that the overall thesis is that a religious outlook involves emotions and values in a deep way that transforms life, and so we should not read Nietzsche as simply rejecting the factual basis of a religious worldview, but as providing an entirely new spiritual revolution (which is as religious as anything). If the author is saying more than this, I don't know what it is. Indeed, the elaborate analogies and the wide range of references from Foucault to Schiller to Epicurus seem to be obstacles to understanding the essay. 

Author Response

I would like to thank you for reading my text and for your comments. I think you have understood my approach and I hope to have the opportunity to correct any difficulties in understanding my work. The various references, which were intended to be illustrative, may indeed be a further reason for making it difficult to contextualise my own thesis. Best regards and thanks again.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper approaches religion from two specific assumptions, that is, “religion can be interpreted as an ‘architecture of value,’ that is, as a technique for constructing values and, at the same time, as a technology of salvation.’ The article also explores religion as “a mechanism for individual and group healing” (p. 1). Once the assumptions are established, they are used to offer a distinct, religious interpretation of Nietzsche. The reviewer expects to see a link between the two sections of the article—the assumptions and the application—but it never materializes.

The article is divided into an introduction and conclusion with three distinct sections in between: one is dedicated to religion as architecture of value and another to religion as technology of salvation. The last part focuses on the Nietzsche angle.

The first part on religion as architecture is weak. The plan is to amass evidence in favor of the argument, but the evidence is only offered, not justified. To follow, I provide an example: The author’s plan was clearly to argue that “Rational, dogmatic and even liturgical contents differ to the extent that—speaking ontologically, not historically—they are derived contents. Religion is not primarily a discourse on divinity, but an evaluation of it” (p. 3). This is a bold statement and needs to be justified, but no defense is forthcoming. I believe the statement is wrong, but that is another story. On a separate note, the “it” included in the statement “religion is not primarily a discourse on divinity, but an evaluation of it” requires clarification: does the indefinite pronoun refer to the discourse or to the divinity? Is the author claiming that religion is an evaluation of the discourse on divinity or an evaluation of divinity? In other words, is religion, according to the author, an evaluation of theology or an evaluation of God? Both statements must be justified as several scholars would at the very least find these statements bizarre. In the second part, the accumulation of evidence works better because it is built around a dialogue of the author with Foucault.

The interpretation of Nietzsche is more properly an attempt to link Nietzsche to German romanticism. It is only at the very end of the third part that the author finally engages with the sacred, stating that “True piety, then, consists in restoring the truly sacred to its place. The place of the sacred is the highest, and the highest is the bottom of the earth: there from where man's natural forces, his creative power, emanate. The sacred must be elevated from the valley of the heavens and the underworld to the highest mountains of the earth, where the footsteps of the prophet Zarathustra are lost. Nietzsche's rejection of religion is thus a moment of his own religiosity, of the veneration of the sanctity of life” (p. 10). What the author is probably trying to say is that Nietzsche, in the author’s opinion, pursues an immanent transcendental option— transcendental because “the sacred is the highest” and immanent because “the highest is the bottom of the earth.” To put it differently, this author perceives that Nietzsche locates the sacred in the very core of human life. That may be, but it must be proved, and the article proposes no evidence.

In conclusion: I struggle to find the link between religion as architecture/technology and the supposed Nietzsche’s immanent transcendentalism. I believe the author should be more consistent in his/her line of thought. The part on religion and architecture and the part on Nietzsche should be consequential, and the same is true in the case of the part of religion as technology and the part of Nietzsche. The argument of the immanent transcendentality of Nietzsche should be proved. Finally, certain statements need to be justified instead of merely presented to the reader.

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you cordially for your careful reading and rich comments. My article is intended as a contribution to a reading of Nietzsche that highlights what is religious in this author. But this religious reading implies, in turn, a reflection on what a religion is. With regard to the latter, I propose to understand religion from the tradition that, from Schleiermacher to Otto and from Mircea Eliade to Foucault, focuses on the non-cognitive aspects of religion, underlining categories such as the contemplative, the numinous, the experience of sacred time and space, piety as "care of the self", etcetera. From this tradition, I wanted to use the concepts of "architecture of value" and "technology of salvation" to describe the essential features of the religious phenomenon: hierarchical distinction between value/disvalue and problematisation of human reality. In other words: ritual as the preservation of value; asceticism as the recovery of value. The reasons I find for linking the Nietzschean Zarathustra with this definition are several, but not all of them have been developed in this paper. The reason for this is the need for an extension that I do not have, so I leave such a deepening for future articles: firstly, the assertion by Nietzsche himself, who sees in his work a sacred book inserted in the tradition of the Bible and the Vedas and which would be related to the realisation by this author that religion can only be overcome religiously, since it operates in the sphere of hierarchies of values; secondly, the messianic call to recover a "sense of the earth" that humanity would have lost in a situation of "fall"; secondly, the messianic call to recover a "sense of the earth" that humanity would have lost in a situation of "fall"; thirdly, the suggestion - problematic, moreover, in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy - that there would be a "natural" or vital hierarchical order, broken by human culture; fourthly, the role of the text itself in the Romantic tradition of constructing a new mythology; and, finally, the central character of the episode of the ass's feast, whose liturgical character has not been sufficiently analysed. In any case, I am grateful once again for your suggestions, which will help me to clarify certain points in this work and to guide my research in the future.

Reviewer 3 Report

There's a sense of joy that underlies your introduction, one that seems to have imbibed deeply and well from Nietzsche's sources. There's also an extra space after the period after the footnote on lines 29, 73. 

I'd suggest a paragraph break at line 53, mostly to indicate for your reader a shift in ideas. I'd also shift away from the language of "man" on line 57 toward a more general term.

Lines 71-82 do an excellent job of foregrounding your thesis on Nietzsche, one that brings together new sources and useful insights.

84-100: Great framing of the question, both poetic and clear, integrating an expansive set of suggestive intertexts and traditions that begin with cinema. 

101-112: Great breadth of thinking, although I'd again wish for more gender inclusive language on 112, as well as 241, 340-341. 

Paragraph break at 181

228-237: Good provisional conclusion regarding the criteria from which the need to reassess values should be understood, cutting through the kind of either/or binary that often plagues readings (of Nietzsche and religion).

Missing quotation marks on 288.

238-389: I very much enjoyed your analysis of Nietzsche via Foucault and your awareness of how philosophy proves to be a transformative technology of salvation writ large. It is good analysis on its own, but also serves to communicate quite well your larger discussion of religion. 

to 436: Really nice overview of German Romanticism and some of its themes and motifs as they found a complicated recipient in Nietzsche, particularly in the discussion of savage/barbarian, as well as the debt to Spinoza.

441: Once again you note a stunning diversity of sources--the integration of Fredrich and Turner are spot on. 

468-505: I appreciate your summoning of iconoclasm as a primary necessity at the heart of true religions, including Nietzsche in this context.

Overall: This is an excellent, enjoyable, and vital contribution to an understanding of Nietzsche--as well as to religion and philosophy generally. Well done, and thank you!

 

Author Response

Dear colleague, I would like to express my gratitude for your careful and generous reading of my work. I have incorporated your suggestions into the proofreading of the text and hope that, thanks to these and those of other proofreaders, it can be published in an improved form. With kind regards.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

(none)

Author Response

Thank you very much again for your review work and the indications given to improve this work, which I will certainly take into consideration for its final version.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for your response to my comments.

I think the idea -- a reading of Nietzsche (N) that highlights what is religious in this author – is interesting and full of promises. But this recursive process to go backward in order to go forward is confusing. More importantly, your decision to use the concepts of ritual as the preservation of value; asceticism as the recovery of value, without having a basis for that decision, is weakening your logic.

In my opinion, you are trying to do too much in one article. The original idea, N can be seen as a religious author, or, more precisely, there is something religious in N as an author, is good. So, I would come with a definition of religion, and I would read the Nietzschean Zarathustra through the lens of that definition. Of course, you need to justify that definition, and eventually it will take some time. But the organization of the article will result reenforced. Intro: the aim and the argument; first part: religion as ….: second part: reading of N. through the prism of that definition; third part: comments, limitations, future lines of research, etc.

As it is, I must reject the paper, I am afraid.

Author Response

Dear Sir, again, thank you for your suggestions. It is true that I have tried to cover in the article a multitude of aspects that, perhaps, would have deserved more detailed attention. However, it would be impossible to fully develop the thesis if I had divided the work instead of drawing a broad line of argument. As for the other aspects mentioned: the definition of ritual as a technique of "value preservation" and of asceticism as a technique of "value recovery" attempts to bring together concepts from a long tradition of the anthropology of religion. This tradition begins with Durkheim and leads to the work of some contemporary authors, such as Jim Stone, via the classics Eliade and Otto. According to this tradition, the specificity of religious life has less to do with linguistically and conceptually formulable beliefs than with the experience of a sacred reality that is precisely defined by its relation of value to the profane. Accordingly, if the ascetic attempts to purify his inner self of a "fallen" state, he does so because he perceives his present state as "disvaluable". For its part, ritual, in its repetitive symbolic action, would serve to keep the religious man in a "state of grace", i.e. in connection with the sacred or with the valuable dimension of his own being. I will try to elaborate further on these ideas in the revision of the text. Thank you again for your time and best regards.