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  • The pure sky and the eternal return: Zarathustra’s affirmative atheism

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    Embargoed until: 2023-04-01
    File version
    Version of Record (VoR)
    Author(s)
    Baker, Gideon
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Baker, Gideon B.
    Year published
    2022
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    Abstract
    Zarathustra initially describes churches as the stale caves of world-denying priests. However, following his encounter with the eternal return of the same, Zarathustra overcomes this resentful atheism. The pure sky that Zarathustra desires above all else, a sky emptied of the gods, is not visible again through the holes in ruined church roofs, but really thanks to these holes. The pure sky is an image of the world liberated from the teleological time of theistic providence, indeed even from the divine necessity that pantheism attributes to the world. Yet for all that it is god-less, the pure sky is acknowledged to be a gift ...
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    Zarathustra initially describes churches as the stale caves of world-denying priests. However, following his encounter with the eternal return of the same, Zarathustra overcomes this resentful atheism. The pure sky that Zarathustra desires above all else, a sky emptied of the gods, is not visible again through the holes in ruined church roofs, but really thanks to these holes. The pure sky is an image of the world liberated from the teleological time of theistic providence, indeed even from the divine necessity that pantheism attributes to the world. Yet for all that it is god-less, the pure sky is acknowledged to be a gift of the same metaphysical-Christian history of God that it only seems to negate: the sky’s pure eye peers through holes in church roofs. Zarathustra, though an “old atheist,” can now love “even churches.” I call this Zarathustra’s affirmative atheism. I also link affirmative atheism to the conception of eternal recurrence as a self-abolishing anti-teaching. In the eternal return, Zarathustra’s atheism is finally indistinguishable from a history of churches and therefore negates itself. But although it is not a new teaching, affirmative atheism points to something novel. This is an atheism that can no longer be taught in doctrines but must be lived as fate.
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    Journal Title
    Nietzsche-Studien
    Volume
    51
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1515/nietzstu-2021-1006
    Copyright Statement
    © 2022 Walter de Gruyter & Co. KG Publishers. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
    Subject
    Philosophy
    Eternal Return of the Same
    Atheism
    Pantheism
    Providence
    Affirmation
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/414302
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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