Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

David Strauss, the confessor and the writercohesion with artistic. In any event, the relation between the fourmain questions which designate the divisions of Strauss's book is notlogical: 'Are we still Christians? Do we still possess religion? How dowe conceive the world? How do we order our life?', and their relationis not logical because the third question has nothingto do withthe second, the fourth nothing to do with the third, and all threehave nothing to do with the first. The natural scientist, for example,who poses the third question, demonstrates the immaculateness ofhis sense for truth precisely in that he passes by the second in silence;and that the themes of the fourth section - marriage, society, capitalpunishment would only be confused and darkened by theintroduction of Darwinist theories from the third section seems to begrasped by Strauss himself, for he in fact pays no further regard tothese theories. But the question 'are we still Christians?' at onceprejudices freedom of philosophical reflection and gives it anunpleasant theological colouring; in addition to which he has quiteforgotten that even today the greater part of mankind is stillBuddhist and not Christian. Why should we without more ado thinkat the words 'old faith' of Christianity alone! If Strauss herewithreveals that he has never ceased to be a Christian theologian and hasthus never learned to become a philosopher, he further surprises usby his inability to distinguish between faith and knowledge and bycontinually naming his so-called 'new faith' and the contemporarysciences in the same breath. Or should we regard the new faith asonly an ironical accommodation to linguistic usage? It almost seemsso when we see that here and there he innocently lets new faith andcontemporary science deputize fo r one another, for example onpage 11, where he asks on which side, that of the old faith or that ofcontemporary science, 'there are to be found more of the obscuritiesand inadequacies unavoidable in human affairs'. According to hisintroduction, moreover, he intends to present the evidence uponwhich the modern philosophy of life depends: all this evidence heborrows from science and here too he adopts wholly the posture of aman of knowledge, not that of a believer.At bottom, then, the new religion is not a new faith but preciselyon a par with modern science and thus not religion at all. If Straussnevertheless asserts that he does have a religion, the reasons for it lieoutside the domain of contemporary science. Only a minute portionof Strauss's book, amounting to no more than a few scattered pages,treats of that which Strauss could have a right to call a faith: namelythat feeling for the cosmos for which he demands the same piety asIIIII '41