August 2000 Print

 

Dr. Peter Chojnowski

August 25, 2000, will mark 100 years since the death of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The contrast between the real man who died in Weimar, Germany, at the turn of the century, insane and in the care of his sister Elizabeth Nietzsche Förster, and the man of the Nietzschean legend could not be greater. According to the legend, fabricated and spread from the 1890's to the 1930's by this same sister, Nietzsche was the great philosopher of "courage" and "truth," who had thought the idea and spoke the phrase that no one else had the courage to speak, that "God is Dead" and that "we have killed him." Nietzsche, who spent more than a decade in a state of complete debilitating insanity (brought on by an advanced stage of the disease syphilis), was the precursor of the übermensch, the Superman, who would smash all existing moral values in order that the slate of the human conscience would be clear, and that the great-souled man could "create" values which would have the sole purpose of augmenting his own life, his own feeling of power and domination. All that which was humble, all that which was weak, all that which was deserving of pity must be destroyed or enslaved to the desire and creative power of the "blond beasts" which were to dominate the new atheistic age proclaimed by Nietzsche. If "God was Dead," then everything was permissible. Nietzsche himself, or so the legend goes, was the first man to embody in his being and life the creative man free from the ideas of God, a universal moral law, tradition, Church, in fact, all authority whatsoever, including the authority of objective truth, as that truth is exercised over the human mind. In this freedom, in this vitality, in this "affirmation of life," Nietzsche stood far above the "mob," the "herd," the common man, and, especially, he stood above the One who had given the common man his rule of life and his goal, the Crucified One, our Lord Jesus Christ.

(Inset left) Page from the handwritten volume of poems by the 13-year-old Nietzsche given to his mother for a Christmas present in 1857. (Inset right) Crayon scrawl including two attempts at a signature and at writing the names of his mother and sister (around 1892). The stark contrast shows a man gone insane.

Such is the legend, such is the manufactured myth about a man who would serve as a "saint" for not only his sister, but for two generations of men and women who intentionally embraced the apostasy into which Christendom was slipping. There is no doubt that Nietzsche, who lost the use of his faculty of reason in 1889 while in near complete obscurity, was the intellectual antichrist of the rising apostasy of European man. The real Nietzsche, as every serious scholar now knows, was not what the heroic and posed portraits (they were all commissioned by his sister and produced during his long period of complete mental derangement) make him out to be. This man, instead, a scion of a long line of Lutheran ministers, was of a sickly constitution for his entire adult life. His multitude of illnesses, from migraines and near blindness, to constant digestive distress, would cause him to leave his teaching career, begun at an extraordinarily young age at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and retreat into isolation, pursuing only two things, his writing and the restoration of his physical health.

The "precursor" of the Superman, the man "strong enough" to place himself "beyond good and evil," was a man known by his contemporaries as a man of extreme shyness, retiring in manners and soft in his speech. The man who agreed with the materialist Ludwig Feuerbach's statement that "man is what he eats," could not tolerate a meal which was spiced or savory in any way. This "asceticism," which would tolerate no artificial stimulant, was misread as a sign of the philosopher's saintliness. In misery and loneliness, ignored by those whose esteem he most desired, he wrote furiously against the One whom he most hated, the Crucified One, Der Schmerzensmann, the Man of Sorrows. It was the man who could not tolerate the idea of the Crucified Savior, the man who in the last year of his "productive" life, 1888, produced a series of intentionally blasphemous texts such as Ecce Homo (his own biography, in which he embraces a complete biologism—refusing any spiritual element in man), Antichrist, and Twilight of the Idols, collapsed in the streets of Turin after sentimentally embracing a horse which was being beaten by its owner. After this, the man who grew up in a house of pietistic Lutheran women, would die cared for by the same women. By 1900, however, Friedrich Nietzsche had become a "saint" for those who wished to do what he himself had said he had done, moved beyond thoughts of "good and evil," who wanted to know no law or creator of value but themselves. Let us not forget the influence which the writings and the myth of Nietzsche were to exercise on 20th-century thought. It is very difficult to contemplate the rise of the pseudo-psychology of Freud and Jung without the thought of Nietzsche. Would National Socialism have taken such dark turns without the thought of the pagan "blond beast" presented to them by Nietzsche? Would Martin Heidegger's atheistic existentialism have been convincing enough for Karl Rahner, prime peritus of Vatican II, had the poem of the completely god-less and autonomous man, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), not been presented to the world by Nietzsche as an anti-gospel of "liberation" from a transcendent God? Would the "anthropocentric theology" of Pope John Paul II be what it is had it not been based on the "value theory" of the German philosopher Max Scheler, and had Scheler not, rightly, attributed at least the formal elements of that theory to Nietzsche?

 

Nietzsche's Critique

"When stepped on, a worm doubles up. That is clever. In that way he lessens the probability of being stepped on again. In the language of morality: humility."¹ This is an aphorism; Nietzsche made a point of not giving a systematic presentation of his thought, in which he presents his view on the true nature of humility, its purpose and its "usefulness" for the "humble." Here we must remember that for Nietzsche "humility," and so, also, God, is only a concept which is "useful" or not "useful" depending on the type of person who possesses the concept. Following uncritically the "Copernican Revolution" of Immanuel Kant in which "reality" is that which appears to the mind and not that which exists independently in itself, Nietzsche saw such realities as humility and God as only ideas which have use and meaning for certain peoples at certain times in history. When he says things like "God is Dead" or "humility is self-preservation reflex of the human worm," he believes himself to be speaking about a pair of ideas and not the true existence of a supreme being or a virtuous state adhering in and giving moral character to a truly existing soul. Unfortunately, just as the reality of the Catholic life had never been a personal reality for Nietzsche due to his early Lutheranism, so too a Thomistic understanding of the very orientation and purpose of the human intellect is totally foreign to this man totally immersed in German Romanticism and Idealism. As was the case for many German thinkers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, they were reacting to and rejecting that which they never really understood. How the towering historical reality of the Roman Catholic Church and the common sense philosophical orientation of Thomism could become something remote and peripheral is difficult to understand.

So too, when we read in his many books, the Joyful Science, the Genealogy of Morals, the Antichrist, the Twilight of the Idols, or Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the reality of humility, which we might truly say (and Nietzsche at least understood this clearly) is the basic and fundamental spiritual attitude of the Christian as that moral reality appears in the lives of the Catholic faithful or in the lives of the saints, is unknown to Nietzsche. The "humility" which he knows was the "modesty," the "decency," and the "domesticity" which he saw while he was growing up in a household made up of Frau Pastor Nietzsche (his mother, who was a widow of a Lutheran minister), his sister, and his maiden aunt.

It is not surprising, even though still shocking and revolting, that Nietzsche should say that the weak, the poor, and the powerless should have invented the concept of "humility" so as to keep in check the happiness, the power, and the striving for excellence of the noble man. "Humility" is, then, understood by Nietzsche as a tool employed by the weak to check the striving of the strong for great things. It is an attitude which the weak seek to foist on the strong, which denies the goodness of life, beauty, and attainment. It was meant to circumvent and prevent. Most importantly, it was a concept based upon a "lie." The lie was that it was wicked to strive after what was great, to achieve, to fulfill that which one had natively inside one's own being. This is why Nietzsche proclaimed humility to be the greatest barrier to the progress of man.

 

Humility as Truth

Often it is more useful to judge a thinker on what he does not say rather than on what he does say. Nietzsche knew that throughout the history of Christendom there were innumerable figures who combined the greatest humility with the greatest and most creative striving. In a very real sense, Nietzsche's critique is itself a lie. There was a truth upon which all authentic humility depends that Nietzsche could not personally accept; it was the reality and truth of the creaturely status of man. It is, precisely, the metaphysical truth of the creaturely status of man which serves as the basis and justification of the virtue of humility. Nietzsche never had an argument against the creaturely status of man; he simply said that he could not tolerate the idea. Such is not a rational argument. If he has no rational argument against humility, then the only thing which he can rely on to convince is an aesthetic impression of the "great" and "beautiful" as opposed to the "oppressed" and "vulgar."²

When we consider St. Thomas Aquinas's treatment of the virtue of humility (it is a virtue from vir, it is a "power over," a form of "manliness"), we find a freshness, universality, and profundity which "looks down from a height" more than any of the Alpine-induced intellectual tirades of Nietzsche. It is extremely telling that St. Thomas indicates that the most specific characteristic of true humility is honesty, a fearless affirmation of one's status within the whole created order of things. It is simply not to claim more for yourself than your position within the actual hierarchy of created and uncreated reality would warrant.³

The "position" which is foundational and essential for the virtue of humility is man's position in so far as he is related to God the Creator. St. Thomas insists, in this regard, that rather than being primarily an attitude in human relationships, humility is a willful and voluntary "subjection to God."⁴ The vice opposed to the virtue of humility, pride (superbia), is, also, primarily not a matter of human relations, but rather an attitude on the part of man concerning his relationship with God. Pride is the anti-realistic denial of the relationship between creature and Creator. Pride is a refusal to affirm the most deeply-rooted aspect of man's being, his creaturely status.⁵ If this "affirmation" or lack thereof of man's creaturely status is that which distinguishes the virtue of humility from the vice of pride, then we can state that both attitudes are a matter of a spiritual and moral decision of the will and not a matter of external appearance or behavior. In fact, we might say that they are the most spiritual of moral attitudes, since it involves a "positioning" of the self towards that which has the greatest degree of reality and yet is imperceptible to the human eye. It is significant here that Satan fell because of a sin of pride ("I will not serve") and St. Michael received the Beatific Vision and grace because of an act of submission and humility ("Who is like unto God?").⁶ Theirs was a purely spiritual choice, unencumbered by the disordered movements of the concupiscible appetite. The spiritual "positioning" involved in the act of humility was a bowing "downwards" and then being exalted "upwards," whereas pride involved a "standing up" and then being cast "down." "All sins flee before God, pride alone stands up against God."⁷ What we must not fail to see with pride, however, is its illusory aspect. One refuses to acknowledge a situation which cannot be otherwise and will never change. The metaphysical "situation" is that man has being in a finite way and God is Being-Itself. God cannot not be and man can only be if his existence is upheld and willed by God. God is a necessary being and man is a contingent being. Indeed, "Who is like unto God?"

Humility, on the contrary, is an attitude of perfect recognition of that which, by reason of God's will, really is; above all, it is the acceptance of one thing: that man and humanity are neither God nor really "like God." Here we glimpse the link between the virtue of humility and the gift of humor.⁸ Indeed, it is in the rest of true hilarity and honest laughter that, more than almost anything else, forces a man to recognize his own creaturely status and all of the consequences of such a status. In laughter, pretense, hypocrisy, and willed error are always caught off guard.

What is clear concerning St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching on the virtue of humility is that it is both a necessary virtue for salvation, along with being an inclusive perfection. With true humility, the soul virtually possesses all of the perfections necessary for salvation. Such is the unique character of humility and the way in which it most accurately mirrors the greatest of the virtues, charity. Since humility is a confession and affirmation of the majesty of God, it engenders a spiritual condition by which we are disposed to accept all that God desires for us. "Be humble, and thou shalt obtain every grace from God" (Ecclus. 3:21). Because it is by means of this virtue, and this virtue alone, that a free and intellectual creature is rightly subordinated to its Creator, which is the "position" all such creatures must be in to receive any of the spiritual benefits of the Blessed Trinity, St. Thomas teaches that, "Acquired humility is in a certain sense the greatest good" (Humilitas acquisita est maximum bonum secundum quid).⁹

Not only is humility an encompassing virtue and perfection, engendered both by the grace of God and the co-operative will of the free creature, it is also a matter of divine mandate. Man, because of his metaphysical relationship to God, has the moral obligation to co-operate with the Holy Ghost in His pacification of the soul. It is impossible to achieve man's final, supernatural end without humility's passive acceptance of the perfect good which God seeks to give, the good of His own being. "No one reaches the kingdom of Heaven except by humility" (Ad regnum coelorum nemo venit nisi per humilitatem sine aliis), says St. Augustine.¹⁰

 

The Humble Striving for Excellence

But, in a way, Nietzsche knew all of this. He knew that, fundamentally, there were only two choices for the whole man and those choices were pride or humility. He chose pride. There is one aspect of humility, and one aspect of human action in general, which he failed to consider or, simply, refused to consider. First, humility was always understood by the moral tradition of Christendom as the virtue which perfected, and did not suppress, the natural striving of the human person for excellentia: superiority, pre-eminence, consideration.¹¹ The virtue of humility is simply a sub-virtue of temperance by which this natural urge is properly related to the order of reason.¹² Second, Nietzsche ignores an essential aspect of human existence, specifically human action, which intimately relates man to the transcendent and creative being of God. This aspect of human action is its establishment upon the basis of concurrent causality. God, on account of His omnipotence, must uphold in existence all beings in order that they may act. Rather than hinder or thwart human action, God makes such action possible. Michelangelo cannot be painting unless Michelangelo is first existing. All creative action on the part of man depends upon the primary causality of God upholding man in being. Moreover, this aspect of the creative act of God is the greatest validation possible for the goodness of human action, along with the goodness of the nature which this action seeks to fulfill. God is by no means "anti-human" as Nietzsche suggests. By taking the approach of an empiricist (i.e., rejecting the validity and authenticity of any reality which does not come under the purview of the five senses), Nietzsche arbitrarily refuses to consider any "reality" other than the passing phenomena. But just because someone refuses to consider it, that does not make it cease to be.

The entire discussion of St. Thomas concerning the virtue of humility is extremely challenging, since it speaks of humility as a virtue which is meant to "temper and restrain" the mind, lest it tend to high things immoderately. When we consider this statement, we are led to believe that "humility," as a virtue, does not primarily and characteristically apply to those who have a very limited and muted desire for states of excellence, but, on the contrary, the virtue of humility appears to be the most specific perfection of the good man who is so driven to higher things, and even some aspect of greatness, that he needs to have such a striving "tempered" so that the excellence and superiority which he so earnestly desires can be attained. According to St. Thomas's portrayal, humility does not weaken our striving for great things which we have the capability to attain, rather, humility prevents us from launching upon a trajectory which is actually beyond the capacity of our being, whether personally or according to our nature. Humility keeps the striving soul from living a life of illusion.

It is clear that we cannot evaluate our own capacities "in light of right reason" unless we both have a vivid and intimate awareness of our own inner life and nascent capacities and an objective, external standard by which to judge ourselves. To put it simply, the ground of humility is man's estimation of himself according to truth.¹³ The two concepts here are "estimation of himself" and "according to truth." Humility is nothing else but a willing conformity to one's true knowledge of God and of oneself. The frequent prayer of St. Augustine, "Noscam Te, noscam me" (May I know Thee; may I know myself!) perfectly expresses this content of the act of humility. Truly, is it not the case that my knowledge of myself is no more than adolescent introspection if there is no appraisal of myself according to the standard set by the whole of created reality, both metaphysical and social. Doesn't Nietzsche's revelry in self-appreciation and self-esteem seem hollow and cowardly when we know that he refused to acknowledge the self-evident fact that there is a cosmic and even social structure into which we are meant to fit. It is not surprising that so often, during his years of self-imposed exile from normal human society (1876-1889), he trembled so when accosted by an unwanted visitor, a visitor who judged him by a standard other than Nietzsche's own. Hiding in one's own thought, in one's own writing, even in one's own poetry is still hiding. But it is a hiding that necessarily leads to despair.

 

Magnanimity

As Josef Pieper rightly points out in his book The Four Cardinal Virtues, in the whole tractate of St. Thomas concerning humility and pride, "there is not a single sentence to suggest an attitude, or principle, of constant self-accusation, of disparagement of one's being and doing, of cringing inferiority feelings, as belonging to humility or any other Christian virtue."¹⁴ This especially relates to humility as this is manifested in relation to other men. Since humility as a virtue and as an excellence, not as a natural psychological state of "feeling inferior to," primarily relates to man's relationship to his Creator, all human relations which involve humility will receive their proper character from this primary relationship of man. St. Thomas specifically raises the question of the humble attitude of man to man, and He answers as follows:

In man, two things have to be considered: that which is of God, and that which is of man....But humility in the strict sense means the awe in virtue of which man subjects himself to God. Consequently man, with regard to that which is of himself, must subject himself to his neighbor with regard to that which is of God in him. But humility does not require that one subject that which is of God in himself to that which seems to be of God in the other....Humility likewise does not require that one subject that which is of himself to that which is of man in the other.¹⁵

It is the last sentence in this quotation which is of most interest to us here. What St. Thomas is saying is that when it comes to "what is of man in the other," there is not a strict need to "humble" ourselves before the other. If we consider the implications of this statement, we find that St. Thomas leaves open the possibility that a man can possess the virtue of humility without in any way understanding or even feeling himself the inferior of any other man. The same humility by which an excellent and superior man submits himself to God and that which is of God in another (i.e., to the supernatural life engendered in their souls by sanctifying grace), allows him to judge himself to be superior to those around him. He is one who has a unique and higher mission. A mission which is beyond the capacity of the many and which demands a regimen which is not demanded of most.

It is extremely interesting that both humility and magnanimity or "high-mindedness" are virtues which relate to this drive of our human nature for superiority, pre-eminence, and consideration. Rather than being opposed as virtue and vice, humility and "highmindedness" or megalopsychia (i.e., great-souledness) are sister virtues, as St. Thomas states, "Humility restrains the appetite from aiming at great things against right reason, while magnanimity urges the mind to great things in accord with right reason. Hence it is clear that magnanimity is not opposed to humility, indeed, they concur in this, that each is according to right reason."¹⁶ With this said, it must be stated that the virtue of humility, being a form of temperance, can apply to every man insofar as all have a drive within them, implanted by God, which moves them to achieve excellentia. The virtue of humility ensures that this drive for excellence and pre-eminence in general or in a specific field of human activity is in accord with one's actual capacity. Pride is the vice by which a man habitually ignores those actual and unchanging limitations which characterize our own person and personality.

The virtue of "high-mindedness" is different, however. Even though it is a virtue which requires humility as a pre-condition for its being a virtue at all, it is a virtue which does not appear to apply to all, but only to the few. "The act of magnanimity is not becoming to every virtuous man, but only to great men."¹⁷ The virtue of magnanimity is that which keeps the man who feels greatness within himself from failing to manifest that greatness in action for the common good.¹⁸ It is the virtue which inclines the mind of the excellent man to hope for the achievement of the highest and most inclusive goods.¹⁹

Perhaps because such a "type" of virtuous man is not easily found, or on account of the fact that Aristotle has a detailed description of the megalopsychos or the "great-souled man" in Book IV of the Nicomachean Ethics, St. Thomas gives a description of both the internal and external dispositions of such a man as would possess, or would be in need of, the virtue of magnanimity. What is interesting for our purposes is that such a personality qualifies as being "virtuous" and "humble" for St. Thomas. It is a possibility within the whole range of redeemed personalities. That a soul could be Christian, humble, virtuous, and "high-minded" was a possibility which Nietzsche could not tolerate and one which St. Thomas, obviously, knows from real experience.

 

The Great-Souled Man

The most notable characteristic of the "great-souled" man, as that man is portrayed by St. Thomas in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa Theologica, is the fact that, from a very early period in his life, the magnanimous man has no specific "occupation." His mind, his desire, and his activity cannot be narrowly encompassed by work dedicated to the achievement of a particular, useful end. Even though he may be skilled in many activities, he is one who is dedicated to and has a mental relationship with one of the transcendental properties of being, either the true, the good, or the beautiful. And just like these properties, his mind will not be fixed on particular, petty things, but it is in some way related to "being as such," normally under a particular aspect, either as true, as good, or as beautiful. Just as these perfections of all beings inexhaustibly await realization, so too does the "great-souled" man sense the excellence of his calling to realize the highest things which the human mind can actualize. He senses the capacity present in his mind, and prepares himself with patience for the day when that capacity shall be fulfilled in great actions. Since he is beholden and under obligation to the good, the true, or the beautiful (e.g., as poet, philosopher, artist, statesman, prelate, or general), he instinctively holds himself "aloof" from the normal run of human affairs and activities. The external reserve and "disinterestedness" which often characterize the "great-souled" man are normally understood as a "haughtiness" and "coldness." Such is not the case. Such a man, with such a mind and with such a will, knows that he will benefit all more if he avoids the mundane distractions, even the distractions of numerous social relationships, in order to be prepared to perform the socially beneficial task which he knows only he can perform.²⁰ He, therefore, will not be accessible to every approach, but will keep himself for the greatness to which he feels akin.²¹

Along with his "striving for great things," the magnanimous man is most closely related to the goods of truth and honor. His relationship to these mark him off from all other virtuous men. The truthfulness of the magnanimous man does not only extend to the proper assessment of his own being, his somewhat hesitant recognition that he is capable of what others are not capable of, great ideas and great deeds. This honest assessment, often expressed in words, is made of all things and persons. For this reason, the "high-minded" are often seen as "critical" and "sharp." He cannot be otherwise. He has an insight into the ideal for man, so that which is "small-minded," all dissimulation and hypocrisy, all flattery born out of a cringing fear of the loss of one's position, is foreign to him and engenders contempt in his mind.²² He who has honestly seen what man ought be can never be satisfied with what man is. As St. Thomas states, "[M]agnanimity makes him despise others in so far as they fall away from God's gifts."²³

The honesty which characterizes his relationship with other men is only mitigated by his characteristic irony and his fitting behavior while in the presence of both those of great dignity and affluence and those who are among the common run of men. Since he is, in a very real sense, above both groups of men, his being is not altered by being modest and unassuming before the humble and "high-spirited" before the dignified. On account of the fact that he has a universally human calling, he understands himself to be a representative of "the human" in his relations with other men. Self-referential irony is employed while in the presence of both groups of men. Enthusiastic "high-spiritedness" in the presence of the mighty is irony, because it covers the fact that the "great-souled" know that everything is tawdry when compared to the true, the good, and the beautiful. Self-depreciation and a lack of pretense in the face of the common and everyday is a resting of the great mind in a common humanity. His interior dignity is even augmented by remaining hidden from those before whom it need not be revealed.

The special good which is most proper to the "great-souled" man is that of honor. Honor is an enticement for such a man to strive after great accomplishments. In some way, the magnanimous man "stoops" to the honor of his fellow men, for he knows that nothing which man can give truly compensates him for the deeds that he has performed. It is the highest tribute which man can pay to man. According to St. Thomas, "he is not uplifted by great honors, because he does not deem them above him; rather does he despise them, and much more such as are ordinary or little. In like manner, he is not cast down by dishonor, but despises it, since he recognizes that he does not deserve it."²⁴

 

Despairing Affirmation: the Eternal Return of the Same

In some way, by indicating that a man of true greatness is acceptable to the moral tradition of Christendom we are indulging a fundamental misconception on the part of Nietzsche concerning the character of the true Christian man. He, in a way, "knew better." The pride of the Nietzschean Superman is not primarily or even essentially revealed by the mere contrast between the creative genius and the contemptibly mediocre masses. According to Nietzsche, what makes a man into a Superman is his "affirmation" of the "eternal recurrence of the same." What is this? For Nietzsche it is a combination of cosmological theory and psychological palliative. Attempting to revive an idea that dominated much of the ancient pagan world, Nietzsche identified his "greatest idea" (and the central concept of his magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra) as the idea that all events, from the great to the most minuscule "recur" an endless number of times. Each moment in time, which, according to Nietzsche, moves in a "cyclical" and not a "linear" fashion, has happened an infinite number of times in the past and will happen again an infinite number of times in the future. "Where is my home? I ask and search and have searched for it, but I have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal—in vain!" Thus spoke the "shadow" that hung over Zarathustra.²⁵ The Nietzschean atheistic Superman had to "affirm" the eternal recurrence of every event in one's own life, every sorrow, every misery, each longing. "I will that nothing be different," said Nietzsche in his autobiography Ecce Homo written in 1888, the last year of his mental sanity. But watch here, here is the final diabolical turn in Nietzsche's thought. To will that the unhappiness and privation of one's life be repeated endlessly, to eternalize the finite, to say the "eternal yes" to the ultimate purposelessness of all things, is to despair. But to affirm that the self be as it is for all eternity, never healed, never redeemed, never made perfectly happy, is to bury hope. This is what truly separates Nietzschean pride from Christian humility. To affirm the ever mundane self is to refuse the adventure of hope. For Nietzsche, to will the "eternal return" was a desperate attempt to gain complete possession of his own being—but it slipped away! Nietzsche understood that peace of soul could only be had when a man affirmed himself and affirmed eternity. But a mundane eternity is no eternity. A self separated from God is no true self. True peace only comes to the humble soul which hopes in the eternal life offered by the hand of God. "Become who you are!"...indeed.

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Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and another in Philosophy from Christendom College. He also received his Master's Degree and doctorate in Philosophy from Fordham University. He will teach the 2000-01 school year for the Society of Saint Pius X at Immaculate Conception Academy, Post Falls, Idaho.

 

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (31) from The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 471.

2. See especially The Genealogy of Morals.

3. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 161, A. 6; Q. 162, A. 3, ad 2.

4. ST, II-II, Q. 162, A. 5; Q. 161, A. 1, ad 5; Q. 161, A.2, ad 3; Q. 161, A. 6.

5. Cf. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), p. 191.

6. Cajetan Mary da Begamo, Humility of Heart, trans. Herbert Cardinal Vaughan (Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books, 1978), p. 1.

7. Johannes Cassianus, De Coenob. Instit., 12, 7.

8. ST, II-II, Q.161, A. 3, ad 3. Cf. Pieper,The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 191.

9. St. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, Q. 1, A. 1, ad 3; A. 19, ad 7.

10. St. Augustine, Lib. de Salut., xxxii.

11. ST, I-II, Q.47, A. 2. Also, St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo, 8, 3.

12. ST, II-II, Q.161, A. 6; Q. 162, A. 3, ad 2.

13. ST, II-II, Q. 161, A. 6; Q. 162, A. 3, ad 2.

14. Pieper,  The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 189.

15. ST, II-II, Q. 161, A. 3.

16. ST, II-II, Q. 161, A. 1, ad 3.

17. ST, II-II, Q. 129, A. 3, ad 2.

18. ST, II-II, Q. 129, A. 1, ad 3.

19. ST, II-II, Q. 129, A. 1.

20. Ibid.

21. ST, II-II, Q. 129, A. 3, ad 5.

22. ST, II-II, Q. 129, A. 2, ad 4; A. 4, ad 2; A. 3, ad 5.

23. ST, II-II, Q. 129, A. 3, ad 4.

24. ST, II-II, Q. 129, A. 2, ad 3.

25. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part III in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Viking Press, 1954).