Thinking feminine.

The masculine and feminine.

A two-hour survey of evening activities:

1. the newscasts ("HHS Saves Women's Health!" "Same-Sex Marriage Approved in ______!"),

2. channel-surfing (have you seen "How I Met Your Mother"? "The Bachelor"? even "The Voice"),

3. and even giving up and going for a walk (bumper sticker: "Abortion is Healthcare. Healthcare is Good.").

The overwhelming message is this: the categories "masculine" and "feminine" no longer need apply. They are inessential, simply describing certain behaviors of either sex that remind us of the fact that, "Oh! Men and women used to be different."

The only real difference is that now we know that men are much more stupid than women. See any five-minute commercial break on television.

See? Dumb, fun-loving men. Responsible, calm, in-charge women.

We've come so far.

A friend recently shared a paper on the loss of the feminine in post-Nietzschean societies. His ideas (the friend's) bear much more in-depth treatment, but for the moment I was struck by a few passages from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

Now, Nietzsche was no modern feminist: he believed that in order to escape the Judeo-Christian slave morality, women must once more be seen solely as the bearers of offspring--a role entirely unmasculine, but also entirely isolated from the masculine. The man must dominate the woman in order to use her as a woman.

But he had a unique insight into the tragedy of modern women: "[The modern woman defeminizes herself] so as to imitate all the stupidities from which ... European manliness suffers." (BGE, 239)

How. True.

Let's think of all the popular female complaints about men.

1. They are so stupid (see commercial), that they think they still run the world.

2. All they want is sex (see sitcoms).

3. They never think about children.

4. They fear commitment.

5. They are either hairy and unsanitary or uber-clean metro-sexuals (laser hair removal!).

6. If they're nice, they're gay. (How many times have you heard that line?)

Now let's think of the popular image of independent modern women.

1. They are so smart and accomplished that they dominate everything they attempt--and so well, too, that the stupid men don't know who's really in charge.

2. They have uncontrollable sexual urges. If they cannot fulfill these urges without "being punished by a baby," then Something Bad will happen.

3. They never think about children (see #2).

4. They seek out long-term commitments to anyone but the men in their lives.

5. They are either unsanitary and dressed for bed or sanitary and dressed to kill. They are always hairless.

6. They are really nice and friendly to everyone who agrees with them.

Now, this is harsh. And these are stereotypes. But take a close look: the stereotypical view of men is in strange parallel to the image held up for women.

Masculine: stupid aggressor.

Feminine: smart aggressor.

Together: it's war.

But is there any alternative? Nietzsche solves the problem with a classic domination scheme: If men were more classically masculine and women were more classically feminine, then the war would be won. By men. Domination-subordination.

This could be what the secular feminists rage against. They think they're raging against the Church. They're actually raging against the Father of Nihilism.

There is another way: John Paul II in Mulieris Dignitatem suggests that, because the male-female differences are a way in which the human person--the communion of human persons--is the image of God, they are not originally at war.

The man and woman can exist, not only together, but also "mutually 'one for the other.' (MD, 7)

Try a new list. While these traits should be present in every human person, they exist more intensely in each sex.

Masculine:

1. creating

2. proclaiming

3. saving

4. striving

Feminine:

1. gestating (spiritually and biologically!)

2. listening

3. praising

4. waiting.

The Church notes--in a redeemed echo of the "stupid man" commercials--that every Christian must in a sense become feminine. We are all listening to the Word, gestating the Word in our hearts, praising the Word, and waiting for the Word to come to us.

The honor due to the truly feminine.

Nietzsche knew women had lost something in the modern era. He just had no idea how tragic that loss was. Or how glorious would be its recovery.

Station XII: Jesus dies.

This is part ten of a series of posts on theStations of the Cross. Here are Stations I and IIand III and IV and Vand VI and VII and VIII and IX and X and XI.

Station XII: Jesus dies on the cross.

"It is finished."

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto." ~Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Nietzsche regards himself as a prophet, heralding the rise of man. The death of God is a mighty deed, a definitive moment. It is definitive, but it is not our rising.

Oh, Nietzsche: Though we slay God endlessly (modern man is no great revolutionary--we have always killed God), still we look for him. We mourn for him "as for an only son." We look into the abyss and pray that you, dear Friedrich, were wrong.

Nietzsche vs. Aristotle: What is truth?

Everyone's seen the billboard or read the bumper sticker:
"Nietzsche: 'God is dead.' ~1885

God: 'Nietzsche is dead.' ~1900"

Very cute. But you have to give Nietzsche a little more credit. He did, after all, diagnose the West's abandonment of God and the its moral and philosophical impotence. Nietzsche is always great fun to dabble in.

Here's a go at some comparisons between a Nietzsche and Aristotle. Try to apply the differences to your own concerns about secularism or, if so inclined, about Christian thought.

In Truth and Illusion, Nietzsche declares that truth is relative because of the mind's irreparable separation from reality. The fundamental differences between Nietzsche and Aristotle lie in their views on this relation of mind to reality, the nature of truth, the validity of thought and language, and th subsequent value of philosophy.

Nietzsche's account of truth rests on the assumption that man's mind, through a series of disconnected intervals, is detached from reality. (He's not talking about trying to live on two hours of sleep per night while nursing.)

These interruptions lie between the mind and things-in-themselves so that man can never grasp the essence of things. The senses distort the thing, for "sensation leads nowhere to truth, but contents itself with receiving stimuli." Man cannot know if the stimuli he receives are accurate images of the thing or are warped signals. When man transforms his sense data into "percepts" (sort of "ideas"), he simply makes a metaphor in his brain for something he thinks he perceived out in the world. From one metaphor, he makes another and another, so that with each hiatus, he "leaps completely out of one sphere and right into the midst of an entirely different one." The workings of the human mind are discontinuous and thus cannot be relied upon to transmit reality. If man cannot know reality, "Then what ... is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms." Not a high estimation of the mind's abilities.

Thus, truth is an illusion and relative to the individual; each man's mind shapes its own reality.

Aristotle's account of truth rests on an entirely different assumption; he declares that reality imprints itself on the human mind, revealing intelligible truths. Because his mind corresponds directly to reality, man is capable of knowing its essence. "Truth means knowing existent objects and falsity does not exist, nor error, but only ignorance." Man can know things as they truly are; ignorance of their existence does not mean things do not exist, but that man has yet to know them.

A thing has its own integrity. Therefore, it cannot be true for one man and false for another. There is one truth, and individual men are more of less ignorant of that truth.

To be continued... (dum, dum, dum...)