The Philosophy of Friedreich Nietzsche
When we look back upon the history of our religious beliefs, it is clear that our gods come and go.
Periodically, we pass through an era in which the old god fades, only to give way to a new god-image. The Olympian deities of ancient Greece and Rome superseded those of ancient Egypt and are themselves now largely forgotten and remembered only in myth. Yahweh, the Hebrew god of the Old Testament, gave way to the good Lord of the New Testament.
Now, we are again experiencing such a transition.
In 1882, following the rise of science, Nietzsche declared that "God is dead!', giving voice to widely held, yet unspoken, sentiment within the intellectual circles of Europe.
In the same breath, Nietzsche also asked how we should respond to such theocide, effectively calling for a new god-image.
The answer soon followed. Within a year, Nietzsche experienced a wave of inspiration. The result was his masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, where the old prophet returns and speaks of the Ubermensch and the Greater Self.
Herein lay the vision for a new age.
Although rarely credited as such, Nietzsche was the first of the depth psychologists. An appreciation for his vision is essential for an understanding of Jung and the ethos of the new era.
Carl Jung & Analytical Psychology
Jung is generally considered a student of Freud, yet his psychology and model of the psyche were fundamentally different. Famously, they split.
For Jung, the psyche was populated not by one but by two centres of intelligence.
In addition to the conscious ego, of which we are well aware and think of as 'I', Jung postulated the existence of a deeper, albeit hidden, Self, much as Nietzsche had intuited.
Following a series of visions that he captured in the Red Book, Jung formulated his Analytical Psychology, which included concepts such as the shadow, the anima and animus, the Self, archetypes and synchronicity. A great host of contributors, including Erich Neuman, Marie Louise von Franz and Edward Edinger, further elaborated Jung’s model of the psyche.
Initially discredited by mainstream academia, Jung’s psychology offers a renewed understanding of religion, myth, legends, fairytales and dreams, as well as hermetic traditions, such as alchemy and astrology.
Jung speaks to a new generation looking to maintain their rationality yet open themselves to the mysteries. As Jung explained:
I am not, however, addressing myself to the happy possessors of faith, but to those many people for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead. For most of them there is no going back, and one does not know either whether going back is always the better way.
To gain an understanding of religious matters, probably all that is left us today is the psychological approach.
That is why I take these thought forms that have become historically fixed, try to melt them down again and pour them into moulds of immediate experience. It is certainly a difficult undertaking to discover the connecting links between dogma and the immediate experience of psychological archetypes, but a study of the natural symbols of the unconscious gives us the necessary raw material. - Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion, CW 11:par 148
Reaching beyond the limits of a reductive mentality, characteristic of the sciences of the day, Jung’s psychology opened the way to a new mysticism and reenchanted worldview.
Jung provides us with a new lens, through which we may observe the psyche as reflected in our myths, legends and folklore.
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