Nietzsche And The Secular Saint Analysis

Although Nietzsche and Dostoevsky fight for the innermost center of humanity in their attempt to define the art living a meaningful life through the metaphor of Zasima and the overman, the turn of the 20th century introduced a new factor. “Totalitarianism is nothing other than the rule of force” (Ambrosio lecture 22) and with the peak of the industrial revolution and the horrors of the two world wars that generated by the scientific community and which brought about death to humanity on an astronomical scale. With the invention of weapons of mass destruction came the new concept of crimes against humanity. How can the individual rise to the status of hero or saint when humanity as a whole through the scientific community created weapons of mass destruction to bring mass
destruction? The hero is not justified in the truth of this reality. Nor is the saint taking reasonability for all. Humans facing death at such a grand scale cannot begin to search for the meaning of life when facing the horror of death. Is that what it means in the paradigm shift toward totalitarianism as described by Dr. Ambrosio? Or is that the same false dream of peace that countless historical leaders have claimed ranging from Xerxes to Hitler.
The horror of the Holocaust brings forth the truth of freedom and liberty. Victor Frankl’s liberty was taken during his time in the concentration camps, but yet he believed beyond the idea of being responsible to all for all. Frankl understood “that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us” (Frankl 77). Through the responsibility that freedom gives in allowing us the opportunity, the choice in how we will respond when life provides us suffering. However, Elie Wiesel also experiences great suffering in the Holocaust and chose rejection of God, a very typical response for those that suffer. Even as Wiesel rejects total reasonability that comes with a belief in God and replaces it with a more human size state of responsibility, Wiesel still clings to hope despite the totalitarianism brought about the birth of the death of humanity. A hope that “Peace is not God’s gift to His creatures; it is our gift to each other” (Ambrosio lecture 27). Yet if that is so, the alarming rate of lack of responsibility of living a life toward that peace is evident everywhere. How does the saint answer the question, ‘why God would allow such suffering?’ Or how does the hero then justify such tragedy in the face of such vast suffering?
The idea of the secular saint is difficult to imagine and understand.
Simone Weil life started as that of Greco-Roman hero traits and later in her life adopted the characteristics of the saint. She is one of many lives that lived the calling of the secular saint, a manner of living a life with purpose and meaning that pulled from the historical point of views of the saint and the hero. What is hard to grasp is her philosophy that everyone has the same inalienable rights of food, shelter, clothing and security. She also believes that the soul should have the rights of meaning and value that is rooted in freedom or right to consent or the right to withhold consent. If one wants any of these needs the social expectation in the world of Weil is that it is the reasonability of anyone and everyone should provide that missing need. The individual that is in need, whether due to external events or his or her own failure is unrealistic to require others to be held responsible to provide for that need. Considering that the need is caused by the inability of that individual to act according to universality of justice brought by the hero or the intimacy of love through the relationship of the
saint.