from video above:
Jung says straight out Nietzsche completely accepted the death of God and tried to see what we should do beyond that. But he himself was no atheist. Nietzsche feels the despiration of the world very strongly and he experiences its effects before anyone else. The atheists in Nietzsche's own time are quite literally like the atheists in the marketplace. When the madman makes his declaration, they've become unaware of the religious framework by which the human mind is organized. They don't believe themselves to be susceptible to it. They think that their thought exists Beyond it.
Jung believes that this demystification of the world occurred gradually, and initially it was for quite a worthy purpose. The Sciences are are a worthy Endeavor because the gaps of human knowledge are always filled with projection, and such a world is a chaotic world when your world becomes ruled by projections, so to speak. When you're in a world, you don't understand science has been our way of taming the world. In that way, the science has become the new expression of the pre-existent order behind the chaos of Life. Nietzsche himself was rather insightful to give this scientism its' own Wise Old Man, its own magician (magistos) who is Socrates. The Death of Socrates is another repeated Motif in Nietzsche's writing which is particularly interesting in the light of Jungian analysis. Socrates is the Wise Old King who represents the positivist worldview. In many ways, he has as much of a modern problem for Nietzsche, as he is an ancient Greek problem. He inevitably must drink his poison, as a form of martyrdom for the truth. Scientism is a kind of eternal religious project, but one which never manages to become the final state of the Soul. Because when you totalize the value of Scientism it is deadly.
So, Jung in his essay "psychology and religion" writes the following "Consciousness can hardly exist in a state of complete projection. At most, it would be a heap of emotions. Through the withdrawal of projections, conscious knowledge slowly developed. Science curiously enough began with the discovery of astronomical laws, and hence, with the withdrawal, so to speak, of the most distant projections. This was the first stage in the despiritization of the world, one step followed another. Already in Antiquity, the gods were withdrawn from mountains and rivers from trees and animals. Modern science has subtlized its projections to an almost unrecognizable degree. But our ordinary life swarms with them. You can find them spread out in the newspapers, in books, rumors, and ordinary social gossip. All gaps in our actual knowledge are still filled with projections."
And further down Jung continues: "The materialistic error was probably unavoidable at first, since the Throne of God cannot be discovered among the galactical systems, the inference was that God never existed. The second unavoidable error is psychologism. If God is anything, he must be an illusion derived from certain motives, from Will To Power, for instance, or from repressed sexuality. These arguments are not new. Much the same thing was said by the Christian missionaries who overthrew the idols of heathen Gods. But whereas the early missionaries were conscious of serving a new God, by combating the old ones, modern iconoclasts are unconscious of the One in whose name they are destroying Old values."
So we should take note. Jung brings up two of his predecessors in this passage, but not by name. Nietzsche and Freud, men who say that God is an illusion derived from certain motives. One could read Nietzsche's "on the old and new tablets" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which I'm almost certain is what Jung is thinking of here especially given that he references "the Smashing of old tablets" a bit further in the paragraph, which we'll get to in a moment. But important in that passage, Zarathustra tells us every people has had its' sacred values. All of which have been different, and all of which have actually expressed the will to power of a people. He says that they defined their sacred values by differentiating themselves from their neighbors, seeking an altogether different form of the good than their neighbor sought for. That the many different gods, therefore, are imagistic expressions of a particular way of expressing power. And that therefore, the Idols of man don't refer to anything metaphysical, but are simply the representation of a psychological need.
Freud's explanation is that we believe in God because of, in so many words, "Terror Management Theory". From my own understanding, Freud basically thought that the root of God belief was prior to anything rational. It's simply a way of dealing with an indifferent, uncaring existence. Nevertheless, Freud had quite a bit to say about God the Father, in so far as God, in the way that God is portrayed in our sort of cultural images as "the wise old man with the beard," that is somewhat indicative of an infantile regression to a state where one wants to be cared for by Daddy. So here, as with everything in Freud, there's an influence of one's psychosexual family dynamics that continually recreates the image of God the Father. In the words of Christopher Hitchens, "Nietzsche said God is dead. Freud said God is Dad".
I've been waiting to quote that one for probably the whole podcast. But Jung calls this an error. He calls it "psychologism to reduce everything down to being merely psychology". That's not Jung's task. Jung's task is the opposite. Not to regard psychological phenomena as merely, or simply, or just. Whenever we insert those sorts of words, we're saying it's insignificant. Rather, Jung's task is to understand psychological phenomena as being as significant as our myths. As significant as our religious ideas. To see some "common Essence" to the disciplines of religion and psychology.
---
"Magnus Pan Motuus Est"
Pan is dead. Great Pan is dead.
Ah! bow your heads, ye maidens all,
And weave ye him his coronal.’
'There is no summer in the leaves,
And withered are the sedges;
How shall we weave a coronal,
Or gather floral pledges?'
'That I may not say, Ladies.
Death was ever a churl.
That I may not say, Ladies.
How should he show a reason,
That he has taken our Lord away
Upon such hollow season?'
- Ezra Pound---
..So let me paint the world for you all the way down to the smallest things that exist, from bouncing molecules that feel or repel each other, to the striving of some species to overcome changes in its environment, to your own will to see something accomplished in the world of things. These are all wills that differentiate. You too are repeated acts of willing, in a great sea of willing. The you that refers to you is not "Identity". It's a repetition of your will to differentiate. Not one force, either, but many forces. Multiplicity not Identity.
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