An Analysis of Chesterton and Nietzsche

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An Analysis of Chesterton and Nietzsche

Imagine the lame giant of the Victorian age stumbling about in the darkness, wrestling with an unseen opponent. It pries the crushing grip of a hand from its throat only to discover the hand is its own. Imagine two explorers on opposites sides of a great ocean. Anchors are weighed, and each explorer sets out to see just beyond the horizon, to sail beyond the sunset. They collide amidships in the midnight fog and breeze, but they continue their journeys. They reach land, utter words of praise and thanks, plant their flags and claim their claims only to discover that they had each returned to "conquer" their homelands. G.K. Chesterton and Friedrich Nietzsche embarked on cyclical

journeys. Using their explorations in "Orthodoxy" and Beyond Good and Evil, their courses can be mapped toward self discovery. A dynamic relationship exists in examining and understanding their similar philosophical motivations and the resulting overlapping arguments. They both launch scathing attacks on reason; they conceal their ultimate meanings through complexity: one through paradox, the other with the metaphor of the mask; they both advocate the reawakening of a child-like sense of wonder, and ultimately, they found their ethical systems on courage. Using the same philosophical tools, each thinker carves out a completely unique niche into intellectual history: one within the framework of orthodox Christianity, the other as a forefather of modern Existential thought.

Chesterton set "Orthodoxy" in the context of a personal statement of faith and as a retort to Mr. G.S. Street's critique of his earlier work "Heretics." Street claimed that "Heretics" did not provide the reader wi...

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...lexities, it may well be impossible to tell whether G.K. Chesterton was secretly laughing, beneath his paradoxes, whether Nietzsche was sneering behind his mask.

Works Cited

Chesterton, G.K. G.K. Chesterton: Colected Works. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986.

---. The Victorian Agein Literature. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962.

Hill, Kent R. "The Sweet Grace of Reason: The Apologetics of G. K. Chesterton". Rpt. In The Riddle of Joy.

Michael MacDonald and Andrew A Tadie Eds. Grand Rapids Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989.

Hollis, Christopher. G.K. Chesterton. London: Longman, Greens & Co., 1964.

Lea, F.A. Modern Christian Revolutionaries. Donald Atwater Ed. New York: The Devin-Adair Co., 1947.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Walter Kaufmann trans. New York: Random House, 1989.

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