Modern thinking or Eternal Return?

"In the State of Nature we are free animals but enslaved human beings; in the State of Society we are enslaved animals but free human beings. Christianity has conquered freedom for Mankind; and now Mankind uses that freedom to destroy Christianity." (Winter-Spring 2008).

I wrote this phrases some years ago, and in retrospective I find them very interesting. I was reading Hegel at that moment, who I think inspired me to reach this conclusion. But now I discover that the first part of the statement is absolutely modern in principle. The idea that nature is previous and contrary to human enterprise and that our reason is our spiritual endowment to conquer beastly nature is so a modern idea that we can find it widespread from Descartes to Marx and beyond. There is implicitly a progressive approach of human nature. On the contrary, for ancient thinkers, and especially for Aristotle, nature is not contrary to human industry, but is the foundation of it. We use our rational endowments like language and labor by nature and not contrary to it, as if to conquer it.

But then, to understand the first part of the statement; that humanity and its reason is somehow superior to the State of Nature; we must pay heed to the second part. That the conquest of nature by our human endowments was facilitated by Christianity in particular, and by our Jude moral backgrounds in general, is an idea that I drew from Hegel's historical philosophy, and that is determinant to understand Modern political and ethical thinking. Nietzsche might be the genius in discovering the injustice underlying the Christian struggle against our bodily nature, and the motive why he rises against all Modern thinking. But I think that he might have committed and injustice against Ancient philosophy, and especially against Aristotle if he includes, as I think he actually does, Ancient thought with Christian and Modern thought. His statement in the The Will to Power that Plato is the first Christian might sound plausible, but I think he is wrong. In order to prove this, I would need more than a blog article, but an academic thesis, which is not proper here.

The interesting thing to point out is that it was historically impossible, if not absolutely absurd, for Ancient thought to reach the conclusion that human reason and its endowments were contrary to nature and bound to conquer it, as Modern thinking does. Christianity was missing. Hence, we find no progressive thinking in the Ancients, but cyclical accounts of history. Isn't it the Eternal Return of Nietzsche a very Ancient idea contrary to Modern thought? I think it is. Nietzsche gives us the clue to understand the departure of Modern and Ancient thought that we can trace back to Christianity. Now my question goes: Can we, contemporary minds find a synthesis between Ancient cyclical thought and Christian morality? That, I think, is the challenge posted by today's Postmodernism.