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Class
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Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Love Command
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The love commands in the New Testament have another important
trajectory in western history in addition to the ascetic tradition
of celibacy, namely in the tradition of non-violent civil disobedience. Martin Luther King,
Jr. was one of that movement's greatest advocates. The son of a Baptist minister and an ordained
minister himself, King found himself impelled to the cause of justice by the Christian scriptures. But those same scriptures advocated love of enemy, and the principle of turning the other cheek and relishing recompense only in the hereafter had led some critics such as Karl Marx to charge that Christianity was a source of cultural decadence and decay.
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One of these critics, and one whom King had read, was Friedrich
W. Nietzsche (1844-1900). The son of a Lutheran minister
who died when Friedrich was just 5, Nietzsche went on to study
theology, classical philology and philosophy until he was institutionalized
at age 45. Before his illness, Nietzsche composed several
works in which he challenged Christianity and all cultural systems
that bred, in his mind, passivity, resentment, and guilt. In
his work, The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche assumes the mantle
of that mythological figure and focuses his arguments against
Christianity. In this book and in the shorter excerpts
from other works that you will read, Neitzsche argues that Christianity
is a nihilistic or decadent religion, one that must presume the
dysfunction of the world in order to justify its own existence. Christian
"love" manifests this weakness in its willingness to
diminish the individual (think of turning the other cheek, asceticism,
martyrdom).
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- King disagreed with Nietzsche's claim that love weakened Christianity,
but lacked a method for demonstrating love's strength. He
found that method in the works of Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948),
whose principles of non-violent civil disobedience provided a
way to live the love of enemy in order to create positive changes
in society.
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- As you read King's speech and sermon, consider the following
questions:
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- How does Martin Luther King, Jr. assess the relative strengths
and weaknesses of the three responses to oppression in his
address, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"? What
principles does King borrow from Gandhi's movement of non-violent
resistance?
- In his sermon, "Loving your Enemies," how does King refute Nietzsche's critique?
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- Assigned Readings
- Primary: King, "Love, Law and Civil Disobedience"
(speech) and "Loving Your Enemies" (sermon; all
on ERes)
- Secondary: Online class prep
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- Further Reading
Cone, James H. "Martin and Malcolm on Nonviolence
and Violence." Princeton Seminary Bulletin
20 (1999) 252-63.
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King, Martin Luther, Jr. Strength to Love. Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1981; original, 1963.
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--------. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings
and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington. San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986.
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Nietzsche, Friedrich W. Basic Writings of Nietzsche,
trans. Walter Kaufman, Modern Library Classics. New
York: Random House, 2000.
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Steger, Manfred B. Gandhi's Dilemma: Nonviolent Principles and Nationalist Power. New
York: St. Martin's, 2000.
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- Links
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- Sources
- Photographs:
- King: Enhanced by C. Murphy from the photo enhancement of
Robin M. White, Bettmann Archive, from the cover of A Testament
of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther
King, Jr. (ed. James M. Washington; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1986).
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- Nietzsche: From Björn Christensson, "Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)," Björn's Guide to Philosophy,
Online, http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/phil/filosofer/nietzsche.html,
20 February 2017.
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