Publications [#336482] of Michael A. Gillespie

Duke :: Philosophy :: Faculty :: Michael A. Gillespie

Papers Published

  1. Allen Gillespie, M, On Debt and Redemption: Friedrich Nietzsche's Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 46 no. 2 (June, 2018), pp. 267-287, WILEY.
    (last updated on 2024/03/29)

    Abstract:
    In this essay, I argue that the notion of monetary debt does not displace but merely conceals our deeper, ontological debt to the sources of our being and way of life. I suggest that first Christianity and then modern science attempted to find a means of redemption that could free us from debt, but that both were unable to reconcile the ideas of freedom and indebtedness. I then examine the way in which Friedrich Nietzsche tried to resolve the apparent contradiction of our debt to the past and our freedom to shape the future by developing a new form of redemption rooted in his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.