Some have criticized the mayor of '
self-deification,' by encouraging public institutions and government employees to use the image.
For Mahoney, "Comte takes the place of Christ, just as the love of Humanity,' the jealous Grand-Etre, takes the place of 'love of God.' In this sense, Comte has divinized his own existence, making himself the herald of a new Humanity worshipping itself." Man's "
self-deification" by man is the antithesis of man's divinization through the power and gift of God.
The majority of the documents are Sumerian archival records originating in the ancient city of Adab, modern Tell Bismaya, and dating back to the early reign of the (in)famous king Naram-Suen (2261-2206 B.C.), who--among other pioneering achievements--succeeded in creating the first empire and introducing
self-deification on the state level.
They posit a collective
self-deification of man that Kolnai insists always leads to man's self-enslavement (see his magisterial 1949 essay "Privilege and Liberty" for a particularly profound development of this theme).
(These are separate traditions in the present day; their followers may see each other as misguided or evil.) The book considers the Dragon Rouge order, the ethnographies of odark magic,o and its ideologies, including individualism,
self-deification, and the rejection of sources of authority outside the self.
Perhaps there is a secret affinity between the national self-aggrandizement of fascism and the
self-deification of the artist.
Emerging themes from the conference include the need to rethink notions of the categories of the divine and human, the suggestion to view
self-deification of rulers as both an anomaly and a dynamic phenomenon, and the realization that the divine kingship manifests itself differently in varying areas of the world.
Balthasar criticizes these "secular theologies" as embodying the sinful marks of Prometheus and Dionysius, or
self-deification through "self-mastery" and "ecstatic transport" (37), tendencies that gave birth to the "two monstrosities" of modernity: the Nietzschean "superman" and the "subhuman" clone of mass production and consumption (253).
The identification of this complex renders problematical Heine's advocacy of humankind's
self-deification, while also highlighting the ambivalence in the Wintermerchen.
To claim otherwise is to be guilty of the obvious sin of idolatry, or worse yet,
self-deification. It is not possible to hold to an idea of the pervasive nature of sin and, at the same time, to insist that ultimate truth can be located in human words.
Thus, she identifies in Nietzsche, a 'lust for
self-deification' (24-5).
That
self-deification requires suicide merely exemplifies the truth that to will to be one's own god is to will to be nothing.