Most criticism of Joseph Smith comes from a particular paradigm or point of view. I am not here to defend Joseph Smith from these particular critics in this post. I am merely going to offer a philosophical question. What if we looked at Smith more from a Nietzschean lens (point of view). What if we ask if Joseph Smith exhibited the Stoic and Nietzschean virtues?
Consider the following Aphorisms from Part 5 of Friedrich Nietzsche's book, Beyond Good and Evil (Cambridge Texts 2002. Edited by Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman, Translated by Judith Norman). Starting with Aphorism 200 (words in brackets my own):
… a person will have … conflicting (and often not merely conflicting) drives and value standards that fight with each other and rarely leave each other alone. A man like this … will typically be a weaker person: his most basic desire is for an end to the war that he is. His notion of happiness corresponds to that of a medicine and mentality of pacification (for instance the Epicurean or [ascetic] Christian); it is a notion of happiness as primarily rest, lack of disturbance, repletion, unity at last and the “Sabbath of Sabbaths,” to speak with the holy rhetorician Augustine, who was himself this sort of person. – But if conflict and war affect such a nature as one more stimulus and goad to life –, and if genuine proficiency and finesse in waging war with himself (which is to say: the ability to control and outwit himself) are inherited and cultivated along with his most powerful and irreconcilable drives, then what emerge are those amazing, incomprehensible, and unthinkable ones, those human riddles destined for victory and for seduction; Alcibiades and Caesar are the most exquisite expressions of this type (– and I will gladly set by their side that first European after my taste, the Hohenstaufen Frederick II), and among artists perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear in exactly those ages when that weaker type, with his longing for peace, comes to the fore. These types belong together and derive from the same set of causes.
I would argue that Joseph Smith was one of these men with powerful and irreconcilable drive; an amazing, incomprehensible, and unthinkable human riddle that was destined for victory and for seduction. Nietzsche continues in the next Aphorism 201:
… Until now [the 1800s], in the spirit of common utility, certain strong and dangerous drives such as enterprise, daring, vindictiveness, cunning, rapacity, and a domineering spirit must have been not only honored (under different names than these of course), but nurtured and cultivated (since, given the threats to the group, they were constantly needed against the common enemies). Now [in the puritan ascetic era], however, since there are no more escape valves for these drives, they are seen as twice as dangerous and, one by one, they are denounced as immoral and abandoned to slander. Now the opposite drives and inclinations come into moral favor; step by step, the herd instinct draws its conclusion. …
Thus, from this Nietzschean perspective, if Joseph Smith is interpreted as releasing the puritanical ascetic “lid” (or cap) suppressing the natural human drives -- in order to restore Christianity to its original Hebraic Roots -- then Joseph Smith can be seen as both affirming the God of the Hebrew Bible and affirming the energies of Life itself (a recurring and core principle of Nietzsche's philosophy). Nietzsche continues:
When the highest and strongest drives erupt in passion, driving the individual up and out and far above the average, over the depths of the herd conscience, the self-esteem of the community is destroyed – its faith in itself, its backbone, as it were, is broken: as a result, these are the very drives that will be denounced and slandered the most. A high, independent spiritedness, a will to stand alone, even an excellent faculty of reason, will be perceived as a threat. Everything that raises the individual over the herd and frightens the neighbor will henceforth be called evil; the proper, modest, unobtrusive, equalizing attitude and the mediocrity of desires acquire moral names and honors. …
As I argue in my blog post here, Joseph's highest and strongest drives were certainly erupting in passionate expression, driving him up and out and far above the average man. As a result, Joseph Smith was a threat to his Protestant neighbors and the mediocrity of their Puritanism and Monotono-theism with his restoration of the original Hebrew theology of a Plurality of Gods with God the Father having a body; combined with his revelations on the plurality of Super-couples (as gods) and the Temple Endowment of Power.
The Sectarian Creeds spoke of a bodiless deity without parts and passions and the idea of being a prudish ascetic (Life-renunciant). In contrast to this, Joseph's theological philosophy unleashed the stop valves of the lifeward instincts; as he produced an outlet for the very energies of Life itself, and was thus the ultimate Life-affirming theologian par excellence. As he artistically bricolaged the release of the energies of Life: flowing through the body of the Saints as they imitated the Gods themselves; Gods who in fact had body parts and passions, as creative beings of glory and power; as divine Super-couples or Heavenly Parents.
In the next Aphorism 202, it is like Nietzsche secularly "prophesied" the coming Wokeism Movement. For if you just change some words around in Aphorism 202, exchanging in the word Wokeism, it is eerily familiar of current times. He even seems to have expected men like Joseph Smith to come along and offer a philosophical structure to overcome this anti-hierarchy leveling utopianism (that denies the unlevel/non-utopian hierarchical nature of Life itself); men like Joseph Smith, with the self-esteem and sheer will to overcome puritanical Protestantism with its acetic Augustinian despising of the body. As Nietzsche writes in the following Aphorism 203:
We who have a different faith – … where do we need to reach with our hopes? – Towards new philosophers, there is no alternative; towards spirits who are strong and original enough to give impetus to opposed valuations and initiate a revaluation … towards those sent out ahead; towards the men of the future who in the present tie the knots and gather the force that compels the will of millennia into new channels. To teach humanity its future as its will, as dependent on a human will, to prepare for the great risk and wholesale attempt at breeding and cultivation …: a new type of philosopher and commander will be needed for this some day, and whatever hidden, dreadful, or benevolent spirits have existed on earth will pale into insignificance beside the image of this type. The image of such leaders hovers before our eyes: – may I say this out loud, you free spirits? The conditions that would have to be partly created and partly exploited for them to come into being; the probable paths and trials that would enable a soul to grow tall and strong enough to feel the compulsion for these tasks; a revaluation of values whose new pressure and hammer will steel a conscience and transform a heart into bronze to bear the weight of a responsibility like this; and, on the other hand, the necessity of such leaders, the terrible danger that they could fail to appear or simply fail and degenerate – these are our real worries and dark clouds, do you know this, you free spirits? These are the heavy, distant thoughts and storms that traverse the sky of our lives. There are few pains as intense as ever having seen, guessed, or sympathized while an extraordinary person ran off course and degenerated … In a single glance he will comprehend everything that could be bred from humanity, given a favorable accumulation and intensification of forces and tasks; he will know with all the prescience of his conscience how humanity has still not exhausted its greatest possibilities, and how often the type man has already faced mysterious decisions and new paths …
In my view, this new type of philosopher and commander, in many ways fits the life and accomplishments of Joseph Smith (which I showed in the links to Nietzsche's words in the aphorism above, directing the reader to examples of Joseph Smith's innovative creativity, leadership roles, and accomplishments).
This is not to say that Joseph Smith was completely Nietzschean. Obviously Joseph Smith parted ways with Nietzsche's attack on Judeo-Christian compassion, equal rights, democracy, and the scientific enlightenment; as Smith instead supported American democracy and a philosophical naturalism based on Newtonian science and the philosophy of Thomas Dick and others; and Joseph encouraged seeking knowledge in the best books, and championed fair-minded equality through his Dream of Zion. Yet there is some overlapping consistency in the two men: the consistent rejection of Augustinianism, mediocrity and idleness; their uncapping of the body's energies that ever bubble up and directing them in a more healthy direction rather than repressing the instincts; so that the body does not turn in on itself and despise itself and attack itself; by directing those bodily drives outward through a religion-making pathway of power and fecundity.
