Why Should We Read Kazantzakis in the Twenty-first Century?: A Constructive (Rather than Deconstructive) Postmodern Response

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson are among the most important intellectual influences on Nikos Kazantzakis. To some extent these two influences are compatible. In other respects, however, these two influences are at odds with each other. This is due to the fact that Nietzsche exhibits a deconstructionist postmodernism that is quite different from the constructive postmodernism found in Bergson. It is Kazantzakis's dynamic, Bergsonian theism that is still instructive in the twenty-first century and scholars should be wary of both Nietzsche and the influence of Nietzsche on Kazantzakis. That is, both Bergson and Kazantzakis defend a naturalistic theism that provides a viable third way between traditional, supernatural theism, on the one hand, and reductionist, mechanistic, non-theistic naturalism on the other.