Those who think that 'philosophical rock' is somehow an oxymoron, that neither rock musicians nor the music they produce can have real philosophical meaning. This view is nonsense. Rock musicians, like their fans, are at least as smart as anyone else. Moreover, the ideas produ ced by great philosophers permeate culture and often speak through people, whether they’re aware of it or not. This, too, is true of rock musicians as much as it’s true of other people, perhaps even truer of them. Metallica is, of course, to those who’ve actually paid attention to their music, a decidedly philosophical rock band. While, granted, the band members have had no formal philosophical training, the lyrics of their songs and various qualities of their music do exhibit real philosophical meaning. James Hetfield (1963-), in particular, the band’s lead singer and principal composer, presents insightful criticisms of religion, morality, and society. His philosophical commentary, in fact, is strikingly similar to some of the lines of criticism that have been developed by philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Karl Marx (1818-83).

I have argued as much elsewhere. What is it that I think similar between Metallica and Nietzsche and Marx? Well, the principal thing is that like Nietzsche and Marx, Metallica advances a moral criticism of religion, in particular Christianity. Over the course of western philosophical history, philosophers have criticized religion in a number of ways. Perhaps the best known is what I’d call the “epistemological” critique perfected by philosophers of the European and American Enlightenment. This line of criticism argues that the kinds of things that religions claim to know just can’t be known—for example, whether God exists, whether there’s one God or many, whether God is a trinity or not, whether God thinks, whether God is loving, whether God issues any moral prescriptions for us, etc. The religious often pretend to know such things, but of course they really don’t.