What happened? The fact requires a sanction—a power to grant values becomes necessary, and the only way it can create such values is by denying nature The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it is only at this price that he can exist at all. Christianity sprang from a soil so corrupt that on it everything natural, every natural value, every reality was opposed by the deepest instincts of the ruling class—it grew up as a sort of war to the death upon reality, and as such it has never been surpassed.
The phenomenon is of the first order of importance: the small insurrectionary movement which took the name of Jesus of Nazareth is simply the Jewish instinct redivivus —in other words, it is the priestly instinct come to such a pass that it can no longer endure the priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a state of existence even more fantastic than any before it, of a vision of life even more unreal than that necessary to an ecclesiastical organization.
Christianity actually denies the church This is what brought him to the cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription that was put upon the cross. He died for his own sins—there is not the slightest ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he died for the sins of others.
As to whether he himself was conscious of this contradiction—whether, in fact, this was the only contradiction he was cognizant of—that is quite another question. Here, for the first time, I touch upon the problem of the psychology of the Saviour. My difficulties are quite different from those which enabled the learned curiosity of the German mind to achieve one of its most unforgettable triumphs.
It is a long while since I, like all other young scholars, enjoyed with all the sapient laboriousness of a fastidious philologist the work of the incomparable Strauss. The histories of saints present the most dubious variety of literature in existence; to examine them by the scientific method, in the entire ab sence of corroborative documents , seems to me to condemn the whole inquiry from the start—it is simply learned idling Nietzsche here refers to it.
What concerns me is the psychological type of the Saviour. This type might be depicted in the Gospels, in however mutilated a form and however much overladen with extraneous characters—that is, in spite of the Gospels; just as the figure of Francis of Assisi shows itself in his legends in spite of his legends.
It is not a question of mere truthful evidence as to what he did, what he said and how he actually died; the question is, whether his type is still conceivable, whether it has been handed down to us. But if there is anything essentially unevangelical, it is surely the concept of the hero. Every one is the child of God—Jesus claims nothing for himself alone—as the child of God each man is the equal of every other man Imagine making Jesus a hero!
In the strict sense of the physiologist, a quite different word ought to be used here We all know that there is a morbid sensibility of the tactile nerves which causes those suffering from it to recoil from every touch, and from every effort to grasp a solid object. The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all bounds and distances in feeling : the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that it senses all resistance, all compulsion to resistance, as unbearable anguish —that is to say, as harmful , as prohibited by the instinct of self-preservation , and regards blessedness joy as possible only when it is no longer necessary to offer resistance to anybody or anything, however evil or dangerous—love, as the only, as the ultimate possibility of life These are the two physiological realities upon and out of which the doctrine of salvation has sprung.
I call them a sublime super-development of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation of paganism.
I have already given my answer to the problem. The prerequisite to it is the assumption that the type of the Saviour has reached us only in a greatly distorted form. This distortion is very probable: there are many reasons why a type of that sort should not be handed down in a pure form, complete and free of additions.
The milieu in which this strange figure moved must have left marks upon him, and more must have been imprinted by the history, the destiny , of the early Christian communities; the latter indeed, must have embellished the type retrospectively with characters which can be understood only as serving the purposes of war and of propaganda. The prophet, the messiah, the future judge, the teacher of morals, the worker of wonders, John the Baptist—all these merely presented chances to misunderstand it Finally, let us not underrate the proprium of all great, and especially all sectarian veneration: it tends to erase from the venerated objects all its original traits and idiosyncrasies, often so painfully strange— it does not even see them.
Nevertheless, the probabilities seem to be against it, for in that case tradition would have been particularly accurate and objective, whereas we have reasons for assuming the contrary. The physiologists, at all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in the living organism, the result of degeneration.
To be sure, the accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain sort: in primitive Christianity one finds only concepts of a Judaeo-Semitic character —that of eating and drinking at the last supper belongs to this category—an idea which, like everything else Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church. But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics [6] an opportunity to speak in parables.
It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya, [7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse [8] —and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.
Denial is precisely the thing that is impossible to him. The results of such a point of view project themselves into a new way of life , the special evangelical way of life. He offers no resistance, either by word or in his heart, to those who stand against him.
He is angry with no one, and he despises no one. The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of life—and so was his death He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God—not even prayer.
And thereby it has robbed conception of its immaculateness —. His wife was Alcmene. During his absence she was visited by Zeus, and bore Heracles. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love him Mankind was unspeakably far from our benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the spirit which alone makes possible the solution of such strange and subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their own advantage therein; they created the church out of denial of the Gospels Quite to the contrary, the whole history of Christianity—from the death on the cross onward—is the history of a progressively clumsier misunderstanding of an original symbolism.
With every extension of Christianity among larger and ruder masses, even less capable of grasping the principles that gave birth to it, the need arose to make it more and more vulgar and barbarous —it absorbed the teachings and rites of all the subterranean cults of the imperium Romanum , and the absurdities engendered by all sorts of sickly reasoning.
It was the fate of Christianity that its faith had to become as sickly, as low and as vulgar as the needs were sickly, low and vulgar to which it had to administer. A sickly barbarism finally lifts itself to power as the church—the church, that incarnation of deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of soul, to all discipline of the spirit, to all spontaneous and kindly humanity.
There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy— contempt of man. Let me leave no doubt as to what I despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man with whom I am unhappily contemporaneous.
The man of today—I am suffocated by his foul breath! But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins. All the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are—as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is—as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before.
What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table? A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without any shame, that he is a Christian!
Whom, then, does Christianity deny? To this day such a life is still possible, and for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain possible in all ages Not faith, but acts; above all, an avoidance of acts, a different state of being States of consciousness, faith of a sort, the acceptance, for example, of anything as true—as every psychologist knows, the value of these things is perfectly indifferent and fifth-rate compared to that of the instincts: strictly speaking, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false.
To reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance of truth, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to formulate the negation of Christianity. In fact, there are no Christians. In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing that so much as touches reality: on the contrary, one recognizes an instinctive hatred of reality as the motive power, the only motive power at the bottom of Christianity.
What follows therefrom? That even here, in psychologicis , there is a radical error, which is to say one conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in substance.
Take away one idea and put a genuine reality in its place—and the whole of Christianity crumbles to nothingness! At the moment when their disgust leaves them —and us!
Therefore, let us not underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false to the point of innocence , is far above the ape—in its application to the Christians a well-known theory of descent becomes a mere piece of politeness Here everything must be accounted for as necessary; everything must have a meaning, a reason, the highest sort of reason; the love of a disciple excludes all chance.
Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-doing element in his character had been lacking; what is more, he had appeared to present its opposite. Obviously, the little community had not understood what was precisely the most important thing of all: the example offered by this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every feeling of ressentiment —a plain indication of how little he was understood at all!
All that Jesus could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, was to offer the strongest possible proof, or example , of his teachings in the most public manner But his disciples were very far from forgiving his death—though to have done so would have accorded with the Gospels in the highest degree; and neither were they prepared to offer themselves, with gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a similar death On the contrary, it was precisely the most unevangelical of feelings, revenge , that now possessed them.
On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unbalanced souls could no longer endure the Gospel doctrine, taught by Jesus, of the equal right of all men to be children of God: their revenge took the form of elevating Jesus in an extravagant fashion, and thus separating him from themselves: just as, in earlier times, the Jews, to revenge themselves upon their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him on a great height.
At once there was an end of the gospels! Sacrifice for sin, and in its most obnoxious and barbarous form: sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What appalling paganism! And not as a mere privilege! Paul even preached it as a reward One now begins to see just what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a new and thoroughly original effort to found a Buddhistic peace movement, and so establish happiness on earth —real, not merely promised.
What , indeed, has not this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred! Above all, the Saviour: he nailed him to his own cross. The life, the example, the teaching, the death of Christ, the meaning and the law of the whole gospels—nothing was left of all this after that counterfeiter in hatred had reduced it to his uses.
Surely not reality; surely not historical truth! Once more the priestly instinct of the Jew perpetrated the same old master crime against history—he simply struck out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own history of Christian beginnings. Later on the church even falsified the history of man in order to make it a prologue to Christianity The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the consequences of his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote contact with reality.
At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour—what he needed was the death on the cross, and something more. To see anything honest in such a man as Paul, whose home was at the centre of the Stoical enlightenment, when he converts an hallucination into a proof of the resurrection of the Saviour, or even to believe his tale that he suffered from this hallucination himself—this would be a genuine niaiserie in a psychologist. Paul willed the end; therefore he also willed the means What was the only part of Christianity that Mohammed borrowed later on?
The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct—henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. Why be public-spirited?
Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph —it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals—for the pathos of distance Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!
That which Paul, with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was at bottom merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is not to be compared to them.
Here we are among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. The thing responsible is race. The whole of Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies, and there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice of Jewish technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery.
The Christian, that ultima ratio of lying, is the Jew all over again—he is threefold the Jew The underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly practice, the instinctive repudiation of every other mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values and utilities—this is not only tradition, it is inheritance : only as an inheritance is it able to operate with the force of nature.
The whole of mankind, even the best minds of the best ages with one exception, perhaps hardly human— , have permitted themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as a book of innocence I simply cannot endure the way they have of rolling up their eyes. In letting God sit in judgment they judge themselves; in glorifying God they glorify themselves; in demanding that every one show the virtues which they themselves happen to be capable of—still more, which they must have in order to remain on top—they assume the grand air of men struggling for virtue, of men engaging in a war that virtue may prevail.
Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to hide in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into a duty : it is on grounds of duty that they account for their lives of humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof of their piety Ah, that humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud! One may read the gospels as books of moral seduction: these petty folks fasten themselves to morality—they know the uses of morality! Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!
The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish : once a chasm began to yawn between Jews and Judaeo-Christians, the latter had no choice but to employ the self-preservative measures that the Jewish instinct had devised, even against the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews had employed them only against non-Jews.
Christian morality is refuted by its fors : its reasons are against it,—this makes it Christian. Mark viii, With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? An error , to put it mildly A bit before this God appears as a tailor, at least in certain cases It compares itself to the prophets If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy ; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe Not many wise men after the flesh, not men mighty, not many noble are called : But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea , and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.
Paul was the greatest of all apostles of revenge That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable. Neither has a pleasant smell. In it humanity does not even make the first step upward—the instinct for cleanliness is lacking Only evil instincts are there, and there is not even the courage of these evil instincts. It is all coward ice; it is all a shutting of the eyes, a self-deception. These petty bigots make a capital miscalculation.
They attack, but everything they attack is thereby distinguished. Even the scribes and pharisees are benefitted by such opposition: they must certainly have been worth something to have been hated in such an indecent manner.
Strictly speaking, he has no alternative. The Christian, and particularly the Christian priest, is thus a criterion of values. Pilate, the Roman viceroy. To regard a Jewish imbroglio seriously —that was quite beyond him.
One Jew more or less—what did it matter? We deny that God is God As a matter of fact no man can be a philologian or a physician without being also Antichrist. No one, in fact, has understood it. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. He creates man—man is entertaining But then he notices that man is also bored. In the act he brought boredom to an end—and also many other things!
Woman was the second mistake of God. Ergo , she is also to blame for science It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge. The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike —it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific! Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the original sin. This is all there is of morality.
For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts! Nevertheless—how terrible! War—among other things, a great disturber of science! Knowledge, deliverance from the priests , prospers in spite of war.
At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest. Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest. What is needed is a Saviour. On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests!
An attack of parasites! The vampirism of pale, subterranean leeches! My voice reaches even the deaf. But this is as far as we may go. Man has had to fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to.
Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is the hardest of all services. Not , of course, to a priest: for his instincts prompt him to the lie that sickness is not sickness and lunatic asylums not lunatic asylums. Christianity finds sickness necessary , just as the Greek spirit had need of a superabundance of health—the actual ulterior purpose of the whole system of salvation of the church is to make people ill.
Once I ventured to designate the whole Christian system of training [22] in penance and salvation now best studied in England as a method of producing a folie circulaire upon a soil already prepared for it, which is to say, a soil thoroughly unhealthy. We others, who have the courage for health and likewise for contempt,—we may well despise a religion that teaches misunderstanding of the body! The Christian movement, as a European movement, was from the start no more than a general uprising of all sorts of outcast and refuse elements —who now, under cover of Christianity, aspire to power.
Weakness and suffering was seen as morally praiseworthy. The slave classes comforted themselves with the thought they would be going to heaven when they died.
Therefore, certain actions have acquired a moral significance that is not justified. Using strength and power is often seen as morally bad. Values, through time, have become re-valued.
In order for the human race or a given society to be successful, a further re-valuation of values is in order. In particular, the idea of seeking moral truth that is, positing the existence of objective moral facts is likely to lead people astray. So whose morality is Nietzsche attacking?
Target One: Immanuel Kant It is fundamentally based in Christian ethics, and devises a set of rules the categorial imperative that people can use to decide if their action is the right one. Much emphasis is placed on the use of reason. Nietzsche disagrees with the formulation of such rules, which place the same obligations on everyone and which could be said to imply the existence of moral facts.
Target 2: John Stuart Mill Mill is one of the founders of Utilitarianism. Briefly expressed, this is the view that every action should aim at the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people possible. Again, Nietzsche rejects this account as it places universal obligations on everyone. Nietzsche particularly criticises Christian ethics, and in the Genealogy they are his main target.
Christianity, according to Nietzsche, is responsible for the slave morality, or at the very least it is an expression of this morality. As well as this, it seems to particularly offend Nietzsche that Christianity is based on a lie whereas it purports to represent universal truth. Paul applied to other monotheistic religions.
The Ascetic Ideal. The Third Treatise is mainly concerned with what Nietzsche calls the ascetic ideal. The ascetic ideal, according to Nietzsche, is a very damaging aspect of modern thought and values. Asceticism is the denial of pleasure and the search for a higher meaning in life.
Of course, this antidote is not a cure, and simply keeps the sufferers anaesthetized. One of the worst things about the ascetic ideal is the emphasis on the search for truth.
They are trying to hold up a mirror to the world and discover what is really true. In fact, there is no such objective truth. Reality is teleological, that is, aimed at a particular goal. Truth is subjective. Some questions to think about when considering Nietzsche…. Well, it is true to say that Nietzsche had a severe mental breakdown in , two years after the publication of the Genealogy.
The collection, The Will to Power, was published from the papers he left behind and was published after his death. A common theory held e. How can the Christian message be recovered? All these are still unknown to us, but, undoubtedly, the questions are so provocative that it is worth musing upon them. References Aristotel.
Metafizica [Metaphysics], transl. Bondor, George. Nietzsche and the Problem of Interpretation]. Conway, Daniel W. Journal of Nietzsche Studies. Gauchet, Marcel. A Political History of Religion, transl. Heidegger, Martin. Metafizica lui Nietzsche [Nietzsche's Metaphysics], transl. Identity and Difference, transl. Nietzsche, vol. I, The Will to Power as Art; vol. IV, Nihilism, transl. Harper San Francisco. Marion, Jean-Luc. Cinci studii [The Idol and the Distance.
Five Studies], transl. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Oradea: Aion Publishing House. How to Become What You Are], transl. Thomson, Iain D. Heidegger on Ontotheology, Technology and Politics of Education.
Cambridge University Press. Vattimo, Gianni. Philosophy after Nietzsche and Heidegger], transl. Nietzsche and the Problem of Liberation], transl. It is possible to be Christians outside the Church? Wrathal, Mark A ed. In , Nietzsche turned mad, because of the effects of syphilis. Since then he was dependent of his sister and mother.
Ironically, Nietzsche became absolutely dependent on empathy and love — the cardinal virtues of Christianity. Not surprisingly Mr. Saugstad has succeeded in almost completely misunderstanding Nietzsche; but then most do. Nietzsche remains. Today he stands before and within the Unknown God, sharing in the Divine Nature of a God that will always be completely unknowable to human beings. Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Unfortunately, Andreas is currently unable to quickly, or easily, reply to you — but I hope one day soon, he will be able to share his thoughts on what you shared.
To live by an antique system created by the desperate minds of the underfed Disease, famine, murder, rape, greed, global warming. I guess when I watch the evening news I fail to see how his genius has provided us with betterment of society, much less hope. Where do you find hope in this world? Apparently the world needed to wait until the last two centuries for someone to figure out this mess. His hope was for the overman not hope for the masses with your comment I have to say you have no understanding of his writing.
Now, why you tie global warming to a discussion about Nietzsche is rather wicked. What Christianity has done, is to fill our minds with belief of a world to come, which rids our world of human suffering. This teaching is dangerous.
Because suffering is the only mechanism for growing human strength and knowledge. Nietzsche was the first to prove that this dogmatism has and will keep falling, leaving a bliss of confusion and absurdism. I dare look into our reality. Human nature as a will to power. Every priest as a slanderer, denier of reality. Denying Life! I look into this horrible carnivalistic reality each day with nausea and disgust. And I find beauty. This is where the paths of people like you and me divide.
People like you get hopeless in these situations, whereas I keep moving forward — resisting any illusion offered from, again, people like you. I wish the worst suffering of all upon your type of people. You are weak, and you should feel bad about it. Jesus came to share truth in order to save others — ultimately dying on the cross for us. It is hard for me to imagine Nietzche dying for his words for us. God forgive me if that is judgemental but……I think you need to see the purpose behind the words first.
I will make my own sacrifices. The moral decay of this society and history has proven that as a civilization, we fall woefully short of being civilized. Oceans of blood have been shed in the name of religion over centuries up to the present. Religiosity is merely a mindset based on ancient old doctrines that no longer pertain to contemporary society.
Nietzsche saw himself as a prophet of new morality, and aimed to create a moral code that succeeded where religion had failed, therefore I find it hard to accept earlier comments that Nietzsche was not an atheist. As one Nietzsche scholar, Alistair Kee, writes, this leads to existential terror When God is dead, we lack something to hold on to in life.
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