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Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On the Genealogy of Morals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Good and Evil
The Repression of Human Nature
Art, Beauty, and Emotions
Summary
Analysis
1. Nietzsche wonders about the significance of ascetic ideals, which celebrate self-control and holding back from material, emotional, and bodily desires—similar to the way monks live. He thinks that artists either put too little or too much stock in such ideals. Philosophers and scholars use them to privilege the intellect over bodily urges. For women, the ideals give rise to ideas of bodily purity. Priests, however, use ascetic ideals to exert their power. Nietzsche decides to unpack these ideas a bit more fully.
Ascetic ideals, for Nietzsche, are a moral code in which people think it’s good to distance oneself from life’s everyday aspects. This entails self-control against material gain in society (meaning it’s better to be poor), emotional and egotistic urges (meaning it’s better to be humble), and bodily desires (meaning its better to be chaste). Effectively, the ascetic ideal upholds the Christian values of poverty, chastity, and humility. However, Nietzsche believes that such a value system enables priests to exert power over others, effectively making the ascetic ideal a hypocritical one.
Themes
2. Nietzsche looks at the operatic composer Richard Wagner, who celebrates “chastity” in his later operas. Wagner depicts “chastity” and “sensuality” as opposites—meaning that a person must be one or the other, and chaste people are good while sensual people are evil. In Wagner’s earlier piece Luther’s Wedding, however, the protagonist (Luther) has the “courage” to be sensual. In any case, Nietzsche thinks that there’s no reason to pick one or the other. In Goethe and Hafiz’s poems, they depict the delicate balance between the “animal” and the “angel” in humans as a charming aspect of life. Nietzsche agrees—he thinks that internal conflicts like these make life more exciting.
Nietzsche begins with artists. He compares his former friend and current rival Richard Wagner’s operas to the poetry of German artist Goethe and Persian artist Hafiz. Nietzsche thinks that good art reflects the complex and fascinating nature of life. He likes Goethe and Hafiz because they play with the tension between being sensual (“animal”) and being spiritual (“angel”), which makes their art sophisticated, insightful, and interesting. Nietzsche thinks that Wagner’s characters used to do this too (like Luther in Luther’s Wedding), but lately, Nietzsche finds that Wagner’s work has become reductive: it demonizes sensuality and praises chastity, which makes it overly simplistic.
Themes
3. Nietzsche berates another of Wagner’s operatic characters in the opera Parsifal. This time, Nietzsche’s target is Parsifal, a simple country boy who rejects the sensual advances of flower maidens and seeks the Holy Grail. Nietzsche wishes that Wagner intended to create a parody or satire exposing how perverse the ascetic ideal is, but Wagner didn’t. Nietzsche says that when Parsifal is taken seriously, the character hates intellectual and sensual pursuits. Nietzsche is surprised by this, because Wagner used to admire the philosopher Feuerbach, whose motto is “healthy sensuality.”
Nietzsche thinks that Wagner has become influenced by the ascetic ideals of chastity, poverty, and humility. As Wagner has gotten older, he’s shifted from creating complex, interesting characters (like Luther) to simplistic, moralizing characters (like Parsifal) who reject the dynamism of everyday life to embrace religion. To Nietzsche, this makes Wagner’s art reductive and shallow.
Themes
4. In Nietzsche’s opinion, the best art allows the artist to disappear so that the work can come alive in its own right. Wagner, however, turns his art into a reflection of his own beliefs—specifically, his turn to chastity in old age—which makes his art bad. Nietzsche reasons that this sort of thing tends to happen to artists when they become frustrated of living in the fiction of their creations and want to start experiencing something real for themselves. Nietzsche thinks it’s a shame that Wagner’s art had to suffer for this. He wishes that Wagner went out on a high note, with art that was more confident and triumphant (rather than repentant) in tone.
For Nietzsche, good art is multifaceted—it creates a world of its own that a person can get lost in. Bad art, on the other hand, is just a shallow front for pushing some personal agenda. Nietzsche effectively believes that Wagner has become so seduced by the ascetic ideal (poverty, chastity, and humility) that he turns his art into a mouthpiece for that message instead of making art that’s complex and interesting. As a result, his newer operas are redundant, one-note, and simplistic.
Themes
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5. Nietzsche decides that when artists address the ascetic ideal in their work, they’re really just reflecting the views of society, their patrons, or a particular philosophy. Nietzsche thinks that Wagner was seduced by Schopenhauer’s philosophical ideas about music. Wagner used to think of music as an instrument, medium, or means to stage drama. However, Schopenhauer thinks that music captures what he considers the essence of life: a relentless, exhausting, striving will that is the basis of all existence. Wagner thus starts to believe that music communicates the metaphysical (or supernatural) underpinnings of the world, as if it’s a telephone call from God, and he begins to work in ascetic ideals into his compositions.
The German philosopher Schopenhauer believes that all reality and human experience is driven by a feeling of relentless striving which he calls the “will.” To Schopenhauer, music comes closest to capturing this striving sensation because music isn’t cluttered with visual imagery—it just moves forward. Nietzsche thinks that Wagner becomes enamored with this idea, and he starts to believe that his art can communicate unseen, supernatural messages from God. To Nietzsche, this turns Wagner’s art into a vehicle for his religious views rather than a medium to explore the complicated dramas of life.
Themes
6. Nietzsche turns to the philosopher Kant’s views about art. Nietzsche thinks Kant makes a big mistake when he decides that an observer sees something as beautiful by distancing their personal interests, feelings, and desires from the experience. Nietzsche thinks that Kant’s lack of experience with art makes him say idiotic things. On the other hand, Stendhal, who’s an artist himself, says that beautiful art makes people feel things and be interested. Nietzsche agrees with this sentiment—he thinks it’s ridiculous to say that people look at nude statues, for instance, without any stirrings of desire.
The German philosopher Kant believes that in order to see real beauty in art, a person has to take everything that’s personally appealing out of the equation and focus on what’s left over. Kant thinks that people should focus on the structure, form, or shape of the art in an unemotional way. To Nietzsche, Kant has no idea what he’s talking about: people shouldn’t try to distance themselves from things they feel passionate about when they look at art. Moreover, Nietzsche argues that artists (like Stendhal) typically want their art to move and excite people. To Nietzsche, this is where art’s true power lies. Artists don’t want the audience to take all of this emotional context out of the picture so they can focus on the “real” beauty, as there would be nothing important left to take in.
Themes
Nietzsche thinks that Schopenhauer (despite being more in tune with the arts) makes the same mistake as Kant. Schopenhauer thinks that contemplating art silences sexual interest and gives a person a break from desiring, striving, wanting, and willing. Nietzsche says that Schopenhauer was only 26 when he wrote this, so perhaps he was experiencing some youthful angst. Nietzsche agrees that sometimes art can have a calming effect, but more often than not (as Stendhal argues), art is exciting and stimulating. If anything, it sounds like Schopenhauer feels tortured and seeks an escape.
Schopenhauer thinks that all aspects of existence are underpinned by a feeling of relentless striving (the “will”), which is exhausting and depressing. The only place Schopenhauer personally feels relief from this feeling is when he looks at art, which makes him feel calm, relaxed, and still—it seems to silence all the noise. Schopenhauer assumes that all people feel that way when they look at art, but Nietzsche thinks that Schopenhauer is confusing his personal experience with everyone’s experience. Nietzsche believes that many people look at art because they find the opposite to be true: they find art thrilling, moving, dramatic, and exciting—not just a calm escape from the world.
Themes
7. Nietzsche even suspects that Schopenhauer enjoys raging against sexual desire, as if it’s some kind of release for his frustration. In fact, Nietzsche thinks that nearly all philosophers are hostile to sensuality—Schopenhauer just exposes that tendency most visibly. Philosophers also tend to praise the ascetic ideal, which advocates self-control against material or bodily desires. This makes sense to Nietzsche: because philosophers spend their lives thinking, so they tend to delegitimize anything that could be a distraction (such as marriage) or undermine their power to think, and thinking is what makes philosophers happy. Essentially, by appealing to the ascetic ideal, philosophers can legitimize their intellect-focused ways.
Nietzsche thinks that many philosophers wrongly generalize from their personal experience. He believes that philosophers are peculiar people who don’t want life to get messy—rather, they want peace and quiet to focus and think about ideas—so they valorize the ascetic ideal (of distancing themselves from emotions, desire, and everyday life). Philosophers enjoy using their intellects in calm, detached, and rational ways, and the ascetic ideal helps them to achieve that, even if it doesn’t suit everybody.
Themes
8. Such philosophers assume that the ascetic ideal—which champions “poverty, humility, chastity”—is universally virtuous and morally good. Nietzsche emphasizes that philosophers confuse what’s good for them with what’s good for everyone. It’s obvious, Nietzsche says, that productive intellectual people thrive when they live in “poverty, humility, and chastity.” Poverty allows philosophers to avoid distractions like politics and commerce. Humility allows philosophers to observe life from the shadows, or from a distance, which helps them come up with ideas. Finally, chastity avoids distractions like family and relationships. Every intellectual knows how distracting these things can be when they’re working on something. There’s no real commitment to the ascetic ideal in all this—it’s just convenient for them.
Nietzsche uses the case of philosophers to show how the ascetic ideal (of being detached from sensuality, emotions, and material wealth) surfaces in secular contexts. He wants to show that it has a pervasive influence on European culture even when religion isn’t in the picture. Philosophers believe they’re a different camp to religious thinkers because they value thinking for oneself over believing what religious doctrines say. The problem, for Nietzsche, is that philosophers are enamored with rational, detached, thinking, so they diminish everything that gets in the way of that. In their theories, they tend to discredit emotions as misleading, sensual desire as low or primitive, and materialistic motivations as shallow. To Nietzsche, this shows that philosophers just end up inadvertently pushing the religious agenda—of poverty, chastity, and humility—anyway.
Themes
Nietzsche decides to illustrate his point using Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer, through some personal quirk, finds that looking at beautiful art completely absorbs his attention and stimulates his ability to contemplate and think deeply. But there’s no reason why “sensual” experiences can’t do the same thing—for example, experiencing puberty or a sexual awakening can also trigger deep thoughts. Maybe, Nietzsche speculates, Schopenhauer’s sexual urges aren’t so much silenced as transformed when he looks at art.
Nietzsche revisits Schopenhauer to emphasize that philosophers tend to generalize from their own experiences. Philosophers often think they’re latching onto some objective insight about the world that applies to everybody. They assume, for example, that eliminating sexual distractions or looking at art in calm ways helps people connect with deep and profound insights, so these are fundamentally good practices. But really, they’re overlooking all the other ways that life can feel meaningful and profound.
Themes
9. Since maintaining a distanced attitude to life helps intellectuals to do their work, they’ve never been impartial about the ascetic ideal. In fact, Nietzsche thinks that modern life is foolish: we’re arrogant and reckless in the way we treat the environment, the idea of God, and ourselves. Everything that we think is good was once bad. We celebrate marriage yet historically considered it possessive. Obeying the law was considered an outrageous infringement on personal freedom. Before customs and morals entered the picture in human history, kind and peaceful behavior was considered dangerous rather than virtuous. Pitying somebody was insulting. For Nietzsche, every step we’ve taken away from these attitudes has come at a colossal price: mental and physical self-torture.
Philosophers assume that being calm and rational is fundamentally more progressive, moral, and sophisticated than being emotional, sensual, and materialistic (which they find primitive). But Nietzsche disagrees. Many ancient scholars argue that being calm, detached, and isolated is bad, while being actively engaged in communal life and contributing to society is much more moral and virtuous. Nietzsche thinks the historical views are more progressive because they help people live happier lives instead of suffering in the prison of their thoughts. To Nietzsche, this means that despite what philosophers think, European culture has improved on the past—it’s gotten worse.
Themes
10. Nietzsche thinks that historically, contemplation was considered passive and suspicious. Ancient thinkers—or “intellectual revolutionaries”—had to find a way to justify their radical break with society’s preference for proactive, warlike behavior. The ascetic ideal serves intellectuals well, as it justifies the philosophers’ tendency to withdraw from society. Philosophers have celebrated living like “ascetic priest[s]” for so long that they really buy into the idea rather than questioning it. Nietzsche wonders what it would take for a revolutionary thinker—one who shuns dominant social attitudes—to emerge today.
Nietzsche also thinks that the philosopher’s job is to question the status quo and push people to see things differently from what’s already obvious in their culture. In the ancient past, it made sense for scholars to explore the idea of being passive and detached, because people in warrior-based cultures assumed there was no value in being that way. Those scholars were radical in pushing a different agenda. In Nietzsche’s view, modern European philosophers fail to do that—they only reinforce what the dominant cultural view already believes. Philosophers think it’s good to be detached and intellectual rather than passionate and engaged. The ascetic ideal says exactly the same thing, so there aren’t any radical, subversive, or intellectually novel ideas in their work.
Themes
11. Nietzsche thinks that the “ascetic priest” is a formidable opponent who finds “his faith” in living a withdrawn life. Acetic priests consider everyday life to be misguided, and they have to enforce this attitude on others to justify their own beliefs. People who emulate this attitude arise throughout history, in every race and in every class. Their self-contradictory lives that are essentially “hostile to life” itself—meaning bodily wellbeing, procreation, and joy. Instead, they derive pleasure from self-imposed deprivation and punishment. This idea is most tangibly realized in Christianity.
For Nietzsche, an “ascetic priest” is someone who endorses the ascetic ideal: they believe in withdrawing from indulgences such as money, sex, food, and socializing. Ascetic priests assume they’re silencing their instinctive passions and aggressions, but to Nietzsche, they’re just using their instinctive urges to exert power over themselves and control their own behavior. Ascetic priests therefore only fuel the instincts they try to silence, but they do this in a repressed way that’s hostile to all the things in life that actually bring joy, such as sexual pleasure, social flourishing, and bodily health. What’s more, ascetic priests also demand that other people behave in the same way, because it legitimates their beliefs, which causes even more suffering.
Themes
12. To Nietzsche, this “perverse” attitude leads to other perversions, like believing that reality is an illusion. However, Nietzsche thinks that there is something valuable in trying to see things from a different perspective. Philosophers strive to see the world in the abstract, over and above the subjective human perspective. They believe in “pure reason,” and they try to step outside of messy, emotional, and diverse human experiences. Nietzsche thinks that this is all nonsense—it’s impossible for us to see without seeing from a perspective. Instead of trying to understand the world from outside the human perspective (which is impossible), philosophers should strive to understand the world from as many different perspectives as possible.
Nietzsche thinks that philosophers are ascetic priests in their own way. Like a religious priest, they isolate themselves and withdraw from society to focus on pure thinking. Philosophers believe that withdrawing helps them see things from a neutral or objective perspective. They assume that they’re seeing the real truth because they see the world without all its messiness. But Nietzsche believes that they’re just confused—no matter how much a person withdraws, they’re still seeing from their point of view. To Nietzsche, living like an aesthetic priest is dangerous: it fuels the belief that withdrawing helps people be objective, when actually, it just takes people away from all the things in life that being joy.
Themes
13. Nietzsche revisits the ascetic ideal, which advocates severe withdrawal from material emotional, and bodily aspects of everyday life—or, as Nietzsche puts it, celebrates poverty, humility, and chastity. He says it’s not really correct to say that ascetic priests turn their backs on life. In fact, Nietzsche thinks they’re motivated by a desire to preserve life, but they do it in a perverse, “diseased,” or “sick” way. Ascetic priests want to escape the pain and fear of facing human mortality. They yearn for a different kind of existence that transcends earthly life. They weaponize the ascetic ideal to exert power over the downtrodden by promising them a different kind of existence in the afterlife.
Nietzsche thinks that the ascetic ideal (thinking it’s good to withdraw from everyday life) is problematic because it doesn’t work: it makes people suffer rather than helping them feel better about life. Religious (rather than philosophical) ascetic priests feel tormented by their fear of death, so they make themselves believe that withdrawing from life will gain them access to an afterlife, where there’ll be no suffering because there’s no death. When they push this agenda on others, they’re forcibly removing people from all the aspects of real life—like love, friendship, and success—that bring joy. In effect, they make people suffer more.
Themes
14. The more normalized this sickness becomes in humanity, the more Nietzsche thinks we should appreciate individuals who are “healthy,” meaning they have the courage to attack life with vigor. Nietzsche thinks that modern European culture is a threat to humanity, as it’s imbued with “sickly” people who deny their actual human instincts, long to be something other than what they are, and therefore hate themselves. This self-contempt makes people vindictive, miserable, and contemptuous for the healthy people among us. These healthy individuals embrace life head on and accept—rather than loathe and deny—their human instincts.
To Nietzsche, societies that encourage people to deny their natural emotional, bodily, and social urges are perverse: they stunt personal growth and make people suffer. Nietzsche uses physical sickness to symbolize the emotional and spiritual sickness these cultures cause, as they push a moral code that makes people feel worse rather than better. By contrast, Nietzsche uses physical health to represent societies with moral codes that encourage people to actively pursue their instinctive desires rather than hold back from being emotional, sensual, and social. “Healthy” cultures allow people to enjoy being fully human, flourish, and feel good.
Themes
Nietzsche believes that the “struggle of the sick against the healthy” lurks behind all aspects of society: families, institutions, and communities. Sick people suffer patiently and righteously, all the while expressing resentment toward the way “healthy” people approach life. The philosopher Eugen Dühring, an anti-Semitic moralist, is a prime example of the vindictiveness of sickly people who seek revenge on the healthy. Nietzsche thinks it would be a disaster for healthy people, who are mentally and physically fit, to doubt their “right to happiness.” He thinks that healthy people should try to stay away from sickly ones instead of healing them. They need to focus on expressing their healthy ways, because they are humanity’s only hope.
Nietzsche thinks that 19th-century European culture is “sick”—it tells people that being “good” means denying their natural urges, which makes them suffer. Some people obey this moral code and become sick themselves. Others are “healthy”: they go their own way, embrace their desires, and live full, active lives. Nietzsche thinks people who repress their passionate and aggressive urges can’t direct that energy towards the “healthy” aim of making their own lives better. They end up using that energy in a “sick” way that makes other people’s lives worse. Repressed passion and aggression come out in perverse ways, as prejudice and hatred against others—like Dühring’s anti-Semitism.
Themes
15. While healthy people are busy living actively and embracing life, somebody steps in to “make the sick healthy,” and the ascetic priest steps in to fill this role. The ascetic priest is accepted as a kind of savior for sick people, even though he himself is sick. He finds his own happiness in exerting power over people who are suffering, like a tyrannical god. Ascetic priests maintain power by sowing discord among other predators and inflicting suffering among the weak, so that they can play the role of the healer. People who suffer need an outlet for their resentment, and the ascetic priest encourages their followers to unleash their resentment on themselves in the form of self-blame.
Nietzsche says that ascetic priests claim to alleviate suffering, but actually, they use people to diminish their own suffering. An ascetic priest wields power over the disenfranchised by posing as their leader. Feeling powerful is inherently satisfying to human beings, so this cuts into their suffering. Yet the values they praise (poverty, chastity, and humility) stop their followers from satisfying their own innate urges, which only makes them suffer more.
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16. Nietzsche thinks the ascetic priest exploits the suffering of the sick by encouraging “self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery” to render them harmless—meaning they cannot usurp the ascetic priest’s power. Ascetic priests essentially set up institutions (like “the Church”) to collect sick people and create a division between the sick and the healthy. Sick people feel perpetually guilty or sinful, but there’s no need for them to manage their pain like that. Healthy people, on the other hand, process their experiences even when they’re are difficult to cope with, and then they move on.
Nietzsche thinks that ascetic priests’ practices are diabolically clever, because they set up a system that forces people to police their gut instincts and hold back from being aggressive. This means that the ascetic priest’s position of power is always secure, and their instinctive satisfaction from being powerful continues. Nietzsche thus finds institutions like “the Church” regressive: they perpetuate suffering and make European culture worse rather than better.
Themes
17. Nietzsche thinks that all major religions are combatting a general depressive feeling of apathy. Nietzsche doesn’t know why European culture feels like this, but he believes that many religions encourage people to escape this depressive feeling by going into a sort of “hibernation” from life. People effectively abstain from living active lives, and they shun all emotional experiences. This tactic is common in many cultures: Hindus and Buddhists advocate freeing oneself from all desire, wishing, and activity, and retreating into a place that’s beyond the suffering triggered by conceptions of “Good and Evil.” Virtues like humility therefore aren’t valuable in themselves, but valuable because they help people achieve a “hypnotic sensation of nothingness” which numbs their pain.
Nietzsche raises the example of spiritual leaders in other cultures to show that there are ways in which isolation from society can yield enlightenment and reduce suffering—but he doesn’t think that’s what’s going on in Europe. In other cultures, some spiritual leaders spend their lives trying to free themselves from the push-and-pull of everyday life, meaning they no longer judge themselves as “good” or “evil” and retreat into a mental place beyond that kind of thinking at all. To Nietzsche, ascetic priests (meaning Christian leaders who advocate chastity, poverty, and humility) do something completely different, since their moral code is entrenched in thinking about “good” and “evil.”
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18. Nietzsche thinks that achieving a hypnotic ability to deaden all feelings (including pain) is actually quite rare and requires a great deal of training and effort. Ascetic priests, however, use another tactic. They encourage ceaseless, mindless everyday work, which effectively distracts the sufferer from having time to think about their pain. They also encourage “petty pleasures” but emphasize giving (rather than receiving) pleasure through acts of kindness and charity, captured in the command to “love thy neighbor.” Ascetic priests also encourage a sense of community because the feeling of empowerment in being among friends alleviates suffering too. Nietzsche thinks that strong people strive for solitude, while the weak strive for unity.
Nietzsche argues that ascetic priests don’t train people to condition their minds to stop thinking in terms of “good” and “evil” so that they can achieve the peaceful sensation of feeling nothing. Rather, ascetic priests only try to control people’s behavior: they tell people to act humble, chaste, and charitable. To Nietzsche, acting this way is somewhat unnatural because it represses natural human (bodily, social, and emotional) urges, which causes suffering. Nietzsche thinks that when religious people are around others who act the same way, they feel a sense of community, which is comforting—but it also masks the fact that they are actually making themselves suffer more in the long run by fighting their natural urges.
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19. Nietzsche thinks that repressing vitality, encouraging mindless work, abstaining from pleasure, and fostering community are relatively innocuous strategies—but he also thinks that ascetic priests employ more harmful techniques. Despite encouraging release from emotions, ascetic priests also agitate people’s emotions by encouraging passion for morals, which is hypocritical. “Good” people—especially man German cultural leaders—are so saturated with naïve enthusiasm for morality that they are essentially lying to themselves and encouraging submitting to morality instead of a making oneself strong to deal with suffering.
Here, Nietzsche reinforces his claim that ascetic priests don’t train people to calm their minds and achieve a peaceful freedom from the intensity of emotional life. Nietzsche argues that ascetic priests actually encourage people to feel more, not less, because they want people to be passionate about controlling their behavior. To Nietzsche, this means that people aren’t mentally calmed and soothed by Christian religious practices, and people therefore never experience the peace of mind that asceticism (or withdrawal from the messiness of life) promises.
Themes
20. Such people intend to use the ascetic ideal to alleviate emotional pain—but only covers up symptoms rather than providing a cure. Their methods, however, worsen the underlying suffering. Ascetic priests effectively treat the apathy of depression but not depression itself. Nietzsche argues that ascetic priests effectively make people feel relief from their apathy by making them care about redemption, but this actually means that people have to torture themselves (by thinking of themselves as guilty sinners) in order to feel that relief.
Nietzsche emphasizes that religious life makes people feel that their lives have meaning, which also alleviates suffering. But in order to connect with that meaning, people have to feel guilty for having natural urges, bodily desires, aggressive instincts, and emotional passions. People effectively have to believe that their human tendencies are evil in order to care about salvation, and this, once again, makes them suffer.
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21. The ascetic priest would say that he has reformed humankind, but to Nietzsche, it looks more like the ascetic priest has harmed humankind by making people weak and repressed. Nietzsche thinks that the ascetic priest’s methods trigger nervous breakdowns. He argues that since the Middle Ages, religious people have experienced like chronic depression, hysteria, and moodiness. The “doctrine of sin” is a “moral cult” that makes people emotionally volatile (rather than free from the burden of feelings). To Nietzsche, the ascetic ideal is the worst possible path for Europeans’ health.
Nietzsche argues once again that European culture is making humanity worse, not better. Ascetic priests believe they are cultivating better human beings, but they only force people to repress their natural instincts while riling up passionate feelings about religious behavior. Nietzsche thinks this push-and-pull of suppressing natural passions and encouraging religious ones is disorienting, and it triggers mass hysteria (like witch hunts), which shows how emotionally unstable most people in European culture are.
Themes
22. Nietzsche even thinks that the ascetic priest has ruined people’s artistic tastes as well as their psychological well-being. He believes that early Christians rejected ancient literature in favor of the of the New Testament, which Nietzsche despises. Ascetic priests also use the New Testament as a weapon against the arts, by characterizing writers like Shakespeare as heathens. To Nietzsche, the Old Testament is completely different. When he reads it, he senses heroism and great men. He feels, however, that the New Testament loses its “Jewish” feel and becomes pedestrian, hysterical, and shallow. Nietzsche concludes that the ascetic ideal is an education in bad taste and bad manners.
Nietzsche continues condemning Christian religious practice by arguing that Christianity undermines other aspects of European culture as well, like the arts. He thinks people who are passionate about poverty, chastity, and humility tend to reject good writing (like Shakespeare’s) that focuses on romance, heroism, and the social intricacies of life. Nietzsche’s aim is to show that ascetic ideals, or Christian religious values, bleed into all aspects of European culture and make it worse.
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23. Nietzsche continues disparaging the ascetic ideal. He thinks it’s damaging in many other ways, but already the extent of its devastation on culture is obvious. Nietzsche wonders why there hasn’t been more resistance to the ascetic ideal. Many people assume “modern scientific knowledge”—which eliminates God from the picture—has displaced the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche, however, thinks that scientific knowledge isn’t the ascetic ideal’s opposite. Rather, it’s the latest incarnation of the ascetic ideal.
Nietzsche now turns to the role of science in European culture. Many people assume that science is the opposite of religion, but Nietzsche thinks that even science embodies the ascetic ideal: it advocates (like philosophy) for detached, objective analysis of life. Once again, Nietzsche sees the ascetic ideal (the idea of detaching from life’s emotional, bodily, and social components) lurking behind the scenes. He thinks it’s so pervasive in Europe that the whole culture is damaging to humanity.
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24. Nietzsche thinks that people who claim to be areligious (such as scientists, atheists, skeptics) try to reject the ascetic ideal. They believe in intellectuality over faith and see themselves to be freethinkers, but they also align themselves the ascetic ideal because they believe in “truth.” Nietzsche says that European skeptics always seek to arrive at some truth by thinking, which reinforces the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche thinks scholars need to question the “value of truth” as an intellectual pursuit.
Nietzsche reiterates that even atheists and scientists believe they can discover some deep, abstract “truth” about life by rejecting faith and using their minds to think through life’s important questions. He thinks European culture is flooded with people who believe that taking a step back from life (to think, to be religious, or to pursue truth) is useful. As before, Nietzsche is skeptical about any approach that focuses on stepping back from life rather than stepping into it.
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25. Nietzsche is doubtful that there’s any social practice in European culture that challenges the ascetic ideal or that provides an alternative to it. Nietzsche sarcastically extolls the virtues of Europe’s great social practices. He mentions artists (who are too corruptible), scientists (who have to become emotionally detached to do their serious scientific work), philosophers (like Kant, who thinks he’s liberated humanity from religious dogma), and agnostics, who doubt everything so much that they might just believe in God after all. All in all, Nietzsche thinks that the ascetic ideal is winning in Europe right now.
Nietzsche argues that all sorts of people think they’ve stepped away from the limitations of religious thinking. Yet they often endorse Christian values or rely on detaching from life to think. Thus, Nietzsche believes that European culture is saturated with the ascetic ideal. To Nietzsche, withdrawing from the sensual, emotional, and social aspects of life—whether for religion or for intellectual pursuits—cuts people off from experiences that foster actual flourishing and joy, meaning European culture is bad for humanity.
Themes
26. Nietzsche turns to historians, to see if they fare any better. He thinks historians don’t like acting as judges, and they describe things rather than affirming or denying in gloomy, detached, quiet ways. It doesn’t seem to Nietzsche like there’s much flourishing going on there. Nietzsche also finds “armchair scholars” who claim to be objective nauseating. He thinks such people are ingenuine—they espouse the wisdom of others in order to appear objective in their thinking. He also hates anti-Semites, who resort to moral posturing. Germans are numbed because they feel superior and listen to too much Wagner. Nietzsche thinks that everywhere in Europe, all he smells is bad air.
To drive his point home, Nietzsche describes both historians and amateur thinkers (“armchair scholars”) as people who strive to be detached, unemotional, and objective. But Nietzsche thinks that shunning emotional, bodily, and social experiences stunts or deadens the human experience, so he imagines that Europe is full of corpses that give of “bad air,” rather than active, thriving human beings.
Themes
27. Nietzsche stops himself and says he needs to get back on track. He asks himself where things stand in European culture. Quoting a passage from another of his books, The Gay Science, Nietzsche concludes that Christian dogma is no longer pervasive in Europe, but Christian morality still runs rampant. Nietzsche is hopeful that questioning our reliance on truth and objectivity will start to dismantle Christian morality, but he thinks it will take at least 200 years.
Summing up his general argument so far, Nietzsche says that even though Europe is growing more secular (or less dogmatic), the Christian idea of abstinence from emotional, sensual, and social aspects of life is still pervasive. People still believe it’s possible to discover truth by stepping back from life and thinking. Nietzsche thinks that European scholars need to start questioning why they think that’s so important.
Themes
28. Nietzsche concludes that one question plagues humankind, and it’s the big one: the meaning of our existence. Nietzsche thinks that the ascetic ideal fills the void for a while—it makes us think that we suffer, but that we do so for a purpose. It gives our lives meaning, and that makes us feel good. Unfortunately, the ascetic ideal has some serious baggage, which is disastrous to humanity. Namely, guilt, hatred of our animalistic instincts, and denial of anything material and sensual. Essentially, the aesthetic ideal encourages “a wish for oblivion.” In the end, Nietzsche says, a human being will always prefer to “desire oblivion than not desire at all.”
In closing, Nietzsche acknowledges that the ascetic ideal (shunning emotional, bodily, and social aspects of experience) is so seductive because it gives life meaning. Either people become religious and believe that they suffer now for heavenly rewards, or they want to become detached to seek objectivity or truth, which seems meaningful. The problem is that when they try to deny their natural urges—all the feelings, sensations, and desires that make us human—they end up hating themselves. Nietzsche concludes with an ironic quip: at its core, the “desire” for detachment is an emotional sensation. It seems, after all, that urges, desires, and feelings are part of everything we do, and that’s exactly what makes us human.
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