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ABSTRACT
Nietzsche famously rails against Christian virtues such as humility and compassion. Yet he is well aware that historical Christians, especially those in positions of power, typically preached such values but did not practice them. This raises the question whom Nietzsche is really targeting in his animadversions against Christian virtues. The answer developed here is that his real targets are his contemporaries, including atheist, socialists such as Eugen Dühring, who, with their advocacy of egalitarian, democratic social and political policies, are trying to implement the values Christians long preached but rarely practiced. In nominating moderns, including those who seek the realization of enlightenment liberal democratic values, rather than past Christians, as Nietzsche’s real targets we create space for reconciling Nietzsche’s claim that he accepts the past (as embodied in his doctrine of amor fati) with his project of seeking to open up new possibilities for the future. In the concluding sections the questions are raised to what extent do Nietzsche’s attacks on Christian virtues exhibit the very ressentiment he so vehemently criticises as a source of Christian values, and whether his criticism of the modern social and political implementation of those values is really supported by his own values.
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Notes
1 Throughout this text I take Nietzsche’s term ‘Mitleid’ to be best translated as ‘compassion’ even though translators of Nietzsche often render it as ‘pity’. There are obviously some contexts where ‘pity’ is the appropriate translation, for instance, where Nietzsche talks of ‘Selbstmitleid’ (HAH I 277) the translation ‘self-pity’ makes more sense than ‘self-compassion’. But Nietzsche’s non-reflexive uses of ‘Mitleid’ are often in response to Schopenhauer’s use of that term and Schopenhauer had in mind a kind of sentiment that naturally moves one to try to help those to whom one feels Mitleid. It is arguably compassion rather than pity that has this effect. Masters can feel pity for the miserable, dishonourable, lives of slaves but be in no way moved to try to improve the lot of their slaves, to reduce their suffering; something they could easily do. Such masters cannot be said to have compassion for their slaves. For more on this see von Tevenar (Citation2007).
2 Different kinds of problems are presented by his continual assertions that Christians ‘jewify’ the world (GS 135, 139, also GM I 9), and that Christians are in fact Jews (A 44). For more on this see Gemes (Citation2006) and Gemes (Citation2021).
3 For Nietzsche’s negative appraisal of other Christian virtues see Z I ‘Prologue’ 5, Z I ‘Of Love of One’s Neighbour’, Z III ‘Spirit of Gravity’ 2, Z IV ‘Of the Higher Man’ 11, BGE 33, 201, and 262, on neighbour-love; and GM I and III (passim) on asceticism and renunciation.
4 Allowing that in the case of Goethe and Nietzsche part of their greatness lies in their overcoming of their Judeo-Christian heritage does not militate against the importance of that heritage in their self-formation . For Nietzsche’s acknowledgement of this in his own case see KSA 13:641, 1888 25[7] quoted below.
5 Nietzsche in EH designates the GM as one of the most ucanniest works ever written (EH, Genealogy of Morality). I have argued (Gemes Citation2006 and Citation2021) that it is uncanny because in GM he writes about slaves and Jews who would have seemed distant figures to his German audience, only to reveal that he is really talking about that very audience, so that they, after having properly absorbed his message, will ask ‘what did we actually experience just now?’ still more: ‘who are we actually?’ (GM Preface 1, Nietzsche’s emphasis)
6 In HAH I 633 Nietzsche contrasts the methods of the Inquisition to the present age where 'anyone who advocates opinions with violent word and deed is felt to be an enemy of our present-day culture, or at least as one backward (zurückgebliebener – a term which in Nietzsche’s times was part of the discourse on atavism)'. In the same work he notes that the protestant Calvin was not averse to seeing his enemies burnt at the stake (HAH I 101). That historical Christians, unlike we moderns, had no trouble with spectacles of pain, was something Nietzsche was well aware of.
7 Note, this allows that Nietzsche is sincere in his criticisms of those past Christians, including St Paul and Luther, who preached Christian virtues, since it is that preaching that is partly responsible for what he takes to be the calamity of the realization of these virtues in modernity. It also allows that he detested the hypocrisy of those who preached Christian virtues without practicing them.
8 Luther, mentioned in A 39 as a point of contrast, explicitly claims that belief, faith, is the core of Christianity. Thanks to Mark Migotti for bringing this to my attention.
9 A similar line is taken in Urs Sommer (Citation1997, 72). Stegmaier (Citation2018, 422) argues that ‘In fact Nietzsche attacked Judaism only as a way of attacking Christianity, and he attacked Christianity only to attack the self-righteous morality that had been developed in Europe in the name of Christianity’ (my translation). For more on the first part of this claim see Gemes (Citation2021).
10 At this point Nietzsche has in focus the, in his mind, Christian derived virtue of truthfulness rather than that of compassion. Here again it is worth noting that while the historical Christians preached the value of truth it is their secular cousins of modern times, the practitioners and followers of science who realized it to a far greater degree.
11 Holub (Citation2018, 170) citing this same passage observes that '[t]he tendencies that Nietzsche comes to identify with socialism are the same ones he finds in his considerations of Christianity'.
12 An e-mail conversation with Gudrun von Tevenar spurred me to look in Nietzsche’s texts to see if he ever gives any explanation of why Christian virtues only get practically realized after the eclipse of Christian belief.
13 While many in the 19th century took Comte to be an atheist, Nietzsche’s position on this is not clear. He was familiar with Mill’s book on Comte (Mill Citation1865, Nietzsche owned and heavily annotated a German translation of this work) which rightly identifies Comte as an agnostic. When Nietzsche writes of Comte 'wanting to lead his Frenchmen to Rome via the detour of science' (TI Skirmishes 4) it is difficult to be sure if the reference to Rome is simply a reference to Christian values, or if he means something more.
14 Today we have many different versions of the notion of equality, to name just a few, equality of treatment under the law, equality of opportunities, equality of outcomes. Nietzsche is typically not very specific about what notions of equality is in play in his texts. Generally, we can surmise that the relevant notions of equality he rejects typically relate to equality of value and equality of rights, for instance in political matters (an equal vote/say for every citizen).
15 In Gemes (Citation2006), it is similarly argued Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality professes to be about the historical origins of morality but in fact it is equally about certain current pathologies.
16 This is argued in greater detail in Gemes (Citation2021).
17 Of course St Paul laid the groundwork for this notion: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Galatians 3:28). In A29 Nietzsche attributes this notion of equality to Jesus. Reading On the Genealogy of Morality and The Antichrist might easily lead one to think that for Nietzsche Christianity’s triumph over pagan, or what he calls noble, values occurred around the time of Jesus or Paul, or possibly as late as the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century CE. In fact occasional passages suggest that Nietzsche understood that for a very long time Christianity incorporated pagan elements (for example see D70; KSA 7:139, 1870 7 [13]; KSA 7:690, 1873 29 [132]). This is a theme he would have been exposed to from the writings of his friend Overbeck (e.g. Overbeck Citation1873) which emphasized that, after the early messianic Christianity of the first two centuries of the Common Era, Christianity took in major elements of pagan and Hellenistic thought. Siedentop (Citation2015) does a good job of tracing the roots of our modern notions of equality in Christianity and especially monastic Christianity (cf. 2015, chapter 7).
18 The idea that Christianity was a fundamental impetus behind the democratic movement is something Nietzsche may well have picked up from his reading of Renan’s Vie de Jesus (see 1863: 270-71). Interestingly, in a section of that book that Nietzsche excerpts in his notebooks (KSA 13:186-7, 1887,11[405]), Renan (Citation1863, 180–181) further traces the democratic spirit back to the Jews and the Old Testament.
19 This reference to a history of 2000 years suggests the slave revolt begins with Jesus and his disciples. The Antichrist suggests that the slave revolt in values begins with the captive Jews in the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE.
20 The theme that valorisation of equality and democracy fosters mediocrity was also shared by Burckhardt, de Tocqueville and Mill. The latter put it succinctly: ‘The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilization, is toward collective mediocrity’ (1873:159-60). For more on this, see Kahan (Citation1992, esp. pages 49-53).
21 It is mainly in the late works after 1885 that Nietzsche expresses hostility to democracy, see also, for instance, BGE44 where he identifies 'the democratic taste' with that of 'levellers' who seek 'the happiness of the herd' (BGE 44), and GM III 25 where he characterizes democracy, as 'a symptom of declining life'. Though Mill and Tocqueville on democracy were generally a lot more nuanced than Nietzsche and considered various positive possibilities in democracy, it is worth noting that there are passages from his middle period where Nietzsche sounds a more sympathetic note to the possibilities of democracy as of something yet to come’ (HAH WS 293, see also HAH WS 275 and 289). For more on this see Patton (Citation2014).
22 Considerations of space do not allow for a serious engagement with important subtleties regarding Nietzsche’s attitudes to different forms of Chrtiainity. Arguably Nietzsche’s more favourable comments about Christianity are focused on Roman Catholicism, with its clear acceptance of a hierarchy and a form of nobility, the princes of the Church – see, for instance, D60 quoted above, and GM III 22 which contrasts the Catholic church’s ‘reverential etiquette of hieratic taste’, with Luther’s more egalitarian peasant directness with his God. Many of his more hostile and intemperate remarks are focused on the more egalitarian Protestantism, especially that of his own Lutheran background, and early Christianity (notably in A, the Christianity of St Paul, itself so influential on Luther’s Protestantism). In GS 358 Nietzsche explicitly associates ‘modern ideas’, presumably including ideas of equality and, possibly, democracy, with the ‘peasant rebellion of the North’, meaning Luther’s reformist movement. Conversations with Tim Stoll and Gudrun von Tevenar alerted me to this important point.
23 For an early version of the contrast between Greeks who use their Gods to celebrate life and Christians who use God to demean life see HAH I 114.While HAH is generally critical of Christianity and its influence it does not exhibit the full hostility and vitriol of the later works, such as The Antichrist. Thus it includes sympathetic references to Christianity beatifying certain sober and industrious people (HAH I 115), to Christian architecture signifying a higher order of things (HAH I 218), to Christianity providing an abundance of profound sensations (HAH I 244).
24 Though a large and honourable mention is certainly given to Socrates as a debaser of the instincts in The Twilight of the Idols chapter titled ‘The Problem of Socrates’.
25 In 1854, Wagner became acquainted with he works of Arthur Schopenhauer and it was this encounter that according to Nietzsche led to Wagner’s embracing the decadence of life renunciation (see, for instance, CW 4-5).
26 In GM III 25 he refers to Plato as ‘the great slanderer of life’. In EH The Birth of Tragedy 2 he says, ‘the degenerating instinct that turns against life’ is ‘in a certain sense already the philosophy of Plato’. In a note he refers to the Platonic slandering of the senses as ‘the preparation of the soil for Christianity’ (KSA 13:169, 1887 11[375]).
27 Note, this is not to claim that Platonism has not led to social changes in various societies. The point is that it is not the kind of doctrine that can inflame the masses to seek social change. In an early note entitled 'Philosophy and Masses' (Philosophie und Volk) Nietzsche, commenting on various ancient philosophers, notes 'It is not possible to ground a popular culture on philosophy' (KSA 7:544, 1872 23[14]
28 Thanks to Mattia Riccardi for this point
29 This is the line taken in Sommer (Citation1997 esp. pgs. 61–72)
30 Here, Nietzsche’s take on Christianity is notably different from that of Overbeck who argued that genuine Christianity dies around the second century CE with the advent of Patristic Christianity (1873 173–4). Overbeck claims the original Christians were a small insular mystical community with thoroughly anti-scientific attitudes and with an essential belief in the imminent reappearance of the messiah. He argued that modern Christians who sought to reconcile religion with science were in some sense incoherent. For Overbeck, the essence of Christianity died around the second century CE, whereas for Nietzsche the essence of Christianity lives on, even among 'pale atheists', as the epigraph above from Antichrist 59 demonstrates. For more on the relationship of Nietzsche and Overbeck on Christianity, including important areas and times of agreement not mentioned here, see the authoritative Sommer Citation1997 (also Sommer Citation2003).
31 Certain passages from earlier works, for instance HAH I 114, pre-figure the repeated charge in On the Genealogy of Morality and The Antichrist that Christianity destroys man’s nature. But in such passages it is typically raised as a general point about Christian doctrine and not as a point about the influence of Christianity on modernity.
32 The sources for Nietzsche’s later views about Christianity are varied. But one notable source of influence, especially on his GM, is probably his reading of Eugen Dühring’s Cursus der Philosophie, a work cited in GM itself (GM II 11), and which Nietzsche had (miss)quoted from as early as 1883 (KSA 10:271, 1883,7[78]). Dühring claims that through Christianity, in particular Protestantism, the modern culture world has been poisoned with Jewish servility (Citation1875, 317). Dühring writes of 'the emancipation from the Jews' as 'a prominent social problem' (Citation1875, 393). Perhaps it is Nietzsche’s very awareness of his debts to Dühring that leads him to pointedly distance himself from Dühring’s crass antisemitism in GM (GM III 14).
33 Nietzsche criticises Darwin because he erroneously interprets Darwin as claiming that life aims at mere preservation not growth (GS 349, TI Skirmishes 14), Part of his objection to the values of modernity is that they function to preserve the average mediocre type rather than to facilitate the growth of the exceptional (see BGE 62 and D132 both quoted above).
34 This is of a piece with his claim in GM II 7 that '[e]very animal, thus also la bête philosophe, instinctively strives for an optimum of favourable conditions under which it can vent its power completely and attain its maximum in the feeling of power'. Note that this is what every animal instinctively strives for does not mean that every animal actually strives or succeeds in obtaining these conditions. Influences such as Christianity, the values of modernity, can thwart the instincts. Thanks are due to Andrew Huddleston for discussions of GM II 7.
35 Tim Stoll alerted me to this last point.
36 EH Why I am So Wise 7 strikes a clearly false note with its claim that he has never experienced misfortunes and frustrations from Christianity. His letter written shortly before his breakdown where he claims that no person has ever had more right to annihilate Christianity gives a better insight into his sense of being injured by it (SB 8:512,1888 1179).
37 Jenkins (Citation2018, 192) argues for the identification in Nietzsche’s work of ressentiment with vengefulness. Other have argued for a thicker concept . For instance, Leiter identifies ressentiment with a 'special kind of festering hatred and vengefulness, one motivated by impotence in the face of unpleasant external stimuli' (Citation2002, 204). While for the purposes of the argument here we need not adjudicate on this difference, below a possible reconciliation of these differences is suggested by separating the person of ressentiment (‘thick’ concept) from one who has mere episodes of ressentiment (‘thin’ concept).
38 One must allow here that much of the tone and rhetoric of GM, and especially A, naturally leads readers to think that Nietzsche wishes that Jewish/Christian priests had never existed. But BGE 250 where he registers his gratitude to the Jews for introducing the 'grand style in morality', and GM I 6 where he says that priests led to the human soul acquiring depth, and GM I7 where he says '[h]human history would be much too stupid' without the input of the likes of the priests, suggest otherwise. The charitable reading is that Nietzsche in GM and A is trying to create in his readers an affective animus towards the values promulgated by priests since he believes the current implementation of those values are detrimental to human flourishing. A less charitable reading would be that Nietzsche has to a certain extent lost control and let his own personal ressentiment against priests and his own Christian heritage overpower his more considered opinions. Discussions with Tom Stern and Gudrun von Tevenar helped formulate my thoughts on this issue.
39 This allows that Nietzsche sees some role for the continuance of Christian values, for instance, as giving solace to those who can only aspire to a low level of existence. This is perfectly consistent with the objective of lessening the hold of those values on others capable of higher levels of existence. It even allows that for some Christianity is crucial to their achieving the highest level of existence possible for them, and some of these may even reach great heights (see BGE 61). Perhaps this is how Nietzsche saw Jesus.
40 This is not unrelated to the much-vaunted distinction between 'active nihilism' and 'passive nihilism' (KSA 13: 350, 1887 9 [27]). Nevertheless we should note those expressions only occur in one note and never in any of Nietzsche’s published works.
41 Gemes (Citation2019) considers why Nietzsche was so hostile to ressentiment. There it is argued that Nietzsche raises both a moral-psychological objection, ressentiment, especially when directed to one’s own drives, typically leads to a certain kind of self-estrangement, and a moral-aesthetic objection, ressentiment makes one ugly.
42 An interesting possibility that we cannot explore here is that in attacking the Christian character of his day he is also, consciously, or not, expressing ressentiment to his own thoroughly Christian pedigree, thus bearing out his striking observation that 'Whoever attacks his time can only attack himself: what can he see if not himself?' (KSA 8:500, 1878 27 [81]). But for a surprising expression of admiration for a certain type of Christian and pride in his Christian heritage see (KSA 12:156, 1885 2 [180]).
43 One might think Bloom is thinking of garden variety resentment rather than the character colouring festering hate of ressentiment. Here it helps to recall that Bloom invokes the notion of the Freudian Oedipal in characterizing the feelings of the strong poet to his antagonist (Citation1997, 108). For Freudians, the negotiation of the Oedipal stage is a major determining factor for every individual’s whole character.
44 Given what Nietzsche has written about the historical sensibility and what he calls 'monumental history' (see Untimely Mediations II), one wonders to what extent Nietzsche would concur with Bloom’s claim that strong poets, or, as in his own case, strong philosophers, make 'history by misreading one another' (Bloom Citation1997, 5).
45 In GM III 10 he contrasts a caterpillar kind of philosopher who is an incarnation of the ascetic priest against a possible philosopher who has sufficient, pride, daring, courage and self-confidence.
46 This last section was inspired by conversations with Hallvard Lillehammer and Bernard Reginster and Andreas Urs Sommer. This essay was originally inspired by a question from Alexander Bell during a Nietzsche course taught with Andrew Huddleston in 2019. Alexander asked why Nietzsche rails against Christian notions such as compassion when he surely knows that throughout history most Christians, especially those in power, did not actually practice what they preached? It has been greatly improved through comments from ISNS conference participants who heard an earlier version at Oxford on June 24, 2022. Special thanks to, Bernard Reginster, Brian Leiter, Chris Janaway, Gudrun von Tevenar, Hallvard Lillehammer, Mark Migotti, and Scott Jenkins for post conference conversations.