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by Lutza Berkenbosch
In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche places a lot of emphasis on the dangers of religion. His harsh words on the topic of Christianity are very justified, as he makes very compelling points on just why it is such a grave issue. In the Genealogy, Christianity is initially portrayed as an extension of ressentiment, an emotion born from hatred and envy, and it uses the ascetic ideal to turn suffering inwards, creating guilt. The original virtues and vices have been changed, and through religion, these have been ingrained in the heads of all Christians, making them suffer and become sick. Nietzsche has “no love for the New Testament”, the text on the teachings of Christianity, and he highlights the damage religion has had on society, but he also recognizes that religion has been a necessary aspect in the battle against nihilism (GM 3.22/p.105). He discusses how the ascetic ideal of Christianity has provided humans meaning for their existence and their suffering and offered a will to live, an argument that is crucial in the reading of the Genealogy and understanding Nietzsche’s ideas on the complex topic of religion. It is easy to overlook his praise of it, but Nietzsche’s argument is a lot more complex than a critique of religion. He goes in depth into what religion and Christianity do provide for the world, and how these aspects are critical for human development and life in general. While he does believe that those following Christian values are sick and the guilt engrained in their heads is a cause for their immense suffering, this suffering is not harmful enough to remove the importance of the meaning that has been provided to them.
The Christian values that Nietzsche is so concerned with all begin with the slave revolt of morality, begun by the Jewish priestly class, and the concept of ressentiment. This slave morality is described in Peter J. Woodford’s book The Moral Meaning of Nature as “a successful revolt of the weak and socially powerless over the strong and dominant” and was “carried out by those who were . . . full of ressentiment against their superiors” (Woodford 43). This revolt that is adopted by Christianity has roots in the Jewish priestly class who paved the way for Christianity, and whose hatred towards the more powerful class turned “into something enormous and uncanny, into something most spiritual and poisonous” (GM 1.7/p.16). They were only able to obtain satisfaction through spiritual revenge, so they inverted the values of the strong by holding that “the miserable alone are the good; the poor, powerless lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly are also the pious, only blessed in God, for them alone there is blessedness, – whereas you, you noble and powerful ones, you are in all eternity the evil” (GM 1.7/p.16-17). Because of this reversal of the aristocratic value equation, that being “good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved of God”, the powerless, namely the Jewish priestly class and their followers, have successfully reversed the truth (GM 1.7/p.16). This preliminary Jewish inversion is later transferred to Christianity and is the base for the ideology that Nietzsche is initially so against and created an unstoppable “poisoning through the entire body of humanity” (GM 1.9/p.18). The emergence of the internalization of instincts (the bad conscience) has created the foundation for ressentiment, which exploited this internalization and later resulted in slave morality.
This bad conscience that Nietzsche speaks of has very significant implications for religion. Though it has always existed, it has manifested itself through religious systems, when “new, distinctively moral concepts of ‘good’, ‘bad’, and even ‘evil’ emerged that no longer expressed the basic desire for itself” (Woodford 43). Some may think that these are the ‘correct’ moral values, and that the emergence of these is a positive event, but not for Nietzsche. For him, he sees this as their instinct for freedom, or will to power, has been suppressed, and think of these instincts that are suppressed as “guilt before God” (GM 2.22/p.63). It results in guilty conscience, as bad conscience evolved into guilt through Christian religion: “this man of bad conscience has taken over the religious presupposition in order to drive his self-torture to its most gruesome severity” (GM 2.22/p.63). Christianity is rooted in a creditor/debtor relationship between God and its followers, where people feel as though they owe God something. Humans see their instinctual animal self as sinful, and because of God’s sacrifice that they must repay, they believe themselves to be in debt, but the debt will never go away since their instinctual drives will never disappear. Nietzsche’s account of Christian guilt is as follows:
[T]he paradoxical and horrifying remedy in which tortured humanity found temporary relief, Christianity’s stroke of genius: God sacrificing himself for the guilt of man, God himself exacting payment of himself, God as the only one who can redeem from man what has become irredeemable for man himself – the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor. (GM 2.21/p.63)
The creation of God comes from guilt, resulting in humans being trapped by their suppressed desired, and led by ressentiment. This “rise of the Christian god as the maximum god” has resulted in bringing “a maximum of feelings of guilt into appearance on earth” (GM 2.20/p.62). Without Christianity and belief in this god, the feelings of debt and guilt would be more limited, and humans would be back to their intended functions, without these dangerous aspects. The bad conscience present in humans would also be far less vast, as it stems from “the deep sickness into which man had to fall under the pressure of that the most fundamental of all changes he ever experienced – the change of finding himself enclosed once and for all within the sway of society and peace” (GM 2.16/p.56). Religion traps people into a state where they cannot grow and develop as freely as their animal instincts demand. Humans are no longer able to release their impulses, so their instincts turn inwards, resulting in a guilty conscience, an “active ‘bad conscience’”, all happening through religion (GM 2.18/p.59).
The debt that humans feel they owe to higher powers in general (not only in Christianity) also results in suffering, as people feel they must do anything to decrease the debt, so they will result in creating suffering if they think it will make the gods happy. Nietzsche believes that “all religions are in their deepest foundations systems of cruelties”, and those who follow a religion increase the cruelty and suffering present in the world (GM 2.3/p.38). He explains this by saying that horrible events such as the Trojan wars “were meant as festival games for the gods”, and since the gods thought of human suffering as entertainment for them, people glorified violence to please the gods (GM 2.7/p.44). This all ties back to the debt that humans of religious beliefs feel they owe to the higher power, and the guilty conscience that arose through the Christian religion. Not only does suffering increase, but since humans can never repay the guilt they feel they owe to the Christian God, the suffering will never cease to exist, because the debt will continue to grow, never to disappear.
Through the idea that sin is the interpretation of the animal instincts, Nietzsche believes that the concept of sin is not a real thing, but another product of ressentiment and the inversion of human values. Nietzsche associates guilt and sin by saying:
‘Sinfulness’ in humans is not a factual state but rather only the interpretation of a factual state, namely being physiologically out of sorts – the latter seen from a moral-religious perspective that is no longer binding on us. – that someone feels ‘guilty’, ‘sinful’ does not at all prove he is right in feeling so. (GM 3.16/p.92-93)
This feeling of sinfulness that Christians have internalized is fabricated by the latter-day ascetic priest, the religious leadership of Christianity, and part of the process in which religion has inverted the virtues and vices that humans act upon. Humans feel guilt for their perfectly normal human instincts, something that Nietzsche says, “is suffering of man from man, from himself” (GM 2.16/p.57). Humans are pitted against themselves, rather than embracing their instincts, all because of their religion forcing them to feel guilt for them. Humans have been blocked from the “more natural outlet for [their] desire to cause pain”, so they have been forced to turn their pain inwards, to themselves (GM 2.22/p.63). This “suppressed cruelty of the human animal who had been made inwards… invented the bad conscience in order to cause himself pain”, and the ascetic priest exploited this already present bad conscience (GM 2.22/p.63). This animal human that Nietzsche speaks of is the human before Christianity and ressentiment have taken over and refined their bad conscience and who the ascetic priest has “ruined the health of [their] soul” (GM 3.22/p.104).
The ideals of the ascetic priest have been what ultimately create “the sick animal”, a contrast between the animal human and the person who has been infected with the sickness of religion (GM 3.13/p.86). The ascetic priest’s ideology is “the incarnate wish for a different existence, an existence somewhere else”; he is the sick, leading the rest of the sick, making them even more diseased (GM 3.13/p.86). Through the disease that the ascetic priest brings, the sickness will spread, and those who are weak will infect the healthy with their sickness, that being the ascetic ideal and its distinctive form of ressentiment. Woodford explores this through a discussion of the ascetic monk, who embodies the ascetic ideal. They are the ones “who rejected conventional markers of social success and material well-being through restricted diet or fasting, restricted sexuality, withdrawal from society, simple dress, and humble habitation” (Woodford 45). According to Woodford, “it is this kind of sacrifice and disciplining of life that Nietzsche finds at the origins of all the so-called antinatural values of Christianity” (Woodford 45). This rejection of animal instincts is one way in which the ascetic ideal is manifested, and those who it encounters believe it is the cure for what they think are their sins.
This is the spread of the Christian values of the ascetic priest that Nietzsche is concerned with, and the values that stem from ressentiment and the slave revolt in morality will be inflicted on everyone who comes into contact with it. The ascetic priest also is central to the guilty conscience that is so present in Christianity, since the priest changes the direction of ressentiment by changing the direction of the blame that people have.
‘I am suffering: for this someone must be to blame’ – thus every diseased sheep thinks. But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him: ‘that’s right my sheep! Someone must be to blame for it: but you yourself are this someone, you alone are to blame for it – you alone are to blame for yourself!’ (GM 3.15/p.92)
This is what Nietzsche means by the “priest changes the direction of ressentiment”: the blame one has for their suffering moves from blaming others to blaming themselves, creates depression and anger towards yourself, which is rarely a good thing (GM 3.15/p.91). Even if it is not true, the ascetic priest forces their ideals on others and causes them to blame themselves for their suffering.
Though blaming yourself for your own pain does not seem to be a positive aspect of the ascetic ideal, it does give you a meaning for your suffering, a singularly powerful and high praise Nietzsche gives to the Christian priest. On the ascetic priest, he says, “this seeming enemy of life, this negating one – precisely he belongs to the very great conserving and yes-creating forces of life”, meaning that the priest creates meaning and purpose (GM 3.13/p.86). The priest, at first glance, seems to be the subject of Nietzsche’s primary critique, but with a closer reading, Nietzsche’s praise is more apparent. If one believes that there is a reason for their suffering, it may make them feel less hopeless and miserable, since instead of pointless suffering, there is a point to it. Even if they believe it is their own fault, they feel as though they have a sense of agency over it, rather than being a victim to it. This concept of religious values giving someone meaning is one of the major positive aspects of religion and Christianity. “If one disregards the ascetic ideal: man, the animal man, has until now had no meaning. His existence on earth contained no goal” (GM 3.28/p.117). Religion, specifically the belief in God (who closely observes and appreciates their suffering as payment for an unpayable debt), gave humans meaning and a will to live and endure their suffering. Having a god to be in debt to created a purpose for humans, and though it also created the guilty conscience, false sins, and the suppression of natural instincts, it gave life meaning. The ascetic ideal and the Christian faith removed “suicidal nihilism”, allowing humans to no longer merely be “a leaf in the wind”, floating through life with no purpose (GM 3.28/p.118).
This all may seem very contradictory to what Nietzsche has spent the whole book discussing, but that is not the case. How could someone who has written so much on the dangers of the Christian ideals actually find that the ideals are necessary? In the reading of the Genealogy, the reader will come to find that these seeming contradictions may not be so contradictory after all. Nietzsche ends the third and final treatise of the Genealogy with the following on how the ascetic ideal brings a new interpretation of suffering:
The interpretation – there is no doubt – brought new suffering with it, deeper, more inward, more poisonous, gnawing more at life: it brought all suffering under the perspective of guilt . . . But in spite of all this – man was rescued by it, he had a meaning, he was henceforth no longer like a leaf in the wind, a plaything of nonsense, “without- sense,” now he could will something – no matter for the moment in what direction, to what end, with what he willed: the will itself was saved. (GM 3.28/p.118)
Nietzsche is not disregarding what he has said on Christianity and the ascetic ideal in the pervious sections of the book; he acknowledges that through Christianity and the ascetic ideal, suffering has increased. The guilty conscience has surfaced, and human desires have been turned inward and suppressed, but that may be the price to be paid for meaning and the will that Nietzsche finds to be of utmost importance. As Jeffrey McDonough’s book, Saints, Heretics, and Atheists, notes: “people will even invite suffering . . . as long as they believe it is a means to some end . . . What is difficult for people to stomach, Nietzsche proposes, is not suffering itself, but pointless suffering” (McDonough 24.4) Through the ascetic ideal, their suffering is no longer pointless, and though the blame is directed at themselves and brings along great hatred, “all of this means – let us dare to grasp this – a will to nothingness” (GM 3.28/p.118). For Nietzsche, it does not appear to matter what this will is, as long as it exists: “man would much rather will nothingness than not will” (GM 3.28/p.118). The ascetic ideal provides this meaning, which creates a will, and “this need to find meaning in one’s suffering, Nietzsche hypothesizes, is what ultimately explains the remarkable success of ascetic ideals” (McDonough 24.4).
Nietzsche spends a large portion discussing how religion, specifically Christianity, increases suffering, most prominently through the guilt and sin that people following the teachings experience; however, as McDonough states, “the most, basic, fundamental source of pain for humanity, according to Nietzsche . . . is not suffering itself, but a failure to find meaning in life” (McDonough 24.6). While suffering is enhanced through religion, “the greatest [or, at least in Nietzsche’s opinion, greatest] threat to humanity is nihilism”, which is what religion directly combats (McDonough 24.6). This is the point that clears up a lot of the contradictions that it is easy to assume Nietzsche makes in the Genealogy. It cannot be denied that Nietzsche raises many points on the dangers of Christianity: how it internalizes the ascetic ideal, creates immense guilt, and most importantly, generates excess suffering, but the idea that it creates meaning and will is perhaps the most important aspect of it, and this is what makes Nietzsche’s argument hold. “The ascetic ideal is an artifice for the preservation of life”, combatting suicidal nihilism and in turn, giving meaning to existence (GM 3.13/p.86). The way in which Christianity embodies the ascetic ideal does come with internal hate and guilt, and its manifestation of ressentiment is something that Nietzsche does not deny, yet he accepts that it does create the will that he finds so important. He still does not see Christianity as a force for good, and says that the bad conscience that Christianity exploits “is a sickness . . . – this admits of no doubt – but a sickness as pregnancy is a sickness” (GM 2.19/p.60). It causes agony but is necessary, much like pregnancy, and without it (and religion), humans would lose the ability to develop and the will and meaning that is so crucial to life would be lost. Though he is nowhere near someone who idolizes religion, especially Christianity, it is necessary until humans can find another force in life where meaning and will can be found.
However important religion is, Nietzsche’s issues with it cannot be forgotten. He still believes that the central issue with religion is that it is built from a place of ressentiment, but there are some religions, unlike Christianity, that are to be admired. There are ones who have used “more noble ways of making use of the fabrication of gods”, instead of “this self-crucifixion and self-defilement of man” that Christianity and Europe have created through their religious faith (GM 2.23/p.64). Nietzsche uses the ancient Greeks as an example, who have used their religion and their gods to stay away from bad conscience, which is precisely the opposite of what Christianity has done. The Greek gods “served in those days to justify humans to a certain degree even in bad things, they served as causes of evil – in those days it was not the punishment they took upon themselves but rather, as is more noble, the guilt”, an important distinction from the Christian God (GM 2.23/p.65). The gods not only gave meaning to life, but they also took the guilt from humans by making themselves the causes of evil; rather than the humans, unlike Christianity, which pushes the guilt onto humans, Greek gods take the guilt, removing the guilty conscience. So, while bad conscience cannot be completely removed, it is not exploited and not able to be turned into a guilty conscience. This demonstrates that Nietzsche does not necessarily have a problem with the creation of gods, but his issues with religion are from what Christianity specifically brings along with it: guilty conscience, and how it is born from a place of hate.
At first glance (and even at first reading, due to the complexity of Nietzsche’s writing), it can be difficult to see past his initial comments on slave morality, bad and guilty conscience, and ressentiment, and it is easy to make the (false) conclusion that Nietzsche is against everything that has been the foundation for Christianity. While he does believe that these all contribute to an increase of suffering and the creditor-debtor relationship is an unhealthy one, he thinks that there are bigger problems to deal with: the need for humans to have a will. After more thorough analysis, it is more apparent that Nietzsche does not see bad conscience as a bad thing, unlike the name suggests. However contradictory it may seem, he does think that the ascetic ideal, and Christianity along with it is necessary for society. Until society finds a better solution to nihilism and a will is found elsewhere, the ascetic ideal, and therefore religion, is necessary.
Work Cited
McDonough, Jeffrey K., “Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: No Alternative?” Saints, Heretics, and Atheists: A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Oxford Academic, 2022, pg 240-48. https://doi.org/10.1093 oso/9780197563847.003.0024
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Maudemarie Clarke and Alan J. Swensen, Hackett Publishing, 1998.
Woodford, Peter J. The Moral Meaning of Nature. The University of Chicago Press, 2018.