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by Isobel Wilson
Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality critiques Christianity for causing irreparable damage to human morality. His genealogical approach identifies the historical context in which Christianity emerged, tracing the origin of the humanity’s moral decline to its adoption of the New Testament. Since then, he argues, mankind has been suffering under a distorted sense of what is “good,” as the “ascetic ideal” that Christianity preaches removes man from his life-affirming nature and glorifies weakness over strength. Nietzsche asserts that this ideal offers meaning and contributes to human complexity, which is often interpreted as praise. However, upon closer inspection, these supposed endorsements of the ascetic reveal themselves to reinforce his argument that Christianity undermines human progress by instilling guilt on humanity, glorifying weakness through slave morality, and promoting a life-negating dogma. This essay will evaluate the methods through which Nietzsche denounces Christianity, specifically in his portrayal of the ascetic ideal, slave morality, and ressentiment, and address how what he acknowledges as “positive” aspects of Christianity only further his condemnation.
Nietzsche’s main point of contention with Christianity is its revaluation morality; its adoption of a slave morality where man came to idealize what had once been considered shameful. Previously, having a “will to power” was a sign of moral health and was indicative of God’s favour. However, when the sect of Christianity evolved out of Judaism, a revaluation occurred and created conditions where “the miserable alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly are the only pious, the only blessed in God” and the noble and powerful ones are “the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the cursed” (GM 1.7/p.16-17). Nietzsche overwhelmingly views the ascetic ideal as a catalyst for human decline, as it “is directed greenly and maliciously against physiological flourishing itself, in particular against its expression, beauty, joy; whereas pleasure is felt and sought in deformation, atrophy, in pain, in accident, in the ugly, in voluntary forfeit, in unselfing, self-flagellation, self-sacrifice”, impeding the progress of mankind by villainizing success and condemning man to an existence plagued by self-inflicted inferiority (GM 3.11/p.84)
Nietzsche praises the Old Testament of the Bible for its portrayal of “great human beings, a heroic landscape, and (…) the incomparable naïveté of the strong heart” and criticizes the New Testament, which he refers to as the “most overestimated scriptural work” with nothing but “embellishment, crookedness, [and] oddness” (GM 3.22/p.105). He implies that the New Testament is not representative of God, but rather of “pious little men”, as “no cock will crow about [the ascetic ideal], much less God” (GM 3.22 /p.105). The contrast between the Old Testament and the New Testament reveals how the revaluation deteriorated humanity’s understanding of social hierarchy and what it means to be ‘good’, as the Old Testament represents the will to power, whereas the New Testament represents the diseased state of humanity as a result of slave morality. Nietzsche compares the Christian God with the Greek gods, that latter of who have found “more noble ways of making use of the fabrication of gods than the self-crucifixion and selfdefilement of [Christianity]” (GM 2.23/p.64). Greek gods justify natural behaviour by acting human; they are flawed, yet they take pride in success and power, which Nietzsche believes to be more affirming of the human condition. Author Michael Forster furthers this conviction by contrasting the Homeric admiration for honour and wealth, and the distaste for those who had no title or power to their name. He alludes to The Odyssey, in which Odysseus seeks revenge against those who offended him, a far cry from the biblical precept “[l]ove your enemies, do good to them which hate you” which appears in the New Testament (cited in Forster 9; Luke 6:27). This contrast reveals more specifically what Nietzsche rejects about Christianity, as he praises religions that affirm life through nobility, but he takes issue with the ascetic nature of Christianity that persuades man to supress his own potential. This systematic inversion brought man from a state of pride to a state of shame, which Nietzsche condemns for degrading the human species into an unnatural state of weakness.
For Nietzsche, the slave revolt of morality was driven by ressentiment, a sentiment of revenge that Nietzsche claims emerged from Judaism as a strategy to overcome its oppressors by inflicting psychological damage in the form of guilt. Forster’s article “Nietzsche: Three Genealogies of Christianity” explores the historical conditions in which Nietzsche believes the slave revolt occurred. The revaluation was a mechanism through which the Jewish population could overcome the persecution by the Greeks and Romans: “the first Christians also had a reason to denigrate them as part of their broader project of systematically attacking Greek and Roman values through the inversion and thereby attacking the Greeks and Romans themselves” (Forster 13). Guilt became a vessel to avenge the more powerful, as “the happy would one day begin to be ashamed of their happiness and perhaps say among themselves: ‘it is a disgrace to be happy! There is too much misery” (GM 3.14/p.89). Forster and Nietzsche both assert that ressentiment was a way to diminish the “world that had so badly disappointed them by projecting all value onto an otherworld, and thereby making this world appear valueless in comparison” (Forster 13). The Jewish revaluation forever changed man’s view of himself and the world around him, causing those who had previously been in power to diminish themselves by succumbing to the guilt caused by ressentiment.
Nietzsche attributes human complexity to the acquisition of guilt instilled by the revaluation, as “only here did the human soul acquire depth in a higher sense and become evil”, and with this complexity also comes the “superiority of man over other creatures” (GM 1.6/p.16). This proclamation should not be interpreted as praise for Christianity, as man becoming “an interesting animal” does not equate to an improved animal (GM 1.6/ p.16). Nietzsche understands the acquisition of depth and moral complexity of man as synonymous with “‘tamed’, ‘weakened’, ‘discouraged’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘pampered’, ’emasculated’ (hence almost the same as injured)” (GM 3.21/ p.103). He views this new moral complexity not as evolution toward excellence, but as a form of domestication that causes man to turn his emotional instincts against himself, resulting in guilt, ressentiment, and a weakening of humanity’s natural will to power. Thus, Christianity’s moral absolutes and punishments tame man, “but it does not make him ‘better’” (GM 2.15/ p.56).
Nietzsche furthers this point by implying human complexity arose along with bad conscience, when “all those instincts of the wild free roaming human turned themselves backwards against man himself” (GM 2.16/ p.57). These internalized instincts are the aggressive and violent attitudes that had previously been expelled outwards and onto others, which were suddenly directed inwards:
All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn themselves inwards – this is what I call the internalizing of man: thus first grows in man that which he later calls his “soul”. The entire inner world, originally thin as if inserted between two skins, has spread and unfolded, has taken on depth, breadth, height to the same extent that man’s outward discharging has been obstructed. (GM 2.16/p.57)
The new trajectory of man’s aggressive instincts gave rise to self-contempt and guilt. Though man became more complex, he began finding “pleasure in persecution, in assault, in change, in destruction” and creating the conditions for the emergence of “bad conscience” (GM 2.16/p.57). Therefore, the psychological depth and complexity of the species was attained at the expense of natural human conscience and suppression of the true human condition. It villainized man’s natural instincts to seek power, honour, and ensure his own well-being, translating them into guilt and ultimately “‘demonizing [human] nature’” (GM 2.21/p.63). In doing so, it inspired “the will of man to find himself guilty and reprehensible to the point that it cannot be atoned for [and] his will to erect an ideal – that of the “holy God” – in order (…) to be tangibly certain of his absolute unworthiness” (GM 2.22/p.63). The more ‘successful’ andWilson 6 complex a species is, “the more ‘guilty’ and ‘indebted’ they felt towards their now idealized forebears”, equating a species’ progress with debt and portraying how human complexity does not necessarily contribute to its development (Greer 313).
Of the natural instincts suppressed by Christianity, Nietzsche especially focuses on man’s will to power. Nietzsche views Christianity as negating man’s natural will to power, as well as removing the value of life itself. Nietzsche views Christianity as representing “life against life” as man becomes preoccupied with weakness, rejecting his natural will to power for the prospect of divine salvation in the afterlife (GM 3.12/p.85). The ascetic ideal represents a repression of man’s true nature: a will to power, greatness, wealth, and nobility, and replaces it with a will to enslavement, submission, poverty, and humility; all for the favour of God, as they [exploit the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of self- discipline, self-supervision, self-overcoming” (GM 3.16/p.92). This only deteriorates the state of man as he begins to find pleasure in punishment and seek out the opportunity to diminish himself. He believes that man should embrace suffering, and attribute meaning to life independently of dogma; true power affirms life and embraces reality rather than finding comfort in mediocrity. Nietzsche believes that embracing hardship affirms man’s ability to bear the challenges of life, whereas Christianity makes suffering out to be a form of divine punishment for which man must degrade himself. For Nietzsche, this justification goes against the true nature of man, as Christianity represents the “hatred of the human, still more of the animal, still more of the material, this abhorrence of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and of beauty” (GM 3.28/p.118). It is an aversion to life itself, which is accomplished by diminishing man’s view of himself and the world around him.
Nietzsche portrays the repression of man’s natural instincts and the acquisition of guilt as a mechanism of social control, as guilt is quickly translated into a form of debt to Christian dogma and the institutions that uphold it. The ascetic reinterprets suffering into a form of punishment, as “guilt before God (…) becomes an instrument of torture for [man]” since he is born into a world where he must constantly diminish himself to uphold the Christian standards of morality (GM 2.22/p.63). Man had previously not experienced such a heightened sense of guilt before the moral absolutes of Christianity were established, as it was through “the internalization of moral codes, and the representation of these codes in memory that can dispense mental pain (i.e., guilt)” (Greer 310). Nietzsche asserts that the founding of Christianity “was therefore accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on earth” (GM 2.20/p.62). Humanity sought to find a reason for the suffering they endured and the ascetic provided them with a solution: “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). The translation of external injustice into internal blame reinforces human complexity as contributing to the “taming” of the human species, as the overwhelming burden of guilt that is placed upon the shoulders of the human race creates conditions where man is submissive to ascetic control. Nietzsche’s condemnation reveals the contractual nature of Christianity, as slave morality disfigures man’s view of himself, condemning him to a life of self-belittlement to maintain the ascetic condition, he is in irreparable and inescapable “[debt] to deity” (GM 2.20/p.61).
This infliction of mental pain is essential for the maintenance of control and “dominion over ones who suffer”, as the ascetic diminishes humanity into a submissive position by translating guilt into sins which must be forgiven through dedication to God (GM 3.15/p.90). This appears in what Nietzsche refers to as the “relationship of the debtor and his creditor”, where man is in debt to God and must work to repay him (GM 2.19/p.60).
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, out of love (is that credible?)—out of love for his debtor!… (GM 2.21/p.63)
Scholar Scott Greer furthers Nietzsche’s conviction that Christianity “governs behaviour through a sense of guilt; a sense of guilt, indebtedness, and obligation” towards God (Greer 313). He elaborates on how the dynamic between the debtor and creditor is used by the Church as a means to obtain power: “the capacity for guilt, that ‘instrument’ of ‘bad conscience,’ was the internal development in human history that allowed for some measure of social control” (Greer 310). The sentiment of being indebted to God gives rise to feelings of guilt, which then enables the inevitable decline of man through self-hatred and life-negation. This relationship between debtor and creditor is burdens man with a sense of existential guilt as “from [the] womb man arises and into which the evil principle is now placed”, referring to the moral weight of being born in sin (GM 2.21/p.62-63). The ascetic ideal nurtures bad conscience as it places the individual in guilt immediately upon birth; “guilt [has] developed phylogenetically in the human species and therefore represent a state of ontological guilt or a sense of being ‘born into sin’” (Greer 311). Nietzsche condemns Christianity for subjecting man to a lifetime of debt, for which they have to “repay them through sacrifices and achievements”, exposing how man must reduce himself to elevate the ascetic ideal (GM 2.19/p.60).
Nietzsche views the ascetic’s success as impressive, but ultimately poisonous. The characteristics he attributes to Christianity are overwhelmingly negative, however, they do reveal a sense of admiration for its effectiveness. He juxtaposes descriptions like “sublime”, and “ingenious”, with “dangerous” and “cult”, admitting to its successful strategy for the ascetic, but not for contributing positively to the development of humanity but rather its capacity to engrain itself so deeply into human conscience (GM 3.21/p.104). He views it as a sickness, referring to Christians as “diseased sheep” as the ascetic priest adopts the role of the “foreordained savior, shepherd, and advocate of the sick herd” (GM 3.15/p.92, p.90). He refers to the ascetic as “this true artist of the feelings of guilt”, reinterpreting the harsh reality of the world and acting not as a solution to the existential problems of humanity, but rather to “combat the listlessness of depression, to alleviate it, to anesthetize it” (GM 3.20/p.102, p.101). Naturally, man “does not negate suffering in itself: he wants it, he even seeks it out, provided one shows him a meaning for it”, which is exactly what the ascetic does, accomplishing this feat in such a way that man blames himself for his own misfortune and diminishes himself as a result (GM 3.28/p.117). This acknowledgement of the ascetic’s effectiveness only heightens his warning against it, as it reveals its brilliant, yet damaging impacts on humanity. He overwhelmingly views the ascetic as a disease, but one that is widely successful and strategic.
Nietzsche alleges that Christianity emerged from man’s need for a purpose, when “an enormous void surrounded man – he did not know how to justify, to explain, to affirm himself; he suffered from the problem of his meaning” (GM 3.28/p.117). He views the ascetic explanation of existence not as a rational explanation for the workings of the world, but rather as a coping mechanism for the suffrage that humans face that is otherwise unintelligible. He concludes that the foundation of religion is based on man’s existential worry, stating that “the origin of the gods, an origin, that is, out of fear!” (GM 2.19/p.61). The ascetic ideal provides comfort for man, fabricating unnatural answers to the harsh reality of man’s existence; “the alleviation of suffering, ‘comforting’ of every kind – this turns out to be his very genius: how inventively he has understood his task as a comforter” (GM 3.17/p.93). He refers to Christianity as a “faute de mieux, par excellence”, or in other words, an explanation that was useful in the lack of anything better (GM 3.28/p.118). This exposes humanity’s desperate need for meaning, as they are willing to embrace a life-denying framework simply because it renders meaning to suffering. Man had previously existed in a world void of meaning and purpose, without means to justify the suffering he endured; “for every great human destiny, a still greater ‘for nothing!’ resounded as refrain” (GM 3.28/p.117). Just as there was no greater reward for triumph, there was no one to blame for the unwarranted suffering of the human species. This posed the threat of nihilism, “a condition in which there is nothing to will” and man feels that his existence serves no purpose (Reginster 167).
Nietzsche acknowledges the ascetic as being necessary in protecting man from “suicidal nihilism”, as “man was rescued by it, he had a meaning, he was henceforth no longer like a leaf in the wind (GM 3.28/p.118). Though he does offer this brief moment of praise, it is juxtaposed next to the overwhelming argument of the opposite. He concludes with the declaration that “man would much rather will nothingness than not will”, or in other words, man would rather submit himself completely to a dogma that provides meaning than exist without purpose and succumb to nihilism (GM 3.28/p.118). This raises the question: is willing nothingness better than not willing at all? Writer Bernard Reginster argues that Nietzsche’s praise of the ascetic is paradoxical, as the meaning that Christianity provides to prevent nihilism is not so far removed from the very thing it aims to prevent. In his work The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, Reginster asserts that both are features of nihilism; willing nothingness and willing nothing are two sides of the same coin, and one should not be considered as a saving grace in preventing the other. Reginster reveals how Nietzsche portrays the ascetic ideal as both defense against nihilism, but also an expression of it. The ascetic fills man’s void of purposelessness by binding humanity to a life-denying moral framework that inspires submission and weakness. Therefore, despite psychologically relieving man from the threat of nihilism, he is met with moral enslavement and self-belittlement. Reginster argues that this “[interpretation of] suffering as punishment for one’s guilt provides no relief for this suffering itself, and it in fact creates ‘fresh suffering’ that is also ‘deeper’ and more ‘destructive’”, making the ascetic more of an enabling force to nihilism than a solution (Reginster 167). Willing nothingness as a way of finding purpose was not intended as a redeeming feature of Christianity for Nietzsche, but served to demonstrate man’s will to degrade himself if provided he is given a meaning for it. Nietzsche views Christianity as an antidote that cured man’s lack of purpose, but also as a potent poison that diseased human morality and understanding of man’s position in the world. The element of Christianity that Nietzsche most praises also supports his condemnation, revealing how what may initially seem to be a redeeming feature of Christianity can quickly become the opposite.
Ultimately, On the Genealogy of Morality reveals not only Nietzsche’s harsh rejection of Christianity, but also how he views it as a contributing factor to human decline. He criticizes the ascetic ideal because it glorifies everything he believes is wrong in the world; it has made a virtue out of weakness and deceived the masses into “interpreting weakness itself as freedom”, manipulating people into submission by making them feel guilty for strength (GM 1.13/p.26). He denounces slave morality, which gave rise to feelings of guilt, indebtedness, and consequently, the loss of humanity’s natural will to power. He believes that true goodness lies within the powerful and the unashamed, as seen in Homer’s works and the Greek gods. The supposed “positive” aspects that he attributes to the ascetic only further his critique, revealing his paradoxical conception of human complexity and moral depth. The psychological depth attained through slave morality further incapacitates humanity, as it gives rise to bad conscience and places man in a state of moral enslavement and self-contempt as he internalizes instincts that were meant to be expelled outwards. Though he seemingly admits to the ascetic’s necessity in impeding nihilism, the meaning it promotes a life-denying moral framework that enables the very thing it is supposed to impede. Nietzsche views Christianity as a vessel for human decline, facilitating the adoption of slave morality and inhibiting humanity’s ability to find meaning outside of the ascetic, and acting as a force that disables man into a state of helplessness, steering the herd towards weakness rather than contributing to the development of the human species.
Works Cited
Forster, M. N. (2022). Nietzsche: Three Genealogies of Christianity. Genealogy, 6(2), 38. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020038
Greer, Scott. “Freud’s ‘Bad Conscience’: The Case of Nietzsche’s Genealogy.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, vol. 38, no. 3, June 2002, pp. 303–15.
EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.10064.
Nietzsche, Freidrich. On The Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Hackett Publishing Company, 1988.
Reginster, Bernard, ‘Asceticism’, The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (Oxford, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23
Sept. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868903.003.0006