The reader may note that after a
long thematic hiatus we are back in my Nietzsche
section. For a variety of reasons, this section has never been posted on my
blog as a block of entries. A sizable number of entries preceding it and
following it have already found their places on my blog. In a future
mega-revision, if such is in the cards at all, I intend to remedy this glaring
shortcoming, and coupled with significant revisions and expansions, this
section may be posted on this blog as a whole. Meanwhile, that time may never
come, and it would be silly to wait for it ad infinitum. So, here it is.
This entry is immensely complicated and difficult to be
satisfied with, under any circumstances, without an intensive effort on my part
to go much deeper into the subject, which my present constraints of time do not
allow me to do. I am therefore reduced to making peace with the current state
of this entry, being a second approximation to the final goal, and, to be sure,
a series of several such approximations is in store for me in the future. The
same goes for the whole Nietzsche and Christianity series of entries,
both in this Nietzsche section and elsewhere.
The motifs and references in this entry echo and often
replicate the ones scattered around other sections of this book, particularly,
in the Religion section. This is to be expected whenever a ‘sine qua
non’ Nietzsche entry duels with a ‘sine qua non’ thematic
entry, and neither is willing to give in. At some later stage I shall look at
all such conflicts of redundancy again, to make a proper judgment, bearing in
mind that, although I wish to keep repetition to the minimum, it is also
natural that most Nietzschean entries carry certain specific themes, and
naturally these themes do belong in their respective sections, for which
to exclude Nietzsche just because he has a section of his own would have been a
triumph of silliness.
***
The word “Antichrist” is unquestionably the strongest word of
condemnation or of opprobrium in all Christian vocabulary. It is therefore the
ultimate challenge to Christian sensibilities when a person calls himself
the Antichrist, especially with such gusto as Nietzsche seems to do
it in this passage of Ecce Homo:
“I am
the anti-donkey par excellence, and thus, a world-historical monster. I am, in
Greek, and not only in Greek, the Antichrist.”
It is all too easy, and perhaps
even charitable, to attribute a great many sentences of this nature in Ecce Homo to a progressive state of
Nietzsche’s mental illness, exhibiting itself in this terminal sickbed quasi-autobiography,
but the question of dismissing anything merely on that account is by no means
all that simple. Indeed, the positively-charged word Antichrist reverberates
through Nietzsche’s later writings, be that in the title of his famous 1888
book Der Antichrist, or in such reasonably sane lines in his 1886 Preface
to Birth of Tragedy, or the 1887 Genealogy of Morals:
“Thus
it happened that in those days, with this problem book, my vital instincts
turned against ethics, and founded a radical counter-doctrine, slanted
aesthetically, to oppose the Christian libel on life. But it still wanted a
name. Being a philologist, I christened it rather arbitrarily (for who can tell
the real name of the Antichrist?) with the name of a Greek god, Dionysos.”
(1886 Preface to Birth of Tragedy, #5.) “Is this even possible today? But some day he must yet
come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit,
this Antichrist and Antinihilist, this victor over God and nothingness,--- he
must come one day…” (Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay,
#24.)
These are no ravings of a
lunatic, unless we dismiss everything that Nietzsche has ever written as
lunacy, in which case we must dismiss all genius as a product of a mentally
disordered mind, and install mediocrity as the queen of philosophy and
creativity as such. I suggest that we dismiss nothing on that account, but
treat it all with utmost respect and most careful consideration.
Aside from Nietzsche’s exorbitant
propensity to shock, the question which this entry puts out is whether he is
much more than Anti-Christian in his approach (which would be only
natural in the Kierkegaardian age), and is in fact a bona fide Anti-Christ?
I know that a myriad of Nietzsche
readers will immediately confront me with Nietzsche passages that are not only
conspicuously anti-Christ (e.g. "Christ, on the
other hand, whom we like to imagine as having the warmest of hearts, furthered
men’s stupidity, took the side of the intellectually weak, and kept the
greatest intellect from being produced: and this was consistent. We can predict
that his opposite, the absolute wise man, will just as necessarily prevent the
production of a Christ." -- In Menschliches 235), but ‘anti-God’
as well (e.g. the highly irreverent story of God’s creation of man, in Antichrist
48).
There is no point in trying to
defend some of these outrageously indefensible passages, except to reiterate
that “advocatus diaboli” is not necessarily an equivalent of the devil.
But my defense of Nietzsche takes a different road. Hasn’t he called Jesus
Christ “the noblest human being” who ever lived? (In Menschliches
475.) And hasn’t he made this notable distinction between a Christian and
the Christians:
“The
word Christianity is already a misunderstanding: in reality there has
been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.” (Antichrist 39.)
In fact, this whole passage is so important for the understanding of his “anti-Christianity”
that I am compelled to quote it in full:
"I shall
go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity.-- The
word Christianity is already a misunderstanding: in reality there has
been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross. The Gospels died on
the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the Gospels was the
very reverse of what he had lived: bad tidings, a Dysangelium.
It’s an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in faith and
particularly in faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark of
the Christian… Only the Christian way of life, the life lived by
him who died on the cross, is Christian. To this day, such a life is
still possible and for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive
Christianity will remain possible in all ages. Not faith, but acts;
above all, an avoidance of acts, a different state of being.
States of consciousness, faith of a sort, the acceptance, for example, of
anything as “true” -- as every psychologist knows, the value of these things is
perfectly indifferent and fifth-rate, compared to that of the instincts:
Strictly speaking, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false. To
reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance of truth,
to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to formulate the negation of
Christianity. In fact, there are no Christians. The “Christian,”
that is, he, who for two thousand years has passed as a Christian, -- is simply
a psychological self-delusion. Closely examined, it appears that, despite all
his “faith,” he has been ruled only by his instincts-- and what
instincts!-- In all ages, for example, in the case of Luther, “faith” has
been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a curtain, behind which the
instincts have played their game-- a shrewd blindness to the domination
of certain of the instincts. I have already called “faith” the specially
Christian form of shrewdness-- people always talk of their
“faith,” and act, according to their instincts. In the world of
ideas of the Christian, there is nothing that so much as touches reality: On
the contrary, one recognizes an instinctive hatred of reality as the
motive power, the only motive power at the bottom of Christianity… What follows
therefrom?--- That even here, in psychologicis, there is a radical
error, which is to say, one conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in substance.
Take away one idea and put in its place an authentic reality,-- and the
whole of Christianity crumbles to nothingness!-- Viewed calmly, this strangest
of all phenomena, a religion not only depending on errors,-- but inventive and
ingenious only in devising injurious errors, poisonous to life and to
the heart-- this remains a spectacle for the gods-- for those gods who
are also philosophers, and whom I have encountered, for example, in the famous
dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when their disgust leaves them (and
us!) they will be thankful for the spectacle afforded by the Christians:
perhaps because of this curious exhibition alone the wretched little
planet called the earth deserves a glance from omnipotence, a show of divine
interest. Therefore, let us not underestimate these Christians: the Christian,
false to the point of innocence, is far above the ape, and, in its
application to the Christians, a well-known theory of descent becomes a mere
piece of politeness."
To be continued…
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