THE TAMING OF THE BEAST

(Although it may appear otherwise, this is not another Genealogie entry, but a smooth move from that one to the next Nietzschean work, which is Die Götzen-Dämmerung.)

In an already quoted passage from Genealogie-3-12, Nietzsche remarks that the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our concept of this thing, our objectivity, be. We ought to keep this profound observation in mind as we approach one of the so many ostensibly unpalatable statements he has in store for us, as I do, reconciling my love of Nietzsche with the offended sense of right and wrong, whenever these two are at odds over something downright outrageous that he has just said in my presence.

Both my mother and my father were Russian Orthodox believers, religion and patriotism being inseparable --- not at all paradoxically --- in the Soviet State.

I was raised in a God-loving home, where “morality” was one of the most important words in our lexicon, and the goodness, the propriety, and the absolute necessity of moral conduct was unequivocally recognized and honored. It is therefore impossible to take Nietzsche’s side in his relentless attacks on morality, should the question be formulated as “are you for it or against it?” But fortunately Nietzsche himself provides the solution for establishing a reasonable compatibility of the incompatibles. He does not require us to take the side of Böse against the side of niceness, as Maxwell Smart used to euphemize the word Gut. Rather than taking sides, what he has suggested is to go jenseits, and, all of a sudden, his intention, and the advantage that it offers to us, are daylight clear: he is offering us an “extra eye” to look at the subject of morality, so dear to our hearts and minds. And, of course, the more eyes, different eyes, we may use to observe the same thing, the more complete will our concept of this thing, our objectivity, be. Therefore, we have nothing to lose, but a great deal to gain here, thus paying proper tribute to the subject whose “goodness, propriety, and absolute necessity we unequivocally recognize and honor.”

The whole preceding consideration has been presented to the reader in anticipation of the following passage, which is both explosive and breathtakingly fresh, from Nietzsche’s Die Götzen-Dämmerung: The Improvers of Mankind: 1-2:

“…My demand of the philosopher is well known: that he take his stand beyond good and evil, and treat the illusion of moral judgment as beneath him. This demand follows from an insight I was first to articulate, namely, that there are no moral facts. Moral and religious judgments are based on realities which do not exist. Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena --- or, more precisely, a misinterpretation. Moral judgments, like religious ones, belong to a stage of ignorance, in which the very concept of the real, and the distinction between what is real and imaginary, are still lacking. “Truth” at this stage designates all sorts of things which we today call “figments of the imagination.” Moral judgments are therefore never to be taken literally: So understood, they are always merely absurd. Semiotically, however, they remain invaluable: they reveal, at least for those who can interpret them, the most valuable realities of cultures and psychologies that did not know how to “understand” themselves. Morality is only a language of signs (a group of symptoms): one must know how to interpret them correctly, to be able to profit from them.

A first, tentative example: at all times morality has aimed to “improve” men --- this aim is above all what was called morality. Under the same word, however, the most divergent tendencies have been concealed. But “improvement” has meant both taming the beast called man, and breeding a particular kind of man. Such zoological concepts are required to express the realities--- realities, of which the typical “improver,” the priest, admittedly neither knows anything, nor wants to know anything.

To call the taming of an animal its “improvement” sounds almost like a joke to our ears. Whoever knows what goes on in kennels, doubts that dogs are “improved” there. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through pain, through wounds, and through hunger, they become sickly beasts. It is no different with the tamed man. whom the priest has “improved.” In the early Middle Ages,-- when the church was indeed, above all, a kennel,-- the most perfect specimens of the “blond beast” were hunted down everywhere; and the noble Teutons, for example, were “improved.” But how did such an “improved” Teuton look, after he had been drawn into a monastery? Like a caricature of man, a miscarriage: he had become a ‘sinner,’ he was stuck in a cage tormented with all sorts of painful concepts. And there he lay, sick, miserable, hateful to himself, full of evil feelings against the impulses of his own life, full of suspicion against all that was still strong and happy. In short, a “Christian.”

Physiologically speaking, in the struggle with beasts, making them sick may be the only way to make them weak. The church understood this: it sickened and weakened man--- and by so doing, “improved” him.”

As I said before, it is practically impossible for a Christian, or for an adherent of a great religious tradition other than Christianity, to accept this ruthless assassination of morality, while standing on the moral ground provided by those traditions. But then, it is equally impossible to make a moralist of one religious tradition accept the morality of a competing religious tradition as well. It is only on neutral ground, provided to the thinking man by philosophy, and general common sense, that such philosophical challenges and dares may be accepted, and, both intellectually and morally, benefited from.

In fact, it is only when standing on such neutral ground, while reading Nietzsche, that we can properly see and address--not the basics of our morality, which are hopefully unassailable in the best of us--but some of the worst excesses of micro-religious moralities imposed on the believers by their crafty denominations.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a conservative Baptist pastor a few years ago about the evils of drinking and smoking in the eyes of some, while not in the eyes of others. Many Baptist congregations, he told me, outlaw smoking as an immoral vice across the United States, but not in Kentucky, where tobacco is grown, and any attack on smoking is considered an attack on an important home industry, and therefore, immoral in itself, as outlawing smoking in Kentucky undercuts people’s ability to be self-sufficient. By the same token, drinking alcohol is prohibited as a noxious vice by numerous congregations across the United States, but not in the State of California, where Sonoma and Napa Counties depend on the wine industry in making their ends meet… Mind you, we were not even talking about the practices of different Christian or Baptist denominations in America, but about the practices of a single denomination --- Southern Baptist, --- which vary from state to state in their definition of Gut und Böse, depending on the types of industries these states rely on, a criterion which has nothing to do with religious morality per se!

So, long live Nietzsche’s extra eye and his daring to criticize those who dare to hide behind the authority of God just because it best suits their worldly purposes!