The Repression of Human Nature Theme Analysis

In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche argues that Christian values have corrupted European society and triggered a regressive cultural crisis in late 19th-century Europe. Nietzsche believes that humans are innate predators, but modern European society doesn’t offer a healthy outlet for people’s violent predatory instincts—essentially, human beings’ primal need to feel the satisfaction of exerting power over their prey. To Nietzsche, the “ascetic” ideology of Judeo-Christian doctrine—centering on “poverty, chastity, and humility,” or practicing restraint from life’s pleasures—masks a perversion of human culture that makes it profoundly sick. To Nietzsche, most aspects of modern European human culture—including religion, philosophy, science, and law—aren’t progressive but merely express the sadistic human urge for power and ultimately make people suffer. Nietzsche thus argues that European culture is in crisis because the Christian values on which its founded don’t allow people to experience joy in living as we are meant to and instead forces us to manifest our inherent sadistic impulses in harmful ways.

Nietzsche believes that humankind has an innate drive to feel powerful, which is a part of our survival instinct. Prior to large societies, human beings had to hunt, kill, roam, and conquer territory in order to survive. But Nietzsche is clear that there’s nothing wrong with this—human beings are simply hardwired to thrive off of conflict and cruelty, because it keeps us alive in the harsh, predatory natural world. Nietzsche argues that the primal human is a “beast of prey”: we are hardwired to be predatory as a means of survive. Hunting and killing are essentially cruel behaviors, but without such instincts, humans wouldn’t have survived the early days of our existence. Early humans were also “nomadic,” instinctively seizing and protecting territory to survive. When people form small, isolated societies, they still practice “murder, arson, rape, and torture” outside the domain of their own territory, which are manifestations of an innate drive for violence and power. Historically, humankind thought there was nothing immoral about possessing these power-driven instincts. In fact, expressing such instincts give people a profound feeling of “joy” and “freedom” in acting true to ourselves. But Nietzsche notes that many powerful people in modern Europe assume that recent human civilization has triumphed by “taming” our “animal” selves (and our violent lust for power). To Nietzsche, this is a lie, because our instincts can’t be changed. Instinctive, predatory human tendencies to express power, violence, and cruelty only become more dangerous to humanity when we try to suppress them.

Nietzsche argues that modern European culture, which centers on Christian values of “poverty, chastity, and humility,” doesn’t have healthy outlets for humankind’s predatory, sadistic impulses, so these impulses inevitably emerge in more damaging ways. In Nietzsche’s view, the law was originally designed to allow people to live full and active lives and carve out areas where conflict and aggression were permissible—but the modern European conceptions of justice exert “vengeance” on criminals in far more damaging ways. The European legal system is based on ideas of credit and debt, meaning that a person who breaks a law owes a debt to society—and justice is characterized as a legal right to inflict pain on the criminal in equal proportion to the debt owed. To Nietzsche, such a practice is evidence of the sadistic impulse in humankind emerging as resentful vengeance rather than healthy conflict. Christian religious leaders—or “ascetic priests”—promise to help those who suffer, but Nietzsche argues that they only cause more suffering as their followers deny their natural instincts. Essentially, ascetic priests exert power by falsely depicting themselves as healers who will lead others to “bliss” in the afterlife. Nietzsche believes that practicing the “ascetic ideology” of Christian values makes people suffer, because it forces them to feel guilty every time they feel their natural aggressive urges. Such people believe that they are evil, or sinful, for being human and having a natural instinct to exert power and thrive in the world. In exerting power, the ascetic priest feels a sense of mastery, which brings them joy—but their followers perpetually suffer because they believe that their inevitable instincts to exert power are evil, meaning they feel perpetually “unworthy.”

Even many nonreligious thinkers (such as secular philosophers) embody the “ascetic ideal,” arguing that humans are at their best when they use their rationality and suppress their “animalistic” emotional and bodily feelings. Such practices appeal to philosophers because they enjoy thinking and therefore want to rid themselves of distractions like commerce and romance. The desire to feel mastery over their emotions allows philosophers to exert their power (over emotional and bodily “distractions” in life), and they feel happy in being able to do so. As such, they tend to argue that cultivating “reason” is fundamentally better than getting bogged down in the messy emotional encounters of life. For many people, however, the same practices of restraint from life’s daily pleasures only make them deny the aspects of life that will actually make them happy and fulfilled.

Nietzsche believes that we would experience life with profound “joy” if we accepted that we simply are power-driven beings, and we cultivated healthy public outlets to manage our innate desire for conflict and violence. Nietzsche argues that some historical cultures, like the Ancient Greeks, recognized and even embraced the “beast of prey” in humankind and were thus more progressive than modern Europeans. The Ancient Greeks provided healthy public outlets—like “war,” “violent festivities,” and public executions—for humans to express the cruel aspects of our nature. Harsh as they seem, Nietzsche believes that such “bizarre cruelties” are actually beneficial because they allow us to feel a healthy “joy” in expressing our natural instincts. Modern European culture—which has no such outlets—forces people to turn their instinctual cruelty inward on themselves. Instead of being expressed and released, this self-directed cruelty festers and continues unchecked, which causes great “pain” and “misery.” Thus, contrary to the modern belief that Christian morality is progressive, Nietzsche argues that modern European culture founded on this value system is actually regressive and damaging to humanity.