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Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On the Genealogy of Morals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Good and Evil
The Repression of Human Nature
Art, Beauty, and Emotions
Summary
Analysis
1. Nietzsche wonders about the significance of ascetic ideals, which celebrate self-control and holding back from material, emotional, and bodily desires—similar to the way monks live. He thinks that artists either put too little or too much stock in such ideals. Philosophers and scholars use them to privilege the intellect over bodily urges. For women, the ideals give rise to ideas of bodily purity. Priests, however, use ascetic ideals to exert their power. Nietzsche decides to unpack these ideas a bit more fully.
Ascetic ideals, for Nietzsche, are a moral code in which people think it’s good to distance oneself from life’s everyday aspects. This entails self-control against material gain in society (meaning it’s better to be poor), emotional and egotistic urges (meaning it’s better to be humble), and bodily desires (meaning its better to be chaste). Effectively, the ascetic ideal upholds the Christian values of poverty, chastity, and humility. However, Nietzsche believes that such a value system enables priests to exert power over others, effectively making the ascetic ideal a hypocritical one.
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2. Nietzsche looks at the operatic composer Richard Wagner, who celebrates “chastity” in his later operas. Wagner depicts “chastity” and “sensuality” as opposites—meaning that a person must be one or the other, and chaste people are good while sensual people are evil. In Wagner’s earlier piece Luther’s Wedding, however, the protagonist (Luther) has the “courage” to be sensual. In any case, Nietzsche thinks that there’s no reason to pick one or the other. In Goethe and Hafiz’s poems, they depict the delicate balance between the “animal” and the “angel” in humans as a charming aspect of life. Nietzsche agrees—he thinks that internal conflicts like these make life more exciting.
Nietzsche begins with artists. He compares his former friend and current rival Richard Wagner’s operas to the poetry of German artist Goethe and Persian artist Hafiz. Nietzsche thinks that good art reflects the complex and fascinating nature of life. He likes Goethe and Hafiz because they play with the tension between being sensual (“animal”) and being spiritual (“angel”), which makes their art sophisticated, insightful, and interesting. Nietzsche thinks that Wagner’s characters used to do this too (like Luther in Luther’s Wedding), but lately, Nietzsche finds that Wagner’s work has become reductive: it demonizes sensuality and praises chastity, which makes it overly simplistic.
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3. Nietzsche berates another of Wagner’s operatic characters in the opera Parsifal. This time, Nietzsche’s target is Parsifal, a simple country boy who rejects the sensual advances of flower maidens and seeks the Holy Grail. Nietzsche wishes that Wagner intended to create a parody or satire exposing how perverse the ascetic ideal is, but Wagner didn’t. Nietzsche says that when Parsifal is taken seriously, the character hates intellectual and sensual pursuits. Nietzsche is surprised by this, because Wagner used to admire the philosopher Feuerbach, whose motto is “healthy sensuality.”
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4. In Nietzsche’s opinion, the best art allows the artist to disappear so that the work can come alive in its own right. Wagner, however, turns his art into a reflection of his own beliefs—specifically, his turn to chastity in old age—which makes his art bad. Nietzsche reasons that this sort of thing tends to happen to artists when they become frustrated of living in the fiction of their creations and want to start experiencing something real for themselves. Nietzsche thinks it’s a shame that Wagner’s art had to suffer for this. He wishes that Wagner went out on a high note, with art that was more confident and triumphant (rather than repentant) in tone.
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5. Nietzsche decides that when artists address the ascetic ideal in their work, they’re really just reflecting the views of society, their patrons, or a particular philosophy. Nietzsche thinks that Wagner was seduced by Schopenhauer’s philosophical ideas about music. Wagner used to think of music as an instrument, medium, or means to stage drama. However, Schopenhauer thinks that music captures what he considers the essence of life: a relentless, exhausting, striving will that is the basis of all existence. Wagner thus starts to believe that music communicates the metaphysical (or supernatural) underpinnings of the world, as if it’s a telephone call from God, and he begins to work in ascetic ideals into his compositions.
6. Nietzsche turns to the philosopher Kant’s views about art. Nietzsche thinks Kant makes a big mistake when he decides that an observer sees something as beautiful by distancing their personal interests, feelings, and desires from the experience. Nietzsche thinks that Kant’s lack of experience with art makes him say idiotic things. On the other hand, Stendhal, who’s an artist himself, says that beautiful art makes people feel things and be interested. Nietzsche agrees with this sentiment—he thinks it’s ridiculous to say that people look at nude statues, for instance, without any stirrings of desire.
Nietzsche thinks that Schopenhauer (despite being more in tune with the arts) makes the same mistake as Kant. Schopenhauer thinks that contemplating art silences sexual interest and gives a person a break from desiring, striving, wanting, and willing. Nietzsche says that Schopenhauer was only 26 when he wrote this, so perhaps he was experiencing some youthful angst. Nietzsche agrees that sometimes art can have a calming effect, but more often than not (as Stendhal argues), art is exciting and stimulating. If anything, it sounds like Schopenhauer feels tortured and seeks an escape.
7. Nietzsche even suspects that Schopenhauer enjoys raging against sexual desire, as if it’s some kind of release for his frustration. In fact, Nietzsche thinks that nearly all philosophers are hostile to sensuality—Schopenhauer just exposes that tendency most visibly. Philosophers also tend to praise the ascetic ideal, which advocates self-control against material or bodily desires. This makes sense to Nietzsche: because philosophers spend their lives thinking, so they tend to delegitimize anything that could be a distraction (such as marriage) or undermine their power to think, and thinking is what makes philosophers happy. Essentially, by appealing to the ascetic ideal, philosophers can legitimize their intellect-focused ways.
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8. Such philosophers assume that the ascetic ideal—which champions “poverty, humility, chastity”—is universally virtuous and morally good. Nietzsche emphasizes that philosophers confuse what’s good for them with what’s good for everyone. It’s obvious, Nietzsche says, that productive intellectual people thrive when they live in “poverty, humility, and chastity.” Poverty allows philosophers to avoid distractions like politics and commerce. Humility allows philosophers to observe life from the shadows, or from a distance, which helps them come up with ideas. Finally, chastity avoids distractions like family and relationships. Every intellectual knows how distracting these things can be when they’re working on something. There’s no real commitment to the ascetic ideal in all this—it’s just convenient for them.
Nietzsche decides to illustrate his point using Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer, through some personal quirk, finds that looking at beautiful art completely absorbs his attention and stimulates his ability to contemplate and think deeply. But there’s no reason why “sensual” experiences can’t do the same thing—for example, experiencing puberty or a sexual awakening can also trigger deep thoughts. Maybe, Nietzsche speculates, Schopenhauer’s sexual urges aren’t so much silenced as transformed when he looks at art.
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9. Since maintaining a distanced attitude to life helps intellectuals to do their work, they’ve never been impartial about the ascetic ideal. In fact, Nietzsche thinks that modern life is foolish: we’re arrogant and reckless in the way we treat the environment, the idea of God, and ourselves. Everything that we think is good was once bad. We celebrate marriage yet historically considered it possessive. Obeying the law was considered an outrageous infringement on personal freedom. Before customs and morals entered the picture in human history, kind and peaceful behavior was considered dangerous rather than virtuous. Pitying somebody was insulting. For Nietzsche, every step we’ve taken away from these attitudes has come at a colossal price: mental and physical self-torture.
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10. Nietzsche thinks that historically, contemplation was considered passive and suspicious. Ancient thinkers—or “intellectual revolutionaries”—had to find a way to justify their radical break with society’s preference for proactive, warlike behavior. The ascetic ideal serves intellectuals well, as it justifies the philosophers’ tendency to withdraw from society. Philosophers have celebrated living like “ascetic priest[s]” for so long that they really buy into the idea rather than questioning it. Nietzsche wonders what it would take for a revolutionary thinker—one who shuns dominant social attitudes—to emerge today.
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11. Nietzsche thinks that the “ascetic priest” is a formidable opponent who finds “his faith” in living a withdrawn life. Acetic priests consider everyday life to be misguided, and they have to enforce this attitude on others to justify their own beliefs. People who emulate this attitude arise throughout history, in every race and in every class. Their self-contradictory lives that are essentially “hostile to life” itself—meaning bodily wellbeing, procreation, and joy. Instead, they derive pleasure from self-imposed deprivation and punishment. This idea is most tangibly realized in Christianity.
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12. To Nietzsche, this “perverse” attitude leads to other perversions, like believing that reality is an illusion. However, Nietzsche thinks that there is something valuable in trying to see things from a different perspective. Philosophers strive to see the world in the abstract, over and above the subjective human perspective. They believe in “pure reason,” and they try to step outside of messy, emotional, and diverse human experiences. Nietzsche thinks that this is all nonsense—it’s impossible for us to see without seeing from a perspective. Instead of trying to understand the world from outside the human perspective (which is impossible), philosophers should strive to understand the world from as many different perspectives as possible.
13. Nietzsche revisits the ascetic ideal, which advocates severe withdrawal from material emotional, and bodily aspects of everyday life—or, as Nietzsche puts it, celebrates poverty, humility, and chastity. He says it’s not really correct to say that ascetic priests turn their backs on life. In fact, Nietzsche thinks they’re motivated by a desire to preserve life, but they do it in a perverse, “diseased,” or “sick” way. Ascetic priests want to escape the pain and fear of facing human mortality. They yearn for a different kind of existence that transcends earthly life. They weaponize the ascetic ideal to exert power over the downtrodden by promising them a different kind of existence in the afterlife.
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14. The more normalized this sickness becomes in humanity, the more Nietzsche thinks we should appreciate individuals who are “healthy,” meaning they have the courage to attack life with vigor. Nietzsche thinks that modern European culture is a threat to humanity, as it’s imbued with “sickly” people who deny their actual human instincts, long to be something other than what they are, and therefore hate themselves. This self-contempt makes people vindictive, miserable, and contemptuous for the healthy people among us. These healthy individuals embrace life head on and accept—rather than loathe and deny—their human instincts.
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Nietzsche believes that the “struggle of the sick against the healthy” lurks behind all aspects of society: families, institutions, and communities. Sick people suffer patiently and righteously, all the while expressing resentment toward the way “healthy” people approach life. The philosopher Eugen Dühring, an anti-Semitic moralist, is a prime example of the vindictiveness of sickly people who seek revenge on the healthy. Nietzsche thinks it would be a disaster for healthy people, who are mentally and physically fit, to doubt their “right to happiness.” He thinks that healthy people should try to stay away from sickly ones instead of healing them. They need to focus on expressing their healthy ways, because they are humanity’s only hope.
15. While healthy people are busy living actively and embracing life, somebody steps in to “make the sick healthy,” and the ascetic priest steps in to fill this role. The ascetic priest is accepted as a kind of savior for sick people, even though he himself is sick. He finds his own happiness in exerting power over people who are suffering, like a tyrannical god. Ascetic priests maintain power by sowing discord among other predators and inflicting suffering among the weak, so that they can play the role of the healer. People who suffer need an outlet for their resentment, and the ascetic priest encourages their followers to unleash their resentment on themselves in the form of self-blame.
16. Nietzsche thinks the ascetic priest exploits the suffering of the sick by encouraging “self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery” to render them harmless—meaning they cannot usurp the ascetic priest’s power. Ascetic priests essentially set up institutions (like “the Church”) to collect sick people and create a division between the sick and the healthy. Sick people feel perpetually guilty or sinful, but there’s no need for them to manage their pain like that. Healthy people, on the other hand, process their experiences even when they’re are difficult to cope with, and then they move on.
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17. Nietzsche thinks that all major religions are combatting a general depressive feeling of apathy. Nietzsche doesn’t know why European culture feels like this, but he believes that many religions encourage people to escape this depressive feeling by going into a sort of “hibernation” from life. People effectively abstain from living active lives, and they shun all emotional experiences. This tactic is common in many cultures: Hindus and Buddhists advocate freeing oneself from all desire, wishing, and activity, and retreating into a place that’s beyond the suffering triggered by conceptions of “Good and Evil.” Virtues like humility therefore aren’t valuable in themselves, but valuable because they help people achieve a “hypnotic sensation of nothingness” which numbs their pain.
18. Nietzsche thinks that achieving a hypnotic ability to deaden all feelings (including pain) is actually quite rare and requires a great deal of training and effort. Ascetic priests, however, use another tactic. They encourage ceaseless, mindless everyday work, which effectively distracts the sufferer from having time to think about their pain. They also encourage “petty pleasures” but emphasize giving (rather than receiving) pleasure through acts of kindness and charity, captured in the command to “love thy neighbor.” Ascetic priests also encourage a sense of community because the feeling of empowerment in being among friends alleviates suffering too. Nietzsche thinks that strong people strive for solitude, while the weak strive for unity.
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19. Nietzsche thinks that repressing vitality, encouraging mindless work, abstaining from pleasure, and fostering community are relatively innocuous strategies—but he also thinks that ascetic priests employ more harmful techniques. Despite encouraging release from emotions, ascetic priests also agitate people’s emotions by encouraging passion for morals, which is hypocritical. “Good” people—especially man German cultural leaders—are so saturated with naïve enthusiasm for morality that they are essentially lying to themselves and encouraging submitting to morality instead of a making oneself strong to deal with suffering.
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20. Such people intend to use the ascetic ideal to alleviate emotional pain—but only covers up symptoms rather than providing a cure. Their methods, however, worsen the underlying suffering. Ascetic priests effectively treat the apathy of depression but not depression itself. Nietzsche argues that ascetic priests effectively make people feel relief from their apathy by making them care about redemption, but this actually means that people have to torture themselves (by thinking of themselves as guilty sinners) in order to feel that relief.
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21. The ascetic priest would say that he has reformed humankind, but to Nietzsche, it looks more like the ascetic priest has harmed humankind by making people weak and repressed. Nietzsche thinks that the ascetic priest’s methods trigger nervous breakdowns. He argues that since the Middle Ages, religious people have experienced like chronic depression, hysteria, and moodiness. The “doctrine of sin” is a “moral cult” that makes people emotionally volatile (rather than free from the burden of feelings). To Nietzsche, the ascetic ideal is the worst possible path for Europeans’ health.
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22. Nietzsche even thinks that the ascetic priest has ruined people’s artistic tastes as well as their psychological well-being. He believes that early Christians rejected ancient literature in favor of the of the New Testament, which Nietzsche despises. Ascetic priests also use the New Testament as a weapon against the arts, by characterizing writers like Shakespeare as heathens. To Nietzsche, the Old Testament is completely different. When he reads it, he senses heroism and great men. He feels, however, that the New Testament loses its “Jewish” feel and becomes pedestrian, hysterical, and shallow. Nietzsche concludes that the ascetic ideal is an education in bad taste and bad manners.
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23. Nietzsche continues disparaging the ascetic ideal. He thinks it’s damaging in many other ways, but already the extent of its devastation on culture is obvious. Nietzsche wonders why there hasn’t been more resistance to the ascetic ideal. Many people assume “modern scientific knowledge”—which eliminates God from the picture—has displaced the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche, however, thinks that scientific knowledge isn’t the ascetic ideal’s opposite. Rather, it’s the latest incarnation of the ascetic ideal.
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24. Nietzsche thinks that people who claim to be areligious (such as scientists, atheists, skeptics) try to reject the ascetic ideal. They believe in intellectuality over faith and see themselves to be freethinkers, but they also align themselves the ascetic ideal because they believe in “truth.” Nietzsche says that European skeptics always seek to arrive at some truth by thinking, which reinforces the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche thinks scholars need to question the “value of truth” as an intellectual pursuit.
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25. Nietzsche is doubtful that there’s any social practice in European culture that challenges the ascetic ideal or that provides an alternative to it. Nietzsche sarcastically extolls the virtues of Europe’s great social practices. He mentions artists (who are too corruptible), scientists (who have to become emotionally detached to do their serious scientific work), philosophers (like Kant, who thinks he’s liberated humanity from religious dogma), and agnostics, who doubt everything so much that they might just believe in God after all. All in all, Nietzsche thinks that the ascetic ideal is winning in Europe right now.
26. Nietzsche turns to historians, to see if they fare any better. He thinks historians don’t like acting as judges, and they describe things rather than affirming or denying in gloomy, detached, quiet ways. It doesn’t seem to Nietzsche like there’s much flourishing going on there. Nietzsche also finds “armchair scholars” who claim to be objective nauseating. He thinks such people are ingenuine—they espouse the wisdom of others in order to appear objective in their thinking. He also hates anti-Semites, who resort to moral posturing. Germans are numbed because they feel superior and listen to too much Wagner. Nietzsche thinks that everywhere in Europe, all he smells is bad air.
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27. Nietzsche stops himself and says he needs to get back on track. He asks himself where things stand in European culture. Quoting a passage from another of his books, The Gay Science, Nietzsche concludes that Christian dogma is no longer pervasive in Europe, but Christian morality still runs rampant. Nietzsche is hopeful that questioning our reliance on truth and objectivity will start to dismantle Christian morality, but he thinks it will take at least 200 years.
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28. Nietzsche concludes that one question plagues humankind, and it’s the big one: the meaning of our existence. Nietzsche thinks that the ascetic ideal fills the void for a while—it makes us think that we suffer, but that we do so for a purpose. It gives our lives meaning, and that makes us feel good. Unfortunately, the ascetic ideal has some serious baggage, which is disastrous to humanity. Namely, guilt, hatred of our animalistic instincts, and denial of anything material and sensual. Essentially, the aesthetic ideal encourages “a wish for oblivion.” In the end, Nietzsche says, a human being will always prefer to “desire oblivion than not desire at all.”
