Sections 11–20
Original German
11 Ein Wort noch gegen Kant als Moralist. Eine Tugend muß unsre Erfindung sein, unsre persönlichste Notwehr und Notdurft: in jedem andern Sinne ist sie bloß eine Gefahr. Was nicht unser Leben bedingt, schadet ihm: eine Tugend bloß aus einem Respekts-Gefühle vor dem Begriff »Tugend«, wie Kant es wollte, ist schädlich. Die »Tugend«, die »Pflicht«, das »Gute an sich«, das Gute mit dem Charakter der Unpersönlichkeit und Allgemeingültigkeit — Hirngespinste, in denen sich der Niedergang, die letzte Entkäftigung des Lebens, das Königsberger Chinesentum ausdrückt. Das Umgekehrte wird von den tiefsten Erhaltungs- und Wachstumsgesetzen geboten: daß jeder sich seine Tugend, seinen kategorischen Imperativ erfinde. Ein Volk geht zusrunde, wenn es seine Pflicht mit dem Pflichtbegriff überhaupt verwechselt. Nichts ruiniert tiefer, innerlicher als jede »unpersönliche« Pflicht, jede Opferung vor dem Moloch der Abstraktion. — Daß man den kategorischen Imperativ Kants nicht als lebensgefährlich empfunden hat! … Der Theologen-Instinkt allein nahm ihn in Schutz! — Eine Handlung, zu der der Instinkt des Lebens zwingt, hat in der Lust ihren Beweis, eine rechte Handlung zu sein: und jener Nihilist mit christlich-dogmatischen Eingeweiden verstand die Lust als Einwand… Was zerstört schneller, als ohne innere Notwendigkeit, ohne eine tief persönliche Wahl, ohne Lust arbeiten, denken, fühlen? als Automat der »Pflicht«? Es ist geradezu das Rezept zur décadence, selbst zum Idiotismus… Kant wurde Idiot. — Und das war der Zeitgenosse Goethes! Dies Verhängnis von Spinne galt als der deutsche Philosoph — gilt es noch! … Ich hüte mich zu sagen, was ich von den Deutschen denke… Hat Kant nicht in der französischen Revolution den Übergang aus der unorganischen Form des Staats in die organische gesehn? Hat er sich nicht gefragt, ob es eine Begebenheit gibt, die gar nicht anders erklärt werden könne als durch eine moralische Anlage der Menschheit, so daß mit ihr, ein für allemal, die »Tendenz der Menschheit zum Guten« bewiesen sei? Antwort Kants: »das ist die Revolution.« Der fehlgreifende Instinkt in allem und jedem, die Widernatur als Instinkt, die deutsche décadence als Philosophie — das ist Kant! —
12 Ich nehme ein paar Skeptiker beiseite, den anständigen Typus in der Geschichte der Philosophie: aber der Rest kennt die ersten Forderungen der intellektuellen Rechtschaffenheit nicht. Sie machen es allesamt wie die Weiblein, alle diese großen Schwärmer und Wundertiere — sie halten die »schönen Gefühle« bereits für Argumente, den »gehobenen Busen« für einen Blasebalg der Gottheit, die Überzeugung für ein Kriterium der Wahrheit. Zuletzt hat noch Kant, in »deutscher« Unschuld, diese Form der Korruption, diesen Mangel an intellektuellem Gewissen unter dem Begriff »praktische Vernunft« zu verwissenschaftlichen versucht: er erfand eigens eine Vernunft dafür, in welchem Falle man sich nicht um die Vernunft zu kümmern habe, nämlich wenn die Moral, wenn die erhabne Forderung »du sollst« laut wird. Erwägt man, daß bei fast allen Völkern der Philosoph nur die Weiterentwicklung des priesterlichen Typus ist, so überrascht dieses Erbstück des Priesters, die Falschmünzerei vor sich selbst, nicht mehr. Wenn man heilige Aufgaben hat, zum Beispiel die Menschen zu bessern, zu retten, zu erlösen — wenn man die Gottheit im Busen trägt, Mundstück jenseitiger Imperative ist, so steht man mit einer solchen Mission bereits außerhalb aller bloß verstandesmäßigen Wertungen — selbst schon geheiligt durch eine solche Aufgabe, selbst schon der Typus einer höheren Ordnung!… Was geht einen Priester die Wissenschaft an! Er steht zu hoch dafür! — Und der Priester hat bisher geherrscht! — Er bestimmte den Begriff »wahr« und »unwahr«!…
13 Unterschätzen wir dies nicht: wir selbst, wir freien Geister, sind bereits eine »Umwertung aller Werte«, eine leibhafte Kriegsund Siegs-Erklärung an alle alten Begriffe von »wahr« und »unwahr«. Die wertvollsten Einsichten werden am spätesten gefunden; aber die wertvollsten Einsichten sind die Methoden. Alle Methoden, alle Voraussetzungen unsrer jetzigen Wissenschaftlichkeit haben jahrtausendelang die tiefste Verachtung gegen sich gehabt: auf sie hin war man aus dem Verkehre mit »honetten« Menschen ausgeschlossen — man galt als »Feind Gottes«, als Verächter der Wahrheit, als »Besessener«. Als wissenschaftlicher Charakter war man Tschandala… Wir haben das ganze Pathos der Menschheit gegen uns gehabt — ihren Begriff von dem, was Wahrheit sein soll, was der Dienst der Wahrheit sein soll: jedes »du sollst« war bisher gegen uns gerichtet… Unsre Objekte, unsre Praktiken, unsre stille, vorsichtige, mißtrauische Art — alles das schien ihr vollkommen unwürdig und verächtlich. — Zuletzt dürfte man, mit einiger Billigkeit, sich fragen, ob es nicht eigentlich ein ästhetischer Geschmack war, was die Menschheit in so langer Blindheit gehalten hat: sie verlangte von der Wahrheit einen pittoresken Effekt, sie verlangte insgleichen vom Erkennenden, daß er stark auf die Sinne wirke. Unsre Bescheidenheit ging ihr am längsten wider den Geschmack … Oh, wie sie das errieten, diese Truthähne Gottes — —
14 Wir haben umgelernt. Wir sind in allen Stücken bescheidner geworden. Wir leiten den Menschen nicht mehr vom »Geist«, von der »Gottheit« ab, wir haben ihn unter die Tiere zurückgestellt. Er gilt uns als das stärkste Tier, weil er das listigste ist: eine Folge davon ist seine Geistigkeit. Wir wehren uns andrerseits gegen eine Eitelkeit, die auch hier wieder laut werden möchte: wie als ob der Mensch die große Hinterabsicht der tierischen Entwicklung gewesen sei. Er ist durchaus keine Krone der Schöpfung: jedes Wesen ist, neben ihm, auf einer gleichen Stufe der Vollkommenheit … Und indem wir das behaupten, behaupten wir noch zuviel: der Mensch ist, relativ genommen, das mißratenste Tier, das krankhafteste, das von seinen Instinkten am gefährlichsten abgeirrte — freilich, mit alledem, auch das interessanteste! — Was die Tiere betrifft, so hat zuerst Descartes, mit verehrungswürdiger Kühnheit, den Gedanken gewagt, das Tier als machina zu verstehn: unsre ganze Physiologie bemüht sich um den Beweis dieses Satzes. Auch stellen wir logischerweise den Menschen nicht beiseite, wie noch Descartes tat: was überhaupt heute vom Menschen begriffen ist, geht genau so weit, als er machinal begriffen ist. Ehedem gab man dem Menschen, als seine Mitgift aus einer höheren Ordnung, den »freien Willen«: heute haben wir ihm selbst den Willen genommen, in dem Sinne, daß darunter kein Vermögen mehr verstanden werden darf. Das alte Wort »Wille« dient nur dazu, eine Resultante zu bezeichnen, eine Art individueller Reaktion, die notwendig auf eine Menge teils widersprechender, teils zusammenstimmender Reize folgt — der Wille »wirkt« nicht mehr, »bewegt« nicht mehr… Ehemals sah man im Bewußtsein des Menschen, im »Geist«, den Beweis seiner höheren Abkunft, seiner Göttlichkeit; um den Menschen zu vollenden, riet man ihm an, nach der Art der Schildkröte die Sinne in sich hineinzuziehn, den Verkehr mit dem Irdischen einzustellen, die sterbliche Hülle abzutun: dann blieb die Hauptsache von ihm zurück, der »reine Geist«. Wir haben uns auch hierüber besser besonnen: das Bewußtwerden, der »Geist«, gilt uns gerade als Symptom einer: relativen Unvollkommenheit des Organismus, als ein Versuchen, Tasten, Fehlgreifen, als eine Mühsal, bei der unnötig viel Nervenkraft verbraucht wird, — wir leugnen, daß irgend etwas vollkommen gemacht werden kann, solange es noch bewußt gemacht wird. Der »reine Geist« ist eine reine Dummheit: rechnen wir das Nervensystem und die Sinne ab, die »sterbliche Hülle«, so verrechnen wir uns — weiter nichts! …
15 Weder die Moral noch die Religion berührt sich im Christentume mit irgendeinem Punkte der Wirklichkeit. Lauter imaginäre Ursachen (»Gott«, »Seele«, »Ich«, »Geist«, »der freie Wille« — oder auch »der unfreie«): lauter imaginäre Wirkungen (»Sünde«, »Erlösung«, »Gnade«, »Strafe«, »Vergebung der Sünde«). Ein Verkehr zwischen imaginären Wesen (»Gott«, »Geister«, »Seelen«); eine imaginäre Naturwissenschaft (anthropozentrisch; völliger Mangel des Begriffs der natürlichen Ursachen); eine imganinäre Psychologie (lauter Selbst-Mißverständnisse, Interpretationen angenehmer oder unangenehmer Allgemeingefühle, zum Beispiel der Zustände des nervus sympathicus, mit Hilfe der Zeichensprache religiös-moralischer Idiosynkrasie — »Reue«, »Gewissensbiß«, »Versuchung des Teufels«, »die Nähe Gottes«); eine imaginäre Teleologie (»das Reich Gottes«, »das Jüngste Gericht«, »das ewige Leben«). — Diese reine Fiktions-Welt unterscheidet sich dadurch sehr zu ihren Ungunsten von der Traumwelt, daß letztere die Wirklichkeit widerspiegelt, während sie die Wirklichkeit fälscht, entwertet, verneint. Nachdem erst der Begriff »Natur« als Gegenbegriff zu »Gott« erfunden war, mußte »natürlich« das Wort sein für »verwerflich« — jene ganze Fiktions-Welt hat ihre Wurzel im Haß gegen das Natürliche (— die Wirklichkeit! —), sie ist der Ausdruck eines tiefen Mißbehagens am Wirklichen … Aber damit ist alles erklärt. Wer allein hat Gründe, sich wegzulügen aus der Wirklichkeit? Wer an ihr leidet. Aber an der Wirklichkeit leiden heißt eine verunglückte Wirklichkeit sein… Das Übergewicht der Unlustgefühle über die Lustgefühle ist die Ursache einer fiktiven Moral und Religion: ein solches Übergewicht gibt aber die Formel ab für décadence…
16 Zu dem gleichen Schlusse nötigt eine Kritik des christlichen Gottesbegriffs. — Ein Volk, das noch an sich selbst glaubt, hat auch noch seinen eignen Gott. In ihm verehrt es die Bedingungen, durch die es obenauf ist, seine Tugenden, — es projiziert seine Lust an sich, sein Machtgefühl in ein Wesen, dem man dafür danken kann. Wer reich ist, will abgeben; ein stolzes Volk braucht einen Gott, um zu opfern… Religion, innerhalb solcher Voraussetzungen, ist eine Form der Dankbarkeit. Man ist für sich selber dankbar: dazu braucht man einen Gott. — Ein solcher Gott muß nützen und schaden können, muß Freund und Feind sein können — man bewundert ihn im Guten wie im Schlimmen. Die widernatürliche Kastration eines Gottes zu einem Gotte bloß des Guten läge hier außerhalb aller Wünschbarkeit. Man hat den bösen Gott so nötig als den guten: man verdankt ja die eigne Existenz nicht gerade der Toleranz, der Menschenfreundlichkeit… Was läge an einem Gotte, der nicht Zorn, Rache, Neid, Hohn, List, Gewalttat kennte? dem vielleicht nicht einmal die entzückenden ardeurs des Siegs und der Vernichtung bekannt wären? Man würde einen solchen Gott nicht verstehn: wozu sollte man ihn haben? — Freilich: wenn ein Volk zugrunde geht; wenn es den Glauben an Zukunft, seine Hoffnung auf Freiheit endgültig schwinden fühlt; wenn ihm die Unterwerfung als erste Nützlichkeit, die Tugenden der Unterworfenen als Erhaltungsbedingungen ins Bewußtsein treten, dann muß sich auch sein Gott verändern. Er wird jetzt Duckmäuser, furchtsam, bescheiden, rät zum »Frieden der Seele«, zum Nicht-mehr-hassen, zur Nachsicht, zur »Liebe« selbst gegen Freund und Feind. Er moralisiert beständig, er kriecht in die Höhle jeder Privattugend, wird Gott für jedermann, wird Privatmann, wird Kosmopolit… Ehemals stellte er ein Volk, die Stärke eines Volkes, alles Aggressive und Machtdurstige aus der Seele eines Volkes dar: jetzt ist er bloß noch der gute Gott… In der Tat, es gibt keine andre Alternative für Götter: entweder sind sie der Wille zur Macht — und so lange werden sie Volksgötter sein —, oder aber die Ohnmacht zur Macht — und dann werden sie notwendig gut…
17 Wo in irgendwelcher Form der Wille zur Macht niedergeht, gibt es jedesmal auch einen physiologischen Rückgang, eine décadence. Die Gottheit der décadence, beschnitten an ihren männlichsten Tugenden und Trieben, wird nunmehr notwendig zum Gott der Physiologisch-Zurückgezogenen, der Schwachen. Sie heißen sich selbst nicht die Schwachen, sie heißen sich »die Guten«… Man versteht, ohne daß ein Wink noch not täte, in welchen Augenblicken der Geschichte erst die dualistische Fiktion eines guten und eines bösen Gottes möglich wird. Mit demselben Instinkte, mit dem die Unterworfnen ihren Gott zum »Guten an sich« herunterbringen, streichen sie aus dem Gotte ihrer Überwinder die guten Eigenschaften aus; sie nehmen Rache an ihren Herren, dadurch daß sie deren Gott verteufeln. — Der gute Gott, ebenso wie der Teufel: beide Ausgeburten der décadence. — Wie kann man heute noch der Einfalt christlicher Theologen so viel nachgeben, um mit ihnen zu dekretieren, die Fortentwicklung des Gottesbegriffs vom »Gotte Israels«, vom Volksgotte zum christlichen Gotte, zum Inbegriff alles Guten, sei ein Fortschritt? — Aber selbst Renan tut es. Als ob Renan ein Recht auf Einfalt hätte! Das Gegenteil springt doch in die Augen. Wenn die Voraussetzungen des aufsteigenden Lebens, wenn alles Starke, Tapfere, Herrische, Stolze aus dem Gottesbegriffe eliminiert werden, wenn er Schritt für Schritt zum Symbol eines Stabs für Müde, eines Rettungsankers für alle Ertrinkenden heruntersinkt, wenn er Arme-Leute-Gott, Sünder-Gott, Kranken-Gott par excellence wird, und das Prädikat »Heiland«, »Erlöser« gleichsam übrigbleibt als göttliches Prädikat überhaupt: wovon redet eine solche Verwandlung? eine solche Reduktion des Göttlichen? — Freilich: »das Reich Gottes« ist damit größer geworden. Ehemals hatte er nur sein Volk, sein »auserwähltes« Volk. Inzwischen ging er, ganz wie sein Volk selber, in die Fremde, auf Wanderschaft, er saß seitdem nirgendswo mehr still: bis er endlich überall heimisch wurde, der große Kosmopolit — bis er »die große Zahl« und die halbe Erde auf seine Seite bekam. Aber der Gott der »großen Zahl«, der Demokrat unter den Göttern, wurde trotzdem kein stolzer Heidengott: er blieb Jude, er blieb der Gott der Winkel, der Gott aller dunklen Ecken und Stellen, aller ungesunden Quartiere der ganzen Welt!… Sein Weltreich ist nach wie vor ein Unterwelts-Reich, ein Hospital, ein souterrain-Reich, ein Ghetto-Reich… Und er selbst, so blaß, so schwach, so décadent… Selbst die blassesten der Blassen wurden noch über ihn Herr, die Herrn Metaphysiker, die Begriffs-Albinos. Diese spannen so lange um ihn herum, bis er, hypnotisiert durch ihre Bewegungen, selbst Spinne, selbst Metaphysicus wurde. Nunmehr spann er wieder die Welt aus sich heraus — sub specie Spinozae —, nunmehr transfigurierte er sich ins immer Dünnere und Blässere, ward »Ideal«, ward »reiner Geist«, ward »absolutum«, ward »Ding an sich« … Verfall eines Gottes: Gott ward »Ding an sich«…
18 Der christliche Gottesbegriff — Gott als Krankengott, Gott als Spinne, Gott als Geist — ist einer der korruptesten Gottesbegriffe, die auf Erden erreicht worden sind; er stellt vielleicht selbst den Pegel des Tiefstands in der absteigenden Entwicklung des Götter-Typus dar. Gott zum Widerspruch des Lebens abgeartet, statt dessen Verklärung und ewiges Ja zu sein! In Gott dem Leben, der Natur, dem Willen zum Leben die Feindschaft angesagt! Gott die Formel für jede Verleumdung des »Diesseits«, für jede Lüge vom »Jenseits«! In Gott das Nichts vergöttlicht, der Wille zum Nichts heilig gesprochen! …
19 Daß die starken Rassen des nördlichen Europa den christlichen Gott nicht von sich gestoßen haben, macht ihrer religiösen Begabung wahrlich keine Ehre — um nicht vom Geschmacke zu reden. Mit einer solchen krankhaften und altersschwachen Ausgeburt der décadence hätten sie fertig werden müssen. Aber es liegt ein Fluch dafür auf ihnen, daß sie nicht mit ihm fertig geworden sind: sie haben die Krankheit, das Alter, den Widerspruch in alle ihre Instinkte aufgenommen — sie haben seitdem keinen Gott mehr geschaffen! Zwei Jahrtausende beinahe und nicht ein einziger neuer Gott! Sondern immer noch und wie zu Recht bestehend, wie ein ultimatum und maximum der gottbildenden Kraft, des creator spiritus im Menschen, dieser erbarmungswürdige Gott des christlichen Monotono-Theismus! Dies hybride Verfalls-Gebilde aus Null, Begriff und Widerspruch, in dem alle décadence-Instinkte, alle Feigheiten und Müdigkeiten der Seele ihre Sanktion haben! — —
20 Mit meiner Verurteilung des Christentums möchte ich kein Unrecht gegen eine verwandte Religion begangen haben, die der Zahl der Bekenner nach sogar überwiegt: gegen den Buddhismus. Beide gehören als nihilistische Religionen zusammen — sie sind décadence-Religionen —, beide sind voneinander in der merkwürdigsten Weise getrennt. Daß man sie jetzt vergleichen kann, dafür ist der Kritiker des Christentums den indischen Gelehrten tief dankbar. — Der Buddhismus ist hundertmal realistischer als das Christentum — er hat die Erbschaft des objektiven und kühlen Probleme-Stellens im Leibe, er kommt nach einer Hunderte von Jahren dauernden philosophischen Bewegung; der Begriff »Gott« ist bereits abgetan, als er kommt. Der Buddhismus ist die einzige eigentlich positivistische Religion, die uns die Geschichte zeigt, auch noch in seiner Erkenntnistheorie (einem strengen Phänomenalismus —), er sagt nicht mehr »Kampf gegen die Sünde«, sondern, ganz der Wirklichkeit das Recht gebend, »Kampf gegen das Leiden«. Er hat — dies unterscheidet ihn tief vom Christentum — die Selbst-Betrügerei der Moral-Begriffe bereits hinter sich, — er steht, in meiner Sprache geredet, jenseits von Gut und Böse. — Die zwei physiologischen Tatsachen, auf denen er ruht und die er ins Auge faßt, sind: einmal eine übergroße Reizbarkeit der Sensibilität, welche sich als raffinierte Schmerzfähigkeit ausdrückt, sodann eine Übergeistigung, ein allzulanges Leben in Begriffen und logischen Prozeduren, unter dem der Person-Instinkt zum Vorteil des »Unpersönlichen« Schaden genommen hat (— beides Zustände, die wenigstens einige meiner Leser, die »Objektiven«, gleich mir selbst, aus Erfahrung kennen werden). Auf Grund dieser physiologischen Bedingungen ist eine Depression entstanden: gegen diese geht Buddha hygienisch vor. Er wendet dagegen das Leben im Freien an, das Wanderleben; die Mäßigung und die Wahl in der Kost; die Vorsicht gegen alle Spirituosa; die Vorsicht insgleichen gegen alle Affekte, die Galle machen, die das Blut erhitzen; keine Sorge, weder für sich, noch für andre. Er fordert Vorstellungen, die entweder Ruhe geben oder erheitern — er erfindet Mittel, die anderen sich abzugewöhnen. Er versteht die Güte, das Gütig-sein als gesundheit-fördernd. Gebet ist ausgeschlossen, ebenso wie die Askese; kein kategorischer Imperativ, kein Zwang überhaupt, selbst nicht innerhalb der Klostergemeinschaft (- man kann wieder hinaus —). Das alles wären Mittel, um jene übergroße Reizbarkeit zu verstärken. Eben darum fordert er auch keinen Kampf gegen Andersdenkende; seine Lehre wehrt sich gegen nichts mehr als gegen das Gefühl der Rache, der Abneigung, des ressentiment (— »nicht durch Feindschaft kommt Feindschaft zu Ende«: der rührende Refrain des ganzen Buddhismus …). Und das mit Recht: gerade diese Affekte wären vollkommen ungesund in Hinsicht auf die diätetische Hauptabsicht. Die geistige Ermüdung, die er vorfindet und die sich in einer allzugroßen »Objektivität« (das heißt Schwächung des Individual-Interesses, Verlust an Schwergewicht, an »Egoismus«) ausdrückt, bekämpft er mit einer strengen Zurückführung auch der geistigsten Interessen auf die Person. In der Lehre Buddhas wird der Egoismus Pflicht: das »eins ist not«, das »wie kommst du vom Leiden los« reguliert und begrenzt die geistige Diät (— man darf sich vielleicht an jenen Athener erinnern, der der reinen »Wissenschaftlichkeit« gleichfalls den Krieg machte, an Sokrates, der den Personal-Egoismus auch im Reich der Probleme zur Moral erhob).
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the German of the preface, all sixty-two sections and the seven-article Law Against Christianity, for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity. Nietzsche’s own emphasis is kept.
11 One more word against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention, our most personal self-defense and necessity: in any other sense it is merely a danger. Whatever does not sustain our life harms it: a virtue practiced merely out of respect for the concept "virtue," as Kant wanted, is harmful. "Virtue," "duty," the "good in itself," goodness characterized by impersonality and universal validity—phantoms in which decline, the final enfeeblement of life, the Chinese mentality of Königsberg find expression. The deepest laws of preservation and growth command the opposite: that each person invent his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. A people perishes when it confuses its own duty with the concept of duty in general. Nothing ruins us more deeply, more inwardly, than any "impersonal" duty, any sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.—To think that Kant's categorical imperative was not felt to be a danger to life!… The theologian's instinct alone took it under its protection!—An action compelled by the instinct of life finds in pleasure its proof of being a right action: and that nihilist with Christian-dogmatic entrails understood pleasure as an objection… What destroys more quickly than working, thinking, feeling without inner necessity, without a deeply personal choice, without pleasure? As an automaton of "duty"? It is nothing less than the recipe for decadence, even for idiocy… Kant became an idiot.—And this man was Goethe's contemporary! This calamitous spider passed for the German philosopher—still does!… I take care not to say what I think of the Germans… Did Kant not see in the French Revolution the transition from the inorganic form of the state to the organic? Did he not ask himself whether there was an event that could be explained in no other way than by a moral disposition in humanity, so that through it humanity's "tendency toward the good" would be proved once and for all? Kant's answer: "That is the Revolution." An instinct that goes wrong in each and every thing, anti-nature as instinct, German decadence as philosophy—that is Kant!—
12 I set aside a few skeptics, the decent type in the history of philosophy: but the rest do not know the first demands of intellectual honesty. All these great enthusiasts and prodigies behave like little women—they already take "beautiful feelings" for arguments, the "heaving bosom" for a bellows of divinity, conviction for a criterion of truth. Finally even Kant, in his "German" innocence, tried to dress this form of corruption, this lack of intellectual conscience, in scientific clothes under the concept "practical reason": he expressly invented a reason for the case in which one need not bother with reason, namely, when morality, when the sublime demand "you shall" makes itself heard. If we consider that among almost all peoples the philosopher is merely a further development of the priestly type, this inheritance from the priest, counterfeiting before oneself, ceases to surprise us. When one has holy tasks—for example, to improve, save, redeem humanity—when one carries divinity in one's breast, is the mouthpiece of imperatives from beyond, then such a mission already places one outside all merely rational valuations—already sanctified oneself by such a task, already oneself the type of a higher order!… What does a priest care about science! He stands too high for that!—And until now the priest has ruled!—He determined the concepts "true" and "untrue"!…
13 Let us not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a "revaluation of all values," an embodied declaration of war and victory against all the old concepts of "true" and "untrue." The most valuable insights are found last; but the most valuable insights are the methods. All the methods, all the presuppositions of our present scientific practice have had the deepest contempt leveled against them for millennia: on their account one was excluded from the company of "respectable" people—one counted as an "enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a "possessed" person. As a scientific mind, one was a Chandala… We have had the whole pathos of humanity against us—its concept of what truth ought to be, of what service to truth ought to be: every "you shall" has so far been directed against us… Our objects, our practices, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all this seemed to humanity utterly unworthy and contemptible.—In the end, one might with some fairness ask whether it was not really an aesthetic taste that kept humanity blind for so long: it demanded a picturesque effect from truth; likewise it demanded that the seeker of knowledge make a powerful impression on the senses. Our modesty offended its taste longest of all… Oh, how they divined that, those turkeys of God——
14 We have learned differently. We have become more modest in every respect. We no longer derive the human being from "spirit," from "divinity"; we have placed him back among the animals. We regard him as the strongest animal because he is the most cunning: his intellectuality is a consequence of this. On the other hand, we resist a vanity that would like to make itself heard here too: as though the human being had been the great ulterior purpose of animal evolution. He is by no means the crown of creation: every being beside him stands on an equal level of perfection… And in saying this, we still say too much: relatively speaking, the human being is the most ill-formed animal, the sickliest, the one that has strayed most dangerously from its instincts—admittedly, with all that, also the most interesting!—As for animals, Descartes was the first, with admirable boldness, to venture the thought of understanding the animal as a machine: our entire physiology strives to prove this proposition. Nor, logically, do we set the human being apart, as Descartes still did: whatever is understood about the human being today extends precisely as far as he is understood as a machine. Formerly, the human being was given "free will" as his dowry from a higher order: today we have taken even will away from him, in the sense that it must no longer be understood as a faculty. The old word "will" serves only to designate a resultant, a kind of individual reaction that necessarily follows a multitude of partly conflicting, partly concordant stimuli—the will no longer "acts," no longer "moves"… Formerly, people saw in human consciousness, in "spirit," proof of a higher descent, of divinity; to perfect the human being, they advised him to draw his senses into himself like a turtle, to cease all intercourse with earthly things, to cast off the mortal shell: then the essential part of him remained, "pure spirit." We have thought better of this too: becoming conscious, "spirit," now counts for us precisely as a symptom of the organism's relative imperfection, as experimenting, groping, missing the mark, as a toil that consumes an unnecessary amount of nervous energy—we deny that anything can be made perfect as long as it is still being done consciously. "Pure spirit" is pure stupidity: if we subtract the nervous system and the senses, the "mortal shell," then our calculation is wrong—nothing more!…
15 In Christianity, neither morality nor religion touches reality at any point. Nothing but imaginary causes ("God," "soul," "I," "spirit," "free will"—or even "unfree will"); nothing but imaginary effects ("sin," "redemption," "grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of sin"). An intercourse between imaginary beings ("God," "spirits," "souls"); an imaginary natural science (anthropocentric; a complete absence of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (nothing but misunderstandings of oneself, interpretations of pleasant or unpleasant general feelings—for example, the states of the sympathetic nerve—with the aid of the sign language of religious-moral idiosyncrasy—"repentance," "pangs of conscience," "the devil's temptation," "the nearness of God"); an imaginary teleology ("the kingdom of God," "the Last Judgment," "eternal life").—This pure world of fiction differs greatly to its disadvantage from the dream world, in that the latter reflects reality, while the former falsifies, devalues, negates reality. Once the concept "nature" had been invented as the opposite of "God," "natural" had to become the word for "reprehensible"—that whole world of fiction has its root in hatred of the natural (—of reality!—); it is the expression of a deep unease in the face of what is real… But that explains everything. Who alone has reasons to lie his way out of reality? Whoever suffers from it. But to suffer from reality means to be a failed reality… The preponderance of feelings of displeasure over feelings of pleasure is the cause of a fictitious morality and religion: such a preponderance, however, supplies the formula for decadence…
16 A critique of the Christian concept of God compels the same conclusion.—A people that still believes in itself still has its own god. In him it reveres the conditions through which it holds the upper hand, its virtues—it projects its delight in itself, its feeling of power, into a being whom it can thank for them. Whoever is rich wants to give; a proud people needs a god in order to sacrifice… Religion, on these assumptions, is a form of gratitude. One is grateful for oneself: for that, one needs a god.—Such a god must be able to help and harm, must be able to be friend and enemy—he is admired in good and in evil alike. The unnatural castration of a god into a god of goodness alone would here lie beyond anything desirable. The evil god is as necessary as the good one: after all, one hardly owes one's own existence to tolerance, to benevolence toward humanity… What use would a god be who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, mockery, cunning, violence? Who perhaps did not even know the intoxicating fervors of victory and annihilation? One would not understand such a god: why have him?—Admittedly, when a people is perishing; when it feels its faith in the future, its hope of freedom, fading away for good; when submission enters its consciousness as the foremost advantage, the virtues of the subjected as the conditions of survival, then its god must change as well. He now becomes a cringing hypocrite, fearful, modest, advises "peace of soul," hating no more, forbearance, "love" even toward friend and enemy. He moralizes incessantly; he crawls into the cave of every private virtue, becomes a god for everyone, becomes a private person, becomes a cosmopolitan… Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in a people's soul: now he is merely the good god… In fact, there is no other alternative for gods: either they are the will to power—and so long as they are, they will be gods of a people—or else incapacity for power—and then they necessarily become good…
17 Wherever the will to power declines in any form, there is also, every time, a physiological regression, a decadence. The divinity of decadence, circumcised in its most virile virtues and drives, now necessarily becomes the god of the physiologically diminished, the weak. They do not call themselves the weak; they call themselves "the good"… No further hint is needed to understand at what moments in history the dualistic fiction of a good and an evil god first becomes possible. With the same instinct by which the subjected reduce their god to "goodness in itself," they strike the good qualities out of their conquerors' god; they take revenge on their masters by demonizing their god.—The good god, just like the devil: both spawn of decadence.—How can anyone today still yield so far to the simplemindedness of Christian theologians as to decree with them that the further development of the concept of God from the "God of Israel," from a people's god to the Christian God, the embodiment of all goodness, is progress?—But even Renan does it. As though Renan had a right to be simpleminded! The opposite stares us in the face. When the prerequisites of ascending life, when everything strong, brave, commanding, proud is eliminated from the concept of God; when, step by step, he sinks to the symbol of a staff for the weary, a saving anchor for all who are drowning; when he becomes the poor people's god, the sinners' god, the sick people's god above all others, and the predicate "savior," "redeemer" is, as it were, all that remains as a divine predicate at all: what does such a transformation speak of? Such a reduction of the divine?—Admittedly, "the kingdom of God" has grown larger in the process. Formerly he had only his people, his "chosen" people. In the meantime, like his people themselves, he went abroad, took to wandering, and from then on could settle nowhere: until at last he made himself at home everywhere, the great cosmopolitan—until he won "the great number" and half the earth to his side. But the god of "the great number," the democrat among gods, did not become a proud pagan god for all that: he remained a Jew, remained the god of hidden corners, the god of all the dark nooks and places, of all the unhealthy quarters of the whole world!… His world empire remains an underworld empire, a hospital, a cellar empire, a ghetto empire… And he himself, so pale, so weak, so decadent… Even the palest of the pale became his masters, the gentlemen metaphysicians, the albinos of concepts. They spun their webs around him so long that, hypnotized by their movements, he himself became a spider, himself a metaphysician. Now he spun the world out of himself again—in the guise of Spinoza—now he transfigured himself into something ever thinner and paler, became "ideal," became "pure spirit," became "the absolute," became "thing in itself"… Decline of a god: God became "thing in itself"…
18 The Christian concept of God—God as god of the sick, God as spider, God as spirit—is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever attained on earth; perhaps it even marks the low-water line in the descending development of the divine type. God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! In God, enmity declared against life, nature, the will to life! God the formula for every slander of "this world," for every lie about "the beyond"! In God, nothingness deified, the will to nothingness canonized!…
19 That the strong races of northern Europe have not cast off the Christian God truly does no credit to their religious gifts—not to mention their taste. They ought to have done away with such a sickly and senile spawn of decadence. But a curse lies upon them for not having done away with him: they have taken sickness, age, contradiction into all their instincts—since then they have created no god! Almost two millennia and not a single new god! Instead, still here, as though rightfully existing, as though the last word and highest achievement of the god-forming power, of the creative spirit in the human being, this pitiable god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid product of decay made of zero, concept, and contradiction, in which all the instincts of decadence, all the soul's cowardice and weariness, find their sanction!——
20 In condemning Christianity, I would not wish to have wronged a kindred religion that even surpasses it in number of adherents: Buddhism. Both belong together as nihilistic religions—they are religions of decadence—yet both are separated from one another in the most remarkable way. For the fact that we can now compare them, the critic of Christianity is deeply grateful to the scholars of India.—Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity—it carries in its blood the inheritance of an objective and cool way of posing problems; it comes after a philosophical movement lasting hundreds of years; the concept "God" has already been disposed of when it arrives. Buddhism is the only truly positivistic religion history shows us, even in its theory of knowledge (a strict phenomenalism—); it no longer says "struggle against sin," but, fully granting reality its due, "struggle against suffering." It has—and this distinguishes it profoundly from Christianity—already left behind the self-deception of moral concepts; in my language, it stands beyond good and evil.—The two physiological facts on which it rests and which it keeps in view are: first, an excessive sensory excitability that expresses itself as a refined capacity for pain; then, an overintellectualization, a life spent too long in concepts and logical procedures, under which the personal instinct has suffered to the advantage of the "impersonal" (—both conditions that at least some of my readers, the "objective" ones, will know from experience, as I do myself). On the basis of these physiological conditions, a depression has arisen: Buddha proceeds against it with hygienic measures. He prescribes life in the open air, the wandering life; moderation and selectiveness in diet; caution toward all alcoholic drinks; likewise caution toward all emotions that stir the bile, that heat the blood; no worry, either for oneself or for others. He calls for ideas that either bring calm or cheerfulness—he devises means of breaking the habit of the others. He understands goodness, being kind, as conducive to health. Prayer is ruled out, as is asceticism; no categorical imperative, no compulsion at all, not even within the monastic community (—one can leave again—). All these would be means of intensifying that excessive excitability. For the very same reason, he calls for no struggle against those who think differently; his teaching resists nothing more than the feeling of revenge, of aversion, of resentment (—"enmity does not come to an end through enmity": the moving refrain of all Buddhism…). And rightly so: precisely these emotions would be utterly unhealthy in view of the chief aim of this regimen. The intellectual fatigue he finds, expressed in an excessive "objectivity" (that is, a weakening of individual interest, a loss of center of gravity, of "egoism"), he combats by rigorously directing even the most intellectual interests back to the person. In Buddha's teaching egoism becomes duty: "one thing is needed," "how can you free yourself from suffering?" regulate and limit the intellectual diet (—one may perhaps recall that Athenian who likewise waged war on pure "scientific practice," Socrates, who elevated personal egoism into a morality even in the realm of problems).
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same German text of the preface, all sixty-two sections and the Law Against Christianity. Nietzsche’s own emphasis is kept.
11 One more word against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention, our most personal defense and most personal need. In any other sense it is only a danger. What is not a condition of our life harms it. A virtue practiced merely out of respect for the idea of “virtue,” as Kant wanted, is harmful. “Virtue,” “duty,” the “good in itself,” the good that is impersonal and valid for everyone—these are fantasies that express decline, life's final loss of strength, the Chinese mentality of Königsberg. The deepest laws of preservation and growth command the opposite: everyone must invent their own virtue, their own categorical imperative. A people perishes when it confuses its own duty with the idea of duty in general. Nothing ruins us more deeply, more inwardly, than any “impersonal” duty, any sacrifice to the Moloch of abstraction.—How could people fail to feel that Kant's categorical imperative was a danger to life!… Only the theologian's instinct protected it!—An action forced on us by life's instinct proves itself a right action through pleasure. But that nihilist with Christian dogma in his guts saw pleasure as an objection… What destroys us faster than working, thinking, and feeling without an inner necessity, without a deeply personal choice, without pleasure? As an automaton of “duty”? It is nothing less than the recipe for decadence, even for idiocy… Kant became an idiot.—And this was Goethe's contemporary! This disastrous spider passed for the German philosopher—and still does!… I am careful not to say what I think of the Germans… Didn't Kant see the French Revolution as the transition from the inorganic form of the state to the organic? Didn't he ask himself whether there was an event that could only be explained by a moral disposition in humanity, so that it proved, once and for all, “humanity's tendency toward the good”? Kant's answer: “That is the Revolution.” An instinct that gets everything wrong, opposition to nature as an instinct, German decadence as philosophy—that is Kant!—
12 I make an exception for a few skeptics, the decent type in the history of philosophy. But the rest do not know the first requirements of intellectual honesty. All these great visionaries and wondrous creatures behave like little women. They already take “beautiful feelings” for arguments, the “swelling chest” for the bellows of divinity, conviction for a test of truth. Most recently, Kant, in his “German” innocence, even tried to make this form of corruption, this lack of intellectual conscience, scientific under the name “practical reason.” He invented a special reason for the case in which we need not bother with reason: when morality, when the lofty demand “you must,” speaks up. Consider that among almost all peoples the philosopher is only a further development of the priestly type. Then this inheritance from the priest—paying oneself with counterfeit money—is no longer surprising. When you have holy tasks—for example, to improve, save, redeem people—when you carry divinity in your breast and are the mouthpiece for commands from beyond, such a mission already places you outside all merely rational judgments. Such a task has already sanctified you yourself, already made you a type of a higher order!… What does a priest care about science! He stands too high for it!—And until now the priest has ruled!—He determined the concepts “true” and “untrue”!…
13 Let's not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a “revaluation of all values,” a declaration of war and victory in the flesh against all the old ideas of “true” and “untrue.” The most valuable insights are found last. But the most valuable insights are methods. All the methods, all the basic assumptions of our present scientific approach faced the deepest contempt for thousands of years. Because of them, you were shut out of the company of “respectable” people. You were considered an “enemy of God,” someone who despised truth, someone “possessed.” With a scientific cast of mind, you were a Chandala… We had the whole passionate attitude of humanity against us—its idea of what truth should be, of what serving truth should be. Until now, every “you must” has been directed against us… Our objects of study, our practices, our quiet, cautious, distrustful way—all of this seemed completely unworthy and contemptible to humanity.—In the end, it would be fair enough to ask whether an aesthetic taste was really what kept humanity blind for so long. It demanded a visually striking effect from truth. It likewise demanded that the person seeking knowledge make a strong impression on the senses. Our modesty offended its taste longest of all… Oh, how they sensed that, those turkeys of God——
14 We have learned to think differently. We have become more modest in every respect. We no longer trace humanity back to “spirit,” to “divinity.” We have put humans back among the animals. We regard the human being as the strongest animal because it is the most cunning: its intellect is a result of this. On the other hand, we resist a vanity that wants to speak up here again, as though humanity had been the great hidden purpose of animal development. Humanity is certainly not the crown of creation. Every creature stands beside it at the same level of perfection… And in saying that, we still say too much. Relatively speaking, the human being is the animal that has turned out worst, the sickliest, the one that has strayed most dangerously from its instincts—though, for all that, also the most interesting!—As for animals, Descartes was the first to dare, with admirable boldness, to think of the animal as a machine. Our whole physiology works to prove this proposition. Logically, we do not set humans apart either, as Descartes still did. Today we understand human beings only to the extent that we understand them as machines. People once gave human beings “free will” as their endowment from a higher order. Today we have taken away even their will, in the sense that it must no longer be understood as a capacity. The old word “will” only serves to name a combined result, a kind of individual reaction that necessarily follows a mass of stimuli, some conflicting, some agreeing. The will no longer “acts,” no longer “moves” anything… People once saw human consciousness, “spirit,” as proof of humanity's higher origin, its divinity. To perfect a human being, they recommended drawing the senses inward like a turtle, stopping contact with earthly things, casting off the mortal shell. Then the essential part remained: “pure spirit.” Here too we have thought better of it. We see conscious awareness, “spirit,” as precisely a symptom of the organism's relative imperfection: an attempt, a fumbling search, a mistake, hard work that uses up an unnecessarily large amount of nervous energy. We deny that anything can be done perfectly as long as it is still done consciously. “Pure spirit” is pure stupidity. If we subtract the nervous system and the senses, the “mortal shell,” then our calculation is wrong—nothing more!…
15 In Christianity, neither morality nor religion touches reality at any point. Nothing but imaginary causes (“God,” “soul,” “I,” “spirit,” “free will”—or “unfree will”); nothing but imaginary effects (“sin,” “redemption,” “grace,” “punishment,” “forgiveness of sin”). Dealings between imaginary beings (“God,” “spirits,” “souls”); an imaginary natural science (human-centered; completely lacking the concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (nothing but misunderstandings of oneself, interpretations of pleasant or unpleasant general feelings—for example, states of the sympathetic nerve—using the symbolic language of religious and moral peculiarities: “repentance,” “pangs of conscience,” “temptation by the devil,” “God's nearness”); an imaginary theory of purposes (“the kingdom of God,” “the Last Judgment,” “eternal life”).—This purely fictional world differs from the dream world greatly to its own disadvantage: dreams reflect reality, while this world falsifies, devalues, and denies reality. Once the concept “nature” had been invented as the opposite of “God,” “natural” had to become the word for “reprehensible.” This entire fictional world is rooted in hatred of the natural—of reality! It expresses a deep uneasiness with what is real… But that explains everything. Who alone has reasons to lie their way out of reality? Those who suffer from it. But to suffer from reality means being a reality that has gone wrong… The cause of a fictional morality and religion is an excess of unpleasant feelings over pleasant ones. But such an excess gives us the formula for decadence…
16 A critique of the Christian idea of God forces us to the same conclusion.—A people that still believes in itself still has its own god. In him it honors the conditions that keep it on top, its virtues. It projects its delight in itself, its feeling of power, into a being it can thank for them. Those who are rich want to give something away. A proud people needs a god so it can sacrifice… Under these conditions, religion is a form of gratitude. People are grateful for themselves: that is why they need a god.—Such a god must be able to help and to harm, to be a friend and an enemy. People admire him in good things as in bad. The unnatural castration of a god into a god of goodness alone would be completely undesirable here. The evil god is needed as much as the good one. After all, people do not exactly owe their own existence to tolerance, to goodwill toward humanity… What use would a god be who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, mockery, cunning, violence? Who perhaps did not even know the delightful passions of victory and destruction? People would not understand such a god. What would they want him for?—Of course, when a people is perishing, when it feels its faith in the future, its hope of freedom, fading away for good, when it becomes conscious of submission as the most useful thing and the virtues of the submissive as the conditions of survival, then its god must change too. He now becomes a cringing sneak, timid, modest. He recommends “peace of soul,” no more hatred, forbearance, “love” even for friend and enemy. He moralizes constantly. He crawls into the den of every private virtue, becomes a god for everyone, becomes a private citizen, becomes a cosmopolitan… Once he represented a people, a people's strength, everything aggressive and hungry for power in a people's soul. Now he is only the good god… In fact, gods have no other alternative: either they are the will to power—and as long as they are, they will be gods of a people—or they are an inability to attain power—and then they necessarily become good…
17 Wherever the will to power declines in any form, there is always a physiological decline as well, a decadence. The deity of decadence, with its most masculine virtues and drives cut away, now necessarily becomes the god of the physically weakened, the weak. They do not call themselves the weak. They call themselves “the good”… You can understand, without another hint, at what moments in history the fiction of two opposing gods, a good god and an evil god first becomes possible. The same instinct that makes the conquered degrade their god to “goodness in itself” makes them erase the good qualities from their conquerors' god. They take revenge on their masters by turning their god into a devil.—The good god, just like the devil: both are offspring of decadence.—How can people today still give in so far to the simplemindedness of Christian theologians that they join them in declaring that the development of the idea of God from the “God of Israel,” from a people's god, to the Christian God, the embodiment of everything good, is progress?—But even Renan does it. As though Renan had a right to be simpleminded! The opposite is obvious. When the conditions of rising life, when everything strong, brave, commanding, proud is removed from the idea of God; when he sinks step by step into the symbol of a staff for the weary, a rescue anchor for all who are drowning; when he becomes the poor people's god, the sinners' god, the sick people's god above all, and “savior,” “redeemer” is, so to speak, the only divine attribute left: what does such a transformation tell us? Such a reduction of the divine?—Of course, “the kingdom of God” has grown larger as a result. Once he had only his own people, his “chosen” people. Since then, just like his people themselves, he went abroad, went wandering. After that he never stayed still anywhere, until at last he became at home everywhere, the great cosmopolitan—until he got “the great number” and half the earth on his side. But despite this, the god of “the great number,” the democrat among gods, did not become a proud pagan god. He remained a Jew, remained the god of nooks, the god of all the dark corners and places, of all the unhealthy quarters of the whole world!… His world empire is still an underworld empire, a hospital, a basement empire, a ghetto empire… And he himself, so pale, so weak, so decadent… Even the palest of the pale came to rule over him, the gentlemen metaphysicians, the albinos of concepts. They spun their webs around him until, hypnotized by their movements, he himself became a spider, a metaphysician himself. Now he spun the world out of himself again—in Spinoza's guise. Now he transformed himself into something thinner and paler all the time, became an “ideal,” became “pure spirit,” became “the absolute,” became “the thing in itself”… The decline of a god: God became “the thing in itself”…
18 The Christian idea of God—God as god of the sick, God as spider, God as spirit—is one of the most corrupt ideas of God ever reached on earth. It may even mark the low point in the downward development of the type called god. God degenerated into the opposite of life, instead of being its glorification and eternal Yes! In God, war declared on life, on nature, on the will to life! God the formula for every slander of “this world,” for every lie about “the beyond”! In God, nothingness made divine, the will to nothingness declared holy!…
19 The fact that the strong races of northern Europe have not cast off the Christian God certainly does no credit to their religious gifts—not to mention their taste. They should have finished off such a sickly, senile offspring of decadence. But a curse lies on them for not having finished him off. They have taken sickness, old age, contradiction into all their instincts. Since then they have created no more gods! Almost two thousand years and not one single new god! Instead, still standing as though by right, as though the final word and utmost limit of humanity's god-forming power, its creative spirit, this pitiful God of Christian monotonous monotheism! This hybrid product of decay, made of zero, concept, and contradiction, in which all instincts of decadence, all the soul's cowardice and weariness, are given approval!——
20 In condemning Christianity, I would not want to have wronged a related religion that even surpasses it in number of followers: Buddhism. The two belong together as nihilistic religions—they are religions of decadence—yet they differ from each other in the most remarkable ways. The critic of Christianity is deeply grateful to the Indian scholars for making it possible to compare them now.—Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity. It has inherited an objective, cool way of posing problems. It comes after a philosophical movement lasting hundreds of years. The concept “God” has already been disposed of when it arrives. Buddhism is the only truly positivist religion that history shows us, even in its theory of knowledge, a strict phenomenalism. It no longer says “struggle against sin,” but, fully granting reality its due, “struggle against suffering.” It has already left behind the self-deception of moral concepts—this deeply separates it from Christianity. In my language, it stands beyond good and evil.—The two physiological facts on which it rests and which it addresses are: first, an excessive sensitivity to stimuli, expressed as a finely developed capacity for pain; second, excessive intellectualization, a life spent too long among concepts and logical procedures, which has damaged the personal instinct to the benefit of the “impersonal.” (Both are conditions that at least some of my readers, the “objective” ones, will know from experience, as I do myself.) These physiological conditions have produced a depression. Buddha tackles it with measures for health. Against it he prescribes life outdoors, a wandering life; moderation and care in choosing food; caution toward all liquor; caution also toward all emotions that stir up bile or heat the blood; no worries, either for yourself or for others. He calls for thoughts that either calm or cheer us. He invents ways of breaking the habit of the others. He understands goodness, being kind, as promoting health. Prayer is ruled out, as is asceticism. No categorical imperative, no compulsion at all, not even within the monastic community—you can leave again. All these would be ways to heighten that excessive sensitivity. For the same reason, he does not call for a struggle against people who think differently. His teaching opposes nothing more than the feeling of revenge, aversion, resentment. (“Hostility does not end through hostility”: the moving refrain of all Buddhism…) And rightly so: these very emotions would be completely unhealthy in view of its chief aim of regulating how we live. He finds intellectual exhaustion, expressed in an excessive “objectivity”—that is, weakened individual interest, a loss of personal weight and importance, of “egoism.” He fights it by strictly bringing even the most intellectual interests back to the person. In Buddha's teaching, egoism becomes a duty. “One thing is needed,” “how do you get free of suffering?”—these regulate and limit the intellectual diet. (We may perhaps recall that Athenian who likewise made war on pure “scientific thinking”: Socrates, who made personal egoism a moral principle even in the realm of problems.)
About this section
Sections 11–20 is part of The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 3 of 8 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
Open the work page for the full contents, every edition, and the download links, or go back to Explore to browse other complete works in the European tradition. The reader keeps your place when you are signed in and lets you compare the original with each translation, one edition at a time.