Sections 21–30
Original German
21 Die Voraussetzung für den Buddhismus ist ein sehr mildes Klima, eine große Sanftmut und Liberalität in den Sitten, kein Militarismus; und daß es die höheren und selbst gelehrten Stände sind, in denen die Bewegung ihren Herd hat. Man will die Heiterkeit, die Stille, die Wunschlosigkeit als höchstes Ziel, und man erreicht sein Ziel. Der Buddhismus ist keine Religion, in der man bloß auf Vollkommenheit aspiriert: das Vollkommene ist der normale Fall. —
Im Christentume kommen die Instinkte Unterworfner und Unterdrückter in den Vordergrund: es sind die niedersten Stände, die in ihm ihr Heil suchen. Hier wird als Beschäftigung, als Mit-. tel gegen die Langeweile die Kasuistik der Sünde, die Selbstkritik, die Gewissens-Inquisition geübt; hier wird der Affekt gegen einen Mächtigen, »Gott« genannt, beständig aufrecht erhalten (durch das Gebet); hier gilt das Höchste als unerreichbar, als Geschenk, als »Gnade«. Hier fehlt auch die Öffentlichkeit; der Versteck, der dunkle Raum ist christlich. Hier wird der Leib verachtet, die Hygiene als Sinnlichkeit abgelehnt; die Kirche wehrt sich selbst gegen die Reinlichkeit (— die erste christliche Maßregel nach Vertreibung der Mauren war die Schließung der öffentlichen Bäder, von denen Cordova allein 270 besaß). Christlich ist ein gewisser Sinn der Grausamkeit gegen sich und andre; der Haß gegen die Andersdenkenden; der Wille, zu verfolgen. Düstere und aufregende Vorstellungen sind im Vordergrunde; die höchstbegehrten, mit den höchsten Namen bezeichneten Zustände sind Epilepsoiden; die Diät wird so gewählt, daß sie morbide Erscheinungen begünstigt und die Nerven überreizt. Christlich ist die Todfeindschaft gegen die Herren der Erde, gegen die »Vornehmen« — und zugleich ein versteckter heimlicher Wettbewerb (-- man läßt ihnen den »Leib«, man will nur die »Seele« …). Christlich ist der Haß gegen den Geist, gegen Stolz, Mut, Freiheit, libertinage des Geistes; christlich ist der Haß gegen die Sinne, gegen die Freuden der Sinne, gegen die Freude überaupt…
22 Das Christentum, als es seinen ersten Boden verließ, die niedrigsten Stände, die Unterwelt der antiken Welt, als es unter Barbaren-Völkern nach Macht ausging, hatte hier nicht mehr müde Menschen zur Voraussetzung, sondern innerlich verwilderte und sich zerreißende — den starken Menschen, aber den mißratnen. Die Unzufriedenheit mit sich, das Leiden an sich ist hier nicht wie bei dem Buddhisten eine übermäßige Reizbarkeit und Schmerzfähigkeit, vielmehr umgekehrt ein übermächtiges Verlangen nach Wehe-tun, nach Auslassung der inneren Spannung in feindseligen Handlungen und Vorstellungen. Das Christentum hatte barbarische Begriffe und Werte nötig, um über Barbaren Herr zu werden: solche sind das Erstlingsopfer, das Bluttrinken im Abendmahl, die Verachtung des Geistes und der Kultur; die Folterung in allen Formen, sinnlich und unsinnlich; der große Pomp des Kultus. Der Buddhismus ist eine Religion für späte Menschen, für gütige, sanfte, übergeistig gewordne Rassen, die zu leicht Schmerz empfinden (— Europa ist noch lange nicht reif für ihn —): er ist eine Rückführung derselben zu Frieden und Heiterkeit, zur Diät im Geistigen, zu einer gewissen Abhärtung im Leiblichen. Das Christentum will über Raubtiere Herr werden; sein Mittel ist, sie krank zu machen — die Schwächung ist das christliche Rezept zur Zähmung, zur »Zivilisation«. Der Buddhismus ist eine Religion für den Schluß und die Müdigkeit der Zivilisation, das Christentum findet sie noch nicht einmal „Vor —es begründet sie unter Umständen.
23 Der Buddhismus, nochmals gesagt, ist hundertmal kälter, wahrhafter, objektiver. Er hat nicht mehr nötig, sich sein Leiden, seine Schmerzfähigkeit anständig zu machen durch die Interpretation der Sünde — er sagt bloß, was er denkt, »ich leide«. Dem Barbaren dagegen ist Leiden an sich nichts Anständiges: er braucht erst eine Auslegung, um es sich einzugestehn, daß er leidet (sein Instinkt weist ihn eher auf Verleugnung des Leidens, auf stilles Ertragen hin). Hier war das Wort »Teufel« eine Wohltat: man hatte einen übermächtigen und furchtbaren Feind — man brauchte sich nicht zu schämen, an einem solchen Feind zu leiden. —
Das Christentum hat einige Feinheiten auf dem Grunde, die zum Orient gehören. Vor allem weiß es, daß es an sich ganz gleichgültig ist, ob etwas wahr ist, aber von höchster Wichtigkeit, sofern es als wahr geglaubt wird. Die Wahrheit und der Glaube, daß etwas wahr sei: zwei ganz auseinanderliegende Interessen-Welten, fast Gegensatz-Welten — man kommt zum einen und zum andern auf grundverschiednen Wegen. Hierüber wissend zu sein — das macht im Orient beinahe den Weisen: so verstehen es die Brahmanen, so versteht es Plato, so jeder Schüler esoterischer Weisheit. Wenn zum Beispiel ein Glück darin liegt, sich von der Sünde erlöst zu glauben, so tut als Voraussetzung dazu nicht not, daß der Mensch sündig sei, sondern daß er sich sündig fühlt. Wenn aber überhaupt vor allem Glaube not tut, so muß man die Vernunft, die Erkenntnis, die Forschung in Mißkredit bringen: der Weg zur Wahrheit wird zum verbotnen Weg. — Die starke Hoffnung ist ein viel größeres Stimulans des Lebens, als irgendein einzelnes wirklich eintretendes Glück. Man muß Leidende durch eine Hoffnung aufrecht erhalten, welcher durch keine Wirklichkeit widersprochen werden kann — welche nicht durch eine Erfüllung abgetan wird: eine Jenseits-Hoffnung. (Gerade wegen dieser Fähigkeit, den Unglücklichen hinzuhalten, galt die Hoffnung bei den Griechen als Übel der Übel, als das eigentlich tückische Übel: es blieb im Faß des Übels zurück). — Damit Liebe möglich ist, muß Gott Person sein; damit die untersten Instinkte mitreden können, muß Gott jung sein. Man hat für die Inbrunst der Weiber einen schönen Heiligen, für die der Männer eine Maria in den Vordergrund zu rücken. Dies unter der Voraussetzung, daß das Christentum auf einem Boden Herr werden will, wo aphrodisische oder Adonis-Kulte den Begriff des Kultus bereits bestimmt haben. Die Forderung der Keuschheit verstärkt die Vehemenz und Innerlichkeit des religiösen Instinkts — sie macht den Kultus wärmer, schwärmerischer, seelenvoller. — Die Liebe ist der Zustand, wo der Mensch die Dinge am meisten so sieht, wie sie nicht sind. Die illusorische Kraft ist da auf ihrer Höhe, ebenso die versüßende, die verklärende Kraft. Man erträgt in der Liebe mehr als sonst, man duldet alles. Es galt eine Religion zu erfinden, in der geliebt werden kann: damit ist man über das Schlimmste am Leben hinaus — man sieht es gar nicht mehr. — Soviel über die drei christlichen Tugenden Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung: ich nenne sie die drei christlichen Klugheiten. — Der Buddhismus ist zu spät, zu positivistisch dazu, um noch auf diese Weise klug zu sein. —
24 Ich berühre hier nur das Problem der Entstehung des Christentums. Der erste Satz zu dessen Lösung heißt: das Christentum ist einzig aus dem Boden zu verstehn, aus dem es gewachsen ist — es ist nicht eine Gegenbewegung gegen den jüdischen Instinkt, es ist dessen Folgerichtigkeit selbst, ein Schluß weiter in dessen furchteinflößender Logik. In der Formel des Erlösers: »Das Heil kommt von den Juden«. — Der zweite Satz heißt: der psychologische Typus des Galiläers ist noch erkennbar, aber erst in seiner vollständigen Entartung (die zugleich Verstümmlung und Überladung mit fremden Zügen ist —) hat er dazu dienen können, wozu er gebraucht worden ist, zum Typus eines Erlösers der Menschheit: —
Die Juden sind das merkwürdigste Volk der Weltgeschichte, weil sie, vor die Frage von Sein und Nichtsein gestellt, mit einer vollkommen unheimlichen Bewußtheit das Sein um jeden Preis vorgezogen haben: dieser Preis war die radikale Fälschung aller Natur, aller Natürlichkeit, aller Realität, der ganzen inneren Welt so gut als der äußeren. Sie grenzten sich ab gegen alle Bedingungen, unter denen bisher ein Volk leben konnte, leben durfte; sie schufen aus sich einen Gegensatz-Begriff zu natürlichen Bedingungen — sie haben, der Reihe nach, die Religion, den Kultus, die Moral, die Geschichte, die Psychologie auf eine unheilbare Weise in den Widerspruch zu deren Natur-Werten umgedreht. Wir begegnen demselben Phänomene noch einmal und in unsäglich vergrößerten Proportionen, trotzdem nur als Kopie — die christliche Kirche entbehrt, im Vergleich zum »Volk der Heiligen«, jedes Anspruchs auf Originalität. Die Juden sind, ebendamit, das verhängnisvollste Volk der Weltgeschichte: in ihrer Nachwirkung haben sie die Menschheit dermaßen falsch gemacht, daß heute noch der Christ antijüdisch fühlen kann, ohne sich als die letzte jüdische Konsequenz zu verstehn.
Ich habe in meiner »Genealogie der Moral« zum ersten Male den Gegensatz-Begriff einer vornehmen Moral und einer ressentiment-Moral psychologisch vorgeführt, letztere aus dem Nein gegen die erstere entsprungen: aber dies ist die jüdisch-christliche Moral ganz und gar. Um Nein sagen zu können zu allem, was 7 die aufsteigende Bewegung des Lebens, die Wohlgeratenheit, die Macht, die Schönheit, die Selbstbejahung auf Erden darstellt, mußte hier sich der Genie gewordne Instinkt des ressentiment eine andre Welt erfinden, von wo aus jene Lebens-Bejahung als das Böse, als das Verwerfliche an sich erschien. Psychologisch nachgerechnet, ist das jüdische Volk ein Volk der zähesten Lebenskraft, welches, unter unmögliche Bedingungen versetzt, freiwillig, aus der tiefsten Klugheit der Selbsterhaltung, die Partei aller décadence-Instinkte nimmt — nicht als von ihnen beherrscht, sondern weil es in ihnen eine Macht erriet, mit der man sich gegen »die Welt« durchsetzen kann. Die Juden sind das Gegenstück aller décadents: sie haben sie darstellen müssen bis zur Illusion, sie haben sich, mit einem non plus ultra des schauspielerischen Genies, an die Spitze aller décadence-Bewegungen zu stellen gewußt (— als Christentum des Paulus —), um aus ihnen etwas zu schaffen, das stärker ist als jede Ja-sagende Partei des Lebens. Die décadence ist, für die im Juden- und Christentum zur Macht verlangende Art von Mensch, eine priesterliche Art, nur Mittel: diese Art von Mensch hat ein Lebens-Interesse daran, die Menschheit krank zu machen und die Begriffe »gut« und »böse«, »wahr« und »falsch« in einen lebensgefährlichen und weltverleumderischen Linn umzudrehn. —
25 Die Geschichte Israels ist unschätzbar als typische Geschichte aller Entnatürlichung der Natur-Werte: ich deute fünf Tatsachen derselben an. Ursprünglich, vor allem in der Zeit des Königtums, stand auch Israel zu allen Dingen in der richtigen, das heißt der natürlichen Beziehung. Sein Javeh war der Ausdruck des Macht-Bewußtseins, der Freude an sich, der Hoffnung auf sich: in ihm erwartete man Sieg und Heil, mit ihm vertraute man der Natur, daß sie gibt, was das Volk nötig hat — vor allem Regen. Javeh ist der Gott Israels und folglich Gott der Gerechtigkeit: die Logik jedes Volks, das in Macht ist und ein gutes Gewissen davon hat. Im Fest-Kultus drücken sich diese beiden Seiten der Selbstbejahung eines Volkes aus: es ist dankbar für die großen Schicksale, durch die es obenauf kam, es ist dankbar im Verhältnis zum Jahreskreislauf und allem Glück in Viehzucht und Ackerbau. — Dieser Zustand der Dinge blieb noch lange das Ideal, auch als er auf eine traurige Weise abgetan war: die Anarchie im Innern, der Assyrer von außen. Aber das Volk hielt als höchste Wünschbarkeit jene Vision eines Königs fest, der ein guter Soldat und ein strenger Richter ist: vor allem jener typische Prophet (das heißt Kritiker und Satiriker des Augenblicks) Jesaja. — Aber jede Hoffnung blieb unerfüllt. Der alte Gott konnte nichts mehr von dem, was er ehemals konnte. Man hätte ihn fahren lassen sollen. Was geschah? Man veränderte seinen Begriff — man entnatürlichte seinen Begriff: um diesen Preis hielt man ihn fest. — Javeh der Gott der »Gerechtigkeit« — nicht mehr eine Einheit mit Israel, ein Ausdruck des Volks-Selbstgefühls: nur noch ein Gott unter Bedingungen … Sein Begriff wird ein Werkzeug in den Händen priesterlicher Agıtatoren, welche alles Glück nunmehr als Lohn, alles Unglück als Strafe für Ungehorsam gegen Gott, für »Sünde« interpretieren: jene verlogenste Interpretations-Manier einer angeblich »sittlichen Weltordnung«, mit der, ein für allemal, der Naturbegriff »Ursache« und »Wirkung« auf den Kopf gestellt ist. Wenn man erst, mit Lohn und Strafe, die natürliche Kausalität aus der Welt geschafft hat, bedarf man einer widernatürlichen Kausalität: der ganze Rest von Unnatur folgt nunmehr. Ein Gott, der fordert — an Stelle eines Gottes, der hilft, der Rat schafft, der im Grunde das Wort ist für jede glückliche Inspiration des Muts und des Selbstvertrauens… Die Moral nicht mehr der Ausdruck der Lebens- und Wachstums-Bedingungen eines Volks, nicht mehr sein unterster Instinkt des Lebens, sondern abstrakt geworden, Gegensatz zum Leben geworden — Moral als grundsätzliche Verschlechterung der Phantasie, als »böser Blick« für alle Dinge. Was ist jüdische, was ist christliche Moral? Der Zufall um seine Unschuld gebracht; das Unglück mit dem Begriff »Sünde« beschmutzt; das Wohlbefinden als Gefahr, als »Versuchung«; das physiologische Übelbefinden mit dem Gewissens-Wurm vergiftet…
26 Der Gottesbegriff gefälscht; der Moralbegriff gefälscht — die jüdische Priesterschaft blieb dabei nicht stehn. Man konnte die ganze Geschichte Israels nicht brauchen: fort mit ihr! — Diese Priester haben jenes Wunderwerk von Fälschung zustande gebracht, als deren Dokumente uns ein guter Teil der Bibel vorliegt: sie haben ihre eigne Volks-Vergangenheit mit einem Hohn ohnegleichen gegen jede Überlieferung, gegen jede historische Realität, ins Religiöse übersetzt, das heißt, aus ihr einen stupiden Heils-Mechanismus von Schuld gegen Javeh und Strafe, von Frömmigkeit gegen Javeh und Lohn gemacht. Wir würden diesen schmachvollsten Akt der Geschichts-Fälschung viel schmerzhafter empfinden, wenn uns nicht die kirchliche Geschichts-Interpretation von Jahrtausenden fast stumpf für die Forderungen der Rechtschaffenheit in historicis gemacht hätte. Und der Kirche sekundierten die Philosophen: die Lüge der »sittlichen Weltordnung« geht durch die ganze Entwicklung selbst der neueren Philosophie. Was bedeutet »sittliche Weltordnung«? Daß es, ein für allemal, einen Willen Gottes gibt, was der Mensch zu tun, was er zu lassen habe; daß der Wert eines Volkes, eines einzelnen sich danach bemesse, wie sehr oder wie wenig dem Willen Gottes gehorcht wird; daß in den Schicksalen eines Volkes, eines einzelnen sich der Wille Gottes als herrschend, das heißt als strafend und belohnend, je nach dem Grade des Gehorsanıs, beweist. — Die Realität an Stelle dieser erbarmungswürdigen Lüge heißt: eine parasitische Art Mensch, die nur auf Kosten aller gesunden Bildungen des Lebens gedeiht, der Priester, mißbraucht den Namen Gottes: er nennt einen Zustand der Gesellschaft, in dem der Priester den Wert der Dinge bestimmt, »das Reich Gottes«; er nennt die Mittel, vermöge deren ein solcher Zustand erreicht oder aufrechterhalten wird, »den Willen Gottes«; er mißt, mit einem kaltblütigen Zynismus, die Völker, die Zeiten, die einzelnen danach ab, ob sie der Priester-Übermacht nützten oder widerstrebten. Man sehe sie am Werk: unter den Händen derjüdischen Priester wurde die große Zeit in der Geschichte Israels eine Verfalls-Zeit, das Exil, das lange Unglück verwandelte sich in eine ewige Strafe für die große Zeit — eine Zeit, in der der Priester noch nichts war. Sie haben aus den mächtigen, sehr frei geratenen Gestalten der Geschichte Israels, je nach Bedürfnis, armselige Ducker und Mucker oder »Gottlose« gemacht, sie haben die Psychologie jedes großen Ereignisses auf die Idioten-Formel »Gehorsam oder Ungehorsam gegen Gott« vereinfacht. — Ein Schritt weiter: der »Wille Gottes« (das heißt die Erhaltungs-Bedingungen für die Macht des Priesters) muß bekannt sein — zu diesem Zwecke bedarf es einer »Offenbarung«. Auf deutsch: eine große literarische Fälschung wird nötig, eine »heilige Schrift« wird entdeckt — unter allem hieratischen Pomp, mit Bußtagen und Jammergeschrei über die lange »Sünde« wird sie öffentlich gemacht. Der »Wille Gottes« stand längst fest: das ganze Unheil liegt darin, daß man sich der »heiligen Schrift« entfremdet hat… Moses schon war der »Wille Gottes« offenbart… Was war geschehn? Der Priester hatte, mit Strenge, mit Pedanterie, bis auf die großen und kleinen Steuern, die man ihm zu zahlen hatte (— die schmackhaftesten Stücke vom Fleisch nicht zu vergessen: denn der Priester ist ein Beefsteak-Fresser), ein für allemal formuliert, was er haben will, »was der Wille Gottes ist«… Von nun an sind alle Dinge des Lebens so geordnet, daß der Priester überall unentbehrlich ist; in allen natürlichen Vorkommnissen des Lebens, bei der Geburt, der Ehe, der Krankheit, dem Tode, gar nicht vom »Opfer« (der Mahlzeit) zu reden, erscheint der heilige Parasit, um sie zu entnatürlichen — in seiner Sprache: zu »heiligen«… Denn dies muß man begreifen: jede natürliche Sitte, jede natürliche Institution (Staat, Gerichtsordnung, Ehe, Kranken- und Armenpflege), jede vom Instinkt des Lebens eingegebne Forderung, kurz alles, was seinen Wert in sich hat, wird durch den Parasitismus des Priesters (oder der »sittlichen Weltordnung«) grundsätzlich wertlos, wert-widrig gemacht: es bedarf nachträglich einer Sanktion — eine wertverleihende Macht tut not, welche die Natur darin verneint, welche eben damit erst einen Wert schafft… Der Priester entwertet, entheiligt die Natur: um diesen Preis besteht er überhaupt. — Der Ungehorsam gegen Gott, das heißt gegen den Priester, gegen »das Gesetz«, bekommt nun den Namen »Sünde«; die Mittel, sich wieder »mit Gott zu versöhnen«, sind, wie billig, Mittel, mit denen die Unterwerfung unter den Priester nur noch gründlicher gewährleistet ist: der Priester allein »erlöst« … Psychologisch nachgerechnet, werden in jeder priesterlich organisierten Gesellschaft die »Sünden« unentbehrlich: sie sind die eigentlichen Handhaben der Macht, der Priester lebt von den Sünden, er hat nötig, daß »gesündigt« wird… Oberster Satz: »Gott vergibt dem, der Buße tut« — auf deutsch: der sich dem Priester unterwirft. —
27 Auf einem dergestalt falschen Boden, wo jede Natur, jeder Naturwert, jede Realität die tiefsten Instinkte der herrschenden Klasse wider sich hatte, wuchs das Christentum auf, eine Todfeindschafts-Form gegen die Realität, die bisher nicht übertroffen worden ist. Das »heilige Volk«, das für alle Dinge nur Priester-Werte, nur Priester-Worte übrig behalten hatte und mit einer Schluß-Folgerichtigkeit, die Furcht einflößen kann, alles, was sonst noch an Macht auf Erden bestand, als »unheilig«, als »Welt«, als »Sünde« von sich abgetrennt hatte — dies Volk brachte für seinen Instinkt eine letzte Formel hervor, die logisch war bis zur Selbstverneinung: es verneinte, als Christentum, noch die letzte Form der Realität, das »heilige Volk«, das »Volk der Ausgewählten«, die jüdische Realität selbst. Der Fall ist ersten Rangs: die kleine aufständische Bewegung, die auf den Namen des Jesus von Nazareth getauft wird, ist der jüdische Instinkt noch einmal — anders gesagt, der Priester-Instinkt, der den Priester als Realität nicht mehr verträgt, die Erfindung einer noch abgezogneren Daseinsform, einer noch unrealeren Vision der Welt, als sie die Organisation einer Kirche bedingt. Das Christentum verneint die Kirche…
Ich sehe nicht ab, wogegen der Aufstand gerichtet war, als dessen Urheber Jesus verstanden oder mißverstanden worden ist, wenn es nicht der Aufstand gegen die jüdische Kirche war — »Kirche« genau in dem Sinn genommen, in dem wir heute das Wort nehmen. Es war ein Aufstand gegen »die Guten und Gerechten«, gegen »die Heiligen Israels«, gegen die Hierarchie der Gesellschaft — nicht gegen deren Verderbnis, sondern gegen die Kaste, das Privilegium, die Ordnung, die Formel; es war der Unglaube an die »höheren Menschen«, das Nein gesprochen gegen alles, was Priester und Theologe war. Aber die Hierarchie, die damit, wenn auch nur für einen Augenblick, in Frage gestellt wurde, war der Pfahlbau, auf dem das jüdische Volk, mitten im »Wasser«, überhaupt noch fortbestand — die mühsam errungene letzte Möglichkeit, übrigzubleiben, das Residuum seiner politischen Sonder-Existenz: ein Angriff auf sie war ein Angriff auf den tiefsten Volks-Instinkt, auf den zähesten Volks-Lebenswillen, der je auf Erden dagewesen ist. Dieser heilige Anarchist, der das niedere Volk, die Ausgestoßnen und »Sünder«, die Tschandala innerhalb des Judentums zum Widerspruch gegen die herrschende Ordnung aufrief — mit einer Sprache, falls den Evangelien zu trauen wäre, die auch heute noch nach Sibirien führen würde, war ein politischer Verbrecher, so weit eben politische Verbrecher in einer absurd-unpolitischen Gemeinschaft möglich waren. Dies brachte ihn ans Kreuz: der Beweis dafür ist die Aufschrift des Kreuzes. Er starb für seine Schuld — es fehlt jeder Grund dafür, so oft es auch behauptet worden ist, daß er für die Schuld andrer starb. —
28 Eine vollkommen andre Frage ist es, ob er einen solchen Gegensatz überhaupt im Bewußtsein hatte — ob er nicht bloß als dieser Gegensatz empfunden wurde. Und hier erst berühre ich das Problem der Psychologie des Erlösers. — Ich bekenne, daß ich wenige Bücher mit solchen Schwierigkeiten lese wie die Evangelien. Diese Schwierigkeiten sind andre als die, an deren Nachweis die gelehrte Neugierde des deutschen Geistes einen ihrer unvergeßlichsten Triumphe gefeiert hat. Die Zeit ist fern, wo auch ich, gleich jedem jungen Gelehrten, mit der klugen Langsamkeit eines raffinierten Philologen das Werk des unvergleichlichen Strauß auskostete. Damals war ich zwanzig Jahre alt: jetzt bin ich zu ernst dafür. Was gehen mich die Widersprüche der »Überlieferung« an? Wie kann man Heiligen-Legenden überhaupt »Überlieferung« nennen! Die Geschichten von Heiligen sind die zweideutigste Literatur, die es überhaupt gibt: auf sie die wissenschaftliche Methode anwenden, wenn sonst keine Urkunden vorliegen, scheint mir von vornherein verurteilt — bloß gelehrter Müßiggang…
29 Was mich angeht, ist der psychologische Typus des Erlösers. Derselbe könnte ja in den Evangelien enthalten sein trotz den Evangelien, wie sehr auch immer verstümmelt oder mit fremden Zügen überladen: wie der des Franziskus von Assisi in seinen Legenden erhalten ist trotz seinen Legenden. Nicht die Wahrheit darüber, was er getan, was er gesagt, wie er eigentlich gestorben ist: sondern die Frage, ob sein Typus überhaupt noch vorstellbar, ob er »überliefert« ist? — Die Versuche, die ich kenne, aus den Evangelien sogar die Geschichte einer »Seele« herauszulesen, scheinen mir Beweise einer verabscheuungswürdigen psychologischen Leichtfertigkeit. Herr Renan, dieser Hanswurst in psychologicis, hat die zwei ungehörigsten Begriffe zu seiner Erklärung des Typus Jesus hinzugebracht, die es hierfür geben kann: den Begriff Genie und den Begriff Held (»héros«). Aber wenn irgend etwas unevangelisch ist, so ist es der Begriff Held. Gerade der Gegensatz zu allem Ringen, zu allem Sich-in-Kampf-fühlen ist hier Instinkt geworden: die Unfähigkeit zum Widerstand wird hier Moral (»widerstehe nicht dem Bösen!« das tiefste Wort der Evangelien, ihr Schlüssel in gewissem Sinne), die Seligkeit im Frieden, in der Sanftmut, im Nicht-feind-sein-können. Was heißt »frohe Botschaft«? Das wahre Leben, das ewige Leben ist gefunden, — es wird nicht verheißen, es ist da, es ist in euch: als Leben in der Liebe, in der Liebe ohne Abzug und Ausschluß, ohne Distanz. Jeder ist das Kind Gottes — Jesus nimmt durchaus nichts für sich allein in Anspruch —, als Kind Gottes ist jeder mit jedem gleich… Aus Jesus einen Helden machen! — Und was für ein Mißverständnis ist gar das Wort »Genie«! Unser ganzer Begriff, unser Kultur-Begriff »Geist« hat in der Welt, in der Jesus lebt, gar keinen Sinn. Mit der Strenge des Physiologen gesprochen, wäre hier ein ganz andres Wort eher noch am Platz: das Wort Idiot. Wir kennen einen Zustand krankhafter Reizbarkeit des Tastsinns, der dann vor jeder Berührung, vor jedem Anfassen eines festen Gegenstandes zurückschaudert. Man übersetze sich einen solchen physiologischen habitus in seine letzte Logik — als Instinkt-Haß gegen jede Realität, als Flucht ins »Unfaßliche«, ins »Unbegreifliche«, als Widerwille gegen jede Formel, jeden Zeit- und Raumbegriff, gegen alles, was fest, Sitte, Institution, Kirche ist, als Zu-Hause-sein in einer Welt, an die keine Art Realität mehr rührt, einer bloß noch »inneren« Welt, einer »wahren« Welt, einer »ewigen« Welt… »Das Reich Gottes ist in euch« …
30 Der Instinkt-Haß gegen die Realität: Folge einer extremen Leid- und Reizfähigkeit, welche überhaupt nicht mehr »berührt« werden will, weil sie jede Berührung zu tief empfindet.
Die Instinkt-Ausschließung aller Abneigung, aller Feindschaft, aller Grenzen und Distanzen im Gefühl: Folge einer extremen Leid- und Reizfähigkeit, welche jedes Widerstreben, Widerstreben-müssen bereits als unerträgliche Unlust (das heißt als schädlich, als vom Selbsterhaltungs-Instinkte widerraten) empfindet und die Seligkeit (die Lust) allein darin kennt, nicht mehr, niemandem mehr, weder dem Übel noch dem Bösen, Widerstand zu leisten — die Liebe als einzige, als letzte Lebens-Möglichkeit…
Dies sind die zwei physiologischen Realitäten, auf denen, aus denen die Erlösungs-Lehre gewachsen ist. Ich nenne sie eine sublime Weiter-Entwicklung des Hedonismus auf durchaus morbider Grundlage. Nächstverwandt, wenn auch mit einem großen Zuschuß von griechischer Vitalität und Nervenkraft, bleibt ihr der Epikureismus, die Erlösungs-Lehre des Heidentums. Epikur ein typischer décadent: zuerst von mir als solcher erkannt. — Die Furcht vor Schmerz, selbst vor dem Unendlich-Kleinen im Schmerz — sie kann gar nicht anders enden als in einer Religion der Liebe…
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.
21 Buddhism presupposes a very mild climate, great gentleness and liberality of manners, no militarism; it also presupposes that the movement has its center among the higher and even the learned classes. Serenity, stillness, freedom from desire are sought as the highest goal, and that goal is attained. Buddhism is not a religion in which one merely aspires to perfection: perfection is the normal case.—
In Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed come to the fore: it is the lowest classes that seek their salvation in it. Here the casuistry of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of conscience are practiced as an occupation, a remedy for boredom; here the emotion directed toward a powerful being called “God” is constantly sustained (through prayer); here the highest is held to be unattainable, a gift, “grace.” Here, too, openness is absent; the hiding place, the dark room is Christian. Here the body is despised, hygiene rejected as sensuality; the Church resists even cleanliness (—the first Christian measure after the expulsion of the Moors was to close the public baths, of which Cordova alone possessed 270). A certain taste for cruelty toward oneself and others is Christian; so are hatred of those who think differently and the will to persecute. Gloomy and agitating ideas stand in the foreground; the states most ardently desired, designated by the loftiest names, are epileptoid; the diet is chosen to foster morbid manifestations and overstimulate the nerves. Christian is the mortal enmity toward the lords of the earth, toward the “noble”—and at the same time a concealed, secret rivalry (—one leaves them the “body,” one wants only the “soul”…). Christian is hatred of the intellect, of pride, courage, freedom, the intellect's unbridled liberty; Christian is hatred of the senses, of the pleasures of the senses, of pleasure altogether…
22 When Christianity left its first soil, the lowest classes, the underworld of the ancient world, and set out in pursuit of power among barbarian peoples, it no longer presupposed weary human beings, but people inwardly savage and tearing themselves apart—the strong human being, but the one who had gone wrong. Dissatisfaction with oneself, suffering from oneself, is here not, as with the Buddhist, an excessive susceptibility to irritation and pain, but rather its opposite: an overpowering craving to inflict pain, to discharge inward tension in hostile actions and ideas. Christianity needed barbaric concepts and values to master barbarians: such are the sacrifice of the firstborn, the drinking of blood in Communion, contempt for the intellect and culture; torture in every form, physical and nonphysical; the great pomp of worship. Buddhism is a religion for late human beings, for kindly, gentle races grown excessively intellectual, who feel pain too easily (—Europe is still far from ripe for it—): it leads them back to peace and serenity, to a diet for the intellect, to a certain hardening of the body. Christianity seeks to master beasts of prey; its means is to make them sick—weakening is the Christian prescription for taming, for “civilization.” Buddhism is a religion for the end and the weariness of civilization; Christianity does not even find civilization already in existence—under certain circumstances it establishes it.
23 Buddhism, to say it once more, is a hundred times colder, more truthful, more objective. It no longer needs to make its suffering, its susceptibility to pain, respectable by interpreting it as sin—it simply says what it thinks: “I suffer.” To the barbarian, by contrast, suffering is in itself nothing respectable: he first needs an interpretation before he can admit to himself that he suffers (his instinct points him rather toward denying suffering, toward bearing it in silence). Here the word “devil” was a blessing: one had an overpowering and terrible enemy—one did not need to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—
Christianity has certain subtleties at its foundation that belong to the Orient. Above all, it knows that whether something is true is in itself quite immaterial, but that it is of the utmost importance insofar as it is believed to be true. Truth and the belief that something is true: two worlds of interest lying far apart, almost opposing worlds—one reaches each of them by fundamentally different paths. To know this—this almost makes the sage in the Orient: the Brahmans understand it so, as does Plato, as does every disciple of esoteric wisdom. If, for example, there is happiness in believing oneself redeemed from sin, then its prerequisite is not that a person should be sinful, but that he should feel sinful. But if faith is needed above all else, then reason, knowledge, inquiry must be discredited: the path to truth becomes the forbidden path.—A strong hope is a far greater stimulant to life than any single happiness that actually comes to pass. Sufferers must be sustained by a hope that no reality can contradict—that cannot be disposed of by fulfillment: a hope of the beyond. (Precisely because of this capacity to keep the unfortunate waiting, the Greeks considered hope the evil of evils, the truly treacherous evil: it remained behind in the jar of evils.)—For love to be possible, God must be a person; for the lowest instincts to have a say, God must be young. A handsome saint must be brought to the foreground for the ardor of women, a Mary for that of men. This presupposes that Christianity seeks mastery on soil where cults of Aphrodite or Adonis have already determined the concept of worship. The demand for chastity intensifies the vehemence and inwardness of the religious instinct—it makes worship warmer, more rapturous, more soulful.—Love is the state in which a person most sees things as they are not. The power of illusion is then at its height, as is the power that sweetens, that transfigures. In love one endures more than otherwise, one tolerates everything. The task was to invent a religion in which one can love: with that one has passed beyond the worst in life—one no longer sees it at all.—So much for the three Christian virtues, faith, love, hope: I call them the three Christian stratagems.—Buddhism is too late, too positivistic, to be cunning in this way any longer.—
24 Here I touch only on the problem of Christianity's origin. The first proposition toward its solution is this: Christianity can be understood only through the soil from which it grew—it is not a countermovement against the Jewish instinct, it is that instinct's very consistency, one further conclusion in its fear-inspiring logic. In the Redeemer's formula: “Salvation comes from the Jews.”—The second proposition is this: the psychological type of the Galilean is still recognizable, but only in its complete degeneration (which is at once mutilation and overloading with alien traits—) could it serve the purpose for which it was employed, as the type of a redeemer of humanity:—
The Jews are the most remarkable people in world history because, confronted with the question of being or nonbeing, they chose being at any price, with a perfectly uncanny awareness: that price was the radical falsification of all nature, all naturalness, all reality, of the entire inner world no less than the outer. They defined themselves in opposition to all the conditions under which a people had hitherto been able to live, had been allowed to live; out of themselves they created a concept opposed to natural conditions—one after another they irreparably inverted religion, worship, morality, history, psychology into contradictions of their natural values. We encounter the same phenomenon once again, on an unspeakably magnified scale, though only as a copy—the Christian Church, compared with the “people of saints,” has no claim whatever to originality. Precisely for this reason, the Jews are the most disastrous people in world history: through their continuing influence they have made humanity so false that even today a Christian can feel anti-Jewish without understanding himself as the ultimate Jewish consequence.
In my “On the Genealogy of Morality,” I presented for the first time the psychological opposition between a noble morality and a morality of resentment, the latter springing from the No directed against the former: but this is Jewish-Christian morality through and through. To be able to say No to everything that represents the ascending movement of life, to flourishing, power, beauty, self-affirmation on earth, the instinct of resentment, become genius, had to invent another world from which that affirmation of life appeared as evil, as the reprehensible in itself. Reckoned psychologically, the Jewish people are a people of the most tenacious vitality, who, placed under impossible conditions, voluntarily, out of the profoundest cunning of self-preservation, take the side of all the instincts of decadence—not because they were ruled by them, but because they divined in them a power with which to prevail against “the world.” The Jews are the opposite of all decadents: they had to portray them to the point of illusion; with an unsurpassable degree of theatrical genius, they knew how to place themselves at the head of all movements of decadence (—as the Christianity of Paul—), in order to create from them something stronger than any Yes-saying party of life. For the kind of human being that seeks power in Judaism and Christianity, a priestly kind, decadence is only a means: this kind of human being has a vital interest in making humanity sick and in twisting the concepts “good” and “evil,” “true” and “false” into a meaning dangerous to life and slanderous of the world.—
25 The history of Israel is invaluable as the typical history of every denaturing of natural values: I indicate five facts from it. Originally, above all in the age of the monarchy, Israel too stood in the right relation to all things, that is, the natural one. Its Yahweh was the expression of its consciousness of power, its delight in itself, its hope for itself: in him it expected victory and salvation; with him it trusted nature to give what the people needed—above all, rain. Yahweh is the God of Israel and consequently the God of justice: the logic of every people that holds power and has a good conscience about it. In festival worship these two sides of a people's self-affirmation find expression: it is grateful for the great strokes of destiny through which it rose to supremacy, it is grateful for the cycle of the year and all good fortune in livestock and agriculture.—This state of things long remained the ideal, even when it had been sadly done away with: anarchy within, the Assyrian without. But the people clung, as the highest object of desire, to that vision of a king who is a good soldier and a stern judge: above all, that typical prophet (that is, critic and satirist of the moment), Isaiah.—But every hope remained unfulfilled. The old God could no longer do any of the things he once could. They should have let him go. What happened? They changed the concept of him—they denatured it: at this price they held on to him.—Yahweh, the God of “justice”—no longer one with Israel, an expression of the people's sense of itself: now only a God on conditions… The concept of him becomes a tool in the hands of priestly agitators, who now interpret all good fortune as a reward, all misfortune as punishment for disobedience to God, for “sin”: that most mendacious manner of interpretation, an allegedly “moral world order,” with which the natural concepts “cause” and “effect” are turned upside down once and for all. Once one has eliminated natural causality from the world by means of reward and punishment, one needs an unnatural causality: all the rest of the unnatural now follows. A God who demands—in place of a God who helps, who finds a way, who is at bottom the word for every happy inspiration of courage and self-confidence… Morality no longer the expression of a people's conditions of life and growth, no longer its deepest instinct of life, but grown abstract, grown into an opposition to life—morality as a systematic corruption of the imagination, as the “evil eye” for all things. What is Jewish morality, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; misfortune sullied with the concept “sin”; well-being as danger, as “temptation”; physiological distress poisoned with the gnawing worm of conscience…
26 The concept of God falsified; the concept of morality falsified—the Jewish priesthood did not stop there. The entire history of Israel was of no use: away with it!—These priests brought off that marvel of falsification whose documents lie before us in a good part of the Bible: with an unparalleled contempt for every tradition, every historical reality, they translated their own people's past into religious terms, that is, made it into a stupid mechanism of salvation, of guilt before Yahweh and punishment, of piety toward Yahweh and reward. We would feel this most shameful act of historical falsification far more painfully had not millennia of ecclesiastical interpretation of history made us almost insensible to the demands of integrity in historical matters. And the philosophers seconded the Church: the lie of the “moral world order” runs through the entire development even of modern philosophy. What does “moral world order” mean? That there is, once and for all, a will of God concerning what human beings should do and leave undone; that the value of a people, of an individual, is measured by how much or how little the will of God is obeyed; that in the destinies of a people, of an individual, the will of God proves itself sovereign, that is, punishing and rewarding according to the degree of obedience.—The reality in place of this pitiable lie is this: a parasitic kind of human being, thriving only at the expense of all the healthy formations of life, the priest, abuses the name of God: he calls a state of society in which the priest determines the value of things “the kingdom of God”; he calls the means by which such a state is attained or maintained “the will of God”; with cold-blooded cynicism, he measures peoples, ages, individuals by whether they served or resisted the priest's supremacy. Watch them at work: in the hands of the Jewish priests, the great age in Israel's history became an age of decline; exile, the long misfortune, turned into an eternal punishment for the great age—an age in which the priest was still nothing. As their needs dictated, they made the mighty, very free-spirited figures of Israel's history into wretched cringers and sanctimonious hypocrites or into “godless men”; they simplified the psychology of every great event into the idiot's formula “obedience or disobedience to God.”—A step further: the “will of God” (that is, the conditions preserving the priest's power) must be known—for this purpose a “revelation” is needed. In plain language: a great literary forgery becomes necessary, a “holy scripture” is discovered—with all the pomp of the priesthood, with days of penance and cries of lamentation over the long “sin,” it is made public. The “will of God” had long been established: all the mischief lies in people's estrangement from “holy scripture”… The “will of God” had already been revealed to Moses… What had happened? The priest had formulated once and for all, with rigor, with pedantry, down to the taxes great and small that had to be paid to him (—not forgetting the choicest cuts of meat: for the priest is a beefsteak-guzzler), what he wants to have, “what the will of God is”… From now on, all the things of life are so arranged that the priest is indispensable everywhere; at every natural occurrence in life, at birth, marriage, sickness, death, not to mention “sacrifice” (the meal), the holy parasite appears to denature them—in his language, to “sanctify” them… For this must be understood: every natural custom, every natural institution (state, judicial system, marriage, care of the sick and poor), every demand inspired by the instinct of life, in short, everything that has its value in itself, is made fundamentally worthless, hostile to value, by the parasitism of the priest (or of the “moral world order”): it subsequently needs a sanction—a value-bestowing power is required, one that denies the nature within it and only thereby creates a value… The priest devalues, desecrates nature: only at this price does he exist at all.—Disobedience to God, that is, to the priest, to “the law,” now receives the name “sin”; the means of becoming “reconciled with God” again are, as is only fitting, means by which submission to the priest is guaranteed still more thoroughly: the priest alone “redeems”… Reckoned psychologically, “sins” become indispensable in every society organized by priests: they are the true levers of power; the priest lives on sins, he needs people to “sin”… Supreme principle: “God forgives whoever does penance”—in plain language: whoever submits to the priest.—
27 On so false a soil, where everything natural, every natural value, every reality had the deepest instincts of the ruling class against it, Christianity grew up, a form of mortal enmity toward reality that has never yet been surpassed. The “holy people,” which had retained only priestly values, only priestly words for all things, and with a consistency of inference capable of inspiring fear had severed from itself everything else on earth that possessed power as “unholy,” as “world,” as “sin”—this people produced a final formula for its instinct, logical to the point of self-negation: as Christianity, it denied even the last form of reality, the “holy people,” the “people of the chosen,” Jewish reality itself. The case is of the first order: the little insurgent movement baptized with the name of Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish instinct once again—in other words, the priestly instinct that can no longer tolerate the priest as a reality, the invention of a still more abstract form of existence, a still more unreal vision of the world than the organization of a church requires. Christianity negates the Church…
I cannot see what the uprising of which Jesus has been understood or misunderstood as the instigator was directed against, if it was not an uprising against the Jewish Church—“Church” taken in precisely the sense in which we use the word today. It was an uprising against “the good and the just,” against “the saints of Israel,” against the hierarchy of society—not against its corruption, but against caste, privilege, order, formula; it was disbelief in the “higher human beings,” the No spoken against everything that was priest and theologian. But the hierarchy thus called into question, if only for a moment, was the structure on stilts upon which the Jewish people still survived at all, in the midst of “water”—the hard-won last possibility of survival, the remnant of its separate political existence: an attack on it was an attack on the deepest instinct of a people, on the most tenacious popular will to life that has ever existed on earth. This holy anarchist, who called the lowly, the outcasts and “sinners,” the Chandala within Judaism, to resist the established order—with language that, if the Gospels were to be trusted, would still lead to Siberia today—was a political criminal, insofar as political criminals were possible at all in an absurdly unpolitical community. This brought him to the cross: the proof is the inscription on the cross. He died for his own guilt—there is no ground whatever for the claim, however often it has been made, that he died for the guilt of others.—
28 An entirely different question is whether he was conscious of such an opposition at all—whether he was not merely felt to be that opposition. And only here do I touch on the problem of the psychology of the Redeemer.—I confess that I read few books with such difficulties as the Gospels. These difficulties are different from those whose demonstration marked one of the most unforgettable triumphs of the German intellect's scholarly curiosity. Far distant is the time when I too, like every young scholar, savored the work of the incomparable Strauss with the knowing slowness of a sophisticated philologist. I was twenty years old then: now I am too serious for that. What do the contradictions of “tradition” matter to me? How can one call saints' legends “tradition” at all! Stories of saints are the most dubious literature in existence: to apply the scientific method to them, when no other documents are available, seems to me doomed from the outset—mere scholarly idleness…
29 What concerns me is the psychological type of the Redeemer. It could, after all, be contained in the Gospels despite the Gospels, however mutilated or overloaded with alien traits: just as that of Francis of Assisi is preserved in his legends despite his legends. Not the truth about what he did, what he said, how he actually died: but the question whether his type can still be conceived at all, whether it has been “handed down”?—The attempts I know to read even the history of a “soul” out of the Gospels seem to me evidence of an abominable psychological frivolity. Mr. Renan, that buffoon in psychological matters, has introduced into his explanation of the type Jesus the two most inappropriate concepts conceivable here: the concept genius and the concept hero (“hero”). But if anything is unevangelical, it is the concept of the hero. Precisely the opposite of all struggle, of all feeling oneself in combat, has here become instinct: the incapacity for resistance here becomes morality (“do not resist evil!”—the deepest saying in the Gospels, their key in a certain sense), blessedness in peace, in gentleness, in the inability to be an enemy. What does “glad tidings” mean? True life, eternal life, has been found—it is not promised, it is here, it is within you: as life in love, in love without qualification or exclusion, without distance. Everyone is the child of God—Jesus claims nothing whatever for himself alone—as a child of God, everyone is equal to everyone else… To make a hero of Jesus!—And what a misunderstanding the word “genius” is! Our whole concept, our cultural concept “spirit,” has no meaning at all in the world in which Jesus lives. Speaking with the rigor of a physiologist, an entirely different word would be more appropriate here: the word idiot. We know a condition of morbid irritability of the sense of touch, which then recoils from every contact, from every grasping of a solid object. Follow such a physiological disposition through to its ultimate logic—as an instinctive hatred of every reality, as a flight into the “intangible,” the “incomprehensible,” as an aversion to every formula, every concept of time and space, to everything fixed, everything that is custom, institution, Church, as being at home in a world no kind of reality touches any longer, a merely “inner” world, a “true” world, an “eternal” world… “The kingdom of God is within you”…
30 Instinctive hatred of reality: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to suffering and irritation that no longer wishes to be “touched” at all, because it feels every touch too deeply.
The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all enmity, all boundaries and distances in feeling: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to suffering and irritation that already feels every resistance, every necessity of resisting, as unbearable displeasure (that is, as harmful, as counseled against by the instinct of self-preservation), and knows blessedness (pleasure) only in no longer resisting anything or anyone, neither affliction nor evil—love as the sole, the last possibility of life…
These are the two physiological realities upon which, out of which, the doctrine of redemption grew. I call it a sublime further development of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid foundation. Its nearest relative, though with a great admixture of Greek vitality and nervous strength, remains Epicureanism, the pagan doctrine of redemption. Epicurus a typical decadent: first recognized as such by me.—The fear of pain, even of the infinitely small in pain—it cannot end otherwise than in a religion of love…
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.
21 Buddhism requires a very mild climate, great gentleness and tolerance in social customs, no militarism, and a movement rooted in the upper, even educated, classes. People seek cheerfulness, peace, and freedom from desire as their highest goal, and they reach it. Buddhism is not a religion in which people merely aspire to perfection: perfection is the normal state.—
In Christianity, the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed come to the front: it is the lowest classes that seek their salvation in it. Here, analyzing the finer points of sin, self-criticism, and interrogating one’s conscience serve as an occupation, as a remedy for boredom. Here, intense feeling toward a powerful being called “God” is constantly kept alive through prayer. Here, the highest state is considered unattainable, a gift, “grace.” Here, too, openness is absent; hiding places and dark rooms are Christian. Here, the body is despised and hygiene rejected as sensuality; the church even resists cleanliness itself. (The first Christian measure after the expulsion of the Moors was to close the public baths, of which Cordova alone had 270.) A certain taste for cruelty to oneself and others is Christian; so are hatred of those who think differently and the will to persecute. Gloomy and agitating ideas take the lead; the most sought-after states, given the most exalted names, are epileptic in character. The diet is chosen to encourage unhealthy symptoms and overstimulate the nerves. Deadly hostility toward the masters of the earth, toward the “noble,” is Christian—and so is a concealed, secret rivalry with them. (They are allowed to keep the “body”; Christians want only the “soul”…) Hatred of the intellect, of pride, courage, freedom, and intellectual license is Christian; hatred of the senses, of the pleasures of the senses, of pleasure in general, is Christian…
22 When Christianity left its original ground—the lowest classes, the underworld of the ancient world—and went looking for power among barbarian peoples, it no longer dealt with tired people. It dealt with people who were inwardly savage and tearing themselves apart—with strong people, but badly formed ones. Their dissatisfaction with themselves, their suffering from themselves, is not, as it is among Buddhists, excessive sensitivity and susceptibility to pain. On the contrary, it is an overpowering desire to hurt, to release inner tension in hostile acts and ideas. Christianity needed barbaric concepts and values to master barbarians: the sacrifice of the firstborn, drinking blood at communion, contempt for the intellect and culture; torture in every form, physical and nonphysical; the great pomp of worship. Buddhism is a religion for people at a late stage of development, for kind, gentle races that have become excessively intellectual and feel pain too easily. (Europe is still far from ready for it.) It leads them back to peace and cheerfulness, to a restricted intellectual diet, to a certain physical toughness. Christianity wants to master predatory animals; its method is to make them sick—weakening is the Christian prescription for taming, for “civilization.” Buddhism is a religion for civilization’s end and exhaustion; Christianity does not even find civilization already there—it establishes it under certain circumstances.
23 Buddhism, to repeat, is a hundred times cooler, more truthful, more objective. It no longer needs to make its suffering, its sensitivity to pain, respectable by interpreting it as sin—it simply says what it thinks: “I suffer.” To the barbarian, on the other hand, suffering is not respectable in itself: he first needs an interpretation before he can admit to himself that he suffers. His instinct points him instead toward denying suffering, toward silently enduring it. Here the word “devil” was a blessing: there was an overpowering and terrible enemy—you did not need to feel ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—
Christianity has some subtleties at its foundation that belong to the East. Above all, it knows that whether something is true is quite unimportant in itself, but of the greatest importance insofar as it is believed to be true. Truth and the belief that something is true: two worlds of interest far apart, almost opposite worlds—you reach them by fundamentally different routes. Knowing this almost makes someone a wise man in the East: this is how the Brahmins understand it, how Plato understands it, how every student of secret wisdom understands it. If, for example, there is happiness in believing yourself freed from sin, this does not require you to be sinful, but to feel sinful. But if belief is what is needed above all, reason, knowledge, and inquiry must be discredited: the road to truth becomes the forbidden road.—A strong hope is a far greater stimulus to life than any single happiness that actually comes about. Sufferers must be kept going by a hope that no reality can contradict—a hope that will not be disposed of by fulfillment: a hope for another world. (Precisely because it could keep the unhappy waiting, the Greeks considered hope the evil of evils, the truly treacherous evil: it remained behind in the jar of evils.)—For love to be possible, God must be a person; for the lowest instincts to have a say, God must be young. A handsome saint must be brought forward for women’s ardor, and a Mary for men’s. This assumes that Christianity wants to gain control in a place where cults of Aphrodite or Adonis have already shaped the idea of worship. The demand for chastity makes the religious instinct more intense and inward—it makes worship warmer, more ecstatic, more soulful.—Love is the state in which people see things most as they are not. The power of illusion is at its height here, as are the powers of sweetening and glorifying. In love, people bear more than usual; they put up with everything. What was needed was to invent a religion in which people could love: that takes them past the worst in life—they no longer even see it.—So much for the three Christian virtues, faith, love, and hope: I call them the three Christian clever strategies.—Buddhism comes too late, is too committed to facts, to be clever in this way anymore.—
24 Here I am only touching on the problem of Christianity’s origin. The first principle for solving it is this: Christianity can be understood only from the ground it grew from—it is not a movement against the Jewish instinct, but that instinct following its own consequences, one further conclusion in its terrifying logic. In the Redeemer’s formula: “Salvation comes from the Jews.”—The second principle is this: the psychological type of the Galilean is still recognizable, but only in its complete degeneration—which both mutilated it and overloaded it with foreign traits—could it serve the purpose it was used for: as the type of a redeemer of humanity.—
The Jews are the most remarkable people in world history because, faced with the question of existence or nonexistence, they chose existence at any price, with a perfectly uncanny awareness. That price was the radical falsification of all nature, everything natural, all reality, the whole inner world just as much as the outer. They set themselves apart from all the conditions under which a people had previously been able, been allowed, to live. They made themselves into the opposite of natural conditions—one after another, they turned religion, worship, morality, history, and psychology irreparably into the opposites of their natural values. We meet the same phenomenon once more, on an indescribably larger scale, though only as a copy: compared with the “people of saints,” the Christian church has no claim whatever to originality. This also makes the Jews the most disastrous people in world history: through their continuing influence, they have made humanity so false that even today a Christian can feel anti-Jewish without understanding himself as the ultimate Jewish consequence.
In my “On the Genealogy of Morality,” I gave the first psychological account of the opposition between a noble morality and a morality of resentment, the latter arising from saying no to the former: but that is Jewish-Christian morality through and through. In order to say no to everything that represents life’s upward movement, to flourishing, power, beauty, self-affirmation on earth, the instinct of resentment, raised here to genius, had to invent an other world. Viewed from there, that affirmation of life appeared as evil, as something inherently reprehensible. Considered psychologically, the Jewish people are a people of the toughest vitality. Put into impossible conditions, they voluntarily side with all the instincts of decadence, out of the deepest cunning of self-preservation—not because those instincts rule them, but because they sensed in them a power with which they could assert themselves against “the world.” The Jews are the opposite of all decadents: they had to act the part of decadents convincingly, and with an unsurpassable degree of acting genius they knew how to put themselves at the head of all movements of decadence—as the Christianity of Paul—in order to create from them something stronger than any party that says yes to life. For the kind of person seeking power in Judaism and Christianity, a priestly kind, decadence is only a means: this kind of person has a vital interest in making humanity sick and twisting the concepts “good” and “evil,” “true” and “false,” into meanings that endanger life and slander the world.—
25 The history of Israel is priceless as a typical history of all the ways natural values are stripped of their nature: I will point out five facts from it. Originally, especially during the monarchy, Israel too stood in the right relationship to everything—that is, the natural one. Its Yahweh expressed its consciousness of power, its pleasure in itself, its hope in itself. From him people expected victory and well-being; with him they trusted nature to provide what the people needed—above all, rain. Yahweh is Israel’s God and therefore the God of justice: this is the logic of every people that has power and a good conscience about it. Festival worship expresses these two sides of a people’s self-affirmation: gratitude for the great turns of fate through which it rose to the top, and gratitude for the yearly cycle and every success in raising livestock and farming.—This state of affairs remained the ideal long after it had sadly come to an end: anarchy within, the Assyrians outside. But the people clung to that vision of a king who is a good soldier and a strict judge as the most desirable thing of all. Above all, the typical prophet—that is, critic and satirist of the present moment—Isaiah clung to it.—But every hope went unfulfilled. The old God could no longer do any of the things he once could. They should have let him go. What happened? They changed the idea of him—they stripped it of its natural character: this was the price of holding on to him.—Yahweh, the God of “justice”—no longer one with Israel, an expression of the people’s sense of itself: now only a God with conditions attached… The idea of him becomes a tool in the hands of priestly agitators, who now interpret every piece of good fortune as a reward, every misfortune as punishment for disobeying God, for “sin”: that most dishonest method of interpretation, an alleged “moral world order,” which turns the natural concepts of “cause” and “effect” upside down once and for all. Once reward and punishment have been used to remove natural causality from the world, an unnatural causality is needed: all the remaining unnaturalness then follows. A God who demands—in place of a God who helps, who finds solutions, who is basically the word for every happy inspiration of courage and self-confidence… Morality is no longer the expression of a people’s conditions for life and growth, no longer its deepest instinct for life. Instead it has become abstract, has become the opposite of life—morality as a systematic corruption of the imagination, as an “evil eye” for everything. What is Jewish morality, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; misfortune dirtied by the concept of “sin”; well-being treated as a danger, a “temptation”; physical distress poisoned by the gnawing worm of conscience…
26 The concept of God falsified; the concept of morality falsified—the Jewish priesthood did not stop there. The whole history of Israel was unusable: away with it!—These priests accomplished that marvel of falsification whose documentary evidence makes up a good part of the Bible: with unmatched contempt for every tradition, every historical reality, they translated their own people’s past into religious terms. That is, they made it into a stupid mechanism of salvation, of guilt before Yahweh and punishment, of devotion to Yahweh and reward. We would feel this most shameful act of historical falsification much more painfully if thousands of years of church interpretations of history had not made us almost numb to the demands of honesty in historical matters. And the philosophers supported the church: the lie of the “moral world order” runs through the whole development even of modern philosophy. What does “moral world order” mean? That God’s will about what people should do and leave undone is fixed once and for all; that the value of a people or an individual is measured by how much or how little they obey God’s will; that in the fate of a people or an individual, God’s will proves itself to be in command—that is, punishing and rewarding according to the degree of obedience.—The reality, rather than this pitiful lie, is this: a parasitic kind of person who thrives only at the expense of all healthy forms of life, the priest, misuses God’s name. He calls a state of society in which the priest determines the value of things “the kingdom of God.” He calls the means by which such a state is achieved or maintained “the will of God.” With cold-blooded cynicism, he judges peoples, periods, and individuals by whether they helped or resisted the priest’s supremacy. Watch them at work: in the hands of the Jewish priests, the great period in Israel’s history became a period of decline. The exile, the long misfortune, turned into an eternal punishment for that great period—a time when the priest was still nothing. As needed, they made the powerful, very free figures of Israel’s history into miserable crawlers and hypocritical bigots, or into the “godless.” They reduced the psychology of every great event to the idiot’s formula, “obedience or disobedience to God.”—One step further: the “will of God”—that is, the conditions for maintaining the priest’s power—must be known. For this purpose a “revelation” is needed. In plain language: a great literary forgery becomes necessary; a “holy scripture” is discovered. It is made public with all the priestly pomp, with days of repentance and cries of grief over the long years of “sin.” The “will of God” had long been established: all the trouble comes from having become estranged from “holy scripture”… The “will of God” had already been revealed to Moses… What had happened? With strictness and pedantry, down to the taxes large and small that had to be paid to him—not forgetting the tastiest cuts of meat, since the priest is a beefsteak-gobbler—the priest had formulated once and for all what he wants, “what the will of God is”… From now on, everything in life is arranged so that the priest is indispensable everywhere. At every natural event in life—birth, marriage, sickness, death, not to mention “sacrifice” (the meal)—the holy parasite appears to strip it of its natural character: in his language, to “sanctify” it… For this must be understood: every natural custom, every natural institution—the state, the legal system, marriage, care for the sick and poor—every demand prompted by the instinct for life, in short, everything that has value in itself, is made fundamentally worthless, opposed to value, by the parasitism of the priest (or the “moral world order”). It then needs authorization—a power that confers value is needed, a power that denies the natural element in it and only by doing so creates a value… The priest devalues nature, desecrates it: this is the price of his very existence.—Disobedience to God—that is, to the priest, to “the law”—is now given the name “sin.” The means of becoming “reconciled with God” are, naturally enough, means that guarantee submission to the priest still more thoroughly: the priest alone “redeems”… Considered psychologically, “sins” become indispensable in every society organized by priests: they are the real levers of power. The priest lives on sins; he needs people to “sin”… Supreme principle: “God forgives whoever repents”—in plain language, whoever submits to the priest.—
27 On ground so false, where everything natural, every natural value, every reality had the deepest instincts of the ruling class against it, Christianity grew up—a form of deadly hostility toward reality that has never been surpassed. The “holy people” had kept only priestly values, only priestly words, for everything. With a consistency of reasoning that can inspire fear, it had cut itself off from every other power that still existed on earth, labeling it “unholy,” “world,” “sin.” This people produced a final formula for its instinct, logical to the point of self-denial: as Christianity, it denied even the last form of reality, the “holy people,” the “chosen people,” Jewish reality itself. This is a case of the first importance: the little rebellious movement baptized in the name of Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish instinct once again. In other words, it is the priestly instinct that can no longer tolerate the priest as a reality, the invention of a still more abstract form of existence, a still more unreal vision of the world than the organization of a church requires. Christianity denies the church…
I cannot see what the uprising that Jesus was understood—or misunderstood—to have started was directed against, unless it was an uprising against the Jewish church—“church” taken in exactly the sense in which we use the word today. It was an uprising against “the good and the just,” against “the saints of Israel,” against the social hierarchy—not against its corruption, but against caste, privilege, order, formula. It was disbelief in “higher people,” a no spoken against everything priestly and theological. But the hierarchy that was called into question, even if only for a moment, was the structure on stilts that kept the Jewish people in existence at all, surrounded by “water”—the last, painfully won possibility of survival, the remnant of its separate political existence. An attack on it was an attack on the people’s deepest instinct, on the toughest national will to live that has ever existed on earth. This holy anarchist called the common people, the outcasts and “sinners,” the Chandala within Judaism, to oppose the established order—in language that, if the Gospels could be trusted, would send someone to Siberia even today. He was a political criminal, insofar as political criminals were possible in an absurdly apolitical community. This brought him to the cross: the inscription on the cross proves it. He died for his own guilt—there is no reason whatever to say, however often it has been claimed, that he died for the guilt of others.—
28 It is an entirely different question whether he was conscious of any such opposition at all—whether he was not simply perceived as that opposition. And only here do I touch on the problem of the psychology of the Redeemer.—I admit that I find few books as difficult to read as the Gospels. These difficulties are different from those whose demonstration gave the scholarly curiosity of the German mind one of its most unforgettable triumphs. The time is long past when I too, like every young scholar, savored the work of the incomparable Strauss with the shrewd slowness of a highly trained philologist. I was twenty then; now I am too serious for that. What do the contradictions of “tradition” matter to me? How can legends of saints be called “tradition” at all! Stories about saints are the most dubious literature there is. Applying the scientific method to them, when no other documents exist, seems doomed from the start to me—mere scholarly idleness…
29 What concerns me is the psychological type of the Redeemer. It could be contained in the Gospels despite the Gospels, however mutilated or overloaded with foreign traits—just as the type of Francis of Assisi is preserved in his legends despite his legends. Not the truth about what he did, what he said, how he actually died, but the question: can his type still be imagined at all; has it been “passed down”?—The attempts I know to read even the history of a “soul” out of the Gospels seem to me evidence of a disgusting psychological carelessness. Mr. Renan, this buffoon in psychology, introduced the two most inappropriate concepts possible into his explanation of the type of Jesus: genius and hero (“hero”). But if anything is contrary to the Gospels, it is the concept of the hero. Here, it is precisely the opposite of all struggle, of any sense of being in combat, that has become instinct. Here, the inability to resist becomes morality (“Do not resist evil!”—the deepest saying in the Gospels, their key in a certain sense); bliss is found in peace, in gentleness, in not being able to be an enemy. What does “good news” mean? True life, eternal life, has been found—it is not promised, it is here, it is within you: as life in love, in love without restriction or exclusion, without distance. Everyone is a child of God—Jesus claims absolutely nothing for himself alone—and as a child of God everyone is equal to everyone else… To make a hero out of Jesus!—And what a misunderstanding the word “genius” is! Our whole concept, our cultural concept of “intellect,” has no meaning at all in the world Jesus lives in. Speaking with a physiologist’s precision, an entirely different word would be more appropriate here: the word idiot. We know of a condition in which the sense of touch is morbidly sensitive, recoiling from every touch, every contact with a solid object. Follow this physiological disposition through to its ultimate logic: an instinctive hatred of every reality, a flight into the “intangible,” the “incomprehensible”; an aversion to every formula, every concept of time and space, to everything fixed, to custom, institution, church; being at home in a world no kind of reality touches anymore, a merely “inner” world, a “true” world, an “eternal” world… “The kingdom of God is within you”…
30 The instinctive hatred of reality: the result of an extreme sensitivity to suffering and stimulation that no longer wants to be “touched” at all, because it feels every touch too deeply.
The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all emotional boundaries and distances: the result of an extreme sensitivity to suffering and stimulation that already feels every resistance, every need to resist, as unbearable discomfort—that is, as harmful, as something the instinct of self-preservation warns against. It knows bliss (pleasure) only in no longer resisting anything or anyone, neither misfortune nor evil—love as the only, the last, possibility of life…
These are the two physiological realities on which, and out of which, the doctrine of redemption grew. I call it a sublime further development of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid foundation. Its closest relative remains Epicureanism, the pagan doctrine of redemption, though with a large addition of Greek vitality and nervous energy. Epicurus, a typical decadent: I was the first to recognize him as such.—The fear of pain, even of the tiniest trace of pain—it cannot end in anything but a religion of love…
About this section
Sections 21–30 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 4 of 8 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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