ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Internet Journal of
Philosophy Vol. 10 2006
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|
Nietzsche
on the Deaths of Socrates and Jesus Morgan Rempel |
Abstract
As is the case with his similarly
polymorphous dialogue with Socrates, Friedrich Nietzsche's career-spanning engagement
with the figure of Jesus is ambivalent in the extreme. In the writings of the
last year of his active life however, this self-professed “antichrist” is unwavering in his commendation of
the Nazarene’s character and posture vis a vis his martyrdom. Even more remarkable is
the Antichrist’s heretofore-ignored tampering with the most
famous death-scene in the Western tradition. This paper examines Nietzsche's
bold manipulation of the celebrated death-scenes of Jesus and Socrates, with
particular attention paid to the possible relationship between his re-writing
of the famed proceedings at
To characterize Nietzsche's career-spanning
engagement with the figure of Jesus of
Even more remarkable however, is the Antichrist’s
seemingly heretofore-unnoticed tampering with one of the most celebrated
scenes in the Western tradition. To ensure that the “redemption” offered at
Who is Nietzsche's Jesus?
Prior to the composition of the Antichrist
in 1888, Nietzsche's reflections on the figure of Jesus tended to be brief,
scattered, and more suggestive than fully developed. Considered en masse however, a definite
sense of direction emerges from these largely respectful early and middle
period musings on the Nazarene. The Jesus of 1878’s Human All Too Human,
through Beyond Good and Evil in 1886 is a noble, sincere, and
astonishingly loving figure, who is also inexperienced, immature, and sensitive
to a worrisome degree. Human, All Too
Human (1878) for example, characterizes Jesus as “the noblest human being”
(1,475) and one “possessing the warmest heart” (1,235). Also found in this
early work is the following observation:
Single exceptions stand out from the species,
whether by virtue of great mildness and humanitarianism or by the magic of
unusual energy; others are attractive in the highest degree because certain
delusions inundate their whole nature with light – as is the case, for example,
with the celebrated founder of Christianity who considered himself the inborn
son of God and therefore felt he was without sin; … (HH, 1,144).
This theme of the Nietzschean
Jesus’ perceived “freedom from sin” also informs aphorism 138 of 1882’s Gay Science:
Christ’s
error – The founder of Christianity thought that there was
nothing of which men suffered more than their sins. That was his error – the
error of one who felt that he was without sin and who lacked firsthand
experience. Thus his soul grew full of that wonderful and fantastic compassion
for a misery that even among his people, who had invented sin, was rarely a
very great misery.
At Beyond Good and Evil 269,
Nietzsche writes:
Alas, he who
knows the heart divines how poor, stupid, helpless, arrogant, blundering, more
prone to destroy than save is even the best and deepest love! - It is possible that
within the holy disguise and fable of Jesus’ life there lies concealed one of
the most painful cases of the martyrdom of
knowledge about love: the martyrdom of the most innocent and longing heart
which never had sufficient of human love, which demanded love, to be loved and nothing else…
Nietzsche consistently paints this gentle
Jesus in images of light and warmth, all the while casting the first century
Jewish milieu in which he moves in terms of darkness, tears, hatred, and an
impulse for revenge. One of the most developed early/middle period treatments
of Jesus is found in the aphorism “Of Voluntary Death” in Part One of Zarathustra. This aphorism continues the
theme of Jesus’ apparent puerility, while sharply differentiating his spirit
from the “tears and the melancholy of the Hebrews”. Zarathustra tells his
disciples:
Truly, too
early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honor: and that he died
too early has since been a fatality for many. As yet he knew only tears and the
melancholy of the Hebrews, together
with the hatred of the good and the just - the Hebrew Jesus: then the longing
for death seized him. Had he only remained in the desert and far from the good
and the just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and learned to love the
earth – and laughter as well!
Believe it,
my brothers! He died too early; he himself would have recanted his teaching had
he lived to my age! He was noble enough to recant! But he was still immature.
The youth loves immaturely … (TSZ, 1,
21).
Like much of the writing from the last year
of Nietzsche's career, the Antichrist condenses and reworks numerous
motifs that run through his earlier work. With respect to the Nietzschean
Jesus, while most of the themes encountered in the pages of the Antichrist
- immaturity, sensitivity, sincerity, and above all, unmitigated love - are
indeed leitmotifs reaching back at least a decade, what is novel (and to many,
off-putting) are the extraordinary lengths to which Nietzsche extends and
radicalizes these familiar hypotheses.
But there is another way in which the Antichrist
distinguishes itself from Nietzsche's earlier discussions of Jesus. In keeping
with a more general change in the language and trajectory of his philosophical
enterprise in the last year of his creative life, explicitly clinical,
quasi-medical terminology figures ever more prominently in an examination of
Jesus that now increasingly comes to resemble a psycho-physiological case
history. Indeed by 1888, Nietzsche has announced that (nihilistic) religions
are to be understood as “systematized case-histor[ies] of sickness employing
religious-moralistic nomenclature” (WP 152).
Accordingly, whereas 1883’s Zarathustra (1,21)
suggests that the youthful Jesus “loves immaturely” and had much to learn about
the subtleties of life, love, and laughter, Antichrist
32, written five years later, insists that such a “type” is clearly to be
construed as a case of “retarded puberty”. Similarly, while the author of
1882’s Gay Science is content to
suggest that Jesus’ loving lifestyle and compassionate posture towards others
is perhaps indicative of one “who lacked firsthand experience” in
the world (GS 138), by 1888
the now self-professed “foremost psychologist of Christianity” not only tenders
a diagnosis of “arrested adolescence”, but comes to devote growing attention to
the Nazarene’s proposed “instincts”, “psychological type”, and “physiological habitus” (in O’Flaherty, pp.89 &
187; A 30 & 29).
Put simply, the psycho-physiological
assessment of Jesus in the Antichrist is of a naïve and loving figure
sensitive to the point of pathology. Nietzsche suggests that the reason the
Nazarene comes to trade largely in an “inner world” of symbol and metaphor is
to psychologically distance himself from, and reduce the importance of, an
external reality that causes this dangerously sensitive soul an inordinate
amount of pain. Nietzsche likewise hypothesizes that someone who does not
resist those doing evil to him, who loves the very people torturing and
executing him, is perhaps one who cannot resist; a damaged figure no
longer capable of struggle or resistance. According to the Nietzsche of the Antichrist,
Jesus’ extraordinary posture of unalloyed love and radical non-resistance is
less a matter of religious conviction or theological revolution, than
psycho-physiological necessity; “love as the sole, as the last possibility of
life” (A 30).
Turning now
to a closer examination of what is so remarkable about the Antichrist’s assessment
of this vulnerable soul’s martyrdom and death, we note aphorism 33’s clever paralleling of the model of life (and death) offered by
“the redeemer”, and behavior bespeaking genuine Christianity:
It
is not a ‘belief’ which distinguishes the Christian: the Christian acts, he is
distinguished by a different mode of
acting. Neither by words nor in his heart does he resist the man who does him
evil. He makes no distinction between foreigner and native, between Jew and
non-Jew… He is not angry with anyone, does not disdain anyone… The life of the
redeemer was nothing else than this practice
–
his death too was nothing else (A
33).
At Antichrist 35 Nietzsche offers an even
more precise rendering of the ultimate significance of Jesus’ manner of dying:
This
“bringer of glad tidings” died as he lived, as he taught – not
to “redeem mankind” but to demonstrate how one ought to live. What he
bequeathed to mankind is his practice:
his bearing before the judges, before the guards, before the accusers and every
kind of calumny and mockery – his bearing on the Cross. He does not defend his rights, he
takes no steps to avert the worst that can happen to him –
more, he provokes it… And he
entreats, he suffers, he loves with
those, in those who are doing evil to him. His words to the thief on the cross next to him contain
the whole Evangel. ‘That was verily a divine
man, a child of God’ – says the thief. ‘If thou feelest this’ — answers the
redeemer — ‘thou art in
As we see
below, nowhere is Nietzsche more true to his intention to “say in ten sentences
what everyone else says in a book – what everyone else does not say in a book” (TI 9,
51), than this fertile passage.
First of
all, it bears emphasizing that what both Nietzsche and the thief on the cross are
responding to is not a doctrine or belief, but Jesus’ behavior, his “practice”,
his “mode of acting”. “What he bequeathed to mankind is his practice:
his bearing before the judges, before the guards … his bearing on the Cross … he suffers, he loves with those, in those who are doing evil
to him” (A 35).
For
Nietzsche, such a wholly non-oppositional and loving practice is not only
Jesus’ embodied bequest to mankind, but is of course the hallmark of genuine
Christianity. It is also the consequence of what he consistently characterizes
as the Nazarene’s morbidly susceptible condition.[2] “The
consequence of such a condition”, observes Nietzsche at Antichrist 33, “projects itself into a new practice…a different
mode of acting”. But the fact that Jesus’ extraordinary posture towards others,
his radically loving way of living (and dying) is seemingly dictated by his
abnormally sensitive “condition”, no more prevents Nietzsche from declaring it “sublime” (A 30&31), than the
thief next to Jesus from recognizing something truly extraordinary. Indeed, it
is precisely this ability to extract a condition of “blessedness” from both a
“tear” and “hatred” (TSZ,1,21) filled Hebrew milieu and
a precarious psycho-physiological “condition”, that lies behind the
philosopher’s commendation of the Nazarene as explicitly “sublime”. So it is
that Antichrist 33’s closes by
celebrating Jesus’
profound
instinct for how one would have to live
in order to feel oneself ‘in Heaven’, to feel oneself ‘eternal’, while in every
other condition one by no means feels
oneself ‘in Heaven’: this alone is the psychological reality of ‘redemption’. –
A new way of living, not a new
belief.
Again, what
is here being celebrated, what Nietzsche characterizes as both “profound” and
“sublime”, is “not a new belief”, but
the Nazarene’s instinctive awareness of what behavior, what way of life, what
posture towards others might allow him to experience a condition of
“blessedness”; to feel himself “in Heaven” in spite of overtly non-Heaven-like
circumstances (A 30&33). It is this all-important emphasis on Jesus’ feeling
of “Heaven”, on the so-called “psychological reality of redemption” (A
33),
that allows us to better appreciate the import of Nietzsche’s accentuation of
the dying Jesus’ conversation with the thief on the adjacent cross.
His words to
the thief on the cross next to him
contain the whole Evangel. ‘That was verily a divine man, a child of God’ – says the thief. ‘If thou feelest
this’ – answers the redeemer – ‘thou art
in
Even more
significant than his remarkable suggestion that “His words to the thief on the
cross next to him contain the whole Evangel”, is the fact that the
all-important words here reported are not the words of the New Testament
Jesus, but of Nietzsche himself. Nor do the words of Nietzsche's thief
correspond to those uttered by the thief encountered in the Gospels. For the
record, Luke, the only gospel writer to mention the conversation with the
thief, reports one thief saying to the other (of Jesus); “We are punished
justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done
nothing wrong”. To Jesus the thief continues: “Jesus, remember me when you come
into your kingdom.” Finally, Luke’s Jesus tells the thief; “I tell you the
truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (23:41).
The
Death of Socrates
With respect to this strange phenomenon of
Nietzsche not only inserting his own words into the mouths of famous figures,
but drawing conclusions about those figures based upon those words, we may note
that he performs a similar piece of ventriloquy in the case of the dying
Socrates. In that section of the Twilight of the Idols (1888) titled The Problem of Socrates, Nietzsche twice
compels his Socrates to verbalise the
unspoken sentiment traditionally ascribed to his life-culminating Phaedo
reference to owing a cock to Asclepius. Writes Nietzsche:
Even Socrates said as he died: “To live - that means
to be a long time sick: I owe a cock to the saviour Asclepius”. Even Socrates
had had enough of it (1).
“Socrates is no physician,” he said softly to himself:
“death alone is a physician here... Socrates himself has only been a long time
sick” (12).
Since the tradition was to offer a cock to Asclepius, Greek god of
medicine and healing, upon recovering from an illness, Socrates’ famous remark
in Plato’s Phaedo (118a) has long
been understood by scholars as suggesting a) that earthly existence is, or Socrates’
earthly life has been, an illness, and/or b) that death is the cure for the
illness of life. While I will return to the sombre and suggestive conclusion that “Even Socrates had had enough of it”
below, I now note that the actual words Nietzsche adds to Plato’s
account of Socrates’ death-bed speech are broadly in keeping with the familiar life-as-illness,
death-as-cure understanding of this famous scene, and accordingly, do
little to alter the conventional interpretation of the passage in question.[3]
By way of contrast, by having Jesus tell
the thief — “If thou feelest this … thou art in
Also
significant is the fact that Nietzsche’s Jesus announces: “thou art in
paradise.” Even Luke’s Jesus, who does on occasion speak of his “kingdom” in
the present tense tells the thief: “today you will be with me in paradise”
(23:41). The all important, yet heretofore unexplored difference between these
two promises — the difference between “you will”
and “you are” — lies at the very
heart of the Antichrist’s unusual vision of the “redeemer” and the
“redemption” in question. One is a claim about a future, presumably after-death
state of affairs. The other comments on an immediate, already existing
“heavenly” reality: A psychological reality available now, available even to those, like the dying thief, in the midst of
astonishingly non-heaven-like circumstances. It is this redemption,
this sublime psychological reality, that the Nietzsche of 1888 is convinced
lies at the heart of the Nazarene’s experience and good news. So convinced in
fact, that he is willing to go to highly unorthodox lengths to ensure that “the
redeemer”, his “redeemer”, makes precisely this point.
The
‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is a condition of the heart – not something that
comes ‘upon the earth’ or ‘after death’…[it] is not something one waits for; it
has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come ‘in a thousand years’ – it is an
experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere…” (Antichrist 34).
Though he does not offer access to a
literal other world, the Antichrist’s Jesus is in fact proposing something
perhaps even more radical than Luke’s: That even a man dying an especially
agonizing death can experience, in the midst and in spite of his torment,
“paradise”, a “blessed” condition of the heart. Not that he will see paradise, but that paradise is
something that can be accessed, can be experienced, right now! “True life”, observes Antichrist 29, “has been found, it is
not being promised, it is here, it is in you”. Accordingly, Nietzsche is not
wrong when he announces: “His words to the
thief on the cross next to him contain the whole Evangel” (A 35). If
readers of Nietzsche are to fully understand the philosopher’s final vision of
Jesus however, it bears emphasis that the words
in question, the good news in
question, and the manner of redemption in question, are Nietzsche’s.
Precisely the Main Thing
Later in the Antichrist, in the context of what he takes to be
the early corruption of Jesus’ message at the hands of the first Jewish
Christians faced with the task of understanding his death, Nietzsche returns to
the topic of “the exemplary element in his manner of dying”. Antichrist 40 conjectures that:
Only now did
the chasm open up: ‘Who killed him? Who was his natural enemy?’ – this
question came like a flash of lightening. Answer: ruling Judaism, its upper class. From this moment one felt oneself
in mutiny against the social order, one subsequently understood Jesus as having
been in mutiny against the social order.
Up till then this warlike trait, this negative trait in word and deed, was lacking
in his image; more, he was the contradiction of it. Clearly the little
community had failed to understand
precisely the main thing, the exemplary element in his manner of dying, the
freedom from, the superiority over every feeling of ressentiment: – a sign of how little
they understood of him at all! Jesus himself would have desired nothing by his
death but publicly to offer the sternest test, the proof of his
teaching…But his disciples were far from forgiving
his death – which would have been evangelic in the highest sense…Precisely the
most unevangelic of feelings, revengefulness, again came uppermost… But
with this everything is misunderstood: the ‘
Like aphorisms 33 and 35, Antichrist 40, in casting Jesus’ death
in terms of “the sternest test, the proof of his teaching”, stresses the
fundamental continuity between the Evangel’s message and his martyrdom. For the
Nietzsche of 1888, Jesus’ death is to be understood as a telling confirmation,
as a consummation of his life and
message. In his death, as in his life, there was no resistance, no opposition,
no anger, no “negative trait in word and deed”; only unalloyed love. What Antichrist 40 adds to
this already discussed continuity is the suggestion of a relationship between
Jesus’ extraordinary posture, and the all too ordinary posture of ressentiment.
Nietzsche’s
psychological emphasis on ressentiment[4] as
a deceptively powerful determinant underlying a vast range of human actions,
sentiments, and valuations is without question one of his most important
contributions to psychology. The philosopher ingeniously manages to locate what
he takes to be evidence of ressentiment
in such seemingly diverse matters as socialism, anti-Semitism, and
Christianity’s emphasis on equality.[5] But
nowhere is this vengeful phenomenon more apparent than in what Nietzsche
characterizes as the “deadly contradiction” of “Judea against Rome”; in the
worldview of subjugated first century Jewry.[6] This, of course, is the milieu in
which Jesus lived, loved, and died.
But as surely as ressentiment is to be understood in terms of animosity,
vengefulness, and contrariety, so the later Nietzsche’s Jesus is ultimately to
be understood in terms of the complete and utter absence of these traits. In essence, to define Jesus in terms of
“the exemplary element in his manner of dying, the freedom from, the
superiority over every feeling of ressentiment”
(A 40), is to deliberately and diametrically oppose his spirit and
embodied message to “the priestly nation of ressentiment
par excellence” (GM 1,16) that
surrounded him in life and seized upon his pliable message at his death.
One would be hard pressed to
over-emphasize the significance of this image of Jesus as one having attained
“superiority over every feeling of ressentiment”.
That Nietzsche maintains that this “superiority” qualifies as the “main thing”
about Jesus is hardly surprising. For to an even greater degree than his
recurring characterization of the Nazarene as “noble” and “sublime” (HH 1,473; TSZ 1,21; A 31).
Nietzsche’s notable emphasis on his ressentiment-free
status puts Jesus in very rarefied (and autobiographical) company. Indeed, since
ressentiment is virtually omnipresent
according to the later Nietzsche, it is telling to consider whom, besides
Jesus, the philosopher considers beyond
this all too human quality.
Interestingly, Nietzsche places
both his own name, and that of the Buddha, on the very short list of
individuals he believes achieved psycho-physiological “freedom” and “victory”
over the “poison” of ressentiment.[7] On a larger scale, it is noteworthy that,
like his heartfelt celebration of the values embodied by the “well born” of the
(pre-Christian)
the
“well-born” felt themselves to be the
“happy”; they did not have to establish their happiness artificially by
examining their enemies, or to persuade themselves, deceive themselves, that they were happy (as all men of ressentiment are in the habit of doing)
(GM I,10).
The Dying Socrates’ Revenge
Curiously related both to his
emphasis upon the “well-born” of
I wish he
had remained taciturn also at the last moment of his life; in that case he
might belong to a still higher order of spirits [Geister]. Whether it was the poison or piety or malice – something
loosened his tongue at that moment and he said: “O Crito, I owe Asclepius a
rooster.” This ridiculous and terrible “last word” means for those who have
ears: “O Crito, life is a disease.” Is it possible that a man like him, who had
lived cheerfully and like a soldier in the sight of everyone, should have been
a pessimist? He had merely kept a cheerful mien while concealing all his life
long his ultimate judgment, his inmost feeling. Socrates, Socrates suffered
life! And then he still revenged himself – with this veiled, gruesome, pious,
and blasphemous saying. Did a Socrates need such revenge? Did his overrich
virtue lack an ounce of magnanimity? – Alas, my friends, we must overcome even
the Greeks! (340)
Nietzsche’s palpable disappointment with his sometimes-admired Socrates
is significant.[11] Clearly, Socrates’ “terrible” and vengeful last words, suggest to
a disenchanted Nietzsche that the Greek’s apparent posture in life may have
been inauthentic. Beneath his smiling demeanour Socrates may well have
harboured hostility to life itself (surely the ultimate “blasphemy” in the
mature Nietzsche’s philosophy).
As already indicated, unlike his re-telling of Jesus’ dying conversation, Nietzsche’s
understanding of Socrates’ final words is not especially original. That
the Greek’s last words express the view that life is illness, and death the cure, is in fact “the usual interpretation of the remark” (Gill, p.28). What is novel, is Nietzsche’s emphasis on the
disturbing negativity and vengefulness of Socrates’ final
conversation. “Did a Socrates need such revenge? Did his overrich virtue lack
an ounce of magnanimity?” (GS 340).
Of course Nietzsche, self-professed
“psychologist without equal” (EH
3,5), is acutely aware of the tendency of life’s failures — suffering, impoverished humanity — to disparage existence;
to vengefully view life through “the venomous eye of ressentiment” (GM 1,11).
One need only read the first essay of the Genealogy of Morals — which
locates in the first
Jewish-Christians the paradigmatic example of what happens “when ressentiment itself becomes creative
and gives birth to values” (1,10) — to appreciate Nietzsche’s
psycho-historical acumen. But compared to his strident accusations of ressentiment among the early Christians,
he seems hesitant to identify such a vengeful posture in Socrates; the figure
he, as a young professor, celebrated as “the first philosopher of life” (in Kaufmann, p.396). “Is it
possible that a man like him … should have been a pessimist?” (GS 340).
It is Socrates’ dying words that seemingly
compel Nietzsche, self-described “unavoidable psychologist and reader of
souls”, one who “never read[s] a word without seeing an attitude” (BGE 269, A 44), to reluctantly answer his own question in the affirmative.
“Socrates, Socrates suffered life!” (GS
340). Confirming the “tortured ambivalence” that Tanner (p.14) locates in so
much of his decades-long engagement with
Nietzsche’s obvious dissatisfaction with what he takes to be Socrates’
dour final judgement upon life is all the more revealing when we consider that
in the one volume where he is explicitly compared to Jesus, 1880’s The Wanderer
and his Shadow, Nietzsche leaves absolutely no doubt as to where his
preference lies.[12] Socrates is unambiguously said not only to be more intelligent than the
Nazarene, but his cheerful disposition, his “wisdom full of roguishness”, is
said to “constitute the finest state of the human soul” (WS 86).
Conclusion
The Wanderer’s unequivocal
contrasting of Socrates’ and Jesus’ dispositions and minds serves to place the
later Nietzsche’s very different assessment of their famous deaths in sharp
relief. Just as Socrates’ negative deathbed judgement serves as testimony to
the pervasive nature of revenge and ressentiment,
so too does it serve as a reminder of just how remarkable a figure the Jesus of
the Antichrist is. As Roth observes, the Jesus of the Antichrist is the very “opposite of
no-saying” (p.366). He does “not begrudge death, but accept[s] it without
revenge” (p.369). Free of the all too human impulse for revenge, even while
suffering the most inhuman of executions, this “‘bringer of glad
tidings’ died as he lived, as he taught
- not to ‘redeem mankind’ but to
demonstrate how one ought to live” (A 35). Diametrically unlike the
death of his Socrates, the death of the Antichrist’s Jesus consummates
and affirms his posture in life, and accordingly “offer[s] the sternest test,
the proof of his teaching” (A 40).
It is this posture, this martyrdom, this life-consistent death that
Nietzsche eulogizes in 1888. That the
thinker celebrating this altogether authentic and ressentiment-free death is Friedrich Nietzsche, the self-professed
“antichrist” (EH 3,2), is remarkable.
Remarkable too are the heretofore-unexplored lengths to which the Antichrist
goes to find a death-scene worthy of such a eulogy.
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Assorted
Opinions and Maxims in Human, All Too
Human (see above).
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[1]Jaspers (1967),
Kaufmann (1974), Biser (1981), Natoli (1985), Roth (1990), and Kee (1999), all
discuss Nietzsche’s treatment of Jesus’ martyrdom, but without reference to the
philosopher’s subtle manipulation of Jesus’ dying conversation. Natoli (p.72)
does quote Antichrist 35’s account of
Jesus’ conversation with the thief on the cross, but does not address
Nietzsche’s alteration of it. Jaspers (pp.17-21), Roth (p.369), and Kee
(pp.153-54) are right to emphasize the inner, psychological character and
immediate accessibility of the Nietzschean Jesus’ “
[2] At Antichrist 30 Nietzsche proposes that
Jesus’ posture of utter non-resistance may be traced to two
psycho-physiological “realities”.
Instinctive hatred of reality:
consequence of an extreme capacity for suffering and irritation which no longer
wants to be ‘touched’ at all because it feels every contact too deeply.
Instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all enmity, all
feeling for limitation and distancing: consequences of an extreme capacity
for suffering and irritation which already feels all resisting, all need for
resistance, as an unbearable displeasure
(that is to say as harmful, as deprecated by the instinct of
self-preservation) and knows
blessedness (pleasure) only in no longer resisting anyone or anything, neither
the evil nor the evil-doer – love as the sole, as the last possibility of life…
These are
the two physiological realities upon
which, out of which the doctrine of redemption has grown. I call it a sublime further
evolution of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid basis…. The fear of pain, even of
the infinitely small in pain – cannot
end otherwise than in a religion of love…
(A 30).
[3] According
to Tredennick: “The last words Socrates speaks show better than all the
arguments what he believed…To himself Socrates was recovering, not dying. He
was entering not into death, but into life, ‘life more abundantly’ ” (p.40, The Collected Dialogues of Plato).
Elsewhere Tredennick asserts that Socrates’ final remark “implies — with a
characteristic mixture of humour, paradox, and piety — that death is the cure
for life” (p.199, The Last Days of
Socrates). Cooper likewise concludes that “Socrates apparently means that
death is a cure for the ills of life” (p.153, Plato: Five Dialogues). On p.28 of his article “The Death of
Socrates”, Gill similarly affirms what he calls “the usual interpretation of
the remark”; that Socrates had “recovered from the sickness of being alive”.
While the “life-as-illness, death-as-cure” interpretation of Phaedo 118a dominates the literature, it is by no means the
only reading of Socrates’ final words (see Crooks, 1998).
[4] In the
absence of a suitable German equivalent Nietzsche consistently employs the
French “ressentiment”. While it would
not be wholly incorrect to substitute the English word “resentment”, I join the
philosopher in his use of the French form both in the name of consistency, and
because Nietzsche’s “ressentiment”
often seems to denote bitterness, vengefulness, and hatred to a degree not
normally associated with “resentment”.
[5] Why the weak conquer: “The anti-Semites
do not forgive the Jews for possessing ‘spirit’– and money. Anti-Semites –
another name for the ‘underprivileged’.” (WP
864)
“The doctrine ‘equal
rights for all’ - this has been more thoroughly sowed by Christianity than by
anything else…it has forged out of the ressentiment
of the masses its chief weapon against us, against everything noble, joyful,
high-spirited on earth... Christianity is a revolt of everything that crawls
along the ground directed against everything that which is elevated” (A 43).
[6] “
[7] In Part Six
of the section of Ecce Homo entitled
“Why I Am So Wise”, Nietzsche writes:
Freedom
from ressentiment, enlightenment about ressentiment — who knows
how much I am ultimately indebted in this respect also to my protracted
sickness! ... And nothing burns one up faster than the affects of ressentiment.
Anger, pathological vulnerability, the impotence for revenge, the lust, the
thirst for revenge, poison-mixing in any sense — for the exhausted that is
surely the most disadvantageous way to react: it involves a rapid consumption
of nervous energy, a pathological increase of harmful secretions, for example
of the gall bladder into the stomach. Ressentiment is what is forbidden par excellence for the sick — it is
their specific evil — unfortunately also their most natural inclination. This
was comprehended by that profound physiologist, the Buddha. His “religion”
should rather be called a kind of hygiene, lest it be confused with
such pitiable phenomena as Christianity: its effectiveness was made conditional
on the victory over ressentiment. To liberate the soul
from this is the first step
towards recovery. "Not by enmity is enmity ended; by friendliness enmity
is ended": these words stand at the beginning of the doctrine of the
Buddha. It is not morality that speaks thus, thus speaks physiology.
[8] Greeks!
Romans! Nobility of instinct, of taste, methodical investigation, genius for
organization and government, the faith in, the will to a future for mankind,
the great Yes to all things, visibly present to all the senses as the Imperium Romanum, grand style no longer
merely art but become reality … ruined by cunning, secret, invisible, anemic
vampires! Not conquered – only sucked dry! ... Covert revengefulness, petty
envy become master! (A59).
Nietzsche’s tendency to contrast the
“natural” values of
[9] Socrates
belonged, in his origins, to the lowest orders: Socrates was rabble. One knows,
one sees for oneself, how ugly he was. But ugliness, an objection in itself, is
among Greeks almost a refutation. Was Socrates a Greek at all? Ugliness is
frequently enough the sign of a thwarted development, a development retarded
by interbreeding. (Twilight, “Problem of Socrates”, 3).
[10] Birth of Tragedy 13 speaks very
favorably of Socrates’ “calm” in the face of death. At Gay Science 36 the deaths of Emperors Augustus and Nero are
compared unfavorably with the “self-control” of “the dying Socrates”.
[11] Like his
attitude toward Jesus, Nietzsche’s relationship with Socrates is long-standing,
polymorphic, and highly ambivalent. Hundreds of references to Socrates can be
found in Nietzsche’s published works, lectures, letters, and notebooks.
Nietzsche’s Socrates is “the first philosopher of life” (in Kaufmann, p.396); “the true
eroticist” (BT 13); “a monstrosity” (BT 13); a “turning point” of world
history (BT 15); an embodiment of
“the finest state of the human soul” (WS
86); and a “buffoon who got himself taken
seriously” (TI, 2, 5). Kaufmann,
who devotes a chapter of his Nietzsche
(1974) to the interpretation of a number of Nietzsche’ comments (particularly
his favorable comments) about
Socrates, concludes (in his Introduction to the Birth of Tragedy) that the figure of Socrates is “deeply
problematic” for Nietzsche. Both Dannhauser (1974), who devotes an entire book
to this complex relationship, and Tanner (1994) emphasize the fundamental
ambivalence underlying so many of Nietzsche’s remarks concerning Socrates.
Writes Tanner: “The image of Socrates was never to let Nietzsche free; as with all the
leading characters in his pantheon and anti-pantheon, his relationship with him
remains one of tortured ambivalence” (p.14).
[12] “If all
goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates
rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason”, writes Nietzsche. Then,
after championing those “modes of life … directed towards joy in living”, this
calculatingly confrontational passage goes on to declare that:
Socrates
excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and
in possessing that wisdom full of
roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he
also possessed the finer intellect. (WS
86)
Copyright © 2006 Minerva
All rights are reserved, but fair and good
faith use with full attribution may be made of this work for educational or
scholarly purposes.
Dr. Morgan Rempel is an Assistant Professor of
Philosophy at The University of Southern Mississippi, and the author of Nietzsche,
Psychohistory, and the Birth of Christianity (Greenwood Press).
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