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| The Lake of Galilee looking south from Tiberias, 1902, by John Fulleylove. |
Nietzsche and the beatitude of Jesus as will to power
Allan Sena
Nietzsche ends the section 30 of The
Antichrist with the following statement, which reinforces the thesis that
the evangel of Jesus is the result of a morbid hyperexcitability and a will to pleasure proper of weakness: “– The fear of pain, even
of infinitely minute pain – that can end in no other way than in a religion of love...” To understand this sentence, it is necessary to turn to the
posthumous fragment 14 [130] of spring of 1888, in which Nietzsche did a sketch
of an attempt of a demonstration of this argument. The fragment is titled
“Reaction: religion. Moral as
décadence.” In its beginning, Nietzsche writes down: “Reaction of the little people [kleiner Leute]”; and, in the other line:
“Love gives the highest feeling of power”. In the posthumous fragment 10 [86] of the fall of 1887, Nietzsche
clearly establishes the connection between Jesus and the little people, whom he
and Paul would have filled the head with delusions of grandeur. The little
people are the type meek, withdrawn, private, idiot, the kind of people, as the
philosopher explains in the fragment 10 [92] from the same period, that was
composed the small Jewish family of the Diaspora, from the lake, from Galilee,
the same environment where Jesus was born. What this décadent people managed to find as source of power? Love. In
the continuation of his notes, in the fragment 14 [130] of spring of 1888,
Nietzsche warns: “Understand to what extent is not the man in
generally that is speaking here, but a certain type of man. One should
scrutinize this type a little more closely.” That is,
this expedient that represents the foundation of the moral of this little
people, is not reserved to any type of man, is not addressed, in any way, to
the middle man, much less to the resentful type of décadent man, to the Christian type. This do not refer, it must be
emphasized, to the type of love which blossomed as the crown of the Jew hatred
against Rome that Nietzsche speaks in section 8 of the first essay of Genealogy of Morals, neither the third
of the three Christian virtues, or rather, shrewdnesses (Klugheiten): faith, hope and love, analyzed in section 23 of The Antichrist. This love of which the
philosopher is referring at this moment is most likely the love that born from a
deep fear of pain, the unconditional love of Jesus.
What causes the pain in the degenerate? The excitations, the stimuli,
the external sensations, the reality.
Every
obstacle is a stimulus, it requires resistance, it requires response, but the
degenerate person is unable to give such an answer; this obstacle then exhausts
the reserve of energy of the degenerate, resulting in an unpleasant feeling of
loss of power, thus causing pain. In
other words, the aggressor, everything that harms (all reality, therefore)
incites, in the assaulted, a resistance, a response, a defense, which the
degenerate is incapable to offer. The degenerate finds itself thus with only
two choices: to resent or to love. The resentment produces an
internal conflict (which in some nature may even prove to be a source of
power), causing therefore pain again. However, a person with an extreme
hyperexcitability, with a morbid irritability that reached its climax, cannot
endure even that kind of pain. How could be possible, then, for such a person,
avoid any pain, the pain most infinitesimal? Avoiding any conflict, whether
external or internal. How to avoid, in turn, any and all kind of conflict? Eliminating
the feelings of hostility, the aggressive instincts, the resentment; no longer
resisting, no longer responding (to avoid any waste of force), whether in act
or in the heart, either externally or internally. How can this be done? By
acceptance, by love of what harms, of what causes pain and suffering, even the
acceptance of pain and suffering itself, something like what Nietzsche called Russian fatalism :
“‘we are divine in love, we become children of God, God loves us and requires
nothing of us except love’”. But
behold then what happens: the love produces pleasant feelings, love brings
peace to the soul, beatifies, love makes the pain cease. What, in reality, does
that mean? Love produces a sense of power. As Nietzsche notes:
Nevertheless, this love, this power
so elevated that this person of such degenerate physiological constitution cannot
recognize as yours, which seems to take over your being from the inside, but at
the same time, presents itself as another, as a superior power, as “Father”,
could not come – this person believes – from himself, this love can only come
from his Father who is in Heaven, from his beloved Abba (Daddy); this love is the manifestation of the power, the
glory, the kingdom of God. By love, he becomes a son of God. His kingdom of God is this feeling of profound
communion with all things, with God,
of love of all things, of God:
one should imagine
the awakening of such a feeling, a kind of ecstasy, a foreign speech [eine fremde Rede], an “evangel”
it is this tidings [Neuheit] that does not allows him to
attribute the love to himself: – he thinks God has drawn his way, and became
alive in him –
When Nietzsche speaks about other alteration of personality, he
is probably referring to the alteration of personality of the saint. This alteration is a consequence of folie circulaire, which
is in the base of Christian mechanisms of penance and redemption, in which it
seeks to intensify the alternation
between states of depression and excitement proper to degeneracy, further
aggravating a physiological conditioning weakened in the pursuit of a fleeting
sensation of a power boost, which the saint believes not belong to him. Therefore,
the Christian doctrine and the
redemption offered by Jesus rest upon the same physiological reality, ie, the
hyperexcitability, however, each one presents a particular way of dealing with
this condition, namely: an unnatural and harmful manner and a natural and not
harmful manner.
In a person like Jesus, this love, or rather, this feeling of power is
manifested, or even better, is conditioned
by the existence of the other, of the
aggressor itself, of the neighbor, of
the “enemy”, of the “bad man”, of the reality
itself; the neighbor, the love of
neighbor, then becomes his God, for it is through it that one attains the
peace of soul, the beatitude, the feeling
of power: that one lives in the
kingdom of God. As clarifies Nietzsche: “‘the ‘neighbor’ [in Jesus] is
transfigured into a God (because the feeling of love is revealed in his
presence)”. At another moment: “Jesus is
[becomes] the neighbor, since he was
rethought as a deity, as exciting cause of a feeling of power.”
Doctoral student in Philosophy at Universidade
Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. Scholar of
CNPq
(allandavy@hotmail.com).
Cf. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “The
Antichrist”. In: The portable Nietzsche. Selected and translated, with an introduction, prefaces and notes by Walter Kaufman. Nova York:
Vinking Penguin, 1982, p. 602.
Cf. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Kritische Studienausgabe. Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazino Montinari.
Berlin/München/New York: Walter de Gruyter/DTV, Band 13, 1988.
Cf. Ecce Homo, Why I am so wise § 6.
