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In the first part of BGE, Nietzsche takes on the "prejudices" of philosophers; in the next part, he takes on the beliefs of average everyday people ("the herd") and contrasts these with those of the "free spirit". Next up are the morals of Christian faith. Hold on to your hat!

Nietzsche's critique of Christian faith focuses on sacrifice, which he claims is not only unreasonable, but also a kind of enslavement. The faithful Christian wants "the unconditional" and "only understands tyrannical morals." He characterizes this as a "religious neurosis," an inversion of the human spirit. Is it so? Does self-sacrifice for faith ever make sense? Is there a rational explanation for asceticism?

He casts self-denial as a kind of con game -- the powerful of the world are conned into believing that the saint must have "inside information" and a secret power if he denies himself of so much. (Section 51) What about spiritual discipline?

He says that the book of grace (the New Testament) is small-souled in comparison to the book of justice (the Old Testament) -- is this because grace implies sin? And this implies a surrender of power to God? (Or the church, or priest.)

Is grammar responsible for a belief in the soul? (Section 54)

The opposite ideal of morality is the life-affirming, an affirmation of "what is." What is it then? (Socrates' favorite question.) How is "what is" identified? Or is identification and/or judgment of "what is" no longer an issue for the person who espouses the "opposite" of morality. (sec 56)

He goes on to suggest that religious belief is waning as man's "spiritual eye" grows stronger. (57) In part this is because religion requires leisure time which modern people no longer have. For their part, scholars are secretly dismissive of religion and only appear to take it seriously, out of good will. (58)

Once again echoing the Republic, he suggests that religion can be used as a noble lie by the philosopher (61) but it must not be allowed to have its "own sovereign way."

How much of Nietzsche's argument arises from an insistence on the individual's freedom and sovereignty? Is his argument against religion at all substantive, or does it boil down to a horror of surrendering one's freedom for the sake of another?

My favorite

Suppose we could contemplate the oddly painful and equally crude and subtle comedy of European Christianity with the mocking and aloof eyes of an Epicurean god, I think our amazement and laughter would never end: doesn’t it seem that a single will dominated Europe for eighteen centuries—to turn man into a sublime miscarriage? Anyone, however, who approached this almost deliberate degeneration and atrophy of man represented by the Christian European (Pascal, for example), feeling the opposite kind of desire, not in an Epicurean spirit but rather with some divine hammer in his hand, would surely have to cry out in wrath, in pity, in horror: “O you dolts, you presumptuous, pitying dolts, what have you done! Was that work for your hands? How have you bungled and botched my beautiful stone! What presumption!��

I’m not showing Nietzsche my doodles and my playdough masterpieces, that’s for sure.

Also, I’m seriously starting to second guess my interpretation of his savagery towards Epicurus in Part I: Maybe he didn’t think there’s anything wrong with hiding his rage, pretending to preach peaceful calm, living low key in semi-seclusion with his chosen friends.

So, do we get to do philosophy with hammers now?

I thought this part was breathtaking:

—Every age has its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages may envy it: and how much naivete—adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and ABOVE which he himself has developed—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of "modern ideas"!

Yes, he calls them "adorable," 21st C style.

No doubt Nietzsche, like all other philosophers, is really motivated by the Will to Power, and he seeks to discredit Christianity because its rules interfere with his freedom.

You spelled "adoggable" wrong.

Someone call the burn unit, apparently Nietzsche is on a roll. (Imagine Nietzsche on Twitter ...)

Thomas wrote: "He casts self-denial as a kind of con game -the powerful of the world are conned into believing that the saint must have "inside information" and a secret power if he denies himself of so much. (Section 51) What about spiritual discipline? "

�� that’s a little harsh. I thought the powerful recognize something strange but unconquered in the saint �� that is, the powerful honored something in themselves by honoring the unwashed saint, it’s not material wealth, it’s not political power, it has something to do with discipline, or that delight in dominion. Despite their “worldly�� status-gap, they are birds of a feather.

Nietzsche said something about “we new philosophers�� donning masks and struggling to find comrades, and if their paths cross, “you may wager that we will mistake one another or betray one another�� (From Will to Power.) I wonder if this is one such scenario: two masked kindred spirits misreading each other, seeing what they want to see, basically fabricating, but that’s not being conned. that’s bestowing honor on someone they recognize as �� “virtuous?��

Thomas wrote: " He says that the book of grace (the New Testament) is small-souled in comparison to the book of justice (the Old Testament)"

For some reasons I missed that remarkable comment until I saw your post. The very strange descriptor “small-souled�� kept me up all night. It immediately reminds me of my spirited objection to Aristotle’s treatment of “Megalopsuchia�� when I first read Nicomachean Ethics. I dug up my notes:

Megalopsuchia is related in Greek thought and literature prior to Aristotle to the concepts of great-heartedness and greatspiritedness, the qualities of the Homeric heroes. In the fourth century bce, greatness of soul is most often attributed to generals, men of politics, and kings, including Philip of Macedon the empire builder and father of Alexander. Plato, however, redefines greatness of soul as the quality of the philosopher when he describes the man with a great soul born in a small city who remains uncorrupted by political machinations (Republic iv 496b).
Aristotle notes that smallness of soul is more opposed to greatness of soul than vanity is opposed to the virtue: for smallness of soul occurs more frequently and is worse (1125a33��34). Self-esteem engenders a sense of ambitiousness, of seeking out opportunities for virtuous action and grabbing them when they are presented, because the great-souled person is able to imagine himself performing actions that the small-souled cannot imagine performing, although they may wish to undertake them.

So, Plato kind of inverted the meaning of "Greatness of Soul,�� if anybody is a con man, it’s Plato, he’s the one who took a penniless but saintly philosopher and labelled his soul great, ennobling him to the level of epic hero status.

And maybe that's why "Platonism for the masses" is small-souled. Nietzsche is out to invert it *again.* Eternal Inversion!

Nietzsche's Old Testament-New Testament statement here is actually a re-iteration of what he said in The Dawn of Day:

84.
The Philology of Christianity.—How little Christianity cultivates the sense of honesty can be inferred from the character of the writings of its learned men. They set out their conjectures as audaciously as if they were dogmas, and are but seldom at a disadvantage in regard to the interpretation of Scripture. Their continual cry is: “I am right, for it is written”—and then follows an explanation so shameless and capricious that a philologist, when he hears it, must stand stock-still between anger and laughter, asking himself again and again: Is it possible? Is it honest? Is it even decent?

It is only those who never—or always—attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of the art of false reading.

When all is said and done, however, what can be expected from the effects of a religion which, during the centuries when it was being firmly established, enacted that huge philological farce concerning the Old Testament? I refer to that attempt to tear the Old Testament from the hands of the Jews under the pretext that it contained only Christian doctrines and belonged to the Christians as the true people of Israel, while the Jews had merely arrogated it to themselves without authority. This was followed by a mania of would-be interpretation and falsification, which could not under any circumstances have been allied with a good conscience. However strongly Jewish savants protested, it was everywhere sedulously asserted that the Old Testament alluded everywhere to Christ, and nothing but Christ, more especially His Cross, and thus, wherever reference was made to wood, a rod, a ladder, a twig, a tree, a willow, or a staff, such a reference could not but be a prophecy relating to the wood of the Cross: even the setting-up [pg 086] of the Unicorn and the Brazen Serpent, even Moses stretching forth his hands in prayer—yea, the very spits on which the Easter lambs were roasted: all these were allusions to the Cross, and, as it were, preludes to it! Did any one who kept on asserting these things ever believe in them? Let it not be forgotten that the Church did not shrink from putting interpolations in the text of the Septuagint (e.g. Ps. xcvi. 10), in order that she might later on make use of these interpolated passages as Christian prophecies. They were engaged in a struggle, and thought of their foes rather than of honesty.

In the Part II thread, David raised these questions /topic/show/...

Is the will to power the only will, or do all the other wills serve it? The will to power seems to me to be defined as the mindset to master one's self, others, and the environment. Wouldn't the other wills just be tools of a will to power? A will to truth because knowledge is power, a will to happiness per William James, a will to indifference per Stocism, a will to absence of pain per Epicurus, etc.

Is this what he means when he says in 36:
Of course, “will�� can work only on “will��. . .
Does he mean "will" can only work on other "wills"?

I thought those are really good questions, and I thought §36 is really really important. I was hoping someone with a great-enough soul would waltz in and address that �� but,

|§47| Even in the background of the most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find, almost as the problem-in-itself, this gruesome question mark of the religious crisis and awakening. How is the denial of the will possible? how is the saint possible? This really seems to have been the question over which Schopenhauer became a philosopher and began.

I think we are now in a better position to think about this “will�� and “will to power��. ( §36 also name-drops Schopenhauer)

Keep in mind §36 asks us to engage in a thought experiment. Nietzsche isn’t defining, asserting what the will is, or what it does, he’s only asking us to to take a premise, apply logic, and look at what follows.

|§36| Granted that nothing is ‘given�� as real except our world of desires and passions, that we can rise or sink to no other ‘reality�� than the reality of our drives �� for thinking is only the relationship of these drives to one another ...it is not merely permitted to make this experiment: it is commanded by the conscience of method. Not to assume several kinds of causality so long as the experiment of getting along with one has not been taken to its ultimate limits (�� to the point of nonsense, if I may say so): that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays �� it follows ‘from its definition��, as a mathematician would say. In the end, the question is whether we really recognize will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of will: if we do so �� and fundamentally belief in this is precisely our belief in causality itself �� then we have to make the experiment of positing causality of will hypothetically as the only one. ‘Will�� can of course operate only on ‘will�� �� and not on ‘matter�� (not on ‘nerves��, for example ��): enough, one must venture the hypothesis that wherever ‘effects�� are recognized, will is operating upon will �� and that all mechanical occurrences, in so far as a force is active in them, are force of will, effects of will...

Could §36 be a critique of Schopenhauer’s endeavor? I.e. suppose we “accept�� the world as will (drives, desires, passions), then what? Follow to the point of nonsense �� if desires and passions is all that there is to “the world,�� all that is “real,�� then how is self-denial possible? How is the saint possible?

(Ergo, the world is not will-and-representation, QED.)

If will cannot operate on matter, not even on nerves, then it seems it cannot affect anything at all in the material world, not even our bodies, not even our thoughts. It must be only an illusion, an epiphenomenon that has no function.

I think the nature of the thought experiment was either what is knowable (epistemology) or intelligible, or maybe psychology. Either way, I think he's not defining the will in his own terms yet, I think he's introducing his problems with various traditional philosophers and then revisiting them in later sections. Maybe that particular aphorism deals with idealists like Berkeley and Schopenhauer.

Sec. 36 is actually about the "Mind-Body problem" which vexed philosophers for a century or two. It also came up in Hume's Enquiry.



I didn't jump in on this, because I don't really know much about the "mind-body problem."

But no, Lia, I don't think Nietzsche intends it as a reductio ad absurdum. More like the 'esoteric' doctrine he can only hint at or adumbrate.

Roger wrote: "If will cannot operate on matter, not even on nerves, then it seems it cannot affect anything at all in the material world, not even our bodies, not even our thoughts. It must be only an illusion, ..."

But is it? In the sense that a 'solid table' is not really solid?
What, in our experience, would lead us to conceive of the will as illusory?

Christopher wrote: ", I don't think Nietzsche intends it as a reductio ad absurdum. More like the 'esoteric' doctrine he can only hint at or adumbrate..."

Fair enough, But still, the word choice makes me think this is a position he rejects.

But, with Nietzsche and esotericism, you never know.

Lia wrote: "But, with Nietzsche and esotericism, you never know. ..."

You just have to shrug your shoulders.

I'm behind on the reading. You folks are making me want to get into it though.

Christopher wrote: "Roger wrote: "If will cannot operate on matter, not even on nerves, then it seems it cannot affect anything at all in the material world, not even our bodies, not even our thoughts. It must be only..."

Indeed, the will as illusion is absolutely contrary to our everyday experience. Yet people believe it. As far as I can tell, that's because they can conceive of no possible way it could happen, outside of an immaterial soul inhabiting and somehow affecting the brain, and they're not willing to accept that idea.

Nietzsche's comments on the Old Testament in some respects mirror my own adolescent feelings. The Old Testament is in large part a folk epic, belonging to the same class of story-cycles I loved to read for other cultures. I was never especially fond of the New Testament growing up, apart from St John's Apocalypse. The Gospels and Epistles represent something wholly different, something truly religious in the Christian sense albeit built on the treasury of narrative and motifs provided by the Old Testament. To a child enamored of kings and battles, the apostles held little appeal.

Of course, the section Christopher quoted shows Nietzsche's utter incomprehension of Patristic hermeneutics. He did share that with much of the scholarship of his age, though.

Rex wrote: " Of course, the section Christopher quoted shows Nietzsche's utter incomprehension of Patristic hermeneutics. He did share that with much of the scholarship of his age, though. ..."

Nietzsche, for all his conservatism, does seem a bit "Whiggish" at times.

But then, the Tories were never that friendly to the RCC either.

I was thinking that "will" could be an aspect of "desire" or "want" and the terms could be interchangeable to a degree. if so, then it makes sense that my will, or wants, can only act on other wants and not directly on material things.

I was thinking about it like this. I "want" to be happy. In order to be happy I have to have some control over myself, others or my environment so I "want" that too, i.e., will to power. Suppose I get it into my head that owning a house will make me happy. Just "wanting" the house doesn't create any material change; my house does not suddenly appear simply from wanting it to. However, it now comes under my will to power, to control myself, others, and my environment to get an education so I can get a good job and make enough money to buy the house. now this will to power, this want, doesn't get me the education, the job, the money, and the house just from wanting it. It is merely the motivation or the drive and mindset for "me" to take actions that do directly bring about material and other changes.

Is this in line with what Nietzsche is saying or am I way off base?

ETA: I am remembering Ahab wondering if Ahab moves Ahab's arm, or does God, who must move everything then, move Ahab's arm?

Nietzsche does seem ultimately to accept that will is a cause:

". . . one must venture the hypothesis that . . . all mechanical occurrences, in so far as a force is active in them, are force of will, effects of will . . ."

Rex wrote: "Of course, the section Christopher quoted shows Nietzsche's utter incomprehension of Patristic hermeneutics. He did share that with much of the scholarship of his age, though...."

The scholars at the time were also scornful of the allegorical proclivities of the Stoics and Platonists (climaxing with Neo-Platonic readings of Homer). Philo of Alexandria, at home with Hellenistic culture, had set a precedent for the Church Fathers with allegorical readings of parts of the Septuagint, the relationship of which to early Rabbinic midrash (homiletical expositions of Scripture) is a subject of debate.

However, I think that a main target of Nietzsche's discussion (in "Dawn") appears elsewhere in the passage quoted, one with an autobiographical weight behind it:

"It is only those who never—or always—attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of the art of false reading."

Nietzsche's was brought up in a conventionally pious Lutheran household (his father and a grandfather were both ordained), far downstream in the history of Christian hermeneutics.

Of course, he was later exposed to the discipline of classical philology (a science in German eyes), where explaining away or distorting the meaning of a passage, if needed, was conducted in a much more rigorous style, with a great show of grammatical and lexicographic knowledge.

(This was the generation which assured itself that the interloper Schliemann *could not* have found nothing of interest at Troy or Mycenae, since they had already proved those stories to be entirely mythical.)

The thing about Nietzsche and the Fathers of the Church is that, despite some disparaging remarks about St. Augustine, the remarks about the philosophers' use of religion seem (to me at least) to describe what men like St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, Clement of Alexandria, and other Fathers were, in fact, doing:

61. The philosopher, as we free spirits understand him—as the man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general development of mankind,—will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as well as creative and fashioning—which can be exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under its spell and protection.
[...]

And in the case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior spirituality they should incline to a more retired and contemplative life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government (over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself may be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of managing grosser affairs, and for securing immunity from the unavoidable filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance, understood this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they secured to themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher and super-regal mission.

Ambrose, in particular, is the kind of man who would have been a senator in earlier times, but became a bishop.

Lia wrote: "�� that’s a little harsh. I thought the powerful recognize something strange but unconquered in the saint �� "

Maybe so, but I think I'm just finishing the thought that he leaves unsaid at the end of that section with -- a coy dash. I think Nietzsche does respect the saint's self-mastery, but he does not respect the reasoning behind the discipline. The saint may not be a con man knowingly, but he is a fool with great power to fool others.

He says that the book of grace (the New Testament) is small-souled in comparison to the book of justice (the Old Testament)"

For some reasons I missed that remarkable comment until I saw your post..

It's especially remarkable that small-souledness has a smell...

Roger wrote: "If will cannot operate on matter, not even on nerves, then it seems it cannot affect anything at all in the material world, not even our bodies, not even our thoughts. It must be only an illusion, ..."

See also section 19, where the will is described as a compound of sensation, thinking, and "an affect of superiority." It doesn't really clarify what Nietzsche thinks the will is, but it lays out the many complications that he is aware of.

David wrote: "ETA: I am remembering Ahab wondering if Ahab moves Ahab's arm, or does God, who must move everything then, move Ahab's arm? "

This is one of the complications that he considers in section 19. The will is a command-and-obey structure, and when one wills oneself, it raises the question of who is the commander and who the commanded. He seems to conclude that this is evidence that the "I" is a synthetic concept and a self-deception.

Cphe wrote: "Wouldn't a saint also be a free spirit?"

I think saints would be excluded from the free spirit category because they adhere to dogma; a religious one at that.

Bryan wrote: "Lia wrote: "But, with Nietzsche and esotericism, you never know. ..."

You just have to shrug your shoulders.

I'm behind on the reading. You folks are making me want to get into it though."

... you've got a taste for ... interesting things! Have you considered a career in free-spiriteering?

Reading Nietzsche is like playing sudoku but with aphorisms. He tells you it's esoteric so you assume you just have to look harder for clues to make all the pieces fit. But I looked at the back of the book and there's no answer key, only strange poetry >__<

I did read through the section last night--I found this much harder to penetrate than the previous two. I'm going to try to read through it again during the rest of the week

Thomas wrote: �� It's especially remarkable that small-souledness has a smell... ��

I suspect there is more to it than mere insult at this point. Remember in §30 he also said

books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them. Where the people eat and drink, even where they venerate, it usually stinks.

Foul smell is consistently used to describe what is common. I might be going full Dan Brown here (sorry) but I’m thinking this is an interpretive signpost, a thread from Ariadne.

Maybe he’s suggesting the OT is esoteric, and the NT is exo?

Lia wrote: "For some reasons I missed that remarkable comment until I saw your post. The very strange descriptor “small-souled�� kept me up all night. It immediately reminds me of my spirited objection to Aristotle’s treatment of “Megalopsuchia�� when I first read Nicomachean Ethics. "


It reminded me of Aristotle's Ethics when I read it also. I think our discussion on it is still around somewhere. Anyway, it stuck out to me because it was translated in my edition as "humble". So when I read the phrase by N, I immediately substituted "the book of grace is humble".

In any case, Nietzsche's attacks seem to me (so far) to be on aesthetic grounds.

Thomas wrote: " Maybe so, but I think I'm just finishing the thought that he leaves unsaid at the end of that section with -- a coy dash. I think Nietzsche does respect the saint's self-mastery, but he does not respect the reasoning behind the discipline. The saint may not be a con man knowingly, but he is a fool with great power to fool others"

Why is he being so coy though? It’s not like he was coy about insulting women, or Kant, or �� everything, it’s like a provocation contest (He’d be great on twitter.) Why is he suddenly coy here?

Anyway, an unknowing con man is too self-contradictory even for me, sorry Tom. The virtue (? as in what makes a con man a con man) of a con man is that he knowingly deceives. If the saint sincerely deprives himself with tyrannical zeal, inverts his way of life, and the powerful sees a kindred spirit in that, it’s not calculated manipulation, it’s just an �� explanation? Interpretation? Psychoanalysis? Of an apparently paradoxical social phenomenon.

Genni wrote: "It reminded me of Aristotle's Ethics when I read it also. I think our discussion on it is still around somewhere. Anyway, it stuck out to me because it was translated in my edition as "humble". So when I read the phrase by N, I immediately substituted "the book of grace is humble".

In any case, Nietzsche's attacks seem to me (so far) to be on aesthetic grounds."

Thank you Genni. That association and remembrance of my initial indignation to (an otherwise goody-two-shoes) Aristotle makes me come around to see (what I imagine to be) Nietzsche’s point: we moderns have been educated to have a distaste for Great-souls, the idea that some people are in fact better and it’s socially appropriate for them to display high self-esteem is automatically repugnant to me. We have eliminated social space for “nobility��.

The aesthetic grounding is interesting in itself �� given his comical repudiation of gluing the OT and NT together. I’ve read multiple commentaries (Julian Young, Kaufmann) that claim BGE is in fact two books stuck together, Young said first and second part deal with completely different philosophical concepts; Kaufmann said there’s a clear stylistic shift somewhere (this is from memory, I don’t have the books/ quotes here with me.), I wonder if it is also a signpost for us to look at Nietzsche’s own stylistic structure, I wonder if BGE is also two books glued together.

David wrote: "Cphe wrote: "Wouldn't a saint also be a free spirit?"

I think saints would be excluded from the free spirit category because they adhere to dogma; a religious one at that."

I concur. It seems Nietzsche mocks both the bloodless scientists / positivists who pretend they have completely eliminated personal prejudices from their works; and the religious fanatics like Pascal, who cruelly sacrificed their “will to truth�� and willed themselves to acquire a "belief" irrespective of its truth. (Of course this takes me back to my earlier objection to Nietzsche’s apparent claim that logic is false and we must accept them. /topic/show/... )

So the saint, however remarkable his self-cruelty is, is not a free spirit. Remember in the Preface , Nietzsche said we very free spirits are neither Jesuits nor democrats. Not that they weren’t remarkable, but whatever they put to healthier sleep, apparently Nietzsche wishes to keep awake, in order to tense that bow.

No, Cphe. His father was a Lutheran minister.

Lia wrote: "Why is he being so coy though? It’s not like he was coy about insulting women, or Kant, or �� everything, it’s like a provocation contest (He’d be great on twitter.) Why is he suddenly coy here? "

To me it looks like the saint is drawing the powerful into his snare. That's what makes it seem like a con to me, and Nietzsche employs a deft rhetorical trick to suggest this. If the powerful recognizes the saint for what he is, I don't see the attraction. The powerful man who recognizes the saint doesn't "have to ask" ...anything. He knows what's up. But he doesn't. The saint is a "riddle" and a "question mark."

Nietzsche clearly respects power, and he must account for the power of Christianity somehow. This religion of self-sacrifice and denial somehow managed to amass political and spiritual power on a global scale. I think he recognizes this power in the saint as well. It's the power of mystery.

Thomas wrote: " The saint is a "riddle" and a "question mark."

Nietzsche clearly respects power, and he must account for the power of Christianity somehow. This religion of self-sacrifice and denial somehow managed to amass political and spiritual power on a global scale. I think he recognizes this power in the saint as well. It's the power of mystery"

For me, I'm still trying to figure out who is Oedipus, and who the Sphinx. What if the saint is not self-conscious of his social relation to the powerful? What if the saint is blindly denying life out of honest quest for meaning? Was Oedipus at fault if he didn't know what he is? Is the saint guilty of deception if he was simply answering to, and at the same time denying another, impulse, drive, will within him?

Thomas wrote: "Nietzsche's critique of Christian faith focuses on sacrifice, which he claims is not only unreasonable, but also a kind of enslavement."

Interesting. I agree Nietzsche dislikes Christianity. He cringes at the sacrifices, "the self-mockery, the self-mutilation." Yet I also feel he lauds those sacrifices, the commitment: Pascal's commitment to faith, the first Christians willingness to risk the wrath Roman law by reaching out to something new, and the saint's commitment to self-denial, to asceticism, which I thought he called will to power(?).

Continuing . . .

I think he admires each of them (Pascal, 1st Christians, Saints). They each act as free spirits in that they resist the herd through sheer Will to Power: Pascal in his faith, the 1st Christians in risking their lives for what they believed in, and the saints for the absoluteness of their belief). Isn't N saying there is something to learn from them but to beware because they also went astray -- dogma, sacrifice of freedom, etc.?

Thomas wrote: "In the first part of BGE, Nietzsche takes on the "prejudices" of philosophers; in the next part, he takes on the beliefs of average everyday people ("the herd") and contrasts these with those of th..."

Thomas, great intro - again!

Thomas wrote: "How much of Nietzsche's argument arises from an insistence on the individual's freedom and sovereignty? Is his argument against religion at all substantive, or does it boil down to a horror of surrendering one's freedom for the sake of another? "

I was wondering the same things. Rex (@ 16) mentioned Nietzsche must not have known much about Patristic hermeneutics, but I wonder if he didn't know much about Christian hermeneutics in general. Or he chose to dismiss it to underscore his point of view. He rants and raves - very eloquently at times - but he never really explains what it is that set him off. This is a pattern so far, he is the "Accuser in Chief," as Xan put it in chapter 2.

In the West we have a very good understanding of what it means to have free will and a right to self-determination based on an amalgam of our Judeo-Christian heritage and Greek philosophy. When he insists that the only way to live out free will is to be, in a nutshell, an egotistical jerk, you have to wonder if he ever truly understood what 'freedom' means in the Christian context. Or he may have simply dismissed it given that to him everything Christian is by default inferior, his few concessions notwithstanding.

Every religion has an understanding who the human person is. It is intrinsic to the human condition to define who we are. By attacking Christianity and how, in his mind, it undermines the human spirit, he has yet to give us any indication of who the human person is, what personhood is, from his perspective.

"or does it boil down to a horror of surrendering one's freedom for the sake of another? "

I think that's the crux. Losing autonomy just isn't in the cards, and everything, his entire world view, has to be subjugated to it. Whatever has the potential of threatening this autonomy is labeled "dangerous." The word seems to pop up at least once per page. So I did a word search of the German word for 'dangerous,' 'gefährlich,' and it appears 47 times in its various grammatical versions in the text.
Whether or not his stance is rational, is an entirely different question.

In this context there is another aspect that we've hinted at before. That is the dynamic between the individual and society. Yes, we have free will and the right to self-determination, but at the same time we live in community with others. There is a reciprocal relationship here, and it has to be balanced, otherwise one will dominate the other and sooner or later you will have conflict. Nietzsche doesn't seem to be concerned with the pitch forks looming on the horizon.

Cphe wrote: "Is it just me or does anyone else think it a strange title for a chapter, the wording?

"what is religious" - it's not so much a question posed."

"What is religious" is a compromise translation of "Das religioese Wesen," which Zimmern translates as "the Religious Mood."- although "Wesen" implies a state of being, not a state of mind.

I think Feuerbach's famous book was called Das Wesen des Christentums- yes, "The Essence of Christianity."

The Essence of Christianity

Kerstin wrote: "In the West we have a very good understanding of what it means to have free will and a right to self-determination based on an amalgam of our Judeo-Christian heritage and Greek philosophy...."

Nietzsche complicates things by lumping together questions which are often addressed separately. (Or maybe we should blame his commentators and critics for not distinguishing them properly)

He has several problems with Free Will, depending on the context. And only some of them deal with things like moral responsibility. I'll mention those which seem most apparent to me -- there may be others, and finer divisions of things I've lumped together.

In terms of his objections to Christianity, there would be the issue of Pre-Determinism, the destiny of the individual soul, and whether God's prior knowledge (omniscience) is in a causal relation to the outcome (omnipotence). This is not, I think, directly addressed in BGE (although I may be wrong -- I'm still re-reading it after a lapse of some years), but it may be implied his objections to the doctrine of eternal damnation in a number of places.

(Aside from what it implies about the character of Christian saints who taught that doctrine, since an objection based on pure humanitarianism is, officially, not on Nietzsche's agenda -- but there may just be an inconsistency here.)

There is also the non-religious psychological issue (and Nietzsche considered himself a psychologist), of whether our responses to stimuli are actually under our conscious control, as we are prone to believe, or if this is an illusion, and we are actually acting or feeling as we do as an automatic response to human nature in general, and all our prior experiences in particular. Conscious decisions are then a mere by-product, not a cause, of our actions.

Alongside the theological and psychological problems, there is also the issue of materialistic determination, in which everything is part of a chain of causes and effects, and can't be extracted from the whole. Treated as a comprehensive "theory of everything," this removes the need for consciousness, assumed in the psychological side of the question, and includes non-humans, and even inanimate objects. So we are no different from insects, or from plants growing in response to sunlight and water, or, for that matter, from planets staying in their orbits.

Nietzsche *sometimes* seems to reject some this, since it creates problems for his doctrine of self-overcoming, which would be reduced to a mere effect, and not a successful personal effort, and so to be celebrated. But sometimes it does fit with his rather low view of human behavior in general.

And, after some early enthusiasm, he had problems with scientific materialism in general, very much including the billiard-ball atomism and theoretical complete predictability of the nineteenth-century -- I have no idea how he would have reacted to the built-in impossibility of such predictions in quantum physics.

Finally (I think) there is his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence, which doesn't appear directly in BGE, but is proclaimed, and celebrated, in "Zarathustra," and again in later works. This seems to imply that there is only a finite number of possible events, and, in a temporally infinite universe, they are repeated endlessly, and in the same sequence. This is materialist determinism extended to the ultimate limit, but I am not sure if he ever confronted this.

Nietzsche seems to have arrived at this rather odd doctrine in what he considered a moment of insight, rather than by carefully working through its implications, and it jumps from the personal to the cosmological without evident steps between them.

Christopher wrote: ""What is religious" is a compromise translation of "Das religioese Wesen," which Zimmern translates as "the Religious Mood."- although "Wesen" implies a state of being, not a state of mind."

"Wesen" is one of those words that is almost chamelion-like. It can mean 'being' as a person, animal, or creature, but 'mood,' 'character,' or 'temperament' work also depending on the context.

Kerstin wrote: "he never really explains what it is that set him off...."

Nietzsche is not without grounds for his attacks. First of all, religions are dogmatic so Nietzsche is going to feel a little too restricted to begin with. In 55 Nietzsche does say,

There is a large ladder of religious atrocities, with many rungs

He then lists his big three, human sacrifice, the neurotic and epilepsy-like sacrifice of human nature to religious asceticism, and that last sacrifice that is still a little puzzling to me but seems to be a mix of sacrificing all earthly aspirations to the afterlife and sacrificing god himself for religious-like belief in other things, like science. He also refers to religious belief, not just a one time suicide of reason, but a constant one. Add those to the atrocities Christian's praise as right and just simply for their being included religious texts. In 46 he acknowledges the modern person's detachment and audacious reversal of the cruelty that is the foundation of the Christian religion as the absurdissimum.

As far as the concept of "the herd" goes, I have to agree with N and add the commonly applied metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep always struck me as far too purposefully disparaging as well as unfair to sheep.

I suppose there are both positive and negative aspects of being in a herd. However, just as the costs of membership to other religions or herds are prohibitive for a person already invested in one religion or herd, there are others for whom the associated costs of membership to all religions or herds are extortionate.

We should also acknowledge a long history of dubious proxy shepherds vying for control of the flock in-absentia. To that Nietzsche says in 53:

"The father" in God has been fundamentally disproved, as well as "the judge," "the rewarder." Together with his "free will." He is not listening-and if he were to hear, he wouldn't know how to help anyway. the worst thing is this: he appears incapable of communicating clearly.

I suspect it goes much deeper for Nietzsche, but that alone seems reason enough to justify his sentiment on the matter.

David wrote: ""The father" in God has been fundamentally disproved, as well as "the judge," "the rewarder." Together with his "free will." He is not listening-and if he were to hear, he wouldn't know how to help anyway. the worst thing is this: he appears incapable of communicating clearly.
I suspect it goes much deeper for Nietzsche, but that alone seems reason enough to justify his sentiment on the matter. ..."

David, I think it is clear from the context that N. is not stating his own thoughts here, but is reporting conversations with other people explaining why they are not religious.

Also, I don't know where you get the word "atrocities"
This is the original:

Es giebt eine grosse Leiter der religiösen Grausamkeit, mit vielen Sprossen; aber drei davon sind die wichtigsten.

55. There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rounds; but three of these are the most important. Once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the best—to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their "nature"; THIS festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and "anti-natural" fanatics. Finally, what still remained to be sacrificed? Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness—this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we all know something thereof already.

He is talking about "cruelty" and not "atrocity," specifically because in the era of human sacrifice, human sacrifice was NOT atrocious, but, on the contrary, "what the gods willed."

Christopher wrote: "David wrote: ". . .I think it is clear from the context that N. is not stating his own thoughts here, but is reporting conversations with other people explaining why they are not religious."

OK thanks for that correction. Do we know if he has an opinion on those thoughts? He did included them to make another point and they are still grounds for giving up theism. But, you are correct; they may not be his grounds?

Also, your comments on atrocity seem to be correct although there seems room for it:

Other ways to say grausamkeit
NOUN
cruelty Grausamkeit, Tierquälerei
ferocity Wildheit, Grausamkeit, Heftigkeit
atrocity Gräueltat, Grausamkeit

Either way, human sacrifice sounds atrociously cruel to me whoever wills it and I do not think Nietzche included that fact as a nicety.
ETA: Translation by Ian Johnston

David wrote: " First of all, religions are dogmatic so Nietzsche is going to feel a little too restricted to begin with."

True.
But what is dogma? It is a philosophical tenet one believes true. In this sense no matter if you follow a religion or are secularist, you follow the philosophical tenets that you consider are true, so secularism and all its permutations is dogmatic too.

David wrote: "In 46 he acknowledges the modern person's detachment and audacious reversal of the cruelty that is the foundation of the Christian religion as the absurdissimum."

If we could magically turn back time and eradicate every trace of Christendom, would the world look better?

We would have:
no hospitals, infirmaries, or soup kitchens
no universities or public schools
no freedom of the individual
no equality of the sexes
no accounting
no abolition of slavery (even though it reared it's ugly head repeatedly)
no musical notation
no genetics
no geology
no Big Bang
no human rights
no gothic or baroque architecture
no Michaelangelo
no Dante
no preservation of Greco-Roman classics

I am sure there are more.

To this day, no other institution on earth feeds, clothes, shoes, heals and educates more people around the globe than the Church.

In the interest of fairness, these things need to be mentioned too.

I just noticed this remark on the saint back in §30:

What serves the higher type of man as food or refreshment must to a very different and inferior type be almost poison. The virtues of the common man would perhaps indicate vice and weakness in a philosopher; it may be possible that if a lofty type of man degenerated and perished, he would only thus acquire qualities on whose account it would prove necessary in the lower world into which he had sunk henceforth to venerate him as a saint. There are books which possess an opposite value for soul and health depending on whether the lower soul, the lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful avails itself of them: in the former case they are dangerous, disintegrative books, which produces dissolution, in the latter they are herald calls challenging the most courageous to their courage.

It seems, when an exceptional man, steeped in the “esoterics�� had sunk into the “lower world,�� the world will then venerate him as a saint. The pieces seem to fit (Nietzsche’s picture): what is food for a “higher�� man is poison for the lower man. To the “exoterics�� looking up from below, a sunken eso appears to be a bad man who suddenly took a U turn and become ... not poisonous, not evil any more. He had turned away from what is proper for him (but poisonous to the herd.)

I wonder if Pascal is one of them. Some notes on Pascal:

- Pascal held that even if the Christian faith was not capable of proof, it is the fearful possibility that it is in fact true that should compel us to prudently become a Christian.

- In Aphorisms, Opinions and Maxims §408 Nietzsche mentions Pascal as one of several figures from whom he will accept judgment,

- in EH Why I am so Clever Nietzsche calls Pascal “the most instructive victim of Christianity,��

In order to be a good Christian, Pascal suppressed his own talents that would have challenged the Christian dogma/ faith. Hence, Christianity the divine hammer, Pascal the sublime miscarriage.

Kerstin wrote: "But what is dogma? It is a philosophical tenet one believes true. In this sense no matter if you follow a religion or are secularist, you follow the philosophical tenets that you consider are true, so secularism and all its permutations is dogmatic too.

So far the book has been thoroughly negative, but in section 56 he hints at what positive notion might replace the unoriginal dogma that informs the morality he detests so much.

Whoever has endeavored with some enigmatic longing, as I have, to think pessimism through to its depths and to liberate it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and simplicity... may just thereby have opened his eyes to the opposite idea: the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive, and world-affirming human being who has not only learned to get along with whatever was and is, but wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity...

So far though he hasn't shown us what this "whatever was and is" is. It looks to me like he has done a great job of laying waste to dogma, but he has replaced it with a question mark. As my Dad taught me a long time ago, it's a lot easier to take a machine apart than it is to put it back together in working order. I'm looking forward to seeing how Nietzsche puts human society back in order (sans dogma, of course.)

Do we really believe that "[t]he virtues of the common man . . . indicate vice and weakness in a philosopher"? Is it not rather that a philosopher needs the virtues of a common man, plus other intellectual virtues?