Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900; Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 -- Criticism and interpretation; Philosophy
What is Jewish morality, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of
its innocence; unhappiness polluted with the idea of "sin"; well being
interpreted as a danger, as a "temptation"; physiological indisposition
poisoned by means of the cankerworm of conscience. 157-158
What does a "moral order of the universe" mean? That once and for all
there is such a thing as will of God which determines what man has to
do and what he has to leave undone; that the value of a people or of
an individual is measured according to how much or how little the one
or the other obeys the will of God; that in the destinies of a people
or of an individual, the will of God shows itself dominant, that is to
say it punishes or rewards according to the degree of obedience. In the
place of this miserable falsehood _reality_ says: a parasitical type of
man, who can flourish only at the cost of all the healthy elements of
life, the priest abuses the name of God: he calls that state of affairs
in which the priest determines the value of things "the Kingdom of
God"; he calls the means whereby such a state of affairs is attained or
maintained, "the Will of God"; with cold-blooded cynicism he measures
peoples, ages and individuals according to whether they favour or
oppose the ascendency of the priesthood. 158-159
I fail to see against whom was directed the insurrection of which
rightly or _wrongly_ Jesus is understood to have been the promoter, if
it were not directed against the Jewish church. 162
This saintly anarchist who called the lowest of the low, the outcasts
and "sinners," the Chandala of Judaism, to revolt against the
established order of things (and in language which, if the gospels are
to be trusted, would get one sent to Siberia even to-day)--this man was
a political criminal in so far as political criminals were possible in
a community so absurdly non-political. This brought him to the cross:
the proof of this is the inscription found thereon. He died for _his_
sins--and no matter how often the contrary has been asserted there is
absolutely nothing to show that he died for the sins of others. 162-163
_The instinctive hatred of reality_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which can no longer endure to
be "touched" at all, because every sensation strikes too deep.
_The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hostility, of all
boundaries and distances in feeling,_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which regards all resistance,
all compulsory resistance as insufferable _anguish_(--that is to say,
as harmful, as _deprecated_ by the self-preservative instinct), and
which knows blessedness (happiness) only when it is no longer obliged
to offer resistance to anybody, either evil or detrimental,--love as
the only ultimate possibility of life....
These are the two _physiological realities_ upon which and out of which
the doctrine of salvation has grown. 166
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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