Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil: Religious belief

The ascetic ideal

• christian faith has always meant sacrifice - freedom, pride, self-mutilation
• Ns account of religious belief = closely linked to slave morality + revolt
• prior to revolt pagan gods were based on qualities the aristocratic class saw and valued in themselves
• with revolt god became reinterpreted as oposite of humans animal nature
• goodness came from transcendent world + things in natural world especially out bodies and instinctual desires became sinful
• christianity required sacrifice of animal instincts and wills - guilty in our nature
• ascetic ideal denies value of our animal life looking for redemption in transcendent world
• rejects bodily desires and praises life of spirit - complicates spirit setting our wills against themselves
• what we naturally want and opposed to this the ideal of transcenging what we want
• ascetic ideal spurs people on to become better & more developed spiritually
• guilt and failure drives ever greater attempts at making amends for who one is -> cultural achievements and spiritual depth
• original force and demands of christianity have faded
• objection - God becoming human is seen as a validation of human nature as a good gift from god
• N - how much christian teaching has celebrated the body in contrast which hasnt
• historically most religions have incorperated an ideal of spiritual life that transcends and denigrates the body

The will to power in religion

• ascetic ideal is paradoxical - opposes life and the will itself but all values are an expression of the will to power
• spread of ascetic ideal originates in the slave revolt which began with the jewish prophets and continued with christianity
• priests and saints were the first to have the ascetic ideal
• priests dont have direct expressive will to power like the aristocrats therefore they resent their power and respect theyve gained
• cant express this directly so teach that aristocratic values are evil and praise a life of poverty and self-denial
• develop the idea of god to support this revaluation
• aristocrats were amazed by phenomenon of the saint respecting the self-discipline involved in self-denial
• made the mistake of thinking that the denial required by the ascetic ideal could not be for nothing so they became suceptible to the saints values
• common people suffer physically and mentally through the ressentiment they feel towards the aristocrats
• worse is the thought that their suffering…