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Jarryd Martin ©

Discuss the account of "the origin of religious cults" in HatH§111, and relate this to D§62, D§91 and GS§319. How might these considerations be related to such aphorisms as HatH IIb §170, D §175 & §186, GS §331 & §329 ?

“‘What is man for, actually?’ – was a question without an answer;
there was no will for man and earth; behind every great
human destiny sounded the even louder refrain ‘in vain!’”

On the Genealogy of Morality, Second Essay,
‘Guilt, Bad Conscience and related matters’ §28

I Introduction - Man’s Humility

The focus of this essay is a characteristic that Nietzsche identifies in Man throughout history: humility. More specifically, a humility regarding one’s own ability to be a ‘first cause’. Something with the ability to be a ‘first cause’ has an independent will: it can create; it can oppose and cause change; it can determine the value of something without prior direction from above; it can independently determine the purpose of its own existence. Historically, human beings have refused to consider themselves capable of being first causes, and so they have sought an external cause. An external cause gives Man a teleological meaning: an absolute ideal to strive for that imbues his actions with a sense of purpose.

In this essay I will discuss how systems of religious cult and commercial culture are both borne of Man’s desire for an external cause. They are both attempts to satisfy our desire for absolute meaning by aspiring to the ascetic ideal. It is my intention to elucidate the logic of sacrifice, and why it gives us such a sense of extrinsic purpose. Finally I will discuss Nietzsche’s denunciation of humility and sacrifice as products of laziness and weakness. In light of this, I will conclude that both the religious life and the commercial life lack real meaning. Greatness requires the renunciation of humility, and the strength to live for oneself.

II The Humility of Religious Man – Human all too Human §111

Early religious Man is exemplary of this humility. The dominant belief is that individuals have no power to directly cause or affect the external world (nature). To echo Nietzsche’s example, rowing does not force the ship to move: rowing is a magical ceremony which compels a supernatural being to move the ship. Man can only exert his will vicariously: by regulating the actions of powerful supernatural beings. He endeavours to do so in two ways. Firstly, he exercises “mild constraint” by enduring submission and sacrifice to gain the affection of the “more powerful tribe” – in that “love binds” the will of the supernatural. Secondly, man exercises “violent constraint” through sorcery – usually by taking something corporeal that belongs or pertains to the more powerful being.¹

The indirectness of this execution of the Religious Man’s will displays extreme humility. Individuals do not even believe that they can affect their physical surroundings without reference to an external power. Even sorcery – which seems quite a direct way to exercise power over nature² – requires one to act on something corporeal in order to influence a spirit, which will then in turn affect nature. The irony of this process is that Man must really have some direct power over the corporeal (nature) in the first place, for otherwise he could not exercise power over the corresponding spirit. The belief suffers from circularity: Man can only affect nature by affecting the supernatural, but can only affect the supernatural by affecting nature…etc. Such is the extent of Man’s humility that he invents a supernatural and paradoxical middleman to explain any effect his actions have on nature.

III Revelation and the Humility of Religious Man – Daybreak §62(134)

Nietzsche expands on the humility of religious people in “On the Origins of Religion”. He describes the “pessimistic doubt”³ that fills the mind of a person who acquires a new idea. As in HatH §111, Man refuses to think of himself as capable of being an initial cause. Just as Man cannot cause a boat to move without a supernatural middleman, he cannot acquire a “great hypothesis” independently. Consequently the humble religious person postulates God as the cause of his idea, “and again [as] the cause of the cause”. He then regards his idea as God’s revelation.

IV Humility and a Meaningful Life

But why do we have this tendency to think there must be an external being that is the cause of our ideas and of natural events? Why can’t we see ourselves as capable of being a first cause? Nietzsche addresses these questions in Part II of “On the Genealogy of Morality”. Pre-religious Man (“animal man”) “suffered from the problem of what he meant”, and existed for “no purpose”.⁴ The question, “what is Man for?”⁵ could not be answered without recourse to something external to Man. To look for the answer within Man was to fall into infinite regress – like a child asking “why?” again and again. I have condensed the (perhaps unconscious) logic that underpins humility like so:

‘Surely I myself couldn’t be the reason for, or the purpose of my own existence! If I am the sole arbiter of my purpose, I could deem any goal worthwhile - and what real meaning could that determination have?’

In short: Humility is tied to a teleological conception of meaning – i.e. a meaningful life is one that achieves a goal. Moreover, that goal must be dictated by something external to the individual. Without an external purpose an individual is in a state of “boredom and torpor” as a result of “great spiritual indolence”.⁶

V The Logic of Sacrifice

The origin of religious cult is when Man finds this missing extrinsic purpose in the ‘ascetic ideal’. The logic is as follows: living for one’s internal self was meaningless, so ‘waging war’ on ‘the enemy within’ that self is the path to a meaningful life.⁷ Moreover, ‘defiance of oneself’⁸ (i.e. opposing your internal purposes) gives one the feeling that one must be serving some external purpose. The ascetic feels as if he is instincts in ‘subordination to the will of another, or to a comprehensive law and ritual’.⁹ In doing so he is released from his state of torpor; sacrifice keeps one ‘occupied’ and ‘makes life endurable and enjoyable’.¹⁰

The phenomenon of revelation is exemplary of this logic. The sacrifice required in revelation is the debasement of the individual to the status of an unthinking ‘organon’. The individual is willing to make that sacrifice because it gives the idea an extrinsic meaning it did not have initially.¹¹ When the idea was a product of the person’s mind (i.e. when it was purely internal) it was uncertain, subjective, uncaused: it was teleologically meaningless. One cannot act confidently toward a purpose based on such an idea. Revelation allows us to regard the idea as something external. The hypothetical nature of the idea is abolished; it is removed from criticism and doubt; in short, it becomes holy. We can act on our ideas confidently, without feelings of responsibility or remorse, because they were handed down to us from above. Even though we are sacrificing our very ability to have great ideas, we feel that “with God’s idea we will succeed”; i.e. we will know and achieve our teleological purpose.¹² Furthermore, we have taken part in the creation of something that exists externally to us. It gives revelation a sense of purpose akin to ‘paternal pride’.¹³ In short: revelation is a process by which we debase ourselves in order to access external meaning.

VI Bargaining with God – Religious Cult Creates and Determines Our Will

Revelation is just one aspect of religious cult in which Man employs sacrifice to access a sense of extrinsic meaning. Man also engages in a kind of ‘bargaining’ with the supernatural in order to imbue his actions with meaning. Recall my discussion in Section B of the ways in which Man attempts to regulate and constrain nature. Man undertakes to do an action in order to gain God’s affection and/or force God do something in return (e.g. cause Spring to come early this year). In order to have any ‘power’ over nature, we give up power in the sense that we are forced to do something for it. We make a sacrifice in that our freedom becomes constrained: we are forced to act in a certain way. This sacrifice can be the giving of an offering, the execution of a spell or even literal human sacrifice.

Man eventually tries to “order and systematise” religious ceremonies and rituals in order to ‘guarantee’ “the whole course of nature”. The various relationships of mutual constraint between God and Man then make up a kind of interlocking lattice that fixes and determines the actions of the parties involved. This is the meaning of religious cult, says Nietzsche: to “impress upon [nature] a regularity and rule of law which it does not at first possess”.¹⁴ It is important to perceive the subtleties of this statement. Religion does not allow Man to gain power, it allows him to limit greater powers. Similarly, we do not become freer; we only “fetter” or regulate the domain of freedom (nature)¹⁵. We do not command nature, we merely enter into a bargain of mutual regulation. Entering into this systematised bargain involves sacrifice, but it is a meaningful sacrifice for an external being.

But it is not what you get in return from that being that is valuable – the bargain itself is what is valuable. If we accept there is no God, cult members cannot get any real returns for their sacrifice (i.e. spring won’t come early simply because you perform a ritual). Therefore, the persistence of religious cult can only be explained if Man benefits from the creation of the system of cult in itself. It is not what you get out of the religious bargain that matters, it is the fact that you are given an extrinsic reason to act in a certain way. The system gives you goals and obligations – you are no longer a “leaf in the breeze”!¹⁶ Religious cult does not allow Man to exert power over nature (or God) for a pre-existing purpose; the system of the cult creates Man’s purpose. Man is “not a will-less servant in his relationship to nature”, but his servitude is the precondition of the very existence of his will.¹⁷

While this bargain entails extreme self-sacrifice and increased suffering for Man, this suffering has a meaning, and “any meaning at all is better than no meaning at all”.¹⁸ Even though it is a nihilistic will; a “will to nothingness” that is anti-life – to ‘not will’ feels worse.¹⁹

VII Sacrificing God for the Ideal of Goodness

Daybreak 91 further develops nature of this ‘bargain’. Nietzsche describes religions as exhibiting traces of the fact that they owe their origins to an ‘immature intellectuality’ in man. When the first arise, religious cults know nothing of a ‘duty of God to be truthful and…clear…in his communications’. Rather, they attempt to force God to be good through the religious bargain.

However, after some time, there is a tendency to idealise God as an example of supreme goodness. Initially, the religious bargain makes sacrifice feel like a meaningful and therefore ‘good’ course of action. The religious person also believes that God hands down these demands of sacrifice. It is only natural then that Man should after some time come to see God (or come to create God) as an ideal of sacrifice and goodness. The Christian God does not merely know what is good, ‘God is good’; God is the supreme ideal of goodness (and Christ is an ideal of sacrifice even in name). It is easy to see how Man benefits from creating these holy ideals. The teleological meaning of the religious life becomes even clearer: your purpose is not merely to endure certain self-sacrifices; it is to strive to emulate an external being that is sacrifice incarnate. God is literally your goal.

However, Nietzsche points out the difficulty of believing in such a ‘good’ God. A god cannot be supremely good if he remains hidden and is not truthful and clear in his communications with Man.²⁰ God as an ideal is therefore inconsistent with our experience of him. Ironically, religious cult is impressing upon God “a regularity and rule of law which it does not at first possess”²¹: goodness.

In doing so, religious cult turns inward and sacrifices itself. Nietzsche notes how costly the setting up of every ideal has been; of “how much ‘god’ had to be sacrificed each time”.²² In order to set up God as an ideal of goodness, it seems that we had to sacrifice his real existence. This may be the answer to Nietzsche’s ‘paradoxical mystery’: ‘why Man sacrificed God for nothingness’ in a final act of religious cruelty.²³

VIII Commercial Culture: Our New Religion

However, if Man were to sacrifice God for nothingness, he would be left once again with the problem of meaninglessness. Without an external ideal to give our actions purpose we would fall again into torpor. It does not seem, however, that individuals have come to accept a life devoid of purpose. Additionally, Nietzsche notes that in his lifetime, in spite of the decline of European theism, the ‘religious instinct’ was growing vigorously.²⁴ I contend that this instinct found its contemporary expression in commercial culture. Nowadays, as in Nietzsche’s time, we posit the commercial ideal of industriousness as our external goal – it is the purpose toward which we sacrifice our instincts. Commercial culture is the new system that creates and determines our will.

This may seem odd in light of Nietzsche’s description of modern man as ‘polyphonic in subjectivity’.²⁵ Surely the will of modern Man is not still “determined in the strongest way by law and tradition”²⁶ like the religious Man of the past? If we recall, however, it was pre-religious Man’s very subjectivity that produced the original feeling of meaninglessness!

‘How’, he asked, ‘can I, in all my subjectivity, determine the purpose of my own life? Without something to guide me, I could subjectively decide that any purpose was worthwhile – and what meaning could such a determination have?’

Modern individuals only differ in that they are more aware of their subjectivity – and this only makes them crave the objective more intensely. We still long, “with Goethe”, to imbibe the uniformity of nature into ourselves.²⁷ Upon sacrificing God, we are not content to drift in the breeze.²⁸ We still feel as if we need some external system; some absolute, ‘holy’ ideal to give teleological meaning to our lives.

Commercial culture satisfies this need – it is the external system that has become “the soul of modern society”.²⁹ Industriousness is an ideal that has become “imprinted in every will and faculty” of the modern individual.³⁰ Commerce is not something we choose to participate in: it has become the only meaningful way to participate in life. Like a religious cult, the lattice of commercial relationships has been elevated above the individuals that participate in it, and it completely determines the will of consumers and producers alike. Firstly, when making any judgement at all, an individual must first have reference to the objective commercial principle of “supply and demand”.³¹ You ask “Who and how many will consume this?”, and the answer “determines the value of a thing in [your] own eyes”.³² In doing so, you feel as if you are discovering the real worth of a thing, rather than arbitrarily assigning it a value. In other words, your judgements are given meaning by the external ideal of industriousness. Secondly, industriousness and commerce involve constantly producing external things to be used by external beings. You experience the same sense of paternal pride as the religious man does when he regards his ideas as God’s revelations. You may be an organon, but at least you are part of an industrious, externally productive system. Furthermore, you experience literal paternal (or maternal) pride when you come to have children – i.e. produce a human being that exists externally to you and will continue to be industriousness even after your death. In short, your life is entirely determined by (and devoted to) extrinsic goals. The more industrious you are, the more meaningful your life feels.

IX The Sacrifices of Industriousness

Given that “virtue is doing something quicker”³³ then rest and leisure seem shameful. The “conscience of an industrious age” does not allow time to be spent on contemplation, or on pleasurable and artistic pursuits.³⁴ “More and more, work enlists all good conscience”, and sacrificing your instinctive desires seems more and more virtuous.³⁵ Conversely, the desire for joy is regarded with increasing suspicion.³⁶ In order to appease our guilt we call it “a need to recuperate” – we say that “one owes it to one’s health” to spend time in a restful and leisurely way. To the industrious person, rest is a no more than a lamentable necessity that enables harder work. Contemplation and art are sinful luxuries.

The logic of sacrifice is as prevalent in commercial culture as it is in religious culture. In sacrificing these natural tendencies (to rest, to feel joyful etc.) one is waging war on one’s internal self, on one’s own subjective desires and needs. Again Man makes the leap of logic to the following conclusion: we must be acting for a higher purpose; we must be moving toward an objective, external, absolute goal. This external ideal makes our sacrifice feel meaningful.

X Nietzsche’s Criticism of Industriousness

Nietzsche’s disdain for the industrious ideal is patent. Commercial culture allows work ethic to become an ersatz for a meaningful achievement ethic.³⁷ He condemns those “Good barrow pushers”³⁸ who live only for their business and for others, “with the cloak of duty hung over their inadequacy”.³⁹ Business people sacrifice in order that their children may have the opportunity to become business people who will sacrifice in order that their children may become business people...: an endless chain of lives lived for others. These people are active as “generic creatures”⁴⁰ who serve a purpose in a productive system. However, they are not active as “distinct individual and unique human beings; in this regard they are lazy”.⁴¹

XI The Laziness of Humility

This criticism does not only discredit the industrious ideal. It denounces religious and industrious individuals alike; in fact, it condemns any individual who looks for an extinsic ‘higher purpose’ to give their life meaning. It is a criticism of Man’s very humility. Nietzsche characterises humility (i.e. the belief that you-as-an-individual-could-not-be-a-first-cause) as being borne of laziness. He points out that it is far easier to renounce one’s will than to maintain a consistent personality yourself⁴² – for the latter requires the “higher activity of the individual”.⁴³ Consequently, it is only weakness that prevents you from seeing your life as an end in itself. The fact is, we are just terrified of facing up to this alternative. Terrified of feeling like a “leaf in the breeze”⁴⁴ rather than a cog in an external, useful machine. Terrified of the boredom that comes with independence. Scared of being alone with ourselves and our thoughts; of otium. Loath to realise who we are internally; of embracing our instincts as natural. And most of all, we are terrified to the point of dishonesty of taking responsibility for who we should become.

XII Conclusions – “Be for yourself”⁴⁵

This alternative may be terrifying, and it is certainly a struggle, but Nietzsche maintains that it is not impossible or meaningless. He commands us to have the strength to rise out of humility and be our own ‘first cause’. Greatness is “wanting to be for yourself” – it includes the ability to “stand alone and live by your own fists”.⁴⁶ Do not live, as ‘business people’ and the religious do, as a ‘generic creature’ that perpetuates the status quo.⁴⁷ The ideal of “self-abnegating, humble, selfless humanity was suited to an opposite age”.⁴⁸ It is important not to underestimate the usefulness of having been religious, and of commercial culture, but we must be able to “outgrow” and “see beyond” these systems.⁴⁹ You must renounce the nihilism of sacrifice and respect your natural instincts. If you are to be a “true philosopher” “reach for the future with a creative hand” to shape your own purpose.⁵⁰ The goals you decide will not be absolute or external, but that flexibility will be their strength. The nature of the goal is inconsequential. It is the struggle toward a goal that imbues your life with meaning. Be the originator of your own will, be your own ‘first cause’, and know that behind your destiny sounds the joyous refrain “for me!”