The Ascetic Priest
The clearest single statement of the significance of the ascetic priest in the Third Treatise is probably the following:
The idea we are fighting about here is the valuation of our life on the part of the ascetic priest: he relates our life (together with that to which it belongs: 'nature', 'world', the entire sphere ofbecoming and of transitoriness) to an entirely different kind of existence which it opposes and excludes, unless, perhaps, it were to turn against itself, to negate itself : in this case, the case of an ascetic life, life is held to be a bridge for that other existence. The ascetic treats life as a wrong path that one must finally retrace back to the point where it begins; or as an error that one refutes through deeds.
Nietzsche comments in section 11 of the treatise that we can begin to tackle the question of ascetic ideals seriously once we have the ascetic priest in sight. A complex analysis of the role of this powerful agent in the transformation of values unfolds through sections 11 — 22—something Nietzsche regarded as an important achievement, to judge by his retrospective comment in Ecce Homo that the Third Treatise answers the question
'whence the ascetic ideal, the priests' ideal, derives its tremendous power', and his final overall verdict that 'This book contains the first psychology of the priest' (EH, 'Genealogy of Morals').
Commentators have pointed out that Nietzsche's treatment of the ascetic priest is marked by ambivalences both descriptive and affective. For Henry Staten the ascetic priest is 'the figure who emerges as the real protagonist of Nietzsche's tale, a protagonist who is neither merely hero nor merely villain, neither merely noble nor merely slave'.1 The affective or evaluative (hero-villain) ambivalence towards the priestly figure is persistent but relatively unproblematic. We have seen that Nietzsche consistently laments the loss of vitality and self-affirmation, the waning of healthy, plural instincts that results from valuing selflessness, but is liable at the same time to admire certain successful transformations of values for their creativity, their imposition ofnew forms upon the material ofhumanity, in short their discharge of power and attainment of mastery. In the case of the ascetic priest the element of admiration is at its most intense, because the priest is a threefold embodiment of will to power. He successfully overturns the prevailing tendency to value the simpler warrior-like virtues and creates new conceptions of the good, achieves command over the weak to whom his priestly interpretations minister, and (most impressively) gains mastery over himself. All three aspects are reflected here:
Dominion over ones who suffer is his realm, it is to this that his instinct directs him, in this he has his most characteristic art, his mastery, his kind of happiness. He must be sick himself [...] but he must also be strong, lord over himself more than over others, with his will to power intact, so that he has the confidence and the fear of the sick, so that for them he can be a foothold, resistance, support, compulsion, disciplinarian, tyrant, god. He is to defend them, his herd—against whom? Against the healthy, no doubt, also against envying the healthy; he must by nature oppose and hold in contempt all coarse, tempestuous, unbridled, hard, violent—predatory health and powerfulness.
The ascetic life is characterized by 'an unsatiated instinct and power-will that would like to become lord not over something living but rather over life itself, over its deepest, strongest, most fundamental preconditions'
1 Staten (1990: 47—8). Ridley (1998: 45 — 50, 61) addresses the same ambivalences.
(GM III. 11). In unleashing such powerful counter-forces the priest makes an unparalleled achievement of the kind Nietzsche admires, yet the values created in the process are those of life-denial which Nietzsche decries as a decline into sickness. This ambivalence, far from being a defect in Nietzsche's position, is close to being its central point.2 He refers to the ascetic life as a 'self-contradiction', as 'life against life', an 'incarnate will to contradiction and anti-nature', 'an attempt [...] to use energy to stop up the source of the energy'.3 But such a conflicted phenomenon is eminently possible on his account:
the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life that seeks with every means to hold its ground and is fighting for its existence [...] This ascetic priest, this seeming enemy of life, this negating one—precisely he belongs to the very great conserving and yes-creating forces of life.
In describing the ascetic priest as both noble and slave, however, Nietzsche appears not just ambivalent, but more genuinely inconsistent. In the First Treatise he discusses the priestly class in sections 6 and 7,4 but dwells little on their role, no doubt simplifying matters because his eye is fixed on the slave as psychological type. He portrays the priestly class as aristocratic, talking of the 'priestly-noble manner of valuation' as something that 'can branch off from the knightly-aristocratic and then develop into its opposite' (GM I. 7). Yet a few lines further on Nietzsche describes the priest as the 'most powerless' of enemies, governed by a thirst for revenge and the deepest of hatreds that grows out of his powerlessness—a profile that coincides with that of the oppressed slave and lacks any hint of nobility.5 As Aaron Ridley writes, 'Nietzsche unquestionably finds it difficult to keep the priest in his place—as a noble whose mode of evaluation is the ''opposite'' of the knights' and who is yet no slave.'6 The motivation for thrusting the priest into the slavish mould in the First Treatise may be that
2 Ridley (1998: 61) says, 'It is extremely hard for Nietzsche to maintain a stable attitude to the priest.' On my view he is not trying to maintain a stable attitude, but consistently manifesting an ambivalence that he wishes to thematize. 3 GM III. 11, 12, 13.
4 GM I. 16 also reiterates the description of the Jews as the 'priestly people of ressentiment.
5 Nor is this problem confined to GM I. Ridley points out that in GM III. 15 the priestly psychology is above hatred and 'holds in contempt [...] more readily than it hates', while yet in GM III. 11 the priest is once again ruled by a 'ressentiment without equal'—though this time against life itself rather than a more powerful human adversary. (See Ridley 1998: 45, 49.)
Nietzsche is assimilating the Jewish people to slaves who revolt against their masters. If an entire people is enslaved or oppressed, their characteristic psychology may be reactive and revenge-driven throughout all strata from priestly leaders downwards, so that the whole people, governed by priests and directed unanimously towards revenge against an alien oppressor, can be described both as 'priestly' and as a 'people of ressentiment'. But this contributes nothing to an analysis of the priest's distinctive role and psychological formation.
'Nobility' and 'slavishness' appear to be concepts of greater complexity than Nietzsche's breakneck pace in the First Treatise can easily accommodate. At the outset the nobles are defined by their being de facto powerful in relation to another, subservient class. But Nietzsche is most interested in their psychology: how they regard themselves and others, how they conceive values, how they respect, despise, and find fulfilment. The prototype noble enjoys a status of social power that is naturally accompanied by a noble psychology. But the priestly class, while enjoying noble social status and power externally, diverge psychologically from their 'knightly-aristocratic' colleagues. Nietzsche makes clear in a number of places that even the least reflective of ancient aristocracies employ religion as a means of symbolizing and enhancing their power.7 In the process of interpreting the world-order and explaining to the nobles what is of value in themselves, religion gives to the priests the distinct role of skilled interpreters. Priests can remain psychologically noble to the extent that they define their own worth in active self-affirmation rather than in reactive opposition to an oppressor—hence they are slaves neither socially nor psychologically. But being physically inactive, weak, and non-aggressive, it is natural for them to place value in passivity, meekness, and bodily abstinence. They are no less powerful for that: their strength lies in intellectual inventiveness, in the ability to interpret, conceptualize, mediate, and persuade, and for Nietzsche interpretation is consistently an instance of mastery and control, an instance of will to power.® So by inventing an ambitious conceptual scheme in which their own characteristics are explained as the most valuable, while the spontaneous natural instincts, robust action, and bodily existence become an aberration from states of true being and value, they attain their own spiritualized form of mastery. It
is because these valued characteristics are shared by the necessarily passive slaves that Nietzsche can, without genuine contradiction, portray the priest as a noble self-affirmer whose value system is slavish and denying of the natural self.
In the Third Treatise there is a parallel and similarly non-contradictory description, partially quoted above, of the ascetic priest as a physician who shares the sickness ofhis patients, while being strong and lord over himself.9 The active work of the priest presupposes a condition for which the weak require a remedy. This condition consists in their suffering itself, the inability to ward off suffering, and a resultant feeling of listlessness (Unlustgefuhl), also called the listlessness of depression (Depressions-UnlustIn an intricate and centrifugal discussion, peppered with historical references, Nietzsche tells how the priest administers palliative care by instigating new feelings in the weak and by teaching them to reinterpret their existing inescapable feelings. The discussion is prefaced by a headline statement:
If one wanted to sum up the value of the priestly mode of existence in the shortest formula one would have to say straight away: the priest changes the direction of ressentiment. For every sufferer instinctively seeks a cause for his suffering [...] 'I am suffering: for this someone must be to blame'—thus every diseased sheep thinks. But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him: 'That's right, my sheep! someone must be to blame for it: but you yourself are this someone, you alone are to blame for it—you alone are to blame for yourself!'... This is bold enough, false enough: but one thing at least has been achieved by it, in this way, as noted, the direction of the ressentiment has been—changed.
Nietzsche divides the means used to combat listlessness—all of which merely alleviate symptoms, leaving the causes of suffering and depression untouched—into two kinds: the 'innocent' and the 'guilty'. The 'innocent' means are as follows: (1) 'Hypnotization' or 'general muffling of the feeling oflife' through avoidance of'whatever stirs up affect'—an abstention from
9 In GM III. 15. Nietzsche there says of the priest, 'He must be sick himself, he must be related to the sick and short-changed from the ground up in order to understand them'. Ridley (1998: 50) takes the phrase 'be related to the sick' as Nietzsche's retraction of'be sick'—'and in this retraction the difference that makes all the difference is acknowledged .... The priest's relation to the ''sick''... is not one of identity.' I have sought to argue rather that the priest's being genuinely sick is not in contradiction with his achieving self-mastery and being in a sense genuinely strong.
all willing and emotional excitement that anaesthetizes and suppresses the susceptibility to pain and amounts to another form of'un-selfing' (GM III. 17, 18, 19). (2) Diversion through constant 'mechanical activity' or work, so that consciousness has no room left over to be filled with suffering (GM III. 18). (3) 'Prescription of a small joy that is easily accessible and can be made a regular practice', the sole example of which mentioned is the pleasure of giving joy to others, which induces towards them a measure of felt superiority, so that 'by prescribing ''love of one's neighbour'' the ascetic priest is basically prescribing an arousal of the strongest, most life-affirming drive [...]—the will to power' (GM III. 18). (4) Herd formation, in which 'the individual's vexation with himself is drowned out by his pleasure in the prospering of the community' (GM III. 19). 'Out of a longing to shake off the dull listlessness and the feeling of weakness, all the sick, the diseased strive instinctively for a herd organization: the priest intuits this instinct and fosters it' (GM III. 18). These 'innocent' means, abstinence, devotion to work, love of one's neighbour, loyal membership of the flock—all recognizable as practices that might be advocated by priests—function by masking, deadening, or distracting from the underlying suffering of depression that afflicts the weak and sickly.
But Nietzsche finds more interesting the so-called 'guilty' means (GM III. 19) that work by provoking an excess of emotion, an excess that frees the human being from everything that is small and small-minded in listlessness, dullness, being out of sorts [...] Basically all great affects have the capacity to do so, assuming that they discharge themselves suddenly: anger, fear, lust, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty; and indeed the ascetic priest has unhesitatingly taken into his service the whole pack of wild dogs in man and unleashed first this one, then that one, always for the same purpose, to waken man out of slow sadness, to put to flight, at least for a time, his dull pain, his lingering misery, always under a religious interpretation and 'justification'.
For all the length ofthe list here, the single outstanding emotion that serves this liberating function is the feeling ofguilt. Nietzsche now interweaves his account ofthe ascetic priest with that ofguilt from the Second Treatise, and resumes the heightened tone of free-flowing outrage that was so expressive in the earlier 'guilt before God' passage. Here is an extract from GM III. 20:
everywhere that wanting-to-misunderstand-suffering made into life's meaning, the reinterpretation of suffering into feelings of guilt, fear, and punishment; everywhere the whip, the hair-shirt, the starving body, contrition; everywhere the sinner breaking himself on the cruel wheels of a restless, diseased—lascivious conscience; everywhere mute torment, extreme fear, the agony ofa tortured heart, the cramps of an unknown happiness, the cry for 'redemption'. [...] This old great magician in the battle with listlessness, the ascetic priest—he had obviously been victorious, his kingdom had come: people no longer protested against pain, they thirsted after pain; 'more pain! more pain!' thus cried the longing of his disciples and initiates for centuries.
We learned in the Second Treatise that human beings came to interpret their sufferings as punishment, and invented an entire world-order of 'higher values' in order that suffering might be comprehended as something perpetually deserved. Now we see how that same transformative process requires a particular kind ofagent, someone who intimately grasps the value of self-denial before absolute values that are 'not of this world'," but who, from a position of social dominance, can claim authority for the vision of the world that makes suffering deserved, and can prescribe the pain of guilt feelings as an alleviation of the dull sense of pointlessness felt by suffering humanity.
The priest empowers the weak by enabling them to find the highest truth and the highest value in their very sufferings, and expresses his own power in effecting such a highly charged transformation. What then is wrong with all this? Simply that the priest's 'cure' for depression makes the sick sicker. Nietzsche calls the ascetic ideal the 'true doom in the history of European health', ahead of alcohol poisoning and syphilis (GM III. 21). Under the guise of 'improving' humanity, the ascetic ideal has, according to him, succeeded in weakening us into a neurotic self-destructiveness and physiological oversensitivity.
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