Intestinal Torment - Religious Ambivalence in the German Soul - From Luther to Hitler (Part 3)
The deadly global reckoning predicted by Nietzsche
“The time has come when we have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the center of gravity by virtue of which we lived; we are lost for a while. Abruptly we plunge into the opposite valuations, with all the energy that such an extreme overvaluation of man has generated in man.”
-Nietzsche, Will To Power
Opposite valuations?
Extreme overvaluation of man?
What was it exactly that Nietzsche (a German) had in mind when he was writing this in the fall of 1887? What was it that he was able to see that others couldn’t? For one cannot deny how remarkable it is that he was basically able to predict the rise of the world wars decades before they happened.
For Nietzsche, Christianity was so much more than just a “religion” that someone “believes in”. Contrary to the simplistic and thought-stopping categories that dominate in our day, no one in ancient times reduced their “religio” to just “what they believed”. And Nietzsche could also see deeper into history and into man to see clearly that “religion” was also about (among other things, many of them very important) the question of values.
And regardless of how he himself disagreed with the values of Christianity personally, he could not deny it’s predominance and power, and what he called “the dominion of values” of Christianity that the whole world seemed to still (regrettably, to Nietzsche) live under—that is, still in Christendom.
Contrary to many modern versions of Christianity (particularly modern evangelicalism and the like) which tend to “universalize” their claims (that is, for example, claiming that the whole world must be saved through salvation through one faith, as the “Catholic church” had done prior), Nietzsche looked at “religion” as a very different thing. For him, it wasn’t about bringing the whole world to the “truth” for some ideal future (for example, as Christ taught people to pray: “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, etc).
No, for Nietzsche, religion was about the myriad of different values that people and peoples had throughout the world. One’s “religion” and connection to the gods (“religio”) was about a celebration and reverence of the values that distinguished you as a people. It was about who you are and where you come from, and how you (and your anscestors in particular) saw the world (and your own place in it).
This is why he wrote the section “A Thousand and One Goals” in his book, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, which you can listen to below:
Contary to most of his German countrymen, Nietzsche had a lot of respect for the Jewish people and particularly their Torah past (of which you can read more about in my series here), and even though he also had many criticisms of them, he generally respected them also as a great people with their own set of ancient values (however they may have conflicted with his own personal values on various points).
Maybe somewhat surprisingly for many, Nietzsche actually really respected “religion” generally and it’s place in society as something that was a guide (and self-celebration) for peoples. And however much he may have regretted Christianity specifically (it’s values particularly), he was very concerned for a future without “religio”, and warned about disasters to come after the so-called “death of God”… ie, when people no longer take “religio” seriously:
However problematic Nietzsche may have thought Christianity was, contrary to the naive secularists who have dominated the west in our time for a while, he did not AT ALL imagine an immediate utopia for the world if we could just rid ourselves of so-called “superstition”. For him, a global darkness was imminent because of the tendency to do exactly that:
"Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. "The Madman", Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Very interestingly, Nietzsche himself spent the last decade of his life in a state of madness. And so one could definitely argue that Nietzsche himself was the very “madman” warning the world of what was to come.
And indeed, a global rush to what he predicted would be “grand politics” after the “death of God” was in fact what we all witnessed come to pass.
And I think that this state of upheaval… of not knowing who you are (ie: “Is there any up or down?”) really succintly sums up the state of most people after the advent of “science” and the loss of religious faith that seemed to accompany it at the time, before the world wars. For indeed, regardless of what the particular religion was, there’s no doubt that faith was a sort of “north star” that gave us a sense of who we are and where we come from. And more than this, religion passed on profound wisdom (however complete or incomplete) about ourselves and our world and the experiences of our anscestors.
But as terrible as this was—this loss of the faith that used to guide us, and in many ways, protect us—Nietzsche also saw that it was inevitable, and that the only way out, tragically, was through.
Why?
Because as he also said in the opening quote above:
“The time has come when we have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the center of gravity by virtue of which we lived; we are lost for a while.”
And so then, he described what the whole world would eventually do:
“Abruptly we plunge into the opposite valuations, with all the energy that such an extreme overvaluation of man has generated in man.”
For Nietzsche, the only way out was through.
Does “human rights” (Christianity) over-value humans?
But what of this “plunge into opposite valuations” and “extreme overvaluation of man” that he mentioned in the quote at the start of this article?
As I have written about, modern people take for granted the idea that all humans everywhere have something called “human rights”, and that these rights need to be protected. And for the founders of the United States of America, they claim this as the whole reason that “governments are instituted among men” to begin with. And even though these very governments they created would eventually end up becoming the greatest danger to man (Nietzsche predicted this), the idea at least at the beginning, was to protect these “rights”.
For the founders of America, the idea that “all men are created equal” was something that they held to be “self-evident”.
But for Nietzsche, this idea was in reality thoroughly Christian (and Jewish—born in the idea of being created in the “image of God” from the book of Genesis—an idea unique to Genesis and not found in any other ancient creation story). For Nietzsche, he would have seen the founders of the US acting out from “under the domain of Christian values”, without being aware of that fact. But Nietzsche also predicted a time when humans would finally become conscious of this crisis.
Contrary to what others like Jordan Peterson have tried to claim, for Nietzsche, there was no basis in science or anything else at all to support this idea. It’s main support was obviously the Abrahamic religions that appealed to their own Creation story. And if you were to get rid of this story, according to Nietzsche, you would undercut the idea of human rights generally, and after establishing a society based on these “rights” for so long, you could create chaos through society.
But as his quote indicates, it wasn’t just because of a loss of faith that chaos would then arise, but rather also because, through Christianity, we had placed such a high value of individual humans to begin with FOR SO LONG (thousands of years)
It wasn’t just that humans lost their faith, but that they had lost a PARTICULAR TYPE OF FAITH that for too long had placed an extreme value on every human that has ever lived (which was demonstrated in things like Christianity’s teaching that humans live forever after death, in heaven or hell in reward or punishment, implying the eternal existence of the individual).
For Nietzsche, this wasn’t just abstract theology. It had profound effects on society in general. It had the secondary effect of creating a society where every single person was extremely important, and thus eventually manifested (after a couple thousand years) in the declaration of the founders of the US that all humans had “rights” that were worth instituting an over-arching government that existed to protect those rights.
But in Nietzsche’s eyes, this was an extreme over-valuation.
But was it because Nietzsche himself was some sort of a barbarian that wanted a society where it was nothing but “might equals right” and where the strong just ruthlessly trampled over the weak according to their pleasure?
No.
Speaking as a psychologist (and historian?), he was concerned about what I would call the “pendulum effect”.
In essence, people would become weary of seeing the weak and the sick constantly catered to and given a higher value than just normal people. And thus, in a society where “helping” was valorized/valued for so long over and above being a warrior, a tendency would eventually rise in certain people where, in an attempt to throw off this seemingly suffocating value system, in esaxperation they would then “pendulum swing” to the other direction. They would tend to swing from “compassion” and “helping”, to dominating and destroying. And in some extreme cases, liquidation/annihilation.
“Pendulum Swing Effect” worse for some than for others?
And for Nietzsche, this pendulum effect would be worse in certain races of people over others. There were some groups of people who felt less tension in their soul with maintaining Christianity’s values, and then there were others who felt an extreme amount of tension from carrying those values for so long.
And who had it the worst? According to Nietzsche, it was (among a few others) the Germans. And that’s why he said before the world wars that the Germans would do well to:
“…turn their abusive name into a name of honor by becoming the first UN-Christian nation in Europe… [because they certainly had] very pronounced dispositions in that direction.” (The Gay Science)
But why was the German name such an “abusive name” to begin with, according to Nietzsche? It was because that, among all the races/groups of people, the values of Christianity were the most off-putting to the Germans (as opposed to, say, the English).
In more ancient times, the Germans were a warrior race of people living in the dark and mysterious woodlands/forests (a forest people). Although of course they valued and took care of each other and their culture and way of life, the way of things in older “Germania” certainly did not include so-called “human rights” as an absolute right from a single God and bestowed upon individuals, or something like that. In fact, the old god Wotan/Odin was, among many other things, often a practical joker, and was known for being very unpredictable (but also war-like).
Indeed, living in the wild forests of Germania, even the ever-conquering/expanding Roman Empire did not think it worth it to conquer and assimilate them into their “civilized” world. For “Germania” (or however they referred to it) was not built for such civilization, they thought.
For an extreme warrior forest race of people like the Germans, life and death—although important—just wasn’t as big of a deal that Christianity had made it out to be through it’s theological teachings. To old Germania, this idea of an eternal heaven and hell of punishment and reward for individuals was extremely unnatural to them. Life and death at the edge of a sword (or numerous other things) was just the way of things. As mentioned, they were so extreme in their almost animistic forest culture (absorbed in the process of life and death as almost the same thing), that even Rome didn’t attempt to assimilate them.
**Of course I’m being a bit simplistic when I discuss things in this way as an overview, but that’s really unavoidable, as I’m trying to give a more bird’s eye view here.**
And so then, what would happen if you eventually converted to Christianity the many inhabitants of this wild “Germania”? What if you actually made them “fit for civilization”?
For Nietzsche, you would create a severe mis-match. Picking a religion on the spectrum of values opposite to where a particular people-group had previously lived, could create extreme ambivalence and tension in the soul and body of such people. And if the mis-match was great enough, over time, it would eventually manifest in extreme health conditions, and thus would create a profoundly irritated people who were “on edge” and prone to extreme sternness and rigidity in their mannerisms.
And if agitated long enough, severe problems could come… And also, severe scapegoating…
Martin Luther Hated God…? Huh?
One thing that really stood out to me (surprisingly) in the four-part podcast series on Luther from The Rest is History was historian Tom Holland discussing how Luther would often be prone to outbursts where he would go to extremes, even saying that he hated God…
This is remarkable. For all his commitment to God, this monk’s ambivalence (and intestinal issues) was obviously a severe issue. For even the worst of religious and spiritual crises for monks and priests and otherwise, very few would actually come out and say that they “hated God”, even as they attempted to serve Him. For usually, the “fear of the Lord” (or just love and reverence in general) would prevent that.
And when it came to Luther’s resistance (emotional outbursts) towards the devil, it would often come in the forms of very crude cursing, and even, hilariously, flatulence aimed towards the devil. Such was the “earthiness” (as Tom Holland describes it) of Martin Luther. Even as he tried to walk the “right” path (as Christianity had taught his people), the famous “earthiness” of the Germans even then clearly came through.
While the English are famously known for their “stiff upper lip” (which implies also a sort of greater ability to hold in themselves their crudeness/earthiness and be more “reverent”, as required), the Germans tend to stand in contrast to this, with much less civilizational nuance, and particularly, less biblical/theological nuance.
Thus, for the English, even after thousands of years of Christian valuations (which, by the way, movies like Monty Python seem to poke fun at, particularly related to the crusades), the less “earthy” (more refined/“civilized”/stuck-up?) nature of the English seems to come through; that is, that they seem to be less tormented by the values/valuations of Christianity. Indeed, Anglicanism has been the main form of Christianity for the English, and many have argued quite persuasively that it is really the English version of Roman Catholicism.
For regardless of what one thinks about how true the Roman Catholic and Anglican faith is to the Bible (or even to original Christianity), one cannot deny that both the Catholics and the Anglicans have created quite a remarkable Christian tradition, particularly with all their elaborate church architecture, and their very subtle and enduring traditions (like the Mass, or liturgies, or likewise).
But for Nietzsche, the Germans didn’t have this “knack for religion” or this subtlety.
And the reason was because, as mentioned, the Germans couldn’t hold in their minds and souls the extreme values and valuations that Christianity presented and proselytized. And for Nietzsche, they weren’t meant to. They were fundamentally a great people, but they had just been mismatched with a faith and viewpoint that didn’t align with the warrior ethos that they REALLY WERE at bottom.
In other words, in contrast with the Spaniards (who spread Catholicism) and/or the English (who colonized the world for the State and Church of England), the Germans just didn’t really believe—and couldn’t really tolerate—the Christian ethos.
But yet, despite this… remarkably… they had managed to take it on for quite a long time. And not just a long time… but hundreds, even thousands of years.
And for Nietzsche, because of this, he saw disaster coming. But this coming disaster was not unprecedented… there were signs of it in history. Indeed, because of the internal tension in the German soul, the coming disaster would manifest as it had in the past… a particular kind of scapegoating.
Martin Luther - Anti-semite?
After having sympathized with Luther so much as a teen—and particularly his heroic trial at the “Diet of Worms”—it was extremely disappointing to me later in life to discover that Luther actually also had a severe anti-semitism problem. And it was manifested famously in his book, “Concerning the Jews and Their Lies”.
At the time of discovering that he wrote that, it definitely pulled the rug on some of my enthusiasm for Luther (I myself am English/Welsh, etc). But now, after developing this hypothesis of the effects of Christianity in the German soul (in contrast with the English and others), I have much more sympathy once again. But this time, for a different reason.
For although I can of course see the ridiculous ideas in Luther’s book for what they are, I can understand now why, after having been tormented so much, he couldn’t resist scapegoating onto “the Jews” all of his people’s problems. Unable to understand what had happened with his own people (and of course, also feeling the pressure to conform to his parents’ stern demands/expectations, as we discussed in the first part), he was unable to get to the root issues, and thus felt the need to displace his own torment onto a group of people who were known for being at the root of the Christianity that he himself now lived in… the Jews.
Tragically though, this displacement on Luther’s part would do little to serve as a warning to future generations that they should not attack the Jews, but rather—quite the contrary—it would serve as an inspiration for future attacks on “the Jews”.
Indeed, it was no coincidence that the Third Reich in Germany would eventually implement their now-infamous “Kristallnacht” on the anniversary of Martin Luther’s birthday…
Proceed to Part 4 (coming soon)
Great stuff, Jonathan. Bravo.