On the Genealogy of Morality (Chap. 4.11)

Only now that we have taken a look at the ascetic priest can we seriously get at our problem: What does the ascetic ideal mean—only now does it become “serious.” From this point on we confront the actual representative of seriousness. “What does all seriousness mean?”—this even more fundamental question perhaps lies already on our lips, a question for physiologists, naturally, but nonetheless one which we will still evade for the moment. In that ideal, the ascetic priest preserves, not merely his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest. His right to existence stands and falls with that ideal. No wonder that here we run into a fearful opponent, given, of course, that we were people antagonistic to that ideal?—an opponent of the sort who fights for his existence against those who deny the ideal. . . On the other hand, it is from the outset improbable that such an interesting stance to our problem will be particularly beneficial to it. The ascetic priest will hardly in himself prove the most successful defender of his ideal, for the same reason that a woman habitually fails when it’s a matter of defending “woman as such”—to say nothing of his being able to provide the most objective assessment of and judgment about the controversy we are dealing with here. Rather than having to fear that he will refute us too well—this much is clear enough—it’s more likely we’ll still have to help him defend himself against us. . . . The idea being contested at this point is the value of our lives in the eyes of ascetic priests: this same life (along with what belongs to it, “nature,” “the world,” the whole sphere of becoming and transience) they set up in relation to an existence of a totally different kind, a relationship characterized by opposition and mutual exclusion, except where life somehow turns against itself, denies itself. In this case, the case of an ascetic life, living counts as a bridge over to that other existence. The ascetic treats life as an incorrect road, where we must finally go backwards, right to the place where it begins, or as a misconception which man refutes by his actions—or should refute. For he demands that people go with him. Where he can, he enforces his evaluation of existence. What’s the meaning of that? Such a monstrous way of assessing value does not stand inscribed in human history as something exceptional and curious. It is one of the most widespread and enduring extant facts. If read from a distant star, the block capital script of our earthly existence might perhaps lead one to conclude that the earth is the inherently ascetic star, a corner for discontented, arrogant, and repellent creatures, incapable of ridding themselves of a deep dissatisfaction with themselves, with the earth, with all living, creatures who inflict as much harm on themselves as possible for the pleasure of inflicting harm—probably their single pleasure. We should consider how regularly, how commonly, how in almost all ages the ascetic priest makes an appearance. He does not belong to one single race. He flourishes everywhere. He grows from all levels of society. And it’s not the case that he breeds and replants his way of assessing value somehow through biological inheritance: the opposite the case—generally speaking, a deep instinct forbids him from reproducing. There must be a high-order necessity which makes this species hostile to life always grow again and flourish—it must be in the interest of life itself not to have such a type of self-contradiction die out. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction. Here a ressentiment without equal is in control, something with an insatiable instinct and will to power, which wants to become master, not over something in life but over life itself, over its deepest, strongest, most basic conditions; here an attempt is being made to use one’s power to block up the sources of that power; here one directs one’s green and malicious gaze against one’s inherent physiological health, particularly against its means of expression—beauty, joy—while one experiences and seeks for a feeling of pleasure in mistrust, atrophy, pain, accident, ugliness, voluntary loss, self-denial, self-flagellation, self-sacrifice.* All this is paradoxical to the highest degree. Here we stand in front of a dichotomy which essentially wants a dichotomy, which enjoys itself in this suffering and always gets even more self-aware and more triumphant in proportion to the decrease in its own prerequisite, the physiological capacity for life. “Triumph precisely in the ultimate agony”—under this supreme sign the ascetic ideal has fought from time immemorial. Inside this riddle of seduction, in this picture of delight and torment, it sees its highest light, its salvation, its final victory. Crux, nux, lux [cross, nut, light]—for the ascetic ideal these are all one thing.

. . . ressentiment: Nietzsche introduces this important term in the First Essay of Genealogy of Morals, in Section 10: a short definition is as follows: “deep-seated resentment, frustration, and hostility, accompanied by a sense of being powerless to express these feelings directly” (Merriam-Webster).