On the Genealogy of Morality (Chap. 4.25)

No! People should not come at me with science when I am looking for the natural antagonist of the ascetic ideal, when I ask, “Where is the opposing will, in which an opposing ideal expresses itself?” For that purpose, science does not stand sufficiently on its own, not nearly; for that it first requires an value ideal, a power to make value, in whose service it could have faith in itself—science is never in itself something which creates values. Its relationship to the ascetic ideal is still not inherently antagonistic at all. It’s even more that case that, for the most part, it represents the forward-driving force in the inner development of this ideal. Its resistance and struggle, when we inspect more closely, are not concerned in any way with the ideal itself, but only with its external trappings, clothing, masquerade, its temporary hardening, petrifaction, dogma. Science makes the life in this ideal free again, since it denies what is exoteric in it. These two things, science and the ascetic ideal—they really stand on a single foundation—I’ve just clarified the point—namely, on the same overvaluing of the truth (or more correctly, on the same faith in the inestimable value of the truth, which is beyond criticism). In that very claim they are necessarily allies—so that, if someone is going to fight against them, he can only fight them together and place them both in question. An appraisal of the value of the ascetic ideal unavoidably also involves an appraisal of the value of science; while there’s still time people should to keep their eyes open for that, their ears alert! (As for art—let me offer a preliminary remark, for I’ll be coming back to it at some point or other at greater length—the very art in which the lie sanctifies itself and the will to deceive has good conscience on its side is much more fundamentally opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science: that’s what Plato’s instinct experienced—the greatest enemy of art which Europe has produced up to this point. Plato versus Homer: that’s the entire, the true antagonism—on one side, the “beyond” of the best will, the great slanderer of life; on the other side, life’s unintentional worshipper, the golden nature. An artistic bondage in the service of the ascetic ideal is thus the truest corruption of the artist there can be. Unfortunately it’s one of the most common, for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Physiologically considered, science also rests on the same foundation as the ascetic ideal: a certain impoverishment of life is the precondition for both—emotions become cool, the tempo slows down, dialectic replaces instinct, seriousness stamped on faces and gestures (seriousness, this most unmistakable sign of a more labourious metabolism, of a life of struggle and hard work). Just look at those periods in a population when the scholars step up into the foreground: they are times of exhaustion, often of evening, of decline. The overflowing force, the certainty about life, the certainty about the future have gone. The preponderance of mandarins never indicates anything good—no more than does the arrival of democracy, the peace tribunal instead of war, equal rights for women, the religion of pity, and all the other things symptomatic of a degenerating life. (Science grasped as a problem: what does science mean?—on this point see the Preface to The Birth of Tragedy).—No! This “modern science”—keep your eyes open for this—is for the time being the best ally of the ascetic ideal, and precisely for this reason: because it is the most unconscious, the most involuntary, the most secret and most subterranean ally! They have up to now been playing a single game, the “poor in spirit” and the scientific opponents of that ideal (we should be careful, incidentally, not to think that these opponents are the opposite of that ideal, something like the rich in spirit—that they are not; I call them hectics of the spirit). The famous victories of the latter—and they have undoubtedly been victories—but over what? They in no way overcame the ascetic ideal. With those victories, the ideal instead became stronger, that is, harder to understand, more spiritual, more dangerous, as science ruthlessly and continually kept breaking off and demolishing a wall, an external structure which had built itself onto the ideal and coarsened its appearance. Do people really think that, for example, the downfall of theological astronomy indicates a downfall of that ideal? . . . Because of that, have human beings perhaps become less dependent on redemption in a world beyond as a solution for the puzzle of their existence, given that existence since then looks, in the visible order of things, even more arbitrary, indolent, and dispensable? Isn’t it the case that since Copernicus the very self-diminution of human beings, their will to self-diminution, has made inexorable progress?* Alas, the faith in their dignity, uniqueness, irreplaceable position in the chain of being has gone—the human being has become an animal, not a metaphorical animal, but absolutely and unconditionally—the one who in his earlier faith was almost God (“child of God,” “God-man” [Gottmensch]) . . . Since Copernicus human beings seem to have reached an inclined plane—they’re now rolling at an accelerating rate past the mid-point—where to? Into nothingness? Into the “penetrating sense of their own nothingness”? . . .Well, then, wouldn’t this be precisely the way—into the old ideal? . . . All science (and not just astronomy, about whose humbling and destructive effects Kant made a noteworthy confession, “it destroys my importance”. . .)—all science, natural as well as unnatural—the name I give to the self-criticism of knowledge—is nowadays keen to talk human beings out of the respect they used to have for themselves, as if the latter were nothing more than a bizarre arrogance about themselves. In this matter we could even say science has its own pride, its characteristically acrid form of stoical ataraxia [indifference], in maintaining this labouriously attained self-contempt for human beings as their ultimate, most serious demand for self respect (and, in fact, that’s justified, for the one who despises is still one person who “has not forgotten respect” . . .). Does doing this really work against the ascetic ideal? Do people really think in all seriousness (as theologians imagined for quite a while) that, say, Kant’s victory over dogmatic theological concepts (“God,” “Soul,” “Freedom,” “Immortality”) succeeded in breaking up that ideal?—in asking that question, it should not concern us at the moment whether Kant himself had anything at all like that in mind. What is certain is that all sorts of transcendentalists since Kant have once more won the game—they’ve been emancipated from the theologians. What a stroke of luck!—Kant showed them that secret path by which from now on they could, on their own initiative and with the finest scientific decency, follow their “hearts’ desires.” Similarly who could now hold anything against the agnostics, if they, as admirers of what is inherently unknown and secret, worship the question mark itself as their God? (Xaver Doudan once spoke of the ravages brought on by “l’habitude d’admirer l’inintelligible au lieu de rester tout simplement dans l’inconnu” [the habit of admiring the unintelligible instead of simply staying in the unknown]; he claimed that the ancients had not done this).* If everything human beings “know” does not satisfy their wishes and, instead, contradicts them and makes them shudder, what a divine excuse to be allowed to seek the blame for this not in “wishes” but in “knowledge”! . . . “There is no knowledge. Consequently—there is a God”—what a new elegantia syllogismi [syllogistic excellence]! What a triumph of the ascetic ideal!

Copernicus: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the Polish astronomer and monk who produced a scientifically based theory of a sun-centred solar system.

Xaver Doudan: Ximénès Doudan (1800-1872), a French writer.