Belief after Nietzsche: Nietzsche’s nihilism through the mirror of theology

Adrie Anthonie Alexander Prosman

This study attempts to answer the question of how theology has responded to Nietzsche’s nihilism. This question is linked with other questions. What is the connection between Nietzsche’s nihilism and the death of God? Why is God’s death so important to Nietzsche? About the death of which God is he speaking and which conclusions can be drawn from this with reference to theology?

The first part of the study (Nietzsche and nihilism; Chapters 2 to 5) consists of a description of the meaning of nihilism in Nietzsche’s thinking. An attempt is made to clarify this notion and to indicate how nihilism is present in the whole of Nietzsche’s range of thought. Subsequently, the way that philosophical interpretation of Nietzsche has dealt with the notion of nihilism is described.

The second part (Theology and Nietzsche; Chapters 7 to 11) examines the reception that the discipline of theology has given to Nietzsche’s nihilism. The choice of theologians has been determined by whether they have been mainly concerned with Nietzsche or not. Of course Nietzsche’s influence extends to a much wider range of theologians than those who explicitly discuss his work, but the aim is to give an indication of the way in which Nietzsche’s thoughts on nihilism and God’s death have been judged by a number of eminent theologians.

The third part (Nietzsche and the Christian faith; Chapters 13 and 14) tries to initiate a systematic reflection on the situation in which Nietzsche has placed the Church and theology. I am guided in this reflection by the extent to which the assessed theologians have a correct understanding of Nietzsche’s nihilism and whether the meaning of God’s death has actually been recognized by them or not. Chapters 2 through 5 give a precise description of the notion of nihilism, and the difference between the death of God and the murder of God. By means of a close-reading of Nietzsche’s works (Chapter 3) we get a better insight into Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Biser has been the first and, so far, the only author to explicitly direct himself against Nietzsche’s proclamation of God’s death (Chapter 4). Biser is of the opinion that Nietzsche regards God as an explanatory principle. He argues that the subject of dismantlement (Destruktion) is not God nor the existence of God, but the concept of God: God as the authority which holds together reality and provides a sense of purpose. He then states that Christian theology had taken leave of this incorrect notion of God a long time ago.

However, it appears from my rendition and interpretation of Nietzsche’s writings (Chapter 3) that Nietzsche not only rejects the philosophical notion of God, but also in particular God as Redeemer. Against this, Nietzsche places his own interpretation of Jesus, one that is acceptable to him. He sees Jesus as someone living beyond good and evil, someone whom evil no longer has a hold over. Nietzsche deliberately deviates from the image that the New Testament gives of Jesus. Nietzsche is not really orientated around the figure of Jesus. The development of his religious thoughts stems from the Dionysian feel of life. His notion of God is not a philosophical notion of God, nor a Greek notion of God, but a Dionysian notion of God.

Vattimo emphasizes that the distinction Nietzsche draws between the Dionysian component of reality and the Apollonian is of vital importance (Chapter 2). This distinction, this difference is of such vital importance that history is determined by it. The difference does not belong to the past, it is not a part of history, but history itself commences with it. If this difference precedes history, it also precedes culture and thereby provides us with the key to understanding what culture is. It is no coincidence or incidental circumstance that Nietzsche brings up this difference in connection with the mythological figures of Dionysus and Apollo. And by that, he shows that the source of the difference lies outside the historical process.

Nietzsche’s thoughts about God are of great importance if we want to get to the core of his concept of culture. This is made clear following René Girard and F. de Graaff (Chapter 5). The death of God is actually the murder of God. Faith in the God of the Bible interferes with the emancipation of humankind and the development of culture. Therefore, God’s death is imperative. In the killing of God, Girard sees the workings of a general principle, the mechanism of victimisation, by which the solidarity of society is restored and culture is made possible by the killing of a guilty victim. Violence is the foundation of culture. This becomes particularly clear in Nietzsche’s desire for power. Girard exposes the desire for power as a mechanism which legitimizes the killing of the victim for the sake of society and culture. De Graaff’s analysis has similarities with Girard’s, but a completely different outcome. The big difference is that, according to Girard, violence is the basis of Nietzsche’s view of culture, whereas, according to De Graaff the basis is not violence, but the sacred.

In De Graaff’s line of thought everything revolves around the death of the God of the West. Some part of this God, the form of an angel, was present in Nietzsche’s person. Therefore, his person is no less important than his thinking. De Graaff regards Nietzsche’s physical and mental sufferings as an embodiment of the downfall of Western culture. By means of Vornehmheit, nobility, Nietzsche held on to the bond with the sacred. After Nietzsche’s death there was no longer any hope for our culture. For a correct understanding of Nietzsche, it is very important to grasp what he means by nihilism (Chapter 2). According to Nietzsche, nihilism has Greek and Christian roots. Nihilism condemns and despises life. This is mainly due to the introduction of higher values by Christianity. In the light of these higher values, life loses its lustre and becomes essentially worthless. Nietzsche designates actual being as a being of no worth. This nihilism perverts existence. It is a power: a desire for the nothing. This power keeps operating until it ruins itself.

This is the moment that man overcomes his resentment and there is a turnaround. Now, the new reality becomes visible and new values arise. These are values derived from life itself. This is the real and final nihilism. Man did not know this new reality before. It brings along a new experience, which is, in fact, a religious experience. This is the experience of Dionysian reality.

Chapters 7 through 11 discuss nine authors: Barth, Miskotte, Küng, Jüngel, Vahanian, Robinson, Sölle, Altizer and Marion, and their relation to Nietzsche’s nihilism.

From a theological viewpoint, Barth and Miskotte have a lot in common. However, when it comes to how they assess the times in which they live, they go their own way. Barth’s consideration of the Nichtige, nothingness, is important because he sets the Nichtige over against Heidegger’s Nichts, the nothing, and Sartre’s Néant (Chapter 7; for Heidegger also see Chapter 2). In doing so, Barth has a distinctive contribution to the discussion about the fundamental cultural changes of his age. Barth regards the Nichtige as the ultimate evil. The Nichtige encapsulates the radical rejection of God’s mercy and election. But this radical evil has already been dismissed, rejected and defeated. This happened in creation, and, more radically, in the resurrection of Christ. On the one hand, Barth takes evil very seriously; on the other hand, he stresses that all forms of evil, including nihilism, have already been defeated. Barth is ambivalent towards his philosophical interlocutors.

Miskotte takes a different position (Chapter 8). With Barth, we get the impression that dogmatic stands previously taken prevent him from truly analysing his culture. In Miskotte’s case, the notion of religion plays a similar obstructing role. Miskotte still regards religion too much as a binding element of culture. With respect to the notion of religion, Miskotte, and Jüngel too, do not sufficiently recognize that with Nietzsche one can speak of a breach. Perhaps we should even speak of a paradigm shift. In any case, it is safe to say that an altered conception of reality plays an important role here. There is no coherence or overview anymore. Nor does religion provide a uniting, directive framework which gives a sense of purpose and by means of which man finds his bearings in life.

Küng’s approach to Nietzsche is remarkable (Chapter 9). Given the title of his book: Existiert Gott? one would expect the God-is-dead issue to get a lot of attention in the chapter about Nietzsche. That chapter, however, hardly deals with God’s death, but expressly with reality. Küng is of the opinion that the grounds for Nietzsche’s nihilism lie in the fact that he does not trust reality. With rational arguments, Küng wants to prove that reality is reliable, even though it appears to be otherwise. Nihilism is opposed in a rational way.

The heart of Jüngel’s refutation of Nietzsche’s nihilism lies in Christology (Chapter 9). The death of Christ on the cross is the death of God. This death is the most profound answer to nihilism, because, in His death, God took up the transitory reality as His own reality and thereby embedded the whole of reality in His own being. In that way, death, and nihilism too, have been defeated. Jüngel regards death as a manifestation of resistance against God and His mercy, but, as God assimilates this death, death shifts character and actually becomes a Gottesphänomen, a sign of God’s presence. God’s love is stronger than death.

Jüngel’s Christological focus can also be found in the work of Robinson and Sölle (Chapter 10). The death of a metaphysical God is no disaster. The radical theologians do not go into mourning because of God’s death. Especially with regard to Sölle, the death of a metaphysical God provides an opportunity to emphasize God’s solidarity with the world once more. The question, however, does remain as to the extent to which Robinson and Sölle still believe in God as a person, as a ‘Thou’. If Robinson and Sölle turn God into an immanent God, then what Vahanian calls the identification of God and man will happen and this will result in the death of both.

Altizer enters this discussion as a radical theologian, but he goes his own way (Chapter 10). His thinking is a systematic reasoning, which appears similar to Jüngel, because both theologians are strongly influenced by Hegel. Reality is a process in which God’s death works as a hinge point. Altizer develops a philosophical theology in which the discussion of God’s death is hardly significant, because it deals with a process regarding the whole of reality. The process moves between the poles of being and nothing, death and life, beginning and end. Altizer was not only influenced by Hegel, but also by Nietzsche. The desire for power is the hidden motive in Altizer’s philosophical theology. The desire for power also manifests itself when Altizer speaks of kenosis. As this desire for power is so overt, there is no room for suffering.

The essence of Marion’s analyses and conclusions is that Nietzsche has declared God’s death, but that he has done so within the framework of ontotheology (Chapter 11). This means that Nietzsche has not defeated metaphysics. Nietzsche kept thinking of God within an ontological pattern. To Marion, this means that Nietzsche could not speak of God except as an idol. An idol is a god who is brought up within this reality’s framework of being. Speaking of God in this manner is foreign to the biblical revelation. Marion wants to speak about God as an icon in a manner in which the notion of distance is essential. At this distance God remains out of range for man and God can be spoken of as God.

Marion demonstrates that Nietzsche’s thinking is formed by the Christic structure. The ‘Christ event’ overshadows everything. This structure of Nietzsche’s thinking proves that he is constantly taking account of the Christian faith and is informed by the God of the Bible.

After a thematic in-depth exploration of the central concepts in Chapter 13, I come to my concluding remarks in Chapter 14. The hinge in Nietzsche’s thinking lies in the fact that God’s death does not mean the disappearance, denial or absence of God, but the defeat of God. Since the cross and God are inseparable from a Christian perspective, Nietzsche’s God-is-dead proclamation is also aimed against the cross. When Nietzsche looks at the cross he sees God hanging there.

 The cross brings about a change. According to Nietzsche, God’s weakness makes the weak human feel stronger. He feels divine, because God is with him through suffering and weakness. This is the reason why the confession that God hangs on the cross is so threatening. Jesus on the cross is still acceptable to Nietzsche. He regards the cross of Jesus as a confirmation of Jesus’ identity. But the meaning that Paul and the Early Church attach to the cross, namely that in Jesus God Himself suffered and died, is highly dangerous for him. Sooner or later it will lead to a revolution: the slave rebellion.

The death on the cross has therefore – paradoxically – not been the death of God. On the contrary, God could show his vitality precisely because of this slave rebellion. The cross has been the resurrection of God. For faith in God has given Europe and the whole world a change of complexion. Still, now, in the days of Nietzsche, God’s end has come. Christian values have been unmasked by the reality of life. Reality has taken revenge on (Christian) truth. The Christian faith has now been eroded; it is hollow. The time has come to kill this God. In the aphorism ‘Der tolle Mensch’ the exclamation ‘God is dead’ is what it is all about. It is about the fact of God’s death. At the same time, it is striking that the one who proclaims the death of God, also claims to be looking for God. This ambivalence is typical of the way that Nietzsche’s writes about death of God.

From ‘Das Eselsfest’, the Ass Festival, we learn that he who wants to kill most thoroughly, has to do so while laughing. The killing must be a joyful killing. This passage says that God’s murderer has resurrected God. Killing and resurrecting are strangely intertwined. Killing and resurrecting are actually the same. The sacred laughing defeats resentment, so that man can defeat himself and kill God. In a parodied manner, God and Christ may and must take up a lasting place within our culture, because this will help to achieve two goals: the death of God and the defeat of man.

The final conclusion is that the heart of Nietzsche’s nihilism holds that the death of God is a continual killing of God through parody. Parody is so important, because it allows one to finally take leave of God and Christ without any resentment. Faith after Nietzsche signifies believing with a certain sensitivity and alertness, as we find in Philippians 1: 9 and 10: Having the knowledge of discernment in view of the day of Christ.

Believing has been the same throughout history: breaking the immanent reality. Whether this reality is controlled by gods, ideas or concepts does not really matter. Reality remains a closed, immanent reality. However, God breaks the oppression of immanence. He liberates. Man is not alone with himself and he is not caught in a reality in which he hears the echo of his own voice. By speaking, God breaks the cosmic silence and makes room for the future.

Post-modern thinking has put an end to the big stories, including the big story of the Enlightenment. The great project of progress, moral improvement and an ideal future has failed. Postmodernity has had a sobering effect. Immanence has not been broken by it, but rather confirmed.

Philosophy and science make immanentism inescapable and give it a status of inviolability. However, in my opinion, this inescapability and inviolability constitute a religious enclosure. Despite many post-modern philosophies and theologies, and despite programmes of destruction, immanence has remained out of range. This points to a hidden religious Anliegen, concern, of our nihilist culture. In my opinion, the real task of theology after Nietzsche lies in its exposure.

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Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is one of the strangest books ever to achieve the status of a classic and represents Nietzsche’s boldest attempt to find a literary form appropriate to his revolutionary ideas. Zarathustra, commonly known by his Greek name, Zoroaster, was an ancient Persian prophet who was the first to preach that the universe is engaged in a fundamental struggle between good and evil. Nietzsche appropriates Zarathustra because, as he explains in Ecce Homo, “Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it.” Through Zarathustra, Nietzsche tries to preach a nobler alternative to the Judeo-Christian worldview. Throughout the text, we find Nietzsche playfully subverting elements from the Old and New Testaments, particularly in reference to the life and ministry of Jesus. For example, at the age of thirty, Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. By contrast, Zarathustra happily spends ten years in the wilderness, suggesting that he is more cheerful in spirit and less needful of others. We also see Zarathustra preaching against “the herd,” whereas Jesus portrays himself as a shepherd leading a flock, and toward the end we find a parody of the last supper.

We should be careful not to mistake Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity, and particularly his proclamation that “God is dead,” for smug atheism. Certainly, Nietzsche has a great deal of venom to expend on Christianity, but he is perhaps even more troubled by the spiritless atheism that he fears will follow it. The claim that God is dead is more of a sociological observation than a metaphysical declaration. Christian morality and its attendant concepts of good and evil no longer have such a powerful hold on our culture as they once did. Nietzsche worries that the world is being increasingly consumed by nihilism, the abandonment of all beliefs. He expresses this worry in the figure of the last man, who represents the triumph of science and materialism. Nietzsche would likely recognize in early twenty-first century consumer culture a perfect expression of the last man, where we direct our tremendous wealth and power to insulating ourselves from all risks and all passions. Zarathustra preaches about the overman not so much to replace Christianity as to fill the void that opens in a culture where fundamental values are eroding.

The overman, sometimes translated as “superman” or rendered in the original German as Übermensch, is Nietzsche’s ideal of a creative, independent, spiritual genius. The overman is often misconceived as any person who has an independent and revolutionary attitude toward ethics or politics, such as a Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King, Jr. Most likely, Nietzsche would have criticized these two figures, the first for advocating democracy and the second for advocating Christianity. Nietzsche dislikes both democracy and Christianity for the way they promote equality and defend the weakest in a society. Nietzsche instead has Zarathustra invoke a system of values in which the strongest and most original in a society can rise above the masses and shine. A great artist, then, is a closer approximation to the overman than a political leader. As expressed in the figures of the camel, the lion, and the child, an overman sets aside the values and assumptions he was raised with and develops his own creative vision of the world, much like an artist. However, the overman is more than just an artist in that his creativity is not limited to the page or the canvas. The overman’s work of art is his own life, which he forges and lives according to his own creative will.

The will to power, which lies at the heart of Nietzsche’s concept of the superman and of his mature philosophy generally, is the supreme drive behind all life. Contrary to alternative views—for instance, that we are fundamentally driven by sex or the need for survival—Nietzsche believes that all life is driven by a lust for power. Barbarians might express this will to power by raping and pillaging, whereas Christians might express it by turning the other cheek and showing that they have enough self-mastery to swallow their vengeful instincts, but the principle is the same. In all cases, living things do what they can to assert their power over themselves and over the world around them. Everyone has a will to power, but some have a healthier will to power than others. Nietzsche would criticize a barbarian’s will to power for not exhibiting enough self-mastery and a Christian’s will to power for being mistrustful of our natural instincts. The overman exhibits a supremely healthy will to power. He celebrates his strength of spirit, is free from guilt and resentment, and is profoundly in love with life.

The doctrine of the eternal recurrence is the profoundly life-affirming lynchpin of Nietzsche’s philosophy. The idea is based on the supposition that if there is only a finite amount of matter in the universe, there are only a finite number of arrangements of that matter, so if time is infinite, each arrangement of matter will be repeated an infinite number of times. The idea as Zarathustra expresses it is logically unsound. Even assuming that there is a finite amount of matter and an infinite amount of time, there are still infinitely many possible configurations of matter, so it is by no means necessary that any given moment, let alone all moments, must repeat itself. However, Nietzsche’s main interest in the eternal recurrence is the theoretical one of how a person would come to terms with this doctrine. In a sense, the eternal recurrence is a kind of litmus test for a potential overman. Faced with the prospect that every moment in one’s life will echo for eternity, only an overman would rejoice. Only an overman is so in love with life that he would not take back a single moment.

The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche

As The Birth of Tragedy was Nietzsche's first published book, it is a rather awkwardly written representation of his early ideas. Nietzsche lamented as much in a supplementary preface, which he wrote fifteen years later in 1886. The older Nietzsche looks back, as we all do, with embarrassment on the na&ium;eveté of his younger self. He writes, "Today I find it an impossible book: I consider it badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof, mistrustful even of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates…" (section three). Writing with the benefit of hindsight and with many great philosophical successes at his back, the older Nietzsche can afford to laugh at himself. However, he also clearly shows in this later preface that the questions he dared to pose inThe Birth of Tragedy are still entirely relevant to him, as is the importance of Schopenhauer, under whose influence he wrote the book. The ideas contained in this small first treatise persisted in his more sophisticated works.

The Birth of Tragedy is divided into twenty-five chapters and a forward. The first fifteen chapters deal with the nature of Greek Tragedy, which Nietzsche claims was born when the Apollonian worldview met the Dionysian. The last ten chapters use the Greek model to understand the state of modern culture, both its decline and its possible rebirth. The tone of the text is inspirational. Nietzsche often addresses the reader directly, saying at the end of chapter twenty, "Dare now to be tragic men, for ye shall be redeemed!" These kinds of exclamations make it more difficult to take his text seriously. However, if we look beyond the flowery words, we find some very interesting ideas. At the same time we confront Nietzsche's enormous bias, particularly when deciding when something is or is not "art." Nietzsche forms a very strict definition of art that excludes such things as subjective self-expression and the opera. Despite his criticisms of human culture, however, Nietzsche has great faith in the human soul and urges us to drop our Socratic pretenses and accept the culture of Dionysus again.

Nietzsche describes the state of Greek art before the influence of Dionysus as being naive, and concerned only with appearances. In this art conception, the observer was never truly united with art, as he remained always in quiet contemplation with it, never immersing himself. The appearances of Apollo were designed to shield man from the innate suffering of the world, and thus provide some relief and comfort.

Then came Dionysus, whose ecstatic revels first shocked the Apollonian man of Greek culture. In the end, however, it was only through one's immersion in the Dionysian essence of Primordial Unity that redemption from the suffering of the world could be achieved. In Dionysus, man found that his existence was not limited to his individual experiences alone, and thus a way was found to escape the fate of all men, which is death. As the Dionysian essence is eternal, one who connects with this essence finds a new source of life and hope. Nietzsche thus shows Dionysus to be an uplifting alternative to the salvation offered by Christianity, which demands that man renounce life on earth altogether and focus only on heaven. For, in order to achieve salvation through Dionysus, one must immerse oneself in life now.

However, while man can only find salvation in Dionysus, he requires Apollo to reveal the essence of Dionysus through his appearances. The chorus and actors of tragedy were representations, through which the essence of Dionysus was given voice to speak. Through them, man was able to experience the joys of redemption from worldly suffering. These Apollonian appearances also stood as a bulwark against the chaos of Dionysus, so that the viewer would be completely lost in Dionysian ecstasy. Nietzsche emphasizes that in real tragic art, the elements of Dionysus and Apollo were inextricably entwined. As words could never hope to delve into the depths of the Dionysian essence, music was the life of the tragic art form.

Music exists in the realm beyond language, and so allows us to rise beyond consciousness and experience our connection to the Primordial Unity. Music is superior to all other arts in that it does not represent a phenomenon, but rather the "world will" itself.

Nietzsche sees Euripides as the murderer of art, he who introduced the Socratic obsession with knowledge and ultimate trust in human thought into the theater. By focusing entirely on the individual, Euripides eliminated the musical element that is crucial to the Dionysian experience. Euripides threw Dionysus out of tragedy, and in doing so he destroyed the delicate balance between Dionysus and Apollo that is fundamental to art. In the second half of his essay, Nietzsche explores the modern ramifications of this shift in Greek thought. He argues that we are still living in the Alexandrian age of culture, which is now on its last legs. Science cannot explain the mysteries of the universe, he writes, and thanks to the work of Kant and Schopenhauer, we must now recognize this fact. The time is ripe for a rebirth of tragedy that will sweep away the dusty remains of Socratic culture. Nietzsche sees German music, Wagner in particular, as the beginning of this transformation. While German culture is decrepit, the German character is going strong, for it has an inkling of the primordial vitality flowing in its veins. Nietzsche has great hope for the coming age and has written this book to prepare us for it.

Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche

On The Genealogy of Morals is made up of three essays, all of which question and critique the value of our moral judgments based on a genealogical method whereby Nietzsche examines the origins and meanings of our different moral concepts.

The first essay, "'Good and Evil,' 'Good and Bad'" contrasts what Nietzsche calls "master morality" and "slave morality." Master morality was developed by the strong, healthy, and free, who saw their own happiness as good and named it thus. By contrast, they saw those who were weak, unhealthy, and enslaved as "bad," since their weakness was undesirable. By contrast, the slaves, feeling oppressed by these wealthy and happy masters, called the masters "evil," and called themselves "good" by contrast.

The second essay, "'Guilt,' 'Bad Conscience,' and the like" deals with (surprise, surprise) guilt, bad conscience, and the like. Nietzsche traces the origins of concepts such as guilt and punishment, showing that originally they were not based on any sense of moral transgression. Rather, guilt simply meant that a debt was owed and punishment was simply a form of securing repayment. Only with the rise of slave morality did these moral concepts gain their present meanings. Nietzsche identifies bad conscience as our tendency to see ourselves as sinners and locates its origins in the need that came with the development of society to inhibit our animal instincts for aggression and cruelty and to turn them inward upon ourselves.

The third essay, "What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?" confronts asceticism, the powerful and paradoxical force that dominates contemporary life. Nietzsche sees it as the expression of a weak, sick will. Unable to cope with its struggle against itself, the sick will sees its animal instincts, its earthly nature, as vile, sinful, and horrible. Unable to free itself from these instincts, it attempts to subdue and tame itself as much as possible. Nietzsche concludes that "man would rather will nothingness than not will."

Nietzsche is difficult to read because he demands that we overturn or suspend many of the assumptions that our very reasoning relies upon. He is one of the Western tradition's deepest thinkers precisely because he calls so much into question. If we can come to understand Nietzsche's genealogical method, his doctrine of the will to power, and his perspectivism as all linked, his arguments will become much easier to follow.

In Nietzsche's distinction between a thing and its meaning, we find the initial doubt with which Nietzsche unravels so many of our assumptions. We are generally tempted to see things as having inherent meanings. For instance, punishment is at once the act of punishing and the reason behind the punishment. However, Nietzsche argues, these things have had different meanings at different times. For instance, the act of punishment has been at times a celebration of one's power, at times an act of cruelty, at times a simple tit-for-tat. We cannot understand a thing, and we certainly cannot understand its origin, if we assume that it has always held the same meaning.

Central to Nietzsche's critique, then, is an attempt at genealogy that will show the winding and undirected route our different moral concepts have taken to arrive in their present shape. Morality is generally treated as sacred because we assume that there is some transcendental ground for our morals, be it God, reason, tradition, or something else. Yet contrary to our assumption that "good," "bad," or "evil" have always had the same meanings, Nietzsche's genealogical method shows how these terms have evolved, shattering any illusion as to the continuity or absolute truth of our present moral concepts.

Because they can have different, even contradictory, meanings over the course of their long life spans, Nietzsche does not believe that concepts or things are the fundamental stuff that makes up reality. Instead, he looks beneath these things to see what drives the different meanings that they adopt over time. Hiding beneath he finds force and will. All of existence, Nietzsche asserts, is a struggle between different wills for the feeling of power. This "will to power" is most evident on a human level, where we see people constantly competing with one another, often for no other purpose than to feel superior to those that they overcome.

That a thing has a meaning at all means that there is some will dominating it, bending it toward a certain interpretation. That a thing may have different meanings over time suggests that different wills have come to dominate it. For instance, the concept of "good" was once dominated by the will of healthy, strong barbarians, and had the opposite meaning that it does now that it is dominated by the will of weak, "sick" ascetics.

According to Nietzsche, then, a belief in an absolute truth or an absolute anything is to give in to one particular meaning, one particular interpretation of a thing. It is essentially to allow oneself to be dominated by a particular will. A will that wishes to remain free will shun absolutes of all kinds and try to look at a matter from as many different perspectives as possible in order to gain its own. This doctrine that has deeply influenced postmodern thought is called "perspectivism."

Nietzsche's inquiries are thus conducted in a very irreverent spirit. Nothing is sacred, nothing is absolute, nothing, we might even say, is true. Our morality is not a set of duties passed down from God but an arbitrary code that has evolved as randomly as the human species itself. The only constant is that we, and everything else, are constantly striving for more power, and the only constant virtue is a will that is powerful, and free from bad conscience, hatred, and ressentiment.

Nietzsche's main project in the Genealogy is to question the value of our morality. Ultimately, he argues that our present morality is born out of a resentment and hatred that was felt toward anything that was powerful, strong, or healthy. As such, he sees our present morality as harmful to the future health and prosperity of our species. While the "blonde beasts" and barbarians of primitive master morality are animalistic brutes, at least they are strong and healthy. On the other hand, our present ascetic morality has "deepened" us by turning our aggressive instincts inward and seeing ourselves as a new wilderness to struggle against. Nietzsche's ideal is to maintain this depth and yet not be ashamed of our animal instincts or of the life that glows within us.