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Gay Science, section 347
Believers and their need to believe. - How much one needs a faith in order to flourish, how much that is "firm" and that one does not wish to be shaken because one clings to it, that is a measure of the degree of one's strength (or, to put the point more clearly, of one's weakness).* Christianity, it seems to me, is still needed by most people in old Europe even today;** therefore it still finds believers. For this is how man is: An article of faith could be refuted before him a thousand times - if he needed it, he would consider it "true" again and again, in accordance with that famous "proof of strength" of which the Bible speaks.***
Metaphysics is still needed by some; but so is that impetuous demand for certainty^ that today discharges itself among large numbers of people in a scientific-positivistic form. The demand that one wants by all means that something should be firm (while on account of the ardor of this demand one is easier and more negligent about the demonstration of this certainty) - this, too, is still the demand for a support, a prop, in short, that instinct of weakness which, to be sure, does not create religious, metaphysical systems, and convictions of all kinds but - conserves them.
Actually, what is steaming around all of these positivistic systems is the vapor of a certain pessimistic gloom, something that smells of weariness, fatalism, disappointment, and fear of new disappointments - or else ostentatious wrath, a bad mood, the anarchism of indignation, and whatever other symptoms and masquerades of the feeling of weakness there may be. Even the vehemence with which our most intelligent contemporaries lose themselves in wretched nooks and crannies, for example, into patriotism^^ (I mean what the French call chauvinisme and the Germans "German") or into petty aesthetic creeds after the manner of French naturalisme (which drags up and bares only that part of nature which inspires nausea and simultaneous amazement - today people like to call this part la verite vraie^^^) or into nihilism a la Petersburg (meaning the belief in unbelief even to the point of martyrdom*^) always manifests above all the need for faith , a support, backbone, something to fall back on.
Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely - a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant - which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will^^ that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence
*This crucial point, which recurs elsewhere in Nietzsche's writings, makes clear, we might say, "how he is not pious," and thus needs to be considered when interpreting secton 344 above.
**This was written in 1886
***Nietzsche also refers to the "proof of strength" in section 50 of The Antichrist and in notes 171 and 452 of The Will to Power. But it is only in this passage above that Nietzsche claims that "the Bible speaks" of it. The reference is to I Corinthians 2.4, where the King James Bible has "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" and Luther "in Beweisung des Geistes und der Kraft."
In theological and homiletical quotations the old-fashioned Beweisung gave way to Beweis (proof - the word Nietzsche uses) during the nineteenth century. Since Schleiermacher this passages became very popular, and the parallelism of Geist and Kraft was replaced by either Geist or, as in Nietzsche's case, Kraft. I am indebted to Professor Otto A. Piper for this information.
^At first glance
Metaphysics is still needed by some; but so is that impetuous demand for certainty^ that today discharges itself among large numbers of people in a scientific-positivistic form. The demand that one wants by all means that something should be firm (while on account of the ardor of this demand one is easier and more negligent about the demonstration of this certainty) - this, too, is still the demand for a support, a prop, in short, that instinct of weakness which, to be sure, does not create religious, metaphysical systems, and convictions of all kinds but - conserves them.
Actually, what is steaming around all of these positivistic systems is the vapor of a certain pessimistic gloom, something that smells of weariness, fatalism, disappointment, and fear of new disappointments - or else ostentatious wrath, a bad mood, the anarchism of indignation, and whatever other symptoms and masquerades of the feeling of weakness there may be. Even the vehemence with which our most intelligent contemporaries lose themselves in wretched nooks and crannies, for example, into patriotism^^ (I mean what the French call chauvinisme and the Germans "German") or into petty aesthetic creeds after the manner of French naturalisme (which drags up and bares only that part of nature which inspires nausea and simultaneous amazement - today people like to call this part la verite vraie^^^) or into nihilism a la Petersburg (meaning the belief in unbelief even to the point of martyrdom*^) always manifests above all the need for faith , a support, backbone, something to fall back on.
Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely - a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant - which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will^^ that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence
*This crucial point, which recurs elsewhere in Nietzsche's writings, makes clear, we might say, "how he is not pious," and thus needs to be considered when interpreting secton 344 above.
**This was written in 1886
***Nietzsche also refers to the "proof of strength" in section 50 of The Antichrist and in notes 171 and 452 of The Will to Power. But it is only in this passage above that Nietzsche claims that "the Bible speaks" of it. The reference is to I Corinthians 2.4, where the King James Bible has "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" and Luther "in Beweisung des Geistes und der Kraft."
In theological and homiletical quotations the old-fashioned Beweisung gave way to Beweis (proof - the word Nietzsche uses) during the nineteenth century. Since Schleiermacher this passages became very popular, and the parallelism of Geist and Kraft was replaced by either Geist or, as in Nietzsche's case, Kraft. I am indebted to Professor Otto A. Piper for this information.
^At first glance
Will to Power, section 770 (Jan. - Fall 1888)
The degree of resistance that must be continually overcome in order to remain on top is the measure of freedom, whether for individuals or for societies - freedom understood, that is, as positive power, as will to power. According to this concept, the highest form of individual freedom, of sovereignty, would in all probability emerge not five steps from its opposite, where the danger of slavery hangs over existence like a hundred swords of Damocles. Look at history from this viewpoint: the ages in which the "individual" achieves such ripe perfection, i.e., freedom, and the classic type of the sovereign man is attained - oh no! they have never been humane ages!
One must have no choice: either on top - or underneath, like a worm, mocked, annihilated, trodden upon. One must oppose tyrants to become a tyrant, i.e., free. It is no small advantage to live under a hundred swords of Damocles: that way one learns to dance, one attains "freedom of movement."
---------------
Copied from Walter Kaufmann's and R.J. Holligndale's 1967 translation.
One must have no choice: either on top - or underneath, like a worm, mocked, annihilated, trodden upon. One must oppose tyrants to become a tyrant, i.e., free. It is no small advantage to live under a hundred swords of Damocles: that way one learns to dance, one attains "freedom of movement."
---------------
Copied from Walter Kaufmann's and R.J. Holligndale's 1967 translation.
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