Christian Education
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Röcken, Germany, near the birthplace of Martin Luther and even closer to the hometown of Johann Sebastian Bach. Five generations of maternal ancestors were Lutheran ministers, as was his father, and his paternal grandfather was a distinguished Protestant scholar. His most intimate love interest Lou SalomĂ© recalled how âNietzsche repeatedly emphasized that the Christianity which imbued the pastor-home of his parents suited his inner beingâsmooth and soft, like a healthy skinâand compliance with all its commandments was as easy to follow as his own inclinations.â1 His father died when Nietzsche was five, and in 1850 he moved to nearby Naumburg because his uncle was a preacher in the cathedral. His sister Elisabeth recalled that Naumburg was âa thoroughly Christian, conservative city, loyal to the King and a pillar of the Throne and the Church.â2 He and his sister were raised by their pious mother, two aunts, and a grandmother. At ten he enrolled at the Cathedral Grammar School where the day was punctuated by resounding church bells. In 1858 he won a scholarship to the prestigious Pforta School, originally a monastery that included a twelfth-century Romanesque chapel and a thirteenth-century Gothic church, which imposed rigorous study and observance with morning chapel and daily prayers. There he recited scriptural passages and songs with great enthusiasm that brought tears to the eyes of listeners. His schoolmates called him âthe little pastor.â
From an early age Nietzsche intended to become a minister like his father. At thirteen he wrote, âIn everything God has safely led me as a father leads his weak child.⊠I have firmly resolved within me to dedicate myself forever to His service.⊠He will preserve us all⊠and shall one day unite us all in eternal joy and bliss.â3 Pforta Christianity was strictly imposed, and Nietzsche welcomed the discipline of his teachers and soaked up their religiosity. In preparation to be a minister he studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French. His schoolmate Paul Deussen also hoped to enter the ministry and in 1861 recalled âthe holy, world-enchanting atmosphere which took possession of us during the weeks before and after our confirmation. We were quite prepared to depart this life, to be with Christ, and all our thinking, feeling, and striving was irradiated by an other-worldly cheerfulness.â4
Around age eighteen, Nietzscheâs faith began to erode. In 1862 he clashed with his mother in refusing to do his Easter duty, as his study of history and science was undermining his faith. Deus-sen recalled that their faith was challenged by âthe superb historical-critical method which we employed in Pforta to torment the ancients and⊠biblical matters.â5 Evidence of Nietzscheâs use of that method is a lecture of that year titled âFate and History,â which jabs at the heart of Christianity: âIf we could examine Christian doctrine and Church history with a free, unconstrained eye, we would be compelled to arrive at many conclusions which contradict generally accepted ideas.â The ideas Nietzsche proposed to contradict centered on the existence of God. If we emancipate ourselves from âthe yoke of habit and prejudiceâ and use the historical-critical method, he argued, we can reach an âunpartisan judgment about religionâ that will be viewed as âsinful.â He concluded with a bold prediction that must have sent shivers up the spines of the Pforta pious: âWe stand at the threshold of a great revolution when the mass of mankind first grasps that the whole fabric of Christianity rests on [mere] assumptions: the existence of God, immortality, and the authority of the Bible.â6 He had not entirely rejected Christianity but had eroded its foundation by viewing it as based on questionable assumptions rather than divine revelation.
The model for the historical-critical method was David Friedrich Straussâs The Life of Jesus (1835), a critical examination of the historical Jesus that Nietzsche read at the University of Bonn in 1864. In addition to Strauss, two bigger cultural icons also played a role in Nietzscheâs apostasyâArthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner. In 1865 Nietzsche moved to the University of Leipzig to study philology and became an avowed atheist, stimulated by Schopenhauerâs The World as Will and Idea (1819). Although Schopenhauer never referred to himself as an atheist or argued against the existence of God, he undermined the feasibility of believing in God by maintaining that behind appearances was not a Kantian thing-in-itself or an omniscient and morally perfect god but an irrational and amoral force, a blind and insatiable will to life.7 Subsequently, Nietzsche described Schopenhauer as âthe first admitted and inexorable atheist among us Germansâ and added that âthe ungodliness of existence was for [Schopenhauer] something given, palpable, indisputable.⊠Unconditional and honest atheism is simply the presupposition of the way he poses his problemâ (GS 307). Schopenhauer held that people are driven by an insatiable will to pleasure. If unsatisfied, that will is frustrated; if satisfied, it is bored and generates new pleasures. Thus life has no ultimate satisfaction or divine purpose but is rather an absurd cycle of lust and ennui. His pessimism led to the blunt statement that it would be better not to live. One shred of hope is to immerse oneself in art created by genius, preferably literary tragedy and music.
Another influential personality who mixed genius, tragedy, and music as well as a kind of apostasy was Wagner. They met in 1868 when he was teaching at the University of Basel. In The Ring of the Nibelung (written 1848â1874, first performed, 1869â1876) Wagner killed off the Norse gods who have replaced the Christian God in a GötterdĂ€mmerung when their castle goes up in flames. Wagnerâs message is that the powerful gods are ultimately conquered after BrĂŒnnhilde, out of love for Siegfried who was betrayed and killed, returns the stolen ring to the Rhine maidens. Wagner announces not the death of the Christian God, but the death of the Norse gods. Still, Wagner was no atheist. He worked on the opera Parsifal, a sympathetic retelling of the story of the Holy Grail, for twenty-five years before its first performance at Bayreuth in July 1882. For Nietzsche, Parsifal showed how Wagner, âdecaying and despairing decadent, suddenly sank down, helpless and broken, before the Christian cross.â8 Wagnerâs abiding theism energized in reaction Nietzscheâs biting atheism.
Nietzscheâs emancipation from Lutheranism inspired by Strauss and Schopenhauer did not involve a personal crisis. As Rudolph Binion concluded, he ârelinquished his childhood faith⊠all at once and effortlessly.â9 He reported feeling ânot at all sad and gloomy rather like a new and scarcely describable kind of light, happiness, relief, exhilaration, encouragement, dawnâ (GS 199). The study of history, philosophy, and ancient languages together with Wagnerâs inspiring operas drew him toward intellectually and artistically rewarding undertakings that enabled him to deal with the big issues of life in a differently fulfilling way. Why then did his anti-Christian views, which emerged without trauma, reach white hot intensity, making him the anti-Christ of the modernist era?
The most plausible answer is suggested by Nietzscheâs charged characterizations of the denigration of the body and sexuality evident in Christianityâs threat to realizing the fullest possibilities of mind and body. Among these threats one stands outââDespisers of the Bodyââthe title of a section in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883â85), which refers to those priestly types from whom âan unconscious envy speaks out of the squint-eyed glance of [their] contemptâ (Z 35). There Nietzsche indicts Christianityâs cultivation of sexual guilt symbolized by Christâs bloody redemption on the cross for otherwise unredeemable sins, particularly original sin, but Nietzscheâs forceful analysis still does not explain the intensity of his anger. It was fueled by his unhappy love life, specifically his failed relationships with women along with betrayal, loneliness, and humiliation aggravated by a bout of gonorrhea and possibly syphilis. A brief survey of his romantic disappointments and failures reveals the most compelling personal explanation for his impassioned denunciations of Christianity.
Sexuality and Love
The little pastor had no childhood sweethearts. After the age of five he was raised in a fatherless home surrounded by five pious, anti-sexual women. In 1876, at age thirty-two, he proposed to Mathilde Trampedach after just three meetings and was promptly rejected.10 He had an intense relationship with his sister, who remained a jealous protector and persecutor throughout his life, a persistent reminder that the wages of sin are death. She boasted that âthroughout his life he never once fell into the clutches of a great passion or a vulgar love.â11 Although highly unreliable, she no doubt said the same and worse to others, contributing to his sense of betrayal and suspicion that people were publicly ridiculing his sex life. The peak of such suspicion resulted from a letter of 1877 that Wagner sent to Nietzscheâs doctor, speculating that Nietzscheâs eye problems were caused by masturbation and that his âaltered mode of thoughtâ was due to âunnatural debauchery with indications of pederasty.â12 The doctor wrote back to Wagner that Nietzsche denied that he masturbated or had had any âabnormal satisfactionsâ or been syphilitic but admitted to having had gonorrhea, explaining further that âon medical advice, he had recently engaged in intercourse in Italy,â presumably at a Naples brothel.13 At the second Bayreuth Festival in 1879, where Wagnerâs music was being celebrated, the contents of this embarrassing exchange surfaced in gossip about how Nietzsche was going blind from masturbation, was going to prostitutes in Italy, and had had a venereal disease. Wagner had leaked a doctorâs confidence in order to publicly malign his onetime close friend, and Nietzsche found out about it, as is evident in a letter to the editor Heinrich Köselitz in April 1883, where he wrote, âWagner is full of evil ideas; but what do you say to the fact that he exchanged letters (and even with my physician) in order to express his conviction that my changed way of thinking is the result of unnatural excesses with an indication of pederasty.â14 In a recent study of Nietzsche, Robert C. Holub concludes that âNietzsche was justifiably offended that Wagner was interfering in very personal matters related to his health and sexualityâ and speculates further that that interference may have been âthe cause or one of the causes of the break between the two men.â15 While Nietzscheâs earlier rejection of Wagner was stimulated by aesthetic and ideological differences over his embracing of Christianity with Parsifal, it was no doubt intensified by this betrayal of sexual intimacies so much that in 1883, following Wagnerâs death, Nietzsche referred to the leak as a âdeadly insultâ and later as âan abysmal treachery of revenge.â16
Scholars have offered several explanations for Nietzscheâs subsequent mental breakdown from manic-depressive illness to syphilis.17 If it was syphilis, he contracted it during sexual relations with a prostitute. If it was not syphilis, he may well have suspected that it was. Beyond brothel experiences, he had no sexual relations with women. He was friendly with several feminists in spite of his stridently anti-feminist comments after 1882. He related well to women with strong minds but did not know what to do with their bodies. His two most important relationships with intellectually formidable women were asexual and ultimately disappointing. One was with Cosima Wagner, seven years older than Nietzsche, whom he met in 1870 shortly after he began teaching at Basel. Over the next three years he made over twenty visits to her and Richardâs lively home at Tribschen and came to regard her as a model wife. His relationship with her lasted for the rest of his sane life. He managed greater emotional intimacy only as he lapsed into insanity and began to refer to himself as the Greek god Dionysus and to her as his true love Ariadne.18 On 27 March 1889, in the asylum at Jena he said, âMy wife Cosima Wagner has brought me here.â19 Nietzsche acquired a âwifeâ only by losing his mind.
His most intense relationship was with the twenty-one-year-old Russian Ă©migrĂ© Lou SalomĂ©. Before he met her, on the basis of reports from his friend Paul RĂ©e, he wrote: âI am greedy for souls of that species.⊠I could consent at most to a two-year marriage, and then only in view of what I mean to do these next ten years.â20 A few days after their first meeting in Rome on 23 April 1882, he asked RĂ©e, who was already in love with her, to propose marriage for him. She rejected this proposal and another also made through RĂ©e a few weeks later. On 6 May the pair climbed the Monte Sacro in Rome and exchanged verbal intimacies, although Nietzscheâs physical loving must have been tepid because in her diary Lou could not recall if he had kissed her.21 That he could contemplate marriage to someone he had not met and then propose marriage to her twice through someone else shows how emotionally immature he was in love matters. Their resulting tempestuous relationship continued over the next six months, complicated by RĂ©eâs rivalry and the intervention of Nietzscheâs sister who hated Lou and worked to enlist everyone against her, especially his mother. Sibling rivalry, runaway sexual gossip, and Christian moral guilt in addition to his sexual inexperience undermined the relationship that gave Nietzsche the peak love experience of his life but also a suicidal depression that he attempted to treat with huge doses of opium. By November he ended the relationship with a letter that concluded with a succinct statement of the philosophy of self-fulfillment and self-unification that he would elaborate three months later in Part I of Zarathustra: âDearest Lou, be what you must be!â22
Nietzscheâs writings reveal outrage that Christian anti-sexual values instilled in his youth caused sexual failures as an adult, as, for example, in numerous tirades against âdespisers of the bodyâ such as St. Paul and St. Augustine who imposed sexual values on the Christian faithful. Behind terms that repeatedly link Christian views of sex with sin, guilt, danger, sickness, poison, and death, I hear Nietzscheâs outcries against his own limited experiences and sexual deficiencies that blocked expressions of love. His Beyond Good and Evil (1886) indicts the desexualizing prescriptions of Pauline Christianity as a source of mental illness: âWherever the religious neurosis has appeared so far, we find it connected with three dangerous dietary prescriptions: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence.â His life story reveals that he was the solitary one who ate poorly and refrained from masturbating, and his inability to disengage from Christianity intensified his religious conflicts, if not mental illness. This transparent self-diagnosis had far-reaching consequences for his entire mental life, as a subsequent epigram suggests: âThe degree and type of a personâs sexuality reaches up into the furthermost peaks of their spiritâ (BGE 45, 60).
The section in Thus Spoke Zarathustra titled âThe Tomb Songâ laments the loss of Louâs love and turns against his âenemiesâ led by his sister who condemned sexual desire: âyou murdered the visions and dearest wonders of my youth.⊠[Y]ou made those who loved me [Lou] scream that I was hurting them most.â He then targets his sisterâs Christianity with bitter contempt: âyour âpietyâ immediately placed its fatter gifts alongside, and in the fumes of your fat what was holiest to me suffocated.â Referring to his own sexual deficiency, he charges: ânow my highest parable [of love] remained unspoken in my limbsâ (Z 111â12). His sexual deficiency stemmed from a religion that viewed sex as a sin, and he learned to make that self-debasing value judgment as a child before he had learned to think for himself. The force of his sco...