Nietzsche Reflection Paper

IV

The concept of guilt, which is a more or less economically-coined concept that’s been carried over to morality, comes from the idea of debt. Christian morality is guilt-based, for example, as Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross represents an act that no human can ever repay within his lifetime and is therefore condemned to be infinitely indebted to God. Nietzsche regards this narrative as genius because it frames life on earth as but one big endeavor and attempt to repay said debt. In turn, religion is the institution that propagates this process, causing us to become humans who don’t live well in the here and now, but rather live our lives in order to pay back our debt for a better afterlife. This inability to let go of the past and

A promise demonstrates Nietzsche’s process of guilt formation from being indebted to someone and transforms into an unhealthy “active desire not to rid oneself, a desire for the continuance of something desired once” (BWE, 146). This very quote demonstrates how the combination of ressentiment and internalization both create a “bad conscience”, which through Christian doctrine prevents us from forgetting the debts we must repay to Jesus Christ and God. We dwell on these debts throughout our earthly lives, continually punishing and repressing ourselves because that is what we think we are supposed to do. Since we are so focused on earning our spot in heaven, we forget to live in the moment and be present. This in turn makes us suffer and leads to dissatisfaction and discontent with our lives. Additionally, we fail to realize that somewhere along the way we had made a choice to submit to the religious ideas presented to us by our culture. Nietzsche’s entire point throughout the first two essays of On the Genealogy of Morals is to make us all aware of this process that happens, often subconsciously. Once we realize that submitting to religion is a choice, we can examine our other choices in values as well. Nietzsche makes a key distinction between religion and morality, suggesting that it is beneficial to consider them