A Polemic
THE three essays of which this Genealogy consists are in regard to expression, intention and art of surprise perhaps the uncanniest things that have ever been written. Dionysos is, as one knows, also the god of darkness. – Each time a beginning which is intended to mislead, cool, scientific, even ironic, intentionally foreground, intentionally keeping in suspense. Gradually an increasing disquiet; isolated flashes of lightning; very unpleasant truths becoming audible as a dull rumbling in the distance – until at last a tempo feroce is attained in which everything surges forward with tremendous tension. At the conclusion each time amid perfecdy awful detonations a new truth visible between thick clouds. – The truth of the first essay is the psychology of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of ressentiment, not, as is no doubt believed, out of the ‘spirit’ – essentially a counter-movement, the great revolt against the domination of noble values. The second essay gives the psychology of the conscience: it is not, as is no doubt believed, ‘the voice of God in man’ – it is the instinct of cruelty turned backwards after it can no longer discharge itself outwards. Cruelty here brought to light for the first time as one of the oldest substrata of culture and one that can least be thought away. The third essay gives the answer to the question where the tremendous power of the ascetic ideal, the priestly ideal, comes from, although it is the harmful ideal par excellence, a will to the end, a décadence ideal. Answer: not because God is active behind the priests, which is no doubt believed, but faute de mieux – because hitherto it has been the only ideal, because it had no competitors. ‘For man will rather will nothingness than not will’… What was lacking above all was a counter-ideal – until the advent of Zarathustra. – I have been understood. Three decisive preliminary studies of a psychologist for a revaluation of all values. – This book contains the first psychology of the priest.