Nietzschean Mimicry

Nietzsche’s understanding of mimicry both borrows and breaks from the concept’s origins in the natural sciences. His notion of mimicry seems taken, at least partially, from the then-emerging field of evolutionary biology. The twenty-first century definition of mimicry remains basically the same as that given by evolutionary biologists in Nietzsche’s day: the process whereby “a defenseless creature finds relief from predators by assuming the pattern and coloring of one that is defended in some way, usually by inedibility” (Forbes Reference Forbes2009, 26). So, for example, nontoxic butterflies sometimes mimic the wing pattern and coloration of toxic butterflies—their shared appearance makes them seem to be a similarly noxious meal to their natural predators. Dissimulation—and simulation—are thus crucial features of mimicry.

Dissimulation (pretending to be what you are not) and simulation (mirroring or copying another) are also central to Nietzsche’s analysis of mimicry. However, he breaks from evolutionary biology’s understanding of mimicry in two key ways.Footnote ¹⁴ First, he argues that mimicry influences the development not only of human behavior but also of human values. It thus encompasses not only imitation but also assimilation—the process of absorbing the logic behind the model’s customs and beliefs. Second, whereas evolutionary biology construes mimicry in largely defensive and so passive terms, Nietzsche thinks that mimicry can also be understood in terms of aggression; it can serve the goals of both self-preservation and domination.

More specifically, aphorism 26 of Daybreak, “Animals and morality,” highlights Nietzsche’s understanding of mimicry as a crucial self-preservation strategy for the weak. There he argues that one adapts to the “social morality” of one’s place and time not only in order to evade the attention of “one’s pursuers”—that is, the authorities responsible for enforcing moral norms and codes—but also to gain an advantage over “one’s prey”—that is, those members of society who practice morality sincerely rather than strategically. Like animals, we learn to “control” and “disguise” ourselves in response to our environment. But whereas animals “adapt their colors to the color of their surroundings” or “adopt the forms and colors of another animal,” we “conceal” ourselves “under the universality of the concept ‘man’ or under society” (D 26). That is, we mimic not just the forms and behaviors of other human beings but also their values. Such mimicry permits the individual to pursue his own advantage insofar as assimilation makes his interests and society’s interests appear identical. Mimicry thus enables the individual to exploit custom to his own advantage.

The strategy of mimicry is thus the strategy of the weak, the strategy of those populations who, due to their relative lack of power, are forced to “go through their lives under changing pressure and coercion, in deep dependency” and so who are forced, in turn, to adjust their goals according to their resources and circumstances (GS 361 [1887]). Powerlessness, Nietzsche argues, disciplines the weak and, as a result, turns them into “masters” of “that incorporated and deep-rooted art of eternal art of hide-and-seek which in animals we call mimicry” (GS 361 [1887]). Furthermore, the dependent condition of the weak necessitates greater self-control as well as greater self-awareness (D 26). On the one hand, the survival of the weak depends on their ability to assess their effect on the strong, to know whether they are perceived as friend or foe, predator or prey. As a result, they are forced to look back upon themselves and consider themselves more objectively. In addition, the weak are, of necessity, more distrustful of their own passions. Mimicry, in other words, requires identification, analysis, and repurposing both of one’s own and others’ behaviors and codes. Thus, mimicry is a pedagogy for developing the intellect. It thereby makes the weak both smarter and more prudent than the strong.

Daybreak’s aphorism 205, “Of the People of Israel,” applies the analysis of mimicry outlined in D 26 to the question of Jewish assimilation in nineteenth century Europe, and further deepens that analysis by demonstrating mimicry’s revolutionary potential. More specifically, Nietzsche hypothesizes that European Jews’ extended subjection to and mimicry of European nobility put them in a position to (1) understand European nobles better than they understood themselves, (2) excel European nobles in the practice of European nobility, and (3) use their knowledge and distinction to their own political advantage—namely, to conquer Europe without resorting to violence. In other words, Nietzsche shows how European Jews’ subaltern positionality—and the mimicry it entailed—made them more noble, that is, more capable of self-mastery, than the European nobility (cf. BGE 250–1).

Nietzsche’s description in D 205 of the Jewish experience of assimilation in Europe as an “eighteen century schooling” [Schule von achtzehn Jahrhunderten] and “apprenticeship” [Übungszeit] points back to the pedagogical function of mimicry highlighted in D 26. Europeans, he argues, spent two centuries attempting to make European Jews “contemptible” by “refusing them access to all honors, to everything honorable.” That is, Europeans tried to make European Jews contemptible by forcing them into a subaltern social position: making them pariahs by giving them access only to “dirtier trades” such as “usury.” However, Nietzsche argues, Europe’s “procedure” of economically and socially excluding European Jews achieved just the opposite. For the Jews’ subjugation ultimately proved to be a training in quintessential European virtues such as temperance [Besonnenheit and Beharrlichkeit], prudence [Überlistung and Ausnützung], and courage [Tapferkeit and Heroismus].

As a result of their “apprenticeship,” that is, being forced to exercise greater self-control and rely on intelligence in “terrible situations” due to their relative weakness, European Jews could endure adversity more nobly than their “less talented” European counterparts. They are, Nietzsche reports, the least likely among Europeans to turn to drink or suicide “in order to escape a profound embarrassment [Verlegenheit].” Their ability to suffer shameful situations reflects a capacity for self-mastery that surpasses that of European nobles, whose “chivalrous noble sentiments” [ritterlich vornehme Empfindungen] led them to prefer death or oblivion to a tarnished reputation (cf. D 199). Unlike European nobles whose sense of self-esteem was determined by and thus dependent upon the opinion of their peers, European Jews could “spurn being spurned” (spernere se sperni), that is contemptuously reject European contempt, because “they believed themselves called to the highest things”—namely to the “ancient God of the Jews.”Footnote ¹⁵ In other words, the Jewish God provided the basis for an alternative hierarchy from which European Jews could contemn European contempt. God’s good opinion as opposed to the good opinion of the European aristocracy mattered most. Jewish piety thus proved more noble than “chivalric” nobility because it entailed stricter forms of self-denial—namely enduring European persecution and pariahdom. The heroic suffering of European Jews then stems from the heroic act of self-dedication to something which they regarded as infinitely higher than themselves,Footnote ¹⁶ a dedication that enabled them to subordinate their security and their vanity to their piety.Footnote ¹⁷

European Jews not only became more proficient in European virtue than European nobles but also came to understand its underlying logic. Nietzsche highlights this aspect of the European-Jewish experience when he turns to consider the virtue of justice. “In addition to this, they understood how to create for themselves a feeling of power and of eternal revenge out of just those trades which one left to them (or to which one left them) (D 205).” Insight into the underlying logic of European justice—namely “requital” (Wiedervergeltung)Footnote ¹⁸—enabled European Jews to exploit the dishonorable trade to which Europe had “left” them. “[O]ne must say even in defense of their usury that without this occasionally pleasant and useful torture of their contemners it would have been difficult to preserve respect for themselves for so long. For our self-respect is bound to our ability to exercise requital in matters good and bad” (D 205). In other words, European Jews transformed the “base” practice of moneylending into something “noble”—namely a means for “preserving” their feelings of pride and confidence under conditions of subjugation.

Furthermore, the experience of subjugation and the mimicry it entailed provided them with a more comprehensive education in justice than their aristocratic counterparts. “At the same time, they do not let their revenge get easily carried away: because they all have the openness of mind [Freisinnigkeit], also of soul, to which the frequent change of place, of climate, of customs of neighbors and oppressors educated [erzieht] them” (D 205). Itinerancy and the conditions of dependency it imposed moderated the Jews’ desire for revenge because it educated them about the variability of geography, climate, and custom. Experiencing various ways of life tempered their attachment to any single way of life. They were thus less likely to demand satisfaction when customs were transgressed because they were not attached to one set of customs and beliefs. Ultimately, however, the experiences accrued from their subjugation profoundly intensified their capacity for self-mastery. “[T]hey possess by far the most experience in all human intercourse [Verkehr] and exercise [üben], even in passion, the caution [Vorsicht] of that experience” (D 205). European Jews had to exercise self-control “even in passion” because they were subject to so many conditions of limitation. Social adaptation, that is, mimicry and assimilation, thus necessarily develops the skill of self-mastery. Indeed, it requires the oppressed to exercise greater self-mastery than their oppressors.

Ultimately, Nietzsche hypothesizes, European Jews’ eighteen century schooling in European virtue—their mimicry of and assimilation to European customs and beliefs—put them in a position to conquer Europe without recourse to violence. That schooling, as I have argued, not only enabled them to understand European nobles better than they understood themselves but also made them superior to their rivals in the skills of virtue and self-mastery. As a result, their assimilation includes the potential to transform Europe politically and culturally, that is, to supplant European rule with Jewish rule and, in turn, replace inferior European values and practices with superior Jewish ones (e.g., piety, familial honor, marriage customs).Footnote ¹⁹ Nietzsche surmises that, even though European Jews lack the spiritual and bodily manners of European nobility, they will eventually come to inherit them as they “unavoidably” and “increasingly” intermarry with “the best of Europe’s nobility.” Indeed, through the process of intermarriage European Jews will eventually become so skilled in noble protocol that—as Europe’s “masters”—they will not even arouse “shame” in their European subjects. Precisely because of their excellence and superiority in nobility, Europe will not resent (and thus rebel against) but rather welcome and ultimately “rejoice” in their ascendency. To make that ascendency a reality, Nietzsche tells us, European Jews must, in the meantime, “distinguish themselves in every field of European distinction and stand among the first: until they are at the point at which they themselves determine what should distinguish” (D 205). Imitating and surpassing Europeans in their own aristocratic practices will put European Jews in a position to determine what counts as noble or honorable, that is, to transform Europe’s very understanding of nobility. Mimicry (in this case the repetition of European values and practices only with a difference) thus plays a central role in bringing about what Nietzsche describes in his later works as a “revaluation of values.”

At the same time, Nietzsche’s analysis of mimicry in Daybreak 26 and 205 highlights—if only implicitly—the deleterious effects of power for the powerful. Whereas the dependent condition of the weak forces them to become both smarter and more prudent, the noble’s power has the opposite effect. He is not suspicious of the weak, because his power gives him no reason to fear them. Power makes him at once less prudent and less self-aware.Footnote ²⁰ It is thus a weakness insofar as it causes the noble to be both more reckless in his behavior and more biased with regard to his own powers and abilities. The noble’s power makes him overconfident with respect to the weak and blinds him to the different kinds of power available to them. Physical and social or political power forestall the development of mental power.

Nietzsche makes explicit the inverse relationship between power and intelligence in Twilight of the Idols. There he argues that the weak are “cleverer” (klüger) and “possess more mind” (haben mehr Geist) (X 14). This is because the weak need “mind,” which Nietzsche here defines as “prudence, patience, cunning, dissimulation, great self-control, and all that is mimicry,” in order to overcome the physical or sociopolitical disparity between themselves and the strong (X 14). Conversely, power makes the strong complacent—and so not only indifferent to the need for adaptation and novelty but also actively hostile to them (cf. BGE 260). The pride that the noble derives from his experience of superiority and the feelings of contempt that it generates impede his capacity to understand and so to adapt to the weak. In turn, his pride and contempt lead him unawares to disregard the potential threat posed by his adversaries. The strong cannot see the weak coming.

Noble Conscience and Its Weaknesses

Nietzsche’s analysis in the Genealogy’s second treatise reveals how certain aspects of the noble’s conscience—their desire for self-sacrifice, their vanity, and a belief in themselves as separate from nature—ultimately made him susceptible to the transformative mimicry of the slave. More specifically, it shows how the slave repeats those aspects of the noble’s conscience with a difference—namely by coupling them to Christianity’s figure of the “holy” or self-sacrificing God (GM II 22). Nietzsche argues that it is through that figure—and that figure alone—that the weak were able to “entangle” conscience, inextricably, with the “concept of God.” The result—Christian or “moralized bad conscience” (i.e., recognition of one’s irredeemable guilt and thus eternal punishment)—mimics and, at the same time, intensifies the noble’s conscience by attaching it to a being whose omnipotence utterly extinguishes the noble’s own capacity for self-sacrifice.

Nietzsche’s review of the Genealogy in his 1888 Ecce Homo provides a concise definition of conscience: “it is the instinct of cruelty which turns itself backwards after it can no longer discharge itself outwards” (III ‘GM’).Footnote ²¹ In other words, conscience is self-directed cruelty—the capacity to deny the natural drives and instincts so as to be able to adhere consistently to a particular code of behavior; it is the internalization of the expectations of one’s peers (cf. GM II 2–3, 16–8). Conscience then has its ultimate ground in cruelty. Cruelty is, for Nietzsche, a paradigmatic manifestation of the will to power—making suffer gratifies our will to power insofar as the spectacle of suffering provides evidence of our ability to overcome weaker, but still resistant, wills (cf. GM II 5–6, 18 and D 113).Footnote ²² Conscience is a refined form of cruelty insofar as it enables man to exercise his will to power on himself as opposed to others through the practice of self-denial (cf. GM II 2–3 and 16–8; cf. also D 29–30). It is thus self-directed cruelty transformed into an ideal (GM II 2); it is cruelty refined and made into a virtue: into selflessness, into self-denial, into self-sacrifice (GM II 18).

Nietzsche’s genealogy of conscience in the second treatise is at the same time a genealogy of vanity. Indeed, vanity is another name for conscience: a way of understanding oneself vis-à-vis the opinion of others. Furthermore, it reveals vanity as a core feature of the noble’s psychology. His self-understanding is mediated by and so dependent upon the opinion of other nobles. Their esteem determines his standing within the community and in turn his sense of self-worth (GM II 2). Moreover, because the power equilibrium that grounds the noble community is in constant flux, he is of necessity preoccupied with maintaining his own reputation in the eyes of other nobles (cf. GM II 8, 11 and HAH 92). He desires their respect and honor because it reflects and establishes for him certain degrees of power. Accordingly, the noble acts honorably because other nobles expect it and he conforms to those expectations because he wants and needs their honor and respect—because of his vanity.Footnote ²³

These two features of conscience—self-mastery and vanity—lead the noble to see himself as separate not only from his own nature, but also nature itself. As Nietzsche shows in GM II 2, the noble takes pride in and thus gains satisfaction from his belief that he has complete control over his natural instincts and drives. But this pride has its basis in a prejudice as to what the will is, that is, what it is that makes possible his “self-mastery”—namely that will is somehow independent of or distinct from nature (cf. D 31–3). In turn, his self-conceit leads him to believe that his power over himself, his power to maintain the continuity of his will over time, necessarily entails “mastery over circumstances, over nature and all lesser-willed more reliable creatures” (GM II 2). He believes that he is apart from nature and therefore superior to it. Indeed, this prejudice grounds the noble’s conception of virtue. As Nietzsche argues in GM II 18, to become conscious of the beautiful and the good and so of the “ideal,” the noble first had to become conscious of the ugly and the evil and so of the “real” (Kaufmann Reference Kaufmann1974, 253). He thus had to negate his own nature in order to affirm or say yes to himself. Of course, the noble does not initially judge his own nature to be inherently defective or corrupt. Nevertheless, the contempt that he comes to feel for his natural instincts makes possible such an interpretation. The noble’s excessive pride in his “self-mastery” opens a rift between himself and his own nature and that rift is the first step toward his downfall—which takes the form of slave morality or the moral interpretation of nature. The noble’s self-conceit—his belief that he is apart from and therefore superior to nature—is the condition of possibility for the moral interpretation of nature and hence the triumph of the weak over the strong.

Transformative Mimicry

Through “transformative” mimicry, the weak are able to exaggerate weaknesses in the noble’s conscience and turn those weaknesses against him. Whereas Nietzsche presents conscience as a natural development in man’s evolution, as a necessary adaptation to his enclosure within society (GM II 16), he presents “moralized bad conscience” (i.e., the internalization of guilt) as a teaching of the weak. The noble comes to see himself as a sinner (and thus guilty) only because the weak taught him that his very nature makes him so. Nietzsche traces the root cause of this mimetic transformation—the transformation of conscience into moralized bad conscience—directly to the concept of the self-sacrificing God of Christianity. Nietzsche’s analyses of the Christian doctrines that stem from that concept of God—namely, original sin and redemption, clarify that transformation. Whereas the doctrine of original sin both affirms and denies the noble’s belief in his own self-sovereignty, the doctrine of redemption imitates—only in a more radical form—the noble’s desire for self-sacrifice.

The movement of Nietzsche’s analysis from the concept of the “maximum” god in GM II 20 to the self-sacrificing God in II 22 makes clear that the teaching of original sin rests entirely upon the idea of the self-sacrificing God. Nietzsche argues that the idea of the “maximum” or omnipotent god facilitates the further internalization of guilt. God’s omnipotence poses a problem for man insofar as the condition of his absolute power entails man’s absolute indebtedness to god. If man can no longer pay off his debts it follows that he can never be absolved of his guilt. He thus finds himself in a perpetual state of indebtedness and therefore in a state of irredeemable punishment: “the prospect of a conclusive redemption shall now pessimistically close itself off once and for all; the gaze shall now bleakly deflect off, deflect back from a brazen impossibility; those concepts ‘guilt’ and ‘duty’ shall now turn themselves backwards…” (GM II 21). God’s omnipotence thus entails an absolute command that, due to its very nature, can never be fulfilled. Man’s inherent powerlessness, his total inability to fulfill his obligations, leaves him with no other option than to completely internalize his guilt, to blame himself for his being powerless and thus susceptible to sin in the first place. As a result, bad conscience fixes itself firmly in the debtor, it “settles, eats into, spreads out, and grows polyp-like in every breadth and depth” (GM II 21). He thus finds himself in a perpetual state of guilt and therefore in a state of irredeemable punishment. Ultimately, man’s impotence refers his guilt back to the “creditor,” the “causa prima of man”: “one thinks here of the beginning of the human race, of its progenitor, who is now burdened with a curse (‘Adam,’ ‘Original Sin,’ ‘unfreedom of the will’)” (GM II 21). The weak “close off” the prospect of a “conclusive redemption” by tracing man’s sinful condition back to his origins, to the ancestor of mankind, which in turn transforms that condition into a heritable trait.Footnote ²⁴ Adam’s disobedience, his act of sin, corrupted human nature such that human beings permanently lost the ability to see the good clearly and to will it unselfishly (Urban Reference Urban1995, 127). As a consequence of Adam’s sin, the human race inherits not only an inclination to sin but also inherits or shares in his guilt as well. Human beings are thus both sinful and guilty at their birth by virtue of their ancestry or heritage.

Nietzsche’s interpretation of the Christian doctrine of sin (“‘Adam’, ‘Original Sin’, ‘unfreedom of the will’”) in GM II 21 points to the role of the weak in the development of human guilt consciousness. In particular, it points to the weak’s understanding of the psychology of the noble type and how that understanding allows the weak to exploit (by repeating with a difference) the noble’s conscience. The weak find in the noble’s conscience a basis in the noble’s soul for making the latter hold himself responsible for his actions just as the weak hold him responsible for them. The weak affirm the noble’s belief that he is responsible for his actions, but they teach the noble that those actions are necessarily sinful insofar as they emanate from an irretrievably corrupt human nature. Sin is not simply this or that wrongful deed and so something that can be removed through the exercise of self-control. Rather, sin is the wrong orientation of the whole of human existence since Adam’s fall, from which no one can free themselves (Lohse Reference Lohse1963, 118). Sin thus cripples the human will insofar as it is something man does with his whole being. As Martin Luther puts it: “In the Scriptures ‘sin’ means not only the outward works of the body, but also everything which stirs and moves within it when the outward deeds occur—namely the inmost heart with all its powers, so that the word ‘do’ should mean: when man falls entirely into sin” (Luther Reference Luther and Böhlau1931, 7). Sin is therefore inevitable, and despite—or rather because of—its inevitability, man remains responsible for it. The Christian doctrine of sin thus mimics the noble’s belief in the sovereignty of his will by affirming it. It teaches him that he has responsibility for sin and so insists that he has the power to do otherwise. At the same time, the doctrine of sin transforms that belief by (paradoxically) denying his sovereignty. It teaches the inevitability of human wrongdoing and so insists on man’s powerlessness before sin.

Yet Christianity also offers to the noble a seductive escape. Nietzsche argues that the noble was tempted not only by the Christian doctrine of sin but even more so by its teaching on redemption, specifically by its presentation of the self-sacrificing God. That presentation mimics—only in a more extreme form—the noble’s desire for self-sacrifice. The Christian doctrine of sin raises a fundamental problem for man: eternal guilt condemns him to eternal punishment. Therefore, Nietzsche argues, the only possible solution is Christianity’s solution, “Christianity’s stroke of genius: God sacrificing himself for the guilt of man” (GM II 21). Because man’s nature is irretrievably sinful, he is totally incapable of the absolute obedience demanded by God, making it such that only God can save man from his sinful condition. Therefore, God must have mercy on man; only He can save man from himself.

Whereas the Christian doctrine of sin plays on the noble’s self-conceit regarding his own sovereignty, the Christian notion of the sacrificial God capitalizes on the noble’s idealization of self-sacrifice. Nietzsche shows throughout the second treatise that the psychology of nobility is rooted in a specific form of will to power—namely in the instinct for cruelty. The chief focus of the second treatise is the adaptation of that will to the novel conditions of society—how the instinct for cruelty turned back against itself when it could no longer discharge itself outwards (GM II 16). And, as he showed in Section 18, the product of that redirected cruelty was the ideal of selflessness, self-denial, and self-sacrifice. The means by which the noble came to discharge his power was, in other words, through exercising power over himself, through self-denial, that is, the denial of his own most basic instincts and drives. The noble’s new standard of value, the ideal of autonomy or complete self-mastery, thus has its ultimate grounds in the will to power—in the desire to inflict cruelty on oneself, to deny oneself, so as to demonstrate one’s power over oneself (cf. D 113 and GM II 2).

The figure of the self-sacrificing God returns to precisely these themes—to the instinct for cruelty, to self-sacrifice, as a paradoxical expression of the will to power. These themes, in turn, point back to the figure of the sovereign individual, to the noble type par excellence, and to its adherence to moralities of honor (GM II 2). Thus, Nietzsche demonstrates precisely what it was about slave morality that so tempted the noble: the mystery of the self-sacrificing divinity, the enormity of that god’s self-denial and the unimaginable power it reveals.

Section 8 of the Genealogy’s first treatise hints at this aspect of the noble’s religious and, ultimately, moral conversion. There Nietzsche suggests that it was the symbol of the ‘holy cross,’ that gruesome paradox of a ‘god on the cross,’ that seduced the noble and, in turn, “triumphed over all other ideals, over all more noble ideals” (GM I 8). The second treatise clarifies that puzzling suggestion by showing that what attracts the noble to the self-sacrificing God, in particular, is His will to power, specifically the degree of self-mastery or self-rule displayed in His self-sacrifice “for the salvation of man.” The noble was able to recognize himself in that “unthinkable, final, extreme cruelty and self-crucifixion of God” (GM I 8), in the strength of will and the capacity for self-constraint required by such an act—in its proof of power. He was, in turn, able to honor himself, his own strength and joy in ruling, in the self-sacrifice of the Christian God. The figure of the Christian God thus represents for Nietzsche an intensification of the sovereign individual, its most extreme configuration—a being whose omnipotence makes him truly sovereign (GM II 2).

Section 21 thus expands in detail on the passing mention of mimicry in Section 20. It expands on that theme by showing how one of the Christian God’s main features harmonizes with the noble’s psyche—namely his will to power or his desire to demonstrate his power through self-sacrifice. That harmony is, of course, no coincidence for Nietzsche. Rather it points back to the agency of the weak—to those subjugated populations who “by force” or “by mimicry” “assimilated themselves to the cult of the gods practiced by their lords” (GM II 20). For, Nietzsche’s analysis suggests, in assimilating themselves to the cult of gods practiced by the noble, the weak came to understand the noble’s deepest motivations, his most basic psychological needs and desires. The weak, in turn, used that understanding to exploit those needs and desires by appealing to a different yet fundamentally similar conception of divinity that was deeply attractive to the noble. That is to say, according to Nietzsche’s revised thesis in the second treatise, the slave triumphed over the noble by way of mimicry and assimilation. By interpreting and understanding the underlying logic of the noble’s customs and beliefs, the priest was able to erect a new ideal that appealed to the noble type in the form of a novel—but also familiar—divinity.

The second treatise thereby revises and clarifies the argument of the first. For whereas the genealogy of the first treatise culminates in the analysis of the “just God,” the genealogy of the second culminates in the analysis of the “holy God.” The first treatise largely ignores the problem of noble morality. One consequence of that neglect is that Nietzsche’s analysis cannot satisfactorily explain the noble’s conversion to slave morality. Insofar as it ignores the question of noble morality, it also ignores the psychology which serves as the basis of that morality. By focusing exclusively on the concept of the “just God,” Nietzsche sought to emphasize those features of Christianity which appealed specifically to the slave, in particular the promise that God will reward the good deeds of the righteous with eternal salvation and punish the evil deeds of the wicked with eternal damnation. In the second treatise, however, Nietzsche aims to bring out those features of the Christian God that appealed specifically to the noble. Whereas the concept of the just God emphasizes free will and the promise of future rewards and punishments, the concept of the holy God radically deemphasizes free will and so also future compensation for righteous or wicked deeds. Rather than emphasizing the future condition of man—his salvation or damnation—the concept of the holy God emphasizes his present condition—namely his condition of irremediable sin and so also of human guilt before God. And it is precisely this thought—the thought of “Guilt before God”—that enticed the noble by providing him with a novel, and ultimately even more extreme, way in which to exercise his will to power on himself (GM II 22). Through that thought, the weak found a way to replace the noble’s dependence upon the authority of beings with whom he shares approximately equal power, that is, other nobles, with a dependence upon the authority of an omnipotent being.

Moralized bad conscience thus represents a permutation or transformation of the noble’s conscience; it is both a reinterpretation and intensification of that conscience and, in particular, an intensification of the practice of self-tyranny. Moralized bad conscience is distinguished from conscience insofar as it calls for complete and total self-abnegation. It requires, in other words, that man recognize and affirm his “absolute unworthiness” (GM II 22). But, Nietzsche argues, even this radical act of self-denial works in the service of the self or ego insofar as the very act of self-denial gratifies the will to power. By denying himself to such an extreme degree the “man of bad conscience”—namely the weak, demonstrate, at the same time, an extremity of power, one that outstrips even the noble in terms of his capacity for selflessness, for self-denial, for self-sacrifice (cf. GM II 18 and BGE 52). The weak thus demonstrate their superiority over the noble through the most radical version of self-mastery, through a more radical form of asceticism—namely through the total negation of the self.