Bartos-ONeill 1

Alexandra Bartos-ONeill
POL S 310
3/18/16
Essay 3

When Morality is Gone: Nietzsches Messiah

When an average youth of today looks to the future, it is typically filled with hope and

wonder for what he or she may do next. When Friedrich Nietzsche looks to the future, it is bleak.

He sees no hope in the modern times that are fast approaching us and instead claims that

humankind has become corrupt and that they are no longer guided by true morals. Where light is

goodness and darkness is hatred, Nietzsche finds that the modern world is doomed. Nietzsches

book of essays, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, tells the story of grief and doom

that plagues the world and how it has become inherently rotten due to the divide between

powerful and weak and religion. However, Nietzsche, in his rejection of morals and religion, has

admitted to his own belief in a Messiah that will come save this nihilistic and negative world.

Nietzsche finds balance between light and dark, the doom he predicts and the hope he wants to

have in this Messiah which he establishes through the moral bankruptcy of the world, peace

during tension, and the qualities of his Messiah.

Nietzsche first asserts the moral bankruptcy of the world and its people in order to

establish the need for a savior to rescue them. The origins of good and bad, light and dark, and

basic morals, tell us that these terms have been sought and established in the wrong place

(Nietzsche 25). Instead of being associated with good deeds, it is associated with the noble,

powerful, high-stationed (Nietzsche 26). This suggests that morals, from the beginning, never

existed in the definition the general populace has today. In its place, as Nietzsche states, are

definitions decided by power where the powerful have decided that their image is what must be
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good and in opposition, all the actions of the commoners would be viewed as bad. Nietzsche

furthers this insight with his linguistic analysis of the words, good and bad. By likening the idea

of a master race to good, Nietzsche theorizes through linguistics the German word, gut,

(translated to good) gives the connation of signify[ing] godlike [and] the man of godlike race

(Nietzsche 31). He establishes an immense power divide between the aristocracy and the poor

that leads to the disintegration of what we know of as our moral compass. This leads to the world

being sick and in desperate need of someone with a correct moral compass, not biased by class

division, to guide them.

The idea of the world being sick and morally bankrupt is furthered by Nietzsches

rejection of practically all forms of religion. According to Nietzsche, all ways of living that are a

result of religion make mankindill with the effects of priestly navet in medicine and goes

on to list fasting and other religious constraints (Nietzsche 32). He reasons that these religion and

priests are on a pedestal similar to that of aristocracy and have since been feeding the public

notions of good and bad that are not based on their true conceptions, but rather on priests desire

to maintain their power. Nietzsche would even suggest that, instead, priests are the truly great

haters in world history and are the most evil enemies as opposed to morally just people

(Nietzsche 33). By asserting this, Nietzsche implies that all those who follow religion blindly are

following the priests into moral bankruptcy and are thus, sick at the core of their being. Religion,

to him, has no value in the discussion of morals. At this point, morals, as the modern world

knows it, do not exist and have vanished into the long perpetuation of power and class divide.

Nietzsche rejects religion perhaps because he sees it as worsening the problem and not a solution

he finds viable, though in the end, his solution may not be all that different from what religion

requests.
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This illness of society especially becomes problematic as it causes the stagnancy and/or

regression of society. The result of a sick and morally bankrupt society is that nothing today

wants to grow greater and that we will become weary of man (Nietzsche 44). This suggests

that humankind will regress into mediocrity and the past, hence Nietzsches bleak view of the

future. Nietzsche even likens this regression to barbarism and beastly behavior, referencing

previous eras as devoid of feeling or conscience [and] destructive (Nietzsche 42). This is not

only evidence of a return to the past, but also of the terrible environment the world is currently in

due to a lack of appropriate morality. After the world has fallen so far into destruction, it is in

need of a solution. To save humankind from this regression, Nietzsche begins to see and come to

terms with the balance between good and bad, light and dark in where he implies potential peace

in that dichotomy.

After addressing the depth of danger modern society is in, Nietzsches vision of the bleak

future unfolds as it becomes clear there is tension between matters of light and dark. A creature

that [takes] sides against itself could potentially lead to a tension, a hope [that] man [is] not

a goal but a great promise (Nietzsche 85). Underneath the pessimism, Nietzsche appears to

have a glimmer of hope, a promise for the future of humankind, which rests within the

unresolved tension of the argument between light and dark. This peace within tension is the

beginning of Nietzsches solution. He suggests that this tension is profoundthat it has risen

even higher [in the] battleground of these opposed values (Nietzsche 52). Being profound and

of higher nature, Nietzsche frames the entering of his solution, his Messsiah, to the moral

degradation of society through the existence of this tension. He suggests that it possesses the

power to save the world from its illness.

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Having peaceful tension strike a balance between light and dark, Nietzsche then goes into

the qualities of his solution, his version of a Messiah, which it must possess. He first addresses

what the savior wouldnt be in his description of the blonde beast and ressentiment. Nietzsche

finds that the blonde beasts are those of noble race who are the beasts of prey (Nietzsche

40-41). Those that are opposed to them, the weak and the commoners, are people of ressentiment

who would revolt against the good ideals of the aristocracy. Instead of being viewed as good

for revolting, the people of ressentiment suffer the same bias to power division and Nietzsche

states that this is self-deception interpret[ing] weakness as freedom (Nietzsche 46). He seems

to imply that revolution is not the answer to the moral dilemma he has seen in modern society.

Instead, revolution would only reverse the order of power. In the example he gives on the

dynamic between the Romans and the Jews, he shows that in the past, the Romans had the

power, but as time passed, the Romans faded and instead, today, Rome has been defeated

beyond all doubt (Nietzsche 53). Nietzsche suggests that this dynamic, this switch of position

and power, does not offer solace to moral problem, but only perpetuates it. When someone is

removed from power, another will replace him or her. The qualities necessary for saving modern

society from nihilistic attitudes do not exist with the people of ressentiment, but instead with

those of a higher nature.

Throughout his essays on morals, Nietzsche consistently references qualities reminiscent

of Platos own theories of a higher being that Nietzsche deems necessary for his version of the

Messiah. As previously mentioned, the beginning of his solution begins with this tension

between light and dark that is profound and of a higher nature (Nietzsche 52). He then

begins his description of a man who possesses that ideal, higher quality. Much like Platos theory

of idealism and higher enlightenment, he talks of a person who has emerge[d] again and again
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into the light and wishes to see a glance of something perfecta man who justifies man

(Nietzsche 44). Here, Nietzsche showcases his version of the Messiah. He espouses the qualities

of perfection, of a person shrouded in light, in a similar fashion to how Plato describes mans

departure from the cave into the light to see truth and perfection. Nietzsche hopes that this

Messiah of his will help rid the world of ideals manufactured by those in power and restore the

true good (Nietzsche 47). The theory of this man to come solve the disparity and confusion

between good and bad epitomizes Nietzsches solution to the balance of light and dark in the

modern world. Because it is seemingly impossible for groups of people those of the nobler race

and those of ressentiment to decide good and bad without bias or influence of power, it is

necessary for a pure, third party to come and arrive to save them all. However, he does still

possess a sense of negativity in the fact that he doubts the possibility of the arrival of this

Messiah, but, in the end, Nietzsche concludes that he must come one day, emerg[ing[ into the

light[and] bring[ing] home the redemption of this reality (Nietzsche 96). By nature of his

solution and mention of redemption and light, Nietzsche has laid the foundation for a world in

desperate need of saving and with a populace corrupted and unable to help itself. Perhaps

inadvertently, while rejecting the idea of religion, Nietzsche has created a Messiah in his own

solution to humanitys problems.

Nietzsches solution reveals the human fear and despair in all of us. Despite a relatively

conclusive belief that modern society possesses no morality and that the world is doomed into

fatal regression, along with a fervent rejection of religion and the people who follow it,

Nietzsche still clings to a form of hope. While having doubts, he still asserts his version of the

Messiah will come to save modern society from the rut it has dug itself in. In the battle between

light and dark, his pessimism shows, but so does his fear and despair of the thought of living in a
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doomed and cruel world. When no other viable solution presents, Nietzsche and the rest of

humankind can only hope.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm and Walter Arnold Kaufmann. On the Genealogy of Morals. New

York: Vintage, 1967. Print.