Bad conscience and the ascetic ideal

Vitalism Session 2

Greetings Archedeliacs,

Welcome to the second session of the seminar on vitalism, focused on Essays 2 and 3 of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. It is not too late to join. The schedule of readings and an introductory spiel are here. The last session generated a lively and high-quality discussion in the comments section. An audio version of this post appears below the paywall.

Today I'm going to consider N’s treatment of the origins of the “bad conscience” and the related theme of how “the ascetic ideal” gets expressed in different historical epochs and in different human types. Then I will pick out a few themes in the third essay that become ingredients for a suggestion that emerges there, namely that modern science and Christianity have common roots, or that modern science is a late expression of -- the direction taken by -- the Christian revolution in the course of its historical development. Even more arrestingly, N claims that atheism, too, is a natural outgrowth of the ascetic ideal at the heart of Christianity. In other words, that Christianity somehow consumes itself. Let's dive in.