29: Too Good For This World (I: The Saint)

Back in season one, we teased the idea of Nietzsche looking for some way to elevate mankind beyond the natural world. While Nietzsche is celebrated for his uncompromising critique of Christian values and otherworldly metaphysics, the advantage of these ideas was that they showed man an ideal which was beyond the cynical view that human beings are simply "clever animals who invented knowledge". Nietzsche floats the idea of the saint, the artist, and the philosopher in the essay, "Schopenhauer as Educator", as figures that showed forward a way beyond nature: a leap into something above mankind.

Perhaps the most complex figure to examine in this formulation is the saint. Those of you who have been listening along since the beginning of the podcast, or who have read The Antichrist, may wonder how it is that Nietzsche ever offered a positive assessment of the life-denying holy men of the world at all. But Nietzsche, in his early writings, expresses an admiration for the power of the saint - the ascetic priest, the sage, the arahant, or whomever we might consider from world-history - as one in whom the "I" has melted away and power over the desires has been obtained. Unfortunately, all great things in the world, it seems, come from prolongued spiritual and physical torture, and the saint is no different. Beneath his power is a dark desire to set himself above the world by refuting the physical in favor of the abstract. Even though the priest offered the ideal to mankind, it was the ideal of nihilism - of seeking after nothingness. Why was this type tolerated among ancient societies at all, Nietzsche wonders? Because of the saint's remarkable power to strike fear into the hearts of men, and his utility for redirecting the destructive drives of the weak and the botched of every society. Join us for the first of several episodes examining these candidates Nietzsche entertained throughout his career for "higher people" - the type who is "too good for this world", the saint.