idiotropic

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes of “Unconditional Duties”:

All those who feel they need the strongest words and sounds, the most eloquent gestures and postures, in order to be effective at all…talk of “duties,” and actually always of duties that are supposed to be unconditional. Without that they would lack the justification for their great pathos, and they understand this very well. Thus they reach for moral philosophies that preach some categorical imperative, or they ingest a goodly piece of religion….Because they desire the unconditional confidence of others, they need first of all to develop unconditional self-confidence on the basis of some ultimate and indisputable commandment that is inherently sublime, and they want to feel like, and be accepted as, its servants and instruments.

Two years prior, in 1880, Dostoevsky published The Brothers Karamazov, whose famous chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” ruminates on a very similar theme. In this intensely ironic parable in which the Grand Inquisitor addresses Christ, Dostoevsky writes:

In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide. But didst Thou not know he would at last reject even Thy image and Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden of free choice? They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in Thee, for they could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou hast caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems.

The Grand Inquisitor informs Jesus that the Church has had to perfect his work by adding to it the kind of spiritual bondage that allows people to live untroubled, in service to commandments that are — on the Church’s authority — inherently sublime.

These passages share a subtext, namely this: that religion functions primarily as a means to negate the fundamental freedom that comes with existence, because that freedom is too heavy for most to bare. By its simple imperatives, its categories of good and evil, it lifts from its adherents the burden of being arbiter of their own lives.

I agree that religion so functions, but is that necessarily cause for contempt? The inability of the average human to deal with the complex ambiguities of life is independent of religion; if he had not this mechanism of self-indenture, he would devise another. In light of this, it might be inevitable for there to exist various ways for us to indenture ourselves (indeed there are others besides religion, capitalism for one). But religion goes further. Not only does it enslave, it claims to exalt. It claims to empower as it thrives on subjugation. It demands respect for the ignoble task of making the feeble-minded absolutely certain of truths that do not exist.

I have to side with Nietzsche in contempt of religion; not only does it feed the “will to ignorance,” but it deceitfully claims to do the opposite. If we are going to throw ourselves into bondage out of some profound ennui, we should at least be honest with ourselves about it (cf. Heidegger’s Being & Time). Digging deeper into this honest interpretation of life may lead us to better understand the very condition in which we find ourselves — questions and answers over which religion pretends to have ultimate authority.