Core LinkDenying One's Instincts

Linked from Essay II, Section 22: "He apprehends in 'God' the ultimate antithesis of his own ineluctable animal instincts..."

 

quotesAnd he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, 'O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.'"

From The Gospel According to Matthew, 2nd Ed., Richmond: University of Richmond, n.d.: p. 50

Reader's Questions

  • Consider what Jesus is asking of God here, and what Jesus decides to do. How is Jesus denying his own instincts? Which ones? How would Nietzsche read Jesus' decision to do "as thou wilt" in the Passion narrative?

quotes...the savage lives within himself; social man lives always outside himself; he knows how to live only in the opinion of others, it is, so to speak, from their judgment alone that he derives the sense of his own existence."

From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on Inequality, p. 136

Readers' Question

  • How would Rousseau read the passage by Nietzsche? Would Rousseau's "savage man" be capable of interpreting his "animal instincts" in the way that Nietzsche claims, as "a form of guilt before God"? Would Rousseau's civilized man be capable? Why or why not?
  • In a broader sense, how do Rousseau's depiction of natural and civilized man differ from Nietzsche's depiction of humans in these stages of civilization?

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