The distinction between agent and action in Christian philosophy, exemplified by the ethic “love the sinner but hate the sin”, also ensured equality for Christians. In Christianity a man is no longer is judged by his actions, but by an intrinsic value afforded to the soul, spirit or body. Yet it is not only this intrinsic value that contributes to the equality of individuals. These three aspects of soul, spirit, and body are not at all meaningless metaphysical notions in Christianity, but rather are symmetrical with three figures of equality in the New Testament: We all suffer, we all sin, we all eat.
Thus the soul, spirit, and body do not belong entirely to a metaphysical or ontological positivism. The aspects of being are also defined negatively by suffering, sin and hunger. These extrinsic considerations given to the three aspects are negative, and the positive intrinsic nature serves to satisfy the extrinsic needs just as Jesus died out of compassion for humanity, forgave humanity, and fed humanity. The intrinsic is represented, in the ultimate, as the inheritance the father gives the son, while the three extrinsic factors are no more than a human condition, and even an evil that can be counteracted by the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. For Nietzsche, these virtues are nihilistic. Christian philosophy only reinforces the negative, rendering passion evil as suffering, action evil as sin, and the physical body evil as need.
The Christian theological division of agent and action itself is artificial for Nietzsche, if not all out false. For him, it is impossible for a person not to be equal to their actions or for their worth not to be defined by their actions. Further, by affirming the division between agent and action in ideology we only perpetuate that other division between agent and patient in reality, which is to say we perpetuate the system of masters and slaves.
Not able to separate an individual from their actions in the Christian fashion, neither can Nietzsche see the difference between the excellent man and the man of excellent actions, nor between the evil man and the man of evil actions. An idea of excellence is to me plainly what Nietzsche meant by “the superior individual”, even if the excellent man must also be evil. If the excellent must be evil, it is precisely because the Christian ethic renders action extrinsic and the extrinsic as entirely necessary evil. Thus the superior man, who must also be a man of action, must necessarily be evil.
For Nietzsche the Christian morality reinforces the power relation under the illusion of erasing all power relations. But this erasing of power relations entails the favoring of the intrinsic over the extrinsic; and this division further perpetuates the favoring of the interior over the exterior, which only reintroduces the very dominance of one individual over another, the master over the slave, the self over the Other. After all, Christ clearly states that it is better to console the suffering, forgive the sinner and feed the hungry than it is to be consoled, forgiven and fed. For Nietzsche’s ontology, this means none other than that such a person is the superior individual. Pity is thus nothing more than a power relation.
Christianity, and that Christian invention known as liberal democracy, both seem to profess equality, yet Nietzsche only sees that one man still commands another and no one yet commands themselves. Thus the “equal” only disguises the subjection of the weak that must be overcome in order to escape living as a slave. Yet the direct comparison of one person to another in terms of superiority or inferiority offends the Christian moral sense because we are caught in a contradiction: Everyone is equal because of suffering, sin and hunger, but equal or not we are much better off than the suffering, the sinner and the hungry if we are consoling, forgiving or feeding them.
Thus, by venerating the virtuous individual in these three cases, the three figures of equality give rise to a greater inequality as a function of the duality between the positive, intrinsic and interior, and the negative, extrinsic and exterior. We are left with a good soul in an evil world, a positive being for an evil existence. A religion that catered to the prostitutes, lepers, thieves and tax collectors, the outsiders, only served to reinforce the division between those above and those below, those on the inside and those on the outside, and those with and those without. Such is the contradictory nature of morality.
The Journal of Magnus Opium 