Nietzsche was convinced that to realize oneself demands rigorous autonomy. It requires continually “overcoming” oneself—that is, the subservient self, bad-conscience self, decadent self, idealized self, disproportionately shaped by others or out of touch with reality. As he saw it, one’s life force or “spirit” is a “will to power,” that is, an instinctual-rational urge or “passion” that seeks to “discharge its strength,” contending with decadence—with cultural or religious authoritarianism or heteronomy and anti-life ideals.
By “will to power” of one’s “spirit,” which means “discharging its strength,” Nietzsche understood “will” to indicate one’s natural instincts working with the empirically obvious world in a reasonable way—in contrast to any unnatural castration of instinct or inclination or focus on some nonempirically contrived “world.” In his exaggerated style, he even once claimed that the real cause of the quality and power of one’s life is more accurately one’s metabolism and natural passion or even the wildness or frenzy of Dionysus. For him, one could not separate the mind from the fleshly body—or the brain from its operations called “mind.” One’s diet as well as environment affect the mind as much as purely psychological causes or thoughts.60
Ironically, the “will to power,” however, necessitates what he called a “going under.” But “going under” did not mean deference to an Absolute, nor did it insinuate some diminution of one’s discharging one’s strength, much less becoming subservient to someone’s ethics of “improvement.” Instead, it involved a thorough critique of oneself and one’s ideas, as he described, a constant “overcoming of oneself,” equal in challenging one’s subjectivity to a shedding of the alleged objective values, which are the false security of authoritarianism and heteronomy’s imposed ideals. This “going under” then generates one’s own project of revaluating all values from which one then “goes over.”
The “will to power” demands an honest thinking for oneself. It flourishes from trusting one’s instinct and reason that does not engage in ignoring the actual life, which is empirically sensed. Much less does it call the actual and only world mere “appearance,” or hate anything that changes. To be autonomous means being open to continual process of change, questioning everything, of loving life as it is rather than resenting it or fearing it while hoping for something easier or more pleasant. It urges one to perfect the true, autonomous self through maximizing its power over itself, even in the reasonable and constructive sublimation of one’s desires.
It does not eliminate all ideals, values, or authorities, but avoids any values that are self-contradictory or not life-affirming. It devotes itself to examine all possible values, a “revaluation of values,” even if one must say “No” in a culture that says “Yes,” or one must say “Yes” to counter culture’s “No.” This means any ethics must be able to stand on its own merit within actual relations, not coerced by some heteronomous institution with its absolutized sacred texts and stagnant, unrealistic dogma. To engage in this revaluation of all values is neither easy nor popular nor comfortable, nor does it compromise its positions by insincerely agreeing with others. But it optimizes real life.
The “camel” stage is one of willingly tolerating “burdens.” As a “camel,” one willingly takes on or attempts to tolerate everything that will require one’s maximum strength of will and instinct. To most people, such choices appear stupid, an invitation to disaster, or a lack of common sense. But it is necessary in this “camel” stage to take on the maximum burdens, until one decides they can no longer be accommodated. At that point, the “camel” journeys to the lonely desert and finally dumps those burdens there. Of course, he admits this process is difficult for spirit. But without challenge, one fails to grow. What are these “burdens” one willingly bears?
In Nietzsche’s own words, which are often a little opaque or cryptic, but which finally smack the reader with the worthiness of the type of courage and strength or resolve manifest in this “camel” stage, he asks about the “burdens” and novel courage of autonomy in the form of questions:
“Is it not humbling oneself to wound one’s haughtiness? Letting one’s folly shine to mock one’s wisdom?
Or is it this: parting from our cause when it triumphs? Climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter?61
Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and, for the sake of the truth, suffering hunger in one’s soul?
Or is it this: being sick and sending home the comforters and making friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want?
Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: loving those who despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us?”62
Since the primary thrust of the “three metamorphoses of the spirit” is obvious to show how difficult it is to arrive at autonomy, one’s real self, which is discernable by the way he describes the “lion” and “child” stages, the “camel” shows, as Nietzsche called it, the limits of the “beast of burden which renounces and is reverent.”63 One’s most difficult task in life is to find oneself and be oneself when one is surrounded by the plethora of heteronomous cultural forces imposing themselves on one’s psyche, all with their imaginary causes, inflated self-regard, uncontested chimeras, decadent ressentiment, and coercion—all the absolutized “religion” or other proposed absolutes.
In this quest for one’s own self through becoming truly autonomous, the “burdens” are left behind, the camel metamorphizes into a lion. But that would require another book with a very different issue. The disposition of the camel of simply reverently renouncing only serves as the first step of the required “going under” for the survival of humanity.
The specific burdens we will examine in this study are the burdens (1) of the bifurcation of humanity; (2) of inflexible faith; (3) of an inherited faith of miracles, mystery and authority; (4) of the limits of human reason; (5) of the problem of how one views death; and (6) of the question of how to verify claims that conflate the historical and mythical. We will be examining them in a Christian setting primarily, although at relevant points must show how common the burden is in other religions.
NOTES
1. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford Press, 1964). In his collected works, both in English and German, he has a variety of articles that address the negative side of “culture,” which he often called “demonic” when it pretended to be the ultimate concern but was not. In his later years, he also analyzed primarily Western art, attempting to distinguish religious style from religious form, and the latter did not have to have a religious subject in representational style, but was basically a breaking of forms, which fit his criteria of final revelation, which he found more in abstract expressionism than other forms. See his On Art and Architecture (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1987).
2. Jefferson argued that each person has been provided by his Creator with sufficient reason and also responsibility to ascertain and live by truth as he sees it, especially as pertains to his duties to his Creator, so the latter is off-limits to any government. Truth will stand on its own. Therefore, “it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.” Thomas Jefferson, “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,” June 12, 1779, Papers 2: facing 305, in The Founder’s Constitution, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, Volume Five: Amendments I–XII (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), p.