Before we examine the further consequences of this mental state, let us acknowledge that it is not through his ‘guilt’ and ‘sin’ that man has got into this condition, but through a series of errors of reason; that it was the fault of the mirror if his image appeared so dark and hateful to him, and that that mirror was his work, the very imperfect work of human imagination and power of judgment. In the first place, a nature that is only capable of purely unegoistic actions is more fabulous than the phoenix; it cannot even be clearly imagined, just because, when closely examined, the whole idea ‘unegoistic action’ vanishes into air. No man ever did a thing which was done only for others and without any personal motive; how should he be able to do anything which had no relation to himself, and therefore without inward obligation (which must always have its foundation in a personal need)? How could the ego act without ego? A God who, on the contrary, is all love, as such a one is often represented, would not be capable of a single unegoistic action, whereby one is reminded of a saying of Lichtenberg’s which is certainly taken from a lower sphere: We cannot possibly feel for others, as the saying is; we feel only for ourselves. This sounds hard, but it is not so really if it be rightly understood. We do not love father or mother or wife or child, but the pleasant sensations they cause us; or, as Rochefoucauld says: ‘Si on croit aimer sa maîtresse pour l’amour d’elle, on est bien trompé.’ To know the reason why actions of love are valued more than others, not on account of their nature, namely, but of their usefulness, we should compare the examinations already mentioned, On the Origin of Moral Sentiments. But should a man desire to be entirely like that God of Love, to do and wish everything for others and nothing for himself, the latter is impossible for the reason that he must do very much for himself to be able to do something for the love of others. Then it is taken for granted that the other is sufficiently egoistic to accept that sacrifice again and again, that living for him – so that the people of love and sacrifice have an interest in the continuance of those who are loveless and incapable of sacrifice, and, in order to exist, the highest morality would be obliged positively to compel the existence of un-morality (whereby it would certainly annihilate itself). Further: the conception of a God disturbs and humbles so long as it is believed in; but as to how it arose there can no longer be any doubt in the present state of the science of comparative ethnology; and with a comprehension of this origin all belief falls to the ground. The Christian who compares his nature with God’s is like Don Quixote, who undervalued his own bravery because his head was full of the marvellous deeds of the heroes of the chivalric romances – the standard of measurement in both cases belongs to the domain of fable. But if the idea of God is removed, so is also the feeling of ‘sin’ as a trespass against divine laws, as a stain in a creature vowed to God. Then, perhaps, there still remains that dejection which is inter-grown and connected with the fear of the punishment of worldly justice or of the scorn of men; the dejection of the pricks of conscience, the sharpest thorn in the consciousness of sin, is always removed if we recognise that though by our own deed we have sinned against human descent, human laws and ordinances, still that we have not imperilled the ‘eternal salvation of the Soul’ and its relation to the Godhead. And if man succeeds in gaining philosophic conviction of the absolute necessity of all actions and their entire irresponsibility, and absorbing this into his flesh and blood, even those remains of the pricks of conscience vanish. Nietzsche
Nietzsche is half right, and it is precisely that half which turns against him. He is right that fallen man loves neither father nor mother, neither wife nor child, but the pleasant sensation they cause him; right that, examined closely, the „purely unegoistic act” dissolves into air wherever the soul performing it has not yet been healed. What he calls a universal law of human action, St Maximus the Confessor had named centuries earlier philautia — disordered self-love, „mother of all the passions” — and had diagnosed it just as radically: that it creeps even into the act believed pure, tinting every glance, every choice, every gift. The difference is not one of observation but of a single logical step Nietzsche refuses to take: he mistakes the illness for the nature. He conflates the state of fallen man with man’s nature as such, and from that conflation draws a metaphysical law where the Fathers saw only a clinical diagnosis — exact, but of a patient, not of health itself.
The patristic distinction alone can part these strands: kata physin, para physin, hyper physin. Self-love is not evil in itself — the instinct of self-preservation, care for one’s own health, the natural desire for good are kata physin, according to nature. It becomes para physin, against nature, when it usurps the place owed to love of God and neighbor, when it makes of every other person merely a mirror of one’s own pleasure — precisely Rochefoucauld’s portrait, which Nietzsche himself quotes: „Si on croit aimer sa maîtresse pour l’amour d’elle, on est bien trompé.” But there is also hyper physin: the same nature, raised by grace above itself, where love ceases to be transaction and becomes pure gift. Nietzsche calls the unegoistic act more fabulous than the phoenix — and he is perfectly right so long as he remains shut within kata and para physin. But this phoenix has existed, once, historically, not as an argument but as an event: Philippians 2:6-8 — „He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant… He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death.” The Cross is not a theory about the possibility of the unegoistic act; it is the act itself, once for all, before which every psychology of interest falls silent.
Here lies the subtlest error in the passage: transferring the human psychological economy — acting always from a lack, an inward need seeking fulfillment — onto God Himself. „A God who is all love would not be capable of a single unegoistic action” — but this assumes divine love works by the same mechanism as ours, through lack satisfied by another. Trinitarian theology says the opposite: love within the Holy Trinity does not proceed from lack but is the overflow of a fullness — Cappadocian perichoresis, not transaction but eternal communion without interest, since there is nothing the Persons of the Trinity might gain from one another. To judge uncreated love by the instrument of created psychology is like measuring the ocean with the cup from which one last drank — the cup remains true to what it is, but testifies only about itself, not about the ocean.
As for conscience and guilt: Nietzsche believes that once belief in God is removed, only the fear of social shame and worldly punishment remains, and that the philosophic conviction of the absolute necessity of all actions — determinism carried to its end — dissolves even that remainder. But syneidesis, as described by St Isaac the Syrian and St Mark the Ascetic, is not fear of others’ tongues, nor calculation of consequences; it is the inward witness of a real rupture between image and likeness, the voice saying that something of what you are has been betrayed, not merely that something visible has been punished. And the price Nietzsche asks in exchange for silencing this voice is greater than it appears: to escape guilt through absolute necessity, one must surrender freedom itself — autexousion, the power of self-determination without which man is no longer the image of God but a link in a chain. The wound is healed by removing the eye that sees it.
Even contemporary psychology does not unreservedly support the thesis Nietzsche presents as self-evident: Batson’s empathy-altruism hypothesis and the research it spawned have questioned this very universal „psychological egoism,” showing that motivation can arise, at least sometimes, from genuine concern for another rather than merely from the pleasant sensation the other causes us. But even this correction does not reach the root — it remains on the plane of fallen nature, debating whether the illness is milder than supposed. Only grace changes the very ground from which the act proceeds, moving it from lack into gift.
And, finally, the mirror. Nietzsche has, once more, a correct intuition turned to a wrong conclusion: he says it was not guilt that brought man into this state, but a mirror — the very imperfect work of human imagination and judgment. True — but the crooked mirror is not the human mind left to itself; it is precisely the unconfessed passion, the kenodoxia which, after Evagrius, always needs a witness, a mirror in which to see and measure itself. Fallen man does not see himself directly; he sees himself in the mirror of the other, in praise received or contempt suffered, exactly like Narcissus bent over water that would not hold his face. Nietzsche wishes to remove from the equation the most feared Witness — God — believing that this alone frees him from the mirror’s distortion. But he remains, without meaning to, before a mirror still: only now it is human judgment, „the very imperfect power of judgment,” itself raised to the rank of God. There is only one Mirror that does not distort the face but straightens it: „But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is not man’s imagination that corrects the darkened image — but the grace which, beholding it, transfigures it.
