Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I, §17: “Metaphysical explanations”
“The young man values metaphysical explanations, because they show him something highly significant in things which he found unpleasant or despicable, and if he is dissatisfied with himself, the feeling becomes lighter when he recognises the innermost world-puzzle or world-misery in that which he so strongly disapproves of in himself. To feel himself less responsible and at the same time to find things more interesting — that seems to him a double benefit for which he has to thank metaphysics. Later on, certainly, he gets distrustful of the whole metaphysical method of explanation; then perhaps it grows clear to him that those results can be obtained equally well and more scientifically in another way: that physical and historical explanations produce the feeling of personal relief to at least the same extent, and that the interest in life and its problems is perhaps still more aroused thereby.”
What Nietzsche Sees, and Where He Is Right
The diagnosis is exact, and older than he is. The first “explanation” in which a man took shelter is the one in Eden: “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). Adam moves the blame in two directions: toward the woman, and, more quietly, toward God, who gave her to him. The woman moves it further: “The serpent deceived me” (3:13). The Psalmist knows the mechanism by name: “Do not incline my heart to words of wickedness, to make excuses for sins” (Psalm 140:4 LXX). And Abba Dorotheos of Gaza named it the root of every conflict: self-justification.
Saint Augustine describes in the Confessions (Book V) exactly the experience of Nietzsche’s young man. In the days when he was a Manichaean, he liked to believe that it was not he who sins but some other nature within him, and his pride delighted to be outside the blame. Manichaeism gave him, then, both benefits of the aphorism: “less responsible” and “more interesting,” for in a cosmic war between light and darkness his own small failing became a battlefield of the world.
Orthodoxy closes this door firmly, and it closes it metaphysically. Saint Basil the Great shows, in his homily “That God Is Not the Author of Evils,” that evil has no being of its own, that it is neither an evil matter nor an evil demiurge: it is a lack (steresis) of good, born of the soul’s free choice. Saint Dionysius the Areopagite (Divine Names, IV) and Saint Maximus the Confessor say the same: passion is the use, against nature (para physin), of a good power given by God. So the Church’s metaphysics leaves no “world-misery” in which to deposit one’s guilt: there is a good nature, and there is a will that turns it against itself.
The Second Benefit: Interest
The aphorism notes the other half of the gain: things become “more interesting.” Here lies the fine psychological observation, and here the Fathers complete it. Evagrius describes acedia, the noonday demon, which does not say “you are lazy” but “the world is vain”: a man puts into the object what is in the soul, and feels himself not lazy but a connoisseur of the world’s vanity. Vainglory, which Evagrius places before pride, puts on a robe of depth: I am not a sinner, I am a tragic case; I do not fail, I confront the absurd. Yet even Ecclesiastes, who said “vanity of vanities,” does not stop there but closes with a word that puts responsibility back into man’s hand: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
Today’s psychology has names for both benefits. The self-serving bias (Miller and Ross, 1975) leads us to credit our successes to ourselves and our failures to circumstances. Moral disengagement (Bandura, 1999) lists the ways we can “switch off” conscience: displacing and diffusing responsibility, softening the deed with words, blaming the one harmed. And today the metaphysics of the alibi wears new clothes: “the universe is teaching you a lesson,” “karma,” “it was written.” Saint John of Damascus distinguishes in the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Book II) Providence from fate: Providence does not remove me from responsibility but works together with my freedom.
The Young Man Grows Old: The Alibi Changes Its Coat
Nietzsche says that later the young man becomes distrustful of metaphysics and discovers that physical and historical explanations give the same relief and perhaps a livelier interest. The observation is correct, and it is, without his intending it, the heaviest one against him: if two kinds of explanation give the same fruit, then the problem was never the kind of explanation but its use as an alibi. The alibi has changed only its coat: “it hurts because that is how the world is” has become “it hurts because I had a hard childhood, genes, hormones, an era.” Sartre called this move “bad faith” (mauvaise foi): denying one’s freedom by declaring oneself something already closed. A famous study (Vohs and Schooler, 2008) suggested that people who read a text denying free will cheated more readily, but later replications gave mixed results, so it is prudent to say only that the link between belief in determinism and weakened responsibility remains a serious hypothesis, not a law.
The Church does not deny conditioning, however. From Adam we inherit, in the Eastern teaching, corruption and death and an inclination toward sin, not personal guilt. And the Lord takes weakness into account: the servant who did not know will be beaten with few stripes (Luke 12:47-48), and on the Cross He says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). But this is the Judge’s mercy toward us, not our plea before Him. Whoever makes himself his own advocate takes the gift of mercy out of his own hand. Explanation is not forgiveness: to explain does not mean to excuse. And the desire to know how a man came to be where he is (physically, historically, psychologically) is legitimate: Saint Basil teaches in the Hexaemeron to read nature as a school of the soul, and Evagrius too has “the contemplation of nature” (physikē theoria) as a stage. The only warning is the Apostle’s: “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (1 Corinthians 8:1).
The Burden That Is Not Denied but Lifted
The young man in the aphorism is not wrong to want relief. The burden is real, and Christ acknowledges it: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He errs in the address. The metaphysics of the alibi lightens by denying the burden: it is not mine, it is the world’s. Christianity lightens by transferring it: it is mine, and I carry it to the One who can take it. “I acknowledged my sin to You… and You forgave the iniquity of my heart” (Psalm 31:5 LXX); “whoever confesses and forsakes his sins will have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13); “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us” (1 John 1:9). And in place of “world-misery” as a faceless mystery, we have a name: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The sin of the world is not a puzzle to contemplate but a burden lifted by a Person.
Psychology confirms it on the human level. June Tangney (Shame and Guilt, 2002) shows that guilt about the deed often leads to reparation, while shame about one’s very being leads to hiding, defensiveness and shifting the blame onto others. The alibi is often a flight from shame. And the Apostle also distinguishes two kinds of sorrow: “godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).
And the second benefit, interest, finds its true source here too. Plato said that philosophy begins in wonder (Theaetetus, 155d), and Saint Maximus sees in every thing a logos, a word of God. But wonder is the fruit of purity, not of escape from responsibility: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). The world becomes more interesting not to the one who has acquitted himself but to the one who has let himself be forgiven, because the alibi hides the truth first of all from himself.
A brother said to an elder:
— Father, anger rules me. This is how God made me.
The elder said:
— God gave you anger as a guard dog, brother. You have set it to bite the guests.
