300 Nietzsche
people, and because we cannot endure the dynamics of anonymous
acdons, we append an invented agent to the acts. The "ego" is an inven-
tion of this sort. In the course of a few sentences, the Cartesian cogito ergo
sum (I think, therefore I am) is swept from the stage. The thought
process, in particular, reveals that it is the act of thought that gives rise
to the actor. It is not the I that is thinking, but rather the thinking that
has me say "I." Nietzsche's subde analysis of will demonstrates that it
has been treated far too simplistically. The will is not, as Schopenhauer
would have it, a dynamic unity, but rather a swarm of diverse ambitions,
an arena of energies battling for power.
In one inspired chapter, Nietzsche explored the power of religion.
Especially important to him was the idea that although the Christian
religion's "theory of morality" protects the "misfits" from the cruelty of
the unjustice of nature and thereby from "nihilism," for this very rea-
son it is also an expression of the will to power. Christianity is living
proof that the revaluation of values is possible. With this perspective in
mind, he spoke admiringly of religious geniuses, notably Paul,
Augustine, and Ignatius of Loyola. They managed to impose their
obsessions on a substantial part of the world. They revolved the stage
of history and created a milieu in which people lived and breathed spir-
ituality. In comparison with these religious athletes, the ordinary man in
the age of deconstructed modernity and nihilism is a pitiful workhorse:
"it seems as though they have absolutely no time left for religion, espe-
cially since it remains unclear to them whether it involves a new busi-
ness or a new pleasure" (5,76; BGE § 58). Nihilistic cultures recognize
only business and pleasure. Nietzsche even found himself defending
earlier religious cultures against this modern nihilistic impoverishment
of life. The incredible vigor with which earlier religions were able to
create and impose values encouraged him to regard a future revaluation
of values, which he considered his task, as both possible and auspicious.
On the Genealogy of Morals, written one year later, consolidated the
analysis and critique of morality developed in earlier works into a uni-
fied whole that was both pithy and ambitious. Nietzsche had a point