19
For Nietzsche, as for Pascal, the problem of grace, was not primarily a
theological or philosophical but an experiential or existential question. For
Nietzsche, it was also a cultural question. For Pascal, the problem lay not in
“the doctrine of grace but [in] the bewildering historical fact that the number of
those who are not touched by the grace of God is so overwhelmingly large.”
45
For Pascal, most men were content with a merely natural existence, content in
their divertissements
. For Nietzsche too, most men were content to take
comfort in some fragment of existence that they had made into a false, but
consolatory whole, a mendacious, metaphysical comfort. Nietzsche, like Pascal,
feared the human tendency to become satisfied with divertissements. Pascal
prayed humans not be spared the distress of ennui; Nietzsche hoped that more
of them would come to know the distress and neediness of the intellectual
conscience.
46
According to Voegelin, the “world-immanent phenomenon of grace” in
Nietzsche’s thought is ‘spiritualized’ force. Nietzsche distinguishes between
three orders: Trieb, Kraft, and Macht or drives, strength and power. “Trieb has
the connotation of a biological force; Kraft, the connotation of strength and
vitality that express themselves in a piece of work; Macht, power, designates
strength that is permeated by spirit [Geist].”
47
The interesting distinction is the
one between Kraft and Macht, between strength and strength supplemented
and so transfigured by the intellect or reason.
48
Nietzsche makes a distinction between “force as the raw material of
human life, and force as the means of overcoming mere nature by disciplining
it spiritually and transforming it into eternal aliveness.” “Force in this second
sense has a function in Nietzsche’s thought comparable to that of grace in the
Christian system.”
49
In addition, however, the agent of grace in Nietzsche’s
system is man himself, for “if the recourse to transcendental reality as the
45
Voegelin, “Nietzsche and Pascal,” p. 286; also see p. 285.
46
Voegelin, “Nietzsche and Pascal,” p. 283. Nietzsche, GS, §2.
47
Voegelin, “Nietzsche and Pascal,” p. 259, fn. 20.
48
Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the prejudices of morality, trans. R. J. Hollingdale
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), § 548.
Convention