Dionysus versus the Crucified

Author(s): René Girard

Source: MLN, Vol. 99, No. 4, French Issue (Sep., 1984), pp. 816-835
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 DionysusversustheCrucified

Rene'Girard

For a while, afterthe war, a great debate raged about Nietzsche's

own responsibilityin the Nazi exploitationof his writingfor anti-
Semitic purposes. There was mostlysilence, however, regarding
his anti-Christianstance; it is too explicitand consistentto be de-
nied.
To those who feltthat Nietzsche'swork should not fall into ne-
glect,the point was irrelevantanyway.Why should Nietzsche be
exonerated from an attitude that a majorityof intellectualsre-
garded as sound? No apology needed to be made.
No apology was made. Nietzsche was in the clear. But the anti-
Christianpolemics of Nietzsche has received scant attentionsince
World War II. Why? If they were asked,-they never are-con-
temporaryNietzscheanswould probablyanswerthattheirthinker's
passionate attitudetoward religion has lost its relevance.
Nietzsche remains "important"because of some avatars of his
thatcame to lightin recentyears,mostlythroughthe ingenuityof
Frenchcritics,Nietzschethe genealogist,Nietzschethe advocate of
"free play," Nietzsche the exponent of counter-culture....
Differentas theyare fromone another,at least in some respects,
these avatarsare all alike in theirindifferenceto the great struggle
that obsessed the last lucid years of Nietzsche. Is there some ob-
scure reason why this should be? Is there somethinginopportune
or embarrassingabout the theme; is it strategicallyadvisable not
to insistupon it?
Whateverthe case may be, Nietzsche'sreligiousproblematicwas
already marginalized when the French criticsbegan their work.

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 M L N 817

The realjob was performedby MartinHeidegger. Even those who

reject the interpretationof Nietzsche as the last great metaphysi-
cian of the West,are dependent on Heidegger fortheirevacuation
of "Dionysus versus the Crucified." Just as existentialismin the
French stylewas an offshootof German philosophyand above all
Heidegger, the new "French Nietzsche" is another livelymouse,
or rathera whole litter,broughtforthby the Heideggerian moun-
tain.
Nietzsche's forced conversion to inverted platonism is rooted
in one essential Heideggerian tenet, which is the mutual incom-
patibilityof religion and thought in the highest sense, the post-
philosophicaland Heideggerian sense.
Everythingin Nietzsche thatcomes under the heading: Dionysus
versustheCrucifiedmust be alien to "thought" and is therefore
harshlycondemned as a pure and simple "returnto monotheism,"
theveryreversein otherwords of what Nietzschehimselfimagined
he was doing. This condemnation is also an allusion to the fact
thatsomeone fightingChristianitywiththe passionate intensityof
Nietzsche must still have been under its influence. Even though
briefflashes of hatred appear here and there in his writings,Hei-
degger on the whole gives an impressionof radical indifferenceto
religion, an attitude that has become a model for quite a few
people. The subject is of littleor no interest.Period.
Heidegger interpretedmonotheismas a monopolisticclaim on
I
the divine that constituted,in his eyes, the heightof ressentiment.
will be the last to disagree with Heidegger regarding the impor-
tance of ressentimentin Nietzsche'swork. I do not believe, however,
that Heidegger or anyone else can disentangle the strands that
belong to ressentiment and thereforeto religiousnon-thoughtfrom
the strandsthat do not and belong thereforeto the philosophical
thoughtthat deserves to be considered and interpreted.
To Heidegger, "Dionysus versus the Crucified"was merelythe
Nietzschean reversal of a previous Christianformula: "The Cru-
cifiedversusDionysus,"and thereforethe same emptystrugglefor
power between two rival religions. As institutionalChristianity
weakens,the philosophicalhostilityto it turnsto silence but it does
not decrease.
To Heidegger, the essential historyof our world is post-philo-
sophical and religion is irrelevant. The Nietzsche of "Dionysus
versus the Crucified" is more alien to the real issues of our times

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818 RENE GIRARD

than the "withdrawalof being" and its comet tail of post-philo-

sophical discourse. Is this view going to prevail?
Even from the standpoint of Nietzschean studies in the nar-
rowestsense, this negative attitudeis a mutilation.It deprives us
of whatis reallyexcitingand novel in the Nietzscheancorpus. Now
thatwe are no longer limitedto the excerptscarefullyselected and
organized by Nietzsche'ssister,and we can read all of the formerly
unpublished writing,we cannot doubt thatthe closer we get to the
end the more obsessive the Christian theme becomes with
Nietzsche. The number and importanceof the fragmentsdealing
withthe subjectincrease. . . We are reminded of a volcano pouring
greater and greater torrentsof murkylava with,here and there,
the sparkle of a jewel still untouched by human hands . . .; for
these some of us at least would gladly burn one fingeror two.
Here, the most daring material becomes inseparable from the
grotesque. Genius and insanitylend each other a hand until the
last instant,giving the lie to the orthodox thesis that disconnects
the two. If we receive the evidence of theirmutual contamination,
we committhe one unforgivablesin, punishable by immediateex-
clusion fromthe club of the respectable Nietzscheans.
These later fragmentsare the heightof ressentiment in the sense
that the final breakdown also is. Nietzsche's superiorityover his
centuryand ours may well be thathe alone pushed the ressentiment
thathe shares withquite a few lesser mortalsto such a heightthat
ityieldeditsmostvirulentand significantfruit.None of Nietzsche's
achievements as a thinker can be divorced from ressentiment,
whetherthe subject is Wagner, the divine or Nietzsche himselfin
Ecce Homo.
Unlike Heidegger, unlike most of his contemporariesand ours,
Nietzschestronglybelieved in the unique specificityof the biblical
and Christianperspective.His reasons cannot be dismissedas sum-
marilyas theywould if he were a Christian.The ethnocentricfal-
lacy will not do.
The uniqueness of the Bible and the New Testamentis affirmed
by Nietzschein a contextdirectlyopposed to Christianapologetics.
Nietzsche tried to put his critique of Christianityon a basis less
shakythan the one that was already standardized in his time,the
great positivisticequivalence of all religious traditions.He knew
too much about pagan mythologynot to be revoltedby the shallow
assimilationof the Judeo-Christianwiththe pagan.

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 M L N 819

He maintained that the Christian spirit tries to stifle "life" by

repressingthe most dynamic individuals of a culture. This is the
famous "moralityof the slaves" versus "the moralityof the mas-
ters,"the one thing everybodyknows about the Nietzschean dis-
tinctionbetween paganism and Judeo-Christianity.
A culture has to pay a price in order to breed a class of higher
men. It has to assume even the worstformsof violence. Time and
time again, Nietzsche tells us that Dionysus accommodates all
human passions,includingthe lustto annihilate,the mostferocious
appetite for destruction.Dionysus says yes to the sacrificeof many
human lives, including,not so paradoxically,those of the highest
typethat is being bred in the process.
Alreadyin TheBirthofTragedy,Nietzschementionedthe violence
that accompanies and often precedes Dionysus everywhere.All
epiphanies of the god leave ruins in their wake. Mania, afterall,
means homicidal fury.Unlike manyof his followers,Nietzschedid
not turnthe Dionysian into somethingidyllicand inconsequential.
He was too honest to dissimulatethe disturbing,the ugly sides of
the Dionysian.
With the years, his references to that frenzied and seemingly
haphazard violence that marks all the episodes of the Dionysian
saga became even more frequent and insistentthan in the past,
but Nietzsche often repeated them almost verbatim,and theybe-
came stereotyped.
Nietzsche never went into an analysis in depth of The Bacchae
for instance,but he always dutifullymentioned the Dionysian vi-
olence. The reason for this is not that Nietzsche particularlyrel-
ished that violence; the opposite is true but this violence plays an
essentialrole and it should not be suppressed.
Nietzsche clearly saw that pagan mythology,like pagan ritual,
centers on the killingof victimsor on their expulsion, which can
seem perfectlywanton. He realized that thistypeof killing,which
is reflectedin manyritualsas well as representedin myths,is often
executed by a large number of murderers; it is a collectivedeed
in which an entire human group is involved. Only exceptionally,
but then most strikingly, as we will see later, did Nietzsche focus
his attentiondirectlyon the collectiveaspect of the god's murder
but his entireproblematicdepends on thisand his mostinteresting
fragmentsclearly demonstrate that need. This is the case, espe-
cially,of a well-knowntext that figuresin The Will toPowerunder
the number 1052.

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820 RENE GIRARD

Nietzsche himselfgave that importanttext a title: The twotypes:

Dionysusand theCrucified.The second paragraph formulatesmost
clearlythe attitudeof Nietzsche:
Dionysusversusthe"Crucified":thereyouhavetheantithesis. It is not
a difference in regardto theirmartyrdom-itis a difference in the
meaningofit.Lifeitself, and recurrence,
itseternalfruitfulness creates
torment, destruction, In the othercase, suf-
the willto annihilation.
fering-the"Crucified as theinnocentone"-counts as an objectionto
thislife,as a formulafor its condemnation.-Onewillsee thatthe
problemis thatof the meaningof suffering:whethera Christian
meaningor a tragicmeaning.In theformercase,it is supposedto be
thepathto a holyexistence;in thelattercase,beingis countedas holy
enough tojustifyevena monstrous amountofsuffering. The tragicman
affirms eventheharshest suffering... Dionysuscuttopiecesisa promise
of life:it willbe eternallyrebornand returnagainfromdestruction.
Nietzsche obviouslyfeltthat the collectivemurder of Dionysus,
in the episode of the Titans, is analogous enough to the passion
of Jesus to be regarded as equivalent. There is a differencebe-
tween the two but "It is not a differencein regard to their mar-
tyrdom."The italicsare Nietzsche's.
The insightregarding the similarityof the two collectivedeaths
is not uncommon among thinkersand anthropologistsof the pe-
riod. It is the insightof Totemand Tabooas well. It has disappeared
from modern anthropology,lost and buried beneath the fast ac-
cumulatingrubble of scholarlyfashion. The structuralistanalyst,
forinstance,is stillconcerned withthe episode of the Titans in the
Dionysus saga but his interesthas shiftedfromthe murder of the
god and the cannibalisticfeastto the culinarypreparationthattook
place inbetween,an interestingquestion no doubt but one that
divertsus fromthe tragicapprehension of Nietzsche.
When the anthropologistsfirstobserved the great abundance of
gods collectivelymurdered in religious cults everywhere,theyfelt
they had discovered something importantand so did Nietzsche,
obviously.This insightprovided studentsof religion with a pow-
erfulfocus forcomparativeanalysis.There is no sacrificialreligion
withouta drama at the center,and the more closelyyou observe
it, the more you discover that the features common to the mar-
tyrdom of Dionysus and Jesus are also common to an immeasurable
number of other cults not only in Greek or Indo-European reli-
gions but in the entireworld.
This remarkablesimilarityis one importantreason whythe later

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 M L N 821

Nietzsche can resort to a single symbol,Dionysus, for countless

mythologicalcults. To say that Dionysus stands for some kind of
non-biblicalmonotheismis a littleludicrous really and unworthy
of Heidegger.
Even though anthropologistsnever discoveredwhyall these cults
had that collective drama as a center, they felt entitled to draw
some preliminaryconclusions from its constant presence. They
were positivists,of course, men who believed in factsand nothing
but hard facts.
If the facts are the same in all these cults, it can be safelyas-
sumed, or so theythought,that these religionsmust be the same.
And this element of sameness is obviously present in the Judaic
religion with its ritual sacrifices,and even more spectacularlyin
the Christian religion. The passion of Jesus certainlyconstitutes
the heart of the gospels, and what is it if not one more instanceof
these collective murders that are the daily bread of religions all
over the world?
This point was made in almost all great works of religious an-
thropologybetween 1850 and World War I. Even today it remains
the hidden basis and principal argument,at least potentially,for
what has become a popular cliche regardingthe manyreligionsof
-
mankind. All of them are "more or less alike."
Although,or ratherbecause Nietzsche shared this comparative
insight regarding collective murder and sacrifice,he refrained
fromthe habitualconclusion. The onlyotherthinkerwho also did,
at least up to a point,was Freud.
Nietzsche rejected that conclusion because he was no positivist.
He knew that the "facts"mean nothingunless and until theyare
interpreted.The martyrdomof Dionysus is interpretedby the ad-
epts of his cult in a manner quite differentfrom the Christian
interpretationof Jesus' passion.
In the case of Jesus, the emphasis lies on the innocenceof the
victimand, as a consequence, on the guilt of his murderers.One
could object that Dionysus, too, was martyredwronglyand that
the titanswere just as guiltyfrom the standpointof the mythas
the murderers of Jesus, and they must have been indeed, since
theywere destroyedby the thunder of Zeus.
Nietzschedid not even mentionthisobjectionbecause he saw its
superficiality. In all the other episodes of the Dionysus cycle,there
is a collectivediasparagmos, a martyrdomsimilarto the martyrdom

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822 RENEGIRARD

of Dionysus at the hands of the Titans. In all of these, however,

the god is not the victimbut the instigatorof the mob lynching.
EverytimeDionysus appears, a victimis dismemberedand often
devoured by his or her manymurderers.The god can be the victim
and he can also be the chief murderer. He can be victimizedand
he can be a victimizer.This change of roles, that also occurs in
most primitivereligions,clearlyconfirmswhat Nietzsche thought
regardingthe indifferenceof mythologytoward biblical morality.
From the one episode in which Dionysus himselfis the victim,
one cannot conclude thatthe Dionysian as such condemns violence
in the sense thatthe gospels do. It is inconceivablethatJesus could
become the instigatorof some "holy lynching."Each time the pos-
sibilityof lynchingoccurs in the gospels, in the case, for instance,
of the adulterous woman about to be stoned (Jn 8, 2-11), Jesus
forestallsthe violence and disperses the mob.
At some point, no doubt, withthe orphic tradition,the murder
of the littleDionysus became a symbolof the human propensity
to evil, in a manner that could be said to approximate somewhat
the Christianviewof the passion,but thisviewwas completelyalien
to the Dionysus that Nietzsche opposed to "the Crucified." It is a
reinterpretationof the old myththat must have occurred under
the influence of the Bible.
There are two typesof religion,accordingto Nietzsche.The first
one, the pagan, understandsthat"lifeitself,itseternalfruitfulness
and recurrence,creates torment,destruction,the will to annihi-
late," and it says yes to all this; it assumes willinglythe worstto-
getherwith the best. It is beyond good and evil. "It affirmseven
the harshestsuffering"as Nietzsche puts it.
The second typeof religionrejectsthissame suffering,Nietzsche
thought. It is interestingthat Nietzsche would have condemned
Christianityfor rejectingsuffering.The habitual criticismis that
Christianityencourages suffering.Nietzsche saw clearlythatJesus
died not as a sacrificialvictimof the Dionysian type,but against
all such sacrifices.Nietzsche accused this death of being a hidden
act of ressentimentbecause it reveals the injusticeof all such deaths
and the "absurdity"not of one specificmob only but of all "dio-
nysian"mobs the world over. The world "absurdity"is Nietzsche's
own.
When Nietzsche keeps repeating thatthe passion of Jesus is "an
objection to life,"or "a formula for its condemnation,"he under-
stands that the Christianpassion is a rejection and an indictment

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 M L N 823

of everythingupon which the old pagan religionswere founded

and with them all human societiesworththeir salt, in Nietzsche's
estimation,the societies in which "the strong and the victorious"
were not prevented by the down-trodden masses from enjoying
the fruitsof theirsuperiority.
Nietzsche,in short,espoused the common ethnologicalunder-
standingof his timeregardingthe presence of violenceat the heart
of most religious cults but he rejected the positivisticconclusion
thatputs all these cultsin the same bag. He singled out the biblical
and the Christian not because Jesus' martyrdomis differentbut
because it is not. It has to be the same for thatmartyrdomofJesus
to be an explicitallusion to the genesis of all pagan religionsand
a silentbut definitivecondemnationof pagan order, of all human
order really.
The Christianpassion is not anti-Jewishas the vulgar antisem-
ites believe; it is anti-pagan; it reinterpretsreligious violence in
such a negative fashion as to make its perpetratorsfeel guiltyfor
committingit,even forsilentlyacceptingit.Since all human culture
is grounded in this collectiveviolence, the whole human race is
declared guiltyfrom the standpoint of the gospels. Life itselfis
slandered because life cannot continue and organize itselfwithout
thistype of violence.
The JewishBible, the Old Testament of the Christians,is similar
to the New in respect to the issue discussed in fragment1052. A
positivisticanthropologist sees no real difference between the
Romulus storyand the Cain story.In both stories,a brotherkills
his brotherand a human communityis founded. The data of the
storiesare the same but in the Bible, the interpretationis unique.
It is not the same thingto interpretthe same murder as a glorious
deed withthe Romans and to interpretit as a crimewiththe Bible.
In the Bible, the storyof Cain is symbolicalnot of one human
societyonlybut of many. It is a statementabout human culturein
general. And it may be more pertinentthan all other discussions
of anthropological origins. Either the vast number of brothers
killingbrothersand other similarcrimesin innumerablefounding
mythssignifiesnothing at all, or it points to a violent origin of
human society passively reflected and assumed by mythological
cultureswhereas it is denounced and rejectedby the Bible and the
Christiangospels.
All mythologicalheroes are fundamentallythe same. If you call
them Cain, however, your interpretationof mythologyis not the

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824 RENE GIRARD

same as if you call them Dionysus. Nietzsche is not satisfiedwith

ignoringthe Bible in the sense thathis time is beginningto do, he
is tryingto reverse it and to rehabilitatethe violence of Cain.
Cain, Romulus and Dionysus committhe same deed and, from
the standpointof the gospels, theymust be given the same name.
It is not the name of a monotheisticgod but the name of the one
"who was a murdererfromthe beginning"(Jn 8, 44), Satan,a word
thatreallymeans the false accuser, whereas the Paraclete,the Holy
Spiritof the Christians,really means the lawyerfor the defense,
the one who turns all martyrsinto witnessesto the truthof the
gospels, thereforeto the untruthof theirown violentdeaths.
All four gospels explicitlylink the innocentdeath ofJesus to the
death of all previous collectivevictimsbeginning with "Abel the
Just."The violence of Cain is part of a long chain of murdersthat
leads to the passion conceived as a returnof the same reenacted,
this time, in the full light of a revelation that spells the doom of
"the prince of this world," or "the powers of this world," or "the
celestial powers." All this refersto the end of the type of society
grounded in the Dionysian attitude,in the docile acceptance of the
scapegoat process and of its violence.
We do not have to share Nietzsche's value judgment to appre-
ciate his understanding of the irreconcilableopposition between
the Bible and mythology,his disgustwiththe bland eclecticismthat
dissolves all sharp issues and dominates the atheism of our time,
as well as its vague and shapeless religiosity.
Nietzsche is a marvelous antidote to all fundamentallyanti-bib-
lical effortsto turn mythologyinto a kind of Bible, and thatis the
enterpriseof all theJungiansof thisworld,or to dissolve the Bible
into mythology, and that is the enterprise of more or less
everybodyelse.
You find nothingin Nietzsche that recalls the saccharine ideal-
ization of primitiveculture thatbegan at the end of the 18th cen-
turyand that we have so successfullyrevived. At the very height
of the great syncreticmishmashof modernity,Nietzsche drew at-
tentionto the irreconcilableopposition between a mythologicalvi-
sion grounded in the perspectiveof the victimizersand a biblical
inspirationthat from the beginning tends to side withthe victims
and produces not only very differentresultsfrom the ethical but
also fromthe intellectualstandpoint.
Nietzsche's value judgment is untenable. Pious effortsto exon-
erate the thinkerfrom the consequences of his own thinkingare

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 M L N 825

misguided. It is undeniable that he himselfextended the scope of

thisjudgment to political and ethical questions in a manner that
can only provide encouragement to the worstideological abbera-
tions.
Hundreds of texts can be quoted that show beyond all doubt
that Nietzsche'sfiercestubbornnessin opposing the inspirationof
the Bible in favor of victims,logicallyand inexorablyled him to-
ward the more and more inhuman attitudesof his lateryearswhich
he espoused, in words of course ratherthan in deeds, witha for-
titudeworthyof a bettercause.
There is a tendency for criticsto play hide and seek with the
later writingsof Nietzsche. It would be more interestingto inves-
tigate the inner compulsion that has led so many intellectualsto
adopt inhuman standards in the last two centuries. No one ex-
emplifiesthis tendency with the perfectionthat Nietzsche does.
Ressentiment has to be part of the picture of course. One essential
thingabout ressentiment is that its ultimatetargetis alwaysressenti-
mentitself,its own mirrorimage, under a slightlydifferentmask
thatmakes it unrecognizable.
Ressentimentis the interiorization of weakened vengeance.
Nietzschesuffersso much fromit that he mistakesit for the orig-
inal and primary form of vengeance. He sees ressentiment not
merelyas the child of Christianitywhich it certainlyis but also as
its fatherwhich it certainlyis not.
Ressentiment flourishes in a world where real vengeance (Dio-
nysus)has been weakened. The Bible and the gospels have dimin-
ished the violence of vengeance and turned it to ressentiment not
because theyoriginatein the latterbut because theirreal targetis
vengeance in all its forms, and they have only succeeded in
wounding vengeance, not in eliminatingit. The gospels are indi-
rectlyresponsible;we alone are directlyresponsible.Ressentiment is
the manner in which the spiritof vengeance survivesthe impact
of Christianityand turnsthe gospels to its own use.
Nietzschewas less blind to the role of vengeance in human cul-
turethan mostpeople of his time,but neverthelesstherewas blind-
ness in him. He analyzed ressentiment and all its works with enor-
mous power. He did not see that the evil he was fightingwas a
relativelyminor evil compared to the more violent formsof ven-
geance.
His insightwas partlyblunted by the deceptive quiet of his post-
Christiansociety.He could affordthe luxuryof resentingressenti-

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826 RENE GIRARD

mentso much thatit appeared as a fateworse than real vengeance.

Being absent from the scene, real vengeance was never seriously
apprehended. Unthinkingly,like so many thinkersof his age and
ours, Nietzschecalled on Dionysus,begging him to bringback real
vengeance as a cure for what seemed to him the worstof all pos-
sible fates,ressentiment.
Such frivolity could only flourishin our privilegedcenturies,in
privilegedparts of the world where real vengeance had retreated
so much that its terror had become unintelligible. But sincere
prayersare never in vain, and the prayers of those who desired
the returnof vengeance have finallybeen heard.
Real vengeance is back among us in the shape of nuclear and
otherabsolute weapons, reducing our planet to the size of a global
primitivevillage,terrifiedonce again by the possibilityof unlimited
bloodfeud. Real vengeance is so awesome that even the most
vengeful men do not dare to unleash it, knowing perfectlywell
that all the dreadful thingstheycan do unto their enemies, their
enemies can also do unto them.
Compared to this, ressentiment and other 19th-centuryannoy-
ances pale to insignificance,or rathertheironly significanceis the
increasingrage everywherethat turns ressentiment back into irre-
pressiblevengeance and can unleash the unspeakable.
At more and more levels of reality,the urgency of the gospel
message can no longer be disregarded with impunity. Those
thinkerswho, like Nietzsche, unthinkinglyappealed to real ven-
geance in theiritchto get rid of ressentimentresemble these foolish
charactersin fairytaleswho make the wrongwishand come to grief
when it comes true.
This can be interpretedas a warningof sorts.But thiswarning
can and is disregarded with impunityby almost everybody.Most
people go on spouting 19th-centuryideas as if the returnof real
vengeance in our world were not an accomplished fact.The truth
is that,for the time being at least, real vengeance has a power of
dissuasion such that, concretely,nothing has changed. The very
enormityof the threat protectsus from the threatened violence.
Ressentiment is intense enough to generate more and more intel-
lectual nihilismbut not intense enough so far to annihilate real
being.
Real vengeance has not yet concretelydemonstratedits power
upon our lives and it never will,in a sense, because if it did, there
would be no more lives to be affectedby anything.There would

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 M L N 827

be no one leftto acknowledge the returnof absolute vengeance as

the real event of our time.
As a result one can go on thinkingfrivolouslyand pretending
today that Nietzsche makes sense as a teacher of ethics,or of his-
tory,or as a philosopher,or as a guide for some kind of "lifestyle,"
or whatever.This cannot fail to sound more futileand unreal with
each passing year. The price to be paid for this is the price any
historicalera must pay for avoiding its real issues, a certain bar-
renness of the spiritand a growing sterilityin all its "culturalac-
tivities."
Our militarymen love to give mythologicalnames to their nu-
clear missiles,Pluto, Poseidon, Ariadne, and the like. Too bad they
never resorted to Dionysus himselfbut it really does not matter.
Those who understand do not need such literalnessand it would
not make any impression on those who do not understand. The
contemporaryuse of mythologyis more profound than all the
mythologicalgames of our philosophers since the Renaissance.
Even though Nietzsche had ceased writinglong before his es-
pousal of mythologicalviolence began to reveal its frivolousside,
there was somethingin him that fiercelyresisted his own wager.
When studying"Dionysus versusthe Crucified,"we should place
the emphasis also on that versus.We can hear in it an echo of the
fiercebattleNietzschefoughtand finallylost in his effortto insure
the revengeof Dionysus over the Crucified.We can also hear these
echoes in the inhuman aspects of Nietzsche's writingat the time,
in the obligationhe imposed upon himselftojustifyeven the worst
formsof oppression and persecution.
There is a universal wager nowadays against the biblical prin-
ciple regarded as intrinsicallyperverseratherthan as pervertedby
the enormous human ingenuityin the service of this perversion.
This wager cannot be sustained withoutsome formof the sacred,
and it has to be thatviolentsacred which Nietzschecalls Dionysus.
Even though Heidegger also detected the presence of violence in
it, he too, glorifiedthe primitivesacred.He looked forwardto fu-
tureepiphanies of itand did not anticipateany particularproblems
withthisviolence even though he was writingabout thisafterthe
end of World War II.
In his later years, Nietzsche kept reviving,glorifyingand mod-
ernizingmore and more sinisteraspects of the primitivesacred. I
am convinced that this process became more intolerableas it be-
came more radical and it led to his finalbreakdown.

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828 RENE GIRARD

The greatnessof Nietzsche is that he committedhimselftotally

to that process and he paid for his commitmentliterallywith his
life. For things to come to such a pass, the forces on both sides
had to be almost evenlybalanced. As the prophets would say: "It
is a dreadful fate to fall into the hands of the livingGod."
Paradoxically,Nietzsche is the one thinkerin the modern world
whose workdid achieve somethingthatthe Christianthinkershave
alwaysfailed to achieve. They have never dared. He put his finger
on that "sword" thatJesus said he brought,the sword destructive
of human culture, that sword no human being can fail to dread
and resent even though-or is it because?-it belongs to what
Pascal calls l'ordrede la charitg.
This force destroysthe old sacred throughthe revelationof its
violentnature,but so far,it has only managed to wound it,turning
itintoa fiercemonsterthatnow threatensto devour us all. Mimetic
doubles are everywherein that cosmic battle and it is temptingto
see nothingelse, nothingbut emptymimeticrivalryin the oppo-
sitionbetween Dionysus and the Crucified.
This is what Heidegger did. Heidegger, here, was stillthe voice
of a modern demystification thatexposes so manyfalsedifferences
thatin the end it misses the one and only differencethat is real.
Heidegger foughton the same side as Nietzsche,no doubt, the
side of the old sacred, but on positionsless exposed, less forward,
less dangerous and revealing than Nietzsche's. He has succeeded,
at least for a while,in neutralizingthe "imprudence" of Nietzsche
in the domain of religion. With time, it will become easier and
easier to realize that,before exploding into the hands of itsmaker,
this machine was producing the opposite of what it was built for,
the glorificationof what is was supposed to vilify,the vilification
of what it was supposed to celebrate.

For quite a few years, I have emphasized the role of collective

violence in the genesis of the primitivesacred and the role of the
of thatgenesis. My purpose in
Bible in the increasingintelligibility
the present essay is to show that Nietzsche is deeply but paradox-
icallyinvolved in that process.
The present effortwill probably meet with skepticism.Many
readers will suspect that I am projectingupon Nietzsche a preoc-
cupation too idiosyncraticto yield significantresults.This attempt
has to resultnot in a mutilationof what Nietzsche "reallythought"
(which does not seem to matteranymore and cannot be reached

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 M L N 829

in any case), but in a revelationof the real fecundityof Nietzsche's

work, his possible contributionto the criticalformulae currently
fashionable.
The general reaction to the theme of thecollective murderofGod
resembles the bewilderment and amused condescension that
greeted the Nietzschean madman when he addressed his contem-
poraries in the marketplace. This anonymous lunatic

lita lanternin thebrightmorninghours,ran to themarketand cried

incessantly,"I seek God, I seek God!" As manyof thosewho do not
believein God were standingaroundjust then,he provokedmuch
laughter.Why,did he getlost?saidone. Did he losehiswaylikea child?
said another.Or is he hiding?Is he afraidof us? Has he gone on a
voyage?or emigrated? Thus theyyelledand laughed.

This is the beginningof the most famous textin The GayScience,

aphorism 125. Even today, especially today perhaps, whoever
touches upon this untouchable subject,thecollective murderof God,
finds himselfin a position curiously reminiscentof the one de-
scribed here. After more than a century, nothing has really
changed, especially in those academic circles that did not appre-
ciate Nietzsche at the time any more than he appreciated them.
My readers are too carefulwithtexts,too erudite,attentive,de-
liberate,thorough and above all too shrewd,too good as readers
of texts to be scandalized, or even surprised when they see me
appropriate this text in the informalfashion that I just did. They
certainlywould not dispute my rightto do this.They have kept in
mind the extraordinarysimilarityof content if not of form,be-
tween my somewhat tiresome insistenceon the religious signifi-
cance of the collectivemurder and the parallel insistenceof this
enigmatictext.
Here is the firstproclamationof the madman:

"Whither is God" he cried."I shalltellyou.We have killedhim-you

But how have we done this?How
and I. All of us are his murderers.
werewe able to drinkup thesea ... ?

Since the late 18th century,fromJean-Paul to Victor Hugo and

beyond, pronouncementsregarding the death of God have mul-
tiplied with each passing year, and belated prophets are now
formingwhat is probably the largest crowd ever gathered in our
intellectual history. What everybody has been announcing, of

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830 RENE GIRARD

course, is that the biblical god is dying of old age. It is a more or

less natural death in other words.
Most people believe that Nietzsche's text refers exclusivelyto
modern atheism. This is part of the story,no doubt, but only a
part, and an enigmaticpart already because it rejects very point-
edly the verynotion everybodyis tryingto find there,the notion
of God as something childish and meaningless really that men
graduallylearned to do withoutin the modern age, as theybecame
more "mature" and learned about electricity, and now computers.
Instead of that gradual fading away of God, withno particular
violence or drama, Nietzsche sees the disappearance of God as a
horrible murder in which every man is involved: "We have killed
him-you and I. All of us are his murderers."
"If God never existed, if there is no such thing as God, how
could he be killed?" That is the question only the uninformed
reader dares to ask and, as usual with great texts,it is a much
smarterone than all the "informed"philosophical questions.
Gods do not have to exist really in order to be murdered. As a
matterof fact,unless theyare firstmurdered theywill never exist.
Unlike ordinary beings who can exist only if they are not mur-
dered, gods begin to existas gods, at least in the eyes of men, only
aftertheyhave been murdered.
In the entiretext,the hackneyed expression "God is dead," ap-
pears in one passage only,and it is followedby an insistentreturn
upon the theme of the collectivemurder of God, as if Nietzsche
suddenly realized the differencebetween the hackneyed concep-
tionof God's "death" as a spectaclepassivelywatchedand the active
deed he had in mind,the collectivecrime thatseems to come from
nowhere.
And he seems to have feltthatthe collectivecrimewas the more
powerful idea but harder to communicate, an idea indeed that
would be resisted and eluded with the utmost energy. More em-
phasis was needed, therefore,and Nietzscheprovided it,including
even a gory descriptionof the collectivemurder of God:

God is dead. God remainsdead. And we have killedhim.How shall

we,themurderers of all murderers, ourselves?Whatwasholi-
comfort
estand mostpowerfulof all thattheworldhas yetownedhas bled to
deathunderour knives.Who willwipethisblood offus? Whatwater
is thereforus to clean ourselves?Whatfestivals what
of atonement,
sacredgamesshallwe have to invent?

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 MLN 831

The firsttwo sentencesare all we have in thattextthatresembles

the old "God is dead" theme. But this is enough of an excuse for
all the commentatorsto seize upon it and substituteonce more the
harmlesscliche forwhat Nietzsche is reallysaying.The references
to the blood, and to the knife,and to the wiping of the blood,
forcefullytake us back to the firstannouncementof the madman.
God did not die a natural death; he was collectivelykilled.
And the crime is so great that new festivalsof atonement,new
sacred games willhave to be invented.New ritualswillundoubtedly
appear. The consequences of God's murder are religious,there-
fore,purely religious. The verydeed that seems to put an end to
the religious process is really the origin of that process, the sum
total of it, really,the religious process par excellence. These new
festivals and sacred games will certainly reenact the collective
murder of God. They willbe sacrificialrites.The death of God is
also his birth.
If God is always the product of his own collectivemurder,does
not this text really say that the death of the gods is theirlife and
thatthe lifeof the gods is theirdeath? What kind of eternalreturn
of religionis this?Can Nietzsche himselfaccount for all this?
When it comes to what everybodyimproperlycalls the death of
God, the only text that is ever quoted is thisone but no reference
is ever made to the substitutionof God's murder for the earlier
peaceful death. Is it not strange?
On "the death of God" this is only one text among many but it
is the most memorable. Unquestionably,the element of noveltyin
it stemsfromthe replacementof death by murder. And yet,when
the admirers of that text refer to it, they always label it as the
greatesttexton the death of God. They alwayssubstitutetheirown
concept of God's death for the more mysterious murder of
Nietzsche.
The aura of thistextis inseparable fromitsdramaticpower and
here as in Greek tragedyand everywhereelse, dramatic power is
rooted in the collectivemurder of God. The genius of Nietzsche
takes him to the real beginning.
Perfectlyrespectablescholars,men who would not touch myown
collective murder with a ten foot pole, quote Nietzsche's text in
preferenceto any other,but theircommentsbetrayno awareness
of the murder theme. They never seem to notice the strangelittle
twistthatmakes thistextdifferentfromall others,eventhoughit is
thisdifferencethatdetermines theirpreference.

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832 RENE GIRARD

They see thisdifferenceas a purelyesthetic difference,of course.

The esthetic difference par excellence, I would add. When
Nietzscheis quoted, a certainexcitementis generated,even today.
Quite innocently and unconsciously, of course, the collective
murder of God becomes our own deed too. We are invited to
partake in it. It is a kind of avant-gardeversion of the eucharist,
a symbolicsacrificethat has not yetcompletelyexhausted itsritual
efficacybecauseits significanceis notperceived.Some people have
tried to transferthe efficacyof Nietzsche's text to the "death of
man" and now the death of science,of truth,of almosteverything,
but theydo not see that, each time, they should say murder and
anyway,the sacred pharmakonhas already evaporated.
Aphorism 125 functionsin the same manner as the collective
murderitself,whichis now hidden behind the themeof an entirely
"natural"and peaceful death, a radicallyundramaticdeath,a death
"sans histoire." The text on the death of God, functionsas one
more murder of God as long as the theme of the murder remains
unacknowledged. Even this textual epiphany of the divine is the
product of a collectivemurder that the murderersare not aware
of having committed."This deed is stillmore distantfrom them
than the most distantstars-and yettheyhave doneit themselves."
Heidegger gave what is regarded by many as the "definitive"
comment about that text. This essay is separate from his two-
volumeNietzsche, and itstitlealready spells out the effortto reinsert
Nietzscheinto a traditionfromwhich this textsecedes, a tradition
to which Heidegger had really returned. The title is, of course,
"Nietzsche'sword, God is dead."
It is relevantto observe at this point that,except for his vocab-
ulary,Heidegger's pronouncementson the futureof the religious
in general are a continuation of 19th-centuryhistoricism.Like
Victor Hugo or any 19th-centuryidealist,Heidegger feltthat the
death of an exhausted religion,the biblical religion,would leave
room forthe independent birthof some new god, a birththatwould
not be rooted in the death of the hated biblical God.
Heidegger often spoke mysteriouslyof some god that should
appear at some pointin the future.When he was in the rightmood,
he would graciouslyextend the wondrous promise of some brand
new divinityto his theologicallyminded admirers-he had quite
a few-eagerly but respectfullywaitingfor the latest word from
high above, regarding a possible futurefor that lesser authority,
God.

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 M L N 833

Even if we had not read it we could predict that Heidegger's

essay can only bury the dramatic force of Nietzsche's madman
under the crushingweightof its philosophical pedantry.And in-
deed it does. According to Heidegger the madman's announce-
ment really means: "the end of the supra-sensiblein the platonic
sense."
Afterthis breathtakingannouncement you cannot expect from
someone like Heidegger that he would take notice of something
as insignificantas the collectivemurder of God. Obviously this is
the type of rhetorical ornament that a thinker still superior to
Nietzsche,one that has really gone beyond the supra-sensiblein
the platonic sense, should do well to avoid.
Heidegger wrotethat,even thoughno specificgod is mentioned,
the only god to whom Nietzsche can and must allude is the Chris-
tian God. That last precision fitswell with the rest of his essay.
Even though Heidegger haughtilyproteststhat his interpretation
has nothingto do with the "vulgar atheism" that is so often read
into thistext,the differenceis not always visibleto me.
To speak primarilyof "the death of God," apropos of this text,
as Heidegger does, is to fallinto the same trap as everybodybefore.
All gods are "beings" (seiende)with a certain historicallifespan,
and then they must die, unlike Being itself(Sein). Now that the
twilightof the biblical God has finallycome, similarto the twilight
and death of the pagan gods before, Dionysus for instance,some
entirelynew gods may well show up in the future. Heidegger
thoughthe could recognize his own thoughtin the textof The Gay
Sciencebut he was wrong. He would have been well advised, from
his own standpoint,ifhe had distrustedthattextto the same extent
that he did DionysusversustheCrucified.From the standpoint of
modernisticorthodoxy,the one is as treacherousas the other.
But was Nietzsche'sown thoughtreallythatdifferentfromHei-
degger's especially in 1882? Explicitlyperhaps, it was not, but in
the writingof that text,when Nietzsche shiftedfromthe death of
God to his murder, he must have felt,as we all feel, the sudden
enormous increase in the symbolicalpower at his disposal. It was
like an unexpected giftfromthe gods, and Nietzsche was not the
sort of writerwho would refuse such a gift.
The factthat he made that shiftfromdeath to murder suggests
that the real basis, the ultimate foundation for the later parallel
and opposition between Dionysus and the Crucifiedwas already a
preoccupationof his,a preoccupationthatrarelycomes to the fore,

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834 RENE GIRARD

it seems-a careful analysis might still show otherwise-but one

that must have been quite pregnant with significancein order to
generate such a great and enigmatictextas thiscollectivemurder
of God.
The ultimatefoundationof the collectivemurderof God is iden-
tical,of course,withthatmartyrdom of Dionysuswhichis recognized
as identical to the martyrdom of Jesus in the fragment1052 of The
WilltoPower.There is no difference between thisdual insightand
the definitionof God's disappearance in our world as one more
instance of that martyrdom.This does not mean that all these
murderscan reallybe equated to each other of course.
The same insightdominates the two texts we have read. And
this insightis never more prominentin Nietzsche's mind than at
the very instantbefore the final breakdown, when the formula:
Dionysusversusthe Crucified,is changed to Dionysus and the Cru-
cified.
It cannot mean at thislate stage that Nietzsche is turninginto a
positivistand that he gives up the differencethat interpretation
makes. But it certainlymeans thatthe differenceforwhichhe has
been fightingis breaking down and collapsing back into the un-
differentiation fromwhich it had earlier emerged.
Aphorism 125 expresses the firstundifferentiation, enormously
creativeand symbolicallypolyvalentin itsreachingforthe essential
significanceof the murder of God. If we believe, withHeidegger,
that the ChristianGod alone is present in this text,we will never
apprehend its enormous polyvalence. The text plays with the
murderof God on several primarylevels thattend to contaminate
each otherbut can neverthelessbe logicallydistinguishedfromone
another.
The most obvious level is the modern disappearance of god as
collectivemurder; a littlebehind comes the collectivemurder of
the pagan gods as the generative power behind their existence,
and way behind, the most difficultlevel of all, is the passion of
Jesus thatcannot be the death of the ChristianGod if the murders
of the gods are always theirbirthbut that could well be the death
of all other gods in the banal sense we have in mind when we talk
of "the death of God." It is not quite true, however, and these
pagan gods "die hard," or rather they are perpetuallyreborn in
workslike Nietzsche's own.
What are we to do withsuch a maelstromof collectivemurders?
In order to make sure thatthe madman makes sense on more than

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 M L N 835

one level,let us listento someone who certainlyis not mad, at least

not in our currenttheoreticalgospel, the great Sigmund Freud.
A fewyears afterNietzschewrote The GayScience,Freud discov-
ered, he thought,that all "festivalsof purificationand atonement,
all sacred games," all the religious ritualsof mankind,are rooted
in the collectivemurder of some real victimmen call God....
My readers are frowning.Yes, I know; thatis not a textof Freud
thatshould be quoted. Our great men do not thinkmuch of it. It
is an exception. They reallythinkthat Freud was temporarilyout
of his mind when he wrote it, madly estranged fromhis own best
work.And indeed he was like the madman of The GayScience.He
dared talk about that taboo subject,the collectivemurder of God.
That is the only reason Totemand Taboo has been excommunicated
and declared anathema. Just as there are non-personsnowadays,
there are also non-books, that should never be mentioned, even
when theyseem to belong to the work of sacred authorities.
The aphorism 125 of The Gay Sciencehas been treated verydif-
ferentlyfromTotemand Taboo. It has been enshrinedand declared
sacred. But this idolatryis really the other side of an excommu-
nicationand the result shows it. Nietzsche's statementon the col-
lectivemurder of God isjust as ignored as Freud's. The excommu-
nicationand the enshrinementare two opposite means to achieve
the same end, which is to preventany perception of a most enig-
matic similaritybetween Freud and Nietzsche on the question of
God. On everythingelse, these twotextsare extremelydistantfrom
each other and their overlapping in respect to the fundamental
theme of the collectivemurder of God should provide food for
thoughtbut it does not. Why?
Let us ask Nietzsche for the answer to that last question. He
knows the answer very well. We are not yet ready, we are never
ready for a real investigationof the subject:
"I cometoo early,"[themadman]said then;"mytimehas notcome
yet.This tremendouseventis stillon its way,stillwandering-ithas
notyetreachedtheears of man.Lightning and thunderrequiretime,
thelightof thestarsrequirestime,deeds requiretimeevenafterthey
are done, beforetheycan be seen and heard.This deed is stillmore
distantfromthemthanthemostdistantstars-andyetthey havedoneit
themselves."

Stanford
University

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