How moral values acquire a history › Third Essay: what makes suffering bearable?

The third essay asks what ascetic ideals mean. Its opening assigns different meanings to different adopters: an artist, a philosopher, and a priest need not be pursuing the same end. For a philosopher, a simple and solitary life might support concentration rather than express hatred of existence (§§6–8). Treating every restriction as the same kind of denial would erase a distinction the essay itself develops.

The ascetic priest's activity is more complicated. Nietzsche describes the ideal as appearing hostile to life while functioning as an instrument through which a suffering life preserves itself (§13). It gives suffering a place within an interpretation. The sufferer can continue to will because suffering has acquired an explanation and a purpose, even if that explanation turns the person against ordinary sources of enjoyment.

In §15 the priest redirects the sufferer's demand to find someone responsible: the sufferer is made to locate the fault in themselves. Nietzsche thinks this can manage destructive resentment while intensifying guilt. The same interpretation can preserve a person and make their condition worse in another respect. That double function prevents a simple verdict that the ideal has done nothing except destroy life.

The argument also reaches apparently secular truth-seeking (§§23–25). Science is not automatically an opponent of the ascetic ideal if it retains an unconditional faith in truth's value. Nietzsche's target is that valuation, rather than a claim that every scientific finding is false. Abandoning a religious doctrine would leave the deeper commitment to investigate if truth still holds unquestioned authority.

Section 12 supplies an important qualification about objectivity. Nietzsche rejects an imagined subject without a direction or an interest, but proposes using different affects and perspectives to develop a more complete understanding. This is not the demand to choose whichever account feels best. It concerns gaining the ability to consider an object through more than one orientation instead of mistaking a single orientation for pure, uninterpreted knowledge.

The essay ends by connecting the ascetic ideal's power with the horror of meaningless suffering (§28). The ideal supplied a meaning; through it, people could will, even when their willing turned against life. The conclusion distinguishes having an aim from having an aim worth affirming. A meaning can make suffering bearable while remaining open to criticism.