# 189 explained — Beyond Good and Evil

> Chapter companion for Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.

## What happens

The chapter examines the necessity of imposed restraints, like fasts or hallowed idle days, to discipline and refine powerful human impulses. It argues that such periods of deprivation, legislated or arising from moral fanaticism (like Christian asceticism), force impulses to humble themselves, thereby purifying and sharpening them. This framework is used to explain the historical sublimation of the sexual impulse into 'amour-passion' under Christian pressure.

## Themes in this chapter

### Critique of Modernity

Analyzes modern societal and religious constructs (like the English Sunday, Christian morality) as mechanisms for disciplining and sublimating natural impulses.

### Psychology as the Fundamental Science

Applies a psychological lens to historical and cultural phenomena, explaining the transformation of the sexual impulse into love as a result of imposed restraint and fasting.

## Character check-ins

### The Englishman

Exemplifies an 'industrious race' whose instinct hallows Sunday, creating a subconscious longing for the workweek as a form of cleverly intercalated fast.

### Christianity

Present as the moral pressure and 'sentiment' under which the sexual impulse was historically sublimated into 'amour-passion' in Europe.

### Europeans

Referenced as the collective subject experiencing the most Christian period where the sublimation of impulse into love occurred.

## Key lines

> Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was a master stroke of English instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to such an extent that the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week—and workday again

The English genius created a somber Sunday ritual so effective that it makes people yearn for work, functioning as a psychological fast.

_Illustrates the legislated restraint of the work impulse._

> Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary days are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to hunger anew.

Societies need enforced breaks from dominant drives so those drives can be subdued and refined.

_States the general principle of necessary restraint._

> ...why it was precisely in the most Christian period of European history, and in general only under the pressure of Christian sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimated into love ( amour-passion ).

Christian asceticism, by fiercely restraining sexuality, ironically transformed and elevated it into passionate love.

_Presents the chapter's key paradox and conclusion._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/189
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters