The Possibility of a New Sanctification in Nietzsche’s Philosophy: From the Collective to a Healthy Individual

Abstract

Religion continues to play a role in many contemporary wars and conflicts, despite its professed commitment to peace and non-violence. A key feature of religion is the demand for sanctification of its members. This raises a paradox: why do religious communities that emphasize individual sanctification often produce or justify selfish forms of action, and why do sanctified individuals consent to them? In traditional frameworks, sanctification refers to the disciplining of human instincts and affects according to a moral code established by the religious community, in order to bring the individual closer to God. In 1881, Nietzsche identified the core of the problems stemming from collectivism, including religion, in what he calls “the properties of the organism”: the tendency of a whole to functionally organize its parts for its own preservation. While it is condemned as egoism at the individual level, it is often justified in religious communities as devotion to God or as an altruistic act for the benefit of the collective. From this perspective, our focus must shift from the individual as part of an organism to the self as an organism, exemplified by the Übermensch. This paper argues that, within traditional religious communities, sanctification functions as a mechanism of control and preservation. Inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy, it proposes “New Sanctification” as a form of individual self-formation. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the Übermensch serves as a model of New Sanctification. Such sanctification does not require the individual to lose the self in the collective. Rather, it is a process through which the individual returns to the self, confronts the world directly, and affirms one’s life in the most active and life-affirming way possible. That is the new sanctification that a healthy individual continually realizes through self-overcoming.