André Gide’s Justification of Evil

A previous article about the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – the author of “The Antichrist” – explored how his thinking is anti-Christian: Since he did not believe in God anymore, he concluded that morality, that is, good and evil, is but a human convention. Thus, life would be arbitrary and senseless. What ensues is nihilism, the belief in nothing, and hedonism, personal pleasure as the highest goal in life. Attempting to conceive of some ideology that gives life a purpose, he arrived at the glorification of strength and vitality as values per se. Hence, his ideal of the “Übermensch” or “Raubmensch” (“superman” or “man of prey”). He embellished this ideology by presenting it as “aristocratic” and justified it with sophisticated essays and witty aphorisms, thereby suggesting to the reader that he, too, belongs to some kind of intellectual elite. However, reduced to its core, his philosophy is one of brute strength: the rule of the strong over the weak and the license for the first to act “as thou wilt” (motto of the Satanist A. Crowley).

In the present sequel, we will look at a particular case of how this philosophy might be used to justify evil: the French writer and Nobel Prize winner André Gide (1869-1951).

Gide grew up in an upper-class protestant family. In contrast to Nietzsche, he had an affinity for Christianity, and his works show that he knew the Bible well. However, he felt inhibited by it concerning his homosexual, or rather, pedophile inclinations. His autobiographic break-through novel “The Immoralist” from 1902 shows how he managed to delude himself and justify his abuse of children based on Nietzsche’s philosophy.

The novel’s protagonist Michel, just like Nietzsche, is a philologist who, up to his mid-twenties, has spent his life but for the study of dead languages – a “theoretical man” in the words of the German philosopher (see “The Birth of Tragedy”). As a favor to his dying father, he marries his childhood friend Marceline, for whom he does not harbor feelings of love nor of attraction. On their honeymoon trip to Northern Africa, he falls ill of tuberculosis and only escapes death due to the selfless care from his wife. The beginning of his recovery at their temporal residence in Africa coincides with the blossoming of an erotic attraction to the Arab children who visit their home. This is also the first time he experiences some kind of “élan vital,” and the starting point of a metamorphosis from his former self as a “theoretical man” to an immoral “man of prey” (see “Beyond Good and Evil” et al.)

A quote from Gide’s “Journal” confirms the story’s autobiographical background:

Je m’agite dans ce dilemme : être moral ; être sincère. La morale consiste à supplanter l’être naturel (le vieil homme) par un être factice préféré. Mais alors, on n’est plus sincère. Le vieil homme, c’est l’homme sincère.(January 11, 1892)

I am torn by this dilemma: being moral; being sincere. Morality consists of supplanting one’s natural being (the old man) by a preferred artificial being. But then, one is not sincere anymore. The old man is the sincere man.

Here, Gide refers to 1 Corinthians 15:46-49:

The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

Jesus, who has freed us from sin, is the “new Adam”, Who has opened the path for us to become a new, heavenly being ourselves. By rejecting Him and returning to the “old man,” one choses sin.

Further statements by Gide show how he felt emboldened to do so by Nietzsche’s philosophy, whom he thanks for “affirming with boldness, art, and madness that which generations might only have timidly insinuated,” and he concludes that this is his starting point for going further (“Prétextes, Souivie de Nouveaux Prétextes…”, 85).

He adopts Nietzsche’s glorification of destruction, a typically satanic rhetoric that subverts the actual God-given order:

Oui, Nietzsche démolit; il sape, mais ce n’est point en découragé, c’est en féroce; c’est noblement, glorieusement, surhumainement, comme un conquérant neuf violente des choses vieillies. La ferveur qu’il y met, il la redonne à d’autres pour construire. L’horreur du repos, du confort, de tout ce qui propose à la vie une diminution, un engourdissement, un sommeil, c’est là ce qui lui fait crever murailles et voûtes ... (“Prétextes ...” 82).

Yes, Nietzsche demolishes; he undermines, but not at all as a discouraged, but ferociously; nobly, gloriously, superhumanly, like a new conquerer violates obsolete things. He gives the fervor he applies to others who might construct. The abhorrence of repose, of comfort, of everything that proposes a diminution of life, a fattening, a slumber, is where he causes the collapse of walls and vaults …

Michel’s metamorphosis in the “Immoralist” from “theoretical man” to “man of prey” is narrated in a way that provides a high potential of identification between reader and protagonist. The latter’s rejection of decadent contemporary European society and culture – and with it of Christianity – becomes seemingly understandable through Gide’s artful critique of its dulness and hypocrisy.

To give a short summary: On their way back to Europe, Michel strengthens himself with hiking trips, and baths in lakes and under the sun. His successful fight with a drunken coachman in Italy is the prove of his new vitality, and he impregnates his wife in the same night. In France, he first grows fond of running his family’s farm in Normandy, but is soon absorbed by his erotic attraction to his administrator’s handsome son and, then, starts associating with “strong” but immoral and depraved characters, ending up with poaching with them in his own possessions. His glorification of the young Gothic king Athalaric – a Nietzschean “Übermensch” such as Cesare Borgia – in his lectures in Paris is met with a lack of understanding and leads to his estrangement from French high-society. The growing urge to live according to his new ideals brings him to convince his pregnant but sick wife to travel again to Northern Africa. Her health deteriorates during the trip, but he ruthlessly pushes on until she dies and he, finally, is able live out his cravings without inhibition. Three friends who look after him after receiving an alarming letter from him find him sharing his bed with an Arab boy in a shack.

The novel is short but subtle and complex, full of intertextual references, not only to Nietzsche but also to the Bible. A thorough analysis of those shows that the author had conscience of the fact that he was glorifying and justifying evil in his novel, but he did it nonetheless. Also, Gide himself spent time in Northern Africa abusing Arab boys. This did not prevent him from being lauded and admired – even as a wise man whose opinion of worldly affairs and ethics seemed valuable to many of his admirers. From a Christian perspective, some of his actions and utterances can only be described as those of a scum-bag. Rejecting Christ, he was honored by the world and awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1947.

There are similar cases of other famous writers, such as the German Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) with his justification of pedophilia in “Death in Venice.”

The thinking and acting of people such as Nietzsche, Gide, and Mann is anti-Christian, and as God has warned us in his Revelations, it will, eventually, become the norm globally. Who has eyes to see and ears to hear knows that we are not far from it.