It's often the case that people familiar with this topic will say, "one cannot be both Christian and Nietzschean." That is a misunderstanding of the case, so long as one can understand the issues that were raised. Nietzsche's opinions with respect to Christianity are often misrepresented as being entirely anti-Christian, but in fact were not so. He on several occasions praised certain aspects of Christianity.
But the focus, I believe, was always on the servile nature of exoteric Christianity, and also the critique of esoteric Christianity from the perspective that it made too many demands upon human nature to really be applicable. In both senses the tendency would then be toward nihilism, in the former because of the slavish and ignoble character of the civilization resulting, and in the latter because the ruling caste is too 'far from life' to set this world into proper order.
I would like to disagree, to an extent. The problem of Christianity in exoteric form being too oriented toward egalitarianism is a real one, but it is one that needn't necessarily dominate if the proper order is allowed to flourish. In fact, I would say that the esoteric form of Christianity was dominant in the Middle Ages, and was not at all prone to the 'fellaheen spirit'. That came later, and it was itself, at least in part, the result of many worldly causes that had little to do with Christianity as such.
The modern system came to be amidst a time of great change. The old system of three castes was already starting to break down by the 15c. There is good reason to believe that the rise of strong Monarchism in Europe was a trend that aided the bourgeoisie in their rise. The example of the Capetian Kings using merchants and townsmen as useful allies against powerful aristocratic enemies is well documented, and one could find similar examples many other places. The other was the transformation of values, namely the vision of order transitioning away from the land-and-faith system to that of an outward-seeking gold-and-plunder motivating idea.
The Middle Ages were a time when some model of Platonic Idealism was put into effect. Each had his place, the man of arms, the man of intellect, and the man of the soil. The mercantile and craftsman bourgeoisie remained in this time a small and specialized class. Also, the priestly caste had a whole host of inner teachings that were not accessible to the public, and the Christian mysticism of that time period was itself only open to initiates. There was a totally parallel elite and intellectual culture in the Church to what was going on in more worldly circles. This does not suggest to me a civilization motivated by egalitarianism.
The plebes of Europe had been set adrift by changes that took place with the coming of the Black Death, constant wars between aristocrats, and the decisive event of the weakening of the Universal Church which took place by means of the Renaissance in the South and the Reformation in the North. Perhaps Nietzsche was correct to criticize the Reformation's excesses, but I tend more toward the Schuon view that the political intransigence of the Church made it more or less inevitable - the controversies of the Cathars in the HMA, or of Wycliffe and Hus later, should have been warning signs. This could have led to a reform that would have preserved the unity of the Church and the continuity of the proper teaching, while making some important concessions to the Northern Europeans, whose needs were not being addressed.
The dysgenicism of constant war was really also a decisive feature. The fact is that many great lineages died out due to the interminable conflicts of the MA. This is why I have always advised against excessive militarism, while being no pacifist. Sparta is a great example of what comes with it, eventually the helots will take over because the lordly Doric lineages have worn themselves out in endless machy. But perhaps we ought to give this trend its due in the MA Europe also, since it was clearly present.
The bourgeoisie was simply clever and opportunistic, and in all, they were happy to go along with whichever system most maximized their wealth. It is my belief that they mainly prospered because they were in a position to exploit the goings-on to their advantage, especially since, as men of peace and commerce, they could make comfortable gains by doing little. And perhaps even the bourgeoisie of today can still be put to good use, so long as they are not allowed to dominate.
But this still doesn't address the issue of egalitarianism and where it came from as such. I don't believe, for the reasons I've mapped out, that we can place it decisively at the doorstep of the Church. There were many spiritual trends arising at the end of the Middle Ages, and the simple answer is, that these trends in both the North and South, contributed decisively to the development of the modern ideology. Humanism divorced from the virtues of its Classical antecedents, and ideas from the Northern bourgeoisie played very decisive roles in all of this.
The plebeian question compounded the problem. The plebes had little to do with the grander historical trends, but they were eventually wholly mobilized by the ascendant forces of the bourgeoisie, and it came to be, with the end of aristocratic power from the 18c-20c that the only two remaining castes of any political note would be the urbanized plebes (or proletariate) and the bourgeoisie. Sadly, this arrangement has clearly, coincident with the rise of technological civilization, made any higher cultural impulses and genuine religion impossible. The bourgeoisie 'won', that is solved the problem of the conflict with the proles, by exporting the conflict to the Third World, but I don't think that will last.
No one has written enough on these last points from the proper perspective. It has mostly fallen to Marxists and other left-Hegelian types to talk about any of this. Perhaps the Traditional types have given it some notice, but it needs more. Traditional thinking needs to be brought into the mainstream so as to appeal to the men of action. It is imperative [i]within the next century[/i] that they can intervene and change the course of history away from the Catastrophic course it is now upon.
It's often been said that philosophy has no 'utility', but this is only judging from utility defined as brute usefulness, i.e. work. This is, of course, true in a sense. But it ignores that there is a higher function of philosophy, or many higher functions as it turns out, corresponding to the various fields. One of them has to do with the question of rule. Politics, metaphysics and ethics are all necessary to the great spiritual task of rule. The descent of these into the gutter, along with the rise of crass biotypes to political power through mob rule and demagogy, is directly correlated with the collapse of civilization. Chinese historian of philosophy Fung Yu-Lan said that the function of philosophy is to cultivate the mind. And without the cultivation of the mind, no coherent form of rule will ever be established again.
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