Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
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The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had a complex philosophy that has influenced Western culture significantly.
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[edit] Nihilism and God is dead
Nietzsche saw nihilism as the outcome of repeated frustrations in the search for meaning. He diagnosed nihilism as a latent presence within the very foundations of European culture, and saw it as a necessary and approaching destiny. The religious worldview had already suffered a number of challenges from contrary perspectives grounded in philosophical skepticism, and in modern science's evolutionary and heliocentric theory. Nietzsche saw this intellectual condition as a new challenge to European culture, which had extended itself beyond a sort of point-of-no-return. Nietzsche conceptualizes this with the famous statement "God is dead", which first appeared in his work in section 108 of The Gay Science, again in section 125 with the parable of "The Madman", and even more famously in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The statement, typically placed in quotation marks,[1] accentuated the crisis that Nietzsche argued that Western culture must face and transcend in the wake of the irreparable dissolution of its traditional foundations, moored largely in classical Greek philosophy and Christianity.[2]
[edit] Master morality and slave morality
Nietzsche argued that two types of morality existed: a master morality that springs actively from the 'noble man', and a slave morality that develops reactively within the weak man. These two moralities do not present simple inversions of one another, they form two different value systems; master morality fits actions into a scale of 'good' or 'bad' whereas slave morality fits actions into a scale of 'good' or 'evil'.
[edit] Übermensch
The Übermensch , (sometimes translated as "Overman", or "superman") is a concept expounded upon by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In that book, the protagonist, Zarathustra, contends that a man can become an Übermensch (homo superior; the common equivalent English translation would be 'super-human'; see below) through the following steps:
- By his will to power, manifested creatively in overcoming nihilism and re-evaluating old ideals or creating new ones.
- By his will to power, manifested destructively in the rejection of, and rebellion against, societal ideals and moral codes.
- By a continual process of self-overcoming.
The Übermensch was contrasted with the exemplar of the Last Man, who is the antithesis of the Übermensch. Whereas Nietzsche considered there to be no examples of an Übermensch in his time, he (via the "mouthpiece" of Zarathustra) declared that there were many examples of Last Men. Zarathustra assigns to the civilization of his time the task of preparing the venue of the Übermensch. In the understanding of this concept, however, one has to recall Nietzsche's ontological critique of the individual subject whom he claimed is a "grammatical fiction". Nietzsche thus criticized both the concepts of soul, personal consciousness and the "ego". Therefore, the Übermensch has also been interpreted as a temporary state of the multiple wills to power composing this individual "fiction". Following this interpretation, the Übermensch is not an individual nor a substance, but something more like the process of overcoming oneself and nihilism. Adding to the interpretive difficulty surrounding the notion of the Übermensch is the matter of the relationship between the views of Zarathustra, the character in the work, and the views of Nietzsche himself.
[edit] Christianity as an institution and Jesus
In his book the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche fights against how Christianity has become an ideology set forth by institutions like churches, and how churches have failed to represent the life of Jesus. Nietzsche finds it important to distinguish between the religion of Christianity and the person of Jesus. Nietzsche attacked Christian religion as represented by churches and institutions for what he called its "transvaluation" of healthy instinctive values. Transvaluation consists of the process by which one can view the meaning of a concept or ideology from a "higher" context. Nietzsche went beyond agnostic and atheistic thinkers of the Enlightenment, who simply regarded Christianity as untrue. He claimed that the Apostle Paul may have deliberately propagated Christianity as a subversive religion (a "psychological warfare weapon") within the Roman Empire as a form of covert revenge for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and of the Second Temple in 70 AD during the Jewish War of 66 - 73 AD. Nietzsche contrasts the Christians with Jesus, whom he regarded as a unique individual, and argues he established his own moral evaluations. As such, Jesus represents a kind of step towards his ideation of the overman. Ultimately, however, Nietzsche claims that, unlike the overman, who embraces life, Jesus denied reality in favor of his "kingdom of God". Jesus's refusal to defend himself, and subsequent death, logically followed from this total disengagement. Nietzsche goes further to analyze the history of Christianity, finding it has progressively distorted the teachings of Jesus more and more. He criticizes the early Christians for turning Jesus into a martyr and Jesus's life into the story of the redemption of mankind in order to dominate the masses, and finds the Apostles cowardly, vulgar, and resentful. He argues that successive generations further misunderstood the life of Jesus as the influence of Christianity grew. By the 19th century, Nietzsche concludes, Christianity had become so worldly as to parody itself — a total inversion of a world view which was, in the beginning, nihilistic, thus implying the "death of God".
[edit] Amor fati and the eternal recurrence
Nietzsche encountered the idea of the eternal recurrence in the works of Heinrich Heine, who speculated that one day a person would be born with the same thought-processes as himself, and that the same applied to every other individual. Nietzsche expanded on this thought to form his theory, which he put forth in The Gay Science and developed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Schopenhauer directly influenced this theory (see Steven Luper's introduction on Nietzsche in Existing for a detailed analysis of these efforts). Schopenhauer postulated that a person who unconditionally affirms life would do so even if everything that has happened were to happen again repeatedly. On a few occasions in his notebooks, Nietzsche discusses the possibility of Eternal Recurrence as a cosmological truth (see Arthur Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher for a detailed analysis of these efforts), but in the works he prepared for publication, he treats it more as a means of life-affirmation. According to Nietzsche, it would require a sincere Amor Fati (Love of Fate), not simply to endure, but to wish for the eternal recurrence of all events exactly as they occurred — all of the pain and joy, the embarrassment and glory. Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", and also characterizes the burden of this idea as the "heaviest weight" imaginable (das schwerste Gewicht). The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life. According to a few interpreters, the eternal return represents more than merely an intellectual concept or challenge: it resembles a koan, or a psychological device that occupies one's entire consciousness, stimulating a transformation of consciousness known as metanoia.
Nehamas wrote in Nietzsche: Life as Literature of three ways of seeing the eternal recurrence: "(A) My life will recur in exactly identical fashion." This expresses a totally fatalistic approach to the idea. "(B) My life may recur in exactly identical fashion." This second view conditionally asserts cosmology, but fails to capture what Nietzsche refers to in The Gay Science, 341. Finally, "(C) If my life were to recur, then it could recur only in identical fashion." Nehamas shows that this interpretation exists totally independently of physics and does not presuppose the truth of cosmology. Nehamas draws the conclusion that if individuals constitute themselves through their actions , then they can only maintain themselves in their current state by living in a reoccurrence of past actions (Nehamas 153).
[edit] Nietzsche's place in contemporary ethical theory
Nietzsche's work addresses ethics from several perspectives: meta-ethics, normative ethics, and descriptive ethics.
In the field of meta-ethics, one can perhaps most usefully classify Nietzsche as a moral skeptic; meaning that he claims that all ethical statements are false, because any kind of correspondence between ethical statements and "moral facts" remains illusory. (This forms part of a more general claim that no universally true fact exists, roughly because none of them more than "appear" to correspond to reality). Instead, ethical statements (like all statements) remain mere "interpretations."
Sometimes Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on what he regards as moral or as immoral. Note, however, that one can explain Nietzsche's moral opinions without attributing to him the claim of their truth. For Nietzsche, after all, we needn't disregard a statement merely because it expresses something false. On the contrary, he depicts falsehood as essential for "life". Interestingly enough, he mentions a "dishonest lie", (discussing Wagner in The Case of Wagner) as opposed to an "honest" one, recommending further to consult Plato with regards to the latter, which should give some idea of the layers of paradox in his work.
In the juncture between normative ethics and descriptive ethics, Nietzsche distinguishes between "master morality" and "slave morality". Although he recognizes that not everyone holds either scheme in a clearly delineated fashion without some syncretism, he presents them in contrast to one another. Some of the contrasts in master vs. slave morality include:
- "good" and "bad" interpretations vs. "good" and "evil" interpretations
- "aristocratic" vs. "part of the 'herd'"
- determines values independently of predetermined foundations (nature) vs. determines values on predetermined, unquestioned foundations (Christianity).
Nietzsche elaborated these ideas in his book On the Genealogy of Morals, in which he also introduced the key concept of ressentiment as the basis for the slave morality. Nietzsche's primarily negative assessment of the ethical and moralistic teachings of the world's monotheistic religions followed from his earlier considerations of the questions of God and morality in the works The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These considerations led Nietzsche to the idea of eternal recurrence and to the (in)famous phrase, "God is dead". Nietzsche primarily meant that, for all practical purposes, his contemporaries lived as if God were dead, though they had not yet recognized it. Nietzsche believed this "death" had already started to undermine the foundations of morality and would lead to moral relativism and moral nihilism. As a response to the dangers of these trends he believed in re-evaluating the foundations of morality to better understand the origins and motives underlying them, so that individuals might decide for themselves whether to regard a moral value as born of an outdated or misguided cultural imposition or as something they wish to hold true.
[edit] Social and political views
[edit] Politics
While a political tone may be discerned in Nietzsche's writings, his work does not in any sense propose or outline a "political project". The man who stated that "The will to a system is a lack of integrity" was consistent in never devising or advocating a specific system of governance, enquiry, or ethics — just as, being an advocate of individual struggle and self-realization, he never concerned himself with mass movements or with the organization of groups and political parties. In this sense, Nietzsche could almost be called an anti-political thinker. Walter Kaufmann put forward the view that the powerful individualism expressed in his writings would be disastrous if introduced to the public realm of politics. Later writers, led by the French intellectual Left, have proposed ways of using Nietzschean theory in what has become known as the "politics of difference" — particularly in formulating theories of political resistance and sexual and moral difference.
Owing largely to the writings of Kaufmann and others, the spectre of Nazism has now been almost entirely exorcised from his writings. Nietzsche often referred to the common people who participated in mass movements and shared a common mass psychology as "the rabble", or "the herd". He valued individualism above all else, and was particularly opposed to pity and altruism (one of the things that he seems to have detested the most about Christianity was its emphasis on pity and how this allegedly leads to the elevation of the weak-minded). While he had a dislike of the state in general, Nietzsche also spoke negatively of anarchists and made it clear that only certain individuals could attempt to break away from the herd mentality. This theme is common throughout Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It was also long thought that one central political theme running through much of Nietzsche's work was Social Darwinism — the idea that the strong have a natural right to dominate the weak, and that feelings such as compassion and mercy are burdens to be overcome. This, too, is based on a misrepresentation of his critiques of morality and politics: the "genealogical method" is, in this sense, an appeal to the possibility of different moral values rather than a defence per se of what he describes as "master" and "slave" moralities. This has influenced a great variety of political movements in the century that has elapsed since Nietzsche's death, and, because all those movements claim Nietzsche as part of their intellectual legacy, it is often difficult to distinguish Nietzsche's own views from the views of those who claim to follow him.
Perhaps Nietzsche's greatest political legacy lies in his 20th century interpreters, among them Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze (and Félix Guattari), and Jacques Derrida. Foucault's later writings, for example, adopt Nietzsche's genealogical method to develop anti-foundationalist theories of power that divide and fragment rather than unite polities (as evinced in the liberal tradition of political theory). The systematic institutionalisation of criminal delinquency, sexual identity and practice, and the mentally ill (to name but a few) are examples used to demonstrate how knowledge or truth is inseparable from the state institutions that formulate notions of legitimacy from 'immoralities' such as homosexuality and the like (captured in the famous power-knowledge equation). Deleuze, arguably the foremost of Nietzsche's interpreters, used the much-maligned 'will to power' thesis in tandem with Marxian notions of commodity surplus and Freudian ideas of desire to articulate concepts such the rhizome and other 'outsides' to state power as traditionally conceived.
[edit] Views on women
Nietzsche's views on women have proven contentious in the eyes of some commentators – even Walter Kaufmann, who translated and expanded interest in him for the English-speaking world, has gone so far as to call Nietzsche's remarks on women "more often than not, second-hand and third-rate."[3] These and similar accusations are normally made referring to certain passages from his works where he makes, according to this view, unflattering statements towards women.[4] That Nietzsche also mocked men and manliness in the same way has not prevented charges of sexism and misogyny against him.[5] There are nevertheless at least two major trends when approaching Nietzsche's contentious views. The one established by Kaufmann[6] can be summarised by his statement: "Nietzsche's writings contain many all-too-human judgements – especially about women – but these are philosophically irrelevant";[7] although many commentators do not dismiss these perceived shortcomings the way Kaufmann does ("...[Nietzsche's] views on women need no comment except to say they are probably [amongst] the most thoroughly discredited aspects of his thought"[8]). Another approach reads Nietzsche's statements on women as being yet another series of word-games amongst word-games meant to challenge the reader and to incite inspection of the concepts involved; this would be an extension of his re-evaluation of morality characterised by his abandonment of customary moral positions in favour of an appropriation in affirmation of the individual – the "revaluations of all values" that dominated Nietzsche's later works.[9] Spurs by Jacques Derrida, Nietzsche and the Feminine, edited by Peter J. Burgard, and Frances Nesbitt Oppel's Nietzsche on Gender: Beyond Man and Woman are some notable examples of proponents of this view.
Nietzsche's view of women is explicitely based upon their role as potential mothers - typical statement is "everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: that is pregnancy".[10] It is an exultation of womanhood as maternity and privileges pregnancy as a vital human form of creativity, and every element of Nietzsche's characterisation of womanhood refers back to a woman's role as mother.[11] In this way Nietzsche denies the equality of men and woman, holding that they are essentially different. The differences between man and woman are ones of powers at their disposal and means of accomplishing their goals. In this regard the question of whether women are made different to men mainly through nature or by social roles is left ambiguous: Nietzsche makes explicit allowances for how woman's ability to express and surpass herself has been constrained by her position in society. But Nietzsche unwaveringly insists on a necessary distinction between the sexes. [5]
Those who take interest in Nietzsche's views on women are offered two contradictory interpretations: some feminist commentators criticise him for placing an irreconciliable difference between the sexes allowing for discrimination against women; others seize upon the opportunity given feminists by his placement of a positive value in womanhood, one through which woman can achieve value and significance for her life equal to any other. [12]
[edit] References
- ^ The Gay Science, Section 108, provides an exception.
- ^ See Beyond Good and Evil.
- ^ Kaufmann, Walter, Editor's Note to Thus Spoke Zarathustra: First Part. In The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, [1954] 1976. p. 120.
- ^ Burgard, Peter J, Introduction: Figures of Excess. In Nietzsche and the Feminine. Ed. Peter J Brugard. Charlottesville and London: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1994. p. 4.
- ^ a b Robert C. Holub, Nietzsche and The Women's Question. Coursework for Berkley University
- ^ Burgard, Peter J, Introduction: Figures of Excess. In Nietzsche and the Feminine. Ed. Peter J Brugard. Charlottesville and London: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1994. p. 2.
- ^ Kaufmann, Walter, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 3rd edition. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968. p. 84.
- ^ Detwiler, Bruce, Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990. p. 193.
- ^ Wicks, Robert, "Friedrich Nietzsche", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) [1].
- ^ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), pp. 178
- ^ Burgard, Peter J, Introduction: Figures of Excess. In Nietzsche and the Feminine. Ed. Peter J Brugard. Charlottesville and London: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1994. p. 7.
- ^ Burgard, Peter J, Introduction: Figures of Excess. In Nietzsche and the Feminine. Ed. Peter J Brugard. Charlottesville and London: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1994. p. 8.
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