19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXXX. Abolish God, Abolish Guilt?

As more sophisticated societies developed from primitive tribes, the sense of indebtedness to their gods continues to grow. IN parallel, the conception of the gods themselves changes. As tribes are unified under despotic rule, their gods become unified until they are consolidated into a single god. The God of Christianity is the “highest potency” god yet developed and correspondingly the feeling of indebtedness and guilt is the greatest in Christianity. Modern society is beginning to become skeptical of Christianity and with this should come a diminution of guilt. A complete and definite victory of atheism may bring about a second innocence devoid of guilt for humanity as a whole.

In section 22 Nietzsche summarizes his hypothesis. Social humanity invented guilt to torture itself. Religion was seized upon to make this self-torture even worse. An entire inventory of instruments of torture was created. Naturalness was rejected in favor of eternal torture of hell. Here we find “an insanity of the will that is without parallel.” Everything humans will is directed against themselves, culminating in a God that assures them of their unworthiness. This is the worst sickness humanity has ever endured. We must turn away in horror from the cry of “love” in the midst of all of this torture.

Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future was published in 1886. It consists of nine “Parts”, each of which is divided into a number of sections, and a set of poems. In the Preface, Nietzsche places the book in the contest of “the fight against Plato, . . . or the fight against the Christian ecclesiastical pressure of millennia.” The “dogmatists error” committed by Plato was his “invention of the pure spirit and the good as such.” The conflict between Europe and Platonism/Christianity has created a dynamic tension, which gives hope of attaining a new goal.

Part One of Beyond Good and Evil is entitled “Prejudices of Philosophers” (or “On the Prejudices of Philosophers”). It begins with the fact that philosophers had had a will to discover the truth. There is a question of the origin of the will to truth, but in investigating the question, one is driven to the more fundamental question as to the value of the will to truth. “Granted that we want the truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance. Nietzsche suggests that he is the first to raise the question of the value of will to truth. He adds that this may be the most risky question that could possibly be raised.

Reading between the lines of what the philosophers say, Nietzsche concludes that all thinking, including philosophical thinking, must be counted among the instinctive functions. “Being conscious” is no more opposed to instinct than being born is opposed to heredity The thinking of the philosopher, then, is secretly influenced by the philosopher’s instincts. Behind al logic are valuations, which in turn are based on “physiological demands, for the maintenance of definite mode of life.” The value of “truth” over illusion and of certainty over uncertainty may only be necessary for human maintenance, but may be only superficial.

It is strange to assert, as Nietzsche does, that the falsehood of an opinion is no objection to it. The important questions about an opinion are whether it is life furthering, life preserving, and species preserving. The falsest opinions serve these functions best. Belief in the eternal and immutable. Reduction of the world to mathematical quantities. To recognize untruth as a condition of life is to go “beyond good and evil,” because it takes conditions of life to be ultimate values.

The philosophers claim to have uncovered their “truths” as the result of the cold application of logical dialectic. In fact, they are merely propounding and defending their real opinions: “their hearts desire abstracted and refined.” They do not admit that it is their prejudices that they parade as “truths.” Kant proposes his “categorical imperative” as if it was the result of dialectical thinking, but instead it expresses the prejudice of an old moralist and ethical preacher. Spinoza packages his own “wisdom” in a mathematical form that is nothing but hocus-pocus.

The Stoics desired to live “according to nature” but nature is indifferent and devoid of all values. Nature is thus contrary to life, which ultimately is al about valuation. If nature were equated to life, then the desire would be the empty imperative to live life according to life. The reality is that the Stoics were attempting to dictate their values to nature. The Stoic “love of truth” turns into a false view of nature. This projection of the values of the philosopher onto everything else is the most spiritual “will to power”: to create the world.

As regards Kant, Kant proclaimed the great discover of synthetic apriori judgments and asked how they are possible. Kant went on to discover a moral faculty to account for moral judgments. His explanation was that they are the product of a “faculty.” But this explanation is empty: such judgments are possible because we have a means for making them. This is like explaining the sleep-inducing property of opium to their power to produce sleep. The German philosophers followed Kant’s procedure enthusiastically, as with Schelling’s “intellectual intuition.” The real explanations for these claims were a felt need to counter the sensualism of the seventeenth century.

As regards Life as Will to Power, Nietzsche contends that living things seek to discharge their strength. “Life itself is will to power” according to Nietzsche. Self-preservation is only a relatively insignificant by-product of the discharge of strength. Thus, self-preservation is not the goal of life. Indeed, teleological principles such as that of self-preservation are superfluous and should be avoided. Spinoza showed that method demands the exclusion of teleological principles.

Philosophers are fond of discovering “immediate certainties” such as: “I think” (Descartes) and “I will” (Schopenhauer). But immediate certainty, absolute knowledge, the thing in itself is contradictions in terms. In the case of “I think” there is a host of connections to the other matters that make its immediacy impossible. What is the origin of the concept of thinking? What is the I? How can the I be the cause of thinking? If the answer is supposed to be given by intuition, we must ask why what is give by intuition is true.

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXXIV. Primordial Humanity

Nietzsche’s “tentative expression” of his “hypothesis” concerning the origins of guilt is given beginning in Section 16 and continuing until the end of the essay. The starting point is a hypothesis about human beings in their primitive state, in which their instincts, their unconscious drives, are “allowed free play” and are “discharged” without opposition. These instinct s “hard hitherto been the foundation of his power, his joy, and his awesomeness. The “wild, extravagant instincts” included: Hostility, Cruelty, Delight in Persecution, Excitement and Destruction.

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXXIII. Guilt and Punishment

The account of the origins of “freedom” and “responsibility” marks the end of the first essay. The aim of the Second Essay is to account for the origins of a different phenomenon, “guilt” or “bad conscience.” Before revealing their true origins, Nietzsche attempts to refute a different explanation. Guilt arises from punishment. To make his case Nietzsche gives an account of the origin of punishment. He describes it as a form of compensation to the victim of the crime, from the “debtor to the creditor.” Punishment does not instill guilt, but on the contrary it hardens the person punished.

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXXII. The Origin of “Freedom” and “Responsibility”

The attributes of strength and weakness are natural, as are all the acts, which are performed through strength and weakness. Common language deceives us into believing that behind every act is a “doer” which can be separated from the act. There is an object, a bolt of lightening, which cause the flash of light to occur. This separation is applied to persons by the weak in the claim that it is the “subject” who is responsible for the act. Thus it is claimed that the strong are free not to act in the way that strong people naturally do. The weak then can claim that they have freely chosen weakness, which is to say that they have chosen to be “good.”

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXXI. The Man of Nobility and the Man of Rancor

The values of the noble man and the man of rancor work in opposite ways. The values of the noble re positive and are an affirmation of what he is. The values of the man of rancor are negative and are a condemnation of what someone else (i.e. the noble) is. The noble looks at those below him as merely unhappy and at his enemies as worthy of respect, which is “a bridge to love.” The man of rancor feels the might of those above him and reacts by declaring them “evil.” Any cleverness on the part of the noble is subordinate to his power and thrust of his instincts. A race of men of rancor regards sharp wittedness “an absolutely vital condition for its existence.”

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXX. The Slave-Revolt in Morality

When the priestly caste splits off from the aristocratic, there exists potential for conflict. The priests are physically powerless, but they are the most dangerous opponents because they become great haters. The priestly haters develop intellect as their weapon, which keeps human history from being ‘a dull and stupid thing.’ The Jewish priesthood were able o get their revenge against the powerful b y inverting their values. Wealth, nobility, and power are turned into evil, and only the poor, lowly, and powerless are good. The inversion constituted the slave-revolt in the history of morality. The revolt remains successful and has been forgotten only because of its success.

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXIX. The Etymology of ‘Good’ and ‘Bad”

From the point of view of etymology (the study of the origin of words), one can obtain an insight into the genealogy of morality itself. In a number of different languages, the word ‘good’ developed to refer to features of nobility or autocracy. It came to designate the spiritually high-minded or the spiritually privileged. This development runs parallel to that of the word ‘bad’ which refers to features of the base, common, or low. In German the word ‘bad’ (schlecht) is the same as ‘simple’ (schlicht), and is merely descriptive of someone as common in contrast to the nobility. The development has not been noticed due to the destructive prejudice of democracy in modern times.

When the clerical case is the highest caste, they appropriate the word ‘pure’ and detach ‘good’ from social standing. Originally, purity was a matter of simple hygiene, but in the hands of the priestly aristocracy, it is transformed into an unhealthy brooding and emotional explosiveness. The metaphysics of the clergy finds purity b y repudiating the senses. Its discontent is to be ‘cured’ by ‘God’, which is the epitome of purity; pure nothingness. This made the passions dangerous, which in turn made the human being into an interesting animal with the consequence e that the human soul became deep and also became evil for the first time.

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXVIII. Goodness and Utility

The first mistake of the English psychologists was to misunderstand the origin of the concept of “good” in utility. Their second mistake as internal to their theory: that goodness was taken to be an intrinsic value because the usefulness of “good” actions was forgotten. Surely, if the actions were so useful, their utility should never be forgotten a more plausible view was taken by Herbert Spencer. He also equates goodness with utility but he claims in addition that this association is never forgotten. It is because the association is made universally that goodness is thought to be an intrinsic value. Although Spencer’s view is wrong, it is at least in itself ‘self-consistent and psychologically tenable” as an explanation.

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXVII. The Unhistorical Deduction of the Concept of “Good”

For all their good spirits, the English psychologists failed in their attempt to understand the concept of “good.” They gave an historical explanation of the origin of the concept. Originally, the on-egoistic acts of people are praised and called “good” by their recipients because they found them to be useful to themselves. Then the origin of the praise was forgotten and it became simply routine to praise non-egoistic acts. That which is merely useful to the recipient is erroneously called “good in itself.” The results of the English psychologists are a devaluation of the proudest values of humanity but they do not think historically, because they reflect the idiosyncratic categories of the psychologists; utility, forgetting, routine, and error.
The error of the English psychologists lies in locating the source of the concept “good” in the sentiments of the recipients of actions. Instead, its origin lies in the valuation given by “the noble, mighty, highly placed, and the high minded” to their own actions. A “good action” belongs “to the highest rank, in contradistinction to all that was base, low and plebeian.” A “bad action” is one undertaken out of baseness. This contrast between the actions of the nobles and that of the base depends on the “pathos of distance,” the feeling of superiority of the “higher” over the “lower.” There is no element of utility here, as the noble values spring from their passions, rather from any cool calculation. Nor is there any reason to call “good” with actions hat are not undertaken egoistically, as the herd would have it.

19th Century Philosophy: Nietzsche

XXVI. The English Psychologists

Nietzsche begins the first essay by considering the case of the “English psychologists,” who attempt to explain human behavior through such mechanisms as principles of associations. It would be an offense to human pride if all that is responsible for our mental life is so mechanical. Thus, it is interesting to speculate as to what drives these psychologists to treat the human being in this way. Is it a mean instinct to belittle humanity? Is it the pessimistic gloominess of disillusioned idealists? Is it a turn away from Plato and Christianity? Is it a taste for the strange and paradoxical? Perhaps it is one of these reasons or a bit of them all. Whatever the reason, Nietzsche holds out the hope hat they are “courageous, magnanimous and proud animals,” which hold out the hope of learning the truth, however distasteful it turns out to be.