Nietzsche in his Forties Nietzsche after his breakdown

Nietzsche in his Forties Nietzsche after his breakdown

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE German philosopher Born 1844 Breakdown 1889 Death 1899 Seminal Works: The Birth of Tragedy Human, All-too-Human The Cheerful Science Thus Spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good and Evil The Genealogy of Morals The Will to Power: A Revaluation of all Values (1889, unfinished) Subjects of his philosophy: Literature, Art, Music, Culture, Religion, Ethics, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Mind, and Language. Themes of his philosophy: Criticism of Platonic Truth. Concepts; Introduction of Fragmented Subject; Revaluation of Values; Will to Power; Explanation of Morality; Criticism of Religion, esp. Christianity; Master and Slave; the Super-human; Eternal Recurrence of the Same.

Criticism of the Platonic Concept of ‘Truth’ NO Platonic form of the Chair Nietzsche is criticizing ‘Truth’ understood in a universal, absolute, and metaphysical sense (not in a pragmatic sense). This notion originally derives from Plato, and implies that ‘Truth’ belongs in the world of ideal forms, not in the world of appearances. Splitting the world up into two: the world of ideal forms representing perfection, and the world of appearances representing imperfection, Plato devaluates and depreciates the only world known to us, the world of appearances. Plato’s idea is inherited in Christianity, where the perfect world becomes the world beyond, the Kingdom of God, the Elysium, and the imperfect world, the existent world, nothing but a “wail of tears. ” Nietzsche most general objection: there is no ideal world of forms, no transcendent world, no ‘hidden’ world. There is only the world we can see, the imperfect world of appearances; consequently, no heaven and no God. The invention of a perfect transcendent world is human self-deception. Therefore Nietzsche can say that the ‘will to truth’ is ‘will to deception. ’ (BGE 2). No Road to Heaven

Revaluation of Values If our so-called ‘true world’ (the world of ideal forms or the world beyond) is nothing but illusion and self-deception (in other words, if it is false), and our so-called ‘false world ’ is our actually existent world, then it follows that what has been traditionally called ‘true, ’ is false, and what has been traditionally called ‘false, ’ is true. This is the mechanism behind Nietzsche’s so-called revaluation of values. The value-opposition ‘true versus false’ has been turned around. Therefore Nietzsche can ask: “why do we want ‘truth’; why not rather untruth? ” (BGE 1). Explanation: why do we want ‘truth’ if it is false, why not rather ‘untruth’ if it is true. Nietzsche believes that philosophy always thinks value-oppositions hierarchically, meaning that one position in the opposition always is positive or appreciated, while the other position is negative or depreciated. For example: True/False, Good/Evil, Reason/Desire. As a consequence, philosophy has always been pursuing (1) something called truth, which has no existence whatsoever, (2) something called ‘good, ’ but from the point of view of a moral theory, which Nietzsche finds despicable, or (3) been advocating something called ‘reason’, which is a quality the human being is completely lacking. In setting up these ideals for itself, the human being has been (and still is) deceiving itself. To revaluate’ is to question these value-oppositions. Is reason for example superior to desire; is it not rather in the service of desire? Briefly, ought we not to turn around the order of rank; ought not the depreciated term to be appreciated? (See BGE 2). Quotation: “How could something originate in its antithesis? Truth in error, for example? Or will to truth in will to deception? Or the unselfish act in self-interest? Or the pure radiant gaze of the sage in covetousness? . . . The things of the highest value must have another origin of their own—they cannot be derivable from this transitory, seductive, deceptive, mean little world, from this confusion of desire and illusion! In the womb of being, rather, in the intransitory, in the hidden god, in the ‘thing-in-itself’— that is where their cause must lie an nowhere else!” p. 33 -34

The World as Chaos and the Will to Power A fundamental assumption in Nietzsche: The universe originally is chaos; there are no laws, rules, or principles guaranteeing order in this chaos. The universe is not a cosmos (harmonious, orderly), it is rather a chaosmos (disharmonious, disorderly). The only principle working in this chaotic universe is the principle of will-topower. However, will to power does not work according to pre-determined designs or intentions; it works as power-struggles where something ends up victorious and something is defeated, but according to random processes. “Life is will to power and nothing else. ” But exactly because there is will-to-power in all processes, the human being has tried to control chaotic nature (i. e. , to subject nature under its power). Our sciences are manifestations of this attempt of control. By means of sciences we simplify a chaotic nature that is in itself too complex to be thought. For example in logic and mathematics, we have invented languages by which to control and manipulate nature; these languages are therefore manifestations of our ‘will to power. ’ These languages are necessary for the advancement of civilization. Still, they simplify, and therefore falsify, chaotic nature. For example, in nature there are no self-identical things (as in logic); and there also no straight lines (as in geometry). (See BGE 4). “Without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and selfidentical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live. ” (BGE 4)

Simplification A fundamental assumption in Nietzsche: whatever we do, we always simplify, therefore falsify. It is done out of necessity because we cannot process the abundance of information that impresses itself upon us. Examples: when we look at a tree, we do not see every branch and every leaf; we see at best a ‘shape’ or a ‘gestalt’; when we read a page, we do not read, nor remember, each sentence, we read only a few, and start constructing a meaning. In brief, we simplify, thus falsify, the external world. Our mind is a ‘simplification-apparatus. ’ (BGE 192). The same is the case, when we construct our inner-mental world. Also our inner world of desires, memories, thoughts, etc. , presents us with an abundance of material that we cannot process as such. The external world is chaos, but the inner world is chaos too. There are no laws or unitary principles in the inner world, except for the random principle of will to power. If we imagine that the inner world of memories and thoughts is like the action happening on a theater stage, there is no puppet-master sitting behind the curtain pulling the strings for what happens on the stage. Whatever happens on this stage, happens according to random will-to-power-processes. Quotation: “O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives in! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple. ” p. 55. Quotation: As little as a reader today reads all the individual words of a page — he rather takes about five words in twenty haphazardly and ‘conjectures’ their probable meaning — just as little do we see a tree exactly and entire with regard to its leaves, branches, color, shape; it is so much easier for us to put together an approximation of a tree. [. . . ] All this means: we are from the very heart and from the very first—accustomed to lying. Or, to express it more virtuously and hypocritically: one is much more of an artist than one realizes. (BGE, 192).

No Rational ‘I’ Philosophers have belied this situation (the inner-mental chaos) when they have invented a rational unifying principle according to which we think. They assume that in the ‘I think, ’ the ‘I’ is such a unifying principle; but the ‘I’ does not exist in the mind. The ‘I’ preceding ‘thinking’ in the sentence ‘I think’ is merely a linguistic construction and convention; it does not mean that there is something in the mind actually corresponding to this ‘I’. (BGE 16 & 17). In the mind there is also no cause-effect relationship. If it existed, the ‘I’ is for example not causing ‘thinking. ’ Similarly, there is no ‘will’ causing action. Such singularities (unitary principles) cannot be located in the mind. There is only a crisscross of processes and power-struggles without any clear and obvious origin. (BGE 19). Quotation “The philosopher must say to himself: when I analyze the event expressed in the sentence ‘I think, ’ I acquire a series of rash assertions which are difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove — fx, that it is I who think, that it has to be something at all which thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of an entity thought of as a cause, that an ‘I’ exists, finally that what is designated by ‘thinking’ has already been determined—that I know what thinking is. ” p. 46.

Morality as a Disciplinary Practice Since the human being is inherently chaotic, society has invented rules by which to discipline and regulate human behavior. These rules come as moral laws. They are never timeless, universal, and abstract—as Kant would have it. In Nietzsche, morality always serves the interest of a group or a people. Moral laws are consequently relative to the history, the culture, and the social group they are meant to serve. (BGE 186). Moral laws are always meant to restrain the human being; and when they have been exercised over several centuries, the originally anarchistic human being has eventually developed something Nietzsche calls a ‘formal conscience’ (equivalent to Freud’s ‘super-ego’) as an internalized selfcriticizing, self-controlling agency in the psyche, that demands obedience. The human being has imprisoned itself thanks to this ‘formal conscience. ” (BGE 188 & 199). Quotation: “Considering that hitherto nothing has been practiced and cultivated among men better or longer than obedience, it is fair to suppose that as a rule a need for it is by now innate as a kind of formal conscience which commands: ‘thou shalt unconditionally do this, unconditionally not do that, ’ in short ‘thou shalt. ’ This need seeks to be satisfied and to fill out its form with a content; in doing so it grasps about wildly, according to the degree of its strength, impatience and tension, with little discrimination, as a crude appetite, and accepts whatever any commander — parent, teacher, law, class, prejudice, public opinion — shouts in its ear. ” p. 120.

The Slave-morality and the Super-Human Especially Christianity has cultivated this obedient and selfrestraining human that Nietzsche labels the ‘slave’ or the ‘herd. ’ Against this ‘herd-morality’ he advocates the idea of a master or noble morality, where the human being has cast off the fetters of Christianity. Nietzsche believes that it is possible to cultivate this alternative ideal of a human type; a future human that he also labels the Übermensch, the super-human or overhuman. Such a human type creates values, does not obey them; he is tough, severe, and unsentimental in his treatment of both himself and fellow human beings; he completely lacks negative sentiments like envy and resentment, because he affirms his own existence Ideally, he is self- and life-affirming to such an extent that he would chose, if given the choice, to re-live his life, without any changes, eternally as the same life. He would chose “Eternal Recurrence of the Same” above an eternal life in heaven. Quotation: “The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of, he judges ‘what harms me is harmful in itself’, he knows himself to be that which in general first accords honour to things, he creates values. [. . . ] The noble human being honors in himself the man of power, also the man who has power over himself, who understands how to speak and how to keep silent, who enjoys practicing severity and harshness upon himself and fells reverence for all that is severe and harsh [ . . . ] belief in oneself, pride in oneself, a fundamental hostility and irony for ‘selflessness’ belong just as definitely to noble morality as does a mild contempt for and caution against sympathy and the ‘warm heart. ’ p. 195 -96. Quotation: “Let us admit to ourselves unflinchingly how every higher culture on earth has hitherto begun! Men of a still natural nature, barbarians in every fearful sense of the word, men of prey sill in possession of an unbroken strength of will and lust for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more civilized, more peaceful, perhaps trading or cattle-raising races. [. . . ] The noble caste was in the beginning always the barbarian caste: their superiority lay, not in their physical strength, bur primarily in their psychical — they were more complete human beings. ” p. 192.

Nietzsche and the Women In Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, we have a character uttering the famous (or infamous) remark: “When you go to a woman, don’t forget the whip. ” Does this advice mean, ‘when you go to a woman, don’t forget to give her a good beating’; or does it mean, ‘when you go to a woman, don’t forget she is dangerous’? Is the whip a weapon of attack or a weapon of defense? Most probably the last, the man who goes to a woman, does so like an animal-trainer approaching a tiger, that is, cautiously and with some kind of weapon for self-defense. Nietzsche is to an extreme degree respectful of the feminine woman. The feminine woman becomes like a model on his Super-Human. He is especially fascinated with her games of seduction. Nietzsche is to the same extreme degree hostile of all Feminism. The call for equality degrades women, because in their femininity they are already superior to men. Why would a superior being (the woman) want to imitate an inferior being (the man). Why would she want to be equal to de-mascularized European ‘man’? Lou-Andreas Salome, Paul Ree and Nietzsche. Salome with a whip. Quotation: “Emancipation of woman [. . . ] is thus revealed as a noteworthy symptom of the growing enfeeblement and blunting of the most feminine instincts. There is a stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a real woman — who is always a clever woman — would have to be ashamed from the very heart. ” p. 168.