Nietzsche
Created | Updated Sep 10, 2004
Nietzsche is perhaps one of the most controversial ‘major’ philosophers of the modern era, a man who, in the eyes of many, confronted the philosophical problems associated with modernity long before others had grasped that these problems were in fact arising. Whilst the rather eccentric form of Nietzsche’s writings prevents one from generalising and creating a single Nietzschean ‘programme’, it is clear that he saw in the evolutionary philosophy of Hegel and its scientific corollary Darwinism a patent challenge to the rational and religious ‘truths’ that so encompassed Western thought and western culture in the late nineteenth century.Once these concepts, such as religion or absolute truths, are rendered worthless then the world becomes one that is, essentially, devoid of meaning, as the values of a society’s culture are deconstructed from their very foundations.
The philosophy of Nietzsche arises primarily from his deep sense of despair at the guise of modernity in western culture. As Hegel’s dialectical philosophy came to dominate continental thought in the mid nineteenth century and Darwin’s theory of evolution began to take hold, it occurred to Nietzsche that the obvious implication of the evolution of man was the evolution of his values. Effectively truth could no longer be seen as correspondence to absolute and unchanging values but rather as coherence with one’s point of view, which would implicitly be dictated to a large degree by one’s traditions and the traditions of society. Thus the ultimate outcome of the destruction of the absolute is the revelation of the subjective nature of society and its cultural values and the subsequent loss of meaning, or purpose if you will, for humanity. It is this subjectivity, this crushing nihilism at which Nietzsche despairs and thus attempts to secure an alternative material, rather than metaphysical, route to meaning.
One of Nietzsche’s most famous targets for evolutionary explanation and thus deconstruction is Christianity, and this is clearly visible in all of his major works. Whilst by all accounts Nietzsche was a rather pious boy as a child, it would be this very piety of the Christian community that would come to offend him to his very core. His attack on Christianity grows out of one of the ideas that is most fundamental to his philosophy, that of the distinction between two different types of morality to be found in the world, namely slave or herd morality and master or noble morality. Both of these moralities are creative in that they are actively sculpted by those who profess to follow such ideas, but the difference lies in how the individuals involved come to ascribe the ideas of good and bad. Thus as Nietzsche himself pens, ‘While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is “outside”, what is “different”, what is “not itself”: and this No is its creative act.’
Whilst the ‘noble’ members of a society recognise and affirm their natural drives and instincts, conceiving ‘the basic conception of “good” spontaneously, out of himself’ , the ‘man of ressentiment’ forgets and suppresses his nature and defines himself in relation to the noble element. Thus the noble attributes become evils to be guarded against, and that which is perceived by the noble as weakness is turned to peacefulness and piety, forgiveness and repentance. It is here that Christianity becomes vitally important as the most effective purveyor of slave morality. For this reason, then, Nietzsche came to despise the bourgeois Christian values of the late nineteenth century, seeing it as one of the principle reasons for the decline in west European culture since the Enlightenment.
Nietzsche argues that as the strong, value creating members of society become more and more powerful through the control and channelling of their own will to power, the members of the ‘herd’ create their god precisely to legitimise the attempt of the ‘herd’ to attack ‘everything autocratic, manly, conquering, tyrannical, all the instincts proper to the highest and most successful of the type “man”’ , and to create new values that ascribe goodness and virtue to the weaknesses that they suffer in relation to the noble set. At base, then, what offends Nietzsche the most in Christianity is that it denies man his true nature and this, whether we agree with his attacks or not, is one of the most important of Nietzsche’s ideas in relation to culture. Man must use his reason in addition to recognising and affirming his own nature and not at its expense, and it is in this idea that Nietzsche anticipated the work of Sigmund Freud in the new science of psychoanalysis.
Indeed Nietzsche himself wrote quite extensive psychological observations, some of which came quite close to what we would now term as Freudian ideas, for example Nietzsche’s observation: ‘“I have done that,” says my memory. “I cannot have done that” – says my pride, and remains adamant. At last – memory yields.’ This aphorism is clearly very similar to the Freudian idea that people can subconsciously repress painful memories and indeed Freud himself cites this aphorism in a note in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, stating that ‘no one…has represented the phenomenon and its psychological proof as exhaustively (erschöpfend) and at the same time as expressively (eindrucksvoll) as Nietzsche.’
Clearly Nietzsche’s idea that the natural and the instinctive, perhaps best represented by the Freudian ‘id’, should be embraced and expressed to allow for the full creative energies of the self to be expressed is not one with which Freud would agree. Undeniably, Nietzsche would have found Freud’s idea of suppressing many of our subconscious desires for the sake of society a little constraining and perhaps even smothering. However, the basic tenet of Nietzsche’s thought, the recognition of the central effect of the desires and instincts on man’s behaviour, anticipates the basis for the entire Freudian school of thought and, as such, deserves recognition.
Of course, whilst Nietzsche had deconstructed many of the values with which he associated the corrupted culture of modernity, he also sought to create new values and a new approach to culture. Perhaps ironically, this great herald of the new man (the Übermensch or overman) looked back to the culture of Ancient Greece to find his examples of these artist tyrants, philosophers and poets who ‘possessed a firm belief in themselves and their “truth” and with it they overthrew all their contemporaries and predecessors; each of them was a warlike brutal tyrant.’ Whilst criticising the religious use of myth to reinforce Christian values, Nietzsche embraced the myths of old that celebrated strength, heroism, power and will. In this sense it is not religion itself that he attacks, but only those that would try to subdue the human spirit and consequently he rather admired the warlike gods of Greece and Rome, gods that embodied and emphasised the affirmation of human noblesse.
Further to this admiration was Nietzsche’s belief that Europe needed to revive its mythical traditions and restore its culture to full heath. It is no wonder, then, that he so strongly admired Napoleon and his attempts to create ‘one Europe’, a concept to which Nietzsche was so wedded, partly as a consequence of his hatred of ‘the lunacy of nationalism’ . In Nationalism he saw a secularised version of the religious response to nihilism, where the state simply replaces god and its citizens the worshippers. Nietzsche believed that Europe was destined to become one, and saw this as the goal of the enlightened few who did not fall into the trap of nationalism, religion or racism. In a letter to Georg Brandes Nietzsche commented on the possibility of victory for the ‘good Europeans’ stating that, “if we are victorious, we will have the governance of the earth in our hands…We have abolished the absurd divisions of race, nation, and class.”
Certainly, despite some popular belief, Nietzsche had no love of nationalism or racism, but what is more fascinating here is his claim that class divisions will be overcome. What this very interesting remark suggests to us is that despite Nietzsche’s association with ideas of aristocratic elitism, he was not by any means an advocate of a class system in the sense that there exists a structured and ordered hierarchical society. Essentially, Nietzsche is concerned simply with describing the way that man’s nature causes society to be. Where a seeming imbalance in social standing exists, it is in Nietzsche’s eye simply the manifestation of the ability of some to affirm their natural will to power set against the failure of others. The concept of class suggests that one belongs to a particular group of human beings, ascribing to their values and defining oneself through a group consciousness and this is idea is clearly abhorrent to one who believes in self-definition, self affirmation and self creation.
As we have seen, then, Nietzsche could be seen as one of the first philosophers of deconstruction and the forefather of such talents as Freud and Derrida who both took up the deconstructionist mantle, and to a certain degree Sartre who used similar logic to reach the nihilistic solipsism of the Cogito, only to move forward in a completely different manner to Nietzsche, under the influence of the Kantian imperatives. Of course there are other, very contentious possibilities and it seems to me rather unfortunate that Nietzsche came to be associated at all with the Fascist movement, a result both of the meddling of his sister in his writings and the subsequent misreading and misinterpretation of his ideas by such men as Hitler. Whilst there are some disturbing aspects to Nietzsche’s work, it is quite clear that he was no Fascist for the creeds of nationalism and anti-Semitism were to Nietzsche, quite abhorrent and destructive to the human spirit. Though it is tempting to see Nietzsche’s philosophy as nihilistic and destructive, we should recognise the profound optimism for which this destruction has prepared the way. In Nietzsche’s far more poetic words: ‘- at last the horizon seems to us again free, even if it is not bright, at last our ships can put out again, no matter what the danger, every daring venture of knowledge is again permitted, the sea, our sea again lies there open before us, perhaps there has never yet been such an “open sea.’”
The philosophy of Nietzsche arises primarily from his deep sense of despair at the guise of modernity in western culture. As Hegel’s dialectical philosophy came to dominate continental thought in the mid nineteenth century and Darwin’s theory of evolution began to take hold, it occurred to Nietzsche that the obvious implication of the evolution of man was the evolution of his values. Effectively truth could no longer be seen as correspondence to absolute and unchanging values but rather as coherence with one’s point of view, which would implicitly be dictated to a large degree by one’s traditions and the traditions of society. Thus the ultimate outcome of the destruction of the absolute is the revelation of the subjective nature of society and its cultural values and the subsequent loss of meaning, or purpose if you will, for humanity. It is this subjectivity, this crushing nihilism at which Nietzsche despairs and thus attempts to secure an alternative material, rather than metaphysical, route to meaning.
One of Nietzsche’s most famous targets for evolutionary explanation and thus deconstruction is Christianity, and this is clearly visible in all of his major works. Whilst by all accounts Nietzsche was a rather pious boy as a child, it would be this very piety of the Christian community that would come to offend him to his very core. His attack on Christianity grows out of one of the ideas that is most fundamental to his philosophy, that of the distinction between two different types of morality to be found in the world, namely slave or herd morality and master or noble morality. Both of these moralities are creative in that they are actively sculpted by those who profess to follow such ideas, but the difference lies in how the individuals involved come to ascribe the ideas of good and bad. Thus as Nietzsche himself pens, ‘While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is “outside”, what is “different”, what is “not itself”: and this No is its creative act.’
Whilst the ‘noble’ members of a society recognise and affirm their natural drives and instincts, conceiving ‘the basic conception of “good” spontaneously, out of himself’ , the ‘man of ressentiment’ forgets and suppresses his nature and defines himself in relation to the noble element. Thus the noble attributes become evils to be guarded against, and that which is perceived by the noble as weakness is turned to peacefulness and piety, forgiveness and repentance. It is here that Christianity becomes vitally important as the most effective purveyor of slave morality. For this reason, then, Nietzsche came to despise the bourgeois Christian values of the late nineteenth century, seeing it as one of the principle reasons for the decline in west European culture since the Enlightenment.
Nietzsche argues that as the strong, value creating members of society become more and more powerful through the control and channelling of their own will to power, the members of the ‘herd’ create their god precisely to legitimise the attempt of the ‘herd’ to attack ‘everything autocratic, manly, conquering, tyrannical, all the instincts proper to the highest and most successful of the type “man”’ , and to create new values that ascribe goodness and virtue to the weaknesses that they suffer in relation to the noble set. At base, then, what offends Nietzsche the most in Christianity is that it denies man his true nature and this, whether we agree with his attacks or not, is one of the most important of Nietzsche’s ideas in relation to culture. Man must use his reason in addition to recognising and affirming his own nature and not at its expense, and it is in this idea that Nietzsche anticipated the work of Sigmund Freud in the new science of psychoanalysis.
Indeed Nietzsche himself wrote quite extensive psychological observations, some of which came quite close to what we would now term as Freudian ideas, for example Nietzsche’s observation: ‘“I have done that,” says my memory. “I cannot have done that” – says my pride, and remains adamant. At last – memory yields.’ This aphorism is clearly very similar to the Freudian idea that people can subconsciously repress painful memories and indeed Freud himself cites this aphorism in a note in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, stating that ‘no one…has represented the phenomenon and its psychological proof as exhaustively (erschöpfend) and at the same time as expressively (eindrucksvoll) as Nietzsche.’
Clearly Nietzsche’s idea that the natural and the instinctive, perhaps best represented by the Freudian ‘id’, should be embraced and expressed to allow for the full creative energies of the self to be expressed is not one with which Freud would agree. Undeniably, Nietzsche would have found Freud’s idea of suppressing many of our subconscious desires for the sake of society a little constraining and perhaps even smothering. However, the basic tenet of Nietzsche’s thought, the recognition of the central effect of the desires and instincts on man’s behaviour, anticipates the basis for the entire Freudian school of thought and, as such, deserves recognition.
Of course, whilst Nietzsche had deconstructed many of the values with which he associated the corrupted culture of modernity, he also sought to create new values and a new approach to culture. Perhaps ironically, this great herald of the new man (the Übermensch or overman) looked back to the culture of Ancient Greece to find his examples of these artist tyrants, philosophers and poets who ‘possessed a firm belief in themselves and their “truth” and with it they overthrew all their contemporaries and predecessors; each of them was a warlike brutal tyrant.’ Whilst criticising the religious use of myth to reinforce Christian values, Nietzsche embraced the myths of old that celebrated strength, heroism, power and will. In this sense it is not religion itself that he attacks, but only those that would try to subdue the human spirit and consequently he rather admired the warlike gods of Greece and Rome, gods that embodied and emphasised the affirmation of human noblesse.
Further to this admiration was Nietzsche’s belief that Europe needed to revive its mythical traditions and restore its culture to full heath. It is no wonder, then, that he so strongly admired Napoleon and his attempts to create ‘one Europe’, a concept to which Nietzsche was so wedded, partly as a consequence of his hatred of ‘the lunacy of nationalism’ . In Nationalism he saw a secularised version of the religious response to nihilism, where the state simply replaces god and its citizens the worshippers. Nietzsche believed that Europe was destined to become one, and saw this as the goal of the enlightened few who did not fall into the trap of nationalism, religion or racism. In a letter to Georg Brandes Nietzsche commented on the possibility of victory for the ‘good Europeans’ stating that, “if we are victorious, we will have the governance of the earth in our hands…We have abolished the absurd divisions of race, nation, and class.”
Certainly, despite some popular belief, Nietzsche had no love of nationalism or racism, but what is more fascinating here is his claim that class divisions will be overcome. What this very interesting remark suggests to us is that despite Nietzsche’s association with ideas of aristocratic elitism, he was not by any means an advocate of a class system in the sense that there exists a structured and ordered hierarchical society. Essentially, Nietzsche is concerned simply with describing the way that man’s nature causes society to be. Where a seeming imbalance in social standing exists, it is in Nietzsche’s eye simply the manifestation of the ability of some to affirm their natural will to power set against the failure of others. The concept of class suggests that one belongs to a particular group of human beings, ascribing to their values and defining oneself through a group consciousness and this is idea is clearly abhorrent to one who believes in self-definition, self affirmation and self creation.
As we have seen, then, Nietzsche could be seen as one of the first philosophers of deconstruction and the forefather of such talents as Freud and Derrida who both took up the deconstructionist mantle, and to a certain degree Sartre who used similar logic to reach the nihilistic solipsism of the Cogito, only to move forward in a completely different manner to Nietzsche, under the influence of the Kantian imperatives. Of course there are other, very contentious possibilities and it seems to me rather unfortunate that Nietzsche came to be associated at all with the Fascist movement, a result both of the meddling of his sister in his writings and the subsequent misreading and misinterpretation of his ideas by such men as Hitler. Whilst there are some disturbing aspects to Nietzsche’s work, it is quite clear that he was no Fascist for the creeds of nationalism and anti-Semitism were to Nietzsche, quite abhorrent and destructive to the human spirit. Though it is tempting to see Nietzsche’s philosophy as nihilistic and destructive, we should recognise the profound optimism for which this destruction has prepared the way. In Nietzsche’s far more poetic words: ‘- at last the horizon seems to us again free, even if it is not bright, at last our ships can put out again, no matter what the danger, every daring venture of knowledge is again permitted, the sea, our sea again lies there open before us, perhaps there has never yet been such an “open sea.’”
