Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher, psychologist, and classical philologist. He was a severe critic of morality, Utilitarianism, contemporary philosophy, materialism, German idealism, German romanticism, and of modernity in general. He is among the most readable of philosophers and penned a large number of aphorisms and varied experimental forms of composition. Although his work was distorted and thus identified with Philosophical Romanticism, Nihilism, Anti-semitism, and even Nazism, he himself vociferously denied such tendencies in his work, even to the point of directly opposing them. In philosophy and literature, he is often identified as an inspiration for existentialism and postmodernism. His thought is, by many accounts, most difficult to comprehend in any systemized form and remains a vivacious topic of debate.

His Works and Ideas

Nietzsche is famous for:

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his embrace of a sort of a-rationalism which found expression in the idea he called "the Will to Power" (der Wille zur Macht);

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his rejection of morality, in which he felt partly reflected the inverse of the "will to power" and a perversion of useful altruism;

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his attacks on Christianity: the most well-known and frequently misunderstood occurs with the phrase "god is dead" from a passage in The Gay Science titled "The Madman", and similarly is The Antichrist;

Related Topics:
Christianity - God is dead - The Gay Science - The Antichrist

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his belief that Christianity planted the seeds of its own eventual demise: Christian notions of truth and the absolute paved the way for rationalism, the Enlightenment and the scientific method, which make blind faith unthinkable for any educated person. Since Martin Luther and Kant, continuing through the enlightenment, analytical and secular thinking had, he said, significantly replaced Christian theology as a social force and hence the statement "God is dead";

Related Topics:
Christianity - Rationalism - Enlightenment - Scientific method - Martin Luther - Kant

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his origination of the Übermensch concept: translated as "overman", sometimes as "superman", which finally means "over-man" or "through-man" or, in German, "Hindurch-Mensch". There is no adequate English translation, and so each option also doubles as an interpretation of what Nietzsche meant by it. German über is identical with the Latin super;

Related Topics:
Übermensch - German - Latin

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his important early concept of "free spirit" that began in Human, All-Too-Human, which may be a starting point for the Übermensch concept;

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his writings on the Eternal Recurrence, while he maintained a philosophical animosity toward its "paralyzing" and nihilistic nature, as a touchstone for the highest possible affirmation of life, of which his Zarathustra embodies.

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The "Will to Power"

One of Nietzsche's central concepts is the will to power, a process of expansion and venting of creative energy that he believed was the basic driving force of nature. He believed it to be the fundamental causal power in the world, the driving force of all natural phenomena and the dynamic to which all other causal powers could be reduced. That is, Nietzsche in part hoped will to power could be a "theory of everything," providing the ultimate foundations for explanations of everything from whole societies, to individual organisms, down to mere lumps of matter. In contrast to the "theories of everything" attempted in physics, Nietzsche's was teleological in nature.

Related Topics:
Theory of everything - Physics - Teleological

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Nietzsche perhaps developed the will to power concept furthest with regard to living organisms, and it is there where the concept is perhaps easiest to understand. There, the will to power is taken as an animal's most fundamental instinct or drive, even more fundamental than the act of self-preservation; the latter is but an epiphenomenon of the former.

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:Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results. — Beyond Good and Evil

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The will to power is something like the desire to exert one's will in self-overcoming, although this "willing" may be unconscious. Indeed, it is unconscious in all non-human beings; it was the frustration of this will that first caused man to become conscious at all. The philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto says that "aggression" is at least sometimes an approximate synonym. However, Nietzsche's ideas of aggression are almost always meant as aggression toward oneself — a sublimation of the brute's aggression — as the energy a person motivates toward self-mastery. In any case, since the will to power is fundamental, any other drives are to be reduced to it; the "will to survive" (i.e. the survival instinct) that biologists (at least in Nietzsche's day) thought to be fundamental, for example, was in this light a manifestation of the will to power.

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:My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (—its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on. — Beyond Good and Evil s.636, Walter Kaufmann translation.

Related Topics:
Beyond Good and Evil - Walter Kaufmann

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Not just instincts but also higher level behaviours (even in humans) were to be reduced to the will to power. This includes both such apparently harmful acts as physical violence, lying, and domination, on one hand, and such apparently non-harmful acts as gift-giving, love, and praise on the other. In Beyond Good and Evil, he claims that philosophers' "will to truth" (i.e., their apparent desire to dispassionately seek objective truth) is actually nothing more than a manifestation of their will to power; this will can be life-affirming or a manifestation of nihilism, but it is will to power all the same.

Related Topics:
Violence - Love - Beyond Good and Evil - Nihilism

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: is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant — not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life. — Beyond Good and Evil s.259, Walter Kaufmann translation.

Related Topics:
Beyond Good and Evil - Walter Kaufmann

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As indicated above, the will to power is meant to explain more than just the behaviour of an individual person or animal. The will to power can also be the explanation for why water flows as it does, why plants grow, and why various societies, enclaves, and civilizations behave as they do.

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Similar ideas in others' thought

With respect to the will to power, Nietzsche was influenced early on by Arthur Schopenhauer and his concept of the "will to live", but he explicitly denied the identity of the two ideas and renounced Schopenhauer's influence in The Birth of Tragedy, (his first book) where he stated his view that Schopenhauer's ideas were pessimistic and will-negating. Philosophers have noted a parallel between the will to power and Hegel's theory of history.

Related Topics:
Arthur Schopenhauer - Hegel

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Defence of the idea

Although the idea may seem harsh to some, Nietzsche saw the will to power — or, as he famously put it, the ability to "say yes! to life" — as life-affirming. Creatures affirm the instinct in exerting their energy, in venting their strength. The suffering borne of conflict between competing wills and the efforts to overcome one's environment are not evil (good & evil, for him, was a false dichotomy anyway), but a part of existence to be embraced. It signifies the healthy expression of the natural order, whereas failing to act in one's self-interest is seen as a type of illness. Enduring satisfaction and pleasure result from living creatively, overcoming oneself, and successfully exerting the will to power.

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Ethics

Nietzsche's work addresses ethics from several perspectives; in today's terms, we might say his remarks pertain to meta-ethics, normative ethics, and descriptive ethics.

Related Topics:
Ethics - Meta-ethics - Normative ethics - Descriptive ethics

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As far as meta-ethics is concerned, Nietzsche can perhaps most usefully be classified as a moral sceptic; that is, he claims that all ethical statements are false, because any kind of correspondence between ethical statements and "moral facts" is illusory. (This is part of a more general claim that there is no universally true fact, roughly because none of them more than "appear" to correspond to reality). Instead, ethical statements (like all statements) are mere "interpretations."

Related Topics:
Meta-ethics - Moral sceptic

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Sometimes, Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on what is moral or immoral. Note, however, that Nietzsche's moral opinions may be explained without attributing to him the claim that they are "true." For Nietzsche, after all, we needn't disregard a statement merely because it is false. On the contrary, he often claims that falsehood is essential for "life." Interestingly enough, he mentions a 'dishonest lie,' discussing Wagner in The Case of Wagner, as opposed to an 'honest' one, saying further, to consult Plato with regards to the latter, which should give some idea of the layers of paradox in his work.

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In the juncture between normative ethics and descriptive ethics, Nietzsche distinguishes between "master morality" and "slave morality." Although he recognises 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:

Related Topics:
Normative ethics - Descriptive ethics

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• "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).

These ideas were elaborated 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.

Related Topics:
On the Genealogy of Morals - Ressentiment

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:The revolt of the slave in morals begins in the very principle of ressentiment becoming creative and giving birth to values — a ressentiment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says 'no' from the very outset to what is 'outside itself,' 'different from itself,' and 'not itself'; and this 'no' is its creative deed. (On the Genealogy of Morals)

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Nietzsche's assessment of both the antiquity and resultant impediments presented by the ethical and moralistic teachings of the world's monotheistic religions eventually led him to his own epiphany about the nature of God and morality, resulting in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Related Topics:
Monotheistic - Epiphany - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Nietzsche is also well-known for the statement "God is dead". While in popular belief it is Nietzsche himself who blatantly made this declaration, it was actually placed into the mouth of a character, a "madman," in The Gay Science. It was also later proclaimed by Nietzsche's Zarathustra. This largely misunderstood statement does not proclaim a physical death, but a natural end to the belief in God being the foundation of the western mind. It is also widely misunderstood as a kind of gloating declaration, when it is actually described as a tragic lament by the character Zarathustra.

Related Topics:
God is dead - Zarathustra

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"God is Dead" is more of an observation than a declaration, and it is noteworthy that Nietzsche never felt the need to advance any arguments for atheism, but merely observed that, for all practical purposes, his contemporaries lived "as if" God were dead. Nietzsche believed this "death" would eventually undermine the foundations of morality and lead to moral relativism and nihilism. To avoid this, he believed in re-evaluating the foundations of morality and placing them not on a pre-determined, but a natural foundation through comparative analysis.

Related Topics:
Atheism - Moral relativism - Nihilism

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Religion

In The Antichrist, Nietzsche attacked Christian pedagogy for what he called its "transvaluation" of healthy instinctive values. He went beyond agnostic and atheistic thinkers of the Enlightenment, who felt that Christianity was simply untrue. He claimed that it may have been deliberately propagated as a subversive religion (a "psychological warfare weapon" or what some would call a "memetic virus") within the Roman Empire by the Apostle Paul as a form of covert revenge for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple during the Jewish War. However, in The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche has a remarkably high view of Jesus, claiming the scholars of the day fail to pay any attention to the man, Jesus, and only look to their construction, Christ. Nietzsche made the cryptic claim that "there was only one true Christian, and he died on the cross." According to the American writer H.L. Mencken, Nietzsche felt that the religion of the ancient Greeks of the heroic and classical era was superior to Christianity because it portrayed strong, heroic, and smart men as role models and did not try to demonize healthy natural desires such as eroticism, thirst for revenge, creativity and independence from social mores. According to at least one authority, the Slovenian scholar Anton Strle, Nietzsche lost his faith in the time he was reading the book Leben Jesu (Life of Jesus), written by the German theologian David Strauss.

Related Topics:
The Antichrist - Enlightenment - Meme - Roman Empire - Paul - Jerusalem - Jewish War - Jesus - H.L. Mencken - Anton Strle - David Strauss

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