Nietzche

Friedrich Nietzche

1844-1900- Lives in the post-Kantian
philosophical world, dominated by the rise of
science marked by Darwinism.
• Portrays science as the great explainer of the
world, BUT claims that it empties the world of
its ‘values’.
• Portrays philosophy as a therapeutic rather
than truth oriented endeavor.

More Distinctives

Subjective and artistic style – In contrast to the
false objectivity of modern philosophy
• Portrays religion as dead and effectively replaced
by science.
• Life is inherently meaningless. A comic
experience.
• Ironic & Sarcastic Tone
• ‘Right and Wrong’ is a false construct… all that
remains is perspective, and perhaps strength vs.
weakness.

Philosophy as therapy

Every philosophy that ranks peace above war, every
ethic with a negative definition of happiness, every
metaphysics and physics that knows some finale, some
final state of some sort, every predominant aesthetic
or religious craving for some Apart, Beyond, Outside,
Above, permits the question whether it was not
sickness that inspired the philosopher. The unconscious
disguise of physiological needs under the cloaks of the
objective, ideal, purely spiritual goes to frightening
lengths—and often I have asked myself whether, taking
a large view, philosophy has not been merely an
interpretation of the body and a misunderstanding of
the body

The significance of Certainty (and
philosophy’s failure to provide it!

ut what is goodheartedness, refinement, or
genius to me, when the person who has these
virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and
judgments and when he does not account the
desire for certainty as his inmost craving and
deepest distress—as that which separates the
higher human beings from the lower. 

On Consciousness (the self)

Consciousness is the last and latest
development of the organic and hence also
what is most unfinished and unstrong.
Consciousness gives rise to countless errors
that lead an animal or man to perish sooner
than necessary, "exceeding destiny," as Homer
puts it.

The Comic Meaninglessness of Life

It is obvious that these tragedians, too,
promote the interests of the species, even if
they should believe that they promote the
interest of God or work as God's emissaries.
They, too, promote the life of the species, by
promoting the faith in life. "Life is worth
living," every one of them shouts; "there is
something to life, there is something behind
life, beneath it; beware!“

The Emptiness of Life 

The trust in life is gone: life itself has become
a problem. Yet one should not jump to the
conclusion that this necessarily makes one
gloomy. Even love of life is still possible, only
one loves differently. It is the love for a
woman that causes doubts in us.

Our ultimate gratitude to art

• If we had not welcomed the arts and invented
this kind of cult of the untrue, then the
realization of general untruth and
mendaciousness that now comes to us through
science—the realization that delusion and error
are conditions of human knowledge and
sensation—would be utterly unbearable. Honesty
would lead to nausea and suicide. But now there
is a counterforce against our honesty that helps
us to avoid such consequences: art as the good
will to appearance.

The Pious One Speaks”

God loves us, for he made us, sent us here !
“ Man hath made God ! “ ye subtle ones reply.
His handiwork he must hold dear,
And what he made shall he deny ?
There sounds the devil’s halting hoof, I fear

The radical subjectivity of morals

I no longer know whether you, my dear fellow
man and neighbor, are at all capable of living
in a way that would damage the species; in
other words, "unreasonably" and "badly."
What might have harmed the species may
have become extinct many thousands of years
ago and may by now be one of those things
that are not possible even for God. Pursue
your best or your worst desires, and above all
perish!

Master and Slave Moralities

Two systems of Values: Master and Slave
• The underclass (in ignorance) uses the categories
of: good / evil. Religious connotations. Central
virtue is weakness and self denial. The central
vice is oppression like the Master.
• The upperclass uses the categories of: good /
bad. In terms of strength and weakness. An ideal
flourishing of strength or a pitiful expression of
weakness. And correctly identifies the central
vice as self-denial / weakness like the Slave.

The will to power

An important recurring theme in Nietzsche is
that “The Will to Power” is much of what
drives human motivation. This is roughly a
Darwinian drive to flourish, but which is
sometimes expressed through jealousy and
contempt

Power and Pride 

An easy prey is something contemptible for proud
natures. They feel good only at the sight of unbroken
men who might become their enemies and at the sight
of all possessions that are hard to come by. Against one
who is suffering they are often hard because he is not
worthy of their aspirations and pride; but they are
doubly obliging toward their peers whom it would be
honorable to fight if the occasion should ever arise.
Spurred by the good feeling of this perspective, the
members of the knightly caste became accustomed to
treating each other with exquisite courtesy.

On nobility of character

What then makes a person noble? Certainly
not that he makes sacrifices; even the frantic
libertine makes sacrifices…Certainly not that
he does something for others and without
selfishness, perhaps the effect of selfishness is
precisely at its greatest in the noblest
persons.

Morality as Culturally Constructed

Wherever we meet with a morality we find a
valuation and order of rank of the human
impulses and activities. These valuations and
orders of rank are always the expression of the
needs of a community or herd: that which is in
the first place to its advantage - and in the second
place and third place - is also the authoritative
standard for the worth of every individual. By
morality the individual is taught to become a
function of the herd, and to ascribe to himself
value only as a function

Strength as ‘True Virture’

Is it virtuous when a cell transforms itself into the function
of a stronger cell? It must do so. And is it wicked when the
stronger one assimilates the other? It must do so likewise:
it is necessary, for it has to have abundant indemnity and
seeks to regenerate itself. One has therefore to distinguish
the instinct of appropriation and the instinct of submission
in benevolence, according as the stronger or the weaker
feels benevolent. Gladness and covetousness are united in
the stronger person, who wants to transform something to
his function… The former case is essentially pity, a pleasant
excitation of the instinct of appropriation at the sight of the
weak: it is to be remembered, however, that "strong" and
"weak" are relative conceptions.

Profundity

Those who know that they are profound strive
for clarity. Those who would like to seem
profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For
the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the
bottom of something it must be profound. It is
so timid and dislikes going into the water.

The Astonishing Reliability of Science

There is a profound and fundamental
satisfaction in the fact that science ascertain
things that hold their ground, and again
furnish the basis for new researches…we are
really astonished how persistently the results
of science hold their ground.

Knowledge as ‘Useful lies’

Origins of Knowledge. Throughout immense
stretches of time the intellect produced
nothing but errors; some of them proved to
be useful and preservative of the species: he
who fell in with them, or inherited them,
waged the battle for himself and his offspring
with better success.

The Death of God

New Struggles. After Buddha was dead people
showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in
a cave - an immense frightful shadow. God is
dead: but as the human race is constituted,
there will perhaps be caves for millenniums
yet, in which people will show his shadow.
And we - we have still to overcome his
shadow!

Christianity as Skepticism

Christianity also has made a great contribution to enlightenment,
and has taught moral skepticism - in a very impressive and effective
manner, accusing and embittering, but with untiring patience and
subtlety; it annihilated in every individual the belief in his virtues: it
made the great virtuous ones, of whom antiquity had no lack,
vanish for ever from the earth, those popular men, who, in the
belief in their perfection, walked about with the dignity of a hero of
the bullfight. When, trained in this Christian school of skepticism,
we now read the moral books of the ancients… we feel a
pleasurable superiority, and are full of secret insight and
penetration… we know better what virtue is? After all, however, we
have applied the same skepticism to all religious states and
processes, such as sin, repentance, grace, sanctification, etc., and
have allowed the worm to burrow so well

Polytheism

For an individual to posit his own ideal and to derive from it his own
law, joys, and rights—that may well have been considered hitherto
as the most outrageous human aberration and as idolatry itself. The
few who dared as much always felt the need to apologize to
themselves, usually by saying: "It wasn't I! Not I! But a god through
me!" The wonderful art and gift of creating gods—polytheism—was
the medium through which this impulse could discharge, purifiy,
perfect, and ennoble itself; for originally it was a very
undistinguished impulse, related to stubbornness, disobedience
and envy. Hostility against this impulse to have an ideal of one's
own was formerly the central law of all morality. There was only
one norm, man; and every people thought that it possessed this
one ultimate norm. But above and outside, in some distant
overworld, one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms; one
god was not considered a denial of another god, nor blasphemy
against him.