Nietzsche

This class will continue the discussion of Nietzsche. We will focus on his discussion of values and how values change.

In his other works besides The Gay Science, which collects many of his aphorisms or short sayings, he refers to the Aryan "blond beast" and the need to "discharge itself," but also includes non-European races like Arabs and Japanese in his list of "noble races":

At the base of all these noble races one cannot fail to recognize the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast who roams about lusting after booty and victory; from time to time this hidden base needs to discharge itself, the animal must get out, must go back into the wilderness: Roman, Arab, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings–in this need they are all alike (Nietzsche 1998 p. 22).

Nietzsche, like Rousseau, idealizes the ancient Greeks, but unlike Rousseau, Nietzsche celebrates the aristocratic and undemocratic aspects of these ancient societies. Nietzsche has little regard for democracy and equality. Those who are victimized by these races then develop their own values, which Nietzsche emphasizes are the opposite of the values of the oppressors:

That the lambs feel anger toward the great birds of prey does not strike us as odd: but that is no reason for holding it against the great birds of prey that they snatch up little lambs for themselves. And when the lambs say among themselves “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is as little as possible a bird of prey but rather its opposite, a lamb,–isn’t he good?” there is nothing to criticize in this setting up of an ideal, even if the birds of prey should look on this a little mockingly and perhaps say to themselves: “we do not feel any anger towards them, these good lambs, as a matter of fact, we love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.”–To demand of strength that it not express itself as strength, that it not be a desire to overwhelm, a desire to cast down, a desire to become lord, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as nonsensical as to demand of weakness that it express itself as strength (p. 25).

In contrast to the noble values he sees in Greek culture and other warrior cultures, he contrasts these "Aryan" cultures with the "Semitic" culture of the Jews. Although many modern scholars have been concerned with trying to rehabilitate Nietzsche's image in relation to Nazism, it is clear that he subscribed to many of the late 19th century racial theories which later influenced the Nazis:

Of all that has been done on earth against “the noble,” “the mighty,” “the lords,” “the power-holders,” nothing is worthy of mention in comparison with that which the Jews have done against them: the Jews, that priestly people who in the end were only able to obtain satisfaction from their enemies and conquerors through a radical revauluation of their values, that is, through an act of spiritual revenge. This was the only way that suited a priestly people, the people of the most suppressed priestly desire for revenge. It was the Jews who in opposition to the aristocratic value equation (good= noble= powerful= beautiful= happy= beloved of God) dared its inversion, with fear-inspiring consistency, and held it fast with teeth of the most unfathomable hate (the hate of powerlessness), namely: “the miserable alone are the good; the poor, powerless, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly, are also the only pious, the only blessed in God, for them alone is there blessedness,–whereas you, you noble and powerful ones, you are in all eternity the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless, you will eternally be the wretched, accursed, and damned!”… (pp. 16-17).

Under the guise of Christianity, these values have continued to grow in European civilization, something which in Nietzsche's time he sees as something degenerative:

Assuming it were true, that which is now in any case believed as “truth,” that the meaning of all culture is simply to breed a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal, out of the beast of prey “man,” then one would have to regard all those instincts of reaction and ressentiment, with the help of which the noble dynasties together with their ideals were finally brought to ruin and overwhelmed, as the actual tools of culture; which is admittedly not to say that the bearers of these instincts themselves at the same time also represent culture. On the contrary, the opposite would not simply be probably–no! today it is obvious! These bearers of the oppressing and retaliation-craving instincts, the descendants of all European and non-European slavery, of all pre-Aryan population in particular­–they represent the regression of humankind! These “tools of culture” are a disgrace to humanity, and rather something that raises a suspicion, a counter-argument against “culture” in general! It may be entirely justifiable if one cannot escape one’s fear of the blond beast at the base of all noble races and is on guard: but who would not a hundred times sooner fear if he might at the same time admire, than not fear but be unable to escape the disgusting sight of the deformed, reduced, atrophied, poisoned? And is that not our doom? (p. 23).

Depiction of "Dancing Plague of 1518" in Strasbourg,
Alsace, France
 by Hendrick Hondius (1642)

It was not just a warrior lifestyle that Nietzsche praised but the vigor of life that Nietzsche admired which he thought was so lacking in Christian society, something which he equated with a kind of spiritual sickness, an inability to enjoy life which turns into a desire to destroy life, and this is nihilism. This sickness was rooted in the incompatibility between Christian morals and our own natural instincts.

The continuous repression of our instincts builds up pressure and tension which manifests itself in different ways. One of the stranger ways in which this manifested itself was in what was called in the middle ages, St. Vitus' dance or simply just dancing mania. Is this evidence of people's instincts reacting uncontrollably to the repressive morals of their day? It is hard to say, although it is interesting that this condition seems to have stopped by the mid-17th century.

Nietzsche saw the time he was living in as beginning now to move past the Christian epoch and move into a new era. He looked forward to this new era as a time when people will have to create new values and new ways of living, "The value of these values must itself be called into question." In opposition to nihilism, Nietzsche's ultimate objective is to provide guidelines for living a joyful life in a world where God is dead, or as he called it "the gay science."

Or as he goes on to say:

One has taken the value of these "values" as given, as a fact, as beyond all calling-into-question; until now one has not had even the slightest doubt or hesitation in ranking "the good" as of higher value than "the evil," of higher value in the sense of its furtherance, usefulness, beneficiality–with respect to man in general (taking into account the future of man). What? if the opposite were true? What? if a symptom of regression also lay in the "good," likewise a danger, a temptation, a poison, a narcotic through which perhaps the present were living at the expense of the future? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but also in a reduced style, on a lower level?
...So that precisely morality would be to blame if a higher power and splendor of the human type–in itself possible–were never attained? So that precisely morality were the danger of dangers?...(p. 5).

After his death, the idea of a "will to power" became the central concept associated with Nietzsche's thinking, under the influence of his sister who managed his estate after his death. The will to power essentially is his earlier thoughts on the "noble races" (Aryan literally means noble), that humanity is fundamentally driven by a need for power, and the most powerful are those who are able to achieve their values. Ideas such as this fit in well with the political context of the early 20th century leading up to World War I.


For the assignment choose a quote from Nietzsche from the readings.