Nietzsche's Critique: 'Death of God' and Origins of Morality - Prof. Shalini P. Satkunanan, Study notes of Political Science

Download Nietzsche's Critique: 'Death of God' and Origins of Morality - Prof. Shalini P. Satkunanan and more Study notes Political Science in PDF only on Docsity! Pol 117 anceint political thinking Study guide for midterm Must know 4 of these 6 terms definitions. The death of god- http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081023113110AAfppje "God is dead" is not meant literally, as in "God is now physically dead"; rather, it is Nietzsche's way of saying that the idea of "God" (religion and other such spirituality) is no longer capable of acting as a source of any moral code or teleology. For the philosopher, this raise the question: does N believe it is possible to rank values? (And thus, ultimately, to offer some as the "right" way to live?) Now, it is very important to be clear that I don't mean that N does not explain why Christian values are not better than other values. N believes he has deflated Christian values by showing both that they are false (god is dead) and that they are resentment cloaked in fake but attractive metaphysics. But we might still offer alternatives. To keep the case simple: what if we believe that people are better off if everyone gets to exercise their will to power? Why can't there be a socialist/democratic will-to-power ethic? (N hated both socialism and modern democracy, seeing them as the expressions of the herd instinct.) Why are the great purposes of the overman better than (N does not say they are, but he clearly believes they are) the trivial purposes of the last man? It is not enough to say they are difficult and unique and authentic and challenging and can give purpose to many others -- why are these properties better than the alternatives? Nietzsche's point of departure since Daybreak is the "death of God", the loss of belief in the Christian God among the cultured classes dramatized as the urbane atheism of the people in the marketplace in §125 of The Gay Science. The people in the marketplace consider the loss of authority of the metaphysical beliefs associated with Christianity to be a process that need have no implications for their practical orientation in life, an orientation that remains structured by a certain conception of morality continuous with "Christian" morality. For Nietzsche, by contrast, morality thus understood is rationally dependent on the truth of those now widely abandoned metaphysical beliefs Nihilism- http://sweetprince.net/words/essays/nietzsche%E2%80%99s-analysis-of-nihilism/ In depicting this dogma as all-intrusive, Nietzsche attempts to show first how even artists and philosophers--usually considered free-thinkers--are themselves afflicted by this dogma, as manifested in their works, which often exude the sickly smells of morality and asceticism. Nietzsche seems especially prescient of twentieth century trends in literature in stating that man has a need for some will, some goal, even the will for nothingness--a statement that seems to anticipate existentialism, and the literature of the absurd, as much as it is a critique of nineteenth century nihilism. Nietzsche is aware that he will be accused of nihilism (since he denies the values that most hold dear). Here, he argues that there is a nihilism that is growing out of the culture that the resentful slaves have created. This culture suppresses the will to power that he believes creates values. Here the hint of the Ubermensch, the overman, that N hopes will arise and which is discussed most clearly in Thus Spake Zarathustra. The overman will be able to escape the problems of theism while still asserting values (escaping nihilism). Master/ noble morality ( value couplet “ good and bad”- The noble conceive only as an afterthought of "bad," and it plays a minor role in their view. The resentful develop the concept of evil, and it is essential to everything they do. Bad and evil are both the opposite priest. First the priest manufactures the illusion of the moral agent, making weak and strong alike responsible for their state, a matter of choice, rather than a manifestation of natural accident and breeding. Nietzsche argues against the ascetic priest by claiming that strength flows from superabundance of strength, and weakness is similarly a kind of natural state; in fact the notion of a "doer" is itself an illusion; only actions exist--a supposition that Heidegger would later embellish considerably. Yet the original aristocratic duality of "good and bad"--"good" being akin to virtù: strength; "bad" meaning "weak", "untrue", "petty", "mean"--is transplanted by the ascetic's conception of "good and evil": we are moral agents responsible to others for our actions and the state of downtrodden. Instead of supposed natural generosity of aristocrats to their own, we now have the onus of responsibility to others regardless of our estimation of their worth The overman ( namely, a human being who is beyond “ good and evil”- what can you glean about the overman from the genealogy) A special value would be to assert life -- even if your life were to repeat itself endlessly just as it is. That is, to be able to assert and endorse your life would be a triumph of a kind. (The man who creates ideals and can face the possibility of eternal return is the overman. Antithesis to the overman is the last man, who is comfortable with animal pleasures alone, and who does not bother to even care about these issues.) Here the hint of the Ubermensch, the overman, that N hopes will arise and which is discussed most clearly in Thus Spake Zarathustra. The overman will be able to escape the problems of theism while still asserting values (escaping nihilism). The overman is the man who knows that will to power produces all our values, and sees also the lie in our "moralities," and aggressively seeks to express his will to power in a creative and novel way, creatin something uniquely personal, uniquely human, and which can give value to others. (I say "man" because N's sexism is so complete as to be ridiculous.) N clearly means that the overman will do great, unusual, difficult things. His ideal then is that there will be a few people (he appears to believe that there can never be more than a few), a kind of elite or nobility, that transforms the world by giving it great purposes (it may be that the rest of us will simply follows these purposes, grateful to have purposes, and we will call these purposes "virtue" or "morality," never admitting their true origin or motivation). His radical way to do this is the concept of eternal return. (Nietzsche tries to argue that eternal return is a real possibility, but I think he did not need that -- his point is sufficient as a thought experiment.) Imagine that this universe is all there is, and that it repeats itself endlessly: at the end of time there is the beginning of time, and all happens again exactly as before. There is no escaping this world, no "true" world behind it. If you can say "yes" then to your life, knowing that it will happen forever the same way again and again, knowing there is nothing behind or beyond it, then you will be (or, at least, you'll be on the way to being) the overman, the one who can say yes to this world and assert values in it. For the philosopher, this raise the question: does N believe it is possible to rank values? (And thus, ultimately, to offer some as the "right" way to live?) Now, it is very important to be clear that I don't mean that N does not explain why Christian values are not better than other values. N believes he has deflated Christian values by showing both that they are false (god is dead) and that they are resentment cloaked in fake but attractive metaphysics. But we might still offer alternatives. To keep the case simple: what if we believe that people are better off if everyone gets to exercise their will to power? Why can't there be a socialist/ democratic will-to-power ethic? (N hated both socialism and modern democracy, seeing them as the expressions of the herd instinct.) Why are the great purposes of the overman better than (N does not say they are, but he clearly believes they are) the trivial purposes of the last man? It is not enough to say they are difficult and unique and authentic and challenging and can give purpose to many others -- why are these properties better than the alternatives? Now, in at least one place in The Will to Power, N suggests that choosing his ethic is just a matter of aesthetics -- that he is merely encouraging us to see things his way. In the world of the overman that he imagines, things will be more diverse, more daring and bold -- and doesn't that sound more beautiful? If that is the sum of his value theory, then we might say that he has rejected foundationalism about purpose -- or, instead, we might say he has accepted it, concluded there is no foundation, and so offered in its stead something similar to but distinct from traditional, foundationalist value theory. I'm not sure which to conclude. The ascetic ideal- he is more at home as psychologist, explaining the motivations of the "ascetic priest" (a psychological type rather than an individual) in his sinister attempts to subvert the primacy of the original aristocratic values. Nietzsche's primary objection to ascetic ideals is that ascetics must deny the value of this life, portray it as a mere bridge to the next life, rather than as an end in itself. For Nietzsche, refining and exercising our wills in this life is the ultimate end, and any dogma that inhibits this process is a manifestation of sickness. In depicting this dogma as all-intrusive, Nietzsche attempts to show first how even artists and philosophers--usually considered free-thinkers--are themselves afflicted by this dogma, as manifested in their works, which often exude the sickly smells of morality and asceticism. Nietzsche seems especially prescient of twentieth century trends in literature in stating that man has a need for some will, some goal, even the will for nothingness--a statement that seems to anticipate existentialism, and the literature of the absurd, as much as it is a critique of nineteenth century nihilism. But aside from Wagner, Nietzsche aims to show that asceticism is a common (but by no means necessary) trait of the artist. The artist's will to action is in some way vitiated by the struggles of his life, else he be not an artist but a doer himself. The artist himself shows a reluctance to fully engage reality. "Homer would not have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles or if Goethe had been a Faust" (III, 4). True artists do not consider themselves to be worthy objects of art.[26] And yet, true artists, for Nietzsche, rarely have the courage to stand alone, needing the "milk of some orthodoxy" to stand upon. consisted of keeping promises, of personal honor, with no suggestion of obligation to those to whom no promises were given. Relying again on etymology, Nietzsche asserts that the very notion of "ought" sprung from the notion of "owe," logically, since the relationship of buyer and seller is among the oldest of relationships, certainly predating the establishment of the state in any form. The notion of punishment originated as retaliation for broken contracts and failure of repayment, and has none of its later righteous tincture. Creditors were simply given the "sweet power" to exact violence on their debtors, who now "owed" them in more ways than one. Thus "guilt" and "conscience" spring ultimately from the creditor/debtor relationship. with the notion that "everything has its price; all can be paid for" soon following. With this key conception in place, justice is soon conceived as the means to exact comparable revenge from debtors; a table of punishments can be drawn up, now that acts can be evaluated in terms of their damage to the creditor. Not only is justice born of this realization, but also according to Nietzsche, "kindness," "equity," "goodwill," and "objectivity" as well. Mutuality and commensurateness replace the former individuality of all persons and actions. Again, the procedures of certain punishments existed long before they were put to use in the name of the State or a moral code. But now the application of punishment is sometimes justified as a mechanism to induce guilt in the victim of the punishing power--as if pain or solitude will somehow awaken the sleeping conscience. Nietzsche doubts the effectiveness of such means, believing that what is taken for "bad conscience" in a criminal is really anguish born of foreknowledge of the State's imminent wrath. Again, Nietzsche shows his tendency to view things from a physical, visceral level, and treats traditional morality as a horrible lie that we all need to overcome. Nietzsche turns to the ill effects of conscience on mankind. To do so, he contrasts the hallowed, pre-moral era, with the time immediately after the establishment of the state. In this view, conscience is actually a "serious illness" born of "man's reaction" toward his new, peaceful, societal home (II, 16). Once the machinery of society had violently broken man from his animal past, all of man's old impulses now turned inward on himself; this is the disease of modern man, and Nietzsche will devote significant time to the prognosis, especially in relation to the role of the ascetic priest. But indeed the sick manage to infect the strong; the infection of asceticism spreads so widely, that society develops a need for "doctors and nurses who themselves are sick" (III, 15). Unfortunately, the ascetic's prescription--more self-mortification, guilt, etc.--will not bring about a true healing; the priest will only successfully channel the course of resentment in the sufferer, offering the drowsy syrup of faith in the afterlife. Of course Nietzsche disputes the priest's diagnosis that "sinfulness" is to blame; for Nietzsche, sinfulness is not real but merely the interpretation of a fact, probably springing ultimately from a physiological discomfort. In contrast, the "well-constituted" soul will easily digest even his negative experiences, remaining unsaddled with guilt or bad-conscience (III, 16). In closing his essay, Nietzsche grants that the ascetic ideal filled a void in the whole problem of man; that man, who often wills to suffer, needed a reason of suffer (which appears counter- intuitive), and that man would rather will ascetic suffering, than to will nothing at all. Paradoxically (except for Nietzsche), asceticism, which is characterized by a denial of the will, saved the will by preserving in us a warped counter-will to suffer. Essay questions 2 of the 4 Method and task of Nietzsche’s genealogy ( including the understanding of history and what Nietzsche’s understanding of history) and what he hopes to accomplish with his work The Will to Power is a fundamental drive that can explain much, perhaps all, human endeavors. This is a theme that Nietzsche does not do much to explain; he seems to have meant to work this out more but did not stay healthy long enough to do so. Philosophical objectivity, then, is another fallacious spin-off from asceticism. It is unnatural to view things from an abstract bird's-eye view; for Nietzsche, divorcing our wills from our perception is "intellectual castration" (III, 12). True objectivity, then, is the ability to see the pros and cons of a thing, "the difference in the perspective and in the emotional interpretations" (III, 12). Consider Nietzsche's theory of objectivity and its ramifications for our views of objectivity in such diverse fields as science, journalism, philosophy: There is only seeing from a perspective, only a "knowing" from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our "idea" of that thing, our "objectivity." But the elimination of the will altogether, the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could do so, what! would not that be called intellectualcastration? (III, 12) Nietzsche's thought: he did not feel bound by the traditional rules of logic, believing them largely irrelevant outside of mathematics, which itself had little to do with manifold reality. Logicians, scientists and others who possess more faith in logic's usefulness in apprehending reality resist Nietzsche's flouting of the rules. Ultimately, however, these more rational minded folk must agree that no rule of logic or mathematics can support the meta-logical assertion that logic or mathematics bring us closer to "truth." Having avowedly freed himself from the standards of Truth and logic, Nietzsche's work appears more as rhetoric, in the benighted sense of the Sophists--an attempt to convince us through appeals to our intuition. Nietzsche's fighting ground almost always becomes psychology--or psychologically compelling portraits of the principal players in the formation of morality: the natural aristocracy; the ascetic priest; the early philosophers; the ancient Greeks; Wagner, etc. A fundamental charge that can be levied against Nietzsche, however, is that his appeals to our intuition are in actuality appeals to our cynicism. The persuasiveness of his method, one of rhetoric and psychology instead of systems or appeals to deductive logic, must be determined by individual readers. critics could object to Nietzsche's passionate espousal of his beliefs; he often lacks the cold, detached stance of the philosopher to which we are accustomed. Nietzsche's response to such an objection can be found in third essay of the Genealogy: that cold, dispassionate quests for truth are too redolent of asceticism; a divorce of one's will from one's perspective; the laughable pretense of bird's-eye objectivity. In the final analysis, Nietzsche's influence will be seen as primarily heuristic: rather than embracing Nietzsche's theories as they are, philosophers benefit from the wide tracts of previously unchartered ground that Nietzsche opened up for exploration. His approach to the origins of morality is singularly original, and anticipates, indeed exerted a decisive influence on twentieth century developments in value theory. Nietzsche himself, at times, would appear satisfied by this; rather than seeking disciples, he encouraged his readers above all to think for themselves. He sought merely to alter the locus of debate; in that, for those who have digested his works, he more than succeeded. Nietzsche’s critique of cristian/slave morality and Christian/ slave morality’s modern manifestations. For example, how does Nietzsche think that Christian morality has taught us to devalue this world and defame life and created the conditions for nihilism As with the lambs and the eagles, so too with human beings. According to Nietzsche, the strong and superior can no more resist being strong and superior than the weak and inferior can resist being weak and inferior. At root of this idea is the belief that there is no distinction between strength (or weakness) and the expression of strength (or weakness). As he puts it, "...the doing itself is everything." One of the main problems with the slave morality, Nietzsche thinks, is that it assumes the exact opposite of this--that is, it assumes "that the strong may freely choose to be weak." Nietzsche thinks that strength just is doing strong things; weakness just is doing weak things. So the thought of tempering or taming strength, would just result in one becoming weaker; likewise, beefing up weakness, would just result in one becoming stronger. for Nietzsche, this is true of philosophers in general, not just Schopenhauer. Philosophers see asceticism as a bridge to independence; a way of achieving their purest intellectuality; a way of affirming their own (and only their own) existence.[27] Philosophers do not see asceticism so much as virtuous but as the means to the best, most rarified, existence. The denial of sensory joy underscores the contrived "importance" of sheer intellectual pursuits. Nietzsche quickly offers an historical sketch of the relationship between philosophy and asceticism. Appealing again to an unnamable, Ur-philosophical time, Nietzsche portrays the first philosophers as showing shame about any softness, much as they show shame (inspired by Christianity) for any hardness they show today. Early philosophers knew how to depict themselves as a continuation in the tradition of wise men, wizards, priests, and soothsayers in order to make others fear them; and the early ascetics behaved no differently. Ascetics too sought power; power over life itself; power over the very sources of power (III, 11). The ascetic priest became the "real representative of seriousness," characterized chiefly by a boundless resentment at those who enjoy health, strength, joy, and power. He sought to convince others of his formula: that this life is but a bridge to the next. (Nietzsche, in an unintentionally hilarious generalization, characterizes earth as "the ascetic planet" (III, 11).) Yet paradoxically, Nietzsche concedes that "Life itself must certainly have an interest in the continuance of such a type of self-contradiction. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction..." (III, 11). Yet, since "Life itself" always grows and thrives despite the hostility of the ascetic priest, life, Nietzsche implies, must somehow strengthen itself through the conflict with asceticism.[28] But indeed the sick manage to infect the strong; the infection of asceticism spreads so widely, that society develops a need for "doctors and nurses who themselves are sick" (III, 15). Unfortunately, the ascetic's prescription--more self-mortification, guilt, etc.--will not bring about a true healing; the priest will only successfully channel the course of resentment in the sufferer, offering the drowsy syrup of faith in the afterlife. Of course Nietzsche disputes the priest's diagnosis that "sinfulness" is to blame; for Nietzsche, sinfulness is not real but merely the interpretation of a fact, probably springing ultimately from a physiological discomfort. In contrast, the "well-constituted" soul will easily digest even his negative experiences, remaining unsaddled with guilt or bad-conscience (III, 16). In closing his essay, Nietzsche grants that the ascetic ideal filled a void in the whole problem of man; that man, who often wills to suffer, needed a reason of suffer (which appears counter-intuitive), and that man would rather will ascetic suffering, than to will nothing at all. Paradoxically (except for Nietzsche), asceticism, which is characterized by a denial of the will, saved the will by preserving in us a warped counter-will to suffer. Essay on the toic of ressentiment Historically, however, there is a split between priest and warrior, and the priests are weak and impotent. As a result, they are overwhelmed with resentment and hate. This resentment and hate was in some ways beneficial, since it generated or allowed for many social and cultural creations (I believe that N's point here is that without this resentful attack on the noble warriors, those noble warriors would have happily spent the next two thousand years jousting and fighting and so on, as opposed to developing other aspects of society like art). He sees the Jews as the victors in a great inversion of values. They were oppressed by warrior nobles (e.g., Romans), and they created the ultimatum revenge of convincing people that warrior nobles and their values were bad, and that being priestly and weak are good. "Ressentiment" is N's special or technical term for the resentful, spiteful morality of the slave. He argues that the resentful measure themselves always against others, especially against the nobles. They are reactive, and because they are impotent they harbor festering hatreds. Nobles instead, he claims, are so full of life and purpose that they don't have time to measure themselves against others. Nor do they harbor hatreds -- they act on insults immediately or are too busy accomplishing things to hold onto hatreds. (I find this section problematic. On the one hand, many of us know people who are full of energy and life and plans, and as a result are generous and never petty. Many of us know people who are petty and mean precisely because they really have no good purpose and are jealous of others who do. On the other hand, nobles -- and all human beings, one might suppose -- likely measure themselves against others. Consider: can there be a world where everyone is -- in N's sense of the word -- noble? If N's concept of nobility is essentially comparative, and the noble are those who are better than others, then the nobles are just as externally oriented as the resentful. What is unclear here is whether everyone can be noble -- and, to refer to another concept of Nietzsche's, whether everyone can be a super(wo)man. One way out of this problem for N might be to argue that the features that were recognized as noble are only contingently features of nobility, and rather arise from being independent, self-willed, autonomous, etc. Then they would be elitist features but not necessarily measured against others.) Furthermore, Nietzsche believes that our current "morality" is false: it is the false cover we put on the will to power that we have which is primarily a fundamental biological drive. That is what we saw in N's history in The Geneology of Morals: the weak acted out of ressentiment, out of a desire to find some way to assert themselves over the great, and that is the source of Christianity and its ethics. This is crucial: before we can question N's ethic, before we can ask what does N offer in place of our ethics, we must recognize that he is not criticizing our ethics as inferior or otherwise flawed. He is rather saying our ethics is misleading. It does not require defense because no one in a position to properly defend it believes it or acts on it. Those who are moved by it are slaves -- those who made it, manipulators grasping for power. Connections- asceticism / conscience The strongest, apparent opposition to asceticism that Nietzsche can detect lies with modern science. It would seem to counter asceticism with its own "will", its strong focus on the temporal universe at the expense of the transcendent. And yet, science remains rhetorically unconvincing for Nietzsche ("these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices do not come from the deeps with sufficient audibility" (III, 23)). Consider, he says, the apparent temperamental similarities between the ascetic priest and the ideal scientist, their dispassion, their fixation with the routine of work. Science, with rare yet exquisite exceptions, is a "hiding-place for every kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, despectio sui, bad conscience--it is the very anxiety that springs from having no ideal, the suffering from the lack of a great love, the discontent with an enforced moderation" (III, 23). These scientists fear "coming to consciousness" (III, 23). Science's right to exist springs ultimately from its faith in its hypotheses or some philosophy. In