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Philosophy: Basic Questions; Boedeker
Handout on Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist (1888)
I. Nietzsche’s life:
- Becamke a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, at the
unheard-of age of 25.
- Was badly injured while serving in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) as a medical
orderly, and never fully recovered.
- Resigned his professorship at the age of 35 due to pain, failing eyesight, and bad health.
- 1887: Publishes Toward the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic.
- 1888: Publishes Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist.
- Became insane at the age of 45, and lived with his sister until his death at age 55.
II. Nietzsche on morals:
A. The will to power:
1. “Will to power” is the instinct or desire to increase one’s strength, force, and
domination of things outside oneself.
2. For Nietzsche, the will to power is the essence of life. Thus all living things seek
not just to survive and reproduce, but also to increase their power.
3. “Will” in “will to power” is not arbitrary free will – as in St. Augustine and
Descartes. Instead, it is the basic life force, which always desires to increase
itself. Will to power is part of the physical and biological world.
4. A value-system is a moral code specifying what we should and should not do.
For Nietzsche, all value systems are a product of the will to power of human
beings.
B. Truth, falsehood, and values:
1. Every statement is either true or false.
2. Every statement must be formulated in some language, conceptual scheme,
conceptual framework, or value-system.
3. For example, let’s say that the statement
“The temperature here and now is 32 ºF”
is true. In this case, so are the statements
“The temperature here and now is 0 ºC”,
and
“The temperature here and now is 273 K”.
The first statement is phrased in the value-system, or language, of degrees
Fahrenheit, the second in that of degrees Celsius, and the third in that of Kelvin.
4. A language (conceptual scheme, value-system) itself, however, is neither true nor
false. Indeed, it’s simply nonsense to say that such a statement is either true or
false. Such attempts to make such statements commit what’s called a category
error: applying a category (such as “true”) to something to which that category
can’t apply. Thus it’s just as nonsensical to try to say that a value-system is true
(or false) as it is to say that the tone middle-C has some color.
5. But a language, or value-system, can be useful or useless for certain purposes.
For example, the Fahrenheit value-system is useful for such everyday purposes as
deciding what to wear (since 100 ºF is about as hot as it gets on earth, and 0 ºF is
about as cold as it gets). The Celsius value-system, however, is much more useful
than the Fahrenheit value-system for doing chemistry on the surface of the earth
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around sea-level, since 0 ºC is (approximately) the freezing point of pure water at
sea-level. And the Kelvin scale is much more useful for doing physics, since 0 K
is “absolute zero”: the temperature at which all physical motion stops.
C. The will to power and values.
1. The oldest values:
a. The oldest values are life-affirming and this-worldly: the values of good (= life,
power) vs. bad (= death, weakness).
b. These oldest values were developed by people in power. Nietzsche therefore
calls these value-systems master morality.
2. At some point, these old values underwent a crisis: they no longer served the will
to power; they were bad for life. These values were in decline, what Nietzsche
calls “decadent”.
3. As a response to this crisis, new values replaced the older ones, changing “good
vs. bad” to “good vs. evil”.
a. What used to be “good” now became “evil”, and what used to be “bad” now
became “good”.
b. In the moral system of “good vs. bad”, “good” is the primary value, and
“bad” is defined as what’s not good. But in the new moral system of “good
vs. evil”, “evil” is the primary value, and “good’ is defined as what’s not evil.
c. Western European Christian moral values (the morals of “good vs. evil”)
are therefore life-denying and otherworldly.
d. For Nietzsche, the moral system of “good vs. evil” is based on resentment
by the powerless of people in power.
e. He therefore calls the moral system of “good vs. evil” a slave morality.
f. Nietzsche thus terms slave morality “nihilistic.” Nihilism comes from the
Latin word “nihil”, which means “nothing”. Nietzsche defines “nihilism” as
“the will to nothing” – that is, the will to deny and reject life in this physical
world.
4. People invent the very ideas of God and a perfect world beyond the physical
world in order to back up the values of slave morality. These other-worldly
beings or places (e.g., Plato’s Forms, the Judeo-Christian God, Heaven) are
regarded as the ultimate source of values.
Moral systems:
Good vs. bad
Earlier
Life-affirming
This-worldly
Master morality
Based in the will to power
Good vs. evil
Later
Life-denying
Otherworldly
Slave morality
Based in resentment by the powerless
of people in power
D. Nietzsche’s criticism of the morality of good vs. evil: A nihilistic value-system is
contradictory. This is because the ultimate source of values is life itself, and its essence,
the will to power. Nevertheless, the morality of good vs. evil attempts to place a value –
and a negative value at that – on life itself. In this way, nihilism is a value-system that
defeats the purpose of value-systems: to increase the power of one’s life. Nihilistic
slave-morality of “good vs. evil” pulls the rug (of life) out from under its own feet.
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III. Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals: A genealogy (or “family tree”) of morals (focused on the
past): to trace our current moral values (of Western European Christianity in the late 19th
Century) back through time to their source. Nietzsche’s Nietzsche sees 3 main sources of these
moral values:
A. Ancient Greece:
1. The earliest Greek values were warrior values.
a. To be a good man was to be brave, strong, powerful, attractive, and
influential. (Recall the heroes in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad.)
b. To be bad was to be cowardly, weak, powerless, ugly, and without
influence.
2. Crisis in values: The Peloponnesian War (431-404BC) between the city-states of
Athens and Sparta placed these ancient Greek values in a crisis. Warrior values
led to horrible wars that were to destroy Greek civilization itself. (Greece fell to
the Macedonian army of the 18-year-old Alexander the Great in 338.)
3. As a response to this crisis, Athenian philosophers during and after the
Peloponnesian War introduced new values. These new values were a reversal of
the old ones.
a. “The problem of Socrates”:
(i) Socrates (c.470-399BC) belonged to the lowest social class of free men
in Athens. He was also ugly. He was thus “bad” according to the
traditional Greek warrior-values.
(ii) Out of resentment for those in power, Socrates reversed traditional
values of “good vs. bad”, forming instead a value-system of “good vs.
evil”. For Socrates, a good man was now someone who rejected
satisfying bodily desires and seeking power and influence in this physical
world. Instead, a good man was someone who did nothing but seek
knowledge and wisdom. For Nietzsche, this is summed up in Socrates’
last words in the Phaedo, which imply that life is a disease cured by death
and a good afterlife.
b. Plato (c.427-347BC) completed Socrates’ work by arguing that this physical
world is really just a shadow of the real world, composed of perfect, non-physical,
universal objects that he called “Forms” or “Ideas”. Examples of Forms include
geometrical figures (lines, points, planes, etc.) and numbers. We cannot perceive
the Forms through the five bodily senses, but can only know them with our minds.
All objects in the physical world are just poor copies of the perfect Forms. The
truly valuable world is one that we can contact not with our bodies, but only with
our souls. After we die, our souls can live in the perfect realm of the Forms – but
only if we have spent our lives “preparing for death” by rejecting the body and its
desires.
B. Judaism:
1. Jewish history:
a. Judaism began as a life-affirming fertility cult, whose values were the fertility of the
soil and the people. The Jews performed sacrifices to their god, Yahweh, in order to
secure and thank Him for His protection of the people.
(i)
Jewish values during this period:
-
good = what’s beneficial to life (fertility of the soil and the people)
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(ii)
(iii)
bad = what’s detrimental life (sterility, death)
During this period, Yahweh, the god of the Jews was
-
not the universal God of everyone, but one of many god – the only one to
have “chosen” the Jews as his favored people.
-
an expression of the hopes and self-confidence of the Jewish people, who
were flourishing.
-
regarded as the author of the Ten Commandments (canonically 1500-1300
BCE), the laws governing proper rituals and sacrifices to Yahweh, and even
the God who challenged Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, resulting in the
Covenant to circumcise all Jewish males in return for being fruitful an
multiplying in the Promised Land. Both of these events can be understood as
part of master morality: necessary for securing a flourishing people with the
strongest possible ties to Yahweh.
-
essentially a protector of the life of the Jewish people, as long as they gave
thanks and performed the proper sacrifices.
-
not only good, but also somewhat arbitrary – in demanding certain sacrifices,
etc.
This original form of Judaism reached a peak in the Golden Age of Israelite
Monarchy (c. 1030-930 BCE): Kings Saul, David, and Solomon. This occurred
after the Jews were liberated from Egyptian domination (c. 3000-1030 BCE)
under the leadership of Moses (c. 1300 BCE).
b. 930-164 BCE: Jews were dominated for centuries by the following peoples:
(i) Egyptians/Canaanites (c. 930-722 BCE).
(ii) Assyrians (722-612 BCE; overthrown by the Babylonians in 612-605 BCE).
(iii)Babylonians (612-539 BCE), who destroyed Solomon’s temple by King
Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BCE); the Jews were then deported, beginning the
Babylonian Captivity.
(iv) Persians (with the conquest of the Babylonians by Persian King Cyrus II the Great
in 539 BCE). In 538 BCE or later, King Artaxerxes commissioned the scribe
Ezra to take command of the Jews and lead them back to Judea to rebuild the
Temple (520-516 BCE). (See below.)
(v) Macedonians (with the conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE).
(vi) The Seleucid Greek Empire (312 BCE-164 BCE).
c. There was a brief Restoration of Jewish Independence during the Maccabean/
Hasmonean Dynasty (164-63 BCE),
d. Romans then occupied Judea from 63BCE to 600CE (under the Roman-controlled
King Herod the Great [ruled 37-4 BCE]).
e. This foreign domination made for a crisis in Jewish values, since God did not appear
to be protecting them.
(i)
In order to survive under these conditions, a new story thus had to be told
about God and the Jews. This began perhaps with the scribe Ezra,
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commissioned (in 459 or 408 BCE) by Persian King Artaxerxes I (ruled
465-424 BCE) or Artaxerxes II (ruled 414-358 BCE) to lead the Jews back
to Jerusalem. Ezra accused the Jews, including Jewish priests, of sinning
by marrying non-Jewish women – a practice that hadn’t been prohibited
by Jewish law prior to Ezra.
(i)
God no longer protects the Jewish people, but punishes them for their
alleged sexual sins during and after the Golden Age. Thus the history of
the Jews becomes a history of God’s punishment for their sins. For
Nietzsche, “a good part of the Bible” contains this falsification of the
history of Israel as a story of guilt and punishment. And indeed, the
Torah, or Pentateuch – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible – might
well have been written down c. 600 BCE, during the Babylonian
Captivity.
(ii)
This new story requires a new conception of God: as a demanding,
vengeful, judging God whose will tells human beings what they should
and should not do, and punishes them if they disobey His will.
(iii)
This new conception of God brings with it a new, moralistic set of values:
- evil (what the Devil tempts us to do) = happiness, flourishing,
illicit sexuality (e.g., with non-Jews).
- good (= the Kingdom of God = how God wants things to be on
earth) = obedience, abstinence from illicit sex (e.g., with nonJews).
C. Christianity: for Nietzsche, progressed in roughly 3 stages. Nietzsche argues that
“Christianity can be understood only in terms of the [false {A 27}] soil out of which it grew – it
is not a counter-movement to the Jewish instinct, it is its very consequence” (A 24). Some of
what he says here sounds anti-Semitic, but this is misleading. In fact, Nietzsche’s portrayal of
Christianity as arising out of Judaism is a direct response to the anti-Semitism that was sweeping
through Europe at this time. Whereas the anti-Semites argued for Christianity by claiming that it
was superior to – and thus different from – Judaism, Nietzsche argues against Christianity by
painting it as more “Jewish” than Judaism. Indeed, the title “Der Antichrist”, which can mean
both “The Antichrist” and “The Anti-Christian,” is probably intended to bring to mind “antiSemitism.”
1. Jesus (c. 6/4BCE-c.29/30CE, born in Judea):
a. Jesus’ program: Jesus was a “holy anarchist” who led a “Buddhistic peace movement,
for an actual, not merely promised, happiness on earth” (A 42) of rebellion “against the
hierarchy of society…, against caste, privilege, order, and formula” (A 27).
b. Jesus’ rebellion appealed primarily to “the people at the bottom [of society], the
outcasts and ‘sinners’” (A 27).
c. The evangel (“good news”) of Jesus the Redeemer: “The ‘good news’ is precisely that
there are no longer any opposites; the kingdom of heaven belongs to the children” (A 32).
“‘Sin’ – any distance separating God and man – is abolished: precisely this is the ‘good
news’. Blessedness is not promised, it is not tied to conditions: it is the only reality” (A
33). Jesus thus does away with all Jewish dichotomies: obedience vs. sin (guilt), reward
vs. punishment, God’s will vs. human conduct.
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d. “Redemption” is not forgiveness of sins, but abolishing the whole notion of sin
altogether. Thus Jesus did not preach the doctrines of Heaven, forgiveness of the sins we
repent, the personal immortality of the soul, the Last Judgment, or even God as judge.
The “Kingdom of God” didn’t mean a “heaven” beyond this physical world, but just
meant the way God would want things to be on earth: peaceful, fair, and loving. “The
‘kingdom of God’ is nothing that one expects; it has no yesterday and no day after
tomorrow, it will not come in “a thousand years” – it is an experience of the heart; it is
everywhere, it is nowhere” (A 34).
e. Jesus’ true followers were not distinguished by their beliefs, but by their actions: “by
not resisting, either in words or in his heart, those who treat him ill; by making no
distinction between foreigner and native, between Jew and not-Jew; by not growing
angry with anybody, by not despising anybody” (A 33). “Only the evangelical practice
leads to God, indeed, it is ‘God’!” (A 33)
f. “True life, eternal life, has been found – it is not promised, it is here, it is in you: as a
living in love, in love without subtraction and exclusion, without regard for station [in
society]. Everyone is the child of God – Jesus definitely presumes nothing for himself
alone – and as child of God everyone is equal to everyone” (A 29). “The concept of the
‘son of man’ [is] an eternal factuality, a psychological symbol redeemed from the concept
of time… [T]he word ‘son’ expresses the entry into the over-all feeling of the
transfiguration of all things (blessedness); the word ‘father’ expresses this feeling itself,
the feeling of eternity, the feeling of perfection” (A 34). This is “eternal life” because it
is concerned neither with the “sins” of the past nor a “judgment” or “reward” in a future
“resurrection” after death, but rather simply with loving one’s neighbor here and now.
g. Jesus’ death on the cross was a natural consequence of his practice – his way of life.
He was rightly perceived as a threat by both the Roman occupiers and the collaborating
Jewish priests. Jesus’ death gave “publicly the strongest exhibition, the proof of his
doctrine” (A 40). It showed that Jesus would rather die than give up his way of life, and
set an example for us by showing that such commitment is possible for all of us.
2. Paul (wrote letters from c. 50-64 CE, when executed, along with Peter, by Roman Emperor
Nero).
a. Jesus’ followers completely misunderstood Jesus’ death. “In truth, there was only one
Christian, and he died on the cross” (A 39). They took it not as a proof, but as a
refutation, of their cause. They thus looked for a reason why Jesus died. They came up
with the answer that Jesus was sacrificed in order that our sins would be forgiven. They
also held the Jews responsible for Christ’s death, and sought revenge against them (thus
starting the long history of Christian anti-Semitism). This accords with the basic axiom
of slave-morality:
someone suffers if and only if someone has done something morally wrong.
In the case of Jesus’s crucifixion, this means:
Jesus suffers if and only if the Jews have done something morally wrong (= demanding
that Pontius Pilate [= the Roman prefect of Judea] order the crucifixion of Jesus).
And this results in the following:
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The Jews ought to suffer because they have done something morally wrong to Jesus (i.e.,
demanding his crucifixion).
b. Thus Paul’s values were entirely unlike Jesus’s, whom Paul interpreted as Christ (=
Greek: the anointed one) and the Messiah (= Hebrew: savior). Whereas Jesus loved his
enemies, Paul hated them.
c. Paul thus reverted to the old Jewish picture of God as a judging and avenging God,
which Christ had rejected. And Paul went considerably beyond Judaism in 4 ways:
(i) inventing the concept of Heaven – a “higher”, “better”, “other” world where good
souls are rewarded after death. God and Heaven are the source of all value; this
physical world is only of second-rate importance. The way to get to Heaven is to
obey the moral law that God lays down: deny your own body and its desires, and only
seek wisdom.
(ii) appropriating the ancient Greek (and non-Jewish) doctrine of the personal
immortality of the soul;
(iii) inventing the concept of the “Last Judgment”, where God separates the good
from the evil. “The ‘last judgment’ is the sweet comfort of revenge – the revolution,
which the socialist worker also awaits, but conceived as a little farther off” (TI 535;
recall the similarities we’ve seen between St. Augustine’s and Marx’ views of
history!); “by letting God judge, they themselves judge” (A 44);
(iv) re-interpreting “the Kingdom of God” to mean not earth as God would want it to
be (as it meant for the Jews, Jesus, and as late as the chronologically first Gospel,
Mark), but rather “the Kingdom of [an otherworldly] Heaven.”
d. In these ways, Paul’s Christian values embody typical slave morality. They were
other-worldly, life-denying, and based on resentment of those in power (the Romans and
the Jewish priests).
e. In order to back up his values, Paul invented the notion that Christ was resurrected
from the dead – as a reward for his obeying his Father’s will. This story is retold in the
Gospels (Mark: c. 70 CE; Matthew: c. 80 CE; Luke: c. 85 CE; John: c. 95 CE).
3. St. Augustine (354-430 CE) combined Pauline Christianity and Plato’s philosophy at the
fall of the Roman Empire:
a. The values of the Roman Empire included seeking pleasure and power in this world.
b. Crisis in Roman values: By the 4th Century AD, the Roman Empire had become greedy
and corrupt. Rome was in decline, and was sacked by the Vandals in 455. St. Augustine
saw Christian values as a response to this crisis, and converted to Christianity in 387.
c. In order to reconcile the perfection of God with evil human actions, Augustine invents
the concept of free will. For Nietzsche, the belief in free will arises out of “the instinct of
wanting to judge and punish”; “the doctrine of the [free] will has been invented
essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because one wanted to attribute guilt…
Men were considered ‘free’ so that they might be judged and punished – that that they
might become guilty. Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman” (TI 7).
d. Augustine recognizes a deep similarity between Pauline Christianity and Plato’s
philosophy. Both despise the body and its desires, and value a “perfect” world beyond
this physical one. Augustine thus identifies the Christian Heaven with Plato’s Forms.
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And he identifies God with Plato’s Form of the Good (the Being of the Forms, i.e., the
property of being eternal and perfect).
IV. Nietzsche’s evaluation of our current moral values (focused on the present).
A. The life-denying and otherworldly slave morality (“good vs. evil”) did serve their
purpose when they were introduced. Nevertheless, these values have now outlived their
usefulness. They are an extremely unnatural kind of morality, since we are creatures living
in this world!
B. Current Western European Christian morality is unhealthy. Denying our bodily desires
and pleasures in favor of an imaginary Heaven is making us sick. Nietzsche calls this denial
of life “nihilism”. Nihilistic values are placing modern culture in decline, or “decadence”.
As a result of their nihilistic values, people now feel that there is no purpose in life.
V. Nietzsche’s plan of action (focused on the future):
A. We must participate in the “death of God”. We must not just recognize that God does
not exist, but we must actually kill God. (“God is dead, and we have killed him!”, from
The Gay Science). That is, we must throw away the whole system of slave morality on
which the idea of God is based.
B. An objection to Nietzsche’s view of morals:
Isn’t Nietzsche just telling us to cast aside all morality and do whatever we want?
Wouldn’t this just lead to anarchy and unnecessary suffering?
Reply to this objection:
Nietzsche is not telling us to cast aside all morality. Instead, he’s just giving us
reasons to cast aside all slave-morality. In other words, he’s not telling us to do evil,
but trying to get us to a perspective “beyond good and evil.”
Nietzsche believes that casting aside nihilistic slave morality will free us from the
resentment (of those we perceive as responsible for our unhappiness) that’s at its root.
This freedom, in turn, has 2 positive effects:
1. Once we’re free of the belief in free will, we will see that behaviors that hurt us
aren’t the fault of other’s “free will” – they are not to be damned or hated. We
will be freer to understand the real causes of our feelings and others’ behavior.
As in Buddhism, we will first admit that we are suffering, and then try to develop
realistic ways to prevent us from suffering.
2. Being free of resentment will make us happier – less spiteful and brooding
(like venomous spiders). And only happy people can be truly virtuous – i.e., truly
loving and generous to other people.
C. But what system of morals should we adopt? Nietzsche does not want us to return to
ancient Greek, Jewish, or Roman values. But he has very little to say positively about which
values we should adopt. All he says is that they will be life-affirming, and be based on the
will to power.
D. Who will introduce these new values? Nietzsche believed that someday an “overman”, or
“superman” (Übermensch), will come, and will introduce a new, healthier set of values.
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