Download Friedrich Nietzsche

Dartmouth
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Nietzsche
German philosopher, social critic, other things – late 19th century
Important because:
Foundational thinker for a great deal of postmodern philosophy – questioning of all values
All the Ks contain a smidgeon of Nietzsche and frankly the degree to which they depart from Nietzsche is often the
degree to which the affirmative has the chance to exploit the tension
This year the security K is basically Nietzsche with a smattering of IR.
Dartmouth
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Genealogy of morals
guiding feature of every moral system is its terminal point of enclosure – the limit where it is no longer capable of
sustaining itself.
To explain, it’s worth going through his geneaology of morals – the attempt to begin a revaluation of values
Good/bad
Noble morality all about affirmation. the excessive creativity of power and impulsiveness found in one who
“lives in trust and openness with himself.”
The opposite of this notion of the good is simply ‘bad,’ and is understood to be that which fails to embody the
fullness of life. It is worthy only of contempt, if it deserves any attention at all. Such a response negates all that is
bad, but this is only a negation in the sense that the bad constitutes inaction or stasis and is brushed aside by the
constant stream of noble activity. That which falls outside the moral system of the noble sovereign may be
destroyed or ignored, but can never be rendered monstrous.
Good/evil
Slave revolt
In contrast, the revaluation conducted by slave morality ascribes the notion of ‘good’ to all that was once considered
‘bad.’ And a new term is invented; ‘evil’ comes to represent all that was once good. Action, creativity, and
production retain their central status but the good is now defined negatively, as the opposite of these processes.
The slave revolt in morality valorizes compassion, pity, empathy, and suffering insofar as they represent an
opposition to the world of the noble morality.
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Ressentiment
Nietzsche’s noble man carries with him no concept of justice in the modern sense. What is is also what is right.
The arbitrary exercise of the power of the sovereign is good because it is the manifest expression of pure will
to power. Order is generated purely by the will of the sovereign, and if one suffers punishment it happens
entirely on a whim. What serves a purpose in one instant may serve the reverse in the next. As such, no
event or act possesses an inherent worthiness or morality. One may lament the misfortune of incurring
punishment but no guilt or self-hatred may be attached to it. The ‘fault’ exists in the order of things writ
large, not in any personal decision.
With the growth of slave morality, things change. And the notion of ressentiment takes hold
The arbitrariness of the old order becomes horrific.
“What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering.”
This is the crucial thing. It’s not just resentment. It’s resentment which requires the creation of a moral
structure to explain the problem.
scapegoat
This is slave morality. Society premised on slave morality upholds the weakest, rather than the strongest.
From this conception, the sovereign who imposes senseless suffering becomes guilty of the greatest crime: the
denial of justice. A moral community is formed, given birth by its reaction against the arbitrary exercise of power,
and the terrain of this moral world is rendered intelligible precisely to the extent that all which falls outside it must
be considered monstrous—an affront to God and His holy order.
One’s suffering now becomes the framework for the invocation of morality—as John Lennon famously sang: “God
is just a concept by which we measure our pain.” 1
The primary injunction of the good, therefore, is to give meaning to suffering, to rescue it from arbitrariness and
offer it a sense of value.
guilt
However, in the cruelest of tricks, the introduction of guilt invariably turns all notions of hatred, ressentiment, and
bad conscience inward. If the primary principle is that all suffering must be made meaningful, then the one thing
that can never be accepted is a world where bad things occur for no reason.
But that is the world in which we live. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
There’s no way around it.
If the dream is impossible the only alternative becomes the rationalization of suffering that remains as deserved
punishment: the “irredeemable punishment” imposed for the failure of humanity to secure the universality of justice.
FREE WILL.
1
John Lennon, “God,” Plastic Ono Band, Apple/EMI, 1970.
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All values devalue themselves (death of god)
The death of god
Talk about the death of god. If god is dead it is because we have killed him
Nietzsche LAMENTS this. The common misconception is that he is a someone who values nihilism.
No: he says the condition of modern existence IS nihilism, and this demands thinking in new ways.
Man comes to occupy the place of the dead god. Not by becoming a new divine, but simply by standing
amidst the empty space
Go through the 6 stages in twilight of the idols
1 – there are some in the world who can literally touch the true world. They are the sages, the ones who see more
deeply into the order of things
2 – the platonic turn. The real world is now wholly beyond us, but the truly wise have it as a promise.
3 – kant. The true world is forever beyond our grasp. We can only interact with phantasms. But the force of the true
world still exists as a duty, an imperative. As an ideal, it’s the goal for our conduct. God is still out there
somewhere and ordering us even if we can never know it
4 – decay of the world. Secularism. The rise of nihilism. The world of the senses is now wholly detached from the
ideal world.
This is the death of god
5 – positivism. Beyond metaphysics. A glimmer of hope, an uplifting of the value of this world after the older
metaphysics has begun to fade away. Human reason can destroy the meaningfulness of the true world out there and
we can simply live in this sensual world.
6 – the sensual world fades, too. Because by abolishing the true world, we destroyed the seeming world, too.
We have found ourselves in the world of the truest and most complete nihilism because we don’t have a way
of anchoring our understanding
Unbearable lightness of being. If we can’t call on god to give what we do eternal meaning then what really
does it matter? If it all only happens once then it’s all lost to us
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The ascetic ideal
Seems a solution. Schopenhauer. Accept the fundamental meaninglessness of the world. Reject all values.
science as the best ally for the ascetic ideal b/c it’s the most unconscious. The further we learn about our
meaninglessness, the more that it strengthens the ascetic ideal. b/c we are still trapped within the ascetic ideal, we
do not take these facts as evidence of the need to simply say Yes, we despair of them as proof of the great No.
science is deployed to suggest that man is insignificant and unimportant
atheism is the ascetic ideal stripped of all outward seeming and reduced to its strongest kernel: the will to truth. You
deny yourself so completely that you even deny the lie of belief in God
but this is the most ABSOLUTE form of life-negation. The problem isn’t religion. Religion is a substitute for the
life-affirmation of the noble morality. But at least it’s a substitute.
This form of atheism denies the slave morality but it does so by denying the capacity for valuation AT ALL
what has conquered god is the Christian ideal itself. The insistence on truthfulness ever more strict,
intellectual cleanliness
the problem isn’t suffering itself. The problem is the lack of answer to the question: “why do I
suffer?” what is the JUSTIFICATION?
in the ascetic ideal, the ONLY THING THAT REMAINS is suffering. And so we find value in that. It BECOMES
self justifying.
“man would rather will nothingness than not will”
so the will to value or truth is the will to suffering.
>>>>>
In the secular world that follows the death of god, the supersensory no longer serves as a binding force for the moral
order. The result: devaluation of the worldly life, and in accordance, a devaluation of the grounding force necessary
to think value at all
At each level, higher and higher conceptions of the truth are imagined, yet each peeling away for artifice only
draws thought closer and closer to the nothingness of nihilism. Each formulation imagines itself to have
discovered the true beginning, but in reality represents only a further deterioration of what came before. At
the summation (or deepest abyss) of this process, when the abolishment of the true world also envelops and
eradicates the apparent world, the entire ordering structure of valuation itself is called into doubt
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What else is there? (art)
Art is more valuable than truth
If all existence is seeming, then truth can no longer understood to be in opposition to falsity, but instead constitutes
the fixing into place of a particular perspective. Hence Nietzsche’s distinction between art and truth: truth is the
petrifaction of a static world, the knowledge of that which is already clear and immobile; art is the constitutive act
capable of establishing a new figuration of life.
Both art and truth are merely perspectives, but truth is a form that reifies existing, closed relationships while
art is the mode of life oriented toward what is open and beyond that closure
Truth is about solidifying, locking into place, settling, stagnation. It’s life negating.
Art is about disruption, endless productivity and creativity. It’s life affirming
Becoming as an opposition to Being. Action over truth.
Surpassing is worth more than preservation
Anti-conservativism.
The task of life is to engage actively. Not to let yourself fade into the nihilistic abyss. To face the absolute worst
and to surpass it
“The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything questionable, even
to the terrible — he is Dionysian.” He supports appearance ABOVE reality
Goal for humanity to strive for – one who is not tied down by ideology or morality
Who unleashes the creative potential of humanity, exercises the will to power
It is the overcoming of nihilism
Eternal return
To live as if you were to live forever
What would remain and what would dissipate? Could you tolerate a life lived endlessly in this particular
moment or would it drive you mad?
tragedy - caprice
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Debate usefulness
Obvi a K of ethics
But it’s also really just a K of metaphysics writ large.
It’s a giant game of justify your existence. And it’s a trap. The worst thing you can do is answer the question.
The rejection of utility, purpose, or value
that which we most fear, that which we organize our lives around preventing is precisely that which we bring
upon ourselves
There is no answer the question “why do good” but neither is there an answer to “why not do good”
There is no real morality or ethics or anything if everything we do is because of rules. To be truly happy,
you must choose it for yourself. Only then can you have created a morality worth anything.