Nietzsche -- nihilist or not?

[tomarin]

i had an exchange with mirdath yesterday on a thread in the non-catholic religions forum in which he denied that nietzsche was a nihilist and said a reading of “thus spake zarathustra” would back up his claim. i haven’t gotten too far in it yet, but here’s what mirdath had to say:

*Nietzsche wasn’t a nihilist; although his views sometimes coincided, he was generally a critic. He was, however, an existentialist and a humanist.

Nihilism says ‘there is no objective meaning or value to life’. If you read Also Sprach Zarathustra (an exercise I highly recommend), you’ll find that Nietzsche, while claiming ‘God is dead’, did find an objective meaning: self-transcendence. That’s what the whole ‘overman’ thing is about: humanity becoming something better than itself. It’s got nothing to do with an Eloi-Morlock style system as the Nazis claimed: everybody is a potential overman. We exist to improve.

Read Zarathustra. It’s beautiful, entertaining, insightful, and at times devilishly funny. You may well come out with a much higher opinion of Nietzsche than you hold now.
*

now my question for all you philosophy buffs is in three parts:

1 - was nietzsche a nihilist? many people seem to think so.

2 - if he wasn’t a nihilist, is it accurate to say he was a humanist?

3 - how can mirdath separate so neatly his ethics (bad) from his criticism (good)? aren’t the two inter-related?

 

[Saul.Tentmaker]

now my question for all you philosophy buffs is in three parts:

1 - was nietzsche a nihilist? many people seem to think so.

No, Nietzsche was certainly not a nihilist, at least as he would see himself. He saw that, though belief in God was dying, evolution itself gave purpose to humanity, that humanity should evolve, becoming the superman.

2 - if he wasn’t a nihilist, is it accurate to say he was a humanist?

Not that either. For Nietzsche, humanity is necessarily flawed, and virtue only comes from overcoming human weakness (such as compassion), from becoming more than human.

Nietzsche was a post-modernest. His epistemology is subjectivist, his ethics are very close to Ayn Rand’s, and his politics is confusing. It is hard to put Nietzsche in a box. I love the story from Thus Spake Zarathustra, about the perfect disciple. Zarathustra speaks out asking for a disciple, and one person comes forward saying “I agree with everything you have said, and I want to follow you and teach others your wisdom.” He told the person to leave his presence, as he would be a terrible disciple. Another comes forth and says “I despise your philosophy, and I will do everything I can to rip it apart, line by line, word by word, I will work to undermine it.” “This,” Zarathustra says, “This is the perfect disciple.” And this is what he meant by saying that the last Christian died on the Cross.

Nietzsche, in an apocryphal case, said something to the effect of “there can be no Nietzschians, my true followers could only hate me, for they would be my betters, and not my slaves.”

3 - how can mirdath separate so neatly his ethics (bad) from his criticism (good)? aren’t the two inter-related?

This is a good question for Mirdath.

 

[Mirdath]

Nietzsche was a post-modernest. His epistemology is subjectivist, his ethics are very close to Ayn Rand’s, and his politics is confusing.

Nietzsche’s ethics have nothing in common with Rand’s. As I said in that thread, Objectivism says not ‘me first’ but ‘me only’, attaching no value to other people beyond that of convenience. Nietzsche sees a value in everyone – the potential to transcend.

Compassion is weakness to an Objectivist, but not to Zarathustra, who sat by the dying tightrope walker and sheltered the Ugliest Man.

And, question 3:

‘Related’ does not mean ‘conjoined at the hip’. Nietzsche’s ethics are indeed related to the rest of his philosophy, but much in the same way phrenology is related to socio-economics.

I admire the guy, I love his writing, I agree with him on many things, but even Homer nods.

 

[tomarin]

bertrand russell (himself an atheist, if i’m not mistaken and yet in the passage i’m about to quote strangely sympathetic to christianity) was not a fan. in “a history of western philosophy” (simon & schuster, 2007 [originally 1945]) he writes

*He (Nietzsche) condemns Christian love because he thinks it is an outcome of fear: I am afraid my neighbor may injure me, and so I assure him that I love him. If I were stronger and bolder, I should openly display the contempt for him which of course I feel. It does not occur to Nietzsche as possible that a man should genuinely feel universal love, obviously because he himself feels almost univeral hatred and fear, which he would fain disguise as lordly indifference. His “noble” man – who is himself in day-dreams – is a being wholly devoid of sympathy, ruthless, cunning, cruel, concerned only with his own power…

It never occurred to Nietzsche that the lust for power, with which he endows his superman, is itself an outcome of fear. Those who do not fear their neighbors see no necessity to tyrannize over them. Men who have conquered fear have not the frantic quality of Nietzsche’s “artist-tyrant” Neros, who try to enjoy music and massacre while their hearts are filled with dread of the inevitable palace revolution. I will not deny that, partly as a result of his teaching, the real world has become very much like his nightmare, but that does not make it any the less horrible…

I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceits into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.* (pages 767-773, emphases mine).

based on what I’ve learned about him so far (and I’m only a chapter or so into “zarathustra”), I don’t see what there is to admire about Nietzsche’s philosophy. it strikes me as chilling and repellant, and the antithesis of everything that draws me to christianity.

 

[Saul.Tentmaker]

Nietzsche’s ethics have nothing in common with Rand’s.

Absolutely, positively, nothing in common with Rand’s? I would suggest for reading CM Sciabarra - Reason Papers, 1998. He disagrees. And I cannot find any scholar anywhere that agrees with that statement. Some would say that the influence of Nietzsche on Rand was minor, some would say it was primarily negative, but I cannot find anyone that says that Nietzsche’s ethics have nothing in common with Rand’s.

Clearly my statement was stronger than that, but not as strong as your negation, by a mile.

As I said in that thread, Objectivism says not ‘me first’ but ‘me only’, attaching no value to other people beyond that of convenience.

This misrepresents Rand. Rand also sees value in everyone. The values of selfishness and capability, which all people have. All people should be valued, but not valued equally, or overvalued.

Nietzsche sees a value in everyone – the potential to transcend.

I do not think Nietzsche would agree that everyone can transcend. Why do you think he would?

Compassion is weakness to an Objectivist, but not to Zarathustra, who sat by the dying tightrope walker and sheltered the Ugliest Man.

There is a sense in which you are right. but what Zarathustra does is not compassion to the other, for then he would be just as weak as they, but compassion for himself. As he says in “Beyond Good and Evil”:

"Compassion for yourself—that is, of course, not compassion the way you mean the term: it’s not pity for social “needs,” for “society” and its sick and unlucky people, with those depraved and broken down from the start, and with the way they lie on the ground all around us—even less is it compassion for the grumbling oppressed, the rebellious slave classes, who strive for mastery—they call it “Freedom.”

Our compassion is a higher compassion which sees further—we see how man is making himself smaller, how you make him smaller—and there are moments when we look at your compassion with an indescribable anxiety, where we defend ourselves against this compassion—where we find your seriousness more dangerous than any carelessness. You want, if possible—and there is no wilder “if possible”—to do away with suffering. What about us? It does seem that we would prefer it to be higher and worse than it ever was! Well being, the way you understand it, that’s no goal. To us that looks like an end, a condition which immediately makes human beings laughable and contemptible, something which makes their destruction desirable!"

To be continued…

 

[Saul.Tentmaker]

based on what I’ve learned about him so far (and I’m only a chapter or so into “zarathustra”), I don’t see what there is to admire about Nietzsche’s philosophy. it strikes me as chilling and repellant, and the antithesis of everything that draws me to christianity.

There is something of a Desert Father about Nietzsche, something about the reality of his inner torment, and about his genuine expression and power. He was, I think, the only consistant and genuine atheist who also could bear to be a philosopher. This may be why he died so early (I don’t buy the siphilis argument at all).

I suggest you read “Nietzsche and Christianity” by Karl Jaspers. He gives a kinder view to Nietzsche, suggesting that his relationship with Chrstianity had actually been very very close, and this is why he spoke so insultingly of it. He defends this very well.

 

[tomarin]

There is something of a Desert Father about Nietzsche, something about the reality of his inner torment, and about his genuine expression and power. He was, I think, the only consistant and genuine atheist who also could bear to be a philosopher. This may be why he died so early (I don’t buy the siphilis argument at all).

I suggest you read “Nietzsche and Christianity” by Karl Jaspers. He gives a kinder view to Nietzsche, suggesting that his relationship with Chrstianity had actually been very very close, and this is why he spoke so insultingly of it. He defends this very well.

thanks for the tip – i’ll take a look for it.

 

[PoliSciProf]

Nietzsche is most certainly a Nihilist. He says he is many, many times. What others have called Being or nature (physis) he calls Chaos (more accurately, power), he works (rhetorically) for the destruction of modern liberalism and has only contempt for European vallues identified as decadence (see the Last Men in Zarathustra), says that Christianity is Platonism for The People, that **all philosophy **is Interpretation (hence preparing the way for post-modernism), thinks that philosophers should be warrior/artists, believes that all religion is a human creation (with only some early salutary effects), counsels cruelty (no turning the other cheek for him!), identifies himself with the pagan god Dionysus, seeks the transformation of all values, hence the transformation of mankind, states that European moral values (Christianity) is the morality of the herd animal and I could go on and on (perhaps to an Eternal Return–my tongue is in my cheek here). Part of the problem is that some readers fail to notice the distinction between Noble and Base nihilism, not seeing that both are in fact nihilism. Values are matters ultimately of taste, hence are arbitrary. In much scholarship there has been an attempt to soften Nietzche’s teachings in order to make him more compatible with the very values Nietzsche despises. He is NOT talking about some sort of gentle Maslow-ian self-actualization. He philosophizes with dynamite, shattering all idols. Nietzche is, of course, a genius and his criticisms are often dead on. He must be confronted philosophically (not with scholasticisms) by his opponents, especially by the Thomists who inhabit this forum. This is very tough to do. For those who want an understanding of nihilism, I recommend Stanley Rosen’s early book, Nihilism. Those who want to really study his masterpiece Thus Spake Zarathustra might want to consider Rosen’s The Mask of Enlightenment as well.

 

[Mirdath]

Clearly my statement was stronger than that, but not as strong as your negation, by a mile.

I’ll admit, my knee jerks a bit when Objectivism comes up I found the article you mentioned – ‘A Renaissance in Rand Scholarship’, yes? – and I’ll give it a read. Skimming it, Sciabarra does seem to have some good points I hadn’t considered so much: humanity as apex of being, deconstruction of what had gone before, overcoming – but these are things I identify more as main points of Nietzsche’s metaphysics than of his ethics.

This misrepresents Rand. Rand also sees value in everyone. The values of selfishness and capability, which all people have. All people should be valued, but not valued equally, or overvalued.

Since we are speaking of ethics, I was working at the personal level: people have value to Rand in so far as they are convenient.

I do not think Nietzsche would agree that everyone can transcend. Why do you think he would?

‘Can’ does not imply ‘will’. The potential is there, but many are content with what they have and are. The Overman is not presented as the elite or ruling class, even though the scene at the cave is attended only by a few; he is presented as the next humanity.

There is a sense in which you are right. but what Zarathustra does is not compassion to the other, for then he would be just as weak as they, but compassion for himself. As he says in “Beyond Good and Evil”:

I’m not seeing what you’re seeing in 7.214 (ah, the joys of private interpretation! – by the way, you left off in the middle of the chapter, and the rest’s important). He’s talking about the ends of compassion – in particular, the end of destroying pain – and saying no, suffering is what has brought us to this point, is what forces us to go on. Compassion devoted to the production of a Utopia is compassion misdirected: the school of hard knocks teaches best.

 

[tomarin]

‘Can’ does not imply ‘will’. The potential is there, but many are content with what they have and are. The Overman is not presented as the elite or ruling class, even though the scene at the cave is attended only by a few; he is presented as the next humanity.

i’m not sure how this can be squared with the inherently aristocratic and anti-democratic nature of nietzsche’s vision. how can someone who despises most of humanity as weak and servile also be a humanist?

granted i haven’t finished zarathustra yet (it is pretty entertaining, if twisted) but based on everything else i know about him it seems unlikely that the bulk of humanity will ever transcend to superman-hood, and i’m sure that’s fine with him. not everyone can be an aristocrat.

unless you’re saying that zarathustra represented a break with his previous thinking on these matters?

 

[tomarin]

by the way, it just occurred to me that if you want to see some of these ideas put into practice, look no further than “the sopranos”. tony and his relatives fit the bill of nietzsche’s superman, don’t they? they are cruel, ambitious, not bound by conventional morality, and owe loyalty to no one but themselves (despite appearing to when it is convenient).

in fact, how does loyalty fit into nietzsche’s scheme, if at all? wouldn’t a world full of tony sopranos just claw and scheme against each other until only one is left? how would this aristocracy ever contain their appetites long enough to guarantee a measure of peace and mutual cooperation (against the masses, presumably)?

 

[Saul.Tentmaker]

‘Can’ does not imply ‘will’. The potential is there, but many are content with what they have and are. The Overman is not presented as the elite or ruling class, even though the scene at the cave is attended only by a few; he is presented as the next humanity.

I entirely agree. But this does not mean that everyone is capable of becoming the superman. The risk of the cliff is that one may fall, and break. But the poor and crippled artist, I think, would have a far better chance of overcoming than the wealthy tycoon who built his philosophy on the artist, and so is a slave to the artist.

Why do you think Nietzsche would argue that everyone is capable?

Compassion devoted to the production of a Utopia is compassion misdirected: the school of hard knocks teaches best.

Compassion directed to anyone but what the self becomes is misdirected. And this is where Rand, the unoriginal philosopher, attempts to steal from Nietzsche, suckling inconsistantly.

And private interpretation of Nietzsche is all I can have. After all, he is a difficult philosopher to understand. You read Kant very slowly, and when you finish, you understand. You can read Nietzsche lighning fast, and when you finish, you have no idea what you read. This, because he borrows from Plato, and so necessarily himself suckles from the God-man he so despises. And despises only because of his love.

But for the purpose of this thread, I think we both agree: Nietzsche is not a nihilist.

 

[Saul.Tentmaker]

by the way, it just occurred to me that if you want to see some of these ideas put into practice, look no further than “the sopranos”. tony and his relatives fit the bill of nietzsche’s superman, don’t they? they are cruel, ambitious, not bound by conventional morality, and owe loyalty to no one but themselves (despite appearing to when it is convenient).

Their only problem is that they are unoriginal. The impoverished philosopher is the master of those who use his philosophy, no matter how they use it. Christians can be tyrants, but Nietzsche would still see them as slaves to Christ (and in this he would be right; I would wish Christ over any master, most of all the most terrible of tyrants: me). A master is slave to no one, least of all a piddling little family called “Mafia”.

Nietzsche was a master, until the day he died, alone and mad, trapped inside his mind, a slave to himself.

 

[Mirdath]

i’m not sure how this can be squared with the inherently aristocratic and anti-democratic nature of nietzsche’s vision. how can someone who despises most of humanity as weak and servile also be a humanist?

Humanism is not necessarily democratic or anarchic. It really just comes down to human worth and potential, and the differences between forms of government, so long as they recognize that worth, aren’t of much concern.

Note that Zarathustra’s problem isn’t that most people can’t do something; it’s that they can’t bring themselves to do it. They’re too caught up in pettiness to become great.

Saul.Tentmaker:

Why do you think Nietzsche would argue that everyone is capable?

Because he sees it as our nature.

 

[tomarin]

Humanism is not necessarily democratic or anarchic. It really just comes down to human worth and potential, and the differences between forms of government, so long as they recognize that worth, aren’t of much concern.

my understanding of humanism was that it can be summed up by the phrase “man is the measure of all things.” it seems to me that nietzsche is saying “the superman (ubermensch) is the measure of all things.” that is, he emphatically rejects some aspects of humanity as undesirable and worthy of contempt.

i wasn’t using democratic in the strictly political sense of the term; perhaps i should have said nietzche is an elitist and exclusionist with respect to most of humanity.

 

[Saul.Tentmaker]

Because he sees it as our nature.

The nature of all things is to become, and all things can will to power, but not all can achieve power, not all can become the superman. This, at least, is my understanding. From what source do you draw your assertion that Nietzsche thinks all people are capable of becoming supermen?

Nietzsche may be a humanist, in a certain sense, but not in the sense of a Humanist from the Humanist Manifesto. For one thing, I don’t think he would agree that all humans have worth and dignity, or that progress is primarily scientific, or even that science gives us an insight into what is true; it is just the next paradigm, one that lives now, but will be dead someday.

 

[tomarin]

Their only problem is that they are unoriginal. The impoverished philosopher is the master of those who use his philosophy, no matter how they use it. Christians can be tyrants, but Nietzsche would still see them as slaves to Christ (and in this he would be right; I would wish Christ over any master, most of all the most terrible of tyrants: me). A master is slave to no one, least of all a piddling little family called “Mafia”.

so would you say for tony soprano to ascend to superman status, he would have to cut all ties to the mob and go freelance AND do so in some completely original fashion (probably occasioning a spectacular feat of violence)?

 

[Greg27]

Nietzsche needs to be read carefully, as his philosophy has been misinterpreted. I think it is accurate to say Nietzsche forsaw nihilism in the culture of the West in his time (much of his work aims to demonstrate there is a grave crisis of meaning, morality and value in Western culture) and tried to forsee paths by which it could be overcome. Nietzsche is a deeply controversial thinker, and remains so, but I think his diagnosis of the pathologies in our culture are often spot on. The question is, how do we overcome these nihilisms? I don’t think following some of his proposed solutions (such as the overman example) are a good idea, and with any great but controversial thinker, his ideas need to be interpreted with great care.

 

[tomarin]

Nietzsche needs to be read carefully, as his philosophy has been misinterpreted.

all right, what is wrong about the following summary of his views (based on what i’ve read so far of “thus spake zarathustra”): he believed in man’s radical freedom to create his own reality including his own morality, by an act of will. when he said “god is dead – it is we who have killed him,” he not only meant that europeans of his time have stopped believing in god, but that we have supplanted god as the source of morality and justice. we are the new gods.

by “we” he meant not the herd of ordinary humanity of course, but rather that natural aristocracy (people like himself presumably) who have the bold vision and the courage to reject conventional morality. because a corollary of his idea of radical freedom is that in order to become a superman one must reject decisively what tradition, religion, custom, law and even our own consciences tell us is just and true, and instead embrace what the old morality told us was part of our baser nature: bloodlust, greed, cruelty, self-aggrandizement and rage.

well, if this accurately represents his views, i can’t say that i agree with any of it. i think there’s something external to us which is the source of our conscience and which is the also the source of everything that is beautiful and good in the world (though what we perceive of it in this world is just a weak shadow of the source). i would rather align myself with that goodness than declare war on it because that would entail a life of constant strife and an incessant pursuit of my appetites for power, money, sex, etc., that is, the opposite of peace. that’s no kind of life for me – or for any sane person, i would hope.

if that makes me a slave, then so be it. at least i have a worthy master.

 

[rabenbergm]

The evolution of man to superman requires a planetary aristocracy based upon a massive slave-class. (See, for example, Chapter 9 of Beyond Good and Evil.) So, no, not everyone can become a superman–in fact, only the few best can.

It’s debatable whether this aristocracy is an organized consensus of the few best or simply the natural result of the few best acting (and exploiting) individually. I endorse the latter possibility for a couple reasons. First, Nietzsche’s characterizations of the superman harken back to Aristotle’s characterization of the great-soulled man, whose principal–if not only–concern is self-perfection. Second, the mysterious power of solitude is a recurrent theme in Nietzsche’s corpus: he seems to believe that the greatest human exaltation comes not through collectivization but through isolation.

Nietzsche is not a nihilist. The last man is a nihilist. Nietzsche intended his works to prevent nihilism. I think a glance around the post-death-of-God world shows that he failed. (Although he gave by far the worthiest attempt.)