Phil 102 Nietzsche(1)

8/16/2019 Phil 102 Nietzsche(1)

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Human Nature Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844-1900)

“I am dynamite.”

— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo


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Question 1:What did Nietzsche he say about God?

A. He is all-powerful but not all-lovingB. He is all-loving but not all-powerful

C. He is the source of all meaning, affirmation,

and joy in lifeD. He is dead


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Controversial Figure

• Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche presented anextremely controversial and provocative

philosophy that continues to attract and repel

people over a century after his death.

• Called himself an “anti-Christ” and wrote abook of the same name in 1888 (IP 376-380).


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“philosophizing with a hammer”

• Nietzsche doesn't use argument and logic. Inopposition to the philosophical tradition. Heprefers the use of overstatement and rhetoric(“aphorism”), indeed any device he can, toprovoke us, to move us, and to annoy us. He isalways aggressive and confrontational. Heonce described his work as “philosophizingwith a hammer.”

• Hammer is also a tuning fork.


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The Goal of Nietzsche’s Philosophy

• Subversive.

• Challenging and overthrowing conventional(i.e., traditional) philosophy, morality andreligion.


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Christianity: “A religion of hate”

– St. Paul: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliverme from the body of this death . . . with my mind Imyself serve the law of God; but with the flesh thelaw of sin” (Romans 8: 23-25)


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Christianity: “A religion of hate”

– “In the kingdom of heaven the blessedwill see the punishment of the damned,

so that they will derive all the morepleasure from their heavenly bliss.“

– St. Aquinas, Summa Theologica


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The Antidote

• Nietzsche’s philosophy is meant to be an antidote toall of this. It is meant to destroy conventionalmorality and replace it with a higher type of morality,

which is “beyond good and evil,” beyond what theChristians and the philosophers have named “good”and “evil.”


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Life Affirmation

• Nietzsche looks toward a creative, joyful,strong, life affirming morality, a moralitywhere we choose, create and affirm our own

values, whereby we give our life its ownmeaning and style.


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“God is dead” (IP 369)

The madman.—Have you not heard of thatmadman who lit a lantern in the bright morninghours, ran to the market place and criedincessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”— As many

of those who did not believe in God werestanding around just then, he provoked muchlaughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose

his way like a child? asked another. Or is hehiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on avoyage? emigrated?— Thus they yelled andlaughed.


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The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them withhis eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried. “I will tell you. We have killed

him—you and I! All of us are his murderers! But how did we dothis? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge towipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when weunchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now?Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plungingcontinually? And backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is

there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through aninfinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has itnot become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Dowe not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hearnothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying

God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?—Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And wehave killed him!


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“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderersof all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of

all that the world has yet owned has bled to deathunder our knives,—who will wipe this blood off us?What water is there for us to clean ourselves? Whatfestivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we

have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed toogreat for us? Must we ourselves not become godssimply to appear worthy of it? There has never beena greater deed,—and whoever is born after us, forthe sake of this deed he will belong to a higherhistory than all history hitherto!”


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Here the madman fell silent and looked again at hislisteners: they, too, were silent and stared at him inastonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground,

and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come tooearly,” he said then; “my time is not yet. Thistremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—ithas not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning andthunder require time; the light of the stars requires time;deeds, though done, still require time to be seen andheard. This deed is still more distant from them than themost distant stars—and yet they have done itthemselves!”

It has been related further that on the same day themadman forced his way into several churches and there

struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and calledto account, he is said always to have replied nothing but:“What after all are these churches now if they are notthe tombs and sepulchers of God?”


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God = Being

– “I am He who Am” (Exodus 3:14)

– God the Creator, God as “first cause” of theuniverse, the God of Genesis etc.

– God of Being = ens realissimum (“the most realbeing”)


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God = Truth

– God is Truth

– Logos made flesh

– “In the beginning was the Word [logos] and the

Word was with God” (John1,1)


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Causes of the death of God

– Protestant Reformation

• Martin Luther (1483-1546)

– Modern science and technology

• Galileo, Newton, Darwin, etc.


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Protestant Reformation

– The theological functions of the Roman CatholicPriest—confession, consolation, absolution of sinand guilt—were regarded as the superfluous

trappings of an obsolete religion, as shown bypeople like Luther, Erasmus, John Knox, andHuldrych Zwingli

– “Everyone his own priest”


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Science and Technology

– At the end of the middle ages, theplague known as the “Black Death”first struck Europe, swept acrossEurope, and was responsible forthe death of between a third and

two thirds of Europe’s population. – Religion explained it in terms ofdivine punishment and wrath.

– Science explains it in terms ofmicrobiology. The remedy is notprayer, but insecticides and

antibiotics!


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Will to Truth and Atheism

– Atheism is “the awe- inspiring catastrophe of atwo-thousand year discipline in truth that finallyforbids itself the lie involved in belief in God”

(Genealogy III §27).


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Consequencesof

the Death of God

– Absolute foundation for morality is removed.

– Continue to live in God’s shadow for some while.• politics = nationalism/socialism

• science = will to truth at all costs

– Age of ambiguity• For some it is cheerful

• For some it is nostalgia

– Aware of our newly found freedom, human subjectivitybecomes transformed


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Nietzsche’s Typology

Weak

D of G = calamity

Passive

Slave-moralistLife hostileNo-sayersReligiousGregarious (“herd animal”)PhilistineE.g., ???

Strong

D of G = opportunity

Active

Master-moralistLife affirmingYes-sayersNon-religious

SolitaryArtisticE.g., ???

HUMANITY


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Relativism(Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”)

• All truths are “perspectival.” They are true only fromthe perspective or the point of view of the personwho adopts it.

• There is no absolute truth in itself. Truths are relativeto the life and interests of the person or communitywho holds them. They are useful fictions or non-truths because they help us live a certain way. Takeaway the necessity to live that way and they have noindependent value or use.

• Nietzsche says: “truth is a kind of error withoutwhich a certain kind of living creature cannot live”(WP sec. 493).


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“Master Moralityand Slave Morality”

• Nietzsche reminds us in The Genealogy of Morals (IP388) that the idea of Good did not originally apply, asit does for us, to altruistic or “unegoistic” actions.

• “Good” was used at the time of Homeric Greece (8thcentury) to describe the way of life of the noble,mighty, highly placed and high minded.

• “Bad” was seen merely as the opposite of Good, “all

that was base, low minded and plebeian.”


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Slave Revolt in Morality

Aristocratic Value Slave Value

(active) (passive)

GOOD GOOD

BAD EVIL(plus ressentiment )


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Art

• How do we go beyond nihilism? Nietzsche’sanswer: “art.”

• It is art allows us to pass from a merenegative, nostalgic and despairing attitudetowards the loss value, into an active,affirmative, joyous attitude.


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Reevaluation of Values“We have art so that we will not perish from the truth” ( Will to Power sec. 822).

ART

MORALITY/TRUTH

Truth Art


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Truth Art

Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers (1888)


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The Overman(der Übermensch)

• Nietzsche thus looks toward a time when hisideal of humanity will come into existence. Helooks towards the future of what he calls the

Overman (der Übermensch).


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The Overman• The overman is not a superman in the sense

of having all the best properties orperfection’s normally attributed to the human.He or she is beyond man. He or she is over

and above man. The Overman transcends. Heis more than human. He is a new species as itwere. Nietzsche says that the Overman is as

far from us as we are from the ape. Man issimply the bridge - the space in between -animal and overman.


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The Overman

• Why? Because the overman is withoutresentment. He or she affirms life in all itscolors and aspects. He says Yes to what is

'outside,' what is 'different.' This 'Yes' i.e.positing something as good, is the overman’screative moment. The Overman gives birth to

values which are essentially respectful of thedifference between self and other.


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The Overman

• The Overman is not trying to get others tobelieve the same as him. He is not trying toforce his own values and views on others. He

creates his own values and in the processcreates himself.

• If he is a “master,” he is master only over

himself.


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The Eternal Return of the Same(IP 370)

• The Greatest Weight . - What, if some day or night ademon were to steal after you in your loneliestloneliness and say to you: "This life as you live it nowand have lived it, you will have to live once more andinnumerable times more; and there will be nothing

new in it, but every pain and every joy and everythought and every sigh and everything unutterablysmall or great in your life will have to return to you,all in the same succession and sequence - even thisspider and this moonlight between the trees, and

even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglassof existence is turned upside down again and again,and you with it, speck of dust!


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• Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your

teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or haveyou once experienced a tremendous moment whenyou have answered him: "You are a god and neverhave I heard anything more divine." If this thoughtgained possession of you, it would change you as youare or perhaps crush you. The question in each andevery thing,"Do you desire once more andinnumerable times more?" would lie upon youractions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposedwould you have to become to yourself and to life tocrave nothing more fervently than this ultimate

eternal confirmation and seal? (Nietzsche, The GayScience, Section 341; (IP 370)


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Stoics

• A member of a Greek school of philosophy, founded by Zenoabout 308 B.C., believing that human beings should be free frompassion and should calmly accept all occurrences as theunavoidable result of divine will or of the natural order.

• The Stoic world is a living creature with a fixed life cycle, ending in

a total ‘conflagration’ (ekpyrōsis, 138, 156, 174). Since the Stoicsbelieved that this is the best of possible worlds, they argued that itwill then be succeeded by another identical world, since anyvariation on the formula would have to be for the worse.

• Thus, the Stoics arrived at the conception of an endless series ofidentical worlds – the doctrine of cyclical recurrence, according towhich history repeats itself in every minute detail.


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Determinism (“amor fati”)• "Did you ever say Yes to one joy? O my friends, then

you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chainedand entwined together, all things are in love; if everyou wanted one moment twice, if ever you said: 'Youplease me, happiness, instant, moment!' then you

wanted everything to return! you wanted everythinganew, everything eternal, everything chained,everything together, everything in love, O that is howyou loved the world, you everlasting men, loved iteternally and for all time: and you say even to woe:

'Go, but return!’ For all joy wants eternity.” (Nietzsche,Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “Drunken Song,” Section 10; IP 371)


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“Innocence of Becoming”

• “Irresponsibility and innocence. Man'scomplete lack of responsibility, for hisbehavior and for his nature, is the bitterestdrop which the man of knowledge must

swallow, if he had been in the habit of seeingresponsibility- and duty as humanity’s claim tonobility.” (Human All Too Human; IP 367)


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Guiltless

• “We are trying with all our might to withdraw,banish, and extinguish the concepts of guiltand punishment from the world.” (WP sec

765)

Phil 102 Nietzsche(1)

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