Nietzsche Lecture

Nietzsche – Lecture 4/11/05

Fredrick Nietzsche (1844-1900) – between 1872 and 1888 Nietzsche published nine books.

It is by a reading of all those books – and in the order that Nietzsche suggests – that we can understand Nietzsche’s philosophy as multi-perspectivism – Nietzsche thought that best, most accurate knowledge was not trying to find the ‘truth’ of some thing or some statement –there was no ultimate knowledge which transcended all other views – but rather the collection of a lot of different views – this is reflected in his books – all the books express different viewpoints – sometimes very contradictory.

What I would like to do in this lecture is give you an overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to his most important ideas.

(quote 1a)

Anti-idealism

Nihilism

Will to Power

Re-valuation of All Values

The first thing to understand about Nietzsche is that his philosophy is radically
anti-idealist.

He rejected the notion of idea of God – and all other metaphysical substitutes for God – such as Platonic Forms or Ideas.

It is this anti-idealist stance that has attracted postmodern thinkers – Foucault.
(geneology - the inquiry into the conditions which certain perspectives have come into being – ie. evaluation and interpretation.

To begin to understand Nietzsche we need to understand the ideas of Socrates/Plato.

Nietzsche is best understood in light of the idealism of Socrates/Plato.

Explain: Platonic Forms.

The two worlds idea – for Nietzsche in Western thought there is a root idea – a main idea – which is common to Western religion and philosophy – and this idea goes back to Socrates – that idea is that the “good” or the “real” or “truth” or “God” or “Paradise or heaven” – those ideas that give human life its meaning have their source in another world – a world that transcends this one – that is better or greater than this world that we live in .

In comparison to this eternal realm or being this world is considered valueless and meaningless, even ‘evil’.
(quote 1)

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute in ‘world history’, but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beast had to die – Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense

To Nietzsche the biggest “clever beast was Socrates: because Socrates claimed that the ultimate goal of human beings was to attain knowledge – not of THIS world - but of that world that transcends this world.

The cave metaphor.

This realm of “forms” – which are eternal, unchangeable, immaterial – this is what Socrates/Plato dialogues such as the Symposium (perfect love), Phaedrus (ideal form first mentioned) – Republic (good).

For Socrates/Plato it is through knowledge that we get to know this real world.

Nietzsche pointed to Kant as the beginning of the end of this idea – because Kant’s ‘real world’ is the noumenon – the thing-in-itself – and this can’t be known.

Explain: Kantian two-world phenomena and noumenon

Thus - even if this ‘real world’ does exists - we can’t know it – so is completely valueless and useless in determining how we should live our lives.

Suddenly with Kant the ‘real world’ cannot be known – this to Nietzsche is the beginning of the end for the ‘real world’ – or the ‘two world’ idea. – for it is after Kant comes the realization that “God is Dead” and the rise of science.

Science takes the place of religion – Nietzsche however criticizes science – because he claims that it holds on to the two-world idea by claiming that the goal of human beings is the knowledge of ‘reality’ or the ‘truth’ of things and that by knowing that ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ our lives will be better and we will be happier.

Nietzsche asks the question: Why would we believe a deeper knowledge of so-called ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ make our lives better?

This loss of a second world – were we located meaning – lead to a loss of meaning – which is nihilism.





(quote 2)

Nihilism:

Loss of all moral and religious beliefs.

Nietzsche said that nihilism was growing in the modern world and that it was a real threat and danger to civilization.

Nietzsche feared what he called a ‘nihilistic rebound’ – he worried what would happen to human society and culture if there were no response to nihilism.

He feared that European Buddhism would become very attractive.

The essence of what Nietzsche means by nihilism is clear stated in his book, Will to Power:

(quote 3)

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary effect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. Nihilism appears at this point …because one hs come to mistrust any ‘meaning’ in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if every thing were in vain. – Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Nietzsche says that we should just see the idea of God or the ‘real world’ as just one interpretation.

Mankind makes up a ‘second world’ to give meaning to this world – then realizes that this second world is fictitious – made up – imagination – and because the imagine world was the basis for meaning in this world – this world looks meaningless.

This growing nihilism – this meaninglessness – and how to respond to it is at the heart of Nietzsche’s philosophy.

To be overcome – beaten – by the meaninglessness of life is to prepare the conditions for what Nietzsche calls passive nihilism.

This is the opposite of what Nietzsche recommends are response to be – which is active nihilism.

Let’s look at the difference between these two terms in more detail.

Passive nihilism sees the world as without meaning and stops there –gives up – Nietzsche called it “tiredness of the spirit”.

Active nihilism is an increase in the power of the spirit. Active nihilism understands nihilism as a transitional stage - active nihilism is a complete nihilism in that it negates even nihilism – through taking up the opportunity to create new values.

Nietzsche and existentialism.

Nietzsche claimed that Buddhism was a passive nihilism – Buddhism sees the lack of meaning – nihilism – but takes this as the final meaning and fails to go beyond it.
in that it saw the world as without meaning – life is suffering – and that it didn’t suggest anything beyond nihilism except the complete annihilation of the individual in parinirvana.

Nietzsche accused Buddhism’s response to nihilism as being passive – but he misunderstood the response as an act of destruction of the ego/individual (as some Buddhist schools do!) rather than a re-cognizing of the always already emptiness of self – which in turn is the fullness of life – thus re-cognizing the emptiness of self is life affirmation.

passive nihilism – sees this world as meaningless, and stops there.

active nihilism – sees the comprehending of this world as meaningless as a stage in greater empowerment – affirmation – of life – or the will to power.

Will to Power

Nietzsche’s notion of the Will to Power can be seen as the basis of his anti-idealist position.

Nietzsche’s philosophy can be most clearly seen as a criticism of idealism. What it idealism? In philosophy more generally ‘idealism’ means that ideas are the only thing that are real or that we can know anything about, ie. Hegel. But for Nietzsche idealism meant any principle or idea – such as platonic forms, or a second ‘real’ world, such as we have been discussing – which is said to be the underlying truth of all the diverse facts of this world. (example: all women, all Thais, all Australians).

Any idealism has to deny exceptions and other factors to be coherent – thus, Nietzsche would say that idealism is life denying – life is not reducible to an identity – it is always a totality of differences – no an identity.

And what is life – it is the will to power.

The will to power is not an idealism – though it can look like one – ie. “an underlying truth to all the diverse facts of the world” – and some philosophers have accused it of being an idealism or metaphysical – which is another way of saying idealism.

But let’s look at what Nietzsche writes in Beyond Good and Evil:

(quote 4)

Granted that nothing is ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions, that we can rise or sink to no other ‘reality’ than the reality of our drives … is it not permitted to make the experiment and ask the question whether this which is given does not suffice for an understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or ‘material’) world? I do not mean as a deception, an ‘appearance’, an ‘idea’ (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhaueran sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our as our emotions themselves – as a more primitive form of the world of emotions in which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity and then branches out and develops in the organic process …as a kind of instinctual life … as an antecedent form of life? – Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

(quote 5)

There is no willing subject behind power, no reality behind the play of forces, no division into will and its other, or into being and nothingness, or into subject and object – for these divisions are themselves the movement of the will to power. The will to power is a plurality of forces, from which identities have to be constructed, not an underlying unity behind appearance. – John Lechte, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity

This will to power has no origin, no purpose, no beginning, no end – because all of these are idealist or metaphysical categories. It is just life force continually organizing and reorganizing itself it to random patterning.

The Re-valuation of All Values

Nietzsche is often said to be a nihilist. In fact, as we have seen , he was trying to find a positive and life-affirming response to what he could see was the coming the nihilism he expected from the collapse of religion, idealism, and metaphysics.

He thought the most life-affirming response was – what he called; “the revaluation of all values”.

Simply – this means that now that value or meaning has collapsed – nihilism – this presented an opportunity to create new values, new ethics – but what will we create this new values upon? We can’t use God or metaphysics – Nietzsche thought these new values should affirm life – or the Will to Power.

(quote 6)

Positing as a general standard of value the attainment of a kind of life in which the will to power as the creative transformation of existence is raised to its highest possible intensity and qualitative expression. This led Nietzsche to take the “enhancement of life’ and creativity to be the guiding ideas of his revaluation of values and the development of a naturalistic value theory. – The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.

This way of thinking carried over into Nietzsche’s thinking about morality – particularly Christian morality.

Nietzsche argued that values or morality should be judged “in the perspective of life” – in other words, does this system of morality affirm and enhance life/will to power?

Nietzsche claimed that most systems of morality and ethics did not enhance life, rather they reflected “all too human” needs and weaknesses of the mediocre (the weak and mediocre are those who cannot accept life as it is – and live in resentment – the will to power)
.
Such as the Slave/Master morality of Christianity – a way in which the weak can take revenge on the strong.

The Eternal Return (or Eternal Recurrence)

Nietzsche ask the question: If you had to live you life again and again, exactly the same every time, forever, could you say “yes!”?

Presented in two ways: thought experiment and test of your ability to affirm you life without any appeal to anything (God, metaphysics) outside it.

And also: he entertained the thought that it could be literally true – if matter is limited and time is eternal – then things must repeat – like throws of a dice.

But in his philosophy – more important as a thought experiment to test one’s ability to affirm life in the face of a complete collapse of metaphysics or meaning.

“I will it thus” – in the face of suffering – to affirm life. Amor fati – love of fate.

Art makes life liveable in the face of the tragic recognition that life is ultimately unknowable as a metaphysical fact – art becomes the way not to deny life – through the principles of form-giving and intoxication – The Birth of Tragedy.