Beyond Good And Evil

“A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof.”

Life is about the life-force, and the life-force is the will. The will to power is the self-determining drive to create one’s own reality and one’s own values. Of course, this often and everywhere flows forth in the drive toward self-preservation, one of the strongest instincts of the will, but this will to power can be directed outward as well toward those things the individual determines are valuable and desirable for possession.

“[S]eparate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with each other, that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of a Continent […]”

Though distinct and varied philosophical concepts and ideas can seem disconnected or unrelated, this is not the case. Traditional values are all part of a long chain of thinking, brought into being as one cause after another, and this can be traced through a genealogical process. Common values and mores are not objective and independently instantiated; they are simply the result of many generations of thinking and are as much a part of a time and place as the plant and animal life of a specific region.

“It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong.”

Strength and independence, asserts the author, are not universal traits; they are special. According to Nietzsche’s logic, the general public is not strong, nor are they intelligent or mature enough to be independent thinkers or actors. It will take the select few to rise above their fellows and prove themselves to be independent thinkers who will be able to bring about change.

“The virtues of the common man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher […]”

There are certain virtues that would seem unbecoming to Nietzsche’s true philosopher. One thinks of meekness and humility: These are virtues in what the authors sees as the commoner, as they allow that person to interact peaceably within their community, but these would be vices for the philosopher whose very role in life is to be a sign of contradiction as they swim against the current and provide a beacon of hope and change for all around them. They must be bold and daring and even proud, which are all vices for the vast majority of people in the world.

“The Christian faith from the beginning is sacrifice, the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.”

Within the Nietzschean cosmos, Christianity struggles against reality by promoting sacrifice and the self-immolation of the spirit. The humility that characterizes Christianity is, to the author, debilitating for a people and a nation, as it crushes the spirit and makes one to view all people as worthy of love, honor, and elevation; this of course is ridiculous, as it wipes away the distinctions between the noble and the common born.

“Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence […]”

Nietzsche views Religion as a neurosis that must be cured and healed. This neurosis is unique in that it always seems to come with three specific outlets: the sacrifice of community, the sacrifice of nourishment, and the sacrifice of sexuality. These three things would seem to be essential for the average human life and the flourishing of human culture, and thus, according to Nietzsche’s reasoning, religion is necessarily antithetical and antagonistic to a desirable life.

“In the Jewish ‘Old Testament,’ the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale, that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it. One stands with fear and reverence before those stupendous remains of what man was formerly […]”

Nietzsche esteems the Old Testament as a monument among human achievements. He believes it is a testament to the heights the human person can scale, and all because it is a witness to reality in its promotion and worship of divine justice. Understood thus, the Old Testament alone is worthy of this high praise beyond all other great literature that the world has ever produced.

“To have bound up this New Testament (a kind of rococo of taste in every respect) along with the Old Testament into one book, as the ‘Bible,’ as ‘The Book in Itself,’ is perhaps the greatest audacity and ‘sin against the Spirit’ which literary Europe has upon its conscience.”

In contrast to the beauty and grandeur of the Old Testament, suggest Nietzsche, is the wet napkin of the New Testament. The writings that make up the New Testament are completely at odds with those found in the Old, and the author sees it as a cultural and human tragedy that a text so imbued with the neurosis of sympathy and self-abnegation should be joined to the Old Testament as if they were fundamentally about the same thing.

“[T]he conceptions ‘God’ and ‘sin,’ will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child’s plaything or a child’s pain seems to an old man […]”

Nietzsche prophesies that in the future, the general public will no longer be religious and will no longer look upon the world as a great battle between good and evil. Rather, the concepts of God and sin and universal morality will be looked upon with pity and embarrassment as a childhood of humanity, which it has grown beyond.

“The philosopher, as we free spirits understand him—as the man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general development of mankind—will use religion […]”

The author concedes that religion is not, within his philosophy, completely without its uses, even though he still believes it is a ridiculous fabrication and superstition. Religion can be a useful tool in the hands of the wise philosopher who knows how to wield it against the public in a cunning manner. The philosopher, as the one who bears the greatest weight of responsibility, will be able to use religion as a means to further their own ends when the need and opportunity arises.

“[T]hey have preserved too much that which should have perished.”

Nietzsche succinctly expresses the sentiment that those who exercise sympathy toward others do not let nature take its course. The flow of history, he believes, is to allow the weak to be conquered by the strong and to let the strong dictate history via the power of their own will. What is weak and diseased and incapable of existing under the strength of its own power must be allowed to perish and pass away to make room for what is new and vigorous.

“The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.”

The general public finds it difficult to understand difficult concepts, especially those that are abstract. On account of this, theoretical truths must be given tangible footholds upon which the average person can cling. The human person learns through their senses, so theoretical and abstract knowledge needs to be learned through the senses in some manner.

“That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good—the atavism of an old ideal.”

With the passing of time, new generations generally consider the evils of a previous age to be the new values they want to espouse. With progress, old taboos become desirable and acts previously considered wicked or immodest become openly practiced and encouraged.

“In every ‘Science of Morals’ hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been omitted: there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there!”

The problem of morality, says Nietzsche, is the problem of attempting to discern what is actually moral and what is actually good. The way in which it should work is reality should be assessed, and our actions and thoughts should be made to accord with it. Up to this point, he says, it has been the other way around: The end result has been determined, and then the moral system has been designed with that specific outcome in mind.

“Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as though, for instance, he should “merit” help, seek just their help, and would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a property […]”

Those who deem themselves helpful are all too often self-serving and manipulative. Their help is given with the expectation of receiving in return. Those who are helped are then held as debtors and must act subservient and grateful in every way so those who help and offer their assistance are seen practically as gods.

“Morality in Europe at present is herding-animal morality […]”

Nietzsche laments that the morality in the peoples of Europe is, he believes, about the lowest common denominator and groupthink. The people of Europe seem to him more like a herd of animals who simply move in one accord as though instinctual without any individual thought. Morality of this kind is beneath human beings.

“The time for petty politics is past; the next century will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world—the compulsion to great politics.”

Nietzsche senses shifting values and cultural movements he believes are going to begin playing themselves out on the world stage, especially in politics. As he sees it, the time for the philosophers to begin exerting their intellectual influence has finally come, and it will take a great soul to strive for the will to power in creating a new world in which the new values will be woven into the fabric of life and society.

“The real philosophers, however, are commanders and law-givers; they say: ‘Thus shall it be!’ They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind […]”

Nietzsche’s distinction between the real philosophers and the “so-called” philosophers is the distinction in their purpose and abilities. The false philosophers are those who are simply deposits of knowledge and who are content to regurgitate the thoughts and values of the past. The true philosopher will be the one who uses their knowledge and imagination to bring about new realities, commanding reality to be such as they determine and deciding the path upon which the nation, and the human race at large, must walk.

“It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a man indispensable for the morrow and the day after the morrow, has ever found himself, and has been obliged to find himself, in contradiction to the day in which he lives; his enemy has always been the ideal of his day.”

The philosopher essentially belongs to the future; the philosopher is never going to be of their own time because it is their duty to be critical of and violent toward the ideals of their own day. The philosopher is meant to be contradictory and antagonistic to draw humanity forward into a new reality that they will struggle against, but it is to be the best and necessary thing.

“[I]n a person created and destined for command, self-denial and modest retirement, instead of being virtues, would be the waste of virtues: so it seems to me.”

Traditional morality dictates that morality be universal, that it applies to all people regardless of age, race, social status, or circumstances. This is not the case in Nietzsche’s view, however, for certain dispositions that would be meritorious in the case of the general public—humility, meekness, self-denial—would be vices for the noble and the free spirit since they would hold that person back from accomplishing the great deeds for which they are destined.

“The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul—has it not been bestowed through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”

The principal means by which greatness of soul is instilled into a people is that of suffering. For Nietzsche, all the endurance and spirit and depth of soul a people possesses is the direct result of the pain, tragedy, and suffering they have had to endure. Suffering is the lot of humanity, and the urge to alleviate this suffering is understandable—it is always and everywhere present—but it is a mistake, and Nietzsche believes it is the reason Europe as a whole has been spiraling downward and disintegrating.

“[L]ife itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation […]”

Attached to the view that human beings need to suffer is the proposition that life itself is about the conquest of the strong over the weak. This is the prime example of the will to power, where might makes right, and it is the duty of the strong and the noble to suppress and exploit the weak and those who are ripe for the taking. As Nietzsche outlines it, life is defined by the constant exchange of goods that occurs at a level that is almost animalistic yet transcends the base level of nature due to the philosophical spirit that allows the free spirits to create new values that can be imposed on the world at large.

“The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment […]”

Nietzsche expands on his idea of nobility, which he relates to his schema of moral value: Morality and values are too often considered objectively and abstractly, as if they could exist on their own apart from the individual in whom they exist. This is a mistake, he asserts, for it is not acts and thoughts that are good, right, and noble; there are only good and noble individuals whose actions are good and right only because they are committed by one who is noble. It is the noble one who creates morality and values and who passes judgment simply by means of his or her existence.