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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE PHILOSOPHER (1844-1900)
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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHEPHILOSOPHER (1844-1900)For the last hundred years or so, Western philosophy has been troubled by moral paradoxes. The civilization that produced democracy has also produced totalitarianism. The praise heaped upon technological advances has been called into question by capitalist exploitation and environmental degradation. Even contemporary political questions such as abortion end in frustrating contradictions. These dilemmas suggest that both moral absolutism and moral relativism are equally dangerous. When, if ever, can we be “right?” Friederich Nietzsche was the first European philosopher to address the paradox of values in itself, rather than take sides, rather than try to resolve various moral questions one way or another. He has been labeled dangerous and crazy by some, and brilliant and poetic by others. His provocative appeal, especially to young people, has been unparalleled in Western philosophy. Life And WorkNietzsche’s own life is indicative of paradox itself, proving the reality of contradictions. Though he had theologians on bath sides of his family, he rejected religion early on. Though his works exhorted the virtues of strength and ruthless abandon, he himself was weak and sickly, and hardly a rogue adventurer. And though some see him as the chief spokesperson for strict totalitarianism, he was eventually launched into madness through the relatively “Christian” act of trying to prevent a man from beating a home. Born in Rocken, Prussia on October 15, 1844, Friedrich Nietzsche was destined to be a scholar, although his family assumed, and encouraged, that his scholarship would be theological. Ironically, after they sent him to the University of Bonn, he gave up Christianity, instead becoming enchanted with the myths of the ancient world, and the heroism and ruthlessness o~’ Greek and Roman deities. Transferring thereafter to the University of Leipzig, Nietzsche developed an interest in politics, philosophy and philology. It was philology, a long-since abandoned philosophical study of ancient writings, which he was to teach at Bale after being rejected from military service. While teaching, the twenty-four year old Friedrich also suffered from the after-effects of dysentery and diphtheria, and his health would deteriorate even further throughout his life. It wasn’t until after his health forced his resignation from teaching that Nietzsche began to write at a maddening pace, composing essays and books which were, by his own admission, designed to shock the morality and comfortable assumptions of his day by raising questions he earnestly believed everyone wondered about, but that no one was willing to ask. During this time he wrote Beyond Good and Evil, a book calling moral absolutes into question, The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche’s attempt to trace the history of moralizing itself, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, an allegorical and poetic work urging humanity to reject conventional truth-seeking in favor of a higher level of consciousness which would glorify madness and power. Other works along the same themes appeared: The Joyful Wisdom, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo and Human. all too Human. His work was filled with purposive inconclusiveness; he often ended his conclusions with question marks or ellipses, indicating he was more concerned with raising the issues than answering the questions. This was true because Nietzsche was chiefly concerned with why humanity felt the need to answer so many questions. He believed that the so-called “will to truth” which characterized philosophy’s self-image was in reality simply a reflection of the “will to power,” that tendency of all living beings to seek life, advantage and security. The problem, as he saw it, was that humans had forgotten that they possessed this desire for power and hid it behind various delusions concerning metaphysical truths. But whether these ideas would stand up to scrutiny was something Nietzsche would never realize, for during his lifetime few people were exposed to, or acknowledged, his thinking, and during the last years of his life he went insane, eventually dying, a virtual idiot, in August of 1900. The initial breakdown was caused by his rushing into the public street to prevent a man from beating a horse, although his poor health certainly contributed to the outcome. In the end, Friedrich Nietzsche was unaware that anyone had read his work, and equally unsure he had even written it. The life-force and power he had glorified always eluded him personally. The Attack On ValuesWhy is it that good ideas often turn bad? Love, an emotion and value so often embraced and praised by poets and philosophers, can become jealousy and smothering overprotection when taken to the extreme. Pride in one’s nation can turn into destructive nationalism and even racism. Extremes creep upon us before we realize they’re there. And the opposite is also the case: Things which we condemn in our moral systems can become “good” if viewed from another angle; selfishness becomes self-respect, dishonesty can be called “creativity,” and so on. All in all, it seems as if values slip out of our control, constantly subject to mismanagement and misinterpretation. Nietzsche believed this was because we place values on a pedestal too far above us. He reasoned that we “value” ideas and ideological systems as if they are in command of us, when in reality we have invented them. And he firmly believed that, far from revealing truths about ourselves, values actually, and by design, hide the most important insights about human nature. In short, values are “noble lies” designed to achieve particular, cynical ends. It was not that Nietzsche wanted humanity to believe in “nothing.” Although he is labeled a nihilist, and even the “father of nihilism,” it was never his intention to have humanity think life was completely without meaning. In fact, he wanted nothing more than for us to stop lying about the things we believe to be important. The lies come in the form of exalting “goodness” when one only sees weakness, of calling courage and the adventurous spirit “evil,” of all the dishonesty and hypocrisy practiced by the priests and political leaders of his time. It was sincerity Nietzsche preached, and he did so by, at least as far as he was concerned, calling things what they were. His solution to the dishonesty of value-making was twofold, one part critical in the philosophical sense, and one part vaguely political. On the philosophical end, he called for and himself practiced a “genealogy,” or historical analysis, of human moral systems. Concerning the latter part of the solution, he demanded a “transvaluation’ of values that would be embraced by the new human being, the “Superman” he saw coming in the Twentieth Century. 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