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UTILITARIANISM SHOULD BE REJECTED
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- SUFFERING IS GOOD AND WE SHOULDN’T TRY TO ELIMINATE IT
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- THE "OLD" NIETZSCHE
UTILITARIANISM SHOULD BE REJECTED1. MORALS BASED ON MAXIMIZING PLEASURE AND MINIMIZING PAIN ARE NAIVE Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 150 Whether it is hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudemonism--all these ways of thinking which measure the value of things according to pleasure and pain, i.e. according to subsidiary circumstances and secondary considerations, are superficial ways of thinking. They are naiveté’s upon which anyone who is conscious of formative powers and of an artist’s conscience will look with scorn and not without some compassion. 2. UTILITARIANISM VIOLATES HISTORICALLY VERIFIED HUMAN NATURE Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. “The Genealogy of Morals.” THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE, 1954, p. 635 The standpoint of utility is as alien and inapplicable as it could possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of practical expediency is always based--and not for one occasional, not for one exceptional instance, but chronically.
Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 214 At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I propose the following: Egoism belongs to the nature of a distinguished soul. I mean that immovable faith that other human beings are by nature subordinate to a being such as “we are”; that they should sacrifice themselves to us. The distinguished soul accepts this fact of its egoism without any question mark, and also without any feeling that it is hard or oppressive or arbitrary; rather as something which may be founded in the basic law of all things.
1. SUFFERING BREEDS CREATIVITY AND NOBILITY Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 151 The discipline of suffering, of suffering in the great sense: don’t you know that all the heightening of man’s powers has been created by only this discipline? That tension of the soul in misfortune which trains it to strength, its shudders at the sight of great perdition, its inventiveness and courageousness in enduring, maintaining itself in, interpreting, and utilizing, misfortune--whatever was given to the soul by way of depth, mystery, mask, mind, guile, and greatness: was it not given through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? 2. REMOVAL OF SUFFERING RESULTS IN THE LOSS OF INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 50 What they would like to strive for with all their power is the universal green pasture-happiness of the herd: security, lack of danger, comfort and alleviation of life for everyone. Their most frequently repeated songs and doctrines are “equal rights” and “compassion for all that suffers.” Suffering is taken by them to be something that must be abolished. 3. THE VIRTUE OF ALTRUISM IS A PRODUCT OF HERDED CONFORMITY Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. “The Genealogy of Morals.” THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE, 1954, p. 635 On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the decay of aristocratic values, that the antitheses between “egoistic” and “altruistic” press more and more heavily on the human conscience--it is, to use my own language, the herd instinct which finds in this antithesis an expression in many ways.
Friedrich Nietzsche may be the most misunderstood, re-understood, and mal-understood philosopher in Western history. Based on a hasty interpretation of his writings, students have created justifications for amorality, chaos, and a very over-literal interpretation of “nihilism,” or the transcendence of values and the rejection of conventional morality. Darker forces, such as proto-Nazis of both modern and contemporary stripes, have interpreted Nietzsche’s glorification of power as an excuse to commit genocide and practice racial selection. And now, at the turn of the Century, Nietzsche has found favor with groups we might find surprising. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote contemptuously of women. But he also wrote: “Supposing truth were a woman. What then?” So it might not really be surprising that more careful feminist thinkers might find in Nietzsche’s apparent misogyny a kind of ironic affirmation of women’s power. Likewise, one might not be shocked that, in an age where sincere seekers of truth know that they must wade through a variety of ideological illusions, Nietzsche’s deconstruction of conventional morality has found new adherents who do not accept the old philosopher’s concomitant nihilism. There are Nietzscheans who uphold democratic ideals even though their figurehead did not. At the turn of the Century, as we look back on a hundred years of absolutist disaster, every horrific war a testament to the inflexibility of the powerful, the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher committed to exposing hypocrisy and crying for authenticity, have more relevance than ever. This essay explores the relevance of Nietzsche’s writings—and contemporary interpretations of them—to current value debate. I will begin by summarizing the differences between the “old” Nietzsche and the “new.” After touching next on some criticisms of Nietzsche that have retained their importance over time, the essay concludes by discussing the application of these ideas to contemporary value debate. THE "OLD" NIETZSCHEFriedrich Nietzsche’s traditional contribution to philosophy is radical enough. Having witnessed his own century of modernist attempts to improve society and redefine the human, Nietzsche came to reject the idea that humans can or should become more compassionate, more moral, more spiritual, more democratic, more utilitarian, and more “progressive.” Nietzsche longed for a return to the values which pre-dated not only modernism, but Christianity and the entire project of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment began in the Eighteenth Century as the project of “moral philosophers,” those devoted to a systemic account of human nature. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and their contemporaries began to see human beings as “equal” both in the sense that citizens ought to have some say in their affairs, and that kings were not the ultimate arbiters of political and moral authority. Nietzsche felt that such sentiments were essentially untrue to our nature; that they were inventions of a “slave” mentality to cover up the resentment of the subjected. Based on this fundamental critique, three themes emerge from the classic interpretation of Nietzsche. First, Nietzsche is fundamentally advocating interpretation of human action and thought based on the will to power. The will to power is the essential “drive” in all living things to thrive and become more powerful. This is especially manifest in humans, as we have a way of rendering our powers permanent, through language and culture. All our thoughts, formulae, and endeavors, collective or individual, are really just ways of trying to become more powerful: whether by philosophically arguing that the stronger are really the weaker (e.g., for Nietzsche, Christianity or Marxism), or by engaging in the kind of struggles which once served to distinguish the strong and noble from the weak. The Nietzschean critique of values is that they are fundamentally attempts to capture all worldly phenomena and systematize it to promote one’s own agenda. Second, Nietzsche glorified “masculine” values, and although he didn’t call them that, there was clearly a strain of competitive and aggressive masculinity in Nietzsche’s thought. He was ambivalent, at best, toward women. On the one hand, he respected their “mysteriousness” and their connection to the world which philosophy cannot apprehend. On the other hand, this was largely due to his belief that women were incapable of philosophy, just as they were incapable of participation in political life. By emphasizing power, a masculine value, and by relegating women to the corner of his own value system, Nietzsche remained an enemy of feminism and feminists for most of the 20th Century. Finally, the classic Nietzsche was “against democracy,” at least insofar as democracy meant that the masses were capable of self-rule. If he was ambivalent about women, Nietzsche was downright contemptuous of utilitarianism, the “slave moralities” of Christianity and its offspring, and any sense that the weak should be lifted above the strong by inventing rights that are not found in nature. In summary, the old Nietzsche is pretty much the philosopher he is given popular credit for being. Except for the misconception concerning racism, a misconception driven by Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth’s dubious and questionable publication of a bunch of Nietzsche’s notes (in a volume now called THE WILL TO POWER), his reputation as being anti-democratic and misogynistic is justified. True, the classic Nietzsche called for authenticity and honesty even as he said everything, every statement, was essentially self-serving fiction. But his outlook on life was bleak and seemed to justify violence, sexism, and authoritarianism. 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