Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers along with Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.

It was the idea, the heroic resignation of the will, that turned Wagner's greatest disciple into his harshest critic. When he first met the composer, Friedrich Nietzsche believed he had found the paragon of all his dreams: a man of genius, strength of will, and the desire to rule. Here was proof that the possibility of greatness still existed in human nature. For the awestruck Nietzsche, Wagner was "the highest of higher men, holding the key to a new epoch of art and life. . . a premonition of the superman". Concerning the master's heroic creation Siegfried, Nietzsche praised him as the truly free human being beyond good and evil, man on his own as he must be after the death of God (Wotan). However, with time Nietzsche began to see cracks in his living idol, disapproving of Wagner’s bourgeois, hedonistic lifestyle, his petty, temperamental egomania, his fanatical German nationalism, his anti-Semitism. Likewise, the character of Siegfried became for him less than superhuman, in fact all too human: an ignorant brute driven by blind instinct, a descendant of Rousseau's natural man whom Nietzsche considered a regressive failure, not a superior being. Rather than return to nature, man needs to conquer his own nature, to ascend above, not descend below his present state.

Nietzsche's break with Wagner parallels his dissatisfaction with Schopenhauer. Once a disciple himself, Nietzsche turned against the philosopher's pessimism about the will. He called Schopenhauer the philosopher of decadence and Wagner the artist of decadence, citing the composer's predilection for associating eroticism with religion (Parsifal) and death (Tristan). Unlike Siegfried the hero of renunciation, Nietzsche's man of the future would redeem humanity "not only from the prevailing [inadequate] ideal but also from what it was bound to lead to – from the great loathing, from the will to nothingness, from nihilism. . . . This antichrist and anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and nothingness – some day he must come", (Nietzsche’s emphasis). After the death of God, Schopenhauer had allowed himself to become enslaved again, this time to the all-powerful will. Nietzsche, however, refused to believe that the will was evil or uncontrollable. He accepted Schopenhauer's basic premise of the will as the fundamental, driving force of all existence but applied Fichte's evaluation of this force as positive and good. Against the denial of the will, he offered his philosophy of the will-to-power.

In many of his ideas Nietzsche was preceded by Thomas Carlyle in his 1840 lectures "On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History." Carlyle’s basic tenet, "That great men should rule and that others should revere them," is supported by a complex faith in history and evolutionary progress. Societies, like organisms, evolve throughout history, thrive for a time, but inevitably become weak and die out, giving place to a stronger, superior breed. Heroes are those who affirm this life process, accepting its cruelty as necessary and thus good. For them courage is a more valuable virtue than love; heroes are noblemen, not saints. The hero functions first as a pattern for others to imitate, and second as a creator, moving history forwards not backwards (history being the biography of great men). Carlyle was among the first of his age to recognize that the death of God is in itself nothing to be happy about, unless man steps in and creates new values to replace the old. For Carlyle the hero should become the object of worship, the center of a new religion proclaiming humanity as “the miracle of miracles. . . the only divinity we can know." For Carlyle's creed Bentley proposes the name Heroic Vitalism, a term embracing both a political theory, Aristocratic Radicalism, and a metaphysic, Supernatural Naturalism. The Heroic Vitalists feared that the recent trends toward democracy would hand over power to the ill-bred, uneducated, and immoral, whereas their belief in a transcendent force in nature directing itself onward and upward gave some hope that this force would overrule in favor of the strong, intelligent, and noble.

Nietzsche agreed with much of Carlyle's hero worship, transferring many qualities of the hero to his concept of the superman. He believed that the hero should be revered, not for the good he has done for the people, but simply out of admiration for the marvelous. The hero justifies himself as a man chosen by destiny to be great. In the life struggle he is a conqueror, growing stronger through conflict. The hero is not ashamed of his strength; instead of the Christian virtues of meekness, humility and compassion, he abides by the beatitudes of Heroic Vitalism: courage, nobility, pride, and the right to rule. His slogan: “The good old rule, the simple plan, that he should keep who has the power, and he should take who can".

With such a philosophy one might think that Nietzsche would have embraced wholeheartedly the views of Charles Darwin, especially his thesis of the survival of the fittest. However, like Carlyle before him and Shaw after him, Nietzsche saw the dark side of Darwin's removal of the metaphysical dimension from the universe. The idea of God had given meaning and purpose to human existence. Without God man was no longer made in His image, no divine spark dwelt in him, and his life had no higher significance than that of the animals. Nietzsche did not argue with the scientific truth of this thesis, but he dreaded the consequences if human beings did not take it on themselves to make their lives significant and meaningful. He criticized the inconsistency of those who rejoiced in their new freedom from God but continued to cling to Christian morality as if nothing had changed. Nietzsche grasped the fact that everything had changed, and that it was time for man to accept his new responsibilities as the only divinity in the universe.

Although he saw this new reality as a reason for hope, he became bitterly discouraged at the evidence around him that the current race of homo sapiens was woefully unfit for the challenge. To those who boasted that man had reached the pinnacle of evolution, Nietzsche protested, "Overproud Europeans of the 19th century, you are raving mad!" Eventually he abandoned his search for the new man in the present, turning to the future to his vision of the superman.

Nietzsche's philosophy stands on three main pillars: the superman, the will-to-power, and eternal recurrence. These beliefs replace the Christian doctrines of God, divine salvation, and eternal life. As substitutes for religious concepts, all three ideas defy definition, remaining in the realm of the poetic, the emotive, and the mysterious. As Bentley says, "Without mystery the superman would evaporate". Nietzsche's spokesman Zarathustra usually describes the superman in contrasting images: man is only a rope stretched over an abyss between beast and superman: as man is to ape, so superman will be to man: man is a lake rising higher and higher now that he does not drain away into a God. In a more comprehensive metaphor Zarathustra explains that man is a polluted stream. The Christian solution has been to remove the pollution, but when this is done, very little remains. The superman, however, will be so large a sea that he can accommodate the pollution without harm. Christianity has told men to abstain from evil, for one who touches pitch becomes defiled. The superman knows that there is no defilement in pitch, no such thing as evil, for all that exists is necessary.

Nietzsche had no conception of a super-race; he spoke only of the individual. He did not share Wagner's interest in the Volk or his belief in a race soul. Hitler's idea of a pure race would have been absurd to Nietzsche, for only through conflict between the races does advancement occur. For Nietzsche the "lesson of existence" is that only great individuals matter, those who raise themselves above their animal nature, their baser instincts for mere pleasure: “Mankind must work continually to produce great individuals – this and nothing else is its task”.

The human being separates himself from the animal kingdom through the exercise of the will-to-power. This concept means more than the natural desire for self-preservation. Nietzsche believed that human beings have a psychological need for power, a need to vent their strength, to assert themselves, to dominate. Such a view would seem an excuse for tyranny and sadism except that Nietzsche posits self-mastery, power over self, as the ultimate goal of the will-to-power. The superman is the one strong enough to overcome himself. This feat restores the distinction between man and animal that Darwin had eliminated, without the help of metaphysics.

It is true, however, that Nietzsche desired men to encourage the passions that lead to evil, for they are also the source of strength needed to achieve the most difficult of tasks, the mastery of self. He felt great wickedness was preferable to weakness, for it gives ground for hope: "Where there is great crime there is also great energy, great will-to-power, consequently the possibility of self-overcoming". The will can be controlled. but it takes the strength of a superman to do it.

Once he reaches this level, the superman can accept himself as he is and all that brought him to this point, saying Yes to his pain and suffering as well as his joys and triumphs. He attains to the supreme moment of existence when he would be content to relive his entire life with its good and its evil; this is the idea of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche speculated that if space and energy are limited but time infinite, then a point would eventually be reached when all possible combinations of events would exhaust themselves and the process would begin again. Whether or not the theory is true, Nietzsche felt men had an ethical imperative to live as if it were true, to live in such a way that they would will to live the same life again and again for eternity (in contrast to Schopenhauer’s Buddhist desire for redemption from rebirth). For the superman this affirmation of life is the highest achievement of the will-to-power.

Nietzsche is often accused of being a pessimist, an anarchist, and a nihilist. He was pessimistic about the man of the 19th century but not about life itself. He did exalt the individual who lives beyond good and evil but only after he has achieved mastery of himself. He recognized the loss of all values and meaning but only as a presupposition, the beginning not the end of his philosophy. In place of God he put the superman, a superior being but still one of us, who says Yes to life and the possibility of human greatness.