Nietzche is not a philosopher. There, I said it.

(ps. i never write reviews this long, but i can't stop ranting about this asshole.) I read the last collection of N’s writings [b:Writings from the Late Notebooks|127272|Writings from the Late Notebooks (History of Philosophy)|Friedrich Nietzsche|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171929761s/127272.jpg|122573] as research for my second novel. Every other page I was scribbling notes like: “No!” “Disagree!” “He forgot about this…!” “This is just an opinion!” Yes, N does spend a lot of time on philosophical matters, critiquing elements of Plato and Kant, talking about free will (he doesn’t believe in it) and the nature of sensations and thought, and so on. And he does come up with the typical granular variations on understanding these matters. I’m not saying he doesn’t spend a lot of time coming up with original philosophical arguments, but they aren’t his focus. Because a large volume of what I’ve read of his philosophy is merely opinion tarted up with philosophical gloss (or chapstick when his lips were dry), at his core I find him to be not so much a philosopher as a culture critic. And as such, it’s much easier to disagree with him.

N’s end goal is to change the way we live. As I read it, all his critiques of religion and being and thought don’t really add up to justifying his cultural opinions. In other words, he doesn’t follow a logical path to demonstrate the value of his values. The real justification? Sad to say, his justification really is…just because he says so.

One important thing to know about Nietzche. He doesn’t care about you. Or me. He doesn’t care about anyone except his rare übermen. (Were these guys featured in an episode of Doctor Who, or what?) He doesn’t expect you to strive to become one either. If you aren’t one already, then your job is to serve the existing übermen and help get everything out of their way that might prevent them from doing their various über things. Like conquering countries. Making world-renowned symphonies. Being decadent and amoral and getting away with it. Never having to worry about money. They are nobility to be served like kings. That is your place in society.

Atheists should not rejoice that N declared, God is dead, they actually should be disgusted with several of his conclusions and one of the primary reasons for his dislike of Christianity. He’s not like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris dismembering the delusion of a belief in mythology. N disdains Christianity for the most part because he sees it as “feminizing” and “weakening” of humanity and thus weakening the überman. The part of Christianity he dislikes is when it suggests compassion for the poor, love they neighbor, God loves all equally, etc. The nicer bits, really. Because those aspects of Christianity tend to suggest that maybe everyone is equal.* To N, Christianity is another distraction from serving the überman. But then, once he’s roasted Christianity to a nicely well-done crisp, he then struggles to conceive of how society could avoid nihilism. In other words, he’s not a friend of atheistic thinking if he thinks we land in nihilism without Christian mythology to give the world meaning. This, to me, actually shows his own psychological weakness (something he despises).

N thinks of a world without God as one of nihilism so he invents this ludicrous idea of the Eternal Recurrence as a secular version of Heaven/Hell. Most of the atheists I know personally are not nihilists. They are often very liberal people who care about creating a better, kinder world. Not all, mind you. Some, certainly, are anti-humanists or, more clearly, cruel grumpy bastards. However, I have found those people to be as rare as Christians who want to shoot abortion doctors. Furthermore, despite N’s fear that lack of Christianity leads to nihilism, I find that one of the primary metaphors that resides at the heart of Christianity is nihilistic: Hell. Of course, I don’t believe in Hell, but the premise of it is the most nihilistic system imaginable. A place of eternal torture? As in forever? Despite all the “values” around Christianity, this is the cold heart of nihilism embedded within decorative values.

Nihilism comes in many forms, but in some sense, all variations suppose that life is without meaning, purpose, or value. And again, one of the many contradictions in N’s chaotic thoughts is that his übermen are permitted, in his view (nay, required!) to be amoral. Morality is for slaves. The Zarathustras of the world don’t need such fictions as morality. They are to follow their own calling. Well, guess what? That’s moral nihilism. N believes there is no basis for morality in nature so überman should be like nature, amoral.** So essentially, what I’m saying is that he invents a new myth (Eternal Recurrence) out of fear of nihilism but then endorses a certain type of nihilism anyway. Hypocrisy! Madness!

What N can’t accept is that morality and values and meaning are subjective. True, there is no absolute ground for them. We learn these things as little children even if we may discard some elements of them as we get wrapped up in cultural pursuits like wealth, fame or merely surviving in a Capitalist society. But regardless, to take the opposite point of view as N, I would declare that we are in this all together on this planet. No one man or woman is an island. We need farmers and carpenters and doctors and supermarket checkout people. We all are possibly going to go down with the ship together due to global warming or a snap in the food chain. And as such, for those of us who aren’t suicidal, it would appear that the greatest value is actually cooperation. The more we cooperate as a species to achieve our goals, the less anything could get in our way. Unfortunately, we live in a brutally competitive world and the so-called “advancements” of our society are puny. We have more effective ways of killing each other in wars. About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. That’s one person every three and a half seconds and unfortunately, it is children who die most often. So, what do we value? iPods? Capitalism is another form of nihilism. Everything in the world is only valued in terms of its monetary worth. That’s one reason compassion is so rare.

As R. Kevin Hill says in this book, “[To Nietzche,]…compassion is rooted in timidity and hedonism, and is incompatible with honesty, which is rooted in cruelty. N’s praise of cruelty, which he seems to think of as masculine, is complemented by a series of anti-feminist remarks which, though evincing a fair amount of misogyny, are also of a piece with his critique of egalitarianism, insofar as feminism can be seen as egalitarianism applied to gender.” Let it be noted here that the kind of honesty N is talking about isn’t so much the “honest-Abe-I-cannot-tell-a-lie variety” rather it’s the honesty to face the fact that we want to hurt someone else out of a desire for power. Therefore, this type of cruelty (based on “honesty”) could justify anything from a personal insult to torture or genocide. There is no line to stop übermen from doing as they see fit.

N has a strangely-out-of-place respect for Buddhism next to his loathing of Christianity (his respect seems to come from a belief that Buddhism came from the “nobles” as opposed to the peasants of Christianity). Buddhism would say that desires and the desire to fulfill desires is what cause us suffering. Thus, the need to express cruelty even if it is “honest” is an expression of weakness not strength. It shows inner weakness because one isn’t content and accepting of what is and because one felt the need to express power and domination over others. In addition, N wants his übermen to be strong more than anything else, but the irony is lost on him.

While it is true that N spoke against nationalism–-politics in general and allegiance to a country was an interference and distraction from the creation of übermen–-it’s understandable why the Nazi’s were attracted to him. At a high level, N is an extreme elitist. Society should only exist to serve the most superior of us. In addition, he opposes any social movements that attempt to “elevate the masses.” In other words, no civil rights movement, no feminism, no emancipation from slavery, nothing that attempts to distribute power more equally because such movements are a waste of energy that should be focused on the übermen. You can think of his social structure as like this: Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. But thousands of other people built the rocket, the rocket parts, calculated the trajectories, and so on. While some people might see this as a communal effort, and that Armstrong would be nothing without them, to N, the value of all those peons only exists in their ability to serve Armstrong and help him become a great man.

The übermen are the second replacement for God in N’s attempt to avoid nihilism (the first being the Eternal Recurrence). So who are these übermen? Here’s a list of names he dropped: Alcibiades, Caesar, Frederick II, Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heine, Schopenhauer, and Wagner. You can see that, uhm, these days a few of these folks have fallen off the RADAR of even moderate greatness (Anyone even know what Heine Nietzsche is kissing here?) Regardless, you have to be from either “noble” background and a military conqueror or a significant artist of world renown or a deep-thinking philosopher to make the cut. Sorry, suckers, you’re slaves not übermen in N’s world. Seeing this list, it’s not hard to imagine that one might add Genghis Kahn, Stalin or, of course, Hitler to it. Stalin being, I think, the best example of someone with no moral scruples who reshaped an entire country successfully almost as if it was a work of art, as he desired it. Hitler was perhaps a little too frantic in comparison.

If we agree, for the sake of argument, that nature has no morality that still leaves the question of why we should opt for N’s value system. There is nothing “absolute” about the greatness of the values he espouses. If there was something “objectively” better then we would be full circle to the idea that there is a ground for morality. I might, for example suggest that instead of optimizing conquering heroes and musical geniuses in the world, we’re better off with a value system that optimizes “love” and cooperation instead. Even if we’re Darwinians, and want our genetic material to survive, which I’m not saying we should be, there’s no guarantee that the human species will survive in a world that optimizes great men like Napoleon. We are at the whims of these great men.

According to Hill, N seems to value certain qualities these übermen have in common which he lists as: skilful, cunning, bold, energetic, ambitious, sensual-erotic, romantic, productive (creative), intellectually curious and honest, free from moral and religious scruple, psychologically perceptive and mocking. Now regardless of how you might feel about any of the qualities that N seemed to admire, my main point is that just because N admires certain traits doesn’t mean that they are in any way absolutely valuable. In fact, there may be times where some of these traits are valuable and other times where they are destructive. In contrast, I could create my own list of admirable traits: generous, loving, compassionate, funny, thoughtful, reliable, and so on. So everything N is striving for is nothing more than the glorification of his own opinions, while to me a philosopher should be seeking truth, whatever that might mean. That is why I have declared N to be a culture critic, with his own extreme biases, rather than a philosopher.

That isn’t to say there isn’t some value in his writing here or there. I’ll close this review with his description of Modernity, which I thought was still quite relevant to our society today. He described Modernity as characterized by its "speed, unreflectiveness, complexity, secularization, science, disillusion, economic competitiveness, cultural failure, incipient violence, and fragmentation." He wasn't a fan of economic competitiveness because it distracted from creating übermen. Great people weren't supposed to have to worry about matters of money. I also think it's interesting that he calls modernity unreflective. All we get these days are soundbites, rarely are there long critiques and deep understanding of political issues. Disillusion, violence, fragmentation—or in other words, alienation. Also, quite prophetic. Therein we agree.


*Now, it’s quite obvious when you look at the effect of Christianity in politics in the United States, religion can easily be applied in the exact opposite direction by the right wing to in fact justify elitism (the rich deserve to be rich or God wouldn’t have made them rich) as well as oppression of certain minority groups (homosexuals), but those aren’t traits N was concerned about. Keep in mind, he was around under Queen Victoria and Abe Lincoln.

**One of the reasons N thinks morality has no ground is because humans are animals and animals don’t have morality. I think even from a purely empirical perspective, it’s not clear that this is true. If we think of morality as behavioral traits that distinguish between “right” and “wrong” behavior, it’s quite possible that elephants, whales, chimps and apes, hell, even dumb ants have morality. It’s all in how you define it. A further contradiction in his thinking—if nature doesn’t value any social traits per se, then on what basis does N have to value certain traits in his übermen? There is no tie back to natural morality. Again, it’s his personal bias.
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