A HISTORY OF OVERCOMING: NIETZSCHE ON THE MORAL ANTECEDENTS AND

SUCCESSORS OF MODERN LIBERALISM

Rodney W. Gill

Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS

December 2016

APPROVED:

Richard Ruderman, Committee Chair Steven Forde, Committee Member Martin Yaffe, Committee Member Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, Committee Member and Chair of the Department of Political Science David Holdeman, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Victor Prybutok, Vice Provost of the Toulouse Graduate School Gill, Rodney W. A History of Overcoming: Nietzsche on the Moral Antecedents and

Successors of Modern Liberalism. Doctor of Philosophy (Political Science), December 2016, 201 pp., bibliography, 112 titles.

This work aims to understand human moral psychology under modern liberalism by analyzing the mature work of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I seek to understand and evaluate

Nietzsche's claim that liberalism, rather than being an overturning of slave morality, is an extension of the slave morality present in both Judaism and Christianity. To ground Nietzsche's critique of liberalism theoretically, I begin by analyzing his "master" and "slave" concepts. With these concepts clarified, I then apply them to Nietzsche's history by following his path from

Judaism to liberalism and beyond--to his "last man" and Übermensch. I find that Nietzsche views history as a series of overcomings wherein a given mode of power maintenance runs counter to the means by which power was initially attained. Liberalism, as the precursor and herald of the

"last man," threatens the end of overcoming and therefore compromises the future of human valuation and meaning.

Copyright 2016

By

Rodney W. Gill

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Chapters

I. INTRODUCTION: THE IMPLICATIONS OF MODERN SCIENCE ON MORALITY ...... 1

Nietzsche Contra the English Psychologist ...... 2

The Mistaken Utility of Darwin ...... 3

True Strength as Strength of Soul ...... 11

The Christianity Connection ...... 20

Conclusions ...... 27

II. MASTER MORALITY AS NOBLE AFFIRMATION ...... 32

Affirmative Moral Characteristics ...... 35

Noble Particularism ...... 38

Noble Conservatism ...... 49

Noble Indifference and Realism ...... 53

III. OVERCOMING AND POWER IN SLAVE MORALITY...... 67

Over-refinement and Spiritual Development ...... 68

The “State” and “Bad Conscience” ...... 77

History as Overcoming ...... 83

The Last Man ...... 92

IV. EXILE AND OTHERWORLDLINESS: NIETZSCHE’S HISTORY OF ISRAEL ...... 97

The Historical Stages of Israel: Questions of Interpretation ...... 102

Judaism and Christianity ...... 107

iii Stage One: The Natural Relationship ...... 108

Stage Two: Maintenance Despite Change ...... 113

Stage Three: Yahweh Altered ...... 115

Stage Four: Priestly Control...... 117

Anti-natural Causality ...... 121

Stage Five: Destruction of History via Canonization of the Sacred Book...... 124

Conclusion: Priestly Judaism and Liberal Politics...... 128

V. HIERARCHY, HIEROCRACY, AND REBELLION: NIETZSCHE ON CHRISTIANITY ...... 135

Christianity as Protestantism...... 139

Sola Scriptura ...... 140

The Priesthood of All Believers ...... 143

Sola Fide ...... 148

Christianity and the Modern Age ...... 151

Truth and the Collapse of Christianity ...... 155

VI. LIBERALISM, THE LAST MAN, AND THE ÜBERMENSCH ...... 158

Science and Modern Liberalism ...... 164

War: Liberalism’s Saving Grace? ...... 167

Modern Politics and Modern Rabble ...... 177

The Liberal Suppression of Greatness ...... 180

Runaway Reason ...... 183

Nietzsche: Herald or Hogwash?...... 189

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 193

iv CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION: THE IMPLICATIONS OF MODERN SCIENCE ON MORALITY

In the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche assumes that we have read his

earlier works.1 Walter Kaufmann, in his editor’s introduction to Genealogy, draws our attention

the page following the title page where is written, “A Sequel to My Last Book, Beyond Good

and Evil, Which it is meant to Supplement and Clarify.”2 It is no coincidence that following

Jenseits von Gut und Böse Nietzsche begins Genealogy with an essay titled Gut und Böse, Gut

und Schlecht. Of course, here Nietzsche clearly alludes to Beyond Good and Evil. What is not

clear is how we should distinguish between “good and bad” and “good and evil” and whether or

not Nietzsche is implying that “good and bad” (Gut und Schlecht) is beyond “good and evil”

(Gut und Böse).

In the essay, “Good and Evil, Good and Bad,” Nietzsche distinguishes between two types

of morality, traces their histories, and illustrates the types of peoples that possess them. Our

initial impression is that these moralities seem very similar. How does one rightly distinguish

between “bad” and “evil,” much less “good” and “good”? Is “bad” versus “evil” simply a

distinction of degree? Is “good” versus “good” a distinction at all?

Nietzsche claims that there is not just a distinction of degree but a fundamental difference

between “good and evil” and “good and bad.” The etymological difference between these pairs

informs us on two types of divergent moralities: that of the master and that of the slave. He

1 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. Edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989.) P.8

2 Ibid. Editor’s Introduction

1 argues that understanding the history of these words, their etymological roots, gives insight not

just into the origins of the words but into the types of people that use and are described by them.

Ultimately, Nietzsche views the words themselves, and the moral weight they carry, as

extensions of character traits of certain type. Morality is thus best understood as a projection

dependent on type.

Nietzsche begins not by analyzing the differences between “good and evil” and “good

and bad” but by criticizing those that he calls “the English psychologists.” It is immediately clear that the attention paid to this target is not typical of scholarship. Nietzsche does not merely intend on giving reason to deny the theories of “the English psychologists”—pushing them aside to make room for his own theory. Instead Nietzsche indicts them for putting forth their own brand of morality by injecting it into their histories of morals. Far be they from being neutral observers of natural moral phenomena, the English psychologist interprets the history of morality according to his conception of morality.

Nietzsche Contra “The English Psychologist”

The full title of the work, On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, informs the reader

precisely what will be contained in the following pages. As a polemic, Nietzsche promises to

dispute earlier works outlining the development of morality. He begins the first essay, true to the

subtitle, by disputing the moral theories of the so-called “English psychologists.” He does not

limit his attack to their theories but undermines also with a psychological account of their

motivations. This attack is used both as a means of undermining standing accounts of moral

development and as a segue to Nietzsche’s own genealogy.

2 From the outset, by using the adjective “English” to describe the psychologists, Nietzsche

bares his own psychological fangs. We know from the preface to whom Nietzsche is referring—

his friend, Prussian-born Paul Rée.3 But what does Nietzsche mean by “English”?

In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche somewhat cryptically uses “English” to denote a

psychological type, a type lacking “real power of spirituality, real profundity of spiritual

perception; in brief, philosophy.”4 Here, in Genealogy, Nietzsche refers to those promoting

utilitarian theories of moral development based in their own distinct understanding of

Darwinism. And though Nietzsche describes the “English” somewhat differently from BGE to

Genealogy it is clear upon further examination that Nietzsche is using the adjective “English” in

a consistent manner across both books.

The Mistaken Utility of Darwin

In the introduction to The Origin of the Moral Sensations Rée writes that “since Darwin

and Lamarck have written, moral phenomena can be traced back to natural causes just as much

as physical phenomena: moral man stands no closer to the intelligible world than physical

man.”5 Rée presupposes natural selection and goes so far as to state that anyone who rejects

natural selection, as “proven by the writing of Darwin,” should “leave [The Origin of the Moral

3 Ibid. P.4

4 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future.

Translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989.) VIII.252

5 Paul Rée, Basic Writings. Translated by Robin Small. Edited by Robin Small (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 2003.) 87

3 Sensations] unread” for “since he denies the premises, he cannot agree with the conclusions.”6

Rée, therefore, uncritically accepts Darwin’s natural selection as axiomatic.

Rée and his kind are not philosophers but advocates or foot soldiers of the “English-

mechanistic doltification of the world” by those like Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Darwin, and Mill.7

Rée, as a second tier thinker reliant on previous thinkers, is scholarly not philosophical. And though Rée is unphilosophical because he works strictly within the limits of those before him,

Nietzsche emphasizes that the whole species of English “philosophy” is not philosophical but appropriative. The English “philosophers” have assumed the term philosophy to advance the utility of the common man. Thus Bacon and his “relief of man’s estate” is an “attack on the philosophical spirit” while the works of Hobbes, Hume, and Locke represent “a debasement and lowering of the value of the concept of ‘philosophy’.”8 Rée can thus be understood as furthering

the empiricist and utilitarian project of these English philosophers, the goal of which is to detach

man from the stressors of necessity and in doing so provide security, stability, and comfort. This

is done through the “industrious diligence” of Darwinism.9

Darwin’s natural selection is useful to a utilitarian project because it undermines

teleological theories and religious beliefs that hold man to a standard that is both hard to reach

and imposing upon individuals. In a strict sense species cease to exist in a Darwinian world. This

is because species are ever changing, slowly adapting to circumstance. And though species may

6 Ibid.

7 Nietzsche, BGE, VIII.252-3.

8 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. Edited by Stephen Jay Gould (New York:

Modern Library, 2001.) I.V.11; Nietzsche, BGE, VIII.252.

9 Nietzsche, BGE, VIII.252.

4 appear to be rigid, this is only because the change in organisms happens so slowly over such an enormous period of time such that species appear to be “fixed.” Darwinism says that in reality all groups of organisms, including human beings, are fluid and adaptive to environments. Man has no essence as human being because the “human being” is just the product of environment and dynamic adaption. Thus, in two hundred thousand years the “human being” as we know it could be a radically different creature.

With this understanding at hand the utilitarian can deny rigid and exacting standards of what it means to be a human—standards that intervene with the acquisition of sensual pleasure.

In short, Darwinism is useful for utilitarianism because it untethers man from belief in higher purpose and demands. Standards of character, like those found in The Nichomachean Ethics or

The Gospels for that matter, can be denied because there is no human being much less a human being par excellence. If man is without essence then there is no end that man is drawn to.

Humanity does not have to hold itself to the rigorous standards of higher cause or divine commandment. One might just as well seek base pleasure for it is no less likely to lead to self- preservation and procreation. Further, one need not impose upon others the “right” or “holy” or

“virtuous” way of life. In jettisoning its varied principles humankind becomes more peaceful, tolerant, and secure.

This point may seem counterintuitive especially considering the popularization of Herbert

Spencer’s description of natural selection as “survival of the fittest” which implies that in a

Darwinian world only the strong, virile, and powerful will survive to see their offspring proliferate. But, if we understand fitness to be merely the ability to survive long enough to propagate given certain circumstances then it becomes much less clear that strength, virility, and power are necessary conditions of survival. Perhaps shrewdness, even meekness, softness, or

5 kindness are characteristics of fitness. This very argument is buttressed by contemporary

biological and economic studies on “reciprocal altruism” that have attempted to show that social

or cooperative traits exist because they tend to benefit individuals within communities.10

Darwin’s world need not be as cutthroat as many assume.

There is substantial literature and scholarly debate concerning the degree to which

Nietzsche was “Darwinist.” The literature has proven fruitful and has brought to light novel ways of thinking of Nietzsche. My fear is that the complicated arguments that scholars have made both for and against Nietzsche as a Darwinist have hidden Nietzsche behind Darwin and evolutionary theory, stretching his words to make Nietzsche have a more complex position that he actually has. And though this is not a treatise on Nietzsche’s Darwinism I feel it necessary to make my position clear. My view has two prongs.

First I hold the view, supported by Nietzsche’s published works as opposed to the

Nachlass and The Will to Power, that Nietzsche does accept natural selection but that it is subordinate to his will to power. This is what John Richardson, in his Nietzsche’s New

Darwinism, calls the “dominant” view—the popular view among scholars to be contrasted with his “recessive” position that natural selection precedes will to power.11 John Richardson argues that “sometimes” Nietzsche “subordinates will to power to natural selection” and “that this is his

10 To name a few in the extensive literature: Robert L. Trivers, "The Evolution of Reciprocal

Altruism." The Quarterly Review of Biology 46, no. 1 (1971): 35-57.; Richard Dawkins, The

Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.); Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher. "The

Nature of Human Altruism." Nature 425, no. 6960 (2003): 785-91.

11 John Richardson, Nietzsche's New Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.) 46, 52

6 [Nietzsche’s] best view.”12 This might be the best view, but is it actually Nietzsche’s? I think that in making will to power subordinate to natural selection we cannot understand will to power as Nietzsche intended. In seeking “charity” Richardson wants to make Nietzsche’s accessible within the dominant scientific view. But this kind of charity distorts and trivializes Nietzsche because it presupposes the dominant scientific view before Nietzsche is even read. Thus all

“charity” skews towards Darwin.

The “drive for ‘power’” Richardson contends, “most pervasively and effectively

maximizes [reproductive fitness].“13 This means that natural selection is the governing process

and that will to power is relegated to something akin to the plumage of peacocks, the fins of

dolphins, or genetic resistance to certain diseases. I think textual evidence proves that Nietzsche

did not hold this view. In BGE:13 Nietzsche writes “life itself is will to power; self-preservation

is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.”14 Quite clearly Nietzsche subordinates

even life itself to will to power. I see little reason to believe that although Nietzsche explicitly

subordinates life to will to power that he holds natural selection to be more primary than will to

power. For surely life must be presupposed as a necessary condition of natural selection.

In an extended critique of Richardson Maudemarie Clark argues against a literal

interpretation of BGE I.13. Clark believes that the use of will to power in BGE I.13 cannot be

taken literally because it applies extraneous teleological principles to biological life, something

that Nietzsche himself warns us against at the end of the passage. So Clark insists that instead of

asserting that all life is will to power Nietzsche uses biological metaphor and imagery to assert

12 Ibid. 52

13 Ibid.

14 Nietzsche, BGE, I.13

7 that “the life of the soul15 is will to power.”16 Clark’s position can be summarized as follows:

Nietzsche uses teleological language to describe life, biological life is not teleological, therefore

when Nietzsche states “life itself is will to power” he must not life literally. I find Clark’s view

to be problematic.

She states that Nietzsche’s statement “something living wants above all else to discharge

its force” is equivalent to his statement “life itself is will to power.”17 It is true that the

statements are equivalent but Clark offers no evidence that either statement is “clearly a

teleological claim.”18 What Clark seems to mean is that by asserting that living things “want” to discharge force that living things posit some goal.19 Here Nietzsche clearly uses figurative

language, for how can, say, a tree have a goal? But the fact that Nietzsche anthropomorphizes

life, asserting that living things want, does not support Clark’s position that Nietzsche isn’t

actually talking about biological life but the life of the soul. Instead it only supports the view that

he is being figurative when he uses the word “wants.” So, if what Nietzsche really means is

“livings things shall discharge force” then we’ve done away with the problem of the

15 emphasis added

16 Maudemarie Clark, "On Nietzsche's Darwinism." International Studies in Philosophy 39, no.

3 (2007): 117-33. 132

17 Ibid. 128

18 Ibid.

19 Clark also seems to argue that goal-orientation and teleology are equivalent. Teleology,

however, does not posit goals, but ends and final cause, which may well be very different from a

goal of any kind.

8 “discharging of energy as a goal.”20 But Clark believes that this position is just too obvious, she

writes, “it is extremely difficult to see how positing the discharge of energy as a goal explains

anything about animal behavior, much less its tendency towards self-preservation. Of course

animal behavior always involves the discharging of energy.”21 Clark moves too quickly from

“force”, in German Kraft, to “energy.” Nietzsche doesn’t mean that living things merely

discharge energy but that force is exerted upon other beings at some sort cost to that being. Thus,

if by force Nietzsche means imposition on others, not the discharge of energy in a vacuum, then

it becomes less difficult to see how discharging of force can lead to self-preservation.

Nietzsche is making a less obvious point, not merely stating that animals release energy.

He is claiming that life as force is necessarily force applied onto something. Force, then, is the imposition of one thing on another by deprivation of some sort. In exerting force life must deprive life; it is no oddity that in taking away from another one gives to itself and therefore sustains its ability to impose itself on others in the future. Life is a vehicle for will to power.

Thus growth, killing, eating, metabolizing, spreading, invading, consuming resources, excreting, and incorporation are the most common means of one being imposing itself on another. Even a tree, in blocking sunlight and pulling water from the ground, imposes itself on the less hardy vegetation that lives underneath it.

The second prong of my view on Nietzsche’s Darwinism is in quasi-agreement with both

Richardson and Clark. Clark uses an interesting word, “deflating,” to discuss what Nietzsche believes accepting natural selection does to human self-perception.22 I agree with both Clark and

20 Ibid. 128

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid. 121

9 Richardson that Nietzsche believed Darwin’s theory to be “deflating” but disagree with both on

the reason why it is deflating. While Richardson holds that Darwinism is deflating because of its

base selfishness Clark believes it to be deflating because “we have accepted the ascetic ideal”

and that natural selection runs counter to our morality under this ideal.23 I, like Clark, find little

reason to believe that Nietzsche derides Darwin because natural selection is a selfish process.

But contrary to Clark’s view the true problem with Darwinism is not that it runs counter to our

ascetic ideal but that in some sense Darwinism reveals our ignoble roots. Clark’s position implies

that were we not fixated on ascetic purity then Darwinism would cease to be perceived as

deflating. But the solution is not so simple. The problem is that she puts Darwinism into direct

opposition against asceticism instead of viewing Darwinism as a further, albeit secular,

debasement of humanity. Where ascetic Christianity is the intersection of myth and debasement,

Darwinism is the intersection of truth and debasement. So Nietzsche’s problem with Darwinism

is not that it is debasing simply from the perspective of the ascetic. Instead Nietzsche argues that

Darwinism is actually debasing because of natural selection’s tendency toward commonness and

because it reveals our intimate, and not so superior, relation to “lower” creatures. Darwin’s

theory is not derided because it is untrue but because it is dishonorable and ignoble.

Nietzsche detests Darwinism because, as he writes, “the species do not grow in perfection: the weak prevail over the strong again and again, for they are the majority—and they

are also more intelligent.” 24 This not truly a criticism of Darwinism but of those who think that

23 Ibid.

24 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. In Twilight of the Idols; The Anti-Christ, translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Edited by Michael Tanner. Harmondsworth (Middx.: Penguin,

1990.) “Skirmishes,” 14

10 natural selection leads to more perfect beings. Nietzsche’s true critique of Darwin is based in the

fear that an actual understanding of Darwin leads one towards self-deprecation as one comes to

grips with its truly ignoble roots. Thus a false, yet ennobling, narrative is preferred so that the

strong may maintain their strength.

True Strength as Strength of Soul

What does Nietzsche mean by “the strong”? As noted above Nietzsche equates the

discharge of force to will to power and life itself.25 The discharge of force or will to power

manifests as both common and extraordinary. Discharging force, will to power, is therefore not

limited to those of unique fortitude and determination as life itself is a product of will to power.

How then can the weak be distinguished from the strong?

We may be tempted to assert, as does Brian Leiter in Nietzsche on Morality, that “those

who are strong…express their power through physical action.”26 This view does not hold up to scrutiny for Nietzsche clarifies what he means by “strength” in a chapter of BGE titled What is

Noble. Nietzsche states that nobility has its origins in barbarism and that “strength of soul,” not

“physical strength,” is what largely leads to noble predominance.27 And though strength of soul

is what leads to predominance over “weaker, more civilized, more peaceful races” Nietzsche

contends that “[w]ithout that pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained28 difference

25 Nietzsche, BGE, I.13.

26 Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (New York: Routledge, 2002.) 8

27 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.257.

28 in German eingefleischten, meaning in-fleshed. Although “ingrained” is an adequate

translation it does leave some ambiguity as to whether the “difference between strata” is natural

11 between strata…that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up either—the craving

for the an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself .“29 Thus, strength of soul has its

origins in something external turned inward, which is to say the imposition of social or political

hierarchy within the individual. The pathos of distance, or feeling of superiority of the upper

class or aristocracy, grows out of the social distance between classes that is natural to human

beings in groups. That social strata and pathos of distance precede the strengthening of the soul,

and therefore the predominance of nobility over lesser classes, seems odd for it implies that the

predominance existed prior to the conditions that makes this very predominance possible. How

can this be?

Nietzsche’s basic formula for strength of soul is as follows: human beings naturally fall into a social hierarchy based on human physical strength, within the most privileged and elite

strata this hierarchy is internalized or self-imposed upon individuals as “strength of soul,” that is,

the ordering of the soul such that traits of the privileged group (higher social class) are held as

praiseworthy above traits common to those of the unprivileged groups. Because both master and

slave morality are present “even in the same human being, within a single soul” this ordering is

necessary.30 Those who are strong of soul bolster traits and feelings that vaunt physicality such as pride, strength, superiority and noble indifference over feelings of utility, humility, pity, and

equality even though they may contain these latter, slavish, traits and feelings. Those who are

or otherwise caused. In German this wording is less ambiguous. In referring to the flesh

Nietzsche seems to imply that this is something that results from a human physiology or organic makeup.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid. IX.260

12 weak of soul allow the lesser, more common feelings and traits to rise above the noble.

Corruption comes about when those of an aristocratic class become dominated by common

feelings and forgo their station as a result.

When, for example, an aristocracy, like that of France at the beginning of the Revolution, throws away its privileges with a sublime disgust and sacrifices itself to an extravagance of its own moral feelings, that is corruption; it was really only the last act of that centuries-old corruption which had led them to surrender, step by step, their governmental prerogatives, demoting themselves to a mere function of the monarchy (finally even to a mere ornament and showpiece). The essential characteristic of a good and healthy aristocracy, however, is that it experiences itself not as a function (whether of monarchy or commonwealth) but as their meaning and highest justification—that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments.31

Nietzsche uses the French aristocracy as a counter-example to the strong of soul. For Nietzsche

what makes the French aristocracy so deplorable is not that they lost their rights and lands to

conquest or war but that they threw away their own privilege for moral feelings. This is

exacerbated by the fact that if anyone should be well versed in the nature of power it is the very

people that exchanged their power for the illusion of morality!

It is important to note that Nietzsche emphasizes the way in which both the weak and

strong of soul experience themselves. It is this self-experience that is the key to understanding the strong-weak soul distinction. For as the example above shows, it is possible to be of the most powerful and aristocratic caste and also be weak of soul. The weak souled aristocrat experiences his station, his privileges and advantages, as unfair. He detaches himself from history and mistakes his station as “unearned” whereas the strong souled aristocrat holds himself to be the culmination of history, the product of bloodlines at the apex of lineage. It is this self-perception, the experiencing of one’s status not as “merited” by individual action or “earned” through

31 Ibid. IX.258

13 success but as right and true based on the necessity of historical unfolding, that is strength of soul.

We may then be tempted to say, the slave is strong of soul if he accepts the historicity of his station, if he understands himself to also be the culmination then surely he is also strong of soul. This understanding of strength of soul lacks content and is akin to mere self-acceptance.

Strength of soul is not a mere confirmation of who or what one is but is a confirmation of power.

It is the mental state that confirms social, political, or physical power. The slave can never be strong of soul because he cannot confirm in himself the power that he lacks.

Now, with a better understanding of what Nietzsche means by “strength of soul” we must return to the question presented above: if social hierarchy precedes as a necessary condition of strength of soul, then how can strength of soul be said to lead to predominance? Or in other words, doesn’t the fact that physical strength and social hierarchy exist before strength of soul (a product of pathos of distance) imply that predominance also precedes strength of soul?

Social dominance, manifested as social hierarchy and class, does precede strength of soul. Although the initial hierarchy comes about first through sheer brutishness and physicality the “predominance” of a noble class or aristocracy to which Nietzsche refers comes about once that external desire to dominate is turned inward. Fundamentally, strength of soul, as the confirmation of the expression of power is more important to predominance than political and physical strength because it allows the powerful to maintain power and the feeling of power in the face of common feeling. Strength of soul is the feeling of self-affirmation that ensures that aristocracies do not throw away their power due moral feelings and impulses like the French aristocracy.

14 There is a strange circularity in the relationship between social hierarchy and strength of

soul. First social hierarchy exists out of the natural human differences of physicality, then,

through introjection, this hierarchy is turned inward upon individuals—character traits that lead

to dominance and hierarchy are held above common traits that lead to equality. This introjection

subsequently reinforces the social hierarchy. The strangeness of this circularity is due to the fact

that Nietzsche emphasizes one part of a necessary chain, what seems to be a dominance

maintenance function (strength of soul), over the physicality that initially allows for social

dominance.

Within this process is an important shift in orientation. In the early “barbarian” stage of

social domination and hierarchy the dominant class is focused outward, meaning that its values

are determined first and foremost by its ability to impose itself on weaker classes. But once the

social hierarchy is turned inward32 man begins to gain his mental complexity and moral

ambiguity. Nietzsche’s focus on strength of soul, specifically the importance that he places on

strength of soul over physical strength, is due to the increasing moral ambivalence of man as he

moves from an animal to a thinking being. The barbarian bares the same moral responsibility as

Nietzsche’s “bird of prey,” which is to say, none. “That lambs dislike birds of prey does not

32 There is some ambiguity to this process. If the process is neither mystical nor metaphysical

then it must in some sense be physical. The best understanding is that the process is learned

through observation. Pathos of distance is a feeling derived from viewing others apart and away from oneself. This observation leads to an acknowledgment and subsequent contrasting of traits that both the viewer (master) and the viewed (slave) possess. This contrast requires the master to abstract from his domain and to “experience”, or empathize with, the slave’s experience. He can then order his soul by valuing his master traits and feelings over his slavish traits and feelings.

15 seem strange: only it gives no grounds for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs.”33 The barbarian is not merely like the bird of prey but is the bird of prey in that he holds neither a moral vocabulary nor a moral understanding of the world; he acts and thinks as any other beast of prey. His soul is not bifurcated between moral sentiment and beastly drive. And like all primal beasts ruled by compulsion we cannot, rightly, hold him to account. But, once man internalizes social hierarchy he begins ordering newly acquired feelings, moods, and traits.

He becomes composed internally of conflicting drives and his innate master drives compete with his learned (infectious) slavish drives. In the resulting mental Ping-Pong, he “thinks” and gains

“choice” or the illusion thereof. It is here that we begin to catch the first glances of morality.

Like the bird of prey, man as barbarian is of a singular drive. “[T]hey were more whole human beings (which also means, at every level, ‘more whole beasts’).”34 The barbarian seems strong of soul because, like the bird of prey, his only drive is the physical expression of power.

In reality he is lacking in anything that we call soul. He lacks the capacity for weakness of soul because he lacks the complexity of soul to simultaneously contain both weak and strong (slave and master) characteristics and thus slavish traits such as empathy, pity, and kindness are as foreign to him as they would be to any other beast. Simply speaking he is incapable of weakness of because he is simply or wholly animal. But by internalizing social hierarchy the barbarian turned nobleman absorbs something that is not of him—namely an estimation of the feelings of the lower castes. In taking on feelings that fall outside of his natural purview he gains a dual character, not of mind and body but of master and slave. So, the conflict that once took place between classes now also takes place within one man. The “de-animalization”—i.e.

33 Nietzsche, GM, I.13.

34 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.257.

16 intellectualization—of man is the bifurcation of drives such that the “soul” is both of the master and the slave. Strength of soul, as it is manifested in man qua man (as opposed to man qua animal), ensures that the natural hierarchy that exists in social relations also exists within the newly divided soul of the individual. Nietzsche holds strength of soul to be more important than physical strength because it holds the soul in order once those of the master type gain the capacity abstract away from themselves (empathize) and therefore to be slavish. That strength of soul reinforces expressions of power and social hierarchy is secondary to the fact that strength of soul leads to dignified self-perception and understanding and therefore maintains the concept of

“greatness” among human beings, a self-understanding contrary to the genealogical narrative explicated under Darwin’s natural selection.

Nietzsche sees the forces of natural selection, contrary to promoting strength and power, as generally promoting weakness and commonness. Even Darwin somewhat confirms this when he writes, “In social animals [natural selection] will adapt the structure of each individual for the benefit of the community.”35 Now this does not necessarily mean that traits associated with strength and power will be selected against but only that if they do exist they will benefit the community. And since man is certainly at least a social animal then it implies that over time individuals will be formed for the benefit of the community. If strength is not useful to the community, then it may well be selected against because it threatens to place the possessor of such traits over the community. Strength, as outlined above, would almost certainly increase the likelihood that the possessor of such strength would subordinate the group to his interests. These

“strong” individuals are seemingly less reliant on the reciprocal altruism of the group and are therefore more likely to subordinate the group to their interests. Thus, evolutionarily speaking

35 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (New York, NY: New American Library, 2003.) IIII

17 there is a possibility that strength and power traits are selected against, particularly if these traits

lead to the subordination of the group. If this is true then the strong are at an existential

biological disadvantage, which is to say that the likelihood of any one strong individual existing

is quite low. This paired with the statistical truism that those of anomalous strength are less

prevalent than those that fall closer to the mean of strength does support Nietzsche’s argument

that the “weak” make up a majority.36

Man’s social condition is intertwined with his biological condition. Put in contemporary

parlance, man’s biological disposition to fall within a normal distribution of “strength” paired

with the possibility of a natural selection that favors “social” traits at the expense of strong

individuals leads to deleterious social consequences. Thus Nietzsche is not Anti-Darwin because

he believes theories of natural selection and general Darwinism to be untrue, but because he

understands the outcomes of natural selection to favor the crowd over “the strong, the privileged,

the fortunate exceptions.”37 Natural selection may be true, but it is not inclined toward the

formation of the “best.” Natural selection favors mere survival and reproduction.

In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche makes a comment that seems to imply that he rejects

Darwinism outright. He says, “physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of

self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to

discharge its force.”38 Self-preservation requires measured restraint so that one’s life is not

36 Assuming that human strength falls onto some rough approximation of a bell curve or normal

distribution we should expect the “strong,” those falling within the elite tail of the bell curve, to be significantly less than those with average and below average strength.

37 Nietzsche, TI, “Skirmishes,” 14.

38 Nietzsche, BGE, I.13

18 exhausted. The discharge of strength and self-preservation understood thusly must be at odds.

But, if we continue to read Nietzsche writes, “self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results [of the discharge of force or will to power].”39 This qualifying statement makes room for natural selection but also shows Nietzsche’s complicated relationship with

Darwinism. Nietzsche does not outright deny natural selection but implies that it can exist as a result of will to power. Will to power, to the extent that it is common, may establish itself as the self-preservational aspects of natural selection. For most, self-preservation is the highest manifestation of will to power. Among the many, strength is discharged gradually such that one does not exhaust oneself. Thus the common man plods along with no great flourishes of spirit.

Unlike the genius who “squanders himself,” “overflows,” and “uses himself up” or Zarathustra’s

tightrope walker who “made danger [his] vocation” and extinguished himself through his

vocation, the common man sustains himself because he puts only comfort above mere life.40

According to Nietzsche’s view, strong human beings are, evolutionarily speaking,

failures. “[T]he weak prevail over the strong again and again, for they are the majority—and

they are also more intelligent” also, “those more select, subtle, strange, and difficult to

understand, easily remain alone, succumb to accidents, being isolated, rarely propagate.”41 But to

39 Ibid.

40 Nietzsche, TI, “Skirmishes,” 44; Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, In The

Portable Nietzsche. Edited by Walter Arnold Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1976.) I.6

41 Although it would be a mistake to conflate strength, as mentioned in the first quote, with

genius in the latter the two are intimately connected. Genius, it seems, presupposes a nuanced

version of strength of soul. Though the strong of soul is not always a genius the genius is always

strong of soul because he is willing and able to combat and suppress his baseness (slavish desire

19 make matters worse the strong are often social failures. The antisocial aspects of genius can lead to ostracism or death at the hands of society. If one is not merely isolated from society but disdained by the multitude for his iconoclasm and flouting of convention then he risks the danger of persecution. Thus, socially speaking, the genius is at risk. It is for these reasons—not reasons concerning the facticity of Darwinism—that Nietzsche disdains Darwinism.

The Christianity Connection

So contrary to Clark’s position, Nietzsche despises Darwinism not merely as threatening to the ascetic perspective but because Darwinism trends toward mediocrity and because it knocks man off of his pedestal. Nietzsche believes that Darwinism is degrading to noble self-perception because it actually is degrading. The problem, then, is not that in accepting the ascetic ideal human beings mistakenly take offense to Darwinism but that in understanding Darwin the nobleman rightly finds it difficult to maintain his nobility. Even the submissiveness of

Christianity attaches humanity to God and in doing so breathes into man traces of the divine.

Humanity maintains a likeness to the creator God that holds man above all others of the domain.

In Christianity man is equal under God but above all other creation. In Darwinism man’s divine spark is extinguished, his purpose curtailed. Man is distinct from baboons and algal blooms only in his arrogance to think himself “a great work worthy the interposition of a deity.”42

for comfort and security) for some form of greatness. Nietzsche, TI, “Skirmishes,” 14; BGE,

IX.268

42 From Darwin’s Notebooks quoted in James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral

Implications of Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.) 1

20 Darwinism is more dangerous to noble self-perception than Christianity because it is lower than Christianity and because it is true. Whereas Christianity unrightfully undercuts nobility Darwinism does so with an air of legitimacy. Despite this Nietzsche does not consider

Darwinism to stand in radical opposition to Christianity. Rather he believes Darwinism, as well as the rest of the modern scientific enterprise, to be a common form of degradation born out of

Christianity’s self-destructive impulse toward truth. He writes,

All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of overcoming […] In this was Christianity as a dogma was destroyed by its own morality; in the same way Christianity as morality must now perish, too […] After Christian truthfulness has drawn one inference after another, it must end by drawing its most striking inference, its inference against itself.43

In Christianity truth becomes divine. Yet the will to truth of Christianity undermines the very facticity of Christianity itself. Thus modern science is born from the self-destructive impulse of

Christianity to seek truth at any cost. Of course there is no assurance that truth will be favorable to human beings.

Darwinism is both born out of Christianity’s impulse to truth and a justification of modern secular morality. For Nietzsche, Darwinism fails to stand as a true justification for modern morality (secularized Christian morality) because Darwinism undermines its only viable foundation—Christian dogma. Christian morality, even under the guise of modern secular morality, collapses without the foundation of Christian dogma, and any secularization of

Christianity into modern morality is but a mask that allows Christianity to maintain itself in times less amenable to religious belief. The English psychologist makes the mistake of adopting

Darwin without understanding how devastating the adoption is to modern secular morals.

43 Nietzsche, GM, III.27

21 Darwinism stands as the deflator par excellence because it deflates the Christian ascetic conception of humanity, the modern secular understanding of morality, and the noble conception of self. As explained above Darwinism is middling, communal, hostile towards greatness, and thus undermining to noble self-perception. Further, it is earthly and naturalistic (if not atheistic) and thus hostile to faith and miracles, i.e. hostile to Christian asceticism. And while the English psychologist utilizes Darwinism to promote modern secular morality he fails to realize that

Darwinism, though giving reason as to why individuals do adopt communally beneficial behaviors such as altruism, gives no reason as to why one should adopt communally beneficial behaviors and thus provides no real moral guidance at all. The English psychologist accepts

Darwin uncritically bearing in mind the lack of support that Darwinism provides for a generally utilitarian morality.

The chief criticism of the English mentality is that it is both symptomatic and emblematic of the modern situation i.e. the incongruence of metaphysics and morality. To the extent that he accepts naturalistic foundations and explanations of phenomena including morality, the English psychologist rejects Christianity. And to the extent that he rejects Christian dogma he should reject Christian morality. Paradoxically though, his atheism proves to be profoundly Christian.

This outwardly absurd statement cannot be taken seriously without a serious defense.

Nietzsche’s psychological and quite Socratic dissection of the English psychologists clarifies the seemingly absurd statement above. Here Nietzsche entertains the English genealogy following it through until the argument unravels. Explaining the “English” genealogy of morals Nietzsche writes “originally… one approved unegoistic actions and called them good from the point of view of those to whom they were done, that is to say, those to whom they were useful.”44 This

44 Nietzsche, GM, I.2

22 understanding or morality rests on two principles: first the “unegoistic” motivation for the doer

and second, a useful consequence for the receiver of a given action. Thus, for an action to be

moral it must have the necessary psychological state (motivation) and subjective advantage for

the beneficiary (consequence). Nietzsche goes on to write of the English genealogy: “later one

forgot how this approval originated and, simply because unegoistic actions were always

habitually praised as good, one also felt them to be good—as if they were something good in

themselves.”45 As time proceeded the requisite consequence was forgotten, thus only the required psychological state of the actor is needed. A good action becomes merely a disinterested action, an action meant for the benefit of another, in a word, altruism.46

Nietzsche speaks counter intuitively of the English temperament. Within this paradox we

find the source of both English altruism and an expression of the modern moral and metaphysical

problem. Nietzsche writes, “[the English] have got rid of the Christian God, and now feel obliged

to cling all the more firmly to Christian morality.”47 The English believe they “intuitively” know

good and evil but in actuality “that [‘intuition’] is merely the consequence of the ascendancy of

Christian evaluation and an expression of the strength and depth of this ascendancy.”48 Christian

morality is internalized such that one mistakes the externally imposed Christian morality for

45 Ibid.

46 Nietzsche is certainly referring to altruism here. He states in the preface that the “altruistic

mode of evaluation… in which Dr. Paul Rée, like all English moral genealogists, sees moral

evaluation as such” (Nietzche, GM, P.4). Here Kaufman faithfully translates the German

“altruistischen” to altruistic.

47 Nietzsche, TI, “Skirmishes,” 5

48 Ibid.

23 intuitive understanding of morality. This mistake leads the English to believe that they no longer

need the Christian God because morality is obvious and natural and therefore need not come

from on high. But Christian morality is not intuitive or “self-evident” and instead is the product

of centuries of inculcation. What the “English” do not realize is that “if one breaks out of it a

fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces.”49 So,

Christian morality is inexorably linked to Christ and Christian dogma.

The English race, according to Nietzsche, “clings firmly to Christianity”50; but

simultaneously the English psychologist holds a “petty subterranean hostility and rancor toward

Christianity.”51 It could be that by virtue of being a psychologist, the English temperament is

overwhelmed and one becomes anti-Christian. What is more likely is that the English

psychologist is “self-deceiving” with a taste for the “painfully paradoxical” and is thus capable

of being Christian and anti-Christian concurrently. What is the substance of this paradox and

why is it the case that Christian morality, even in a secularized form, crumbles without Christ? I

find the answer to be in the connection between Charity and Christ.

Christian charity52 is the origin of the English psychologist’s altruism.53 In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians he writes

49 Ibid.

50 Nietzsche, BGE, XIII.252

51 Nietzsche, GM, I.1

52 Luther translates the ancient Greek ἀγάπη (agape) to the German “Liebe.” The German

“Liebe” can be translated to the English “love” with little contention. Here I maintain the KJV translation of “Charity” to distinguish between lower or vulgar forms of love, i.e. love as desire.

24 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own54, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things55

Central to Christian Charity is self-denial. It is endurance and a lack of conceit, a kindness marked by unselfish concern. It is the nearly impossible task of selfless service. Not to be confused with the physical act of giving, charity is the requisite mental state that is the decisive sibling to the act of giving.

Returning to his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes “though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profitith56 me nothing.”57 Ultimately, it is this charitable mental state that determines the goodness of a given

53 It may be argued that the English psychologist proposes altruism as the root of morality while he himself is not altruistic. This is a mistake considering how Nietzsche contends that morality arises, that is, through projection. The English psychologist, being English of temperament and therefore at his core Christian, is vulgar or slavish. He projects a morality that is suitable to him, a morality that requires the self-denying of those that will take masterly advantage. The science of the English psychologist has the viewpoint of a slave.

54 Emphasis added

55 1 Cor. 13:4-6

56 Here lies a central paradox of Christianity. Charity must be selfless, but in being selfless one reaps rewards, namely that of enteral life with Christ. How can one be selfless if, ultimately, what they seek is self-interest with beyond-this-world foresight?

57 1 Cor. 13:3

25 action, without which the act of giving means nothing. Thus we are shown that the English

altruism described above and Christian charity are chiefly concerned with the altruistic mental

state of the actor.

The kinship between the two concepts is plain: a mental state denying the self for the

benefit of another. But whereas Paul contends that Charity has its foundation in the redeemer and

savior Jesus Christ,58 the English genealogy resulting in altruism seems to arise from nothing but the advantage of the receiver of action.59 In a sense this English expression of morality is

decidedly more Christian than Christianity because it expects no reward earthly or heavenly.

Christian Charity is rewarded with salvation while English altruism is utterly selfless. This, of

course, seems to be an odd point of departure for a moral genealogy for by what means do those

being acted upon have to dictate the actions of those acting upon them? Further, why would the

advantage of those that are acted upon outweigh the advantage of the actor? Nietzsche argues

that they do not and that secularized Christian morality (English altruism) is morally bankrupt

because without Christ there is no foundation for altruism.

Ultimately, according to Nietzsche, this is a mistake on the behalf of the English

psychologists because “the historical spirit itself is lacking in them.”60 Because of their inability

to see their own place in history, the English psychologists are unable to form an accurate

portrayal of the origins and genealogy of morality. They project their morals as morality proper

and are unable to see the true roots of their morality in Christianity or, distilled to its most basic,

slave morality.

58 “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11)

59 see above or GM, I.2

60 Nietzsche, GM, I.2

26 The English psychologist’s blinders to history prevent him from seeing the link between his own morality and Christianity. He assumes because the origin stories differ and because his version of the origin and development of morality is based in a naturalistic narrative requiring no supernatural authority, that his morality is radically different and therefore not reliant on

Christian Charity. What he is unable to see, however, is that his morality is but an iteration of

Christian Charity. He is blind to the reality that underlying the two forms of morality is the same motivation—that is, the slave’s will—and unable to admit, because he has moved so far away from the “foolishness” of supernatural belief, that his morality is but Christian morality in new clothes. The English psychologist is therefore an incarnation of the moral disease that Nietzsche goes on to diagnose in Genealogy.

Conclusions

Here we see just how deeply Nietzsche’s criticism of the “English” psychologist goes.

The explication has six functions:

• To show how “useful” Darwinism is to the utilitarian project • To explain that this usefulness is ultimately a mistake on the part of the English psychologist. • To introduce the “English” psychologist as both a utilitarian and Darwinist and thus internally inconsistent between his metaphysics (or lack thereof) and morality • To show that Nietzsche does accept Darwinism as factually correct (albeit with will to power presupposed) • To show that Nietzsche despises Darwinism because it us “useful” to utilitarianism, but mostly because it is deflating to noble self-perception

Lastly, Nietzsche’s discussion of the English psychologist provides a starting point by which he can dismantle previous accounts of morality and then build on the rubble a moral theory of his own.

27 As I have stated, I am not chiefly concerned with Darwinism, but instead Nietzsche’s understanding of modern politics. Giving an honest account, though, requires constant reference to the modern sciences, which Nietzsche considered to run in tandem with modern politics. In discussing Darwinism I aimed to show how Nietzsche viewed the scientific enterprise as inextricably linked to politics and morality both legitimately and illegitimately. In its legitimate form science has the power to reinforce or decimate certain political and moral forms by determining facts about the natural world and then ascertaining whether or not moral and political claims are supported or denied based on these facts. For example, Nietzsche believed the modern scientific project to have undermined Christian dogma and therefore Christian morality in all its forms. Christ the redeemer loses much of his spiritual luster once the metaphysics of Christianity is deemed impossible. Thus science, from the biological to the chemical and physical, begins a path to a politics beyond Christian morality and perhaps beyond morality altogether.

On the other hand, science is used illegitimately when it seeks to prove a moral or political point rather than allowing political or moral implications to follow from a fact. Some may consider this to be a rather naïve understanding of science from a man who virtually began the postmodern obsession with underlying power motivations. The postmodern reader may be forgiven for holding that Nietzsche believed science and even truth to be artifices constructed to disguise power because in a certain sense this is true. Nietzsche believed that the will to power underlies all things. But even if power underlies all things it does not, therefore, hold that all

28 things are equally true. Truth and lies can both be powerful but, even for Nietzsche, only truth is true.61

The English psychologist harnesses the authority of science to bolster conclusions that do not follow from his accepted facts. Specifically, he draws moral implications concerning altruism from Darwinism rather than realizing that Darwinism undermines morality altogether. The

English psychologist uses Darwinism in order to stand against the hierarchical and often violent morality of nobility, i.e. master morality, all the while failing to realize that Darwinism doesn’t support, but rather denies, his conception of morality because it belittles the only foundation that his (slave) morality can rightfully stand upon—Christian metaphysics.

But metaphysics, to the extent that it is amenable to the “ought,” is “dissolved” with

Hume’s is-ought distinction.62 Because modern science has been constructed with the strict dichotomy between is and ought all modern man is left with are facts that can no longer serve as guides but instead can only be instrumental to subjective values and preferences. In sum

Nietzsche contends that the modern scientific enterprise cannot provide support for modern secular morality because it has done away with the metaphysical moral fact. That is, the modern philosophical project—and therefore the modern scientific project—has severed any morally meaningful connection between human beings and the transcendent or physical worlds. Where

61On Nietzsche’s understanding of truth there is contentious debate. Maudemarie

Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.) gives an extraordinary history of this debate. Ultimately, I agree with her position that

“Nietzsche rejects metaphysics […] but that he ultimately affirms the existence of truths.” 21

62 Nietzsche argues that Kant’s solution to this problem is a spectacular failure in Twilight of the

Idols ‘Reason in Philosophy’

29 once sky giants or divine beings demanded something of man now neither the infinitesimal particle nor the vast chasm of the universe demands a thing or provides comfort. Where we were once free due to our divine connection now we are programed by an environmentally determined inheritance of physical traits and behavioral predispositions. Thus the illusion of morality fades as the characteristics required for morality and made possible by metaphysics (such as freedom, responsibility, directedness, and purposes) are increasingly seen as illusions. We stand as condensed and animated space dust with little direction and no purpose. So in replacing metaphysics with empirical facts we must eschew morality in favor of values or preferences.

Nietzsche’s project seeks an answer to the question of what is to be done in the face of the nihilism born out of scientific truth? Should we turn from the truth to noble or even religious myth in order to regain direction? Should we accept the truth of nihilism and slip into our lack of obligation like a warm bath, finally succumbing to the draw of the last man? Or perhaps there is an alternative; should we expunge the manifold religious and moral conventions against pride by holding firmly to the contention that we are the ruler by which all is measured? Nietzsche seems to hold the latter. Human beings must maintain the life sustaining pride of nobility even in the face of deflating truth. Contrary to slipping into the dark and brooding seriousness of man standing defiantly against nature, that cloying Romantic reaction against Enlightenment philosophy and science, Nietzsche proposes taking modern thought to its natural nihilistic conclusion while simultaneously maintaining the levity and passion of life. We must accept

Nihilism without becoming nihilists. And this is possible because ultimately the question of how humanity reacts to the truth of nihilism will be answered not by a moral directive but according to character. If man’s innate slavishness wins the day then we will become the petty, yet comfortable, last man—seeking little more than security and warmth. However, if strength of

30 soul can overcome this innate slavishness then humanity can maintain its dignity in a world that offers none by transitioning into the seemingly ineffable Übermensch.

The following chapters seek to understand just how humanity has come to this fork between two possible futures, the last man and the Übermensch. The source of this crisis is rooted in a long history, a conflict between the master and slave type lasting millennia. Because

Nietzsche understood history as a conflict between master and slave, it is crucial these concepts be thoroughly drawn out and explored. In the next two chapters I do just that. I first give an in depth account of the master type and then, in the following chapter, give an account of the slave type. These two chapters are intended to give a theoretical framework by which we can understand Nietzsche’s history of overcoming. With the prerequisites to understanding

Nietzsche’s history behind us we will then move on to Nietzsche’s actual history. I begin the second half of this work with a chapter on the history of Judaism—the seed from which modern slave morality grew. I then give an account of Christianity, slave morality near full form. Then, liberal democracy is discussed as a modern, secular iteration of slave morality—the form of slave morality that is most intimately tied to the modern scientific project. Lastly, I discuss

Nietzsche’s conceived futures, the last man and the Übermensch, and their possible political forms

31 CHAPTER II

MASTER MORALITY AS NOBLE AFFIRMATION

I opened the previous chapter with questions regarding the disambiguation of three words— “good,” “bad,” and “evil”—in two pairs “good” and “bad” and “good” and “evil.”

Nietzsche begins his genealogy arguing against the “English” psychologists writing

the concept ‘good’ has been sought and established in the wrong place: the judgment ‘good’ did not originate with those to whom ‘goodness was shown! Rather it was ‘the good’ themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded who felt and established themselves in their actions as good1

“Good” originally understood was a self-labeling of noble and powerful people and, by extension, the characteristics they possessed. The moral content of this early formulation of

“good” was quite limited. Lacking from the early concept of good is the concept of a moral

“ought” when applied to those of the plebian or lower classes. What I mean by this is that the noble conception of good does not argue that there is a standard that all ought to attain or live by.

Some are privileged and therefore good and some are not.

Contemporary readers are likely to find this morality disturbing. Modern secular sociopolitical systems including liberalism, socialism, communism and the manifold variations thereof can be grouped together by the simple fact that they reject privilege as authoritative in determining moral worth. In liberalism, for example, merit is extolled over privilege because people are seen as having both autonomy and innate moral worth as individual human beings.

This autonomy means that individuals are responsible for what they do and therefore individuals deserve praise and blame for actions; because one is not responsible for his station, class, or family wealth he deserves neither praise nor blame for privileges. On the other side those of a

1 Nietzsche, GM, I.2

32 more communalist bent reject privilege, but contrary to most liberal individualists, believe that

redistribution or societal restructuring is necessary to relieve the injustices or exploitation of

systemic privilege. Modern western social and economic systems, despite their differences, are

ideologically driven to ferret out and eliminate unearned privilege via either market mechanisms

or social and economic intervention. Both stand against inheritance as a means of moral worth

and authority.

The view that moral worth comes from privilege of station is today seen as backwards

and shallow because, to the extent that class determines moral worth, the world is reduced to

power and blind chance. But for Nietzsche underneath the shallow equation, power equals moral

worth, is profound truth.2 The acceptance and praising of privilege admits to knowledge of

necessity and the connection between one’s situation and his ancestors and therefore the flow of

time. The connection between morality and ancestry is thus profoundly historical. And contrary

to those like Mark Warren who argue that Nietzsche believed “humans strive to experience

themselves as agents, as the cause of effects” or strive to experience to experience themselves as

subjects, Nietzsche only argues that weak “type of man needs to believe in a neutral independent

‘subject,’ prompted by an instinct for self-preservation and self-affirmation in which every lie is sanctified.”3 The noble one experiences himself not as subject but as fate. And to reject privilege

on these grounds is to reject necessity and to wish that things be other than they are.

2 “Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity!” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay

Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Edited by Walter Arnold

Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974.) P.4

3 Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988) 9;

Nietzsche, GM, I.13

33 The acceptance of privilege in determining moral worth is tied to Nietzsche’s rejection of

free will. As Brian Leiter rightly argues, Nietzsche’s rejection of man as causa sui means that

human beings fail to meet the “Autonomy Condition” for moral responsibility.4 Simply put, human beings are not responsible for that which they cannot control. And with this in mind the acceptance of privilege takes on deeper meaning because it is the conscious or otherwise recognition of the hard to swallow truth that human beings are inescapably bound to history through necessity. The nobleman praises his station because it gives him pleasure and he is unburdened by guilt like those that think that things could be otherwise.

The morality of nobility, i.e. master morality, to the extent that it actually is morality at all, is an affirmative-morality, meaning that it affirms what is and that there is no moral impetus

for those lacking traits considered “good” to attain said traits, i.e. the moral “ought” is absent. In

Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche writes,

what naivety it is to say ‘man ought to be thus and thus!’…The individual is, in his future and in his past, a piece of fate, one law more, one necessity more for everything that is and everything that will be. To say to him ‘change yourself’ means to demand that everything should change, even the past…. we others, we immoralists, have on the contrary opened wide our hearts to every kind of understanding, comprehension, approval. We do not readily deny, we seek our honor in affirming.5

There is only what is: the powerful and noble, i.e. the good, and the weak and plebian i.e. the

bad. The bad need not become good, and in fact, cannot be good because they simply are not.

Understood this way, one’s “moral” status is a state of being based in history and lineage. The

Greek nobility “call themselves, for instance ‘the truthful’… the root of the word coined for this,

4 Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality, 87

5 Nietzsche, TI, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 6.

34 esthlos, signifies one who is, who possess reality, who is actual, who is true.”6 The truth of the noble Greek is that morality is only legitimate to the extent that it recognizes power as the principle good. The noble are “true” and “possess reality” because not only do they understand that the world is power but also because they are exemplars of power.

Affirmative master morality has three basic interrelated characteristics. First, as is obvious from the name, it affirms the characteristics and privileges of the powerful as “good.” Second, it is particularistic. Particularism is simply the view that moral worth is limited to a specific class or culture. As such it stands in consummate opposition to moralities that are, in theory, universally attainable. Particularism is consequence of self-affirmation. The traits that one finds in himself are considered to be exclusive to his group and are found to be lacking in those without power. He cannot, therefore, consider the out-group also to be good, but instead, bad.

Those without power have proven themselves to be bad, thus there is no impetus for them to be good. Lastly, affirmative-morality is politically conservative. Of course the powerful do not wish to relinquish their power and find no pleasure in ceding power to those that see as an undeserving lot.

Affirmative Moral Characteristics

I am hesitant to call affirmative-morality morality at all and find much to agree with

Clark’s position, a position that Nickolas Pappas pejoratively puts in scare quotes as “proto-

morality.”7 And though I actually quite like the term “proto-morality” for describing noble

6 Nietzsche, GM, I.5.

7 Nickolas Pappas, The Nietzsche Disappointment: Reckoning with Nietzsche's Unkept Promises on Origins and Outcomes (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.) 153

35 valuation, because it lacks many of the contemporary trappings of modern morality, I find my

term “affirmative-morality” to be superior. Clark’s position is that master morality is not really

morality at all because it refuses to allocate blame to those who are bad and is therefore merely a

preference indicator and self-celebration.8 I do appreciate her view that goodness understood as a noble valuation is “merely the natural viewpoint of a group of individuals well pleased with themselves when comparing themselves to a group they would not be happy to be a part of” and that “[g]oodness is still constituted by what members of the self-affirming group perceive as marking themselves off from those they would not want to be.”9 But noble morality is still a

form of morality to the extent that it holds both positive and negative valuations, ranks

preferences, decides upon those preferences, and makes clear demarcations between those of

different classes of worth. As Pappas makes clear, blame and punishment aren’t the two sole

qualifiers for what makes morality.10 It is our common understanding of the punitive, prohibitive, and largely negative character of morality that leads those like Clark to deny that affirmative-morality is really morality at all. We are after all, Nietzsche would argue, products not of affirmative-morality and it joyous acceptance of the riches of privilege but of the nagging demands of “slavish” negative-morality. As Pappas writes, “maybe that the masters’ and slaves’ perspectives lie so far apart that from within slave morality not only the battle between the two

8 Maudemarie Clark, "Nietzsche's Immoralism and the Concept of Morality." In Nietzsche,

Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1994.) 24

9 Ibid.

10 Pappas, The Nietzsche Disappointment, 154.

36 but even the morality of the masters’ mores is doomed to remain invisible.”11 The term

“affirmative-morality” is fitting over “proto-morality” because it makes clear that although nobles hold a moral view it is strictly affirmative and they do not believe that there is an impetus for moral behavior or belief among those that fall outside of the privileged class for goodness itself is a privilege. Plebeians cannot simply parrot aristocratic behavior in hopes of gaining the same moral worth. To do so is mere affectation and mimicry and fails to understand the importance of history and lineage in determining moral worth.

Further, affirmative-morality is marked by its realism concerning power. This view takes for granted a world in which power is the underlying motivation for action à la Thucydides and

Machiavelli. But whereas a strict realism amorally accepts the callous truth that human beings are motivated by power while, at the same time, not placing a valuation on power itself,12

affirmative-morality lauds a world reduced to power and gives positive value to the possession of

power. Realism, thusly defined, is affirmative because the powerful affirm their power. Realism

in this sense is not a disinterested evaluation of the cold hard facts but the revelry of the

beneficiaries of said facts. The nobles celebrate themselves, extolling their power and privilege

as the “good, beautiful, happy ones!”13 And only after affirming themselves as “good” do the powerful derive the word “bad.”

The concept “bad” takes a secondary role in noble affirmative-morality. “[the] negative concept ‘low,’ ‘common,’ ‘bad’ is only a subsequently-invented pale, contrasting image in

11 Ibid.

12 Machiavelli, for example, does not contend that “power is good” rather, only that it is a natural

fact that people do seek power, glory, and riches.

13 Nietzsche, GM, I.10.

37 relation to [the] positive basic concept—filled with life and passion through and through.”14

“Good” are those traits associated with the powerful while “bad” are those traits associated with powerlessness. In attaching the concepts “good” to the privileges of power and “bad” to the disadvantages of powerlessness affirmative-morality maintains a particularistic moral understanding, meaning simply that the nobleman prefers the those within his group, the “good,” to those outside of his group, “the bad.” And because power must be relative—to hold “equal” power is to hold no power at all—the nobleman’s sphere of moral worth is rather exclusive.

Moral worth as such is aristocratic, not democratic.

Noble Particularism

Nietzsche does, however, believe that some level of equality exists within the Aristocratic class. He writes, “Refraining mutually from injury, violence and exploitation and placing one’s will on par with that of someone else—this may become, in a certain rough sense, good manners among individuals…if these men are actually similar in strength and values standards and belong together in one body.”15 But, he warns, “as soon as the principle is extended, and possibly even accepted as the fundamental principle of society, it immediately proves to be what it really is—a will to the denial of life, a principle of disintegration and decay.”16 Equality, extended broadly, deprives humanity of its potency because human beings are only capable of relative valuation.

To praise oneself or one’s group necessarily means that one must denigrate another. And though an individuals or groups may consider themselves “good” in an absolute sense, Nietzsche

14 Ibid.

15 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.259.

16 Ibid.

38 considers this absolutism to be an illusion brought about by the relationship that they have to their perceived subordinates. Thus the perception of absolutism (in goodness, piety, justice, bravery, truth, etc.) is couched in the real and relative interactions among cultures and classes.

That the above-mentioned noble Greeks believed that they typified the ideal of “truth” is only evidence of their local superiority and ability to confer titles upon themselves and those weaker.

It does not, however, truly validate their claims to “the truth” or “being true.” Nonetheless, this illusion is important because it is what allows for affirmation and excellence. Because political and social equality leaves little room for relative valuation the possibility of affirmation and pride is denigrated by equality. Unable to affirm himself, man as equal has no drive to greatness, overcoming, or creation. Democracy and equality are thus predecessors to Nietzsche’s vilified last man.

But Nietzsche does identify two main qualities that must intersect such that equality is not decadent—strength and values.17 And while Nietzsche does not clarify what he means by strength we can assume that he means either physical strength or strength of soul. In either case strength here refers to those things needed to solidify class distinctions. Thus, strength refers to class while values refer to culture. Equality, then, is predicated on being of the same class within the same culture. And Nietzsche’s simple calculus of masterful valuation in terms of class is that those of different levels of strength do not merit equal treatment. Those with power use the powerless as tools. The powerless endure the abuse.

The need for similar value standards such that equality is not decadent, on the other hand, is not quite as simple. For Nietzsche individuals of equal strength and culture can exist together on more or less equal terms. But, the necessity of similar values for equality means that two

17 Ibid.

39 individuals could be equal in terms of strength yet remain at odds because of differences in culture. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra tells the reader that if a people wants “to preserve themselves, then they must not esteem as their neighbor esteems.”18 Culture, then, both preserves and divides. Culture preserves those within a group as the same but in doing so divides that segment from the rest of humanity. Zarathustra goes on to say, “Much I found called evil here, and decked out with purple honors there.”19 Culture is the cleavage that makes conflict between equal yet distinct powers possible. When strength imbalances exist between cultures there are two possible outcomes: domination or tacit toleration. The less powerful culture either submits by force or foresight to the domination of the powerful or the powerful culture tolerates the less powerful culture because it poses no threat. But, when two distinct cultures of equal strength come in contact, toleration is not possible because the mere existence of an equal power threatens the existence of the other. It is here, where strength meets but culture diverges, that the enemy is born. Nietzsche writes of the enemy

How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies!—and such reverence is a bridge to love.—For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in which there is nothing to despise and very much to honor!20

The nobleman honors his true enemy because he is equal in strength. As such the enemy gives rise to the possibility of overcoming and affirmation. But first the nobleman must prefer himself to an equal yet distinct being. Seeing that strength is equal, the most apparent distinction between two nobles is one of culture, at its core, conflicting wills. Thus the conflict between cultures is the field in which the battle of two equally assertive wills is played out.

18 Nietzsche, TSZ, “On The Thousand Goals and One.”

19 Ibid.

20 Nietzsche, GM, I.10.

40 The cultural chauvinism that is manifested in these conflicts is but a mask for the

imposition of a great will, or put another way, cultural chauvinism is the social manifestation of

the self-preference of a great will. Cultural chauvinism is much like nationalism—a belief in the

superiority of one’s own people. But Nietzsche’s disdain for nationalism is clear; he writes of the

“more profound and comprehensive men of [his] century,” that “only in their foregrounds or in weaker hours, say in old age, did they belong to the ‘fatherlandish’—they were merely taking a rest from themselves when they became ‘patriots’.”21 He considers the “pathological

estrangement” of the people of Europe to be an effect of “the insanity of nationality.”22 Thus, an interesting problem arises when the will of a great individual or body of individuals exerts its will on the people: Can the great individual escape the trappings of demagoguery, democracy, and nationalism in the pursuit of his political art? According to Paul F. Glenn, Nietzsche recognizes this very problem in Napoleon. Because Napoleon “rose to power during a great revolt against aristocracy and privilege” he was therefore required to employ “the methods and practices of democracy” and thus was “corrupted by democracy.”23 Glenn’s position is strong,

but again we are led to the central problem posed by the fact that the political craft of the great

man necessarily involves “lesser” men. Glenn’s understanding of Nietzsche’s diagnoses is that

Napoleon “succumbed to his own myth, coming to believe that he was the great servant of the

French nation” and that “because Napoleon was forced to make use of populist and nationalist

21 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.256.

22 Ibid.

23 Paul F. Glenn, "Nietzsche's Napoleon: The Higher Man as Political Actor." The Review of

Politics 63, no. 1 (2001) 152

41 rhetoric, he eventually came to believe in those values.”24 I agree with Glenn on his interpretation but disagree with the spirit of his analysis. For it is not that Nietzsche held ambivalent feelings on Napoleon, seeing him as a great leader that was doomed by his methodology, but that all great political actors are doomed by their medium and regardless of how great they may be, they are still men. For none have ascended to the heights of the

Übermensch.

The will of a great man is always lessened by the fact that his political craft is the manipulation of inferiors. Regardless of the political means used (populism, democracy, demagoguery, nationalism, or tyranny) a great leader’s medium is always man. And as such he will always be bound by the methods amenable to this medium. Accordingly, the leader will always be categorized from below by the means used to lead. Cesare Borgia becomes the

“criminal,” Napoleon the “populist” or “reformer,” Socrates the “philosopher,” and Jesus Christ the “redeemer.”

The great man seeks to transfigure the world into his image. Culture, as such, is the imposition of a great will onto the world, i.e. it is the “interpretation” of the great will from below. The people live within and in accordance with their culture and do not see themselves as tools or functions of a great will. Cultural chauvinism seems to be a necessary byproduct of a great will’s imposition.

The true challenge, though, is not imposing oneself on one’s inferiors but imposing oneself on one’s equals. The nobleman understands, if only in his heart, that the particularities of culture are less meaningful than the conflict that is born from them. It is from the contest between cultures, as manifestations of opposing wills, not the idiosyncrasies of the cultures

24 Ibid. 153

42 themselves, that meaning is derived. Opposition supplies meaning in the form of the feeling of overcoming an exterior and equal enemy and makes possible future self-overcoming.

In the agon, or contest, one either affirms or denies one’s superiority and strength. But, for this conflict to exist at all one must first be particular to oneself and one’s culture over others.

Universalism stands in stark contrast to particularism by rendering this contest impotent because it forbids the valuation of oneself or one’s own over others. Christianity, for example, universalizes the biblical command of “love thy neighbor as thyself” to “love your enemies.”25 If taken to heart, this universalization of love renders preference obsolete. Christianity demonstrates its superiority by overcoming the insular love of gentiles and the selfish quid pro quo love of publicans.26 But for Nietzsche this understanding of love rings hollow because it abstracts away from the necessity of relative valuation. Nietzsche holds Kant, “that nihilist with

Christian dogmatic bowels,” particularly liable for promoting the “impersonal and universal” as the foundation for morality.27 Chiefly, he takes Kant to task for failing to see that “A people perishes if it mistakes its own duty for the concept of duty in general.”28 The universal is nihilistic because it favors the abstract and impersonal over the concrete relationships that individuals and peoples have with others. Particularism, on the other hand, is the preference for and moral attachment to one’s own and is thus predicated on the real interpersonal relationships between people. And as such it stands as the second trait of affirmative master-morality.

25 Lev. 19:18; Mat. 5:44

26 Mat. 5:46-7

27 Nietzsche, A, 11.

28 Ibid.

43 Particularism is largely a social or cultural phenomenon and is most vividly illustrated by

the role of a people’s deity or deities. Gods either affirm the character of a people or deny it.

Gods that affirm must be the gods of a people or a region; in a word, they must be particular.

This is because affirmation must be the comparative preference of one to another. To hold the contrary universal view means maintaining no preference for one over another. Affirmation in this context is rendered meaningless because it implies no significant distinction from all others.

Thus, for gods to serve an affirmative function they must be limited such that the people adhering to them stand out as distinct from those surrounding. Those of particularistic gods can say, “Our gods affirm who we are apart from and above all others!” For example, Albert

Henrichs correctly states that Nietzsche “argues that the Greeks felt ennobled and elevated because they conceived and represented their gods as ideal-mirror images of themselves.”29 He is

also correct in saying that Nietzsche used ancient Greek polytheism as a foil to Christianity;

where Greek polytheism affirms the noble Greeks, Christianity “oppresses and humiliates its

followers by predicating their spiritual well-being on the intervention of a divine savior.”30

Henrichs is largely right in these assertions but he misses a couple of crucial points. First, it is

not only the case that Christianity oppresses and humiliates its followers according to Nietzsche,

but that it humiliates all of humanity. Christianity, after all, holds a universal doctrine of sin31.

29 Albert Henrichs, " “Full of Gods”: Nietzsche on Greek Polytheism and Culture." In Nietzsche

and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition (Rochester, NY: Camden

House, 2004.) 121

30 Ibid.

31 For a large segment of society Christianity is not oppressive but increases relative power of the

so-called slave class. I elaborate this point in the following section on negative slave morality.

44 Secondly he implies that Nietzsche was against monotheism.32 A quick review of his

corpus shows that Nietzsche did not think negatively of all monotheistic religions. For example

he names one of his most significant texts after Zarathustra (Zoroaster) the founder of the ancient

monotheistic religion Zoroastrianism. Zarathustra, while not a perfect protagonist, is certainly

shown in a positive light. At the very least Zarathustra is a man concerned with diverting man

from the path to the “last man.”33 A better, and more concrete example is the praise that

Nietzsche gives for Yahweh in section 25 of The Antichrist. Here Nietzsche writes, speaking of

the Israelites of the Kingdom, “Their Yaweh was the expression of their consciousness of power,

of their delight in themselves, their hopes of themselves: in him they anticipated victory and

salvation, with him they trusted that nature would provide what the people needed—above all

rain.”34 Nietzsche’s description of The Kingdom’s Yahweh is very much like Henrichs’

paraphrase of Nietzsche on the Greek gods. For Nietzsche the distinction between polytheism

and monotheism is less important than the content of the religion. Nietzsche’s main concern is

the affirmative and particularistic content of a religion as it relates to its adherents.

Both ancient Greek polytheism and the Kingdom’s Yahwism maintain a particularism

(the second prong of affirmative-morality) that is based in their affirmative character. The deities worshiped by both the Ancient Greeks and the Israelites represent a people of a specific geographic area and are therefore tied to the issues relevant given that location—as per

Nietzsche’s example, the need for rain in Ancient Israel. The gods affirm characteristics that enhance power given the specifics of geography, environment, history, and national interest.

32 Ibid. 120-21

33 Nietzsche, TSZ, P.5

34 Nietzsche, A, 25

45 Because the specifics of environment, geography, and situation are not static across peoples, and

because those of affirmative-morality laud traits that affirm themselves, they see other traits and

cultural practices as foreign and unsuited for their particular piece of the world. But as Nietzsche

writes, “every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself” whereas the slave

“from the outset says No to what is ‘outside.’”35 Noble particularism is then not based first in a

rejection of the “other” but first as an affirmation of oneself as a powerful being compared to

others. The rejection of the “other,” then, emerges only as a product of affirmation.

Slavery is a product born out of this particularism. It is known that at least “in principle”

the Greeks “were averse to the enslavement of their fellow Greeks” and that slaves in ancient

Greece were largely either traded from abroad or won as spoils of war.36 37 Aristotle confirms the

35 Nietzsche, GM, I.10

36 Deborah Kamen, Status in Classical Athens (Princeton University Press, 2013.) 8: Here

Kamen cites the ancient sources of Plato’s Republic 469b-c as well as Xenophon’s Hellenica

1.6.14 and Agesilaus 7.6 as well as the contemporary sources such as Yvon Garlan, "War,

Piracy and Slavery in the Greek World." Slavery & Abolition 8, no. 1 (1987): 7-21; as well as

Vincent J. Rosivach, "Enslaving ‘Barbaroi’ and the Athenian Ideology of Slavery." Historia:

Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte 48, no. 2 (1999): 129-57.

37 For the spoils of war theory Kamen cites Pierre Ducrey Le Traitement Des Prisonniers De

Guerre Dans La Grèce Antique Des Origines À La Conquête Romaine (Athènes: École Française

D'Athènes, 1999.) [1968]; Yvon Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 1988.); Garlan 1987; William Kendrick Pritchett, The Greek State at War (Berkeley:

Univ. of California Press, 1991.); and Hans Klees, Sklavenleben Im Klassischen Griechenland.

(Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1998.)

46 practice of subjugating the conquered to slavery in the chapter on “Slave and Master by Law” in

his Politics, stating, “What is conquered in war is said to belong to the conquerors.”38 Ancient

Greek slavery, if not all slavery seems directly tied to the particularistic character of master

morality. Considering that slaves are outsiders—if not geographically then at least socially—it is

very likely that they lack the local customs of their captors. Thus, their captors are “justified” in

holding them as slaves because they do not demonstrate the same traits—traits that by virtue of

the captors’ successes are associated with power.39

The logic of affirmative morality is firmly predicated in power despite the fact that certain courtesies may extend the circle of morality, such as the ancient Greek reluctance to enslave fellow less powerful Greeks. This extended morality seems to be a function of association. Those who are powerless but maintain cultural traits in common with the powerful, like Greek heritage and customs, cannot be treated as absolutely foreign, i.e. openly reducible to tools, because to do so associates those with power to those without. Further, this logic of power determines how the powerful view the “other”. First, those with power affirm themselves as

“good,” they then seek “its opposite only so as to affirm itself more gratefully and

38 Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle. Edited by Peter Simpson. (Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 1997.) 1.6.1255a3. Aristotle’s view on slavery is nuanced and does not agree

with the view that what is allowed according to the law is just. He makes special effort to

distance himself both from those that hold that slavery, so long as it is lawful, is acceptable and

the view that slavery is always unjust.

39 Surely not all traits of a conquering people are “power” traits i.e. traits that enabled them to

conquer. Certain traits may merely be incidental to the successes of their possessors. With that

said, these incidental traits are most likely also associated with power.

47 triumphantly—its negative concept ‘low,’ ‘common,’ ‘bad’ is only a subsequently-invented pale,

contrasting image in relation to its positive basic concept.”40 In a strict sense the “other”—the

foreigner or slave (the slave being foreign in both a literal and figurative sense)—is a product of

self-affirmation. Affirmation must be exclusive such that it affirms one over, or in relation to,

another. Master morality, an affirmative-morality, is particularistic because the affirming group must hold itself apart from and above others. Of the nobleman Nietzsche writes, “once they go outside, where the strange, the stranger is found, they are not much better than uncaged beasts of prey.”41 Thus the slave must in some sense first be a “foreigner” to merit such mistreatment. The

slave must not embody the homegrown traits or customs of the predominant (master) class

because the pathos of distance between the master and the slave must be maintained.

As explained earlier Nietzsche contends that the pathos of distance is a product of social

stratification.42 Originally this is quite literal. The noble feels an unarticulated superiority over

others caused by living above and away from the masses, separated and physically removed at a

distance. This distance is notable in both ancient Greek and Roman society. The Greeks,

according to Fustel de Coulanges, lived in a sort of “double-cities” situated on hills in which the

nobles would reside on the summit while the plebeians would reside at the base. According to

Roman foundation myth, the patricians and their clients lived on Palatine Hills while the

plebeians were relegated to reside “in the asylum” on the slope of the adjacent Capitoline Hill.43

40 Nietzsche, GM, I.10

41 Ibid. I.11

42 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.257

43 Fustel De Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of

Greece and Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.) IV.2

48 These positions of “high ground” are not merely positions placing one within reach of the local

temple they are also positions of power. They increase the view of those who reside on them and

entail all the strategic advantage of holding high ground. The height, a position of power, is

translated into the “moral high ground” because power is equated with good, or better yet, the

term “good” is merely a term to describe the powerful. This basic understanding of morality is

thus akin to the first iteration of Thrasymachian justice from Plato’s Republic, that is, moral

actions are merely expressions of power. 44

Particularism, then, implies a both a physical and mental distance between the affirmed group and the other. To maintain this affirmation, though, this distance must be upheld. Such is the third characteristic of affirmative master-morality: political conservatism.

Noble Conservatism

The political conservatism of affirmative morality is rooted both in the natural drive for

power and the pathos of distance born out of social stratification. It should be no surprise that

those who attain power also seek to maintain it. The political conservatism of affirmative

morality can merely be described as seeking to maintain the status quo in terms of power

relations. This conservatism is not reactionary, as it does not wish to return to a bygone golden

era. Reactionary conservatism is no different than progressivism in its rejection of the status quo.

Where progressivism seeks to counter the status quo by moving forward or beyond current and

past political arrangements reactionary conservatism seeks to move forward by returning to

previous, often idealized, political modes. Both forms of political belief are degenerate under

44 “‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘I say that the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger’”

Plato, The Republic of Plato. Translated by Allan Bloom. (Basic Books, 1992.) 338c

49 affirmative master morality because they favor either a political past or future to the present. In

this sense they stand as a negation of the present, i.e. politics as they are in actuality.

Nietzsche’s understanding of affirmative master morality as non-reactionary has not freed

him from allegations concerning his own reactionary tendencies. A brief aside is necessary to

show the gap between Nietzsche’s positive (i.e. descriptive) understanding of power and his

normative account. In The Destruction of Reason Marxist critic György Lukács goes so far as to

say that Nietzsche’s politics were not mere tendencies toward reaction but that Nietzsche was

“aggressively reactionary” in his “siding with imperialism.”45 Lukács admits, “it is perfectly

clear that [Nietzsche] never read a single line of Marx and Engels,” nevertheless, he asserts, “his

whole life’s work was a continuous polemic against Marxism and socialism.”46 Lukács has no

issue proffering this baffling train of thought because every “philosophy’s content and method

are determined by the class struggles of its age.”47 Thus according to Lukács’ Marxist logic, all

disagreement stems from either a vested bourgeois interest or false consciousness (i.e. a member

of the proletariat being on the wrong side of the class struggle) and thus Nietzsche is subsumed

into the reactionary camp. Of course this form of argument has no defeater for all criticism, even

excellently reasoned philosophy, is proof of the influence of economic forces. While it is true

that Nietzsche opposed and deeply disdained socialism, according to the Marxist logic it makes

no difference that Nietzsche did not seek to further any entrenched interest nor did he seek to return to an aristocratic past.

45 György Lukács, The Destruction of Reason (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981.)

III.1

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

50 The claim that Nietzsche was “reactionary” fails on two fronts. First, it misattributes

reactionary beliefs and sentiments to those with master morality and then it misattributes that

misattribution to Nietzsche, that is, it mistakes Nietzsche’s description and praise for some

aristocrats and nobility as normative support for master morality. Concerning the former it

mistakes the affirmation of those maintaining their power for the feeble powerlessness of the

reactionary, that is, the negation of the present that seeks to realize a romanticized past. To be

clear, master morality affirms actual power and is not the attitude of one who needs to return to a

previous mode to attain power. As for the latter, it conflates Nietzsche’s positive account with

his normative account. In a positive sense Nietzsche sought to elucidate the sources and guises of

power, and though he clearly holds master morality to be superior to slave morality, he doesn’t

say that humanity should, or can for that matter, return to it. Instead, for Nietzsche humanity has

two possible futures: the last man or the Übermensch.48 And though the last man is the final and

most durable iteration of slave morality the Übermensch is not merely a “super-master,” or an

embodiment of an ultra-distilled version of master morality, but is beyond humanity altogether.

In fact Nietzsche’s normative view is strangely progressive—“a roman Caesar with the soul of

Christ,” that is, the interplay between the intellectual depth and desire for truth pulled from

religion and the discipline and affirmative feeling of those whose happiness justifies existence,49 a man capable of finding meaning outside of religious fables and mythology. It should be clear then, that Nietzsche is neither reactionary nor does he advocate a return to master morality.

This detour is important if only to provide distance between Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality and the type of morals, or lack thereof, that he advocates. Simply speaking, one cannot

48 Nietzsche, TSZ, I.3-5

49 Nietzsche, TSZ, I.3

51 conflate Nietzsche’s position with that of the subjects of his study. As such one cannot assert that

Nietzsche advocates master morality regardless of his clear preference for master morality over slave morality

To return to the political conservatism of Nietzsche’s preferred, although not promoted, master morality I entertain two sources. First, mentioned above, is the maintenance of power as an extension of strength of soul (as discussed in the previous chapter). Power attained must be maintained. Second is the pathos of distance itself. The pathos of distance, as it feeds into the particularism of a social class, results in political conservatism.

First and foremost, we must make clear the distinction between particularism and conservatism. By particularism I mean only the moral preference of one’s own family, clan, class, race or ethnicity over others. Conservatism is narrowly defined, as it relates to master morality, as a desire for the maintenance of the hierarchical status quo by those who are in power. Conservatism in this sense attaches the actual power of the master to the moral position that this power should be maintained. Thus the political conservatism of master morality is not in accord with traditionalists who reject the contemporary or modern world seeking instead a return, because in admitting the necessity of return, the traditionalist concedes his powerlessness in his current circumstance.

How then, does the pathos of distance result in the political conservatism defined above?

As has already been shown the pathos of distance breeds a certain particularism, or favoring of one’s own kind, among those separated by geography, culture and class. Nietzsche writes that the pathos of distance, “the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a ‘below’—that is the origin of the antithesis

52 ‘good’ and ‘bad.’”50 The moral position, we are good, is born out of the experience of power and used to reinforce the normative claim, e.g. we are good therefore we deserve power. This position is plainly circular and equivalent to the saying we are good because we are powerful and we ought to maintain power because we are good or we ought to maintain power because we are powerful. With that said, the noble position does not wish to hide this circularity but rejoices in the position that power is the ultimate source of value.

Noble Indifference and Realism

The feeling of power and distance breeds certain traits that are conducive to political conservatism. Most notable is noble indifference as opposed to pity.51 Of pity, Nietzsche writes,

50 Nietzsche, GM, I.2

51 mitleid literally, “with suffering” or “harm-with” clarifies the depth of pity in the German vernacular. The word has been translated both as “pity,” in the classic Walter Kaufmann translation, and “compassion” by Clark and Swensen (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the

Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen.

(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 1998.)) in their more recent and, quite often, more literal translation. Compassion initially seems like the natural choice being derived from the latin compati through compassio—literally “with suffering.” Our problem though, as modern readers, is that we don’t speak Latin, nor do we think so literally about the etymology of words as the source of meaning. Today “compassion” does not necessarily imply that one suffers with another, rather that one wishes to alleviate the pain in another. A compassionate person may very well have high spirits. Pity, on the other hand, seems to imply that the one pitying is captured by

53 it “makes suffering contagious…it multiplies misery and conserves all that is miserable and is thus a prime instrument of the advancement of decadence: pity persuades men to nothingness!”52

Pity, like the corruption that befell the French Aristocracy,53 saps the vitality that enables an aristocracy to accept “in good conscience the sacrifice of countless people who have to be pushed down and shrunk into incomplete human beings, into slaves, into tools, all for the sake of the aristocracy.”54 Pity causes those with power to throw away their prerogatives, the privileges that maintain their station above others, by eliciting a disdain of inequality and entitlement. Pity is not only sympathy for the dejected but also the feeling, gleaned from the seeming injustice that others live without privilege, that one’s own station is unfair and unearned and thus unwarranted.

Thus the feeling of pity does not lead one to “conserve” the political status quo but to renounce it, ushering in equality and denial of hierarchy.

To the lower classes, Nietzsche asserts, the nobleman “may behave…’as the heart

emotion, made melancholy by the plight of another. Thus, I stick with Kaufmann’s translation of mitleid: “pity.”

52 Nietzsche, Friedrich. A, 7

53 In section 6 of The Antichrist Nietzsche writes “I understand corruption…in the sense of decadence,” further in section 7 he writes “[pity] is thus the prime instrument of the advancement of decadence.” The French Aristocracy, he writes, “throws away its privileges with a sublime disgust and sacrifices itself to an extravagance of its own moral feelings, that is corruption.”

(BGE, IX.258) Thus we should have no problem associating pity with the moral feelings

(corruption or decadence) of the French Aristocracy.

54 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.258.

54 desires’” and that here, “pity and like feeling may find their place.”55 (BGE, Part 9, 260) “The noble human being,” Nietzsche argues, “helps the unfortunate, but not or almost not from pity, but prompted more by an urge begotten by excess of power.”56 Pity does seem possible for the noble with the all-important caveat that it not lead to decadence. Of course, this seems to run counter to Nietzsche’s other comments on pity such as his discussion of the noble human being

that “is actually proud of the fact that he is not made for pity.”57 We must then distinguish between pity as an expression of power and pity as decadence. Noble pity must be kindness or aid without the negative feeling associated with pity or the diminishing effects on power. This kind of pity does not lead one to question their prerogatives. Conversely, decadent pity transfers the feelings of the sufferer to the one taking pity. The one taking pity absorbs the sorrow of the pitiful, identifying with the suffering of the pitiful and having their spirits diminished as a result.

This process of identification and sorrow has the possible political effect of loosening hierarchical control. If an aristocracy lacks the requisite strength of soul to ward off feelings of pity, then there remains the possibility that an aristocracy will degenerate from within. Through decadent pity aristocrats identify with their inferiors and thus seek political modes that suit this identification. In casting away their privileged position in the name of pity, they usher in a new politics of identification, that is, the politics of equality (democracy, liberalism, socialism, communism). Whereas during periods of aristocratic hardiness one found equality only within one’s social group, during periods of decadence all of humanity becomes one’s peer. Because

Nietzsche favors hierarchy and aristocratic hardiness to equality and universal identification, it is

55 Ibid. IX.260

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

55 clear why he so despises pity: pity as the transference of suffering is the key to a politics of equality.

The pathos of distance stands apart from pity, not as its opposite, what Aristotle refers to as indignation or “pain at unmerited fortune,” but as nearly complete dissociation from the prosaic world of the lowborn. 58 The pathos of distance engenders noble indifference to the feelings of those of a lower stratum. As such the conscience is clean even in the light of glaring inequality. And because the noble has a clear conscience he has no problem in maintaining this inequality by conserving his place in the social hierarchy. Through physical distance the noble class maintains the mental and emotional distance, a noble indifference born out of the pathos of distance. Of noble indifference Nietzsche writes, “To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long—that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget.”59

He goes on to say, “Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others.”60 The nobleman isn’t burdened by pity and when he does feel pity he is able to

“recuperate” or “forget” instead of forgoing his prerogatives and allowing his pity to serve as a vehicle for equality and democracy.

Whereas pity infects, causing those like the French aristocrats to cast away their privileges, the pathos of distance ensures that nobility does not identify too strongly with the suffering masses. Because of this indifference, the nobleman does not seek to remedy the plight

58 Aristotle, Rhetoric, Translated by W. Rhys Roberts. (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications 2004.)

II.9, 1837a8-9

59 Nietzsche, GM, I.10

60 Ibid.

56 of the masses via reduction of his own prerogatives, property, and wealth. In short, he does not seek the relative equalization of power because he does not identify with the lower classes and is thus able to maintain his political power by virtue of the fact that he is not burdened by the moral feelings of pity and guilt.

Nietzsche characterizes the indifference that is born out of the pathos of distance as both cruelty and denial on one hand and noble pity and acceptance on the other.61 It is more accurate to say that those of lower social classes may experience noble indifference as either cruelty or kindness. An example of the first case is Cesare Borgia. The indifference of a man like Cesare

Borgia is like that of an animal.62 “Primitive men” considered this cruelty, or “disinterested

malice,” to be the baseline of human behavior.63 Those that suffer under this kind of person

suffer as playthings, the cruelty exerted upon them being the product of their tormentor’s

pleasure at inflicting pain and lack of sympathy to their suffering.

And though Nietzsche does take pains to show how cruelty could have been born out of

the debtor-creditor relationship, he admits that this is “offered only as conjecture,” and that “the concept ‘revenge’ does not enhance [one’s] insight into the matter [of cruelty] but further veils and darkens it” for “’how can making suffer constitute a compensation?’ ”64 Thus Nietzsche’s

view is more in line with the “primitive” men who believe that cruelty is in some sense natural to

human beings. Cruelty of this sort is indifferent because it is not meant as a corrective to a past

transgression, i.e. it does not come from a place of ressentiment. Like a child burning ants with a

61 Nietzsche, GM, I.11, II.5-7; BGE, IX.260

62 Nietzsche, BGE, V.197

63 Nietzsche, GM, II.6

64 Ibid.

57 magnifying glass, those in power are cruel to their inferiors because unrestrained power allows

for the expression of a natural predisposition. They do not and simply cannot identify with their

inferiors and thus do not feel empathy with their suffering.

On the other hand, indifference can be understood as kindness. For example, the Persian

Achaemenid Empire,65 under the rule of Cyrus the Great, is known to have allowed conquered peoples to return to their homelands and religious practices following the Persian conquest of

Babylonia. This gesture of kindness has led to the common view that the Persians under Cyrus were particularly tolerant in a time when tolerance was far from the norm. Drawing from biblical and Greek sources, Etienne Nodet contends, “Cyrus gained a reputation as an enlightened liberator.”66 This view is mirrored in The Cambridge History of Judaism wherein Ephraim Stern

states that Cyrus “presented himself to the conquered as a liberator” and that “his policy [of

allowing conquered peoples to return to their homelands] gained him the goodwill of almost the

65 Nietzsche certainly considered the Persians to be a noble people. Evidence is sprinkled

throughout his later works. In BGE he says of the Persians, they “believed in an order of rank

and not equality and equal rights”—certainly a noble trait (BGE, II.30). Further, the most

prominent values of Zarathustra’s people, the Persians, are “to speak the truth and to handle bow

and arrow well.” (TSZ, I, “On the Thousand Goals and One”) Of course, in Genealogy Nietzsche

says that that the self-perception of truthfulness is “a typical character trait” of nobility (GM,

I.5).

66 Étienne Nodet, A Search for the Origins of Judaism: From Joshua to the Mishnah (Sheffield,

England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997.) 17

58 entire ancient world.”67 Nietzsche scholar Tim Murphy rightly notes that Cyrus was held in such high esteem that he is “described in the book of Isaiah as ‘messiah’.”68 It is not difficult to understand Cyrus as an exceptionally liberal ancient leader.

But not all scholars believe in the near mythic status that has surrounded Cyrus. Amélie

Kuhrt contends that the so-called Cyrus Cylinder, an inscribed clay tablet of imperial policy said to have ushered in a new “humanitarian tone” to the world, was likely only “the mechanism used by Cyrus to legitimize his conquest of Babylonia by manipulating local traditions—an exercise in which he probably received the support of a fairly powerful segment of the urban population in Babylonia.”69 Kuhrt’s point that toleration and humanitarianism can be used to serve strategic goals is well taken, though she ought to reconsider her position that

“Xenophon…presented [Cyrus] as the ideal ruler and paragon of every conceivable moral virtue.”70 For her critique of Cyrus’s humanitarianism and tolerance is not foreign to Xenophon.

Contrary to Kuhrt’s caricature of Xenophon drooling over the ideal Cyrus, Xenophon’s

Education of Cyrus, read correctly, shows Cyrus’s proto-Machiavellian character. Education is rife with examples of Cyrus’s manipulation (VIII.4.1-6), greed (VIII.2.20) and excessive desires

67 Ephraim Stern, "The Persian Empire and the Political and Social History of Palestine in the

Persian Period." In The Cambridge History of Judaism, edited by W. D. Davies and Louis

Finkelstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.) 70

68 Tim Murphy, "The Retroactive Confiscations of Judaism." In Nietzsche and the Gods (Albany:

State University of New York Press, 2001.) 6

69 Amélie Kuhrt, "The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy." Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 8, no. 25 (1983): 83-97. 93

70 Ibid. 83

59 for honors (I.2.1; VIII.2.20-23) as well as many other examples that counter the view that Cyrus

was a paragon of virtue. Herodotus too iterates Cyrus’s less than moral character. In his

Histories, Herodotus notes that in order to convince the Persians to take up arms against his own

grandfather—Astyages the King Media—Cyrus subjected them to a day of toil cutting thorn

covered brambles by hand.71 The following day, he gave them a great feast and told them that if

they should follow him in battle against his grandfather they would continue to live in the luxury

he provided them that day, but if not they should toil as slaves in perpetuity.72 Thus even in

Herodotus’ ancient source Cyrus is cast as a Machiavellian thug rather than a great liberator or

paragon of virtue.

And as Machiavelli himself writes, contrary to the “moral” view, “Xenophon in his life of

Cyrus show this necessity to deceive, considering that the first expedition that he has Cyrus make

against the king of Armenians is full of fraud.” (Discourses, II, 13, 1) Machiavelli was so

influenced by Cyrus’s amoralism that he lists him among the four founders mentioned in his

chapter “Of New Principalities That Are Acquired through One’s Own Arms and Virtue” of The

Prince. And though Machiavelli’s use of Xenophon’s Cyrus does not prove that the Cyrus was

indeed intended as an amoral character, it should make one pause to consider the veracity of any claims of Cyrus’s moral virtue. The point is that Kuhrt’s Machiavellian characterization of Cyrus is in fact closer to Xenophon’s position than she believes. Xenophon’s quasi-fictional and quasi- historical account given in Education of Cyrus may, in fact, be truer to the spirit of the actual

Cyrus than those accounts that laud the Persian leader as a tolerant humanitarian.

71 Herodotus. "The Histories." In Herodotus, translated by A. D. Godley. (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1920.)1.126

72 Ibid.

60 The regime of Cyrus was “tolerant” of diverse beliefs and practices for strategic reasons.

This “tolerance” was made possible by an indifference to the content of beliefs and practices that

did not challenge his rule. Thus, Cyrus sought not to rout the Jewish people for holding distinct

spiritual beliefs and practices but instead allowed them to return to their lands. As such Cyrus did

not interpret the world morally but strategically.

Noble indifference sits squarely with the precedence of strategy over morality. Foreign

cultural and religious beliefs and practices tend to disgust moral minds such that action is

demanded in the name of decency. The strategic mind, however, does not fret those things that

do not interfere with goals. He is indifferent to religious content and concerns to the extent that

they are not averse to his goals. As Edward Gibbon points out in his classic The History of the

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the magistrates of the Roman Empire during the Age of

the Antonines,

knew and valued the advantages of religion, as it is connected with civil government. They encouraged the public festivals which humanise the manners of the people. They managed the arts of divination, as a convenient instrument of policy: and they respected as the firmest bond of society, the useful persuasion that, either in this or in a future life, the crime of perjury is most assuredly punished by the avenging gods. But whilst they acknowledged the general advantages of religion, they were convinced that the various modes of worship contributed alike to the same salutary purposes; and that, in every country, the form of superstition, which had received the sanction of time and experience, was the best adapted to the climate and to its inhabitants73

In the view of the strategically minded, acting strictly upon moral concerns creates unnecessary risk. Thus toleration serves a practical, rather than a moral end. And what’s more, as Gibbon makes clear, religion—while not believed by the statesman—can invigorate public spirit and patriotism among the people.

73 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edited by J. B.

Bury. Vol. 1 (New York: Fred De Fau & Company, 1906.) II, “Of the Magistrates”

61 The example of Cyrus the Great gives insight to Nietzsche’s conception of noble tolerance as a product of the relationship between indifference and strategy rather than morality.

Moral obligation, whether in the form of pity or moral disgust, hamstrings strategic action. On one hand, decadent pity in the mind of the ruler casts shadows of doubt on the legitimacy of political power and thus begets the possibility that the ruler will relinquish their political power to appease moral feelings. On the other hand, moral disgust can lead to the ostracizing of subjects and creation of unnecessary enemies. And though taking moral positions may at times be politically prudent and it may be in the interest of the ruler or statesman to instill morality within his subject, the political conservative must not himself succumb to moral feeling and obligation so as to be able to move freely in the maintenance of his political power.

Nietzsche’s distinction between noble pity and cruelty introduces an interesting question regarding the strategic importance of the relationship between a ruling class and its “inferiors.”

Both noble pity and cruelty come from a place of aristocratic prerogative as well as indifference to the feelings of inferiors but surely they are not equal in their strategic or political prudence.

Cruelty for its own sake is never politically expedient because it risks alienating a subordinated population and therefore risks creating enemies needlessly. Noble pity, however, seems to find its place once the noble class is advanced enough to move beyond “their indifference to and contempt for security, body, life, comfort, their hair-raising cheerfulness and profound joy in all destruction in all the voluptuousness of victory and cruelty” to foresight and strategy.74 Noble pity does not run the risk of needlessly provoking, and is thus a more sound political strategy than cruelty for its own sake.

But Nietzsche talks disparagingly of mere utility. He equates “utility reigning in moral

74 Nietzsche, GM, I.11

62 judgments” to “the utility of the herd” and states, “Slave morality is essentially a morality of utility.”75 Interestingly, though, he states of the noble character, “it judges, ‘what is harmful to me is harmful in itself.’”76 But this seems to be exactly Nietzsche’s critique of utilitarianism: that slavish and downtrodden people universalize as morality proper a morality that really only benefits themselves. The distinction, it seems, is one of honesty and deception as well as hierarchy and equality. Where the nobleman does not disguise the fact that his morality is exclusively beneficial to himself and his class, the utilitarian or slave makes the bold claim that his morality is beneficial to all, or at the very least that his morality is equally applicable to all and reduces general net suffering, while in reality his morality comes at a cost to those with power by imposing equality. But this distinction hardly seems to solve the problem that nobility maintains a seemingly ignoble trait, i.e. that of utility.

Here, we must return to the origin of nobility in barbarism. Nietzsche writes that “the origins of an aristocratic society” are to be found in “barbarians.”77 78 Conceptually, Nietzsche’s barbarian is a paradoxical creature. This has to do with the fact that the barbarian is not barbarian for long before he begins his transition into an aristocrat. Initially, the barbarian typifies the

Dionysian, that is, a swirling animal chaos that revels in annihilation and reckless abandon.79 But

75 Nietzsche, BGE V.201; VII.228; IX.260

76 Ibid. IX.260

77 Nietzsche, Friedrich. BGE, IX.257

78 Nietzsche discusses this further in GM, I.11 where he states that “it is the noble races that have left behind them the concept of the ‘barbarian’ wherever they have gone; even their highest culture betrays a consciousness of it and even a pride in it.”

79 Nietzsche, Friedrich. GM, I.11

63 within this Dionysian spirit lies an instinct to order—“an instinctive creation and imposition of forms.”80 The uncaring and reckless barbarians or “unconscious artists” soon begin a process of imposing themselves upon a “formless and nomad[ic]” populace.81 From this imposition society and cemented hierarchy are born. Thus the transition between barbarian and aristocrat is one based in the imposition of order and hierarchy. Aristocratic society has lost and gained something in its transition from barbarism: “In all higher and more mixed cultures there also appear attempts at mediation between” master morality and slave morality.82 Aristocracy maintains its “high tension” by refining the overt brutishness of its barbarian ancestors while incorporating the depth and cunning of the slave.83 To maintain itself against the possibility of decadence an aristocracy must remain strong of soul, it must hold on to the feeling of affirmation that makes possible the preservation order and hierarchy.

But to admit that it is necessary to maintain hierarchy is to admit that in some sense nobility is already decadent. Nobility, rather than being overtly animalistic or barbarian, is a tension of the soul that maintains affirmation and hierarchy despite an inclination to slip into slavishness. Nietzsche writes of justice under nobility that it

began with, ‘everything must be dischargeable, everything must be discharged,’ end by winking and letting those incapable of discharging their debt go free.; it ends, as does every good thing on earth, by overcoming itself. This self-overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself—mercy; it goes without saying that mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful man.84

80 Ibid. II.17

81 Ibid.

82 Nietzsche, Friedrich. BGE, IX.260

83 Ibid.

84 Nietzsche, Friedrich. GM, II.11

64 Mercy, like pity, runs counter to the general mood and prerogative of the master class. But in

“overcoming” himself the master gives mercy and in doing so becomes partially slave85. But like

the nobleman that externally maintains order over the squabbling hordes, the nobleman internally

maintains order over his soul, insuring that the slavishness within does not overrun its master.

Aristocracies, it seems, are not meant to last. For pinnacles are both points of ascension

and decline. Thus barbarians, or “men of prey,” imposed themselves upon old aristocracies—

“upon mellow old cultures whose last vitality was even then flaring up in splendid fireworks of

spirit and corruption.”86 Pity and mercy, even when they are signs of “the most powerful men,”

i.e. human beings with such power that they can afford to take pity and mercy, foreshadow an

impending decline because they mark a zenith of power. Pity and mercy as prerogatives of power

soon decline into strategies employed to maintain power and then, lastly, as moral feelings that

explicitly reject inequalities of power.

The differentiation between barbarism and aristocracy gives insight to the role of utility within aristocracies. Utility finds its place early in the creation of society, when barbarians begin thinking of maintaining order and their place in the hierarchy of a newly forming society. The barbarian qua creator of society must immediately shift to the maintainer of society. Thus, the barbarian overcomes himself by transforming his Dionysian spirit into the Apollonian, form imposing spirit, and in doing so becomes an aristocrat that seeks to conserve his power and the form of society that allows for the maintenance of his power. But in this conservation there are

85 Notice, the greatest enemy of the master class is not the lowly and boorish but the over-refined

and aristocratic priestly class.

86 Nietzsche, Friedrich. BGE, IX.257

65 already signs of decline. The very fact that his power does not merely flow from his exuberant nature, and must instead be maintained internally and externally, within his soul and in society, proves this decline.

The core of master morality is born from the chaos of barbarism but is not barbarism. The master seeks to impose form and order against the Dionysian instinct so as to maintain power gained from the ecstatic release of energy in barbarism. Master morality is, at its heart, the harnessing of the inscrutable and chaotic power of humanity through the maintenance of social order.

In understanding barbarism and aristocracy, we begin to grasp Nietzsche’s trajectory. For soon aristocracy and nobility, like “every good thing,” must overcome itself and give rise to something new. And like the barbarian that overcame itself to become the aristocrat, the aristocrat overcomes itself to become something new. Perhaps the master is closer to the slave than most would suspect.

66 CHAPTER III

OVERCOMING AND POWER IN SLAVE MORALITY

On its face, slave morality is the opposite of master morality. Nietzsche writes that the

“slave revolt in morality” is an inversion of the masterful mode of valuation.1 But that slave

morality is the “opposite” of master morality belies the all-important roots of slave morality. For

as Nietzsche also writes, “One will have divined already how easily the priestly mode of

valuation can branch off from the knightly-aristocratic and then develop into its opposite.”2 The

priestly mode of valuation, the inversion of master morality that composes the table of values of

slave morality, is born of a break from the “knightly-aristocratic” class. That slave morality is born of the knightly-aristocratic shows the close genealogical relationship between slave morality and master morality. Of course it is also important to note that the priestly aristocratic class is not a class of slaves, rather it is a noble class.

This chapter serves as a continuation of the last and intends to examine the defining traits of slave morality as well as to discuss how, like barbarians transitioning to aristocrats, aristocrats transition to priests. Further, this chapter discusses the implication of the priest on society as well as what Nietzsche saw as the obsolescence of the priestly class through “overcoming.” As such it also functions as the second prong of the theoretical foundation needed to understand the latter half of this of this dissertation, that is Nietzsche’s history as it leads to modern liberalism and beyond.

1 Nietzsche, Friedrich. GM, I.7

2 Ibid. Italics added.

67 Over-refinement and Spiritual Development

The priestly instinct begins, as Nietzsche states, in the over refinement in things physical.

Priestly refinement as first manifested was “altogether unsymbolical,” “the ‘pure one’ is from the beginning merely a man who washes himself, who forbids himself certain foods to produce skin ailments, who does not sleep with dirty women of the lower strata, who has an aversion to blood.”3 Each of these traits stands in opposition to the expectations of men in a warrior caste.

Warriors are often unable to wash themselves, especially when in combat. The warrior must eat what he can and out of necessity cannot be choosy in his eating habits. The machismo culture of the warrior caste encourages promiscuity and sexual virility. And of course the warrior must be familiar, must even relish, in the ornaments of combat including mud, sweat, and most importantly blood. It is not difficult to imagine how a man with an aversion to uncleanliness,

“intestinal morbidity,” and “neurasthenia” would find the life of the warrior ill-suited to his disposition.4

What is clear, according to Nietzsche’s understanding, is that the split between master and slave moralities is predicated first on the priest’s physiology and aversion to the physical world and that the split between master and slave moralities is one of intra rather than inter-class conflict. This is significant because, on its face, the distinction between slave morality and master morality appears as conflict between two separate classes, of course, that of the slave and that of the master. But, upon closer inspection we see that the actual conflict has its roots solely within the noble or aristocratic class. It would be safe to say that master and slave are

3 Ibid. I.6

4 Ibid.

68 designations of soul that only loosely mapped on social class and therefore do not always align with social class. Thus the priest, even at an elite position in the social hierarchy, is slavish.

We move too quickly when we limit the distinction between slave and master moralities to only the physical. It is clear that Nietzsche believes the origins of slave morality, and its rejection of the warrior lifestyle, lies in the physiology of the priests and their aversion to uncleanliness in a very real and corporeal sense. But it is also true that Nietzsche often posits physical or real world roots to psychological and spiritual phenomena while being rather unclear about how man’s physicality is transformed into an inner, mental or spiritual, life. For example,

Nietzsche declares that the pathos of distance has its beginnings in the “ingrained difference between strata—when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks down upon subjects and instruments” and that “distances within the soul itself” are an internalization of this pathos.5 The process of internalization, while quite possibly physical, is fuzzy at best. That the slave morality begins as a physical revulsion does not mean that slave morality is to be understood as a primarily, or even largely, physical phenomenon. David Wollenberg makes an excellent critique of Brian Leiter’s reduction of slave morality (an indeed all morality according to Nietzsche) to

“psycho-physical ‘type facts’”; his critique is quite devastating: if slave morality has indeed won the day, and in some sense made slaves of even masters, then Nietzsche cannot rely on the physical constitution of individuals as solely determining their values for even the physically adept become slavish under slave morality.6 Indeed, Leiter’s explanation as quoted by

Wollenberg is that “some mechanism” is responsible for inverting dispositional values in masters

5 Nietzsche, Friedrich. BGE, IX.257

6 David Wollenberg, "Nietzsche, Spinoza, and the Moral Affects." Journal of the History of

Philosophy 51, no. 4 (2013): 617-49. 636

69 and thus making them slavish.7 But this is precisely the problem with linking Nietzsche’s

understanding of the physical to the social and mental, that this “mechanism” is often unclear.

And this is also the problem one faces when understanding exactly how the priest’s physical

revulsion creates a vast spiritual and mental world, or how it is “that man first became an

interesting animal” in the “priestly form.”8

If we expect Nietzsche to be first and foremost a naturalist, as do an increasing number of

individuals in the English-speaking tradition (Brian Leiter and Maudemarie Clark to name two of

the most prominent), then we may be blind to psychological, political, and sociological

explanations that Nietzsche gives for certain processes and phenomena. We should be wary of

attributing to Nietzsche a sort of natural, physical, or material reductionism, not because

naturalism is not true in some sense, but because Nietzsche viewed these doctrines as

abstractions from human experience. For example, Nietzsche calls the atom, in the same breath

as Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” a “little changeling.”9 In Twilight of the Idols ( “The Four Great

Errors” subsection “The error of false causality”) Nietzsche writes “And even your atom,

messieurs mechanists and physicists, how much error, how much rudimentary psychology, still

remains in your atom!”10 For Nietzsche the atom is an error alongside Kant’s “thing-in-itself” meaning that it abstracts away from the fundamentals of human perception. We cannot experience atoms yet we seek human causality in a miniscule world that will never be fully accessible to our experiential understanding. Nietzsche’s point is that it makes little sense to try

7 Wollenberg critiques Brian Leiter’s Nietzsche on Morality

8 Nietzsche, Friedrich. GM, I.6

9 Ibid. GM, I.13

10 Nietzsche, Friedrich. TI, “The Four Great Errors,” 4

70 to understand the human world, politics and morality most prominently, in terms of the atom or

“thing-in-itself” because we are bound to human perspective and intuition. Thus, when we try to anchor morality or politics to the experientially inaccessible and infinitely tiny world of the atom or the abstract noumenal world we gain little more understanding than when we seek humanity in fantasy.

Nietzsche is not against applying our experiential understanding to the abstract world of atoms but he is against viewing our experiential world through the abstract because in doing so we root the primarily human things like morality, politics, and society to things that we can never truly understand, i.e. the incorporeal God, noumena, or atoms. So Nietzsche’s point is not that one shouldn’t do science or that science cannot tell us things about the natural world but that the level of observation must be correct for the specimen of study. At a certain point the physical gives way to the chemical and the chemical to the biological and so on. That a house is composed of foundation, frame, and bricks does not mean that we lose loose understanding of what a “house” is when we cease to think of it as its constituent parts. In fact, it seems, we may lose something when we think of a house as merely components. Thus, when we base all of morality in “type-facts” (dispositions based in physiology) we gloss over the fact that human beings live in environments, composed of geographies, climates, societies, politics and most importantly other people.

So, while Nietzsche does claim that the priest’s physiology initially determines his aversions, it is only once we move beyond this primary understanding that the human being becomes “interesting.” The rich psychological, spiritual, social, and political life that proceeds from man’s physiology is therefore orders above mere physiology, and we risk losing some depth of understanding when we focus only on the constituent parts of human beings. Thus,

71 when we speak of the priest we can only briefly talk about the origins of he priest’s initial

revulsion based in physiology because soon this aversion is transformed into a higher order

mental and spiritual life.

The priest’s aversions are situated in a social context. The priest is of the aristocratic class alongside those that Nietzsche calls the “warrior-aristocratic” class. To understand how the priest’s aversions are transformed from a physiological disposition to the depth of inner life it is important to keep in mind that the priest’s aversions make it impossible for him to maintain himself as a warrior within a warrior culture. The priest is severely handicapped in the struggle for power, “The priestly-noble mode of valuation, presupposes, as we have seen, other things: it is disadvantageous for it when it comes to war!”11 To maintain his power the priest must “create”

an inner life such that he can convince others that the powerful and expressive external life of the

warrior is undermined as shallow or meaningless. With this inner life “created” the priest can

create a morality that explicitly rejects the traits of the warrior for those that maintain the priest’s power. But this “inner life” or psychological depth must assume a preexisting psychological capacity unless we are to believe that the priestly type was able to create a faculty through will alone.

Though understudied, there have been several attempts at attributing to Nietzsche a

“theory of consciousness” or “theory of mind.”12 And though the discussion of Nietzsche’s

11 Nietzsche, Friedrich. GM, I.7

12 Paul Katsafanas, "Nietzsche's Theory of Mind: Consciousness and

Conceptualization." European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 1 (2005): 1-31.; Steven D. Hales

and Rex Welshon. Nietzsche's Perspectivism. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.);

Steven D. Hales and Robert C. Welshon. "Truth, Paradox, and Nietzschean

72 “theory of mind” has bared some fruit I cannot enter into this debate here except to put forth the claim that man’s psychological depth, which has made man “interesting,” was “activated” within a certain social context as a strategic means of attaining and maintaining power. The priest, being unable to live as a warrior in a warrior’s world, was forced into finding novel means to satisfy his will to power. Slave morality is the means by which the priest maintains his power against a physically dominant warrior class.

But before I discuss the characteristics of slave morality that make it an effective strategic tool in acquiring and maintaining power we must answer a fundamental question, that is, how does the priest come into existence at all? Is the priest merely a product of biological “type- facts,” i.e. physiology as it determines an individual’s constitution, or is there something social that makes the priest? I contend that the priest was indeed considered by Nietzsche to be a biological “type” but that it is only in a certain social context that this type is able to proliferate.

It is hard to imagine the priestly type surviving in barbarian society. The rustic life of tribal and nomadic warriors (Nietzsche calls them “barbarians”) is simply not conducive to his survival; for outside of the mere physicality required to be a warrior is the need survive off of the land, either in the wild or on small farmsteads. And though we should be wary of reports concerning the “savagery” of barbarians from more “civilized” peoples, it is surely the case that a direct reliance on the fruits of nature requires a robust makeup and a strong stomach. For example, in his work on the Goths, historian Herwig Wolfram paints a picture of barbarians

Perspectivism." History of Philosophy Quarterly 11, no. 1 (January 01, 1994): 101-19; Rex

Welshon, The Philosophy of Nietzsche (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004.); Rex

Welshon, Nietzsche's Dynamic Metapsychology: This Uncanny Animal (New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2014.)

73 constantly in a state of tribal warfare and thus unable to adequately store food through the winter;

of the barbarian diet he writes, “the Huns weren’t the only ones who devoured their meat raw.”13

The Mongols were known to let blood from their horses, drinking of it in times of dire need.14 Of course the priest’s aversions, more precisely his stomach, puts him in direct opposition to a life so intimately tied to the earth.

As several authors15 have pointed out, Nietzsche’s writings are rife with discussions of

the stomach, digestion, and diet. Often these are used as metaphors for non-intestinal issues, e.g.

digestion as “forgetting.”16 Other times, Nietzsche seems to walk a fine line between analogy

13 Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.) 7

14 John Mason Smith Jr., "Mongol Campaign Rations: Milk, Marmots, and Blood." In Turks,

Hungarians and Kipchaks: A Festschrift in Honor of Tibor Halasi-Kun, edited by Pierre

Oberling and Geraldine Cecilia Butash (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Print. Office,

1984.) 223-228

15 Kathleen Marie Higgins, "On the Genealogy of Morals—Nietzsche’s Gift." In Nietzsche,

Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's on the Genealogy of Morals, edited by Richard

Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.) Silke-Maria Weineck, "Digesting the

Nineteenth Century: Nietzsche and the Stomach of Modernity." Romanticism 12, no. 1 (2006):

35-43..; Christa Davis Acampora, "On Sovereignty and Overhumanity: Why It Matters How We

Read Nietzsche's Genealogy II.2." In Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals: Critical Essays, edited by Christa Davis. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.); Eric

Blondel, Nietzsche, the Body and Culture: Philosophy as a Philological Genealogy (Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press, 1991.)

16 Higgins, “Nietzsche’s Gift,” 59

74 and biology. The same chapter in which Nietzsche speaks of the “altogether unsymbolical” beginnings of the priest he discusses the priest’s “intestinal morbidity” and their “naïveté in medcine” that focuses on “certain forms of diet (abstinence from meat)” and “fasting.”17 We should thus be inclined to believe that here Nietzsche speaks strictly of the physiological. But the same chapter ends by stepping away from the “unsymbolical,” writing that only in the priest “did the human soul in a higher sense acquire depth.”18 We shouldn’t be so quick, then, to draw a sharp distinction between the physiological and the psychological, for the stomach and the mind are closely linked.

Of course it is possible that an aversion to corporeality is first rooted in illness. We can easily imagine an individual developing revulsion to certain foods (most likely flesh) because of a stomach or intestinal malady or from consuming rancid or otherwise spoiled food. Perhaps then even the sight of meat and flesh provokes the disgust that was initially triggered by consuming it.

Through association and abstraction, the physiological occurrence of dyspepsia morphs into the psychological phenomenon of disgust or revulsion at the sight or thought of a certain object.

But this story draws too distinct a line between the physiological and the psychological.

For it need not be the case that revulsion begins as a purely physiological occurrence or that psychological revulsion does not cause very real physical suffering. Disgust, even when triggered through sight or thought as opposed to a physiological response, can lead to nausea, stomach pain, gagging and vomiting. Psychological revulsion and disgust is often no less visceral than stomach or intestinal illnesses. Thus the best interpretation is not that psychological revulsion stems from physiological revulsion but that the two are concurrent and interrelated.

17 Nietzsche, GM, I.7

18 Ibid. I.6

75 Man gains his psychological depth not from gaining a new mental life, “creating” the psychological through the physiological, but by expanding and abstracting a previously held capacity. His physical and psychological revulsion and disgust to certain objects—meat, sex, and disease—as indication of his lack of physical fortitude, becomes revulsion to all things physical, to corporeality itself. Man becomes interesting when he turns his back to the filthy imperfection of the world and creates in its place the perfection of God, the heavens, the forms, or noumena.

The creation of the incorporeal is strategic because it is used as a lever of power and therapeutic because the incorporeal stands as a refuge of purity away from the inhospitable corporeal world. Nietzsche writes that the ascetic ideal, as the movement to the incorporeal, is

“in the case of the priestly faith, their best instrument of power, also the ‘supreme’ license for power.”19 He goes on to state that the problem of the ascetic ideal can only truly be understood in the light of the priest and that “[t]he ascetic priest possessed in this ideal not only his faith, but also his will, his power, his interest.”20 But God and the subsequent immaterial iterations mentioned above—impositions of the ascetic ideal and objects of the “priestly faith”— are not merely snake oil, for snake oil implies that the salesman knows he sells bunk. The priest, however, as evidenced by his faith, very much believes in what he “sells” and in fact needs it to turn away from the adulterated material world.

But Nietzsche sees a contradiction in denigrating the real world in order to inflate the spiritual world. “Life against life” Nietzsche contends, is a “simple absurdity.”21 Why then does the priest degrade the real world in favor of the spiritual? In short, to save himself. Nietzsche

19 Nietzsche, GM, III.1.

20 Ibid. III.11

21 Ibid. III.13

76 writes, “the case is therefore the opposite of what those who reverence this [ascetic] ideal believe: life wrestles in it and through it, with death and against death; the ascetic ideal is an artifice for the preservation of life.”22 The ascetic ideal, whether religious or philosophical, is a weapon against those who are hostile to the priest’s continued existence. Decadence, Nietzsche argues, “is only a means.”23 By “downgrad[ing] physicality to an illusion” the priest undermines physical expressions of power (via an inversion of values) thereby convincing the warrior, the exploiter, the “beast of prey” to suppress his power in the name of his ideal.24 Thus the priest, somewhat paradoxically, gains real world power and is able to maintain himself by denigrating the actual world in favor of the spiritual realm. The priest does not transcend corporeal existence through spirituality but fortifies his corporeal existence through the illusion of spirituality.

The priest, however, cannot simply convince the warrior to accept the ascetic ideal by denying earthly pleasure and noble pursuits. The warrior must be “convinced” in his own terms.

Thus the priest imbues God with the characteristics of a master capable of punishing.25 The warrior, fluent in the language of power, must either submit to God’s orders—values favorable to the survival of the priest—or be destroyed by the omnipotent God.

The “State” and “Bad Conscience”

It is hardly convincing that the effete and ostracized priests could sway the unrefined warrior caste by means of persuasion alone. In barbarian society the warrior’s preponderance of

22 Ibid.

23 Nietzsche, A, 24.

24 Nietzsche, GM, III.12.

25 Nietzsche, A, 26.

77 physical power is further strengthened by fact that he exists within a carnal culture. So, the

priests are doubly disadvantaged, as both weaklings and social pariahs—“when not feared, they

were despised.”26 The priest had neither the trust nor the social standing to convince the warrior

caste of anything, much less lure him into self-imposed submission. His lack of social standing is

compounded by the fact that the warrior’s “language” of violence and imposition is not open to

the persuasiveness of reason or spirituality. The idea that the priest is simply able to convince the

undomesticated warrior to accept the ascetic ideal and submit to slave morality discounts the fact that the priest and warrior live in very different, mutually unintelligible, worlds.

How then does the priest “convince” the warrior to submit? Nietzsche provides a complete account in his discussion of the formation of “bad conscience” within the “state.” Bad conscience, Nietzsche contends, is a “serious illness” born out of “the stress of the most fundamental change [mankind] ever experienced—that change which occurred when he found

himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and of peace.”27 “Bad conscience” is the

consequence of man’s alienation from his nature, specifically, his inability to externalize

aggression within society. Society, in moving toward order and peace, must hinder humanity’s

violent passions. Man’s aggressive and violent nature does not disappear but turns inward

leading to mental self-laceration, guilt, and “bad conscience.” “Hostility, cruelty, joy in

persecuting, in attacking, in change, destruction—all this turned against the possessors of such

instincts: that is the origin of ‘bad conscience.’”28 Thus, society, in suppressing man’s violent

external nature, triggers a largely latent mental life: “All instincts that do not discharge

26 Nietzsche, GM, III.10.

27 Ibid. II.16

28 Ibid.

78 themselves outwardly turn inward—this is what I call the internalization of man.”29 The state then, as Nietzsche understands it, limits human nature in an effort to attain order and peace.

Even though the priest thrives in society, i.e. in the world neutered of human nature, he is not responsible for having created it. No, the “state,” and by extension guilt and “bad conscience,” is the product of

some pack of blond beasts of prey, a conqueror and master race which, organized for war and with the ability to organize, unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws upon a populace perhaps tremendously superior in numbers but still formless and nomad30

A faction of barbarians conquers and assimilates, imposing form upon the chaotic democracy of force that is tribal warfare, and in doing so creates society. Thus Nietzsche shows the continuity between the barbarian and the priest as well as the master and the slave—for he admits that the

“blond beast” makes the priest’s world possible.31 In the unremitting brutality of nature the priest cannot survive for long. It is only once a faction of barbarians imposes order upon the chaos of warring tribes, cementing themselves as a nascent nobility or aristocracy, that the priest can truly thrive in the newly ordered society.

Nietzsche makes the generalizable point that the chaotic force of barbarianism extinguishes itself as it imposes form and structure upon the unruly hordes. By imposing control upon others the barbarian “conqueror and master race” must also order and control itself. Thus the barbarian transforms into the aristocrat as his external and internal control strengthens.

Chaotic and dynamic power cedes to control, order, and hierarchy without and within.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid. II.17

31 Ibid.

79 The domineering barbarian faction cannot maintain power without exercising control

over itself. Strict hierarchy is erected to maintain control over both those outside of the

aristocracy but also those within. And like those living under the power of the aristocracy, the

aristocracy itself is subjected to the product if its confinement, namely, guilt and “bad

conscience” as well as the rest of the mental life that captivity produces.

Now we can see just how the priest is able to corrupt the warrior aristocrat. In expressing

his power the barbarian produces two paradoxical results. First, by enforcing order on warring

tribes he creates the stability needed for the priest’s prosperity. Second, he alters himself into a

creature open to priestly influence. By solidifying his power, the barbarian turned aristocrat

necessarily confines himself, losing the total freedom of man as animal and as a result creates an

inner world wherein he can express his repressed instincts. By opening this world, the world of

the mind and soul, the warrior aristocrat opens a gate through which the priest may enter. The

priest is able to corrupt the warrior aristocrat because, in a sense, the warrior aristocrat is already

decadent by virtue of the expression of his own power—or at the very least has made himself

amenable to the language of the priest.

It is here that “strength of soul” becomes necessary to combat against the priest. As mentioned previously, strength of soul is the ordering of the soul such that aristocratic traits are maintained even in the presence of moral feeling. An individual who is strong of soul is one who, though corrupted by moral feeling, maintains the desire for hierarchy and therefore does not throw away his prerogatives. Strength of soul is the tension between the master and slave within the soul such that the natural hierarchy of master over slave is maintained.

The driving forces behind morality, as so far explained, have been the elite classes of warriors and priests. But where precisely is the role of the slave in so-called slave morality? Up

80 to this point the slave has actually been a peripheral character in Nietzsche’s drama between the warrior-aristocratic class and the priestly-aristocratic class. Nietzsche’s understanding of master and slave moralities begins as a top-down or elite driven theory. And though much less active, the slave’s role is no less interesting than that of the warrior or priestly castes.

The slave revolt in morality is at its beginning not truly a revolt by slaves but is an idealization of slavishness by the priestly caste to attain submission from the physically dominant warrior caste. That slave morality is tactical in the hands of the priest is a point that many have missed. Aaron Ridley, for example, writes that slave morality “forges its own values” and that “the slave reaps the first fruits of his32 inversion of the value-positing eye.”33 He goes on to write of the priest’s “denigrating of the immanent in favor of the transcendental” by merely

“exploiting, to these ends, the momentum of the process that has made the slave as he already is.”34 Ridley sees the slave as the prime mover against master morality. But this understanding glosses over the Nietzsche’s contention that the beginning of the conflict lies between the priest and the knight/warrior as well as the essentially passive character of the slave. The slave is idealized as summum bonum by the priest but does not, at least initially, advocate values. Rather, it is the priest that plays advocate for the slave.

That the Jewish people, according to Nietzsche, embodied “the most deeply repressed priestly vengefulness.” would seem to support Ridley’s understanding of the people, the rabble,

32 Emphasis added

33 Aaron Ridley, Nietzsche's Conscience: Six Character Studies from the Genealogy (Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1998.) 40

34 Ibid. 40

81 or the slave as actively pushing slave morality.35 But, if one reads this line in light of Nietzsche’s understanding of the history of Israel as explained in The Antichrist, we see that it is the priests who have inverted values against the noble warrior caste to their own benefit.36 That the rabble

follow suit is no surprise for Nietzsche sees the masses as initially passive, or as those who are

dictated moral orders—even when they find themselves as the object or ideal of those moral

orders. Thus the Jewish people were a “priestly people,” according to Nietzsche, because the

priests had won the day, i.e. the priests conquered the Kings and shifted the moral order in their

favor.

The goal of the priest is to turn the warrior into the slave by engaging the warrior’s newly

activated “bad conscience.” And if the priest is successful then hierarchy is maintained but

altered with the priest at its apex. But, like the barbarian turned aristocrat whose own means of

exerting power (controlling disparate tribes in ordered society) leads to his downfall, the priest

himself becomes subject to his own means of attaining power. For if the priest advocates

slavishness then it is not long until his own authority, or the concept of authority itself, is viewed

with an air of suspicion.

Only after the warrior aristocrat has made the ground fertile for the proliferation of the

priest can the priest make the ground fertile for the slave. Thus Jesus, the “holy anarchist who

roused up the lowly, the outcasts and the ‘sinners,’ the Chandala within Judaism to oppose the

35 Nietzsche, GM, I.7.

36 Nietzsche, A, 25-27. The following chapter is dedicated to Nietzsche’s history of Israel and the

particulars of this particular priestly value inversion.

82 ruling order” was able to make headway only because his predecessors, the Jewish priests, had paved his way.37

History as Overcoming

The revolution of Christ makes clear that history for Nietzsche is a series of

“overcoming” with each preceding dominant class being overturned by a new “radical” class.

This overturning is but a continuance and realization of the internal inconsistencies of a given class’s will to power. Nietzsche writes,

All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of self-overcoming: thus the law of life will have it, the law of the necessity of ‘self-overcoming’ in the nature of life—the law-giver himself eventually receives the call: ‘patere legem, quam ipse tulisti [submit to the law you yourself proposed].’ In this way Christianity as a dogma was destroyed by its own morality; in the same way Christianity as a morality must now perish, too: we stand on the threshold of this event. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one inference after another, it must end by drawing its most striking inference, its inference against itself; this will happened, however, when it poses the question “what is the meaning of all will to truth?38

Once power is realized it becomes self-defeating as the maintenance of power turns against the means of attaining power. The barbarian overcomes himself as his power is refined and strengthened, and thus he becomes the warrior aristocrat. The warrior aristocrats cede power to the priests in virtue of their own power by creating society and in doing so confining themselves within society, developing “bad conscience,” and ultimately falling prey to moral feeling.

Like his predecessors the priest cedes power to the slave on account of the inconsistency between his power acquisition and maintenance. We must remember that the priest’s power is predicated on inverting “noble” warrior values into slave values and thus the warrior caste is

37 Ibid. 27

38 Nietzsche, GM, III.27

83 vilified to the priest’s benefit. The transition from master to slave morality fundamentally alters

the field in which power is sought. For the noble warrior the struggle for power is chiefly a

physical pursuit. The priest, however, moves the competition for power into the mental realm. In

moving the competition for power to the realm of the mind the priest inadvertently opens his rule

to challenge on intellectual grounds. Whereas challenging the noble warrior on intellectual

grounds would be utterly ineffective—for the warrior deals in the realm of overt physical power

and not that of argumentation, “intellectual consistency,” and universal moral orders—

challenging the priest’s “intellectual consistency” is effective because the priest has moved the

struggle for power to the realm of the mind. The priest cannot physically dominate the slave;

consequently, once the slave realizes the inconsistency of the priest’s position of power in light

of the priest’s teaching the slave is free to rebel. Simply put, if “the wretched alone are the good;

the poor, impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are pious,

alone are blessed by God” then how does the priest justify his power over the wretched?39 (GM I

7) The priest ushers in a “disbelief in ‘higher men’ ” all the while failing to realize that a

disbelief in higher would ultimately challenge his authority (A 27). The content of the priest’s

means of attaining power, the values of slave morality, stand in opposition to the continued

maintenance of the priest’s power. And unless the priest falls back on previous modes of power

maintenance, perhaps by employing the overt physicality of the warrior caste,40 then his rule falls to the revolt “against caste, privilege, the order, the social form.” (Ibid) The slave is then able to

39 Ibid. I.17

40 This does seem possible, perhaps even historical (Pope Julius II and Cesare Borgia for

example), but ultimately undermines both the authority and teaching of the priest.

84 usurp the power of the priest.41

But unlike all his predecessors there is something final about the “ascendance” of the slave. The slave’s power is predicated on the destruction of power dynamics as previously understood. This is because for the slave to “come to power” the very concept of power must be destroyed. Power, as expressed under all previous modes, was relational or relative. A certain class, caste, or group held power over another. But for the slave to succeed the concept of power must be done away with all together. Equality or egalitarianism is the slave’s formula for achieving “power.” Of course, “power” in this sense is quite the opposite of power in the relational sense mentioned above. Slavish power as manifested in egalitarianism means that no one has power over another, there is no rank-ordering of individuals or castes considering the worth or value of human beings. The slave gains in power simply by doing away with masters altogether, not, as in previous modes, by becoming the master. The slave makes net gains in power by ending his oppression through egalitarian leveling. Speaking of equality Nietzsche writes “As soon as there is a desire to take this principle further, however, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it at once reveals itself for what it is: as the will to the denial of life, as the principle of dissolution and decay.”42 Nietzsche thus equates equality, as a

“denial of life,” to nihilism.

41 The Protestant Reformation’s undermining of the Papacy and Luther’s translation of the Bible into the common German tongue is a prime example of the slaves wresting power from the priests. With the Reformation the priest became largely outmoded as an intermediary between

God and the people. The “democratization” of the Christian faith was but another step toward the full realization of slave morality.

42 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.259.

85 Nietzsche’s critique of the slave is intertwined with his critique of nihilism. Nietzsche’s

critique of nihilism is complicated by the fact that Nietzsche himself may very well have been a

“nihilist” in some profound sense.43 The clearest definition Nietzsche gives to the term

“nihilism” can be found in his Notebooks, wherein he writes, “What does nihilism mean? That

the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer.”44 It is

clear that nihilism, as the devaluation of values, is a problem for Nietzsche. But, with that said,

Nietzsche does advocate a form of moral-nihilism that is distinct from value-nihilism. In fact, the whole theme of Genealogy is that morality is a mode of power and thus moral propositions are substantively untrue, i.e. that moral-nihilism is true. Morality is a guise or “mask” for the acquisition and maintenance of power wherein the content of a specific morality benefits one

group over another. The content of morality, insofar as it is metaphysically grounded, is false and

illusory because it is merely a distraction from an underlying power play. Nietzsche’s chief task

in Genealogy is thus to question the “value of these [moral] ‘values’.”45

But values and morality are distinct. Morality is most commonly grounded in something

outside of the individual positing a given morality. Morality, as it is understood by its adherents,

has a quality that transcends the interest of a given individual or at least attaches the individual to

a universal such as God or reason. Of course Nietzsche is skeptical of these foundations, arguing

43 Charles R. Pigden, "Nihilism, Nietzsche and the Doppelganger Problem." Ethical Theory and

Moral Practice 10, no. 5 (2007): 441-56.; Jeffrey A. Metzger, ed. Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the

Philosophy of the Future. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Print.)

44 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Will to Power. Edited by Walter Arnold Kaufmann.

Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House, 1967. I.2

45 Nietzsche, GM, P.6

86 instead that all morality is rooted in values. Values differ from morality in that values directly

reflect the orientation of the individual or group positing the value. Nietzsche argues that all

morality is in actuality valuation, in that morality is meant to benefit the advocate of any given

morality. This does not mean, however, that individuals posit a morality knowing full well that it

is merely valuation or preference, for morality is constituted in such a way that it obscures its

underlying motivation. The modern problem (the problem beginning with Christianity through

modern politics of liberalism, democracy, and socialism) is not that human beings can no longer

be moral but that human beings can no longer make valuations. That human beings can no longer

value (the above mentioned value-nihilism that Nietzsche feared) is based, paradoxically, in the

fact that values have undermined the illusion of morality.

There is a relationship of dependence between values and morality. Values, as beneficial

individual preferences, provide the actual basis for morality. And yet the illusory character of

morality hides the truth, even to its possessor, that morality is in actuality based not in a

transcendent and universal order but in individual values. But it is from this illusory character

that morality derives its force. Morality, as an appeal to the transcendent, enlarges the preference

of the individual to grandiose proportions—as the edict of God or the ordering of the universe.

An individual’s values are perceived as morality thus values take on a character much loftier

than the mere preference of one man. Values, when obscured by morality, attain the force of the

morality’s narrative and thus the individual becomes cosmically meaningful. The slave becomes

“pious” and “blessed by God” or the philosopher is idealized as virtuous.46 But when morality is discovered for what it is, a guise for values, it then loses its force as morality is diminished into mere preference.

46 Ibid. I.7

87 But something else happens when morality is reduced to value—values also lose their

force because they are not veiled behind morality. “Whither is God?” Nietzsche’s madman asks

the crowd of the marketplace. He answers his own question “We have killed him—you and I. All

of us are his murderers.”47 The madman goes on to ask, “Whither are we moving? Away from

all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is

there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?”48 The “death of

God” begins with the inability to believe in God and progresses such that all morality must be

thrown away. The authority of God, and then even abstract moral mandates, becomes too much

for the slave to bear. Morality gives way to the equalizing impulse of slave morality and is

translated into mere value. But in what sense is the destruction of morality a problem? Is it not

Nietzsche who famously writes, concerning the need for a psychology free of morality, “We sail

right over morality, we crush, we destroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to

voyage there”?49 Is On the Genealogy of Morality not an effort to exposed morality as a fraud

thus propelling man Beyond Good and Evil?

The problem inherent in the death of God (the destruction of morality) is that we understand valuation as inextricably linked to morality. Through slave morality human beings have been conditioned to value only through morality. Whereas the master is content being his own standard of value, slave morality, as disseminated by the priest, always seeks value from an external transcendent source. Thus when the concept of transcendent morality is questioned, and ultimately destroyed, we become incapable of posing valuations at all. In reducing morality to

47 Nietzsche, GS, III.125.

48 Ibid.

49 Nietzsche, BGE, I, 23

88 values we inadvertently removed the force from valuation. “’Why?’ finds no answer” and the madman recognizes humanity’s aimlessness as we succumb to nihilism.

The problem of nihilism or the death of God is that humanity can no longer create or hold values as meaningful without the impetus that morality provided. Without the mask of morality, we are no longer able to value. For Nietzsche human beings are first and foremost imposers of values. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra tells us,

Humans first placed values into things, in order to preserve themselves – they first created meaning for things, a human meaning! That is why they call themselves “human,” that is: the esteemer. Esteeming is creating: hear me, you creators! Esteeming itself is the treasure and jewel of all esteemed things. Only through esteeming is there value, and without esteeming the nut of existence would be hollow.50

Thus life is meaningless and hollow without valuation. And it is the slave, ultimately, that makes valuation impossible by bringing to prominence both equality and values.

As mentioned above the slave must bring about equality to make effective gains in power. The effect of slavish equality is that once morality is washed away all values become equal. One cannot, under the terms of equality, hold his values over that of any other. Thus the concept of value, like the concept of morality, is watered down such that it holds no significance.

Nietzsche’s “formula” for nihilism follows: meaning is predicated on value and value on power differentials, thus equality, as the erasure of power differentials, robs life of meaning by rendering valuation moot. It is this “formula” that lies at the heart of Nietzsche’s critique of modernity.

If we cannot return to morality because it has been undermined by a lack of belief in the transcendent then is there any solution to the problem of value-nihilism? Nietzsche’s madman appears to provide a solution in the form of a question, “Must we ourselves not become gods to

50 Nietzsche, Friedrich. TSZ, I, “On the Thousand Goals and One”

89 be worthy of [murdering God]?”51 Nietzsche continues this perplexing line of thought in his later work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. After a saint praises God, Zarathustra ends section two of the prologue by asking, “ ‘Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!’”52 The very next section opens with Zarathustra in another town proclaiming to a crowded gathered to watch a tightrope walker, “I teach you the overman.

Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”53 It is no coincidence that Zarathustra proclaims humanity’s destiny in the overman after speaking of the death of God. For the solution to the “death of God”—the meaningless provoked by the devaluation of values in equality—is the overman, or for the madman, becoming gods. Of course the crowd laughs at Zarathustra and his proclamation. After two more failed attempts to preach the overman Zarathustra tells himself “They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears.”54 The parallels between Zarathustra and the madman are striking. Both preach to a crowd that embodies the death of God yet fails to recognize the dire consequence of this death. Both offer solutions—Zarathustra arguing for the coming of the overman and the madman asking if humanity must become gods to be worthy of killing God. Both also fall on deaf ears, “ ‘I have come too early,’ [the madman] said then; ‘my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.’”55 Zarathustra and the madman are

“mad” from the perspective of the crowd, from humanity, which hasn’t realized that equality and

51 Nietzsche, Friedrich. GS, III.125

52 Nietzsche, Friedrich. TSZ, P.2

53 Ibid. P.3

54 Ibid. P.5

55 Nietzsche, GS, III.125

90 the destruction of morality has rendered value, and therefore life, meaningless. They taunt and shun Zarathustra and the madman for advocating a hyperbolic solution to a problem that they have not yet recognized.

If the solution to the “death of god” is the overman, that is “becoming god,” then what typifies this mysterious character? Further, how can the overman impart meaning back into life thus overcoming slavish equality? In his characteristic illusory style Nietzsche gives some hints.

After first mentioning the overman, Zarathustra tells the townsfolk “All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than cover come man?“56 The process of overcoming mirrors the historical account that I have explained above, from barbarian, to warrior aristocrat, to priestly aristocrat, and finally to the slave. And as mentioned above, the slave presents a novel problem to the history of overcoming in that with the slave comes the possibility of an end to overcoming.

Zarathustra recognizes this problem and diagnoses an “ebb” to the otherwise continual flood of human overcoming. Bearing this in mind we can understand the overman as one who will continue the “flood,” which is to say, continue the progression of overcoming by usurping the power of the slave.

For Nietzsche, the vehicle for overcoming is hierarchy. Life’s meaning is predicated on the contest for power, thus as one group seeks to dethrone those in power life is flush with meaning and purpose for both parties. Not only is there the outward contest for power between groups or castes but there is also the inner “intellectual” conflict that comes about through the decadence of questioning one’s prerogatives and privilege. The slave’s will to power runs counter to the maintenance of hierarchy and because of this must be the final overcoming to be

56 Nietzsche, TSZ, P.3

91 successful. The slave’s only hope is to obliterate power, hierarchy, and overcoming all together such that his power is cemented throughout time.

The Last Man

If slavishness comes to fruition, then Nietzsche sees little hope for the future. Slave

morality ends with the last man, that is, the equal individual. The last man, according to

Zarathustra, is “most contemptible” and “lives longest” being “as ineradicable as the flea

beetle.”57 Of the last man Nietzsche writes, “time is coming that man will no longer shoot the

arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!”58

The key to the last man’s longevity is inculcating equality as the meta-political end, i.e. equality

as the aim of politics as such, such that any future politics will assume equality as its central

purpose. And therefore the last man is the funeral toll for hierarchy and meaningful valuation.

Zarathustra goes on to decry the last man in much the same manner stating that he is unable to

“give birth to a star” and that “he is no longer able to despise himself.”59 That the last man

cannot “despise himself” does not prove his affirmative character or nobility. Instead it proves

the degree to which he is lacking in character. The last man feels no impetus to perfect himself

because (bearing in mind that his values hold no particular importance over others’) he lacks

motivation. Without the contest inherent in hierarchical political and social systems the last man

does not strive, instead he is content with creature comforts.

57 Ibid. P.5

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

92 The “happiness” of the last man bears several traits. The last man doesn’t know “love,”

“creation,” and “longing” yet “makes everything small.”60 The last man’s inability to strive is based in his primary concern for comfort and security. Creation, longing, and love are too risky for the last man, too rife with the possibility of failure and therefore the possibility of provoking

“unnecessary” pain. He has nothing to overcome socially, no masters to defeat, no rivals to overcome because all hierarchy has broken down. Further, the very categories of status and hierarchy have become outmoded with the inculcation of the internal logic of equality and individualism—the individual is permitted to hold his own values, yet one cannot, while maintaining equality, hold these values above anyone else’s.

The last man supplants striving, creation, art, and overcoming with entertainment.

Nietzsche writes, “A fool, whoever still stumbles over stones or human beings! A little poison now and then: that makes for agreeable dreams.”61 We can imagine the kind of petty and

vindictive yet transient and easily forgotten language of contemporary American political

discourse: politics as soap opera. The last man does not care for politics in the grand ancient

sense where one seeks the regime conducive to the best life nor has he the patience for modern

politics as administration of safety and security. And instead of seeking the best way for human

beings to live or even engaging in administering a pluralistic society as a citizen the last man

views politics as entertainment. He is unwilling and unable to invest in a meaningful way to public life—such an investment would assume failure, struggle, and overcoming—yet he amuses

himself and draws ire from public democratic contest. He debases politics by trivializing the

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

93 meaningful lasting parts of human interaction while, at the same time, inflating the trivial and fashionable. He thereby avoids “stumbling” over human beings.

Like his political relationship to his fellow human being the last man also debases work.

“One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing.”62 Whereas work was once the product of necessity or spirit and thus intimately tied, respectively, to both the basic and noble in humanity, work becomes a pastime free of any deep human meaning.

The last man for Nietzsche is a stand in for the end game of egalitarian individualism, a schizophrenic condition wherein the equality of all individuals undermines any one individual’s values. The last man is selfish, rubbing up against his neighbor “for one needs warmth,” yet identical to all others, “No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.”63 He is an individual yet not distinct, community oriented but only to the extent that it brings him comfort.

Through his protagonist Zarathustra Nietzsche portrays the future of the last man to be very dark indeed. But when Zarathustra completes his speech on the last man, a speech meant to repulse the townsfolk who are clearly meant to represent the modern European, the crowd clamors “Give us the last man, O Zarathustra […] Turn us into these last men!”64 Zarathustra’s attempts to sway the crowd through pride and contempt fail and leave the reader to wonder if the people to whom Zarathustra speaks are the last men? But the very fact that they ask to be transformed into the last man indicates that they have not yet become what they seek. And

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

94 despite the fact that they are not yet last men Zarathustra is still incapable of communicating with them. He decides in lieu of speaking to the people he must speak to “companions” and “fellow creators,” those “who follow [him] because they want to follow themselves—wherever [he] want[s].”65

Nietzsche, like Zarathustra, believes humanity’s redemption cannot be found in “the

people.” If we take Zarathustra’s predicament to be an allegory for his relationship to modern

Europe, then it is clear that most people will be hostile to the ideas of Nietzsche and will herald

the coming of the last man. “The people,” generally speaking, seek the last man because they

want the equality, security, and comfort that Nietzsche detests as incompatible with human

meaning and creative striving. But only in jettisoning the modern foundation of equality can

meaningful valuation again become possible. However, this cannot be done through a return to

ancient and nobler forms of valuation because those noble values were supported by myths that

are no longer accessible to us due to their refutation by the modern scientific project. The

Übermensch must tread unworn paths.

The previous chapters have intended to lay a framework for understanding the subsequent

chapters on the history of morality beginning in Judaism, through Christianity, to modern

Liberalism. Through clarifying Nietzsche’s concepts—barbarism, aristocracy, priests, slaves,

etc.—we gain a unique way of understanding Nietzsche’s history. We learn, for instance, that the

master and slave dichotomy is not a rigid class designator but rather describes the “soul” which

is often, but not always, related to position in a social hierarchy. With the breakdown of the

rigidness of the master-slave dichotomy we also learn that the aristocrat is not fully master, but is

a composition of master and slave wherein the master maintains dominance over the slave.

65 Ibid. P.8

95 Further, we learn that slave morality, in its initial form, is not employed by slaves but by priests who idealize slaves as a means of attaining power over a class of warrior aristocrats and kings.

Lastly, we learn that the slave makes his gains in power only by dismantling the concepts of hierarchy and power altogether. The following chapters will build on and employ the concepts discussed in the previous chapters to elucidate Nietzsche’s history from Judaism to Liberalism.

In doing so I hope to grasp the true political ramifications of Nietzsche’s work.

96 CHAPTER IV

EXILE AND OTHERWORLDLINESS: NIETZSCHE’S HISTORY OF ISRAEL

Where the previous chapters of this dissertation laid out a Nietzschean framework of sorts, the following chapters put that framework to use in an effort to understand Nietzsche’s history leading to liberalism. It is important, then, to recall both the master-slave dichotomy as well as the conception of history as overcoming when considering what follows. Specifically, this chapter explores a series of “overcomings” within the history of Israel, beginning first with the Kings of the Kingdom period and their defeat by the priests. Respectively, these historical

examples map onto the concepts of “masters” and those employing slave morality as elucidated

in the previous two chapters. I then give an account of how the priests are ultimately overcome

by the very mode of power that allowed them to come to prominence, thus ushering in the

possibility of a true slave morality.

In two short and somewhat obscure passages in an often-overlooked book, The

Antichrist, Nietzsche gives an account central to his understanding of the development of

morality. The passages, numbered 25 and 26, explain the circumstances leading to and

culminating in priestly dominance. These passages are particularly significant due to Nietzsche’s

claim that “[t]he history of Israel is invaluable as a typical1 history of the denaturalization of natural values.”2 Thus Nietzsche understands the history of Israel as illustrative of an occurrence that is more widespread the specifics of the case at hand. Referencing the details in his history of

1 Italics added

2 Nietzsche, A, 25.

97 Israel should give insight into his more abstract theory of moral development found in On the

Genealogy of Morality and Beyond Good and Evil as well as his concept of otherworldliness.3

Nietzsche’s history of Judaism is at the heart of his critique of modern politics.

Accordingly, modern political manifestations, from liberalism to socialism and anarchism, are all

in some sense products of the radical value inversion of the Jewish priests and a further

radicalization in Christianity. Therefore, the history of Israel maintains an unsurpassed

importance to the unfolding of Nietzsche’s historical narrative and his theory of morality.

In sections 25 and 26 of The Antichrist Nietzsche shows that the inversion of values is not

merely an abstract process, but a purposeful and historically real event or process. The history of

Israel is not only relevant because it is emblematic of the inversion of values generally, but also

because modern politics is but a continuation and radicalization of a “denaturalization” that

began over a thousand years ago in the Levant. Nietzsche is concerned with alienation in modern

3 In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra warns the town’s folk to stay away from those that

speak of “überirdischen Hoffnungen.” (Nietzsche, TSZ, P.3) This translates literally as beyond-

or above-worldly hopes. Kaufman’s translation to “otherworldly hopes” works well and certainly grasps the meaning and connotation being conveyed by Nietzsche in the original German. Later

Zarathustra also speaks of den Hinterweltlern that can be translated quite accurately as the behind- or after-worldly. While the two words überirdisch and Hinterweltlern do not have the

exact same meanings Nietzsche treats them much the same. These words can be used to describe

things that are outside of experience such as Kant’s noumena or Plato’s ideas, things that have

not come yet but are promised such as the return to promised lands, realms outside of the earth

like the Christian’s heaven and hell, and universals such as the latter form of Judaism’s

Yahweh—in a sense the mystical and metaphysical.

98 political systems as well as the absence of impetus these systems have in developing character.

But in “diagnosing the modern malaise” Nietzsche does not seek to isolate modernity from history.4 Rather, his project seeks to undercover the roots of this malaise, connecting the modern political project of liberal democracy to its historical predecessors. And it is only through this historical critique, Nietzsche contends, that the modern political problems of alienation and nihilism can be addressed and then redressed.

The centrality of Judaism to Nietzsche’s understanding of politics has been severely understudied. Considering politics, Nietzsche is most often noted as having connected

Christianity to liberal democracy. This is, of course, true. But by consistently overlooking priestly Judaism as the source of nihilism in liberal democracy, we are unable to grasp the depth and, to a certain extent, the parsimony of Nietzsche’s theory of denaturalization. This combined with Nietzsche’s idiosyncratic style and the subsequent postmodern interpretations of his works belies his rather straightforward and intuitive point that morality can be used as a means of attaining power and status. Simply speaking, the denaturalization of natural values is a tactic employed by the priests as a means of usurping power.

This is not to say that the tactical explanation of denaturalization is not complicated by subsequent alterations and abstractions in Christianity and modern politics. For what begins in

Judaism as a priestly power play has sent profound “spiritual” and social reverberations through history that may culminate in Nietzsche’s last man. And to take Nietzsche’s denaturalization seriously is to take seriously his conception of the last man, that is, to take seriously the possibility that human greatness is in danger. This may be hard to do in a time of particle

4 The quoted phrase appears as an essay title in Walker Percy. Signposts in a Strange Land. New

York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991.

99 accelerators, super highways, and space exploration. For the scientific progress and infrastructure

that has been maintained since the time of Nietzsche is no less than awesome in its scale and

ambition. How then can we say that human greatness is indeed in danger?

Nietzsche’s claim is not that human beings will be unable to progress technologically or

be incapable of promoting common utility through massive projects, but that greatness of

character will be permanently cast away as humanity becomes better at promoting the common

interest. With the increase of common interest Nietzsche sees a trend moving towards an ever- expanding circle of moral responsibility in the manner of W.E.H Lecky and Peter Singer such that the very distinctions that make moral evaluations meaningful become obsolete.5 Quite

simply, the concept of distinction dissolves thus rendering life foundationless and therefore

meaningless. Humanity becomes less able to articulate a place for itself because it eschews the

concepts of privilege and hierarchy, i.e. valuation and preference ranking. Where certain human

beings once saw themselves as the purpose of the earth, we now see ourselves as but another

creature among many. Perhaps soon, humanity will no longer be able to justify its privileged

5 Lecky and Singer make progressive claims concerning humanity’s increasing morality.

Nietzsche seems to agree that “the moral circle” is expanding, but not necessarily that this is a

good thing. For an understanding of the “moral circle” see William Edward Hartpole

Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (New York, NY: D.

Appleton & Company, 1921): “At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world.” (101)

and Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2011)

100 position nor the massive environmental toll that this privileged position has so far required.

Humanity seemingly will be left with little other option than to succumb to nihilism and wither

away.

To be clear, this problem is a moral one, which is not to say that humanity’s lack of

morals will lead it to nihilism, but rather that modern morality is itself life denying and therefore

nihilistic. This chapter seeks to uncover what Nietzsche saw as the heart of nihilism in modern

liberal morality. Better yet, how did the priests’ essentially tactical denaturalization of values

devolve into a spiritually and socially significant nihilism? The answer, for Nietzsche, can be

found in the exilic history of the Jewish people.

It is important to consider the fact that Nietzsche’s goals are unlikely to reflect our own.

But with that said, his critiques do provide the liberal democratic west a unique opportunity for

profound self-criticism. The instability of liberal democracy as the prevailing political order both

internationally, with the rise of influence of autocratic China and Russia, and internally, with the

prevalence of alienated western youths joining extremist causes, should give one pause to

question the premise that the material benefits afforded in western welfare democracies are

enough to sustain liberal democracy as the dominant political mode. For if liberal democracy,

despite its material and economic promise, cannot address less tangible social and spiritual needs

then we should consider why these needs are lacking and what, if anything, can be done about it.

This chapter is an investigation of the initial stage of a process that Nietzsche believed to have led to the nihilism innate in modern politics—a process the Nietzsche calls

“denaturalization.” However, the scope is not limited to a specific historical period. This

investigation is relevant to the present day to the extent that Nietzsche considered modern

problems to have ancient origins and to the extent that the tactics employed by the priests are still

101 possible today. Further research should investigate the connection between priestly Judaism and

Christianity as well the relationship between Christianity to modern political forms.

Politically speaking, the implication of this study stands counter to those asserting that

Nietzsche can be read as a political “skeptic,”6 an inadvertent democrat,7 or as altogether anti- political.8 This study supports Paul Kirkland’s claim that Nietzsche “deny[s] support to political principles or orders that sought complete solutions or universal order,” demanding instead “the acknowledgement of the limited character of all political orders and the conflicts this certainly entails.”9 For Nietzsche the impetus to moral universalization through otherworldly concepts is the hallmark of weakness in a local context. Universalization in the case of the history of Israel is an extraordinary instance of overextension wherein a local power struggle takes on a deleterious world-historical character.

The Historical Stages of Israel: Questions of Interpretation

According to Nietzsche this denaturalization of natural values takes place in five stages.10

6 Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche's Political Skepticism. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

2007); and Craig French, "Nietzsche, Genealogy and Political Authority." Polity 43, no. 1

(2010): 7-35.

7 Lawrence Hatab, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics.

(Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1995.)

8 Peter Bergmann, Nietzsche, "The Last Antipolitical German" (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1987.)

9 Paul Kirkland, "Nietzsche's Tragic Realism." The Review of Politics 72, no. 01 (2010), 56

10 Nietzsche, A, 25.

102 Roughly speaking, Nietzsche’s account describes the transfer of power from the noble knightly

class in the Kingdom period to the post-exilic priestly class. Thus Nietzsche’s history of Israel is

a concrete example of conflict between the warrior and priestly classes—an example of the

conflict as outlined more generally in Genealogy.11 My intent is to discuss each of these five

stages within the transfer in terms of their specifics and then connect Nietzsche’s history of Israel

to his mature corpus thereby connecting them to Nietzsche’s broader theory of morality.

But Nietzsche, unfortunately, does not clearly delineate his fives stages of

denaturalization in the history of Israel.12 In my reading of aphorisms 25 and 26 I count at least

six to eight stages depending on the importance and distinctiveness that one gives each stage.

According to Nietzsche’s numbering some of my “stages” must fall in between as sub-stages or merely parts of larger stages. In the following outline I preserve Nietzsche’s five stages— drawing from the text the most important and encapsulating stages—and indicate as sub-stages those things that upon my reading stand out as distinct. Nietzsche’s stages can be understood thusly: 1) the natural relationship 2) maintenance of Yahweh despite changes in circumstance 3)

11 Nietzsche, GM, I.6-7

12 The historical veracity of Nietzsche’s account of Israel is important for many reasons. At this

time though, I am concerned less with the correctness of Nietzsche’s account than the degree to

which the account, as Nietzsche understood it, influenced and relates to his theory of morality.

Thus my intent at this point is to bracket questions regarding the accuracy of Nietzsche’s

historical account and focus primarily on the internal consistency of Nietzsche’s argument and

understanding. This does not, however, preclude a future study determining the factual accuracy

of Nietzsche’s history of Israel as it relates to Nietzsche’s broader ideas and theories.

103 alteration of Yahweh 4) priestly control of Yahweh 4.1) anti-natural causality 5) destruction of

history (reinterpretation) via canonization of the ‘sacred book.’

Other formulations, though not without their virtues, tend to lose sight of Nietzsche

proper, imposing extra-Nietzschean sources upon his history. Tim Murphy, for example, lays out

the five stages of denaturalization as follows:

1. the high period of the Israelite Yawhism-cum-nationalism 2. the post-Josiahanic theological revaluation 3. the post-Josiahanic moral revaluation 4. the Deuteronomist revisionist history 5. Josiah and Ezra’s “discovery” of the sacred text13

Murphy justifies this formulation on the grounds that Nietzsche read Julius Wellhausen’s

Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel shortly before writing The Antichrist.14 Nietzsche,

Murphy argues “emplots this transition [from the rule of kings to priestly rule] within his

revaluation.”15 Murphy is correct in identifying Wellhausen’s influence on Nietzsche’s history,

13 Tim Murphy, Nietzsche, Metaphor, Religion. (Albany: State University of New York Press,

2001.) 96

14 Murphy cites both Gary Shapiro, "Nietzsche Contra Renan." History and Theory 21, no. 2

(1982) and Weaver Santaniello, Nietzsche, God, and the Jews: His Critique of Judeo-

Christianity in Relation to the Nazi Myth. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994) as

evidence of Nietzsche’s reliance on Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis. Shapiro and

Santaniello are right in stressing Wellhausen’s influence on Nietzsche but tend to focus largely

on the historical context within which Nietzsche wrote instead of Nietzsche’s theory understood

broadly.

15 Murphy, Nietzsche, Metaphor, Religion, 96

104 as any reading of Wellhausen’s Prolegomena, specifically book III chapter XI and his article

Israel, proves. Murphy’s mistake is conflating Wellhausen’s endeavor with Nietzsche’s.

Though Murphy argues that Nietzsche places Wellhausen’s transition within his own

“revaluation” Murphy still uses Wellhausen’s terminology to describe Nietzsche’s stages. Yet nowhere in aphorisms 25 and 26 of The Antichrist does Nietzsche mention Josiah, Ezra, or the

Deuteronomist(s). The imposition of these terms severely alters Nietzsche’s focus. Nietzsche was not concerned with the history of Israel insofar as it falls within the traditional academic fields of history and Biblical studies. Instead Nietzsche’s history of Israel is of vital importance within the context of The Antichrist as well as his larger project concerning the origins of

Christian (slave) morals. It makes little sense to place Nietzsche completely within the context of the Wellhausen or documentary hypothesis of Biblical source because Nietzsche’s project is simply not as narrowly limited as Biblical or historical scholarship. The conflation of Nietzsche’s history with the parlance of academic history confuses Nietzsche’s grand theory of morals with pedantic and field specific study. One treads on much firmer ground if, instead of describing

Nietzsche’s history of Israel in academic terms, he tries to work within the Nietzschean corpus and terminology. Thus it is safe to say that Nietzsche uses Wellhausen’s “facts” but diverges on interpretation. Doing so ensures that one does not lose sight of Nietzsche’s history as it relates to his larger project. As such my objection to Murphy’s formulation is not merely aesthetic but substantive.

Another troublesome formulation can be found in Tim Themi’s Lacan’s Ethics and

Nietzsche’s Critique of Platonism. Here Themi describes Yahweh during the time of the

Kingdom—what I above classify as the natural relationship—as “relative to what was to

105 come…a natural enough expression of narcissistic affirmation.”16 But, on the contrary, Nietzsche

does not say that Yahweh during the period of the Kingdom was sufficiently natural compared to

the later priestly conception. He says that Israel stood in “a correct, that is to say natural

relationship to all things” and then, immediately in the following sentence, states that “[t]heir

Yaweh was the expression of their consciousness of power.”17 One should not, therefore, assume

that Nietzsche only intends this early conception of Yahweh to be compared to the latter priestly

conception. Yahweh of the Kingdom is not simply “natural enough” or natural only in

comparison to Yahweh of the priests. If the relation between Israel and “all things” is natural and

typical then it implies that the expression of this natural relationship—Yahweh—as a

manifestation and confirmation of nature is also natural.

Another problem with Themi’s formulation is due to his Freudian interpretation of

Nietzsche’s history. I do not wish to critique Themi’s overall method of drawing discourse back

and forth between Nietzsche and Lacan; for the particular case I take issue only with Themi’s

imposition of Freud upon Nietzsche’s history. Themi writes that Nietzsche’s Yahweh of the

Kingdom was an “expression of narcissistic affirmation.”18 But I find that the use of the Freudian term “narcissistic” reads Freud’s theory of narcissism and all its intellectual baggage into

Nietzsche.19 Simply put, Nietzsche does not presuppose Freud’s formalized structure of the

16 Tim Themi, Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's Critique of Platonism. (State University of New

York Press) 98

17 Nietzsche, A, 25

18 Themi, Ethics and Nietzsche's Critique of Platonism, 98

19 For Freud on narcissism see Zur Einführung des Narzißmus, translated in Sigmund

Freud, Freud's "On Narcissism--an Introduction" Edited by Joseph Sandler, Ethel Spector

106 psyche and any integration of Freud’s understanding of narcissism into Nietzsche’s history

presupposes much that simply isn’t present for Nietzsche. And though similarities certainly

abound between Nietzsche and Freud these must be cautiously drawn out by rigorous textual

examination not by casual reference and equivocation between texts and concepts. Because of

this I must reject Themi’s formulation of Nietzsche’s history in favor of my account outlined

above. After some preliminary words on the context of Nietzsche’s history of Israel and the

denaturalization of natural values I will expand upon the very brief outline given above.

Judaism and Christianity

Although it is not my intent here to discuss the relationship between Judaism and

Christianity as understood by Nietzsche, it is important to note that Nietzsche’s history of

Judaism is meant as an introduction to his discussion of Christianity. The preceding section,

number 24, is an account of the origins of Christianity. Here Nietzsche states that Christianity is

“not a counter-movement against the Jewish instinct, it is actually its logical consequence, one

further conclusion of its fear inspiring logic.”20 In sections 25 and 26 he goes even further, tracing the genesis of denaturalized values within the history of Judaism. The heart of

Person, and Peter Fonagy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.) and Sigmund Freud,

"Mourning and Melancholia." Edited by Peter Gay. In The Freud Reader (New York: W.W.

Norton, 1989.) Roughly speaking, narcissism is manifest in infants and children as within the

natural process of development, in moderation in adults, and as pathological in paraphrenics (On

Narcissism, II). None of these Freudian iterations of narcissism can be used to describe

Nietzsche’s understanding of the Kingdom or its relationship with Yahweh.

20 Nietzsche, A, 24.

107 Christianity, and therefore Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, can be traced back to Judaism.

And it is not enough to state that Christianity arose from Judaism for this raises the foundational

question: where in Judaism did this “fear inspiring logic” arise? What are the historical

circumstances that would lead to a Judaism capable of producing the decadence values of

Christianity? Nietzsche gives his answer in his history of Israel.

Stage One: The Natural Relationship

As stated above Nietzsche’s history of Israel takes place in five stages. Of the first stage

Nietzsche states

Originally, above all in the period of the Kingdom, Israel too stood in a correct, that is to say natural relationship to all things. Their Yaweh was the expression of their consciousness of power, of their delight in themselves, their hopes of themselves: in him they anticipated victory and salvation, with him they trusted that nature would provide what the people needed—above all rain.21

Unpacking this short passage is quite complicated. Here Nietzsche refers to the United Monarchy under Saul and David that began to disintegrate under Solomon and finally crumbled under

Solomon’s son Rehoboam. Nietzsche speaks of the “correct” or “natural relationship” between the Kingdom and “all things” and then immediately discusses Yahweh. The “naturalness” of the

Kingdom of Israel under the United Monarchy is intimately tied to this early conception of

Yahweh; but of what does this “naturalness” consist?

One would not be wrong in stating that the overriding theme of aphorism 25 of Antichrist is nature and the decline thereof. Particularly, Nietzsche is concerned with how natural values are transformed into unnatural values. Before one can understand how natural values are transformed, or denaturalized, one must understand what Nietzsche means by nature.

21 Ibid. 25

108 Nietzsche’s use of the word nature is exceedingly difficult to grasp. Stanley Rosen rightly states that nature “plays an ambiguous role in Nietzsche’s thinking.”22 In some instances

Nietzsche sneers, placing nature in quotations as “nature.”23 Here, the discussion of “nature”

refers to nature from the point of view of the moralist; for the moralist nature is humankind’s

base and evil desire to express power. From this point of view the moralist misunderstands nature

debasing its value as something that must be suppressed by morality. “[D]uring the moral epoch

of mankind, [men] sacrificed to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their ‘nature’;

This festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and ‘anti-natural’ fanatics.”24 In morality

humankind continually sacrifices that which it “loved the best”, its instincts, to God. The

ascetic’s eyes glimmer with sly fascination because he derives his power from duping human

beings into behaving morally, which is to say, sacrificing their instincts. His power stems from

his ability to fool others into muting their own power.

Later in BGE Nietzsche speaks of the “man of prey” using Cesare Borgia as an example.

He says that we “misunderstand ‘nature,’ as long as we still look for something ‘pathological’ at

the bottom of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths.”25 According to the moral

view man’s “nature” is an affliction that must be remedied with morality. Thus the moralist—

22 Stanley Rosen, The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra. (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1995) 195

23 see Beyond Good and Evil sections III.55, V.188, V.197, VI.207. In these sections Nietzsche

refers to the bastardization or moralization of nature as “nature.”

24 Nietzsche, BGE, III.55

25 Ibid. V.197

109 being inculcated into morality and therefore seeing ambition as a disease—hates the “villain”

Cesare Borgia for favoring his own pathological lust for power over moral restraint.

In denouncing the moralist’s equivocation of nature with base and innate disease

Nietzsche makes room for another conception of nature—that of noble nature as life affirming and untainted by the moral view. This understanding of nature is outlined in part nine, What is

Noble, of BGE. Here Nietzsche confirms the naturalness of Cesare Borgia equating “human beings whose nature was still natural” with “barbarians in every terrible sense of the word” and

“men of prey who were still in possession of unbroken strength of will and lust for power.”26

Nature at its most primal is the expression of power un-gilded with moral fineries. Nietzsche refers to this conception of nature when he speaks of the correct or natural relationship between the Kingdom of Israel and all things.

Since the Kingdom of Israel was both typical and correct then it stands to reason that those traits that the Kingdom possessed in the particular can be broadened by juxtaposing the specifics of the case with Nietzsche’s grand theory of morality. This is a point that some seem to miss. In The Mask of Enlightenment Rosen denounces Nietzsche for “lacking a satisfactory analysis of the concept of value” and in lieu of this analysis justifying “his rank-ordering by example.” 27 But as Nietzsche writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra “[a] table of good hangs over every people…behold, it is their will to power.”28 Thus Rosen’s casting of Nietzsche’s position on values ignores that the important content of values lays beneath the manifestation any

26 Ibid. IX.257

27 Stanley Rosen, The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity (South Bend, IN: St.

Augustine's Press, 2002) 42

28 Nietzsche, TSZ, I, “On the Thousand Goals and One”

110 particular value. At their most basic, values can be reduced to “the will to power.” But between

“the will to power” and any particular value is a typology within which values fall. This is to say that although values appear in different manifestations there are commonalities of type between values that on the surface may appear as quite different; in this sense what is valued, be it concept, practice, or actual thing, is superficial and secondary to the underlying motivation for valuation.

At its most basic this typology can be viewed as a spectrum between the masterful and the slavish, where the nature of the masterful is to discharge power and the nature of the slavish is to suppress this discharge as a means to his own power. Both the master and the slave seeks power, the difference is the means by which this power is attained. Where the master seeks dominance, the slave seeks to reduce the power of the master thereby attaining a relative increase in power—from subjugation to equality. Nature, as used by Nietzsche in the non-pejorative sense, is the masterful discharge of power. On the masterful side are the “knightly-aristocratic” classes that maintain “a powerful physicality, a flourishing, abundant, even overflowing health, together with that which serves to preserve it: war, adventure, hunting, dancing, war games, and in general all that involves vigorous, free, joyful activity.”29 These characteristics fall within the master-type as expressions or discharges of power and appear among the Greeks30, Romans,

29 Nietzsche, GM, I.7

30 Plato comes to mind when one thinks of the Greeks. For Nietzsche, though, Plato fought against the Greek instinct much like the Jewish priests fought against the instinct of the Kings. In

Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche compares “Greek philosophy as the decadence of the Greek instinct” with “Thucydides as the grand summation, the last manifestation of that strong, stern, hard matter-of-factness instinctive to the older Hellenes” (TI, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 3).

111 Persians, “Arabians,” Japanese, and the Israelites of the Kingdom among others. These examples

do not justify the values or character traits that they possess but conversely the “knightly-

aristocratic” relationship with the earth, the self-celebrating and power affirming displays, justify

the examples. Were the Greeks meek and mediocre instead of robustly prideful in their

glorification of the Greek body and spirit then Nietzsche would certainly not hold them in the

same esteem.

One can see from this that Nietzsche does not maintain the radically relativistic view that

any moral traits are acceptable given certain circumstances. Nietzsche is a moral relativist31 only to the extent that different values in certain situations engender a desirable relationship to things, that is to say—power. Different behaviors, ethics, customs, and politics are acceptable so long as

within their circumstances they produce mastery, i.e. the expression of power and the

consciousness thereof that allows the powerful to affirm his existence. As Nietzsche writes

concerning the concept of Gods, “There is in fact no other alternative for Gods; either they are

the will to power—and so long as they are that they will be national gods—or else the impotence

of power—and then they necessarily become good…”32 Thus the Israelites of the Kingdom,

When Nietzsche speaks of the Greeks in terms of “nobility”, “aristocracy”, and nature he refers

to the latter, older, understanding of Greekness.

31 The common term used to describe Nietzsche’s theory of knowledge is “perspectivism,” which

may speak to a certain relativist element running through Nietzsche’s discussion of knowledge.

More in depth discussions of Nietzsche and perspectivism can be found in Maudemarie

Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and

Steven D. Hales and Robert C. Welshon, "Truth, Paradox, and Nietzschean Perspectivism," 1994

32 Nietzsche, A, 16.

112 whose nationalistic Yahweh was the “expression of their consciousness of power, of their delight

in themselves” within which “they anticipated victory and salvation,” can be held in common as

natural with the polytheistic Greeks, whose gods were “reflections of noble and autocratic men,

in whom the animal in man felt deified.”33 Despite having distinct rituals, rights, deities,

dogmas as well as non-religious cultural beliefs and political practices—all which fall under

“values”—both maintain a power-based relationship to their circumstance. In this sense

Nietzsche calls them natural.

Stage Two: Maintenance Despite Change

So far only natural values have been discussed at length. This paper, however, is not only

concerned with Nietzsche’s view of nature but how the natural becomes unnatural via the

process of denaturalization. Nietzsche writes “This state of things [the natural relationship] long

remained the ideal, even after it had been tragically done away with: anarchy from within, the

Assyrian from without.”34 Here Nietzsche refers to two things, first (“anarchy from within”) the splitting of the United Monarchy into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of

Judah in the south and the subsequent contest for power in the northern Kingdom followed by

(“Assyrian from without”) the capture of the northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians. He goes on to write, “The people retained as its supreme desideratum that vision of a king who is a good soldier and an upright judge; as did above all the typical prophet (that is to critic and satirist of the hour) Isaiah.”35 Weaver Santaniello rightly asserts that Nietzsche held “the prophets,

33 Nietzsche, GM, II.23.

34 Nietzsche, A, 26.

35 Ibid.

113 particularly Isaiah” accountable for beginning to interpret “natural causality in terms of reward

and punishment” and further that he believed Christianity to have originated with Isaiah.36

Nietzsche writes that Isaiah, like the people, held or kept the vision of God who is a warrior and severe judge but that these hopes “remained unfulfilled.”37 And in order to retain Yahweh he was

altered—made to be a judging God instead of an affirming God. Thus, both Yahweh and

traditional cultural practices were maintained yet altered following the division of the Kingdom

and subsequent captivity and displacement of the Israelites. But the problem with maintaining

Yahweh and traditional cultural practices is that they are intimately tied to a land that is no

longer possessed.

Neither Yahweh nor the practices surrounding Yahweh can function in new lands as they

are fundamentally tied to culture and politics based in a specific environment. Nietzsche

maintains, “Every hope remained unfulfilled. The old God could no longer do what he formerly

could.”38 Yahweh could no longer be the source of affirmation of a subjugated and exiled people

for surely the fact that they were subjugated and exiled proves that Yahweh, in his original state,

was no longer “the expression of their consciousness of power, their delight in themselves, their

hopes in themselves.”39 That Yahweh was tied to Israel—“Yahweh is the God of Israel and

consequently the God of Justice”—is undone by the fact that the Israelites were displaced.40

36 Weaver Santaniello, "Nietzsche's Antichrist: 19th-Century Christian Jews And The Real ‘Big

Lie,’" Modern Judaism 17, no. 2 (1997), 171-72

37 Nietzsche, A, 25.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

114 Considering their exile the Israelites must either concede that Yahweh is no longer their God, and therefore dismiss Yahweh, or they must alter God from a particularistic, geographically bound entity, to the God of a people set adrift. Contrary to Nietzsche’s ex post facto advice, “One should have let him go,” Yahweh was maintained, but at a cost. Yahweh could no longer be the particular God he once was, he must be altered and expanded. Thus begins the march toward

Christian universalism.

Stage Three: Yahweh Altered

The new conception of Yahweh takes on dimensions not previously held by the particularistic God of Israel. Strictly speaking the relationship between Yahweh and the people must change upon exile if Yahweh is still to be God to the Israelites. Yahweh can no longer be bound by geography and must therefore be universalized to some degree in order to be maintained. Further, Yahweh must me made harsher, more judgmental in his moralizing if he is to maintain a connection to people that are no longer in their home land. God must be an antidote to assimilation. Nietzsche writes that Yahweh, “the god of ‘justice,’ ” is “no longer at one with

Israel, an expression of national self-confidence: now only a God bound by conditions.”41 What are these conditions? This question is quite perplexing because the expanded vision of Yahweh is seemingly less encumbered by conditions the further it is universalized. For example, the new conception of Yahweh is no longer limited by the geographical confines of Israel. But it is precisely because of the fact that the land no longer binds Yahweh that he must be bound by conditions. For if Yahweh is not bound, or is not in some sense static, then he cannot rightly stand as the anchor for his people.

41 Ibid.

115 The role of Yahweh as an anchor for the Jewish people gets to the heart of aphorisms 25 and 26. In the preceding aphorism Nietzsche writes

The Jews are the most remarkable nation of world history because, faced with the question of being or not being, they preferred, with a perfectly uncanny conviction, being at any price: the price they had to pay was the radical falsification of all nature…they made themselves the antithesis to natural conditions—they inverted religion, religious worship, morality, history, psychology one after another.42

Thus Yahweh is maintained, albeit in an altered state, so that the Israelites may also maintain themselves as the Jewish people.

Because the Israelites were exiled from their land, their identity can no longer be based on the same localism that the original conception of Yahweh was rooted in. Conditions must be put on Yahweh because the “home-bred and prescriptive” 43 customs are detached from their source—the relationship between the people and their land. Customs according to this view are

“home-bred” meaning that they deal explicitly with local issues and “prescriptive” meaning that they are authoritative not simply because they are ancient or ancestral but because they are therapeutic remedies engrained through time so as to become conventional, i.e. they are practical solutions to local problems. Because the Israelites were uprooted from their land, Yahweh can only be maintained without the original practicality. In this sense the maintenance of Yahweh is artificial. It is the manmade continuity of an ideal that is no longer suited for its circumstance and held in place in order to maintain identity, rather than an organic custom born out of the hardships incurred over time in a specific region.

42 Nietzsche, A, 24

43 Leo Strauss turns this Burkean phrase in "Progress or Return?" In Jewish Philosophy and the

Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, edited by Kenneth Hart

Green. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) 112

116 Nietzsche’s issue is that the Jewish people, in order to maintain a semblance of identity

and avoid assimilation, undermined the natural relationship that man has to the earth. God in the

original or natural sense is a customary artifact produced in order to promote man’s power given

his locality. God in this sense needn’t be “bound by conditions” because he is tied to the soil—

bound by locality and thus connected to the people that reside on the soil. God may in turn be

“flexible” or adaptable to changing situations because the rootedness of the people insures that

the malleability of God does not threaten the people’s identity. But, when, as in the case of the

Israelites, the people are exiled from their land God, can no longer be flexible because he takes

on a new role; he becomes the anchor to which the people attach their identity. God replaces the

land as an anchor to the people and as a consequence he himself must be bound by conditions so

that he stands as an uncompromising foundation for the people.

Stage Four: Priestly Control

Priestly control, for Nietzsche, was a process made possible with the division of the

United Monarchy, the Assyrian captivity, and Isaiah’s maintenance through alteration of

Yahweh. The priest’s power gained strength through the Babylonian exile and the

systematization of the Priestly Code. Wellhausen (Nietzsche’s historical source) writes of the

exilic character of the P-source,44

44 The P-Source, as it interests us here, are those responsible for the revision and codification of certain rituals and traditions (i.e. the Priestly Code and Holiness Code) into the Torah. In a religiously sympathetic account of the P-Source Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament:

An Introduction (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1984.) writes “To help people maintain their

faith in Yahweh even when everything seemed to have been lost, P set out all of the aspects of

117 the temple was now destroyed and the worship interrupted, and the practice of the past times had to be written down if it was not to be lost. Thus it came about that in the exile the conduct of worship became the subject of the Torah, and in this process reformation was naturally aimed at as well as restoration […] After the temple was restored this theoretical zeal still continued to work.45 46

Israel’s faith that were still valid. It includes in its story the reasons for keeping the Sabbath (Gen

1), the origins of circumcision (Gen 17), the divine command to obey all the cultic and religious

laws (Lev 1-27, Num 1-10, 25-36) and the important role of the high priest next to Moses himself (Ex 4:28; Num 1, etc.).” (103) When Nietzsche speaks of priests in sections 25 and 26 he is referring to the P-Source.

45 Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, Translated by J. Sutherland Black.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.) X.II.2

46 Erhard Blum states that Wellhausen was “basically right concerning the issue of dating,”

meaning that “‘P’ comprises old traditions kept by the priesthood at the First Temple in

Jerusalem, but, on the other hand its present literary shape and its theological and ‘political’

intentions are to be understood in the context of the Persian period.” Erhart. Blum, "Issues and

Problems in the Contemporary Debate Regarding the Priestly Writings." In The Strata of the

Priestly Writings: Contemporary Debate and Future Directions, edited by Sarah Shectman and

Joel S. Baden. (Zürich: TVZ, Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2009.)

31-32. But Wellhausen contends that although the P-Source “worked into the Pentateuch as the

standard legislative element in it” and “as such it was published and introduced in the year 444

B.C., a century after exile” that it actually has its roots in the exilic period (Wellhausen, X.II.2).

Blum is therefore in disagreement with Wellhausen. Considering that Nietzsche took his

“historical facts” from Wellhausen, we must stick with Wellhausen’s hypothesis that the

character of the P-source is exilic.

118 Thus the push for the codification of tradition and subsequent strength of the priestly class was

rooted in the desire to maintain identity, “the practice of the past time,” into and through exile.

The conditions that bind Yahweh are not generated organically from the relationship a people

has to their land but are artificially altered and maintained by the priestly caste. “The new

conception of him becomes an instrument in the hands of priestly agitators.”47 The priestly class

uses exile and captivity as lever to attain and maintain power. Exile is an opportunity to usurp

power from the defeated “knightly-aristocratic” class by codifying a conception of God that

cements the priest’s power. But to do so they must invert values such that their power will not be

contested.

In On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche explains value inversion using the Jewish people as his classic example. He writes of the “priestly” Jewish people,

It was the Jews who, with awe-inspiring consistency, dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation (good=noble=powerful=beautiful=happy=beloved of God)…saying ‘the wretched alone are the good; the poor, impotent, lowly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God…and you, the powerful and noble, are on the contrary evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity”48 49

47 Nietzsche, A, 25

48 Nietzsche, GM, I.7

49 A brief, yet informative, discussion of Nietzsche’s “ambivalence” towards the Jewish people

can be found in Yirmiyahu. Yovel, "Nietzsche and the Jews: The Structure of an Ambivalence."

In Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, edited by Jacob Golomb (New York: Routledge, 1997.) as well

as a longer treatment in Yirmiyahu.Yovel, Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews

(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.)

Like Yovel, Duffy and Mittelman draw a threefold distinction between “(i) the Judaism of the

older, preprophetic parts of the Old Testament, (ii) the prophetic Judaism out of which

119 The quote directly above follows Nietzsche’s discussion of the conflict that comes about

between aristocratic priests and knights, specifically “when the priestly caste and the warrior

caste are in jealous opposition to one another and unwilling to come to terms.”50 The power of

the priest does not come from the “powerful physicality” like that of the warrior knight, but

“because they are the most impotent.”51 The priest, because he lacks the physical strength and agility of the warrior, must instead resort to cunning and manipulation to attain power. His cleverest tactic is to invert the morality of the warrior caste, i.e. the kings of the United

Monarchy, moralizing nature into the nefarious “nature” of the aristocrats responsible for exile.

Nietzsche goes straight from this discussion to his “most notable example…the Jews, that priestly people” and their inversion of noble values.52 So it would seem then that Nietzsche holds all Jews, the Jewish people as a whole, accountable for the inversion of noble (natural) values.

But, if this section from Genealogy is read in conjunction with aphorisms 25 and 26 of The

Antichrist one sees that Nietzsche holds the priests, not the people, responsible for the denaturalization of natural values. In his account of Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s “On Priests”

Laurence Lampert writes of the priests, “Their teaching of equality, the equality of all as slaves before a sovereign Master [God], has been the path by which the herd has passed into its modern

Christianity arose, and (iii) modern Judaism” and consider Nietzsche’s true disdain to be

reserved for prophetic, or “priestly,” Judaism. Michael F. Duffy and Willard Mittelman.

"Nietzsche's Attitudes Toward the Jews." Journal of the History of Ideas 49, no. 2 (1988): 302,

317

50 Nietzsche, GM, I.7

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

120 and secular future.”53 Thus it is the priests that Nietzsche finds deserving of his ire.

The corruptions of the priests are twofold. First, the priests subject not only the naturally

slavish, but also the masterful to the yoke. Second, by subjecting all to God’s yoke the priests

erase the distinctions between people thus ridding the world of meaningful human content. The

content of human lives is even further diminished as the priestly project becomes radicalized,

first into Christianity and then into secular morality and politics. Thus Nietzsche’s analysis is

deeper than a mere social critique, for equality as the end of preferential judgments concerning

human beings leaches into humanity’s general ability to perceive. Soon human beings become

incapable of making preferential judgments at all. No longer can the nation or the individual

prefer itself to others. Humanity itself begins to question its privileged position over the rest of

the earth’s creatures. Humanity’s will to life is diminished because human beings are no longer

comfortable “valuating” much less placing a higher valuation on themselves than other creatures.

The erasure of human distinction is but the social manifestation of the movement towards

nihilism—the obliteration of all valuation and preference such that all meaning is drained from the world. Social equality is thus a segue to the abyss.

Anti-natural Causality

Perhaps the most important tool at the hands of the priest is that of anti-natural causality.

Anti-natural causality begins with Isaiah’s incorporation of judgment into God and takes its most dastardly form with the priests. While Isaiah seeks to maintain, the priests seek to reform and control. Under this new understanding of causality the priests interpret “all good fortune as a

53 Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.) 93

121 reward, all misfortune as punishment for disobedience of God.”54 God according to this new

causality “demands” rather than “helps,” which alters morality from an “expression of the

conditions under which a nation lives and grows” to an “abstract” and “fundamental degradation

of the imagination.”55 Of course Nietzsche believes that these demands are merely the way that

the priestly caste is able to wield power and to impose themselves upon the people. Anti-natural

causality makes the priests indispensable because of their vital importance to the newly codified

rituals that God demands of his people. Thus the people will be punished if they act out of

accordance with God’s (the priest’s) will.56

The will of the priest is equivalent to that of the ascetic as explained in On the Genealogy of Morals. “The ascetic priest possessed in [the ascetic] ideal not only his faith but also his will, his power, his interest.”57 To this point the ascetic priests (as per our example, the Jewish Priests)

“abstracts” morality giving it an otherworldly character suited to the priest’s needs.

The substance of this abstraction is twofold. First God is abstracted from a particularistic

and geographically bound entity to an all-powerful and universal being. Second, the abstract,

nonphysical, and non-anthropomorphic being is declared the source of causality. Rites, rituals,

and the Law are now the means of appeasing God, i.e. “a stupid salvation-mechanism of guilt

towards Yahweh and punishment, piety toward Yahweh and reward” of which the priest must be

54 Nietzsche, A, 25.

55 Ibid.

56 For an example of the punishments look to Leviticus 20 within the so-called holiness code of

the P-Source

57 Nietzsche, GM, III.11

122 the intermediary.58 The punishments and rewards are not merely social and political, or doled out

by man in accordance to, say, Leviticus 20,59 but are also spiritual such as God’s declaration that

he will “set [his] face against” those that disobey certain laws.60

Thus the people live under the abstract fear that upon breaking in the Law they will be alienated from God and as a result take on the feeling of bad conscience irrespective of any actual culpability.61 This bad conscience does not stop with the people, those most willing to

accept subjugation because of their “slavishness,” but also with Kings and nobles. With this new

bad conscience, that constant feeling of indebtedness, they are further intertwined in the web of

the priests, being everyday more reliant on the priests for the rites and rituals that assure that

their debts to God will be forgiven. Of course their mystical debts aren’t forgiven but renewed.

Their bad conscience is necessary because the priests do not have the requisite power needed for

physical domination. As Murphy writes of the priests, “they not only used whatever means they

have available to advance their own interests, they attempt to get the social debate fought on

their terms.”62 Murphy, though, does not take this point far enough for there is no “social debate”

to be had. The imposition of priestly power is not the result of a stacked debate, but instead it is

the nullification of debate because the “worm of bad conscience” poisons possible detractors.

58 Nietzsche, A, 26

59 For example punishment for having sex during menstruation is banishment of both the man

and woman (Lev. 20:18). Mediums, on the other hand, are to be stoned to death (Lev. 20:27).

60 Lev. 17:10, 20:3, 20:5, 20:6, 26:14-20

61 “physiological disposition poisoned by the worm of conscience” (Nietzsche, The Antichrist

25)

62 Murphy, Nietzsche, Metaphor, Religion, 99.

123 The priest alters morality such that both the kings and the people fall under the sway of priestly

interpretation. In short, they release a psycho-moral “disease” whereby even those of a “warrior”

or “knightly” constitution diminish their own power. Both the people and the potential “higher”

types are self-regulated by the “worm of conscience.”63

Stage Five: Destruction of History via Canonization of the Sacred Book

The final stage of the denaturalization of natural values is the destruction of history such that any true understanding of the past, and therefore possibility of returning, is made very difficult. This is a means of projecting priestly dominance into the future by distorting the past and thereby buttressing against those that may challenge the priests down the line. Again this mirrors the battle between the priestly class and the warrior class given in Genealogy. And

though the central thesis circles the conflict between master and slave moralities, it is important

to note that the conflict outlined in Genealogy begins as an intra- rather that inter-class conflict.

Of course, this is also true in the example of the history of Israel. Both the warriors and the

priests fall within the same elevated caste. As such slavishness, and perhaps mastery, need not be

tethered to social class but instead represent dispositions or character determined by physiology

and social circumstance.

The priests’ slavishness is significant because it determines their tactics and strategy.

Rather than using brute force to attain power, the priest’s physiologically determined character—

his physical weakness and therefore reliance on wit—leads him to shrewd tactics. “In the hands

of the Jewish priests,” Nietzsche writes, “the great epoch in the history of Israel became an

epoch of decay, the Exile, the long years of misfortune, was transformed into an eternal

63 Nietzsche, A, 25.

124 punishment for the great epoch—an epoch in which the priest was as yet nothing.”64 The priests interpret history—rather, moralize history—such that anyone looking back will see the great kings and warriors, the priest’s enemies, as responsible for the downfall of Israel. To learn how this is done we must return to Wellhausen and the p-source.

In his chapter on the books of Chronicles, Wellhausen compares two differing accounts of the same history—one history where the influence of priests is present and another where the influence is absent. The Chronicles, Wellhausen contends, bear the mark of priestly influence while, and on the other hand, the books of Samuel and Kings give a similar history free of this influence. Wellhausen writes, “the books of Samuel and of Kings were edited in the Babylonian exile; Chronicles, on the other hand, were composed fully three hundred years later, after the fall of the Persian empire.”65 And it is between the Babylonian exile and the fall of the Persian

Empire that the Priestly code (composing a large portion of Leviticus and other sections of the

Torah) was codified. Thus, Wellhausen argues, when the Chronicler looked back upon the text that composed the Hebrew Bible, he viewed something very different than did those who wrote

Samuel and Kings three hundred years before; he saw a document after the priestly code had been codified where the focus had completely shifted away from the Kings to the priests. The

Chronicler’s history is stained by the priestly code. Thus for Nietzsche the “priests perpetrated that miracle of falsification the documentation of which lies before us in a good part of the Bible: with unparalleled disdain of every tradition, every historical reality, they translated their national past into religious terms.”66

64 Ibid. 26

65 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, VI.Intro.

66 Nietzsche, A, 26.

125 Wellhausen believes the imposition of the priests is most apparent in the case of King

David. He writes,

See what Chronicles has made of David! The founder of the kingdom has become the founder of the temple and public worship, the king and hero at the head of his companions in arms has become the singer and master of ceremonies at the head of a swarm of priests and Levites; his clearly cut figure has become a feeble holy picture, seen through a cloud of incense.67

David, being a hugely important figure, cannot simply be cast as the enemy. No, he must be recast as the Überpriest. And casting David as such colors all subsequent history. For example,

Wellhausen cites 2 Chronicles 13:8-12 where Abijah of Judah rebukes Jeroboam I of Israel— before they engage each other in battle—for worshiping “the golden calf,” and casting out “the priests of Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites.”68 Of course the context of this remark is that the dissolution of the United Monarchy is the fault of those in Israel who worshiped idols and expelled the Aaronite and Levite priests. The coloring of David as archpriest makes it such that Abijah, great grandson of David, can be shown to have questioned the legitimacy of

Jeroboam’s rule of Israel not merely on genealogical grounds but on religious grounds. Thus the conflict between Israel and Judah takes on a spiritual significance outside of the typical infighting of aristocratic and monarchic lines. Because David was cast as the Archpriest, it must be the case that the falling away from David entails falling away from the priesthood; and in falling away from the priesthood the United Monarchy was torn asunder and subjected to the consequent years of hardship, exile, and captivity.

67 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, VI.I.2.

68 Ibid, IV.II.1

126 It is clear, then, what Nietzsche means when he speaks of the necessity of the priest’s

“great literary forgery.”69 By falsifying the priestly code and inserting it into the preexisting

Hebrew Bible, the priests assured that any subsequent readings and alterations or addendums

would be flavored favorably to the priests and that exile would be viewed as the punishment for

falling away from the priests. If Wellhausen and Nietzsche are to be believed, then not only did the priests impose themselves into the existing text of the Hebrew Bible, they also altered the text such that later additions to the cannon, such as Chronicles, would bear marks of these alterations. The genius of the “priestly forgery” is that by inserting themselves within the historical narrative of a preexisting text, the priests assured not only their place in the holy texts to the reader but also, as shown by the example of the Chronicler, to subsequent writers thereby cementing their power beneath an internally referential layer of holy text.

The responsibility of the “great epoch” parallels that which Nietzsche calls an inversion of values in Genealogy.70 Those warrior Kings are either subsumed into the priestly caste, like

David, or become responsible for the dissolution of United Monarchy and the subsequent exiles of the Jewish people like Jeroboam. The “noble” Kings are interpreted morally and viewed as power hungry subversives to the will of God. Their “faults,” in the eyes of the priests, become examples of what not to do, what God forbids. Thus the priest defines evil first, mirroring slave morality that “from the outset says No” and “needs a hostile external world” and then defines the good.71 For Nietzsche the whole concept of exile, that ever-present theme in Judaism, is marred by the fact that the priests use it as a tool to negate the Kings.

69 Nietzsche, A, 26

70 Nietzsche, GM, I.7

71 Ibid. I.10

127 The example given in sections 25 and 26 of The Antichrist shows the extent of priestly

tactics. Incapable of challenging their physical superiors in combat, the priestly type distorts

history, both appropriating and denigrating the honor and glory of their enemies, making

themselves “vital” to the function and maintenance of the community. But for Nietzsche the

priest is nothing more than “the most dangerous kind of parasite, the actual poison spider of life”

because aside from the fact that the priest serves no essential political or social function outside

of his self-preservation, he also augments the glory usurped from his enemies and bestows it to

God.72 But if there is no God, as Nietzsche believes, then it becomes clear that the priest

sacrifices mankind’s greatest sources of meaning, honor and glory, to an illusion.

Conclusion: Priestly Judaism and Liberal Politics

The priests could not be tolerated for long. According to Nietzsche the priestly instinct

“can no longer endure the priest as a reality, the invention of an even more abstract form of existence, and even more unreal vision of the world” must come about.73 Tim Murphy, ignores

this, citing The Antichrist 24 as evidence that “Christianity, rather than being the Aufhebung, the

overcoming-by-canceling of Judaism, it can only be understood as an outgrowth of Judaism.”74

Christianity was indeed born out of the soil of Judaism, as Murphy argues, but this does not

mean that it is only an outgrowth and not simultaneously an overcoming. And Murphy’s point

seems to be that because Christianity didn’t annihilate Judaism that it is therefore not an

overcoming (Aufhebung). Despite the fact that Christianity did, in fact, explode into the world’s

72 Nietzsche, A, 38

73 Ibid. 27

74 Tim Murphy, Nietzsche, Metaphor Religion, 95

128 most prominent religion, it is not the case that Christianity must utterly destroy Judaism for it to

be an overcoming, but only that it must come into being itself as a negation based in the internal

inconsistency of Judaism—for example when the teaching that “the wretched alone are the

good” comes in conflict with the privileges and power of the priestly class.75 Thus again we see the common theme in Nietzsche, that a means of attaining power runs counter to power maintenance. The barbarians imposed order and thus ceased being barbarians, the nobility created society—repressing themselves and developing a conscience—and thus made themselves open to the influence of the priests, and the priest inverted morality, making an ideal of the lowly, only to discover that by doing so they had conceptually undermined the very power hierarchy of which they were the apex.

Christianity goes on to further universalize morality such that the Jewish people are no longer strictly “holy” or “chosen” but become yet another people among the peoples in need of salvation. In Protestantism’s reformation of Catholic hierarchy, the priest no longer stands as the conduit between the people and God, therefore making Christianity even more abstract than the priestly Judaism from which Christianity arose. Soon thereafter even God becomes too concrete, too real—morality is sought for its own sake—thus ushering in the even more radically moral secular age.

Leading the push to modern secularization is the liberal democracy born of the

Enlightenment. Liberalism as generally understood stands in opposition to clerical zeal and priestly dominance by relegating religion and belief to the “private sphere.” But for Nietzsche this opposition is rooted in a radical inversion of priestly power. And even though it stands as a secular bulwark against hierocracy, liberalism has its roots in the priestly value inversion that

75 Nietzsche, GM, I.7

129 challenged the noble values of kings and heroes. Contrary to these noble values, Nietzsche describes liberalism as a “reduction to the herd animal.”76 He uses similar language when explicitly connecting modern democracy to Christianity,

with the help of a religion which indulged and flattered the most sublime herd animal desires, we have reached the point where we find even in political and social institutions an ever more visible expression of this morality: the democratic movement is the heir of the Christian movement.77

And if Christianity is “not a counter-movement” against priestly Judaism but rather “grew from the soil” of Judaism and is “its logical consequence” and the “conclusion to its fear-inspiring logic,” then the connection between liberalism and Judaism by way of Christianity is plain.78

The significance of this connection, if we trust Nietzsche, is that the political form of liberalism, born of the rational and empirical minds of the enlightenment,79 might not be as rational as we believe. Instead, the picture that Nietzsche gives of liberalism is that of the second in a line of radical revisions to a priestly project founded in the ressentiment against noble kings.

This ressentiment towards greatness has trickled down, through Christianity, to liberal institutions and has been forgotten to the extent that the foundations of liberalism are now thought to be the product of rational reflection and not merely a philosophical veneer disguising the position of an adversary in an age old power struggle. Liberal institutions, contrary to their stated and implied purposes, actually stifle true freedom because they “undermine the will to power, they are the leveling of mountain and valley exalted to a moral principle, [and] they make

76 Nietzsche, TI, “What Germans Lack,” 38

77 Nietzsche, BGE, V.202.

78 Nietzsche, AC, 24.

79 Kant and Locke stand out as exemplars

130 [one] small, cowardly, and smug.”80 The true goal of liberalism is not liberty but security, that

is, security from the “beasts of prey,” like noble kings and aristocracies. In liberalism conflict is

pulled from the realm of contest, battle, and war—the realms of manly honor and glory—and

replaced with election, representation, and legislative deliberation. The liberal state serves to

filter the excessive violence of politics, by limiting the scope of conflict through liberal

institutions such as legislative and judicial bodies, thus protecting the “slavish” and “herd-like” that would otherwise be dominated. Because of the damage that liberalism does to greatness in the name of the welfare and security, through its inculcation as the only legitimate form of politics, Nietzsche rejects it as but another iteration of slave-morality.

Nietzsche’s critique is noteworthy not only to those who would relish the demise of liberalism, but also to those who see a liberal world order as the most practical and promising future for humanity. At the very least, Nietzsche provides grounds for profound liberal self- criticism in an effort to understand those who are most hostile towards liberalism. For if liberalism has roots in the denaturalization of values, then we are left to conclude that liberalism cannot satisfy all that is innate to human beings. Contrary to socialists and progressives, who state that liberalism does not go far enough in its eradication of hierarchy and will therefore never rectify the material inequality of humanity that causes division and strife, Nietzsche puts forth an even more radical claim that challenges the very presumption that security and material prosperity are fundamentally “good” or universally sought. Nietzsche’s insight is pertinent especially for the liberal who is perplexed by the allure of the manifestly illiberal and to those who can only appreciate material solutions to human conflict. Perhaps the increasing contemporary charisma of both Islamic fundamentalism and right-wing extremism exists not due

80 Nietzsche, TI, “What Germans Lack,” 38.

131 to a dearth of material benefits provided by liberal welfare states but in spite of these benefits. It

is conceivable that these perverse attempts at nationalism and religious revivalism are not merely

contingent upon political, economic, or social conditions but, instead, that there lies within them

something existentially basic. For if Nietzsche is correct, then there exists in humanity a deep-

seated drive to glory and honor that liberalism can redirect and suppress but cannot eradicate.

That human beings have long sought honor and glory is not a new insight. From Homer’s

Odyssey to Machiavelli’s The Prince is a lengthy history detailing the importance of the heroic

arts to humanity. Nietzsche’s significance, however, is not in discovering the past preeminence

of contest, honor, and glory but in showing how these “values” have been overturned in

modernity and in insisting that they need not be historical relics relegated to “unenlightened”

human epochs. Nietzsche makes clear that although the science and politics of modernity has tried, and in large part succeeded, in suppressing noble values humanity, still maintains an ingrained drive towards them. And in refusing to condemn, going so far as to advocate in some instances, the noble values that modernity has found so morally repugnant, Nietzsche confesses his place in a long and diverse line of political realists who have likewise understood the immutability and significance of man’s less than sociable characteristics.

We gain a unique perspective on Nietzsche’s take on morality when we understand the history of Israel as a story of tactics gone awry. What starts as a means of overturning the power of the ancient Kings of Israel by the priestly caste ends with the priestly mode of power acquisition collapsing in on itself. The priest can no longer maintain his power, for in denigrating the hierarchy of kings by contesting the very concept of earthly hierarchy, he denigrates his own hierarchical position. More importantly what began in the history of Israel as a tactical means of power acquisition has led to the momentous world-historical effects of value inversion or

132 denaturalization generally, such that all modern morality and politics is rooted in “slave morality.”

As stated in the introduction, this essay supports those who seek to pull Nietzsche from the ether and ground his thought on a sturdier foundation of a kind of political realism. And while it is not correct to call Nietzsche a “realist,” at least not in any contemporary sense, his history of Israel is certainly evidence of an intellectual link between him and Machiavelli.81 For example, in Discourses on Livy Machiavelli anticipates some of Nietzsche’s critique of

Christianity, stating that Christianity “makes us esteem less the honor of the world” placing honor instead in “humility, abjectness, and contempt of things human” thus rendering “the world weak and given it in prey to criminal men.”82 And though Nietzsche is less concerned with the instrumental weakness of Christianity—that it renders one weak to criminality—he is of like mind with Machiavelli concerning the denigration and “contempt” of worldly matters. Like

Machiavelli, Nietzsche is compelled by the ways that religion and morality are used to support what should be considered largely political ends. These parallels point to a certain neo-

Machiavellian vein running throughout Nietzsche’s work that should incline us to read Nietzsche

81 The connection between Nietzsche and Machiavelli has been explored, to varying degrees of success by Don Dombowsky, Nietzsche's Machiavellian Politics (New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2004.) Diego A. Von Vacano, The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and the

Making of Aesthetic Political Theory (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007.); and Brook

Montgomery Blair, "Post-metaphysical and Radical Humanist Thought in the Writings of

Machiavelli and Nietzsche." History of European Ideas 27, no. 3 (2001): 199-238.

82 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan

Tarcov. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) II.2

133 less in the mood of postmodernism and existentialism and more as a flamboyant psychologist of

Machtpolitk.

134 CHAPTER V

HIERARCHY, HIEROCRACY, AND REBELLION NIETZSCHE ON CHRISTIANITY

Throughout his works Nietzsche spares little scorn for Christianity. And while the previous chapter made an argument for the Jewish origins of a modernity that Nietzsche held in contempt, it is safe to say that the criticisms Nietzsche leveled at Judaism pale in comparison to the rancor that he saved for Christianity. But like most of Nietzsche’s positions, his vitriol is tempered with fascination and even awe. For even though Nietzsche disdains Christianity it is clear that he holds an appreciation for the willful power of Jesus of Nazareth.

This chapter is concerned with Nietzsche’s historical account of Christianity. And like

the previous chapter and the chapter to follow it is rooted in the theoretical accounts of the

master-slave dichotomy as well as the concept of history as overcoming as presented in chapters

II and III. If one considers modernity and the “death of God” to have their origins in priestly

Judaism, then one can say that Christianity “overcomes” Judaism by radicalizing it, bringing us

even closer to the “death of God” and “the last man.” And Nietzsche stresses this transition,

between priestly Judaism and Christianity, as a “rebellious movement,” a “negation,” and a “No”

to the Jewish Church.1 This rebellion is enigmatic, especially when we consider that Nietzsche considers both priestly Judaism and Christianity to be slavish. The guiding question for understanding Christianity is thus: how do slaves rebel against slaves?

To answer this question, it is important that we reiterate some points from the previous chapters and return briefly to priestly Judaism. For by referencing the framework given in chapters 2 and 3 we gain better access to what can rightly be called a slave rebellion against a

1 Nietzsche, A, 27

135 slave rebellion.2 At the end of section 26 of The Antichrist Nietzsche gives a lengthy account of

the goals of the Jewish priests. He writes, “The priest had […] formulated once and for all what

he intends to have, ‘what the will of God is’.”3 By determining the will of God the priest makes himself “everywhere indispensible; at all the natural events of life, at birth, marriage, sickness, death, not to speak of ‘sacrifice’ (meal-times).”4 In altering God the priest inserts himself into all

aspects of everyday life, imposing himself on the course of nature. Nietzsche goes on to write,

there appears the holy parasite to denaturalize them—in his language to ‘sanctify’ them…For one must grasp this: every natural custom, every natural institution (state, administration of justice, marriage, tending of the sick and poor) every requirement presented by the instinct for life, in short everything valuable in itself, becomes utterly valueless, inimical to value through the parasitism of the priest.5

By inserting himself between man and nature the priest drains the natural course of life of any

value in itself. When viewed through the priest, natural events such as birth, marriage, and death,

as well as concepts such as justice and welfare, become events and concepts only valuable to the

extent that the priest can sanctify them. Thus marriage is only valuable through the priest and

justice maintains its “value” only when it is the product of priestly dogma. And the goal of the

priest’s value “parasitism,” i.e. his vampirism of natural values, is to subject the “sinful” to his yoke:

Disobedience of God, that is to say of the priest, of ‘the law’ now acquires the name ‘sin’; the means of ‘becoming reconciled again with God’ are, as is only to be expected,

2 In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche mentions Judaism’s “slave revolt in morality.” (BGE,

V.195)

3 Nietzsche, A, 26.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

136 means by which subjection to the priest is only more thoroughly guaranteed: the priest alone ‘redeems’.6

The priest debases nature to attain power. He must degrade the natural to the sinful so that he can

be the means by which the impure is sanctified. The extent to which the priest inserts himself

into the lives of man is all encompassing, nature is “transvaluated” or revaluated into sin, and therefore all things fall under the purview of the priest.

This discussion of the priest is meant to reiterate the point given in previous chapters that although the priest is “slavish” his means of power acquisition does maintain a hierarchy with himself at the peak. So, while it can be said that the priest is slavish, it cannot be said that the priest is utterly slavish for he still seeks the maintenance of hierarchy. If we zoom out from the particulars of the knightly-aristocrat, the priest, and the slave, then we begin to see what is, in

Nietzsche’s eyes, an undesirable progression away from physicality and hierarchy. Where the priest maintains the hierarchy but jettisons the physicality of the knightly-aristocrat the slave jettisons physicality and hierarchy. Nietzsche sees the history leading to modernity as a progression away from nature where decreasing animal physicality and the hierarchy that it produces are replaced with intellect and equality. And while the development of the intellect has made man “interesting,” it also serves to tame the animal spiritedness from humanity, directing man’s natural disposition to dominance and conflict inward manifesting itself as guilt and bad conscience.

Nietzsche’s concern is that the animal instincts of humanity, those that motivate struggle, self-overcoming and creation, will be tamed from man as he over-refines himself intellectually and politically. What Nietzsche sees in Christianity that makes it so much more egregious than

6 Ibid.

137 priestly Judaism is that by erasing the hierarchy of the priest Christianity makes way for the final domestication of mankind.

Nietzsche speaks with uncharacteristic clarity when denouncing Christianity.

“Christianity,” he writes, “negates the Church.”7 Where the priests sought to overcome the power of the Kings, Christianity stands against the power of the priesthood with a radicalized fervor. For Christianity does not seek to replace the priest with yet another set of rulers, rather,

Christianity seeks to demolish earthly lordship completely.

Further, it is in Christianity that the term “slave-morality” can first be used with no sense of irony or confusion. Referring to Jesus Nietzsche writes, “This holy anarchist who roused up the lowly, the outcasts and ‘sinners’, the Chandala within Judaism to oppose the ruling order—in language which, if the Gospels are to be trusted, would even today lead to Siberia—was a political criminal.”8 Of course by Chandala Nietzsche refers to the lowest “untouchable” class in the Hindu caste system—quite the opposite of the priests, who, if we were to continue the metaphor would surely stand at the peak of the Hindu caste system as the Brahmin. Contrasting

Jesus and his companions—prostitutes, lepers, among other “Chandala”—to the ritual purity of the priestly class shows the radical nature of the Jesus’s revolt. Where the slavishness of priestly

Judaism was tactically employed by the priests in order to render their enemies submissive, the slavishness of Christianity was, initially, the product of the slavishness of its creator and adherents. In Christianity the slave comes to prominence.

7 Ibid. 27

8 Ibid.

138 Christianity as Protestantism

For Nietzsche Christianity is essentially Protestant. Where Catholicism has its basis in priestly hierarchy and is therefore akin to priestly Judaism, Protestantism avowedly rejects the many hierarchical facets of Catholicism and is therefore a precursor to modern democracy. The democratizing impulse of Christianity is both personified and pursued by Nietzsche’s compatriot

Martin Luther. Of Luther Nietzsche writes, “there was hidden in Luther the abysmal hatred against ‘the higher human beings’ and the dominion of the ‘higher human beings’ as conceived by the church.”9 Nietzsche speaks in the same manner when describing Jesus’s rejection of the

Jewish priestly caste: Jesus was “misunderstood,” he urges, if he was not taken to be a “revolt against the Jewish Church […] against the social hierarchy […] against caste, privilege, the order, the social form; it was a disbelief in ‘higher men’, a No uttered towards everything that was priest and theologian.”10 And though in each instance Nietzsche refers to “higher men” or

“higher human beings” in quotes we should only consider his position to be only semi-ironic.

While it is certainly not the case that Nietzsche considered Jewish and Catholic priests to be higher men in any real sense, it is also true that both stand apart from the masses as particularly pure, devout, and learned men with unique exegetical access to the holy documents of their respective faiths and thus wield considerable religious and political power. And though these priests do not maintain their positions of power by virtue of their manliness or through success in combat they do maintain the impulse for stratification and rank ordering of human beings by virtue of their spirituality. In Jesus of Nazareth and Protestantism, however, there exists a leveling impulse that is much more radical than the priestly value inversion. Nietzsche’s critique

9 Nietzsche, GS, V.358.

10 Nietzsche, A, 27.

139 of Christianity can be seen in his disdain for certain aspects of Protestant “doctrine” (namely sola

scriptura, priesthood of all believers, and sola fide) through his denunciation of Martin Luther.

Sola Scriptura

In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche famously praises Martin Luther’s translation of the

Christian Bible.11 Though Nietzsche praises the prose of Luther’s translation he makes also takes

issue with the fact that the translation was made at all. In The Gay Science Nietzsche writes of

Luther, “he tore up with honest wrath what the old spider had woven so carefully for such a long

time. He surrendered the holy books to everybody—until they finally got into the hands of the

philologists.”12 Concerning the “spider” Nietzsche refers to the Catholic hierocracy.13 And in

translating the Bible into the common vernacular, taking it out of the foreign and ancient

languages of Hebrew, Koine Greek, Aramaic, and Latin, Luther made it accessible to the

German lay audience. In effect, Luther’s translation served to democratize the Bible to a segment

of society beyond the insular world of the Church.

11 Nietzsche, Friedrich. BGE, VIII.247; and for a thorough account of the influence of Luther on

Nietzsche’s style refer to Duncan Large, "Nietzsche's Use of Biblical Language." Journal of

Nietzsche Studies, no. 22 (2001): 88-115.

12 Nietzsche, GS, V.358

13 Nietzsche often refers to the priestly type often as “spiders.” For an in-depth account of

Nietzsche’s use of the spider analogy see Alan D. Schrift, "Arachnophobe or Arachnophile?

Nietzsche and His Spiders." In A Nietzschean Bestiary: Becoming Animal beyond Docile and

Brutal, edited by Christa Davis Acampora and Ralph R. Acampora (Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield Publishers, 2004.)

140 But Luther’s translation must be understood in conjunction with his broader denunciation of Catholic hierarchy and tradition. At the Diet of Worms an assembly wherein Martin Luther was forced to repudiate or confirm his anti-papal statements put forth in The Ninety-Five Theses among other writings, upon being asked if he would “defend” or “retract” any of his work Luther replied,

Unless I am convicted of error by the testimony of Scripture or (since I put not trust in the unsupported authority of Pope or of councils, since it is plain that they have often erred and often contradicted themselves) by manifest reason I stand convinced by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s word, I cannot and will not recant anything.14

By denouncing the Pope and the ecumenical councils Luther set forth in demolishing two of the pillars of the Catholic Church: hierarchy and tradition. As Nietzsche writes, “[Luther] destroyed the concept of the ‘church’ by throwing away the faith in the inspiration of the church councils.”15 As Julian Young concisely writes, “Luther destroyed the Church […] by destroying the idea of a spiritual aristocracy.”16 But it is not simply the case that Luther destroyed spiritual aristocracy and thus the Church. We do well by returning to a previous chapter where I cited

Nietzsche in Genealogy—“All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of self-overcoming.”17 Luther is thus best understood as a manifestation of the internal

14Martin Luther, “The Diet of Worms” in Documents of the Christian Church. Edited by Henry

Bettenson and Chris Maunder. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) VIII.I.f Luther’s Final

Answer

15 Nietzsche,GS, V.358.

16 Julian Young, Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2006.) 99

17 Nietzsche, GM, III.27

141 inconsistencies of the “spiritual aristocracy,” that is, as the “overcoming” of the Catholic Church.

If Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, tells us “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the

earth” and in Romans Paul tells us

Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God

then by what special right does the priest have to rule over the masses?18 Luther, by focusing on the scripture, uses the priest’s own means of attaining power against him—the very text that those like Paul have created to lord over Christendom.

Thus the shift towards Scripture is important in two distinct ways. First, any tradition or hierarchical position that exists outside of Scripture or contrary to scripture has no basis and thus no authority. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, in shifting from tradition and hierarchy to the fundamentality of Scripture, Luther opens the Church to all those who have access to scripture. This paired with Luther’s translation of the Bible into common German had the effect of democratizing and individualizing the Christian religious experience. Luther effectively replaces the Church-qua-institution with the Church as individual conscience; For since Luther’s disruption anyone who could read is able to have a personal relationship to the central source of the Christian Faith.

Luther’s focus on Scripture taken together with his translation of the Bible was an affront to priestly power. In holding Scripture above the Pope and the councils and then translating said

Scripture into the common tongue Luther made the priest obsolete. For in having no formal authority above Scripture or sole access to that Scripture the priest could no longer exclusively

18 Matt. 5:5; Rom. 3:23-25

142 perform the meaningful functions of maintaining tradition and serving as a conduit between the

people and Scripture. And with the decline of the priest’s religious authority so came a decline in

his political authority that was couched in his “essential” function as intermediary between the

people and God.

The Priesthood of All Believers

In undermining the Pope and the councils by way of scripture and translating the Bible

into a common language Luther made possible the Universal Priesthood. In his Appeal to the

German Nobility Luther challenges the bifurcation between the holy men of the Church as the

“spiritual estate” and that of all others as the “temporal estate,” stating on the contrary that “all

Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of

office.”19 He goes on to write, emphasizing the universality of the priesthood,

As for the unction by a pope or a bishop, tonsure, ordination, consecration, and clothes differing from those of the laymen—all this may make a hypocrite or an anointed puppet, but never a Christian or spiritual man. Thus we are all consecrated as priests by baptism as St. Peter says.20

Further, in his De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium (Prelude to the Babylonian

Captivity of the Church) Luther challenges the authority of the Catholic hierarchy writing that the priests “have no right to exercise power over us (ius imperii, in what has not been committed to them) except insofar as we may have granted it to them”; he goes on to reason, citing 1 Peter

2, “‘You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom.’ In this way we are all priests,

19 Luther, “The Appeal to the German Nobility,” VIII.I.e.1,

20 Ibid. Italics added.

143 as many of us are Christians.”21 But for Nietzsche the mantra “Everyone his own priest!” reveals

Luther’s true decadence.22

Luther, like Jesus and Socrates, is “rabble.” The importance of correct classification

cannot be over stated for the priest-type and the slave-type can be easily conflated. The priest

serves in the Church as a spiritual nobleman—wherein the Church is “a structure for ruling that

secures the highest rank for the more spiritual human beings.”23 The slave, on the other hand, is

utterly common with no position of rank. Luther, Nietzsche writes, “was a man of the common

people who lacked everything that one might inherit from a ruling class”24; likewise “Socrates

was rabble”25 whose dialectics was the “defeat of a nobler taste,”26 and Christ was put to death on the Cross, “which was in general reserved for the canaille alone.”27 In classifying each of

these great figures, not as members of a noble spiritual authority but as rabble, Nietzsche give the

reader a hint to the commonalities that lie beneath their commonness.

In each case we see a deep drive for freedom. Through his dialectics Socrates negates

21 Martin Luther, De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium, WA 6564.6-14; L W 36:112-

113 in Nagel, Norman. "Luther and the Priesthood of All Believers." Concordia Theological

Quarterly 61, no. 4 (October 1997): 277-98.

22 Nietzsche, GS, V.358.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid

25 Nietzsche, TI, “The problem of Socrates,” 3.

26 Ibid. 5

27 Nietzsche, A, 40.

144 Greek nobility by demanding that they “give reasons” for their beliefs.28 The effect of Socrates’

negation is to undermine the authority of the Greek nobility by challenging their instinctual and

conventional conceptions of justice, piety, and the good. His dialectics is purely negative, as

Nietzsche writes, “The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to demonstrate that he is not an idiot

[…] The dialectician devitalizes his opponent’s intellect”—the opponent is interrogated and

made to see the inconsistencies that underpin his beliefs but unlike Plato, Socrates offers nothing

in return.29 Socrates seeks the destruction of Greek convention as a means to freedom.

Where Socrates seeks freedom from the conventions of Greek nobility Jesus seeks

freedom from reality. Jesus, because of his deep capacity for suffering and an aversion to reality,

such that he can no longer resist persecution, takes “flight into the ‘ungraspable,’ into the

‘inconceivable’ ” and transforms the Church from a social institution to a “home in a world

undisturbed by reality of any kind, a merely ‘inner’ world, a ‘real’ world, an ‘eternal’ world.”30

“The ‘Kingdom of Heaven’” under Christ as redeemer becomes “a condition of the heart,” where internally the mind recedes so as to feel or experience itself free from outside influence and externally the body stands defiant through a lack of resistance.31 Christianity under the

psychology of the redeemer is a passive-aggression that negates those who seek to do harm by

refusing to give them the satisfaction of one’s hatred and resistance.32 Jesus challenges the noble

conception of a warrior king who resists even fate by turning this conception on its head. Jesus is

28 Nietzsche, TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 5.

29 Ibid. “The Problem of Socrates,” 7.

30 Nietzsche, A, 29-30.

31 Ibid. 34

32 Ibid. 34-35

145 not merely king but “King of kings,” or God, yet contrary to the noble understanding of kingship

Jesus does not resist in the face of humiliation, torture, and execution. Nietzsche writes, “He does not resist, he does not defend his rights, he takes no steps to avert the worst that can happen to him—more, he provokes it….And he entreats, he suffers, he loves with those, in those who are doing evil to him.”33 And by refusing to act as a counter force he serves as an empty vessel upon which his aggressors act, thereby robbing their acts of aggression any satisfactory resistance.

Further, in allowing his flesh to be mortified he declares reality to be inconsequential. Thus

Jesus’s pacifism has the dual purpose of freeing himself from the influence of the world and undermining those who do him harm.

The revolution of Jesus Christ is a revolution in the character of nobility. Where once the noble was associated with traits of force, honor, action and domination Jesus upends these traits, taking love, suffering, forgiveness and passivity and turning them into Kingly traits. He becomes the King of grace who loves all despite their complicity in his suffering thereby shifting the Kingly archetype from the powerful and cruel to the loving sufferer thus blunting the power of the ambitious who would emulate him.

Luther too seeks freedom—puzzlingly, from the very Church that considers itself to be the only legitimate heir to Christ and his apostles, that is, the Roman Catholic Church. The

European spirit owes “its thirst for independence, its faith in a right to liberty, its ‘naturalness,’” to the “Lutheran Reformation.”34 Nietzsche holds the fairly mainstream Protestant view that the

Catholic Church, with its hierarchy and pomp, is not the legitimate heir to Christ and the

Apostles but is a falling away from Christ and the Church. But, while Nietzsche does hold the

33 Ibid. 35

34 Nietzsche, GS, V.358.

146 view that the Lutheran Reformation stands closer to the true Spirit of Christianity than does

Catholicism he does not consider this to be a positive occasion. For Nietzsche the Catholic

Church of the Renaissance had come to be a radically anti-Christian institution, an “attack at the

decisive point, in the very seat of Christianity,” which set “noble values on the throne.”35 With

“Cesare Borgia as Pope [….] Christianity would thereby have been abolished!”36 But alas, “A

German monk, Luther, went to Rome” and “fulminated in Rome against the Renaissance.”37 In

Luther Nietzsche sees a return to the same ignoble impulse to freedom that was manifested a

millennium and a half before in Jesus of Nazareth. Luther’s Reformation was a restoration of the

slavish Christianity over a Catholic Church that had become manifestly unchristian, which is to

say noble in the manner of ancient Greece and Rome.

The freedom sought by the likes of Socrates, Jesus, and Luther is of a different character

altogether than noble freedom. The freedom of nobility is manifested as discipline and manners

among peers coupled with an utter lack of constraint against those who fall outside of one’s

class.38 Noble freedom is freedom to express one’s animal nature fully and without regard for

consequence. One the other hand, the freedom of the slave is always a freedom from, which is to

say freedom from the abuses, persecution, and oppression of the masters. Of Jesus Nietzsche

writes, “One sees what came to an end with the death on the Cross: a new, an absolutely primary

beginning to a Buddhistic peace movement.”39 Slavish freedom is thus predicated on a reigning

35 Nietzsche, A, 61.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Nietzsche, GM, I.11.

39 Nietzsche, A, 42.

147 in of the master’s aggression, it is freedom as security and peace. The nobleman, however, has

no need for freedom as it is understood by the slave. He embraces fate because he is most often

fate’s beneficiary. And when fate does challenge him, in the form of a worthy opponent, he

embraces war and battle as an opportunity to prove himself in contest such as the Greek agon.40

That Luther is closer to Jesus than is the Catholic Church is, for Nietzsche, a reason to

reject Luther. But this is not to say that Luther and Jesus bear the hallmark trait of Christianity,

that is, of ressentiment. For both Luther and Jesus are innocents. Nietzsche, arguing against

Ernest Renan’s characterization of Jesus as “genius” and “hero,” considers the word “idiot” to be

more appropriate.41 Similarly, of Luther, Nietzsche writes, “He is innocent of everything; he did

not know what he was doing.”42 Conversely, Paul is the “greatest of all apostles of revenge.”43 It is in Paul that the ressentiment of Christianity finds its inception.

Sola Fide

Sola Fide, the Protestant doctrine that man is saved by grace through faith alone, has its biblical roots largely in the teachings of Paul. In his epistles Paul gives several iterations of the same theme, justifying faith over works and the Law of the Torah, as in Romans: “therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law,” and “Therefore being

40 Nietzsche’s account of ancient Greek agon (ἀγών), or contest, can be found in Friedrich

Nietzsche, "Homer's Contest." In On the Genealogy of Morality edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson,

translated by Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.)

41 Nietzsche, A, 29.

42 Nietzsche, GS, V.358.

43 Nietzsche, A, 45.

148 justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”; Galatians:

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith”; and Ephesians: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”44 Walter Kaufman, in his classic

Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, rightly declares Nietzsche’s disdain for Paul— based partially on the doctrine of sola fide—but his focus on “ ‘faith’ as that which modern man professes hypocritically without having a thought of doing anything about it” oversells

Nietzsche’s concern with the lack of action inherent in the doctrine of sola fide and his concern with hypocrisy.45 While it is true, as theologian Rubén Rosario Rodríguez argues, that Nietzsche

“aims his venom at the priestly architects of the Christian religion who replace Christ-like praxis with ‘faith,’” he does not do so for the reason that Kaufman argues: that faith is less demanding than praxis.46 The issue with the doctrine of faith alone is not that it makes one fall prey to hypocrisy when one cannot act in accordance with their beliefs, rather, the problem is that faith is torturous, that is, faith is more difficult, and thus, crueler than law and the regulation of acts.

When one finds oneself lacking in faith he cannot will himself to believe no matter how hard he tries. Where one can act without faith and thus fulfill the law one cannot have faith without belief.

44 Rom. 3:28, 5:1; Gal 2:24; Eph. 2:8-9

45 Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1974.) 343

46 Rubén Rosario Rodriguez, "Nietzsche's Critique of Religion: A Liberationist

Perspective." Theological Studies 75, no. 4 (2014): 863-89. 876

149 Faith, therefore, subjects mankind to a kind of terror. Because one cannot will one’s faith, if one doubts or is lacking in faith he finds himself in an impossible situation: he must will belief—will faith—or be subjected to the torments of hell. But why is this terror necessary?

According to Nietzsche “Paul understood the need for the lie, for ‘faith’” in that “Paul wants to confound the ‘wisdom of the world.’”47 The “wisdom of the world,” or science, is a product of

“[h]appiness, for leisure gives room for thought.”48 Faith, and the guilt and fear imposed by a lack of faith or an imperfect faith, which is to say all faith, fills one’s time and one’s mind with torturous thoughts. Man has neither the leisure nor the requisite mental space to think when he is encumbered by the fear and guilt inherent in faith. In a doctrine of faith there is no place to go for absolution because one’s conscience and knowledge of oneself is their only guide. Do I believe? Am I saved? Do I believe enough to be saved? No one else can answer these questions for faith is utterly private. Thus the individual is left to question his own faith and motivations with no confirmation other than his own, always questionable, understanding of his own motivations and faith.

The problem with faith is not, as Kaufmann believes, that faith is not difficult enough, but rather that it is too difficult and too torturous psychologically. Faith as it is presented by Paul is a lever of social control whereby life is devitalized through fear and guilt. Humanity’s leisure and therefore its knowledge and power is stymied by the constant badgering of conscience. Thus the character of Jesus and Paul are utterly different. Jesus, a man of the rabble, sought peace by receding from the world. He sought the domestication of man as a means to peace. Paul, a man of “rabbinical impudence,” creates a “priestly tyranny,” “forms herds,”” and “tyrannizes over

47 Nietzsche, A, 47

48 Ibid. 48

150 masses.”49 Paul, the priestly character, thus seeks the domestication of humanity with aims at dominating the herd.

Christianity and the Modern Age

So, what are we to make of Nietzsche’s understanding of Christianity considering his seeming ambivalence towards Jesus and his account of a Christianity that is substantively different in distinct times and places? First, it may be fitting to drop the term “ambivalent” altogether when describing Nietzsche’s attitude towards Jesus. It is simply not the case, as

Kaufmann argues, that Nietzsche had “reverence” for Jesus the man while repudiating Jesus as

Christ, which is to say, Jesus as deified by the early Church and all subsequent iterations of

Christianity.50 This sentiment is echoed by Hazelton who writes of Nietzsche’s “essentially liberal distinction […] between Jesus and Christianity.”51 The mistake that Kaufmann and

Hazelton make is conflating Nietzsche’s less severe disdain for Jesus as a man for reverence.

This is an easy mistake, especially considering that Nietzsche’s critique of Jesus the man is followed by his severe critique of the early Church and Paul. Paul, a priestly man, is thus “the most dangerous kind of parasite, the actual poison spider of life.”52 By comparison, Nietzsche’s critique of Jesus as man does look like praise! But, for Nietzsche, Jesus is still an “idiot,” a “holy anarchist,” and rabble—hardly the reverence that suggested by Kaufmann and Hazelton.

49 Nietzsche, A, 41-42

50 Kaufmann, Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 342

51 Roger Hazelton, "Was Nietzsche an Anti-Christian?" The Journal of Religion 22, no. 1

(1942): 63-88. 66

52 Nietzsche, A, 38

151 The use of the term “idiot” to describe Jesus brings to mind Dostoyevsky’s use of the

term in The Idiot. In “Nietzsche’s Jesus” Ronald Carson draws our attention to the supposed link

between Nietzsche’s Jesus-as-man as given in The Antichrist and Prince Myshkin in

Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Without delving too far into the specifics, Carson states that the

evidence linking Nietzsche’s Jesus to Dostoyevsky’s Myshkin is “overwhelmingly

circumstantial.”53 The circumstantial evidence is indeed overwhelming but not conclusive

because we still do not know, despite Nietzsche’s claims of brotherhood with Dostoyevsky and

the translation of The Idiot into French during Nietzsche lifetime, if Nietzsche ever read The

Idiot, nor do we know if in the case that Nietzsche did read The Idiot if he understood it in the

same way as Dostoyevsky.54 Carson’s claim seems to be that Nietzsche’s Jesus and

Dostoyevsky’s Myshkin can both be understood to have both engaged a political world with

profoundly unpolitical acts; paradoxically, to be profoundly unpolitical in a political society,

which is to say to elevate the private in the context of a political society, is to become political in

the sense that one challenges the prevailing mode of existence within the given society,

especially once the private individual gains followers.55 This point is strong and strengthens the

link between Jesus and Socrates however tenuous the connection between Nietzsche and

Dostoyevsky. Jesus was political to the extent that his privatization and abstraction of life—like

Socrates’ retreat into philosophy—endangered the prevailing politics of his time.

The best way to grasp Nietzsche’s take on Jesus, Paul, and the early Church is to understand his categories. Jesus, a man of the rabble and therefore a slavish man, stood against

53 Carson, Ronald A. "Nietzsche’s Jesus." CrossCurrents 21, no. 1 (1971): 39-52. 44

54 Ibid. 43-44

55 Ibid. 47

152 the priestly caste of the Jewish people. He sought power through leveling and a withdrawal from political life, but he did so innocently, which is to say without intent to deceive. Jesus sought equality for himself and all others. Paul’s will to power, however, expresses itself through his guile. Thus, Nietzsche’s attack on Paul does not parallel his attack on Socrates, as Christa Davis

Acampora argues.56 For however clever Socrates is he is rabble, and not of a priestly sort like

Paul.57 Paul sought not equality and freedom as security, but a herd to lord over, which is to say, equality for all but the priestly caste who would maintain privilege and status. He used Jesus, a great democratizer, as a means to attain power. Jesus was used by Paul as a tool for engendering guilt and bad conscience—the devitalizing emotions that would allow him and those like him to stand apart as priestly rulers.

Priestly rule of Christianity long remained the status quo until two distinct yet equally monumental forces coalesced. Martin Luther and the Renaissance both sought to remove the priest from the head of the Church. With the Papacy subject to individuals like Cesare Borgia

Nietzsche considered the possibility of a noble destruction of Christianity from within.58 With the Renaissance influence alive inside the Catholic Church Nietzsche believed that “the old corruption, the peccatum originale, Christianity no longer sat on the Papal throne! Life sat there instead!”59 But Luther, Nietzsche contends, put an end to the noble destruction of the Christian

Church through his own attack against the Catholic Church. The reformation and split between

56 Christa Davis Acampora, Contesting Nietzsche. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.) 111

58 Nietzsche, A, 61

59 Ibid.

153 Protestantism and Catholicism revived Christianity out of its death throes by wresting the throne

away from the noble impulse that resided there during the Renaissance.

Through Luther two forces from the history of Christianity have come together: the

innocent democratization and internalization of Jesus and the not-so-innocent faith of Paul. The

result of this combination is the “uncleanest kind of Christianity there is, the most incurable kind,

the kind hardest to refute, Protestantism.”60 Protestantism is marked by a democratization of

doctrine where individual conscience plays the decisive role. The result of Protestantism is the

creation of a petty egoism wherein even the most mediocre consider their particular mental life

to be spiritually significant. This petty egoism is manifested most clearly in the belief in the

immortality of the soul. Concerning the immortality of the soul Nietzsche writes,

The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct[…] What is the point of public spirit, what is the point of gratitude for one’s descent and one’s forefathers, what is the point of co-operation, trust, of furthering and keeping in view the general welfare? So many ‘temptations’, so many diversions from ‘right road’—‘one thing is needful’…. That, as an ‘immortal soul’, everyone is equal to everybody else, that in the totality of beings the ‘salvation’ of every single one is permitted to claim to be of everlasting moment, that little bigots and three-quarters madmen are permitted to imagine that for their sakes the laws of nature are continually being broken—such raising of every sort of egoism to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt[…] ‘Salvation of the soul’—in plain words: ‘The world revolves around me’ 61

Jesus and Paul undermine the status of the cult as it was understood in Rome and the Greek city- states by privatizing not only the practice of religion but the meaning of religion. Where the cult was previously meant to foster public spiritedness, what began with Jesus’s privatization and internalization of life—a life to be emulated—is transformed into a deified prescription by Paul.

Paul takes Jesus’s internalization of life and makes Jesus the object of that internalization—faith

60 Ibid.

61 Nietzsche, A, 43

154 in Jesus’s resurrection and divinity, rather than the emulation of his life so as to achieve personal peace, becomes the purpose of Christianity. Thus Jesus becomes the holy Christ. Morality, going forward, is faith in Christ along with the guilt and bad conscience that this faith implies.

Truth and the Collapse of Christianity62

Since its inception Christianity has been concerned with Truth. But to understand

Christian Truth it is fitting to briefly look at the Greek conception of truth as understood by

Nietzsche. Early in Genealogy Nietzsche discusses the noble Greek conception of truth stating,

“The root of the word coined for this, ethlos, signifies one who is, who possesses reality, who is actual, who is true; then with a subjective turn, the true as the truthful.”63 Within the noble Greek conception of truth is contained “being.” To be what one is is to wish that things not be otherwise and not have to wait until redemption or death to be; truth, in the noble Greek sense, is an indication or manifestation of power. The true one is one who does not wish other worlds or realities but one who may live as he does in accordance with the great privileges he has been afforded.

Christianity, because it is a slave morality, cannot be content with reality because it has proven to be hostile and oppressive to the slave. Thus reality must be downgraded as “mere” corporeality, “perception,” or “phenomena.” Jesus, as mentioned above, recedes to a world of inner Truth—a world unencumbered by the hostility of reality. Paul, in contrast to the noble

Greek who is, furthers Jesus’s flight from the world by deifying Jesus, positing immortality of the soul, and making faith and grace the definitive states of salvation. As such, man in his

62 Refer back to Chapter II to the discussion of “is,” “truth,” and master morality

63 Nietzsche, GM, I.5

155 material form is found lacking—an incomplete individual whose bodily form constantly tempts

him to evil. Luther fought back against a Catholic Church, which had sought to invigorate itself

with earthly glory, by revitalizing and democratizing the faith doctrine of Paul. Thus Jesus the

man, Paul, and Luther each further an abstract conception of Truth wherein the body and public

life are denigrated by the otherworldly.

But by divinizing Truth they sow the seeds of Christianity’s collapse. For once the will to

Truth is released it turns back on Christianity to negate its seemingly impossible claims. As I argued in the first chapter, Nietzsche contends that science has its roots in Christianity’s will to

Truth. As he writes in The Gay Science, “it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests.”64 The substance of this metaphysical faith is made clear in a later passage:

You see what it was that really triumphed over the Christian god: Christian morality itself, the concept of truthfulness that was understood ever more rigorously, the father confessor’s refinement of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated into a scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price65

Nietzsche goes on to quote this very passage in Genealogy where he seeks the answer to the

question, “What, in all strictness, has really conquered the Christian God?”66 Christianity

overcomes itself when it takes Paul’s anti-science—his negation of the world via faith, bad conscience, and guilt—to its natural conclusion. Paul’s divinization of the Truth (“I say the truth in Christ”; “speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ”) is refined and strengthened such that even the claims of Christianity are not

64 Nietzsche, GS, V.344

65 Ibid. V.357

66 Nietzsche, GM, III.27

156 beyond reproach.67

Respectively, modern science and politics begin with Christianity’s divinization of truth and the democratization of religious experience. But with this shift to secularity the roots of the modern era are forgotten such that science and liberalism are considered to be separate from, or in some cases hostile to, the Christianity that preceded it. Modern science acted as a brushfire, clearing out the metaphysical claims of religion, specifically Christianity, thus making way for the “purely rational” politics of liberalism. But of course Nietzsche could not let the claims of an

“empirical” or “rational” politics go unchecked. For if the science that cleared the way for liberalism was itself a product of the will to Truth then it follows that a critique of the will to

Truth is also, however indirectly, a critique of liberalism. In the next and final chapter of this dissertation I consider Nietzsche’s critique liberalism as an extended critique of Truth. I then consider the future beyond liberalism in the Übermensch and the last man as well as the possibility that Nietzsche’s critique of Truth is itself yet another radicalization of Christianity’s will to Truth.

67 Rom. 9:1; Eph. 4:15

157 CHAPTER VI

LIBERALISM, THE LAST MAN, AND THE ÜBERMENSCH

Liberalism, like all previous “overcomings” given in Nietzsche’s history, comes about when an internal inconsistency of a mode of power is brought to light. Where the priest could not maintain hierarchy given his idealization of the “wretched,” Christianity could not maintain its dogma in light of the Christian idealization of Truth. Christianity cedes way to modern science

and liberalism as it comes to terms with the mythological character of its dogma. What remains

within its modern successors, however, is Christian morality. And Nietzsche’s goal, again is to

point to the new set of inconsistencies that come about when modern science and liberalism

secularize Christianity, thus positing the possibility of two future “overcomings,” the

Übermensch and the last man.

The purgative effects of modern science, which cleared the way for the subjectivism of political liberalism, thus can only be understood in light of Nietzsche’s critique of Truth. And though modern science undermined Christianity it is not because science is absolutely distinct from Christianity, but because in science the form of Christianity (doctrine and metaphysics) is negated by its spirit (the slavish drive to freedom inherent in the will to Truth).68 Nietzsche’s

68 Hegelian themes pervade Nietzsche’s work. And though I cannot go on at length concerning

the connection between Nietzsche and Hegel, Katrina Mitcheson, Nietzsche, Truth and

Transformation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.) rightly understands the continuity between the two

great thinkers: “This understating of overcoming, as retaining something with a new meaning, is

supported by Nietzsche’s association of overcoming with self-sublation [Selbtsaufhebung].

Nietzsche makes this association in On the Genealogy of Morality: ‘all great things bring about

158 critique of truth can be found, most prominently, in three places: section 344 of The Gay Science,

the section called “How the ‘Real world’ at last Became a Myth” in Twilight of the Idols, and the

concluding sections of chapter III of On the Genealogy of Morals.

The substance of Nietzsche’s critique of Truth is the questioning of the value of Truth.

Concerning the “unconditional will to truth,” Nietzsche asks two questions: “why not allow

oneself to be deceived?” and “why not deceive?”69 Regarding the first question (“why not allow oneself to be deceived?”) Nietzsche posits a possible answer: “because one assumes it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived. In this sense, science would be a long-range prudence, a caution, a utility.”70 Of course, though, this presumes that knowledge, rather than self-deception, is a condition of utility. But this is certainly not the case argues Nietzsche, because lies, self-deception, and even ignorance are not a priori disadvantageous and may actually be advantageous. If there is even a grain of truth to the idea that myth has served a vital

their own demise through an act of self-sublation [Selbtsaufhebung]: that is the law of life, the

law of necessary ‘self-overcoming’ [Selbtsüberwindung] in the essence of life (GM III.27).’ As a

former philologist, Nietzsche’s use of terminology is never casual, and he could not have used

Selbtsaufhebung without awareness that it carried the connotation of Hegel’s Aufhebung: ’ ‘To

sublate’ [Aufhebung] has a twofold meaning in the language: on the one hand it means to

preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to […] what is

sublated is at the same time preserved; it has only lost its immediacy but is not on that account

annihilated’” 3 (for the definition of Aufhebung Mitcheson refers to Hegel’s Wissenschaft der

Logik)

69 Nietzsche, GS, V.344

70 Ibid.

159 function in the prosperity of community by bolstering public spirit or that self-deception has

allowed individuals to maintain their contentedness in the face of existential quandaries, then it

cannot be argued that Truth is of unqualified utility.

Conversely, the second question (“why not deceive?”) cannot be answered with an appeal

to utility because deception can quite obviously be beneficial to the deceiver. Thus, Nietzsche

concludes that the will to truth is not a product of utility but “must have originated in spite of the

fact that the disutility and dangerousness of the ‘the will to truth,’ of ‘truth at any price’ is proved

to it constantly.”71 For Nietzsche it is still a “metaphysical faith” that lights the fire of Truth, “the

flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith was also the faith of Plato,

that God is the truth, that truth is divine.”72 But what does it mean for Truth now that we know

that modern science has its roots in a metaphysical faith that has permeated history from at least

the time of Plato? Is the status of truth therefore undone? Is Truth no longer true? While one could argue that Truth is utterly undermined by Nietzsche’s genealogical account of its origins in slave morality and Christianity, but to do so misses the point.

Nietzsche’s critique, and the reason why he focuses on the faith in Truth, is not that there is no truth but that there is no deliverance in Truth. The element of Christianity inherent in modern science is not the explicit content of Christianity, which is to say its truth claims concerning metaphysical dogmas such as immortality of the soul and The Resurrection. Rather,

it is the implicit belief in the emancipatory nature of Truth. In the final section of Genealogy

Nietzsche writes, “The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

160 over mankind so far—and the ascetic ideal offered man meaning!”73 The ascetic ideal, which is woven into the fabric of Christianity, provided man meaning in the denunciation of the material world. But when the dogmas of Christianity were toppled by the strict truth standards of modern science so too was the meaning provided by the ascetic ideal. More importantly, in undermining

Christianity, and thus the divine emancipatory nature of Truth, science undermines its own motivation. If the knowledge gained through science is neither divine nor of obvious utility, that is, if knowledge is only of mere facts of the world then by what virtue does it provide meaning?

Put succinctly, why science?

Nietzsche’s claim, bringing to mind Hume’s Is-Ought distinction, is that modern science has sought to demarcate facts about the world from values that people hold. Modern science, and thus the truth gained through its practice, cannot, then, speak to issues concerning human meaning. Where the science of say, Aristotle, was explicitly tied to function or end (telos), modern science and its practitioners have sought to explain the world independent of purpose.

And this is for Nietzsche just an extension of the ascetic ideal, which is to say, “a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental presuppositions of life; but it is and remains a will! And, to repeat in conclusion what I said at the beginning: man would rather will nothingness than not will”74 That science cannot provide guidance is evidence of its otherworldly character, but this statement—the final statement of Genealogy—is actually brimming with hope. For Nietzsche concedes that the very will to nothingness is nonetheless a will, and even though it is directed against life it is still an indication of life.

73 Nietzsche, GM, III.28

74 Ibid.

161 For Nietzsche the most horrific outcome possible is not that man wills nothingness, but rather that man has no will. Modern science brings about this possibility because in detaching facts from values the concept “value” is rendered impotent. This is the same problem of the last man discussed in chapter III of this dissertation—that because human beings consider valuation as inextricably linked to morality, when morality is undermined we no longer believe in the possibility of meaningful valuation. In previous modes of valuation, like Christianity and

Aristotelian teleology, facts about the world could tell us what to value—facts and values were linked under the designation “morality.” But modern science, and its skepticism that the ought can be derived from the is, breaks the chain between the world and human meaning. Phrased differently, there is truth in facts but no truth in the relationship of facts to meaning. The is-ought distinction is therefore true; But, then again, Nietzsche asks, what is the value of truth?

If the last man personifies the death of value in light of the fact-value distinction, then the Übermensch is the rebirth of value in the light of this death. Laurence Lampert argues, contrary to the view that the Übermensch has any long standing meaning in Nietzsche’s works, that “one of the greatest single causes of the misinterpretation of Nietzsche’s teaching is the failure to see that the clearly provisional teaching of the superman is rendered obsolete by the clearly definitive teaching on eternal return” and that “The superman, if the word can still be used, is the one who has brought the teaching of eternal return.”75 Lampert is right to be wary of the rarely mentioned Übermensch. However, Lampert does not make a strong enough case to dismiss it as only provisional. Lampert argues, “Zarathustra makes clear that the teaching on eternal return opposes any teaching on the linearity of time that points toward some future

75 Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche's Teaching, 258

162 eschatological fulfillment of time”76 But it is not the case that the Übermensch is to be understood as some sort of “end of history,” rather, it is in the last man that this view is contained. That the Übermensch is humanity’s goal does not mean that once achieved it will not posit further goals. The eternal return, as Lampert argues, is an “affirmation that lets beings be what they are”; Zarathustra, therefore “wills the eternal return of beings not grounding in anything more grave than themselves. It refuses revenge on beings, or it refuses to will that they be other than they are.”77 But the eternal return only undermines the Übermensch if the

Übermensch is understood as final or ultimate. That the Übermensch is removed from both

Zarathustra’s public teaching and his teachings to his disciples is not evidence that the

Übermensch is only provisional, but rather, that the Übermensch is not a subject of education.

The Übermensch does not teach the eternal recurrence nor can Zarathustra teach anyone to be the

Übermensch. Rather, the Übermensch and the eternal recurrence are two manifestations of the same spirit. The Übermensch comes about not by a teaching but through history as a reinvigoration of value in the face of the meaninglessness prompted by modern science. The

Übermensch is not simply the one who recognizes nihilism at the heart of modern science—it is, of course, Nietzsche who recognizes this in his critique of truth—but is the one who actualizes the restoration of meaning to value by living a life that is a striving toward—“to realize in oneself the eternal joy of becoming.”78 Thus, if the eternal return is “affirmation of being what one is,” and “being” is essentially “becoming,” then eternal return can be understood as the confirmation of becoming. Man is essentially a becoming who posits goals not because he

76 Ibid. 257-258

77 Ibid. 255

78Nietzsche, TI, “What I Owe the Ancients,” 5

163 wishes to bronze himself into a permanent object of the future but because the future prompts

him to strive in the present. And the Übermensch is he who fulfills this striving, becoming or the

eternal return, against the stagnant self-satisfaction of modernity.

Science and Modern Liberalism

Modern science does not pave the way for liberalism by any particular empirical claim

but rather by its philosophical foundations in the Is-Ought distinction. Though commonly

contributed to Hume (in A Treatise of Human Nature) the modern iteration of the Is-Ought

problem has implicit roots present in the work of Locke—and perhaps even Bacon, Hobbes, and

Machiavelli. Though Locke does believe that “Reason, which is the [Law of Nature], teaches all

Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm

another in his Life, Health, Liberty, of Possession,”79 this reason is built upon the reciprocity of

utility extending from any one individual’s self-interest and not from a purpose driving telos.

Locke’s morality, is thus individualistic and instrumental—do no harm such that you can trust

that no harm will be done to you. Where for Locke reason is predicated on the individual, for

those like Plato and Aristotle reason is rooted in the function of a broader cosmology. Locke, in

divorcing the individual from a larger cosmological picture, implicitly (which is to say

esoterically) dissociates man from any moral criteria outside of the wellbeing of individuals.

Thus the reason of Locke is of a very different character than the reason of those like Plato and

Aristotle as well as the Christian philosophers and theologians.

79 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1993). II.II.6

164 Locke’s individualism, and indeed the individualism that pervades all of modernity, has

its roots in Christianity. As I argued in the previous chapter, Nietzsche believed individualism

flows from the wellspring of Christianity, beginning first with Jesus’s withdrawal from the world

and individualization of religious experience, then Paul’s prescriptive relationship between the

individual and Christ, and lastly Luther’s denunciation of hierarchy, elevation of individual faith,

and unconcealment of scripture. Modernity uncritically absorbs Christianity’s understanding of

humanity as a sea of individuals while forgetting those things, like the transcendence of a

personal relationship to Christ, that make this individualism coherent. Thus modernity seeks

other foundations for its morality like utility or self-interest.

In deriving morality, not from man’s relation to the universe, but from individual welfare

narrowly construed as self-interest, the modern scientific project, and Locke as per the above

example, paved the way for Hume’s is-ought distinction. For the is-ought distinction takes for

granted the human being as an atomized individual rather than as a constituent part of a

functioning whole. For if the human being is viewed as a constituent part, rather than a distinct

individual, then there is little difficulty in deriving the ought of the individual from his function

within the greater whole. It is only when human beings are atomized and thus separated from a

greater context, as in the case of the modern scientific understanding, that function loses all

meaning.

The dominant feature of modern liberalism is its provisional nature. Liberalism is always

provisional because it must be pluralistic in the most superficial of senses. And though some

have argued that Liberalism cannot—while maintaining any consistency—be pluralistic, 80 it is

80 See, for example, John Kekes, "The Incompatibility of Liberalism and Pluralism." American

Philosophical Quarterly29, no. 2 (1992): 141-51.

165 certainly the case that to ensure the freedom that it seeks to ensure, liberalism must not take an absolutist stance on certain moral and religious issues that liberal societies have relegated to the

“private sphere.” Put briefly, liberalism allows for individual belief and practice within the narrow context of the home; as Allan Bloom writes concerning modernity, “Liberal society guarantees the right to privacy, even when nobody wants to keep anything private. A de facto equality among all preferences and practices is declared in order to avoid criticism and comparison.”81 This “de facto equality” of preference is part and parcel to the atomization of individuals in modernity and the related rise of the is-ought distinction wherein no one’s mere

“preference” has any absolute moral weight. Thus the is-ought distinction and liberalism are opposite sides to the same coin that proffers a subjectivity of value that ultimately undermines value.

Nietzsche rarely mentions liberalism by name. And indeed, when he does mention liberalism it is in fleeting glimpses, as in Twilight of the Idols where he writes,

To put up with men, to keep open house in one’s heart—this is liberal, but no more than liberal. One knows hearts which are capable of noble hospitality, which have curtained windows and closed shutters, they keep their best rooms empty. Why do they so?— because they await guests with whom one does not have to ‘put up’…82

Nietzsche’s point here, describing the liberal attitude versus a noble attitude, echoes the point above: that in liberalism one tolerates because one’s own preference is merely one preference among many, deserving neither special accommodation nor enforcement. Compare this to the noble who does not “put up” with those whose company he does not enjoy. The nobleman does

81 Allan Bloom, "The Ladder of Love." In Love and Friendship. (New York: Simon & Schuster,

1993.) 434

82 Nietzsche, TI, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 25.

166 not fall into the value relativism of the liberal because he vaunts himself and his values as affirmation of his character. He does not, therefore, merely “tolerate” but is actively hostile to those things that actively challenge him and is indifferent to those of little concern.

The individualism of modern liberalism is hollow because it denies one the precedence of his values over others’. The takeaway from Nietzsche’s critique is that conviction, and therefore affirmation, are destroyed by the value relativism of liberalism. Hence the value relativism of liberalism is essentially nihilistic because it robs man of meaning and motivation; it leaves man aimless and without even the purpose of created values.

War: Liberalism’s Saving Grace?

Liberalism, however, might not necessarily be deficient of meaning. Of liberal institutions Nietzsche writes, “As long as they are still being fought for, these same institutions produce quite different effects; they then in fact promote freedom mightily,” perhaps liberalism can be saved? Nietzsche goes on to write in the next sentence, “Viewed more closely, it is war which produces these effects, war for liberal institutions which as war permits the illiberal instincts to endure” and finally, “The nations that were worth something, which became something, never became so under liberal institutions.”83 Nietzsche argues two points, first that liberal institutions can further freedom only to the extent that they engage in war for them and, second, that there has not been a great liberal nation. On its face Nietzsche seems to have profound objections to the possibility of liberalism promoting freedom or nobility. Despite

Nietzsche’s overt illiberalism Béla Egyed argues that Nietzsche does in fact maintain an “anti-

83 Nietzche, TI, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 38.

167 democratic liberalism.”84 Nietzschean liberalism, Egyed argues, would, “capture the true spirit of liberalism, one that advocates a true autonomy, one that welcomes contest, and one that is more interested in the process of liberation than in its achievements.”85 Along the same confounding lines, Donovan Miyasaki argues for a “noble Nietzschean form of egalitarianism,” which would,

“be a strong, non-formal kind, promoting general proportionality of power, grounded in a relative equality of welfare, resources, and capabilities.”86 Miyasaki’s purpose, much like

Lawrence Hatab’s A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy,87 is not to show that Nietzsche was a democrat but “to redirect his best ideas […] against the weaker elements of his philosophical work, particularly those views – such as his arguments against egalitarianism – that are […] more deeply grounded in his own character and prejudices than in his philosophical commitments.”88 Both of these types of Nietzsche scholarship are illegitimate but for different reasons. Egyed, on one hand, distorts the meaning of liberalism such that it has no semblance to the concept as commonly understood. And while he is not necessarily incorrect in highlighting

Nietzsche’s agonism and the like, I see no sense in using the moniker “liberal” other than to confuse the subject. Miyasaki’s treatment, on the other hand, uses Nietzschean motifs to further

84 Béla Egyed, "Nietzsche’s Anti-Democratic Liberalism." Kritika & Kontext, no. 35 (2007):

100-113.

85 Ibid. 113

86 Donovan Miyasaki, "A Nietzschean Case for Illiberal Egalitarianism." In Nietzsche as

Political Philosopher, edited by Manuel Knoll and Barry Stocker. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014)

155

87 Hatab, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy.

88 Miyasaki, “A Nietzschean Case for Illiberal Egalitarianism,” 155.

168 his particular ends. There is nothing inherently wrong with appropriating past philosophy and

altering it based on critiques (this is, of course, the standard throughout the history of

philosophy) but at this point the new philosophy ceases to be what it was. And while Miyasaki’s

take on Nietzsche may have value as it is, which is to say as a theory heavily influenced but

ultimately divergent from Nietzsche, it has no explanatory value in understanding Nietzsche’s

politics.

Making a better case is Barry Stocker who contends “Any political reading must take

account of the liaisons between the political aspects of Nietzsche’s thought and classical liberal

political thought.”89 Stocker’s argument is not that Nietzsche was more liberal than is often

argued but rather that early liberals, classically understood, had more affinities with ancient

regimes and republics that Nietzsche respected than is often granted.90 Stocker makes a fair point

concerning the ancient atavism present in some liberals—Locke and Mill among two of

Stocker’s examples—but fails on two critical points. The first is that there is bound to be overlap

throughout the history of political philosophy between divergence philosophical and political

positions. For example, even if “Locke went along with the prevailing idea that only men of

substantial property could have full political rights, and Locke believed that slavery was a

justified outcome of war” or if Mill “admired antique republics and virtues,” this does not mean

that they do not represent a substantial break from those admired ancient regimes and illiberal

89 Barry Stocker, “A Comparison of Friedrich Nietzsche and Wilhelm von Humboldt as Products of Classical Liberalism.” In Nietzsche as Political Philosopher, edited by Manuel Knoll and

Barry Stocker. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.) 135

90 Ibid. 141

169 political practices.91 A quite Nietzschean reply to Stocker’s claim is that it does not matter that the early liberals weren’t absolutely liberal in the contemporary sense because their work necessarily implies, and indeed led to, an expansion of the foundational principles that underlie contemporary liberalism. Further, Stocker conflates the reasons that classical liberals admired ancient regimes with the reason that Nietzsche does. This, of course, underestimates Nietzsche’s radicalism. Mill’s “admiration for Athenian democracy is compatible with elitist tendencies,”

Stocker argues, because of “his perfectionist view of democracy in which an elite, at least for a

while, dominates in an attempt to raise the level of the mass of the population.”92 But this is

clearly an argument based in utility. Nietzsche favored ancient politics not because it uplifts the

masses but because a pathos of distance is drawn between the upper and lower echelons.93

Ancient politics was a source of affirmation and meaning predicated on the distance between

souls and not a means of utilitarian progress.

Following Nietzsche’s dismissal of liberal institutions and the need for war he discusses

further his conception of freedom. Far from the individual autonomy of the liberal tradition

Nietzsche’s concept of freedom can hardly be conflated with liberal freedom. Freedom is,

according to Nietzsche,

that one has the will to self-responsibility. That one preserves the distance which divides us. That one has become indifferent to hardship, toil, privation, even to life. That one is ready to sacrifice men to one’s cause, oneself not excepted. […] that the manly instincts that delight in war and victory have gained mastery over the other instincts.94

91 Ibid.

92 Ibid.

93 Nietzsche, BGE, IX.257.

94 Nietzsche, TI, “Skirmishes,” 38.

170 In these few sentences Nietzsche describes the integral aspects of his “freedom”: self-

responsibility, distance or hierarchy, discipline, sacrifice, and delight in contest. Nietzsche’s use

of “self-responsibility” may lead some readers to wrongly identify Nietzsche’s conception of

freedom with liberal autonomy. But throughout his writings Nietzsche is clear concerning his

amor fati, or, “love of fate” and a general dismissal of free will.95 In BGE Nietzsche equates free

will with causa sui, “self-cause,” stating that it “is the best self-contradiction that has been

conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic.”96 Conversely he also denies the

“unfree will” stating that cause and effect should only be understood as “conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication.”97 The problem of free will versus

determinism is merely the pretense behind which the will to power lurks. Wills are neither free

nor unfree but rather “strong and weak.”98

But Nietzsche never gives a satisfactory explanation of how the will is neither free nor

unfree yet strong or weak. He does, however, hint at this answer by arguing that the “vain”

demand free will and responsibility as verification of “merit” while the vulgar “do not wish to

answer to anything, or be blamed for anything.”99 The debate between freedom and determinism

is a product of the will to power wherein each position furthers the will to power of those who

propose and defend their respective view. The vain must be the responsible subjects to feed their

self-importance while the vulgar must be oppressed subjects to shield themselves from feelings

95 Nietzsche, GS, IV.276; EH, “Why I am so Clever,” 10.

96 Nietzsche, BGE, 1.21.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid.

171 of responsibility.100 Later in BGE, Nietzsche puts forth a supposition to understand how the will can be neither free nor unfree yet strong or weak. Nietzsche asks “is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether [our world of desires and passions] would not be sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or

‘material’) world?”101 Nietzsche posits the possibility that the apparent world, as contrasted with

Kant’s noumenal realm, is the actual or real world and that at the core of reality is something like the desires and passions of human beings. To clarify and expound Nietzsche goes on,

I mean, not as a deception, as ‘mere appearance,’ an ‘idea’ (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer) but as holding the same rank of reality as our affect—as a more primitive form of the world of affects in which everything still lies contained in a powerful unity before it undergoes ramifications and developments in the organic process102

This statement is the closest one gets to a “metaphysics” in Nietzsche’s works. And it is here that we can understand how things are neither free nor determined. For if all things are contained in a

“powerful unity” then things are neither caused nor free but instead flow together within a oneness. As David Wollenberg correctly notes, as evidenced by Nietzsche’s statement that

100 Notice that Nietzsche says that “unfreedom of the will” is a “problem from two entirely opposite standpoints.” (BGE, I.21) Further, he does not mention the “strong of soul” here, only

“the vain races” who demand free will and responsibility and “others” who “seek to lay blame for themselves somewhere else” (ibid.) Thus neither of these are meant to characterize the

“strong,” i.e. the noblemen who cherish fate as I mentioned in Chapter II. As further evidence, consider BGE, IX.261 concerning the noble human being’s qualms with vanity.

101 Nietzsche, BGE, II.36

102 Ibid.

172 lightning cannot be separated from its flash in GM I.13, “No doer exists ‘behind’ the deed, who

expends his power according

to his whim: the deed is everything.”103 But the case is not so limited so as to simply dissolve the

distinction between the doer and the deed. No, for Nietzsche even the “deed” as a distinct event

is an illusion for no event can be separated from its cause or its effect. All that exists is a flowing,

or process.

Wollenberg goes further to correctly identify the influence of Spinoza (by way of Kuno

Fischer) on Nietzsche, and argues that Spinoza’s conatus, “the striving for self-preservation and

increase in power,” is much like Nietzsche’s dissolving of the doer into the deed as given in GM

I.13.104 The contatus, according to Wollenberg,

Is what defines a grouping of parts as a single coherent individual, a single unified drive, rather than as a multiplicity. It individuates an actor as a coherent whole. Insofar as that common drive is maintained, it makes sense to speak of a single mode, one which strives toward certain ends, which has a mind, and which engages in actions (or is subdued in its attempts to act). Though such a mode is never free from the causal chain of nature, it nevertheless can be understood as acting for itself105

If we take Wollenberg’s Spinozistic understanding of “modes,” that is iterations of power as particular human beings and wills, as “finite moments of the infinite power of nature” then it is easier to understand how Nietzsche believed in neither the freedom of the will nor the determined will.

This is not to say that Nietzsche was a devotee of Spinoza. And though Wollenberg doesn’t mention it, Nietzsche could have taken some of his “Spinozism,” which is to say his

103 Wollenberg, “Nietzsche, Spinoza, and the Moral Affects,” 631

104 Ibid. 633

105 Ibid.

173 conception of wills as modes within a larger unity, from Hegel. Again, this is not to say the

Nietzsche was a Hegelian, but only to say that Nietzsche was familiar with a certain “unity” present in the history of philosophy that can help explain his baffling comments on the free and unfree will.

But Nietzsche’s familiarity with the concept of world unity is not limited to modern philosophy, but extends also to that of the pre-Socratics. In an early work, unpublished during

Nietzsche’s lifetime, he set out to discuss the ancient Greek philosophers from Thales to

Socrates, stating “All other cultures are put to shame by the marvelously idealized philosophical company represented by the ancient Greek masters.”106 What interests us here, though, is who

Nietzsche considers to be the beginning of Greek philosophy—Thales. Nietzsche contends that while it is seemingly preposterous to consider Thales’ position that “water is the primal origin and womb of all things,” in fact, this attempt at naturalizing the world is quite important: “First, because it tells something about the primal origin of all things; second, because it does so in language devoid of image or fable, and finally, because contained in it, if only embryonically, is the thought. ‘all things are one.’ “107 It is the final part that concerns us for it is what makes

Thales “the first Greek philosopher.”108

Nietzsche’s discussion of Thales’ understanding of the world, that “all things are one,” echoes his own discussion of the “powerful unity” mentioned above.109 And though Nietzsche

106 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (Washington, D.C.:

Regnery, 1962.) I

107 Ibid. III

108 Ibid.

109 Nietzsche, BGE, II.36

174 emphasizes that “the thought of Thales—even after the realization that it is unprovable—has its value precisely in the fact that it was meant non-mythically and non-allegorically” a Thalesian

metaphor may be helpful in understanding Nietzsche’s conception of unity. Fortunately,

Nietzsche provides this very metaphor in his collection of notes found under the title The Will to

Power. Of course we should be wary of citing Nietzsche’s notes as his final thoughts on matters;

however, they do not pose the same problem as a supplement for clarifying or reinforcing his

published works (in this instance BGE II.36 and GM I.13). The “world” according to Nietzsche is

waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms110

Mechanistic materialism is an abysmal failure according to Nietzsche because it carves the world

into separate material parts and time intervals (“events”) and draws from that a conception of

causality. But we can better understand individual wills and the “powerful unity” that underlies

them when we free ourselves from mechanical causality and imagine the sea—a vast churning of

waves, crashes, gurgling bubbles, and an infinite number of distinct features and forces all

contained within a oneness. Existence flows. And it is when we try to understand this oneness by

interpreting it, imposing order, and thus positing values that we demonstrate our place, our will

to power, as a feature of the greater chaotic oneness.

So what, then, does this mean for Nietzsche’s conception of the will as it relates to

liberalism? First, the will certainly isn’t free or autonomous nor can anyone be “responsible” in

110 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power. Edited by Walter Arnold Kaufmann.

Translated by R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967.) IV.1067

175 the sense needed for liberal autonomy. To be responsible for oneself, to be the warrior who is free, is to express one’s will to power to therefore distinguish oneself as a finite feature—a crashing wave or an eddy—of the greater oneness of the will to power. The other virtues of war listed above (hierarchy, discipline, sacrifice, delight in contest) aim at distinguishing individuals and communities from others and therefore provide life with content and meaning by way of rank ordering. War “redeems” liberalism because in war liberalism ceases to be liberal—war jostles the calmness of liberalism. But of course this is no true redemption, rather, it is an overturning of the basic foundations of liberalism; for war runs counter to the entropy of equality that liberalism reinforces—a nihilism that forbids the modes from expressing themselves against the greater whole, i.e. the placid calming of the sea of will.

Strictly speaking, the Thalesian metaphor poses two problems for liberalism. The first is that if all individuals are actually just features of a larger chaotic oneness (wave crashes in a sea) then nature simply doesn’t provide the autonomy conditions needed for liberalism to be coherent.

To put it another way, if liberalism requires the possibility of autonomous individuals and self- determination, but autonomy and self-determination are impossible because human beings cannot be demarcated from a greater process or oneness, then the conditions necessary for liberalism cannot be met. The second problem posed by the Thalesian metaphor is that Nietzsche considers liberalism to be a reduction to mediocrity. Liberalism robs human beings of conviction by either appealing to an abstract or merely formal sense of duty (as in the case of Kant) or by watering down all belief to subjective preference. It thus denies human beings the ability to value and distinguish themselves as meaningful features of a larger whole.

176 Modern Politics and Modern Rabble

Liberalism is not unique among modern political manifestations. Generally, Nietzsche

draws little distinction between liberalism and any of the manifold modern political forms, for

underlying each –ism is the same spirit of ressentiment. And though the mechanisms for attaining their desired ends vary, the ends are much the same: the liberation of individuals through equality. Because they are all decidedly modern it is no surprise that they maintain similar individualistic human ontologies. Even Karl Marx, despite all his talk of class and the productive forces that deny human agency, saw individuals as primary.111

In one of his early works, The Greek State, Nietzsche counts the “white race of

‘Liberals’“ among the “paler descendants” of communists and socialists as those who stand

against the ancient world and the arts.112 Later in The Gay Science Nietzsche rejects

111 Karl Marx, "From The German Ideology, Volume One." In The Portable Karl Marx, edited

by Eugene Kamenka. Harmondsworth (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1983.)

: “The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals.”

(The Materialist Conception of History); Further, Marx’s ideal under communism is something

like autonomy and self-directedness of the un-limited individual. He writes, “while in communist

society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in

any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me

to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear

cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter,

fisherman, herdsman or critic.” Ibid. (Consciousness and the Division of Labor)

112 Friedrich Wilhelm. "The Greek State." In On the Genealogy of Morality, edited by Keith

Ansell-Pearson, translated by Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.) P

177 conservatism, liberalism, socialism and proto-fascism in one fell swoop.113 “Nationalism and

race hatred” Nietzsche argues is “the scabies of the heart and blood poisoning that now leads the

nations of Europe to delimit and barricade themselves against each other as if it were a matter of

quarantine.”114 Nietzsche goes on to call the nationalism of Europe, specifically that of Germany,

“petty politics.”115 And while fascism may stand out as unique because of its acceptance of

hierarchy—its inherent völkishness, racialism, reliance on the state, and basis in demagoguery

place fascism squarely within the modern conception of politics. Nietzsche writes of the proto-

fascism of his time, “is it not finding it necessary to plant it between two deadly hatreds? must it

not desire the eternalization of the European system of a lot of petty states?”116 In fascism national identity is predicated and maintained not through an organic cultural process but by the synthetic borders of the modern state, which is to say that fascism derives its demagogic potential from the fact that states and peoples must be vilified and scapegoated to promote a national identity within a bordered area. At the same time, and unlike the Roman Empire—with its uneasy tension and necessary but conflict-prone toleration—fascism demands racial and cultural uniformity. Fascism and doctrines of racial purity simply cannot tolerate the blending and melding of cultures and therefore must retain strict borders. Empire, practically speaking, is impossible under doctrines of nationalism, racial purity, and fascism because they do not maintain enough realism, meaning that they cannot tolerate the inherent diversity of Empire and the statesmanship that this diversity entails.

113 Nietzsche, GS, IV.377

114 Ibid.

115 Ibid.

116 Ibid.

178 The difference between the sham-imperialism as demagogic rhetoric of proto-fascists and fascists alike and the rough multiculturalism of the Roman empire is a point that Nietzsche scholar Daniel Conway misses. While Conway rightly identifies Nietzsche’s imperialistic and pan-Europeanistic bent he oversells the connection between fascism and imperialism broadly speaking and thus also oversells the connection between fascism and Nietzsche’s pan-European imperialism. Conway writes of Nietzsche, “the imperial aspirations that inform his political thinking […] may help us to chart the continuity of his philosophy with the primal impulses that also gave rise to fascism.”117 But Conway’s argument misses the critical point that fascism and

its nationalist and racialist predecessors were not truly imperialistic but, instead, were mere

genocidal fantasies of racial homogeneity. He further omits Nietzsche’s statement in GS 377,

which explicitly argues that nationalism and racialism rely on the maintenance of the modern

state system. But Nietzsche does not argue for such fantasy nor does he advocate the state system

on which fascism relies. Further, the great empires, be they British, Persian, or Roman have not

demanded the kind of cultural and racial uniformity promoted by fascists despite their heavy

handed repression, cultural influence, and imposition. And indeed Conway’s evidence of

Nietzsche’s connection to fascism is truly lacking; Conway cites BGE 256, where Nietzsche

writes that “Europe wants to become one,” as evidence of Nietzsche’s affinity to the Roman

Empire but fails to account for Nietzsche’s statements against the “fatherlandish[ness]” that great men of history (namely Goethe and Napoleon among others) fall into “in weaker hours,” nor does he account for Nietzsche’s earlier discussion of the cultural interplay that produces

117 Conway, Daniel. "Ecce Caesar: Nietzsche’s Imperial Aspirations." In Nietzsche, Godfather of

Fascism?: On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy, edited by Jacob Golomb and Robert S.

Wistrich. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. 174

179 “genius.”118

When Nietzsche argues that Europe wants to be one he is arguing for the thriving conflict

and interaction of a Europe of cultures, not the strict boundaries of the modern managerial state,

the “purity” of hateful totalitarianism, or the watered down version of multiculturalism present in

modern liberal democracies. Nietzsche’s affinity with a European Empire shows his desire to

reinvigorate European culture, a “culture” of cultures that is animated not by uniformity but by

the conflict of real diversity. And this is a diversity that liberalism, much like fascism or communism, cannot tolerate because of its totalizing political aims.

The Liberal Suppression of Greatness

While liberalism is largely understood as the politics of freedom this classification does

not capture its full character. For central to liberalism is not freedom, but freedom under a

caveat— freedom limited by conflict reduction or security. And within this ingrained desire to

reduce conflict and provide safety is an unacknowledged denial of true multiculturalism and

diversity considering the conflict that they entail. Indeed, if we look to the foundational thought

of Thomas Hobbes we see a preoccupation with security first and freedom in a distant second.

And while Hobbes does not typify liberalism and can perhaps only rightly be called a “proto-

liberal” John Locke, on the other hand, maintained a solidly liberal stance; and it is useful if we

are to understand Nietzsche’s critique of liberalism as herd morality—which is to say a morality

built not on freedom but common utility and safety—to briefly look to Locke to see to what

extent this criticism is credible.

118 Nietzsche, BGE, VIII.256; 248

180 A brief summary of Locke’s view of politics is necessary. To begin, Locke states the

state of nature is a “State of Perfect Freedom” for one to “dispose of their Possessions, and

Persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave, or

depending upon the Will of any other Man.”119 The state of nature is free but limited by the Law

of Nature. The Law of Nature limits the State of Nature such that it “is not a State of Licence,”

which means that one

has not Liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any Creature in his Possession but where some nobler use, that its bare Preservation calls for it. […] And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.120

Locke makes a universal appeal to reason to ground his Law of Nature in the reciprocity of

treatment among equal individuals: “[B]eing furnished with like Faculties, sharing all in one

Community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such Subordination among us, that may

Authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses.”121 The limitations placed on individuals even in the State of Nature are based in the extension and universal application of any one individual’s preservation and integrity. And to the extent that the Law of Nature, i.e. reason, is universally followed, any one individual benefits because the personal or subjective limitations that he himself has due to the dictates of reason are protections as applied to others. This formulation should bring to mind the moral demand of reason in Kant to “act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature” and to “act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of

119 Locke, Second Treatise, II.4

120 Ibid. II.6

121 Ibid.

181 every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.”122 But the “use” of others has not, and perhaps cannot, be completely avoided. Thus the problem for Locke is when

“self-love,” which makes “Men partial to themselves and their Friends,” as well as “Ill Nature,

Passion, and Revenge” interfere with reason and makes one susceptible to lash out against their fellow man.123 The same subjectivity and preference for oneself that, for Locke, mediates reason

also makes possible the subversion of reason. And only “Civil government,” Locke argues, “is

the proper Remedy for the Inconveniences of the State of Nature, which must certainly be Great,

where Men may be Judges in their own Case.”124 Thus Locke admits that the Law of Nature is

not universally binding in the State of Nature and that civil government is necessary to solve this

crisis.

If the State of Nature as the State of Liberty is not, indeed, free from conflict, because of

“ill nature” and presumably natural “passion,” then Locke’s point of departure is not freedom, but rather, the restriction of nature (the state of perfect freedom) in the name of security.

Liberalism, for Nietzsche, is a ruse to the extent that it purports to be rooted in the maintenance of freedom but in truth merely seeks to restrict freedom the least. And though the power of the

state is theoretically limited in liberalism—for Locke the limits of legislative power are such that

there is “no other end but preservation”—the limitations on power are integral components to the

authority granted to the state in accordance with Locke’s theory of civil governance.125

122 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Allen W. Wood (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.) 4:421; 4:429

123 Locke, Second Treatise, II.13

124 Locke, Second Treatise, II.13

125 Ibid. XI.135

182 And multiculturalism is only possible in liberalism to the extent that the conflicts between cultures can be reduced to an acceptable level and security can be provided to individuals. As such all those living within a liberal state may carry on with religious and cultural practices within the overarching confines imposed by the state. This limits many religious and cultural practices to the superficial and the private. Thus, liberalism reinforces, albeit in a secular manner, a protestant focus by limiting practice but rarely belief. And though belief is important for other religions and denominations—like Judaism, Catholicism, and

Islam—they often hold religious law and practice to be of equal or greater importance. And in prejudicing belief over practice liberalism attenuates religions and cultures that are rooted in practice and law. Liberalism thus pays lip service to freedom and multiculturalism by allowing religion and culture to exist, but only in the watered-down forms that allow for peaceful coexistence and individual security, autonomy, and consent.

Runaway Reason

Though it is less obviously the case for Locke than it is for Kant, reason for these philosophers of modern liberal politics can be seen as taking on an “otherworldly” character. For in both Locke and Kant reason takes on a character independent of those employing reason. And though it could be argued that Locke’s reason is tied to the interest of individuals living among others, this does not explain why Locke is at pains to distance reason, as the Law of Nature, from its use by particular individuals. And if it is the case that Locke merely employed the Law of

Nature as a rhetorical move to harmonize the subjective reason of individuals then we are left to conclude that Locke implicitly recognized a problem at the heart of modern reason, that is, that the use of reason is predicated upon the same self-interest that might lead one to break the

183 harmony and act outside of the Law of Nature. Seeking to avoid the conundrum of subjectivity

that was at the very least recognized by Locke (and subsequently engraved into the annals of

science and philosophy by Hume as the is-ought distinction) Kant sought to elevate reason to

transcendent law in his categorical imperative thereby solving the problem of subjectivity. In

distancing the categorical imperative from the hypothetical imperative (a means-to-an-end oriented command) he seeks to distinguish moral law from the particulars of any one case and all empirical considerations.126 Thus Kant seeks morality in pure practical philosophy or the

metaphysics of morals. His politics, too, is based in the purity of reason, with freedom, equality,

and independence standing as the a priori principles by which “a state can alone be established

in accordance with pure rational principles of external human right.”127 And it is in this purifying

or distancing act that Nietzsche identifies Kant’s otherworldliness.

For Nietzsche those like Locke and Kant employ reason as foundational without

adequately demonstrating the value of reason. Because Locke realizes that the liberal value of

self-preservation is not necessarily universal, and therefore that not all individuals will fall in

line, he provides a solution that universalizes and imposes self-preservation through civil

government. Kant, however, has a more radical solution: by abstracting to pure practical reason

the problems of subjectivity could be overcome. But for Nietzsche reason as independent from

its instrumental usage cannot justify itself as a foundation for morality or politics because it must

first assume the goodness of reason itself. Nietzsche labels Kant’s work “backdoor philosophy”

126 Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork, 4:419-21

127 Immanuel Kant, "On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No

Use in Practice." In Kant: Political Writings, edited by Hans Siegbert. Reiss, translated by H. B.

Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.) 8:290

184 for this very reason—that it has snuck reason into the picture, a priori, by assuming the goodness

of reason.128 The sacrifice of our instincts to “the Moloch of abstraction—Kant’s Categorical

imperative”—is a great mortal hazard for Nietzsche because it abstracts from one’s power.

Nietzsche asks, “What destroys more quickly than to work, to think, to feel without inner necessity, without a deep personal choice, without joy? as an automaton of ‘duty’? It is virtually

a recipe for decadence, even for idiocy….Kant became an idiot.”129 Again, Nietzsche

emphasizes Kant’s abstraction away from the internal motivation for greatness. Kant’s

categorical imperative, if followed, ensures that a distance is placed between man and morality.

Also, we must note Nietzsche’s reference to Jesus in his use of the term “idiot.”130 Nietzsche see’s Kant’s work as a continuation of the otherworldliness of Jesus, wherein abstract and pure principles serve to empower those who refuse to see the world as it is by shielding them from the imperfections of reality and likewise neutering those with robust natural instincts. The

“barbarian” who is still an animal and the nobleman as typified by Cesare Borgia, i.e. those who still maintain the animal instincts for power, are emasculated and shackled by the duty that Kant claims is based in the freedom of the will. Consequently, for Nietzsche, Kant’s liberalism is not the natural progression of reason flowing from the freedom of the will, but is in its own right a kind of “wretched subterfuge,” a leveling philosophy aimed at diminishing the power of the mighty, masquerading as the ultimate in reason.131

128 Nietzsche, TI, “Skirmishes” 16

129 Nietzsche, A, 11

130 Ibid. 29

131 Kant describes the view commonly known as compatibilism—the view that physical

determinism and freedom of the will are compatible—as ein elender Behelf, which with a bit of

185 Nietzsche makes the connection between Christianity and Kant explicit in a short section of Twilight of the Idols titled “How the ‘Real World’ at last Became a Myth: History of an

Error.” In this brief section Nietzsche outlines the progression of otherworldliness starting with

Plato and ending with the death of both the real and “apparent” world. Of course Nietzsche speaks of the “Real World” ironically for the real world, to the extent that it was composed of

Platonic forms or ideas, the Christian heaven, or Kant’s noumena, has always been a myth. To the purveyors of such realms, though, these worlds were the true worlds obscured by human materiality and convention. Nietzsche’s history, then, shows different iterations of the same type of escapism, myths that proliferated because of a disdain and revulsion toward the uncleanliness, and perhaps injustice, of reality. The necessity to create and maintain such myths, in truth a single myth that the perceived world is but a veil over an immaterial and perfect world, is created and maintained as both a means for the powerless to cope with the cruel imperfection of reality and to attain a semblance of power in actuality. If the “Real World,” as the otherworldly realm, is a myth what then is to be made of the “apparent world,” that is, the realm of perception? For

Nietzsche the answer is obvious, “with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world!”132 But what does Nietzsche mean that the apparent world is abolished? The most obvious answer to this question is that we can no longer speak of an “apparent” or “perceived” world with the death of the otherworldly because the apparent world is all there is. The apparent artistic license has been translated and popularized as “wretched subterfuge.” Immanuel

Kant, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (London: Longmans, Green, &, Paternoster-Row, 1889.)

“Examination of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason," 266

132 Nietzsche, TI, “How the ‘Real World’ at last Became a Myth”.

186 world is the real world and it is nonsensical for human beings to even ponder a world that is

inaccessible to human beings. And Nietzsche surely does mean this, but he also has more in

mind. For it is not enough to say that the world as perceived by human beings is the only world

there is, or at the very least the only world that it makes sense to talk about, for we must also

chisel away at the calcified remains of those old otherworldly myths. And indeed, the title of the

next section, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” gives us a hint as to what we must chisel away.

By and large morality has been tied to concepts of otherworldliness. Morality seeks the otherworldly—God, heaven, or the Good—by way of otherworldly means—such as asceticism, denial, or abstinence. As Nietzsche writes,

all the old moral monsters are unanimous that ‘il faut tuer les passions’. The most famous form for doing this is contained in the New Testament, in the Sermon on the Mount, where by the way, things are not regarded from a lofty standpoint. There, for example, it is said, with reference to sexuality, ‘if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out’133

For Nietzsche passion and desire stand as essential characteristics of life and nature. Desire or

passion admits to a lack or incompleteness that the moralist says will be filled or completed by

virtue of adherence to some form of moral prescription. Thus in Christianity we are told time and

time again that faith in Christ will make one “whole.”134 But wholeness or completeness

precludes becoming and thus precludes the striving that Nietzsche contends is a necessary

condition for greatness. And though he argues that “[t]here is a time with all passions when they

are merely fatalities, when they drag their victim down with the weight of their folly” it is not the

case that the passions should be purged, with “excision,” “castration,” or “extirpation”—this is

ultimately a fool’s errand, for one cannot expunge a lack nor can incompleteness be made

133 Nietzsche, TI, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 1.

134 Mat. 9:22, 12:13, 14:36, 15:28, 15:31; John 5:6; Acts 9:34;

187 whole—but rather one must ask “How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a desire?”135

Morality, rather than harnessing desire to “beatify” it or to create great works of art, seeks to

stamp out desire saying, “No! man ought to be different.”136 Of course this “different” is man

purged of his desires in order to satisfy the moralist, “the bigoted wretch” who “paints himself on

the wall and says ‘ecce homo’!”137 Thus the moralist sees himself as the essential human being

and demands, in a bid to satisfy his power, that others act in accordance with his will by

decimating their own desires and passions. So, for Kant it is not enough to seek refuge in the

purity of reason; he must project himself onto the world in the form of universal morality and

politics.

Morality, to the extent that it makes claims of what ought to be rather than what is, echoes the otherworldly because it denies reality in favor of a prescription and because it often relies on a religious or metaphysical foundation. For Nietzsche the concept of morality, the demand to “change yourself,” is built on an untenable foundation that implies that things can be anything other than what they are, that “everything should change, even in the past.”138 Morality is largely characterized by denial, and opposed to this denial and degeneracy of life Nietzsche writes, “We others, we immoralists, have on the contrary opened our hearts to every kind of

135 Nietzsche, TI, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 1

136 Ibid. 6

137 Ibid. Of course Nietzsche understood that this very claim could be turned onto himself and

thus ironically titled his intellectual auto-biography Ecce Homo.

138 Ibid.

188 understanding, comprehension, approval. We do not readily deny, we seek our honor in

affirming.”139

Nietzsche: Herald or Hogwash?

What is the character of the affirmation of the immoralists? A consistent criticism that

has been leveled at Nietzsche is that he is lacking in a normative ethical account, which is to say

that Nietzsche give us no indication of how we should act. Further, if any ethics or politics can

be surmised from Nietzsche’s work to what extent are they undermined by Nietzsche’s fatalism?

This is to say that if all things are fated and all individuals are products of their history then what

effect can Nietzsche hope to have? Put in Nietzschean terms, how does Nietzsche hope to

influence a turn from the last man to the Übermensch if all things are indeed fated?

There are two ways of understanding the Nietzschean project in light of Nietzsche’s

fatalism. The first is that Nietzsche does not intend to be effective and is just a herald of the

future. If this is the case, then we must pause and ask why Nietzsche entertains two possible

futures, that of the Übermensch and that of the last man? If Nietzsche is such a herald, why did

he not dogmatically announce the one fated future instead of two distinct possibilities? No, it must then be the case that Nietzsche did, in fact, see himself not merely as a herald of the future but capable of influencing the future. Of course if this is the case then we must seriously deal with the problem that Nietzsche’s fatalism presents for his ability to influence the future.

It is a mistake, however, to assume that Nietzsche’s fatalism undermines his ability to

influence the future. For fate is not realized mystically, or independent of the events or processes

that lead to its realization. Thus Nietzsche could very well have an effect on the future coming of

139 Ibid.

189 the Übermensch as a piece of fate, a force within the process culminating in the Übermensch.

And this seems to be precisely how Nietzsche understands himself.

But Nietzsche is not dogmatic in his prophecy. In the section of Ecce Homo titled “Why I

am Destiny” Nietzsche contemplates the possibility that he is a buffoon, and indeed several of

the chapter titles of Ecce Homo (“Why I am so Wise,” “Why I am so Clever,” and “Why I Write

Such Good Books”) are of a boldness befitting only to ironic self-deprecation.140 As such,

Nietzsche entertains the possibility that he is not, in fact, wise, clever, or destiny. And this is not to say that Nietzsche does not view himself as fate, but rather that if he is fate then he cannot truly know. Nietzsche is either a piece of fate that will culminate through history in the

Übermensch or he is not; but in either case, according to his fatalism, he himself cannot be other than what he is irrespective of the future that proceeds from him. And only in the future, once history has unfolded, can one look back and determine if Nietzsche is the earth shattering dynamite he professes to be or a mere buffoon.

Nietzsche’s fear of being seen as a buffoon was overshadowed by the great crisis he saw at the heart of modern liberalism. As Werner Dannhauser reiterates, Nietzsche believed people in modernity consider themselves to be “epigoni,” which is to say those at the end of history, or

“late arrivals for whom there is nothing whatever to do.”141 “Men who have no further task to

accomplish or men who believe there is nothing more to be done,” writes Dannhauser echoing

Nietzsche’s sentiment, “are bound to degenerate, for what is best in man is his aspiration.”142 Of

140 Nietzsche, EH, “Why I am Destiny,” 1.

141 Werner Dannhauser, "Friedrich Nietzsche." In History of Political Philosophy, edited by Leo

Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.) 832

142 Ibid.

190 course this is the problem present in the “last man”—in believing himself to be the culmination

of history he has no aspiration and in believing he has attained his essential nature he “will no

longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond men” and cannot “give birth to a dancing star.”143

Because man believes he has achieved Being in its ultimate form he eschews becoming.

But the problem is not merely an issue of self-satisfaction resultant of humanity’s belief in its terminal status. No, indeed a great injury has been inflicted on humanity that is manifested as a “dangerous mood of cynicism” within which “develops more and more a prudent practical egoism through which the forces of life are paralyzed and at last destroyed”144 Liberalism

decimates public spirit and thus robs life of conviction by relegating many matters of religious

and cultural importance to the private sphere. Man becomes cynical about his beliefs under

liberalism because they are deprived of any practical importance in the realm of acts. And

because all individuals are equal under the liberal banner even one’s beliefs can hold no special

significance relative to the beliefs of others. Like an atrophied limb, even belief withers and dies

under liberalism leaving only the scars of apathy and disenchantment.

The link between liberalism and the last man is clear. Simply put, mere belief cannot

sustain itself distinct from the social rites and rituals of religious and cultural practice. Thus, the

democratic movement that began by individualizing the religious experience as faith and belief

under Christianity overcomes itself once again by undermining belief altogether through

143 Nietzsche, TSZ, I.5.

144 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "On the Uses & Disadvantages of History for Life."

In Untimely Meditations, translated by R. J. Hollingdale “Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1983.” 5

191 liberalism. And deprived even of belief humanity succumbs to creature comforts, petty

squabbles, and mindless entertainment.145

Nietzsche does not seek the perfection of human nature in the Übermensch but rather seeks the continuance of striving and aspiration against what he saw as a tide of apathy and disaffection in modernity. The Übermensch is not a goal but the maintenance of goals, the continual creation of values, and a reinvigoration of becoming. His politics, like his understanding of morality, is not essentialist in that it does not wish to see the world succumb to a singular ideal—like liberalism, fascism or communism—but instead seeks a rough multiplicity of cultural exchange and conflict. To return to the Thalesian theme, Nietzsche seeks the tumult of a sea of features over the placidity of the undistinguished.

145 Nietzsche, TSZ, I.5

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