Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

(Adapted from my Directing Human Actions)

V. Human Nature and Society

A. Human Nature

1. He insists that human beings constitute a transitional, not a final, stage of development. Consequently, human beings cannot become too complacent about, or satisfied with, their achievements without endangering their claim to be human. The must constantly strive to surpass themselves, to prepare the way for what he calls “the superman,” or “overman”--if they want to avoid slipping back to a subhuman level.

2. In the prologue to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue, 4), Zarathustra says,

“Man is a rope, stretched between beast and Superman-a rope across an abyss.

A dangerous crossing-over, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he transcends and descends.”

3. Risks, suffering, sacrifice, reevaluation of values, indomitable spirit, self-assertion, and a willingness to face life without rancor are evident when true human beings act. In effect, humanity itself resides with the noble person.

B. The Last Man

1. What angers and frustrates Nietzsche, however, is the fear that we may one day witness the appearance of the last man--when no one any longer strives to surpass oneself, when everyone wants the same things, when no one takes risks or lets their work involve any deep suffering, when everyone seeks pleasures in moderation, when everyone wants to be equal to everyone else, when no one wants to rule or obey, when no one wants to be either rich or poor, when no one wants to quarrel too long or too harshly lest “their digestion might be upset.” “No herdsman and one herd! Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same; whoever feels different goes to the insane asylum.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, 5)

C. The Will to Power

1. The “last man” signifies the suppression of our most fundamental instinct, the will to power, and the triumph of subhuman mediocrity.

2. We cannot deny this instinct's existence or force without denying life itself: “A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is Will to Power.”

3. More elaborately in Beyond Good and Evil, he insists: “Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency-not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter; people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which `the exploiting character’ is to be absent:--that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. `Exploitation’ does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a. primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life.--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history: let us be so far honest towards ourselves!” (Beyond Good and Evil, 259)

4. He attacks all philosophical or religious positions that advocate suppression of the drive for power.

5. This drive can exhibit itself in many different ways-in war and government, of course, but also in preaching from a pulpit, in writing prose or poetry (as Nietzsche does), in achieving self-control, in punishing children who defy parental desires, in taking risks, or in educating oneself.

6. He does not use the will to power as the ground and limit of a universal moral code.

D. Society (mostly from The Will to Power)

1. Middle-class values, Christianity, democracy, socialism all exhibit the leveling that he abhors.

2. Equality is a “poisonous doctrine” that commands us to treat unequals equally and thereby destroys the truer notion of justice based upon merit.

a. Within society, there must be an order of rank so that inferior people, the herd, do not think of themselves as equal to their superiors.

3. “Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody else's equal. 'At bottom we are all herd and mob.’”

a. The parliamentary government and freedom of the press, upon which democracy prides itself, “are the means whereby cattle become masters.”

4. Socialism, “the tyranny of the meanest and most brainless,” denies life itself by cutting off growth-either (1) by preventing needed decay or (2) by attacking the desire for more possessions.

a. Regarding needed decay, in The Will to Power, he says, Decay, decline, and waste, are, per se, in no way open to objection; they are the natural consequences of life and vital growth. The phenomenon of decadence is just as necessary to life as advance or progress is: we are not in a position which enables us to suppress it. On the contrary, reason would have it retain its rights.”

b. It is disgraceful for socialist thinkers to envision a future society that would eliminate vice, disease, prostitution, crime, and poverty. “Failures and deformities” are a normal accompaniment of bold and energetic social advancement.”

c. Any socialist attempt to restructure society by restructuring its institutions so as to create a better life for all is as impossible as it is life-denying. Institutions lack the power to create a utopia; and even the attempt stunts the growth of life.

d. Regarding the desire for more possessions, he says, “... there will always be too many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more than an attack of illness: and these people of property are like one man with one faith, `one must possess something in order to be some one.’ This, however, is the oldest and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add: `one must desire more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of Development.”

E. Freedom

1. He does not want to do away with freedom.

2. He demands an authentic freedom, not a phony freedom of universal equality.

3. Noble persons, the superior persons, should be free to take risks, to strive for great accomplishments, to suffer and even to sacrifice themselves.

a. Freedom of this sort, authentic freedom, cannot be extended to everyone without cheapening it--because the herd is incapable of being truly free.

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Last updated 12/1/08