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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ã 2008 M. Previous: Reading Number 7: Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil...and Sanity
-Reading Number Eight -
Nietzsche...and His Imaginary Friends
Excerpted from: Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, various sections
So what did Nietzsche believe? Well, he believed in the glorification of power. He believed that there are two kinds of people, masters and slaves, and that the masters were born to dominate the slaves. He believed that he was the herald and prophet of a new age, when the masters would spring forth from humanity to rule in all their glory. Okay, he was kind of bonkers, but we love him as a brother atheist, right?
[From Section Two] We are of the opinion that harshness, violence, enslavement, danger on the street and in the heart, seclusion, stoicism, the art of the tempter and every kind of devilry, that everything evil, frightful, tyrannical, predatory, and snake-like about humans serves to heighten the species ‘human being’ as much as does its opposite. To say only this much, in fact, is not even saying enough...
Aren’t you just in raptures about what a rebel he is? Of course you are. This is the kind of appeal to the emotions that is designed to attract those who want to be free from traditional morality, and lure them into the thrilling, dangerous world that lies “beyond good and evil.” In casting off traditional notions of good and evil, Nietzsche thinks of himself as being in the vanguard of a glorious new movement of the future, whose members he dubs “free spirits.” (Psst—don’t tell Nietzsche, but violating, rebelling against, ignoring traditional moral values—it’s nothing new. People have been doing it since humans first existed.)
[From Section Nine] A species originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavourable conditions.
Just thought I’d throw that in there to show that the influence of Darwin and his “struggle for existence” is with us even here. Way to go, Chucky!
[Back to Section Two]...grateful to god, sheep, and worm in us, curious to the point of vice, investigators to the point of cruelty, thoughtlessly fingering what cannot be grasped, with teeth and stomach for what is most indigestible, ready for any craft that demands sharp wits and sharp senses, ready for every venture thanks to a surplus of ‘free will’, with foresouls and back-souls whose ultimate intentions no one can easily penetrate, with foregrounds and backgrounds that no foot could traverse to the end... That is the sort of human we are, we free spirits!
Now besides Nietzsche, who were the other free spirits? Were there really other people out there pushing these ideas, or did Nietzsche just kind of...well...invent them to make it sound as if he were part of an exciting new wave of the future—sort of an “all the cool people are doing it” appeal? Probably the latter. But hey, let’s not hold it against him that he had a few imaginary friends. He probably needed them, what with being on the verge of insanity and all. So what was it that Nietzsche and his imaginary “free spirit” friends believed? Let’s find out...
[From Section Nine] In the past, every elevation of the type ‘human being’ was achieved by an aristocratic society—and this will always be the case: by a society that believes in a great ladder of hierarchy and value differentiation between people and that requires slavery in one sense or another.
Okay, mark Nietzsche down in the pro-slavery column. And here we, the people of the United States, fought a bloody war to get rid of slavery, when we would have been better off keeping it! Darn.
Let us not mince words in describing to ourselves the beginnings of every previous higher culture on earth! People who still had a nature that was natural, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, predatory humans, whose strength of will and desire for power were still unbroken, threw themselves upon the weaker, more well-behaved, peaceable, perhaps trading or stockbreeding races... At the beginning, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: its dominance was not due to its physical strength primarily, but rather to its spiritual—those were the more complete human beings (which at every level also means the ‘more complete beasts’).
As atheists we pretty much have to believe that we humans are just animals, just beasts. So why not make beastliness our standard for completeness, as Nietzsche does? It’s only “natural.”
...a good and healthy aristocracy...has no misgivings in condoning the sacrifice of a vast number of people who must for its sake be oppressed and diminished into incomplete people, slaves, tools...to enable a select kind of creature to ascend to its higher task and in general to its higher existence...
With all this talk about “good” and “healthy,” “higher,” “elevated,” and “noble,” we might want to ask Nietzsche something: By whose standards do you determine what’s good or higher or noble? You’ve already cast off traditional values. Aren’t you just left with the values that you yourself choose? After all, didn’t you say earlier in the present volume:
[From Section Two] Will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philosophers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still be truth for every one... "My opinion is my opinion: another person has not easily a right to it"--such a philosopher of the future will say, perhaps... "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbour takes it into his mouth... In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.
So it’s not really a matter of truth; Nietzsche cares little for truth. It’s a matter of “taste” and refinement. Well, okay, but tastes differ. And if all you have to base things on is taste, you have no way of proving that your own taste is better than anyone else’s (except of course by a lot of bluster and bravado and posturing about being a forward-looking “free spirit” who is so refined that he savors cruelty and beastliness and slavery). Oh that’s right—we haven’t seen what Nietzsche has to say on cruelty yet:
[From Section Seven] One ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one's eyes... Almost everything that we call "higher culture" is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of cruelty--this is my thesis; the "wild beast" has not been slain at all, it lives, it flourishes, it has only been—transfigured...
“Almost everything that we call ‘higher culture’”? It’s hard to see how enjoying a good Mozart symphony is based upon cruelty... But hey, if Nietzsche and his imaginary friends believed it, who am I to argue?
Here, to be sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of others: there is an abundant, super-abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing one's own suffering--and wherever man has allowed himself to be persuaded to self-denial in the religious sense, or to self-mutilation, as among the Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general..., he is secretly allured and impelled forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of cruelty towards himself.
Truly a philosophy to warm the hearts of sadomasochists everywhere.
[Back to Section Nine] 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... because life is precisely the Will to Power.
No hierarchy of needs here! Desires for security, love, significance, pleasure? They’re all just disguises for the desire for power. Sigmund Freud, eat your heart out! Now let’s look at Nietzsche’s view of morality:
...There is Master Morality and Slave Morality...
That’s it. Those are your choices. Which one will you choose?
In the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception "good," it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself: he despises them.
Despising others as your inferiors—we all know that’s a good sign of healthy mental adjustment, right?
The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;" he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values. He honours whatever he recognizes in himself: such morality equals self-glorification.
Nietzsche makes it all sound so lofty, as if this “noble type of man” were some kind of god, “creating values” and determining the moral order of the universe...when the fact of the matter is: the only values he can “create” are those inside his own head. What’s so godlike about that? Unless... Unless there were somebody the noble man could force his values on! Then he could feel like a god. Ah—now we see why Nietzsche was pro-slavery!
...It is otherwise with the second type of morality, slave-morality. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man,
Yes, how silly of someone who is abused and oppressed to think that humans have a sinful nature!
together with his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust of everything "good" that is there honoured--he would fain persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine.
Ah yes, the idyllic life of the aristocratic slave-master, free from cares as he basks in his own strength and his mastery over his slaves... How could anyone doubt that there lies genuine happiness?
On the other hand, those qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence.
Don’t you just hate it when your slaves complain about the burden of their existence? I know I do. Who do they think they are, the whiners.
[From Section Three] The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which is adapted to a tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience, it takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably painful, that all the past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum [Latin for “ultimate absurdity”], in the form of which "faith" comes to it. ...To be sure, he who is himself only a scrawny, tame house-pet, and knows only the wants of a house-pet (like our cultured people of today, including the Christians of "cultured" Christianity)... perhaps he will find that the New Testament, the book of grace, still appeals more to his heart (there is much in it of the proper, delicate, dank odour of devotees and petty souls).
So on the positive side, Christianity is cruelty (at least according to Nietzsche). But on the negative side it discourages the arrogant, contemptuous, self-centered attitude of the “noble” man who thinks the universe revolves around himself, and that “the sacrifice of a vast number of people” as slaves for his own benefit is only fair. Obviously Christianity has got to go.
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