INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY
FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)
Overcoming
Nihilism: The Revaluation of All Values
An Interpretive Profile of Nietzsche’s Philosophical Project
What I relate is the history of the next two centuries.
I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the
advent of nihilism… For one should make no mistake about the meaning of
the title that this gospel of the future wants to bear. “The Will to
Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values”—in this formulation a
countermovement finds expression, regarding both principle and task; a
movement that in some future will take the place of this perfect
nihilism—but presupposes it, logically and psychologically, and certainly
can come only after and out of it. For why has the advent of nihilism become
necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their
final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical
conclusion of our great values and ideals—because we must experience
nihilism before we can find out what value these “values” really had—We
require, sometime, new values.
—Nietzsche, from the Preface
to The Will to Power (Nov. 1887—March 1888): Sect. 2-4
We will sketch an interpretive profile of Nietzsche’s
philosophical project in three successive, methodical stages: 1)
philosophical focus, 2) diagnosis of nihilism, and 3) the project to
overcome nihilism through a revaluation of all values. Our purpose is
to provide an initial, broad philosophical background or framework for
accurately interpreting Nietzsche’s various critiques of religion, morality,
and philosophy.
A. Nietzsche’s Unifying Philosophical Focus: The
Historical Problem of Nihilism
Nietzsche’s fundamental, unifying philosophical focus
provides an appropriate starting point for delineating the broad contours of
his philosophy. Stated succinctly: Nietzsche is philosophically preoccupied
with what he calls nihilism, a cultural and historical crisis of
value characteristic of Western society. According to Nietzsche, this crisis
of nihilism originates in Western religion, morality, and philosophy and is
practically exhibited in historical institutions, practices, attitudes, and
values. But before we examine Nietzsche’s detailed diagnosis of
nihilism, we must take stock of the general features of his unifying
focus on nihilism.
1. Systematic Unity
Some sympathetic and hostile critics have interpreted
Nietzsche’s philosophical writings as an unsystematic hodgepodge of
disconnected, even disjointed, viewpoints and arguments. Others cite a
prominent doctrine, such as perspectivism or eternal recurrence, as the
central organizing theme of his philosophy. We will adopt the
interpretation, advocated by Walter Kauffman, among others, that the
systematic unity of Nietzsche’s work consists in his critical focus upon a
complex cultural, historical phenomenon that he terms nihilism.
Nietzsche’s historical, problem-oriented focus on nihilism as a
cultural crisis of Western civilization, in contrast to a predominantly
doctrinal focus, provides an appropriately broad interpretive framework
for accurately discerning the mutual interdependence, and distinctive
contributions, of his diverse critiques of religion, morality, and
philosophy.
2. Complex Problematic (French, problématique)
Nietzsche’s systematic or unifying interest in
nihilism, therefore, constitutes it (nihilism) as a complex network of
interrelated problems or problem-set (problématique). Accordingly,
his diverse, critical examinations of religion, morality, philosophy,
modernity (his historical present), the human-all-too-human, etc., may best
be interpreted as a network of individual, yet interconnected,
thematic perspectives on the complex, multi-faceted historical problem of
nihilism.
3. Historical Character
Nietzsche’s philosophical
focus is, in contrast to the majority of Western philosophy up to that time,
clearly historical in character. In this regard, Nietzsche’s
philosophy is similar to other 19th-century philosophers and
thinkers (Marx, Kierkegaard, etc.) who followed Hegel. However, the precise
manner in which they are historical differs considerably. The
specific historical character of Nietzsche’s philosophy may be outlined in
terms of its constituent components:
a) Historical object of inquiry
b) Historical form of consciousness, reflection,
or critique
c) Historically-oriented
genealogical method
d) Historical context of inquiry: Modernity or the
Present Age
B) Nietzsche’s Diagnosis of European Nihilism
1. The Historical and Cultural Sources of European Nihilism:
“We have measured the value of the world
according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world.
Final conclusion: All the values by means of which we have tried so far to
render the world estimable for ourselves […] have proved inapplicable and
therefore devaluated the world.” (WP, 12)
“A nihilist is a man
who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the
world as it ought to be that it does not exist.” (WP, 585)
“The supreme values in whose service man
should live […] were erected over man to strengthen their voice, as if
they were commands of God, as “reality,” as the “true” world, as a hope and
future world. Now that the shabby origin of these values is becoming
clear, the universe seems to have lost value, seems ‘meaningless’” (WP,
7).
a) Judeo-Christian religious tradition:
otherworldly orientation (heaven, immortality, the afterlife as reward and
punishment, a transcendent and eternal divine realm, etc.) as a
devaluation of this world: the ascetic ideal (spiritualization of our
animal or sensual nature), hatred of the earth, reactive repression of
natural instincts, denial or suppression of the senses, physiological
weakness, slave morality, the herd instinct, the psychological state of
réssentiment as the birth of the moral values “good” and “evil,”
historical teleology (history as the progressive unfolding of God’s plan),
and the psychological origin and need for “God.”
b) Western philosophical tradition: prejudices
of the philosophers, beginning with Plato particularly (metaphysical
positing of another, higher, transcendent, true reality beyond this
world of mere appearance) universal truth, moral absolutism, the
spectator attitude of disinterested theoretical inquiry, historical
teleology (history as the progressive unfolding of natural law, Reason,
etc.), philosophical theology, the ascetic ideal (self-denial,
spiritualization or idealization of our animal nature, etc.)
“The nihilistic
question “for what?” is rooted in the old habit of supposing that the goal
must be put up, given, demanded from outside – by some superhuman
authority. Having unlearned faith in that, one still follows the old
habit and seeks another authority that can speak unconditionally
and command goals and tasks. The authority of conscience now
steps up front…. Or the authority of reason…(WP, 20)
2. Nietzsche’s Own Historical Present: Nihilistic
Décadence and the “death of God.”
a) The Death of God: European man’s highest
values have devaluated themselves— “What does nihilism mean? – that the
highest values devaluate themselves” (WP, 2). Transitional
nihilism as the disorienting loss of transcendent goals, purposes,
foundations, meanings, values, and orientation; decline of natural vitality
(symptoms of décadence: decline of vital strength, natural instincts,
affirmation of life, etc.). Cf. Nietzsche’s parable, The Madman,
sect. 125 of The Gay Science (1882). Nietzsche: “We are losing the
center of gravity by virtue of which we have lived; we are lost for a while”
(WP, 30).
b) New Modern Idols: human progress, scientific
enlightenment, political and legal egalitarianism, liberal democratic
institutions, human rights, civil liberties, constitutional or legal
justice, etc.
c) The Reductive Leveling of the Individual to the
Herd: enervation, evisceration, emasculation; loss of natural instincts,
vitality, and strength; dissipation of the existing individual in the
crowd, herd, or masses; disdain for the order of rank, individual
greatness, noble superiority; age of the “last men”
C. Nietzsche’s Project to Overcome Nihilism:
The
Revaluation of All Values
“My formula for greatness in a human being
is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward,
not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still
less conceal it – all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is
necessary – but love it.” (EH, “Why I am So Clever” 10)
“The highest state a philosopher can attain:
to stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence – my formula for this is
amor fati. It is part of this state to perceive not merely the
necessity of those sides of existence hitherto denied, but their
desirability; and not their desirability merely in relation to the sides
hitherto affirmed (perhaps as their complement or precondition), but for
their own sake, as the more powerful, more fruitful, truer sides of
existence, in which its will finds clearer expression.” (WP, 1041)
Overcoming nihilism, man, and oneself: the
revaluation of all values (critique of religion, morality, and philosophy);
Zarathustra and the overman (Ger., übermensch); the will to power;
Dionysus against the Crucified; genealogy of the “shabby origins” of
morality (beyond good and evil); amor fati (love of fate) and the
great Yes to life, the great health; we free spirits, good Europeans,
or higher types.
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