I keep trying to come up with a way to express myself about my thoughts on morality and realize that moral theory is just not a subject I’m even remotely interested in.  I don’t relate to it at all which makes me wonder how many women are involved in Moral Theory?  I recently read Kyra by Carol Gilligan who claims that men and women come at morality completely differently.  For men, moral development is based on rules, abstract values and guiding principles.   But women don’t function this way because we are far more interpersonal.  Our concerns are primarily care and compassion, not hypothetical situations and impersonal justice.  Our focus is on affiliative ways of living.

What I keep coming back to is how misunderstood Nietzsche’s ideas on morality were.   People say he was immoral because he took issue with the moral theory of his time.  But dig into his private life and it’s clear that he was a virtuous, morally upstanding person from most moral perspectives.  (Unless, of course, you judge homosexuality as immoral.  Nietzsche was very likely gay.)

Nitezsche believed it was “the passions” that created greatness.  Nietzsche is called the great immoralist because he felt the main thrust of morality was an attempt to reign in “the passions” which undermines human greatness.   Also, Nietzsche didn’t promote the sort of mindless selfishness that seems to run rampant these days (and is sometimes committed in his name).   He demanded that we engage in self-scrutiny and self-criticism in order to get to know our passions.  What he was promoting was selfishness with a capital “S” and what he was denouncing was Morality with a capital “M”.

He wrote in Daybreak

It goes without saying that I do not deny - unless I am a fool - that many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted, or many called moral ought to be done and encouraged - but I think the one should be encouraged and the other avoided for other reasons than hitherto.   We have to learn to think differently - in order at last, perhaps, very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently.

Maybe he was calling for a swing from the male views on morality to something a bit more feminine?  Maybe his yin/yang was more balanced than the average thinking male of his time?

The problem Nietzsche had with moral theory was that it was based on impersonal, externally imposed abstract values and virtues.   Nietzsche denounced this sort of morality because he said it created a herd morality.  People went along with what everyone else was doing rather than being true to who it is they are.   The Passions are about human creativity - tapping into our inner genius.   But tapping into this genius can come at great cost because you have to be willing to go against the herd.   If you have the capacity to do so, however, it creates a rich inner life that is not necessarily attractive to those on the outside.  (Makes me think of Beck living in a shed so he could dedicate time to his music rather than taking time away from his music in order to have a nicer place to live.)

What Nietzsche has in mind about dedicating your life to your passions is not about doing whatever it is you want to do because there is no morality.  What he’s saying is that we have the capacity to dig inside ourselves and discover what it is that makes us tick beyond current cultural definitions, academic theories and societal expectations.  However, we must be willing to see through the trappings and limitations of Morality with a capital “M” in order to do so.  When we are true to who it is we are, we have what Nietzsche calls a Master Morality.   Those who simply go along with what everyone else is doing, or adopt the principles of others rather than engaging in the self-criticism and self-scrutiny to learn for themselves what engages them have a Slave Morality.  Petty selfish behavior is more likely based on Slave Morality than Master Morality.  And it’s likewise Slave Morality to denounce homosexuality as immoral simply because the Bible denounced it as immoral or because society currently defines it as immoral.

“The Will to Power” was not about enslaving others to your point of view, it was about embracing a master morality which requires being true to who it is you are.    If you are a person who doesn’t steal, then you don’t steal.  It’s as simple as that.  It’s not because someone has told you that you shouldn’t steal, or because it makes you feel bad when you steal, or because you value honesty, or because you think it makes you a good person not to steal.   You don’t steal because it’s not who you are!

My husband and I tend to be very honest about monetary negotiations.   We’re not fanatically perfect about it or anything, but if we know we’ve underpaid for something or accidentally got out of the grocery store and noticed the toothbrush didn’t make it on to the conveyor belt.  We’ll generally go back and pay for the toothbrush or point out that we weren’t charged enough.  We don’t always do it, but we usually do.

Several years ago, we had purchased something at a store and then realized we had been undercharged.  We were right outside the store.  It was nice day.  The kids were perfectly happy.  So my husband went back inside to correct the error.   The minister of our church happened by and asked us why we were hanging around outside the store so I explained to him that my husband was doing.   Before the minister left, my husband came back laughing about how the cashier was shocked that he would have insisted on paying the correct amount.  (She was probably annoyed with him!)  Next Sunday, the minister had a sermon on honesty and integrity and used my husband and I as an example except he turned it into a grand story.   According to him, it was a hot, blustery day and the babies were crying but nevertheless, we insisted on doing the “right” thing.

He turned what we did into some sort of grand moral triumph but there wasn’t anything moralistic about it at all and it had nothing to do with it being the “right” thing to do.   If the babies had been crying and it was a hot day, maybe we would have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.  But the babies weren’t crying and it was a nice day so it was no big deal.

The minister was promoting Morality with a capital “M”.  If you are “good” here is what you should do.   But we knew he was lying!  The minister lied in order to make a point about morality!  I confronted him about using us in that way because it genuinely angered me.  He expected me to understand that he manipulated the story for the greater good.  Clearly the minister thought of himself as morally superior if he felt it was OK to tell a manipulative lie in order to make a point about honesty.

The thing is, no one is exempt from their darker side.  No one!!   It’s all part of human nature.  So why insist on “the moral choice”?  The only way you can truly insist upon it is by denying your darker nature.  Maybe what we need to do is embrace our darker natures so that we can transcend them?  This doesn’t mean go out and do whatever it is you want to do.  A little self-scrutiny goes a long way - what you want to fix out there generally needs to be fixed within, too.  (Take the log out of your own eye before trying to remove the splinter from your neighbor’s.)

Perhaps what we really need is the ability to feel who it is we are.  That way, we can feel our way around relationships much better, too.   We can weigh actions against our own internal governors.  Does this action support who it is you are?  Or does it compromise who it is you are?  Are you doing this to be perceived as good, powerful, honest, sincere, cool, etc.? Or are you doing this because it’s who you are?

John brought up Sartre’s example of the waiter.  Sartre describes the waiter as being just a little too eager to please because he has too heavily identified with being a waiter.  Sartre uses the term “bad faith” to describe the waiter’s actions because he is doing what is expected of a waiter rather than being himself.   He’s acting.  We may enjoy his acting, but we recognize it as acting so it is only himself he deceives and even he is conscious of this self-deception.

The U.S. is about to have a new President and this example fits.  What does President-elect Barack Obama want?   The power of the Presidency?  A legacy?  To be perceived as “good”?   If so, he’s driven by slave morality and is in “bad faith”.   But everyone keeps saying that Barack Obama is the real deal.   We are used to politicians pulling the wool over our eyes, but it doesn’t seem Obama is acting.  He acknowledges he won’t be perfect.  He acknowledges mistakes he’s made.   According to those who have read his memoirs, he seems to be incredibly self-aware and willing to confront his darker nature head on.   His decisions seem to be sincerely inspired, even if we don’t always agree with them.

Not too long ago, I read a book by Ronald Aronson about Camus and Sartre’s infamous argument over Algiers and Communism, etc.  According to Aronson, both Camus and Sartre were ultimately in bad faith because both were concerned ultimately with France.  Camus claimed to be interested in Algiers, but always made France the audience for his books. (He didn’t write to be read in Algiers, he wrote to be read in France.)

No matter how hard Camus and Sartre tried to dispense with ideology, they maintained it.   The were in bad faith because they got trapped inside Morality with a capital “M”.   It’s really tough.  How do we know when we are acting authentically, especially when social circumstances have pulled us into that wonderful either/or situation?  Not too long ago, Bush said “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”.  That makes me think of Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin Skywalker says to Obi Wan Knobe, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy”, and Obi Wan says, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

I guess I’m kind of all over the place again.  The reason I thought of Aronson was because I was musing about Obama and thought that perhaps Obama might meet with Aronson’s hope for a new sort of politician:

“The deepest issues motivating and dividing Camus and Sartre are still with us…the time is ripe for a new type of political intellectual who might bring together each man’s strengths and avoid each man’s weaknesses. We can imagine someone speaking the truth at all times, and opposing oppression everywhere, uniting each man’s characteristic power of insight under a single moral standard. Such an intellectual would illuminate today’s systemic violence while accepting the challenge of mounting an effective struggle against it without creating new evils.” Aronson admits this might be like asking for an angel (as Sartre once said). “Angels do not exist, but they can be a yardstick for human beings.”

Philip Novak wrote the text my professor used for a World Religions class I took about 10 years ago. Later, I discovered that Novak is a Buddhist when I bought a book he co-authored with Huston Smith on Buddhism. So when I was at my favorite Half Price Bookstore and happened upon a book about Nietzsche by him, I immediately bought it.

The vast majority of the book is a collection of aphorisms written by Nietzsche organized around specific topics to show his progression of though so very little of the book is actually written by Novak. But he has an interesting Afterward that compares Nietzsche and Buddha. He writes that even though Nietzsche looked with suspicion upon spiritual teachings of the traditional sort, “was in spite of himself an embodiment of the archetype of the religious prophet and the philosophical seer - not only because of what he said, but also because of the form in which he said it. Nietzsche’s teaching has a familiar soteriological structure [soteriology is theology dealing with salvation]. First, he diagnoses a fallen state: human beings in their normal, untransformed situation are in a radically unsatisfactory condition. They live diminished, benighted lives, embracing illusions as truth. Second, he provides a prescription for salvation: human beings have within themselves the potential for self-transformation, for conversion to a limitlessly better condition, a fulfilled, enlightened life. Every teaching that presupposes such redemptive possibilities must also entail, as Nietzsche’s teaching does, destructive and constructive tasks; first errors must be destroyed, ignorant modes of living must be abandoned; second, new ways of life in accord with the new aim must be envisioned and adopted.”

Many wisdom traditions claim that false self-assessment is the most pernicious error that needs to be destroyed. We overestimate what we, thinking we already possess the fullness of human potential when our lives are more impoverished than they are full. Wisdom traditions attack self-complacency, ignorance, and unfreedom (that is thought to be freedom) in the same way Nietzsche does. But you can’t just attack, you must also provide general blue prints for a new way of being. Nietzsche does attempt to provide a blue print but Novak says Nietzsche’s redemptive vision doesn’t fulfill it’s promise to “bring glad tidings such as there have never been.” But, Nietzsche’s vision did make room in Western thought for the ancient ideas of self-transformation that had originally been rejected in the Western world as “Eastern”.

The viability of his positive vision relies on the viability of the Ubermensch. Solomon is always very clear to say that the Ubermensch is an ideal and not something we should take literally. But Novak says the idea of the Ubermensch is very similar to Buddha’s awakened being. Both Buddha and Nietzsche did something unusual in that “they offered their teachings on the psycho-spiritual refinement of the human person without recourse to theism.” In the case of both the Ubermensch and the awakened being…

1. the emphasis is on disciplined self-mastery;
2. the idea of lifelong overcoming is involved;
3. inner freedom is cherished as a high aim;
4. contemplation is not about fleeing reality but penetrating into it in order to see the true nature of what lies before it;
5. a psycho-physical training that aims at deconditioning the self, freeing it from automatic reactivity, and draining the poisons of enmity and ressentiment are recommended to provide it with access to life’s free flow of quality and the concomitant blessings of freedom, plenitude and gratitude.

But there are definitely differences. For instance, Novak points out Nietzsche’s repudiation of pity. Solomon would say that Nietzsche repudiates a very specific type of pity and compassion (Christian pity) and not the sort Buddhism espouses. When compassion and pity are undertaken in terms of a belief in external morality, the “help” being offered doesn’t take into account the values those being helped might hold and becomes oppressive. Without realizing it, the Christian has placed himself as superior to the person he claims to have compassion for. I wonder of Nietzsche would have been troubled by an understanding of Compassion that takes into account interconnectedness and is not based on a belief in an external morality? It is the belief in an external morality that makes loving your neighbor as yourself narcissistic rather than truly compassionate. In order to truly be compassionate, we must be able to see “the other” as “other”. To think we are helping someone based on our own value system and what we would want to happen to us without also taking into account that the person we are helping may not share our value system is narcissistic. This sort of compassion isn’t really compassion at all and I think Nietzsche was right to reject it.

Nietzsche does reject Buddhist compassion, but both Novak and Solomon claim this is based on long-held Western biases that say Buddhism is life-denying. (Buddhism is definitely about self-control and self-mastery. But the purpose for this is not to deny life. According to N.P. Jacobson, it’s purpose is to provide the means by which we celebrate the wonder of being alive every day.)

It does seem doubtful that Nietzsche’s Ubermensch will be able to stand the test of time as a means to live a joyful life. But I think Novak is definitely right. What Nietzsche has provided us is a way out of a belief system that created the most violent century in history (which Nietzsche accurately predicted). There are many among us who wonder if we are about to kill off the entire planet and a very typical response people have is to laugh and say that if the planet is going to come to an end, they’ll go down in style. (They don’t want to give up their products and comforts). That’s the complacency of Nietzsche’s Last Man who only exists for safety and comfort. It’s mediocrity and is definitely not life affirming! There is a growing group of Christians who want to actively bring about “the end of the world” because for them it means the chance to go to an even better world. We are in dire need of creating new meaning that values life - this life, this world, now!!

Buddhism has become a really big deal in America. Supposedly, it was a dying religion and America has revived it. It’s a very flexible religion so American Buddhism looks very different than Eastern Buddhism. We’ve made it our own and much of it’s teachings have been incorporated into all sectors of our culture. Mindfulness training shows up in Christianity as does meditation. Medicine has been making extensive studies on meditation with interesting results showing it has a positive affect it has on our well-being.)

Novak concludes:

There is a sense in which Nietzsche sacrificed his life for us, offered it as an experiment to test the consequences of sailing on a sea where all Gods have died. His books, written in the blood of this sacrifice, constitute a school through which everyone who wishes to think deeply about life’s enduring questions should pass - but only if they can afford the tuition: the exposure of all cherished convictions to Nietzsche’s relentless hammer. And if our above remarks have any validity, Nietzsche has given us at least one other gift. He has made a western clearing for an ancient path of self-transformation now freed of its commitments to premodern Asian cultures.

Last month, while reading Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, I remembered that I had bought a book several years ago called Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore that I had never gotten around to reading. I think it is probably good I waited to read it because I think I probably got far more out of it having read it now than had I read it earlier. I feel like I’ve spent the last 3 years working through a “Dark Night” and have definitely concluded it is much better to go through it than to try and resist it through religion, depression medication, or other distractions. It’s ironic, but I do think when we give up our fear of it and accept the Dark Night, it makes us better able to trust.

It’s so confusing in our society, though. We are told that happy is good and sad is bad. Sad has to be “fixed”. This leads to the tendency to either blame our sadness on others or an inherent flaw. What we don’t realize is how healing sadness and dark nights of the soul can be. We tend to think in terms of progress and personal growth. The western idea of enlightenment is understood in terms of this progress. It’s understood to be a state of being we reach where nothing can bother us any more. But that’s not what enlightenment is about. There is the Buddhist saying, “Before enlightenment, depression. After enlightenment, depression.” Enlightenment doesn’t “heal” our emotions, it gives us a different perspective on them. It allows us to understand that dark nights are instructive and that sadness isn’t something to fear. It is every bit as “good” as happiness. What dark nights do is help us to become who it is we are by making us deal with the delusions of the ego. Moore says that the end result of our dark nights is not a final victory or an end to suffering. It is a moral development that allows us to engage life more energetically and helps us discover a level of meaning that dissolves discontent.

Moore says, “contemporary America values opinion over reflection. It always wants to know who is right, and not who has the most interesting and suggestive ideas.” The dark nights of the soul, I think, are somewhat akin to Nietzsche’s lion stage. We’re thrown off balance and have to slay the dragon. But we can’t do this if we are convinced that sadness is bad. Instead, we will do everything we can to distract ourselves from the stage so that we can remain a camel - dutifully following the dictates of culture. That’s nihilism. It’s the stuff of the Last Man who only wants safety and comfort. Moore says that Ancient societies focused their attention on the unfolding self. We favor the practical self. But the self is always becoming. It is always evolving. To focus on the practical is definitely practical, but it’s not imaginative. We are told to get past our mood and get on with life. But art understands the depth and character that comes with sadness.

The dark night is a cleansing of perception that allows us to move into the deeper life of the soul. Moore writes, “A society is like an individual: in the face of a dark night it can either become defensive and avoid the challenge of new life, or it can reform itself and discover in the darkness where it has gone wrong. It takes a strong heart, a steady intelligence, and a visionary imagination to go in the direction of life. Sometimes society moves in the right direction; often it retrenches and gets worse. There appears to be no middle ground.”

The best way to deal with a dark night of the soul is to be made luminous by it. Not enlightened, but translucent. He writes: “You are not the eye seeing in the dark, you are the candle being burnt for its luminosity. It is not your luminosity that issues from a dark night, but the dim light of existence itself. Your dark night tells you that life is never as bright and successful and meaningful as you might imagine. If you never learn this lesson, the essential moonlight, the Claire de Lune, will forever be hidden from you.”

Scintilla was a term used by medieval theologians to describe personal brilliance. It is the spark that lies at the heart of a person. Moore says, “When that inner genius shows itself in personality; way of life, values, and expression, mediocrity disappears. It is a cloud that prevents the spark from being seen. Mediocrity is the attitude of “do only what is necessary and sufficient,” the feeling of not having an essence worth showing. It involves giving up on the possibility of living an outstanding life.” But there is something deep in us that perceives something of immense value in the world even if it is clouded by mediocrity.

I think this is very similar to what Nietzsche has in mind when he says we can open ourselves to “the ideal of the most high spirited, energetic, world affirming man who has not only come to terms with and assimilated with what it is but wants to have it again as it was and is for all eternity - insatiably calling out, ‘Once more’.” We have to be willing to go through our dark nights in order to recognize who it is we are. We have to be willing to suffer and through this suffering, we discover that our discontent is an illusion. (James Hillman said that depression is a special problem in a society hell-bent on happiness.)

And some more sketchy notes from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company.

If anyone does happen to read these notes, please forgive the typos. I highly doubt I’ll go back through and proofread for a while. I primarily write these notes for my own understanding and future reference.

Morality

Nietzsche distinguishes between Morality with a capital M and morality with a lowercase m. Different societies have different moralities which is morality with a lowercase m and in the plural. To have an individual morality is to have a rank order of values.

Morality with a capital M, on the other hand, is Morality in the singular. This understanding of Morality is objective and writ large.

Nietzsche attacks singular Morality. He doesn’t attack individual plural morality.

There are no moral facts There are only moral interpretations of facts. Values are not facts in the world and if one appeals to a morality in which these are supposed to be objective, one is always going to be subverting oneself because this is not the nature of values. (The Commandments/facts about human nature are examples of objectified values.)

Values aren’t “in the world”. But they aren’t subjective or personal, either. The truth is more complicated and Nietzsche saw through this very clearly. He was probably one of the first philosophers to do so. To ask if values are in the world or in us doesn’t make sense.

Hume said the values were in us, not in the world. But Hume admitted that when we are worried about values, morality, human behavior, etc. - the question about whether values are in the world is of no interest whatsoever. This is where Nietzsche picks him up. What matters is is what is valuable for life. We experience the world in value laden terms and there is no way to get beyond that. That’s what makes us who we are. It doesn’t matter if it is subjective or objective. What are the values and how do we negotiate them given that different cultures have different values?

Values are culture specific. Different groups have different senses of morality. One of the big issues in the U.S. is always which of these singular moralities with a lowercase “m” are we going to make binding on everyone as a Morality with a capital M? This is what Nietzsche says we have to reject. We have to reject that values were given to us with a capital M from God.

“Thou shalt not” are prohibitions. Morality is seen in terms of what we should not do. Morality with a capital “M” is negative and prohibitive. God given morality is rejected by Nietzsche because the idea of an externally imposed morality is unnatural. We have to understand morality as coming from us.

The modern and most philosophical notion of Morality with a capital “M” is from Kant. Kant said there was a Moral Law and called it “The Categorical Imperative”. It is a command and it is absolutely unexceptional. “Thou Shalt” - no exceptions. Kant has in mind the singular sense of Morality (capital M).

Kant says that we should “Act always that others should act likewise.” We should ask: “What if everyone were to do what it is I am doing?” When you universalize in this way, you take morality out of experience and now understand it as a product of pure, practical reason. It is a rational phenomenon, not an experiential phenomenon. As you universalize as a test of morality, it becomes a rule for everyone. But this doesn’t work. Applying the rule to everyone almost always benefits some and disadvantages others. Universalization isn’t as fair as Kant wants it to be.

Nietzsche says applying the same rule to everyone destroys the exceptions. Nietzsche is always interested in the exceptions. We each have our own individual moralities. Morality (lower case “m”) must come from within - and those are the values worth defending. This is a defense of life in all it’s various forms. It’s the inclinations which give us morality. It is not a rational enterprise.

But even so, to say inclination is good and rationalism is bad is stupid. Some inclinations are healthy and enhance life. Others are stupid and drag life down. It is life itself that is the value. Life by it’s nature is confusing. It is diverse. The defense of life is a defense of diversity. The defense of the individual is a defense of vitality.

Are our values healthy or sick? Do they support life or drag it down? Nietzsche says externally imposed values are unhealthy. Asceticism is life denying. Rational principals are also life denying because they are externally imposed. Reason is opposed to nature in the way Kant uses reason.

Nietzsche likewise attacks modernity. He saw democracy and socialism as a leveling devices. American consumerism makes us all equal in that we have spending power. But it removes any sense of value but the market value.

Immoralism (Virtue, Self & Selfishness)

Nietzsche was a kind and gentle person. His last sane act was to hug a horse to save it from a beating. Nietzsche rejects morality as something universal. Nietzsche did not kill, steal, or commit adultery. He honored his mother and father. He obeyed the commandments but he objected to the idea that these commandments were externally imposed.

He doesn’t reject the content of the commandments. What he rejects is the idea that breaking the commandments relegates people to the realm of evil. That doesn’t explain anything. that they break the commandments consistently is a psychological, sociological problem.

Nietzsche doesn’t reject rational principals. What he rejects is the rationalization of rationality and morality. Kant separates inclinations from reason and says reason is the realm of morality. But once you do that, once you ascertain a person’s moral worth is based upon the moral law itself, you are pushing out of view the inclinations and saying they don’t matter - that we shouldn’t bother looking at them. This pushes aside the actual motives of our behavior in favor of doing the rational thing. But human beings are rarely motivated by what is reasonable, rational, or moral.

Kant says we are not in a position to know what the motives of our behavior actually are. Freud says philosophers before him introduced the unconsciousness. He just made it scientific. Kant was one of the philosophers he was referring to. In Germany, the idea of unconscious has a long picture of motivation as mysterious. Kant uses the unconscious as a way of remaining oblivious to the motivations Nietzsche wants to expose.

For Nietzsche, a kindly act that is understood as acting on principal may very well be motivated by an urge for superiority, a kind of contempt or self-defense. Kant doesn’t let us see this motivation. Instead he gives us a system of rationalizations.

A principal of morality may be perceived as absolute but it often involves all kinds of fiddling. If you have an abstract moral principal, the application of that principal is going to require some gerrymandering and fiddling to apply to the particular case and then it becomes a rationalization. It operates in such a way that doesn’t require we look at the actual motivations behind our behavior. It is possible to be a good person by not doing anything wrong. The focus is never on what you did wonderful - it’s on what you did or didn’t do wrong. For Nietzsche, this is a definition of the sickly. Being a good person and living a good life on those terms doesn’t amount to living a life at all. Existence requires commitment, passion, vibrancy, adventure.

Modern philosophy thinks of ethics in terms of Kant and John Stuart Mill. Kant represents rational principal; Mill emphasizes the general good. These are essentially the same because they are involved with rational principals.

Jesus present Kant with a moral problem. the temptation of Christ shows a person so perfect where the individual is not at war with universal morality. To say Jesus is a good person does not fit.

What ethics consists of are excellences (this comes from Aristotle). To think in terms of virtues is not about being good or obeying rules. It is about being excellent. To be excellent is to be exceptional - not to be like everyone else, The test of having a virtue is that you enjoy doing it. It’s not about being like everyone else.

Nietzsche the Immoralist; Genealogy of Morals

Even now what is sick may have once served healthy moral values. Morality is not just about doing what you want to do. It must also be noble. Mozart doing what he wants to do is noble because his creation of music benefits everyone.

Master morality is doing what you want to do. Slave morality is not doing what you want to do: asceticism, slavery, etc. It’s also following gurus rather than finding your own way.

Morality with a capital M comes about through slavery and persecution. It is a reaction to Master morality.

The term “good” comes from an ancient root which means warrior. It has to do with confidence and price - self-esteem. “I am my own ideal.” It is about pursuing a sense of excellence which is one’s own and that is what the word good means.

The term “bad”, on the otherhand,’ refers to what is pathetic, failure, weakness, pathos, vulgar, what is unsatisfying. Masters speak in terms of doing what they want to do and following this in a straightforward way. Slaves speak in terms of prohibition. “Thous Shalt Not”…. (Not doing what you want to do.)

Nietzsche considered the original development of slave morality a step in the right direction: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives births to values.” The way the masters behave, doing anything they want, is not something to admire. It is something despise . If the slaves were in the role of the master, they would not want to behave in that way. If you make masters evil, you can consider yourself good. This is the opposite of the Master view. Masters view themselves as good without question. People who are different from them are bad (unsatisfied, vulgar, etc.)

Master morality is about good and bad. Slave morality is about good and evil. Slaves have to conclude they are good by seeing someone as worse than them (the Masters). What good amounts to in the slave morality point of view is not directly asserting yourself. It involves having more self-control and they veiw the masters as people who haven’t learned these traits. They haven’t learned to internally disrespect what externally they might go along with. this internal move on the part of the slaves Nietzsche thinks is a brilliant bit of psychology. But the problem is that it later ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps the slave in a secondary position. there is no immediate view of self-worth without the view that someone else is evil.

Nietzsche calls it a transvaluation of values. Evil is doing what those guys do that they think is good. Good is not doing all that. Wealthy is viewed as evil. Strength, power, warrior virtues are flipped and meekness instead is what is seen as virtuous. In modern times, this is like saying ignorance is bliss when knowledge is the virtue of master morality.

How did slave morality become Morality with a capital M? When Constantine converted to Christianity and made Rome a Christian nation around 330 A.D.

Bad consciousness is the twist between master morality and slave morality in all of us. Where both exist, slave morality is likely to take over. Solomon offers an example. Consider a Baboon who exhibits Master Morality. He does whatever it is he wants to do. But he is placed in a zoo and is told stories about the Zoo Keeper who will do horrible things to him if he makes an exception of himself. The Baboon is master of the Baboon world, but the Zoo Keeper will become his Master. This presents a conflict. The Baboon will very likely give in and try and make himself seem like every other Baboon so as not to anger the Zoo Keeper.

Master morality lends itself to a Virtue Ethics. Slave morality lends itself to a Kantian/Judeo-Christian analysis where ethics is understood as universal and the rules are externally imposed and they apply in just the same way to everyone.

Slave morality was originally a good move. But it no longer serves us. Nietzsche doesn’t think we can go back to Master Morality. that’s not possible. But we can move beyond good and evil.

Resentment, Revenge and Justice

The French Ressentiment differs from the English Resentment. Resentment is a much stronger term. Ressentiment means irritation. Resentment seeks revenge. It is a viscous attack. Resentment is a strategy. It turns failure into virtue. It requires putting other people down and getting even with them for their superiority. Resentment is brilliant. The idea is kill someone without them even knowing you killed them.

Revenge is the original meaning of the world justice. Self-revenge is getting even with oneself for doing so well.

As we get used to judging on the basis of negating what is outside of us in order to feel good about ourselves (the blame game), we are constantly at war with ourselves about our excellence. the initially healthy move made by early Christians and Ancient Hebrews of turning the tables on Master Morality has become so internalized that there is almost no way we can get enough support to gain a good opinion of ourselves through our negative views of what is outside of ourselves. We are forced to drag our view down of everyone else in order to make ourselves feel relatively good. But this doesn’t work. It doesn’t provide us with self-esteem.

Nietzsche wages war and guilt and sin. The type of guilt he’s referring to is inward guilt - the belief that we are inherently deficient. Nietzsche says this is an unhealthy way of viewing the self and that it creates resentment.

Sin is judgment from another plane. It is not against oneself or against others but against God. It is impossible to live a sinless life based on the conventional definition of sin. Psychologically what this creates is a need to blame others for our faults.

We are so habituated to the Christian story and we are so obsessed with the need for a God that we will accept anyone who we think adjudicates across the board. This is how Nazism came to power.

Nietzsche calls slaves, not masters, brilliant and strategic. Hegel likewise has Master and Slave switch roles as a battle for recognition. The loser becomes the master slave. The slave becomes creative. The master falls into the slavish dependent position of having to be like others. Nietzsche wants those who are creative and talented but suppressed to turn that around.

Is there a difference between justice and vengeance? Another form of justice is the idea that goods are equally and fairly distributed. Nietzsche has mixed views about justice. He talks about herd morality and uses this term because Herd is considered to be the Christian flock of sheep that are difficult to distinguish but the good shepherd can recognize each individual one. What has happened to this notion of individual differences? Different individuals have different things to contribute to society. But people want to think of justice as an absolute, Nietzsche says it is better to think of justice as personal virtue. Forgiveness is important in this sense, but not as a strategem for getting even. If we have enough going on in our lives, then it becomes easy not to worry about what someone else has done to us.

Will to Power

Solomon and Higgins don’t think Will to Power is central to Nietzsche’s philosophy like other philosophers do. The Will to Power is systematically misleading. Nietzsche doesn’t mean will or power and he probably doesn’t mean “the” or “to”, either.

For Schopenhauer, the will is not individual, it is inside all of us. For Kant, it is individual, but it is external and lies behind our actions. We choose them - we will them. Nietzsche rejects both notions. He maintains Kant’s idea that the will is individualistic, but he rejects the idea of “the will”. He says it is a fiction. Will, in the Kantian sense, is nonsense. There is no agency or force behind “the will”. With Schopenhauer’s understanding, Nietzsche says the idea of a universal will is a metaphysical fiction. Will, for Nietzsche, is really more like motive.

Power is likewise problematic. It is often understood is political or military power. But the term for this in German is “reich”. Nietzsche uses the term “macht” which translates into English as the will to be alive, to feel vital and creative. In this sense, saying “the will” makes no sense. And “to” indicates a goal orientation that Nietzsche rejects. For Nietzsche, “The Will to Power” represents the present - not the future. It is never extinguished. No individual goal can satisfy it. It’s always a drive to enhance vitality and express oneself. The Will to Power cannot be predicted in advance. Any particular goal is a manifestation of The Will to Power. when one goal is fulfilled, another one takes it’s place.

Life consists of doing what you love. this isn’t imposed on you from the outside. It is discovered by trial and error. If you want to succeed, do what you love. The problem with goal setting is that if you set power as a goal, you make success far less likely. Likewise, to say “I want to be happy” is self-defeating.

Life is a process. It is ongoing. Life is exciting. It is dangerous. It involves taking risks. This thinking is in conflict with Darwin who talks about survival of the fittest. Goals should not be about survival. They should be about being a great “this” or a great “that”. It is the exercise of excellence.

Life is cruel. That’s the way ti is. To say we strive for pleasure and an avoidance of pain is likewise a faulty understanding. Creativity doesn’t offer a point of satisfaction. We are desiring creatures. To think in terms of complacency or contentment is to deny the kind of creatures we are.

The Ubermensch is an ideal. It is a full manifestation of “The Will to Power”.

Eternal Recurrence

The idea that time repeats itself over and over again is an ancient idea. Time as a wheel was an understanding in Zarathustra’s Persia; the Vedic Philosophy of India, Ancient Greece (through Heraclitus, the Stoics, and the Pythagoreans). But Christian Orthodoxy rejected it. The church insisted that history is linear. The atonement would be a linear event in time. The Church said that there is only one time and it is linear.

In his notes, Nietzsche plays with a proof for Eternal Recurrence. It goes something like this: Time is infinite. there is a finite number of energy packets (energy states) and consequently a finite number of sequences of energy packets. In the infinity of time, the number of sequences is going to have to repeat itself an infinite number of times.

This proof is obviously flawed and Nietzsche never intended to publish it. But that doesn’t mean Nietzsche doesn’t believe in Eternal recurrence.

If you were to take this thought seriously - that your life is going to be repeated an infinite number of times, then the weight it gives to this life and the moments of this life is incalculable compared to the Christian image that this life is but a blink and it is the next life, the eternal life, that gets all the weight.

Milan Kundera in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, played with Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence. If events repeat themselves an infinite number of time and consequently have a certain amount of weight because of this repetition, would we be able to tolerate the idea of that much weight on the way we live our lives instead of rationalizing our lives? The rationalization goes like this:

This will be over soon, then I’ll get what I want. If I just put up with the job now, I’ll get the promotion in the future. There is yet another world waiting for me that is more perfect than this one.

What if, instead, we took the moments of our lives seriously?

The Nietzschean alternative to Christian consciousness where we are always looking forward to the next life is this idea of eternal recurrence. We are so used to thinking of life as linear that it is difficult to understand the idea of time as circular in many cultures, current and ancient. The problem is that we can’t know the difference between on occurrence and a recurrence.

There is a deep prejudice against eternal recurrence in the Judeo-Christian world because of the belief in “free will” even though there is some evidence for it in physics. Nietzsche says that the idea of “free will” is often used as and excuse for blame. It leads to a general reinforcement of uglifying the world around you in order to feel good.

Nietzsche thinks our primary freedom is how we deal with internal drives. Freedom is to feel free to actively engage in your life. To deal with life in the present and fully be yourself. This is the only freedom we have and thankfully is the only one we really want because it is readily available to us all the time.

Nietzsche was clear that there is a sense of immortality for those who excel. Not as in an after life, but in the same sense Homer is immortal through his works.

Nietzsche gave meaning to his life by doing something that went beyond his life. Becoming who you are doesn’t end in death. Events after death deeply affect one’s flourishing. [Which makes me think of Solomon who is dead, but here I am watching a lecture by him as though he is alive.]

Nietzsche says “become who you are”. So who does Nietzsche want us to be? He won’t ofer concrete advice. Instead he says in The Gay Science: Give style to your character. Love who you are and what you have to work with and make something beautiful out of it.

The slave takes his flaws and turns them into weapons by re-describing them as good. Nietzsche is a sick lonely man. What do you do when you find yourself alienated from other people? Nietzsche gave shape to himself. The man with the mustache becomes irrelevant to the creation Nietzsche has become.

It’s an art of transfiguration. This is about taking your own traits and giving them a setting. Taking the resources you have and creating a masterpiece. Our endowments are not virtues until we figure out a creative way to use them.

The individual plays off other people and vice versa. If we becomes ourselves, we positively affect others.

Solomon and Higgins conclude the lecture with a quote from Nietzsche:

Whoever has really gazed down with an Asiatic and Super-Asiatic eye into the most world denying of all possible modes of thought (beyond good and evil) and no longer, like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the spell of morality. Perhaps by this very act without really desiring it may have opened himself to this opposite ideal. The ideal of the most high spirited, energetic, world affirming man who has not only come to terms with and assimilated with what it is but wants to have it again as it was and is for all eternity - insatiably calling out, “Once more”.

More sketchy notes from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. (I may or may not proofread this tomorrow. Forgive any typos.)

Love Pity and Resentment

• There is a dichotomy that occurs between doing the right thing and doing what you want to do (self-interest). Nietzsche questions this dichotomy and says that very often that self-interest may be the right thing to do and the right thing to do may be self-interest. People do what it is they are motivated to do. When you practice benevolence you are often practicing a form of subtle revenge. Also, if someone is suffering and I feel pity for them, I’m not making them feel any better. By suffering with them, I’m not making them feel any better. I don’t reduce the suffering, I increase it. Pity for someone casts them into an inferior role. When you pity them, you no longer fear them. You are superior.
• How much can we actually empathize with another person? When we pity someone with insight and empathy we can understand that we share the world and are subject to the same plight. This is Schopenhauer’s stance. We realize we are all inferior and subject to the same plight. We are victims. Nietzsche says this is pathetic. To think we are all victims together is not a noble notion. He says the idea of compassion is a hypocrisy.
• Ressintement (Resentment) seems to be a justified and reasonable response to injustice but really it is nothing more than a sense of hopelessness.
• Guilt goes along with resentment. The major thrust of Christianity is to cure the problem of guilt. But Christianity created the problem of guilt; Christianity makes people feel guilty and then offers them a way out of the guilt. That’s hypocritical.

Love & Friendship

• Love is a longing for something far beyond oneself.
• Christian love doesn’t emphasize friendship and it de-sexualizes love. Nietzsche rejects this. Love always has a sexual element.
• Marriage is a long conversation.
• A friendship based on mutual enjoyment is much different than a friendship based on mutual advantage. Enjoying someone is much better than using someone for advantage. But even more important is friendship based on mutual admiration - one that makes us want to be a better person because of the relationship. Aristotle said this was the key to friendship.
• Friendship is also about mutual inspiration.

Women

• Nietzsche is often thought of as sexist. Some of his comments do seem very sexist but when understood in context, they aren’t as sexist as they first appear.
• Nietzsche says “Supposing truth is a woman, what then?” Truth in German is a feminine noun. People think this is a sexist comment but it isn’t. Nietzsche assumes women are psychologically complex and suggests by this aphorism that truth, like a woman is reticent to be known. It has to be wooed. (Women are resistant to male demands.) Like a woman for a desiring man, truth cannot ultimately be had.)
• In Beyond Good & Evil (pp. 231-239), he prefaces his comments about women as the comments being “only my truths”. He recognizes that women may not agree with his ideas about them. (That the female perspective is very likely different than his perspective.) He says that women want to debunk fantasies men have had about themselves and that this is not a persuasive approach. It’s giving control to consciousness what is better left to instinct. They are buying into a game men have been harmed by. Nietzsche tries to understand an alternative consciousness - that of women. In doing so, he upholds perspectivism. He doesn’t think women should be more like men. They have will of their own. They have a different perspective than men and this perspective is beneficial.

Top 10

This lecture provided a list of Nietzsche’s top 10 favorite philosophers and top 10 least favorite philosophers. I didn’t write them all down, but a few definitely caught my interest.

• Spinoza is on the list of favorites. Nietzsche recognized himself in Spinoza. They had much in common: Love of fate; the rejection of pity; naturalism; the attempt to understand the individual in the context of the whole
• Emerson is also on the list of favorites. (He’s the only American on either list.) Some of Nietzsche’s ideas have names that come from Emerson. Emerson talked about the Oversoul, Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (Overman) is a very similar idea. Emerson talked about the joyous science. Nietzsche uses the term “gay science”. Emerson talked about the “death of God and, like Nietzsche, he rejected orthodox theology for religious reasons.
• Kant is one of Nietzsche’s favorite and least favorite philosophers. He greatly admires Kant but he also criticizes him because he doesn’t propose something naturalistic. He proposes something dictated to us - even if it is reason doing the dictating.
• Martin Luther is one of Nietzsche’s least favorite philosophers. Much of Nietzsche’s thought shows clear Lutheran underpinnings. But Nietzsche sees depravity in Luther that he rejects.
• St. Paul is one of Nietzsche’s least favorite philosophers. He is an opportunist. A propogandist. Paul had no use for the life of the redeemer. He needed the crucifixion. Paul was resentful and had no use for life.
• Absurd rationality leads to the idea that life is worthless.

History

• Hegel said that spirit is this worldly. It’s a sort of cosmic consciousness. It’s isn’t otherworldly. Nietzsche agrees with this understanding of spirit.
• Hegel invented history. The question of whether truth changes through time were not questions actively raised until Hegel. He makes this question a central focus and this thesis is very close to Nietzsche’s. The truth of history is the truth of change. There are many truths and these truths can contradict each other. It isn’t a matter of which ones are right and which ones are wrong. It’s a matter of which are more developed, which are more naive, which are one sided, which take account of others.
• Hegel said Bacchanalian revel was the truth of philosophy in general. this is very similar to Nietzsche’s Dionysian metaphor. Philosophy is not a neat linear progression. It is not a matter of rational thinking. It is a passionate mess. It is complicated and unresolved.
• Philosophers conflict and they build on one another in a patterned way. (Not that there is a purpose behind it all - a teleology). Something emerging in a patterned way is what Nietzsche’s genealogy is all about.
• Darwin said that man is not the ultimate stage but a stepping stone to something else. Nietzsche was against the idea of “the survival of the fittest” because he said it had not been fully established. He says it is about a struggle for power. Nietzsche interprets Darwin as an English theologian - that we are at the end of evolution and man is the result. Social Darwinism says only the fittest societies survive. It is a moral philosophy. Those that perish were meant to perish. those that survive were meant to survive. It’s harsh doctrine and Nietzsche rejects it. Nietzsche’s had a far more artistic sense. For Nietzsche, it’s not just a matter of simple survival, it is a matter of creativity and imagination. Those who survive are the most creative. What comes out of natural selection in terms of society isn’t the best, it is the weakest; the most common; the most repulsive. The cockroach is most likely the most fit. But is this the best?
• Nietzsche’s Last Man is most likely the fittest in terms of natural selection. But if it is up to us to choose through our ability to create, is this what we want to choose? Do we want to be the ultimate couch potato living safely and comfortably. Or do we want to live a more risky, creative existence?
• What we call truth are those things that best lead to human survival. Evolution tells us why we believe what it is we believe not by justifying belief but by showing the place beliefs play in a flourishing life.
• History can be a form of the “other-worldly” because it is based on the past. But you can’t just go back to the past. You have to live in the here and now.
• History is essential for many things, but it is not an ends in itself.
• How do we find a perspective where history affirms life? Antiquarian History is a way of appreciating our past that doesn’t involve white washing. Greece was a culture steeped in cruelty. It’s not enough to just look at the nice parts but as it really was. Our history, ugly or beautiful, is part of what makes us what we are.
• The underlying value must always be life itself.

Nihilism

• Nihilism was originally understood as something akin to teenage rebellion. It was a rejection of tradition. Nietzsche rejected German Society so in this sense he could be called a nihilist. But he didn’t reject society altogether.
• Nietzsche defined nihilism as the highest values devaluing themselves. He’s talking about two values in particular: moral values and the values of the Judeo/Christian tradition. Religion and morality are his focus.
• Skepticism is healthy. Cynicism is an unhealthy denial of life. Trial and error is skepticism. Cynicism is being tired and weary - being so skeptical that you aren’t open to anything. It doesn’t allow for possibilities. It is closed rather than open.
• Nietzsche is against Nihilism. But he refuses to take “the truth” as something fixed, absolute and easily accessible. We create the truth through our experience and our living. He is a nihilist in terms of knowledge.
• If Christians are honest, it doesn’t take much to realize that God is not central to their conception of the real world. Realistically, the Christian God no longer played a major role. Our culture is no longer centered on this God - whether we uphold the idea or not.
• Are the values we once held valuable? Values change. Perhaps they were reasonable moves at one time but they are no longer valuable.
• Schopenhauer said asceticism was a way to make life good - renounce the will and maintain peace. Nietzsche rejects this. To fast for the sake of fasting or to sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice makes no sense to him. Is there a deeper motive for asceticism? Someone able to control impulses often feels superior and self-righteous.
• Nietzsche sees science as having been pursued as a sort of Goethean selling the soul to the devil. The desire for truth is a desire to align finite powers with the infinite. With this thinking, one becomes a representative of humanity rather than an individual. Nietzsche says the scientific world view is a shadow of God that still lingers with us. It’s important not to transpose habits of the past to a scientific world view. We need to resuscitate our powers and not transfer them to the Christian God or some dream of nature we know nothing about.

I posted my notes on Lecture 12 yesterday from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. The notes were fresh on my mind so I took the most notes on that lecture because it was primarily new to me. The earlier lectures were primarily review, but I did jot down some notes from lectures 1-11 for future reference…

• Nietzsche very often makes references to images Luther used.
• I thought this was very cool! Nietzsche thought Christianity had served an important historical function for people. In the passage about the madman, it’s not people who believe in God who the madman assaults. The madman assaults those who think they can eliminate the need God once filled in society. By simply focusing on science they can ignore the needs of humanity for something like myth. Nietzsche thinks this is ungrateful. The way to show gratitude is to think beyond the historical function.
• Nietzsche says we shouldn’t throw out our desires. What we should throw out is the idea that we can reach perfect contentment and that the attainment of perfect satisfaction is even desirable.
• Nietzsche is far more optimistic that Schopenhauer. Life involves the negative components, but we can become something that takes joy in.
• The meaning of life is not in reason, rationalism, or theology. It’s to be found in the passions.
• Camel stage - treats tradition with reverence. Says “yes” to it. Lion stage - evaluates tradition and asserts individuality by challenging what has been handed down. Say “no” to tradition. We have to fully make our way through the camel stage before the lion stage makes sense. The Child stage is a new affirmation of life. It is boundless energy for what is new. Experimentation. Creative energy - full creative response and full vitality.
• The Ubermensch is an idea. It is a way of being that involves risk taking. This is contrasted with the Last Man which seeks nothing but comfort - the ultimate couch potato.

Rationality, Romanticism, Consciousness

• Rationality has several meanings: 1) thinking ability, to reflect; 2) mathematics; 3) instrumental reasoning, to think; 4) having the right goals (Aristotle); 5) reason is the royal road to truth (modern understanding/Enlightenment)
• Nietzsche, like Aristotle, thinks reason involves having the right goals. He says that reason becomes a tyrant when it is thought of as the royal road to truth (contra-Kant).
• Kant preached a faith in reason and even brought religion into the realm of reason. Nietzsche felt this idea that reason is universal was a pretension. While France and Britain were moving toward the age of reason, Germany was involved in Romanaticism which puts its faith in the passions and not in reason. Nietzsche saw much wrong with Romanticism, too. He said it was a pretense of passions.
• Nietzsche says we are animals motivated by drives and instincts. We are natural, biological beings. The meaning of life is to be found in life itself. Not in the upper realms of reason. Like Freud, Nietzsche understood that what drives us are very often things we are not conscious of.
• Nietzsche asked where does consciousness come from? And he comes up with a theory: It developed because of the need for communication. Consciousness was created in our interactions with others (rather than the traditional view that consciousness was somehow already in the mind). If you live alone, consciousness becomes superfluous. We have cultured, sophisticated, individual instincts.
• Thinking, for Nietzsche, can be a sort of disease. It can be dangerous because it blinds us to our creativity and uniqueness. Therefore consciousness is dangerous. BUT!! It’s an important stage in our evolution. When a faculty is new (like the advent of language/consciousness), it is always dangerous at first. But as it matures, we learn to make better use of it.
• Nietzsche was very interested in how language (the new faculty which gave rise to consciousness) expresses the truth.
• Nietzsche was very critical of the romantics of his time. He said they pretended passion. He said that romanticism is a mask; an act. The reality is that passion contains a quantum of reason and reason contains quantum passion. Both reason and passion contain an amount of both the Apollonian (reason) and the Dionysian (passion).
• Nietzsche uses aphorisms because he doesn’t want followers. He knows the reader won’t understand the whole picture by reading a single aphorism so it will take some work to understand. An active readership achieved through a sort of companionship with Nietzsche.
• Most of philosophy is centered on formal deductive reasoning. Not Nietzsche. Some would say he doesn’t do philosophy at all. He uses a sequence of fallacies; aphorisms, rhetoric, literature and ad hominem arguments. He wants to stimulate our emotional experience.
• Sophistry is an appeal to emotions and understands argument as an art form because the use of strict rational argument convinces no one. Philosophy is a sort of rhetoric. Socrates was a great rhetoritician. This is what made him so powerful even though his arguments would be readily dismissed in institutions today. So it is no dis-service to say that Nietzsche is doing rhetoric rather than logic.

Truth

• Nietzsche says there is no truth, there is only interpretations. But he praises truthfulness. This idea is not antagonistic toward science. Science is experimental and Nietzsche is willing to allow any hypothesis which says “let’s try it”. Experimenting with ideas and philosophical view points is kindred with science. Nietzsche says it isn’t good enough to say God created it this way.
• Science is non-dogmatic. Most beliefs people have held turn out to be false eventually. So why think current theories are the truth? Theories are always tentative. Philosophy should be undogmatic like science. But Niezsche also sometimes opposes science. This opposition is based on the aesthetic perspective. The aesthetic view has ways of seeing that are non-scientific. If science and aesthetics are opposed, Nietzsche says that aesthetics always get the upper hand. If it doesn’t, science easily becomes dogmatic. And when it does, it loses it’s virtue.
• Nietzsche asks “Why is truth important? Why must we have truth at any cost?” Individual lives are ruined. People have been excommunicated for the truth. The truth has upset entire civilizations (Freud). Why are we willing to pay the cost?
• Nietzsche comes up with several reasons. Truth isn’t necessarily pursued for itself. It is very often pursued for other goals. The main motivation for searching for truth is sometimes status. Status is the primary objective, not truth. Truth is a means to an end, not the end in itself. “The truth shall set you free.” Truth as a means to an end is based on the idea that truth is rock hard and immovable. If you get the truth, you gain power because claiming to have the truth puts you in a privileged position.
• But Nietzsche says there is no way of getting to the bottom of things. All we have is our experience which is an interpretation based on other interpretations. It’s all experience and experience is always an interpretation of something else.
• Appearances depend on being some thing of which there are appearances. There is a gap between the experience and appearances on the one hand and what they are experiences and appearances of on the other hand. There is no way of getting around or behind the appearances and experiences to see reality itself. This is something Nietzsche struggles with. Traditional philosophy, science ancient times, makes a distinction between reality on the one hand and appearances on the other. Nietzsche thinks this is a bogus distinction. There is only the world of our experience and it doesn’t make sense to talk about anything else.
• But what do we say about our experience? Kant talked about “world in itself” which is the world as God might see it. Kant admitted that we can’t have a conception of “the world in itself”. But Nietzsche says there is no such thing as “a world in itself”. There is no God’s eye view. Even if there were a God, this God would have to see it from a god’s perspective which remains a perspective.
• What is truth from once perspective is not the truth from another perspective. But this doesn’t mean that one truth need exclude the other.
• Nietzsche holds what is now called “perspectivism”. There are lots of different viewpoints we can take on things. This does not rule out argument, debate or pursuit itself - just the understanding that it must always be perceptualized. Science, for instance, is a difinitive perspective.
• Perspectivism is not the same as relativism why says that every view is as good as any other. But it is always a matter of not taking one position and digging in. Philosophy is about shifting perspectives.
• Where is the truth? It doesn’t lie behind appearances. Philosophical truth is getting a sense of how all the perspectives tie together. You have to be able to entertain different truths at the same time.
• Nietzsche was a quasi follower of Darwin. The Darwinian notion of fitness as a pragmatic theory of truth fits with Nietzsche’s theories. Imagine a species of creatures who have built into their brains that the future will be unlike the past. If you see lightening strike a tall tree, you rush under the tree during the next storm expecting that lightening won’t strike in the same place twice twice (or having struck this tree it will strike elsewhere next time). It’s easy to see how such a species would be short lived. A species that developed and inductive mind and learns by experience is much more likely to survive and flourish.
• What are our truths? They are the indispensible errors of mankind. They are the truths without which we as a species would not survive. To ask if these truths exist apart from reality is nonsensical.

I’ve been watching the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. (It’s currently on sale.) I’ve made my way through the first twelve lectures so far. I didn’t take many notes on the first 9 lectures or so because they were mostly a rehash of what I’ve already written about. But I did end up taking far more copious notes on lectures 10 through 12. These are my notes from lecture 12. I’ll have to back up and provide earlier notes later, but this lecture was of particular interest to me.

I find some of the concepts within Existentialism interesting although I must admit my main interest as far as Existentialism goes are people who aren’t necessarily existentialists - Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. The main thing that distinguishes Nietzsche from the existentialists is that he rejects the existential notion of freedom. Sartre’s understanding of freedom is that it is entirely up to us what it is we become. It’s almost as though we are given a blank slate and can write upon it (besides where we were born, how old we are, etc.) whatever it is we choose to write upon it.

This is not how Nietzsche understands freedom. Nietzsche’s idea of freedom can be summarized in one phrase: “Become who you are”. This is not the same thing as the meaningless comment parents often tell their children - “Be who you are”. Being who you are suggests an unchanging event. Becoming suggests something in process. We are born with talents, abilities and potentialities. But we are rarely thrown into circumstances that cultivate these abilities. It is up to us to cultivate them.

In England and France, a negative conception of freedom, Laissez Faire, had become popular. To be left alone was freedom. But in Germany, the idea of freedom was a positive notion - “freedom to”. Freedom to have a career, freedom to participate, etc.

Nietzsche had a totally different idea of freedom. He said freedom was to become who one is. He believed the idea of freedom as freedom from constraint was a fantasy - especially a fantasy of the oppressed. Great art and great things in general are not freedom from constraint. It’s the limits which define greatness and make for creativity. (For instance, the creativity that emerges through Haiku or the Japanese art form that requires a single brush stroke. When the paintbrush is lifted from the page, the drawing is finished.)

We are constrained by culture, biology circumstances of history, etc. For Nietzsche, freedom could only be understood within these constraints. He summarized freedom as “freedom to create”.

Nietzsche is an individualist, but not in the modern sense which emerged in the 12th century.  The 12th century is when the notion of individual first became prominent. The idea of the individual found even more prominence through the Enlightenment and Romanticism. What gets left out of this notion is family, community, etc.  But Nietzsche’s idea that freedom is an individual’s ability to create is not the same as an individuals ability to choose. There are always constraints and determinants on our behavior (something Sartre completely denies).

Nietzsche was a biological determinist. He said that often what appears to be choices aren’t choices at all. But we can “become who we are”. We have to spend our lives creating ourselves - not on a blank canvas saying anything goes - but within the limitations and restrictions of our individual circumstances. It’s similar to the idea of self-realization if you can drop the new-age baggage that goes along with that idea. We are born into a tradition, a culture, etc. that defines are limits.

Nietzsche would not agree with Sartre that it is our choice who it is we become. But he does say that there are many choices along the way that are already in accordance with a shape that has been given to us, from the most part, from birth. In order to become who it is we are, we have to trust our instinct. We are much more in tune with the person we can become through instinct than we are through reason. This is because reason is very often based on compliance with the culture.

We each have our own idea, our own character, our own destiny to fill out. Nietzsche rejects universal will. He asks, “Do we have a will”? Do we decide to do something or is it done through us? How much do we choose to do and how much is an expression of our natures?

This makes agency a subtle problem for Nietzsche. What makes us think we are the agents of our own actions?  Take thinking, for instance. Why are we so sure we are thinkers? Nietzsche says a thought comes when it will, not when “I” will. Nietzsche therefore thinks we overemphasize agency, freedom and choice. There is a sort of fate and it is important that we love our fate (amor fati). But we can and will be something if we work hard enough to cultivate it.

So while he definitely rejects the existentialist notion of freedom, he emphasizes what all existentialists emphasize - the imporance of individual existence and seeing to it that we take responsibility for who it is we are.

It seems true to me that we are born with a certain conditioning that limits our choice to an extent. We are interconnected beings. We don’t live in a vacuum.

I’ve been listening to bits and pieces of Wapnick’s lecture on Nietzsche & ACIM the past few months and finally listened to all of it on a road trip to Dallas a few weeks ago.

He compares Nietzsche’s three metamorphosis with ACIM’s stages of the Development of Trust (Manual for Teachers, Chapter 4) and other teachings within ACIM. It’s very interesting. I’m not always sure I agree with how he has interpreted Nietzsche’s stage (especially the Child stage), but for the most part, his understanding works with my own.

Wapnick claims ACIM is an atheism. He says that the Jesus of ACIM is likewise an atheist because any God we could possibly conceive of doesn’t exist. God is beyond any image or idea we could possibly have. That, of course, works for me

Wapnick says that ACIM primarily discusses Nietzsche’s Lion stage and does not discuss Nietzsche’s Camel stage because it assumes we have already made it through that stage. ACIM assumes we have successfully gone through the dutiful stage so have fully recognized ourselves as an ego. We’ve said “yes” to the world and we now realize the world is a desert. We cannot transcend what it is we haven’t accepted so if we haven’t fully accepted our ego, then any attempt to study ACIM will be disastrous. A certain psychological maturity must be reached before we try and undertake ACIM teaching, otherwise, we’ll forever be claiming “the world doesn’t exist” as a means to deny the ego rather than to accept it.

I really appreciate this because I remember going to ACIM study groups and being appalled by what several of the members were claiming. There was a standard question that was frequently asked - if you stand in front of an 18 wheeler and believe you won’t get run over, does that mean you won’t get run over? Several said this was true. Others said that it wasn’t. But the bigger question is this: Why ask such questions in the first place? That’s psychotic and proof you haven’t yet made it through the Camel stage! We have a physical body that is subject to physical laws. What ACIM teaches is not a way to make our physical body transcend the physical laws. It teaches us a way to change our thoughts about ourselves. It’s psychologically based, not physically based. There is a mind/body connection so when we change our mind, we very often change our attitudes toward our body, too which can change our physical circumstances. But to want to somehow make our bodies immune to physical laws is based on fear, not acceptance or love. It’s to be stuck in the Camel stage.

We must first say “yes” to the world. The Camel stage is the “yay-saying” stage. It is only once we have been somewhat successful in the world and somewhat pyschologically balanced that we can begin to say “no” to the world. That’s the lion stage. The “nay-saying” stage”. We come to realize that everything that the world told us was true was actually false. But we can’t understand this if we never accepted it in the first place. We have to fully go through the Camel stage first otherwise we will be forever stuck in the Camel stage without realizing it.

The lion lives in the desert. Nothing physical has changed, what has changed is our understanding. Psychologically, the world is now a desert. Everything that once had meaning for us no longer holds that meaning. We must slay the dragon. We think the dragon is a treasure because it has a thousand golden scales that distract us. So we begin to slay those scales one by one and realize, the thousand scales are only one. And when we realize this, there is no need to slay the one scale because we recognize the illusion. When Zorathustra reached this stage, he sang and he danced. That’s the appropriate response. We can’t slay the ego because it doesn’t exist. We have to see it for what it is so that we can transcend it.

Wapnick equates the Child stage with Enlightenment (I guess). He kept saying that Nietzsche never got “there”, but I’m not sure where “there” is supposed to be. I don’t think Nietzsche saw the Child stage as an end destination and this is what I liked so much about Nietzsche’s three metamorphosis. It’s a never ending cycle. We go through the camel stage, we slay the dragon, we return to the innocence of a child, and the cycle continues over again. There is no end destination. No place to arrive. No beginning or end.

To me, that is always the problem with spirituality - that we go through all of this in order to achieve something like enlightenment. In Buddhism, the desire to be enlightened is egoic and is yet another scale that must be slain. To do in order to get misses the point.

There is something kind of tricky about individuality that Nietzsche, ACIM and Buddhism all point to. When you hear Wapnick talk about Nietzsche, it sounds almost as though he is saying give up your individuality. But Nietzsche (as all Existentialism) is pro-individuality. We Americans tend to think of ourselves as individualists and we are in a sense in that we demand and obtain what we want because we think we are entitled. But we are still heavily driven by herd mentality. Our public schools are primarily geared to teaching our children to become active consumers and producers which makes marketing extremely effective in the U.S. Creative individuals are very often outcasts. They exist on the fringe of society unless they can figure out a way to successfully mass produce their creativity to mainstream America. And of course, as soon as it is mass produced, it’s part of the herd mentality and no longer creative in the individualistic sense.

ACIM, Buddhism and Nietzsche all say we need to get to a point where we can see the world for what it is - basically a narcissistic hall of mirrors driven by the ego. But until we are able to fully recognize ourselves as individuals (which requires being able to see the other as truly “other”); until we are able to fully appreciate our “God given” talents and personal creative abilities, we’ll have difficulty even recognizing that we have an ego. So while it seems ACIM and Buddhism suggest that we get rid of our individuality in favor of some sort of universal, that is not what either is saying at all.

It is true that in Buddhism, there is no indivisible thing. We can only ever truly know ourselves through others. As Robert Thurman says, if there was an individual that was the real you, not only would you not be individualistic, you wouldn’t even be there because in order to be there you have to be related. But if there was a part of you that was non-relational, then you couldn’t relate to other individuals. You couldn’t exist. Only because you are infinitely divisible are you nothing more than your infinite connections. We are therefore entirely responsible for our part of the interconnectedness. Therefore, every individual is the supreme purpose of the life of the whole. In that way the whole flourishes individual by individual. This flourishing of the whole individual by individual is what Nietzsche is talking about!

What individual talents do we have to offer the whole? What projects bring us the most joy? The stuff of the world isn’t what brings us joy, it’s our passionate engagement in the world that brings us joy. But passionate engagement is very difficult to come by if we are driven by nothing more than egoic desire.

Thomas Jefferson wrote of future U.S. generations: “Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.”

Freedom isn’t the ability to do whatever it is we want to do or buy what it is we want to buy. That’s a belief in entitlement and has nothing to do with freedom at all. As Goethe said, “None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”

I’ve been simultaneously listening to Solomon’s lectures on Nietzsche and one thing that really struck me was the idea of “will”. Will to power is not about having power over others, it’s about having the courage to live an authentic life. Really, that is what ACIM is saying when it says we need to let go of the ego so we can accept the will of God’s as our own. The values of the world drive us to be something that we are not because we conform to expectations - our own and others. We aren’t open to possibility or to who it is we truly are because that’s a scary and vulnerable proposition. We’re afraid of being punished through solitude. But Nietzsche says it is important to get over our fear of solitude so that we can live a passionate life. And the way to live a passionate life is to be open to our talents and what moves us as individuals rather than what is expected of us socially.

Just a few other thoughts…

Nietzsche’s idea about romantic love is very similar to that of ACIM. He wants us to look at what motivates us. And if you look at romantic love, it’s all about asserting our power over another. It’s very selfish. It isn’t love. ACIM calls it a special relationship as opposed to a holy relationship.

Nietzsche wanted to get rid of guilt and sin. Guilt and sin are metaphysical. So is the concept of evil which ties them together. It’s not just a function of human projection. Guilt and sin are perceived as essential features of the world. Guilt, in particular, is understood as an acquired property of the soul. It’s a metaphysical blemish. Take this with the idea of Original Sin and what it says is that we all have blemished souls. Nietzsche doesn’t think we are perfect, but he says we should not accept the idea that we are flawed from the outset. The idea that we are guilty in some sort of fundamental way is something he totally rejects. He has the same attitude toward sin. To me, this is likewise very ACIM. Nietzsche rejects the notion of evil as it is attached to metaphysics, theology or as a set of absolute values.

The movie presented Steppenwolf as though it was one long drug trip after another and perhaps that is what it was. But if Hesse had been involved in Buddhist meditation and Jungian dream interpretation (he knew Carl Jung personally), I’m not sure it is completely accurate to conclude the book is about a drug trip even though some of our best literary works come to us via the drug trips of authors.

In the intro. to my copy of the book, Hesse says Steppenwolf has been more misunderstood than any of his other novels. In fact, he says it has been violently misunderstood by those who are most enthusiastic about it - especially his younger readers. He wrote this book about his problems when he was 50 and the younger individuals who read it tend to completely misunderstand it. And as for those of us who are his age now when he wrote the book, he wants us to know it is not about a man despairing, but a man believing. “May everyone find in it what strikes a chord in him and is of some use to him! But I would be happy if many of them were to realize that the story of the Steppenwolf pictures a disease and crisis - but not one leading to death and destruction, on the contrary - to healing.”

It’s like a dark night of the soul, like in Martin Scorcese’s After Hours. The imagination is heightened in our dark nights. But dark nights are always cleansing if we allow them to be.

The person who introduces the story Haller left to him says, “I have no doubt that they are for the most part fictitious, not, however, in the sense of arbitrary invention. They are rather the deeply lived spiritual events which he has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experience.” He goes on, “I see them as a document of the times, for Haller’s sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but a sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.”

Haller said, “Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage would in our civilization. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, everyone doesn’t feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche’s had to suffer our present ills a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today.”

The rest of the book is Harry Haller’s records which doesn’t play out as a formula. It isn’t 2+2=4. It’s the realization that the self is comprised of onion layers, not a Cartesian split self between lived experience and rational understanding (wolf and man). Rather, the self is comprised of an infinity of selves which is the same as saying there is “no-self”. Instead of thinking in terms of Cartesian dualism, he comes to understand himself in terms of an onion where layer after layer can be pealed away until at last there is nothing (or everything).

Still making my way through No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life by Robert Solomon. (It’s still on sale.)

Here are a few notes from Lectures 10-13 on Nietzsche:

Nietzsche defined nihilism as the highest values devaluing themselves. Judeo-Christianity and morality don’t give us values, they take them away. This is because the focus is on another world, one that is better than this one.

Nietzsche admired the Greeks before Socrates (pre-Socratics) like Heraclitus, Sophocles and Homer. These Greeks are at odds with Plato and Aristotle. Socrates invented the idea of the otherworld and Nietzsche claims this was because he hated life. This notion invented by Socrates created a Greek form of monism that shows up in post-Socratic Greece and also makes it’s way into Judeo-Christian monotheism and into the secular sciences and politics of the West. The focus is on the otherworldly and the belief that a single picture can tie all things together. Likewise, reason is often an escape from life - an escape to something otherworldly.

Nietzsche has an Epistemological Nihilism that is a rejection of what gives rise to skepticism and nihilism:

• There is no truth.
• There are many truths.
• What we call truth is just our interpretation.
• Rejects distinction between appearance and reality.

Perspectivism: We always see things from a particular perspective. For instance, science only gives us one perspective. It has all sorts of rigorous techniques to make sure we get the truth from that perspective. But whether or not science is the perspective we ought to take up is not itself a scientific question. You can’t just say to be scientific is to be rational because there is still the unanswered question - “Why should I be rational?”

Science itself accepts this. It deals in hypothesis and perspectives. The more perspectives we gain, the better. But the scientific perspective isn’t the only perspective. For Neitzsche, the aesthetic perspective is the one that always wins out.

The idea that the future will be like the past is an idea that has been defended by philosophers as one of the basic necessary beliefs which lies at the foundation of all possible knowledge (especially Kant). But Nietzsche, borrowing somewhat from Darwin’s Origin of the Species, doesn’t agree that the future will be like the past. What we believe to be utter necessity is really just a matter of contingency. What is true is what works in a certain context.

Nietzsche attacks Judeo-Christian morality for it’s emphasis on the otherworldly; for it’s cruelty; and for it’s hypocrisy. He also attacks the rational morality as defined by Kant. This was a general, universal, rational principle which is binding on all rational creatures. Nietzsche wants to know how universal principles of any form apply to all rational creatures? How can principals apply to everyone equally? Solomon gives the example of grading a class of students - whatever system adopted will be more advantageous to one group and less advantageous to another.

Nietzsche thinks love and respect are stretched so thin they no longer mean anything. Nietzsche doesn’t reject morality. He rejects a certain way of looking at morality. Nietzsche’s Moral Philosophy is a philosophy of virtue or character and it is not defined by rules, principles of good behavior, love or fear of God.

Nietzsche thinks that selfishness on the one hand and altruism on the other is a false dichotomy. The idea that we do the right thing and will be rewarded is false. The idea that virtue is it’s own reward was something both Nietzsche and Aristotle wanted to get rid of.

Consider this: Why don’t you lie?

Kant - lying is wrong

Mill - lying hurts people’s feelings. It makes you untrustworthy in the future.

Virtue - I’m not a liar. (Aristotle and Nietzsche)

Nietzsche says he is an immoralist not because he defends bad behavior but because he thinks we need to look at morality in a different way. Ethics for Nietzsche had everything to do with individual character.

What kind of person am I?

The energy we spend judging others is a sort of decadence, nihilism, and immorality. Therefore, Nietzsche finds virtuous people beautiful, not good.

Master Morality is the celebration of a pursuit of excellence.

• focused on excellence
• virtues are excellence
• in pursuit of being a beautiful person, all virtues are taken into account

Slave morality is reactive morality

• reactive - slaves
• it is resentment
• turns master values upside down
• emphasizes self-denial, asceticism

To be good is not to have what the Masters have. The good is self-denial. We have lived through 2000 years of slave morality, but slavery has not been abolished. It’s simply been sublimated.

Nietzsche uses the analogy of birds of prey and lambs. Lambs want to know why the birds of prey have to be like they are. Why can’t they be more like lambs? That is slave morality. We are born with certain characteristics we can’t change. A bird of prey cannot be a lamb. This is our fate. In this sense, our love of fate is a virtue. There are things we can’t change about ourselves, but what we do with our talents, abilities, etc. is up to us.

This self-realization (an abused term) can be traced back to Aristotle: “Become who you are.” Aristotle talks about unity of virtues. Nietzsche talks about disunity of virtues. You have to choose which path you take. Self-actualization is turning yourself into something.

Willpower has been understood as the amount of resistance we can overcome. Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is the cranky pessimist who said:

• Reality, or the world as it is, in itself, is something that we can experience.
• We experience the will in ourselves.
• The will is reality in itself.
• The will is not individual, and not our own.

Kant said the will is bound by rationality. Schopenhauer disagreed. It is not bound by rationality, nor does it have an ultimate purpose. The purpose of the will is to continue the species. The purpose of continuing the species is to continue life. The purpose of continuing life? There is no purpose. This is a depressing picture that amounts to nothing. It’s the picture that influenced Camus and his Myth of Sisyphus. If we are just thrown about by forces within us, then what’s the point of life? Schopenhauer said there isn’t one. It’s the philosopher’s job to give us an escape and so he suggests Buddhism and aesthetic appreciation.

Nietzsche was impressed with Schopenhauer, but he rejected Schopenhauer’s pessimism. And, he says there is no thing “in itself”. When you get rid of the “thing in itself” we have to likewise get rid of the idea of mere appearances, too. Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer rejected the notion of individual free will. Schopenhauer rejected it because it is “the will” and belongs to all of us. Nietzsche rejected it because the notion of free will depends on an imaginary sense of self. The self is always embedded, contextualized. It is indistinguishable from the culture, the world, of biology. To think we can be autonomous is illusory. Free will confuses causes and effects.

Most of the time we just do things. Nietzsche thinks consciousness if overrated. We are biological creatures and much of what we do is a matter of necessity. We spend far too much time judging and justifying.

Nietzsche’s idea of Eternal Recurrence harks back to ancient Greeks and ancient Hindus. It is a test of one’s own attitude toward life. The central question is whether you accept life itself - your life

Evolution doesn’t necessarily mean the best comes out on top. In the end, it might be the cockroach and the Gonorrhea bacteria fighting for survival. In the same sense, the evolution of humanity might create the Last Man. The Last Man is the ultimate middle class consumer. He has no aspirations. He is merely content, comfortable and satisfied. If we are evolving, what do we want to be? The Ubermensch or the Last Man? It’s the same thing as asking whether we want a Master Morality or a Slave Morality.

The Ubermensch is a mere possibility. Something to aspire for and dream about. It is a master morality spiritualized by 2000 years of slave morality. It is free of resentment. It makes fun of the “improvement of man”. You can’t change people. We have to work within the realm of what we are.

Will to Power is an idea borrowed from Schopenhauer’s “Will” (reality in itself - what’s behind all the appearances). Nietzsche rejected a reality behind appearances so the notion of Will in Schopenhauer is a notion Nietzsche thinks has to go. Solomon says “Will to Power” should probably go too, but it doesn’t. He defines it in this way:

• Power does not refer to military power
• Power is often the power of thought, imagination, and creativity
• Power is not power over others, but self-mastery.

Self-mastery is the centerpiece of Nietzschean philosophy. “Will to Power” is basically a slogan that explains a motivation. What motivates us is a desire to feel power (ambiguously understood). It is opposed to the motivational theory of hedonism. Power can also be understood as self-esteem: not just feeling good about yourself, but feeling energized. “Will to Power” is the the opposite of resentment because people who are resentful hold others responsible for their problems rather than taking responsibility for their lives.

Nietzsche’s philosophy is a philosophy of passion and energy. The ultimate passion is the love of life, but not life as life. It’s love of your individual life - what you have done or are doing with it. Philosophy is the affirmation of life, not a means of escape.