Nietzsche the Amoralist
From a casual study of Nietzsche's life it might be gathered that he
had little time for private meditation or for any lonely brooding over
problems foreign to his school and university studies. Indeed, from
the very moment when it was decided that he should become a scholar,
to the day when the University of Leipzig granted him his doctor's
degree without examination, his existence seems to have been so wholly
occupied by strenuous application to the duties which his aspirations
imposed upon him that, even if he had had the will to do so, it would
seem that he could not have had the leisure to become engaged in
any serious thought outside his regular work. Nevertheless, if we
inquire into the matter more deeply, we find to our astonishment, that
during the whole of that arduous period--from his thirteenth to this
twenty-fourth year--his imagination did not once cease from playing
around problems of the highest import, quite unrelated to his school
and university subjects.
In the introduction to _The Genealogy of Morals_, he writes as follows:
--"... while but a boy of thirteen the problem of the origin of
evil haunted me: to it I dedicated, in an age when we have in
heart half-play, half-God, my first literary child-play, my first
philosophical composition; and, as regards my solution of the problem
therein, well, I gave, as is but fair, God the honour, and made
him _Father_ of evil."[1] And then he continues: "A little historical and
philological schooling, together with an inborn and delicate sense
regarding psychological questions, changed my problem in a very short
time into that other one: under what circumstances and conditions did
man invent the valuations good and evil? And what is their own specific
value?"
This problem, as stated here, seems stupendous enough; in fact, it
would be difficult, in the whole realm of human thought, to discover
a question of greater moment and intricacy; and yet we shall see that
Nietzsche was just as much born to attack and solve it as Cardinal
Newman seems, from the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_, to have been born to
the Roman Catholic Church.
If we reflect a moment, we find that "good" and "evil" are certainly
words that exercise a tremendous power in the world. To attach the
word "good" to any thing or deed is to give it the hall-mark of
desirability: on the other hand, to attach the word "evil" to it is
tantamount to proscribing it from existence. Even in the old English
proverb, "Give a dog a bad name and hang him," we have a suggestion of
the enormous force which has been compressed into the two monosyllables
"good" and "bad," and before we seriously take up the problem, it were
well to ponder a while over the really profound significance of these
two words.
Nietzsche, as we have already observed, was never in any doubt as to
their importance: his life passion was the desire to solve the meaning,
the origin, and the intrinsic value of the two terms; and he did not
rest until he had achieved his end.
Let us now examine what morality--what "good" and "evil"--means to
almost everybody to-day. In the minds of nearly all those people who
are neither students nor actual teachers of philosophy, there is a
superstition that "good" is a perfectly definite and absolute value,
and that "evil" is known unto all. Few seem to doubt that the meaning
of these words has been fixed once and for ever. The ordinary European
lives, reads, and sleeps, year in, year out, under the delusion that
all is quite clear in regard to right and wrong. Such a person is, of
course, somewhat abashed when you tell him that a certain people in the
East practise infanticide and call it good or that a certain people in
the West always separate at meals and eat apart and call _this_ good. He
usually gets over the difficulty, however, by saying that they know no
better, and when at last he is hard pressed, and is bound to admit that
views of good and bad, sometimes the reverse of his own, actually do
preserve and unite people in strange lands, he takes refuge in the hope
that all differences may one day be broken down and that the problem
will thus be solved.
No such facile shelving of the question, however, could satisfy
Nietzsche. From the very outset he freed himself from all national
and even racial prejudices, and could see no particular reason why
the kind of morality now prevailing in Europe, or countries like
Europe, must necessarily and ultimately overcome and supplant all
others. He therefore attacked the question with a perfectly open
mind, and asked himself whether he quite understood the part the
terms "good" and "evil" have played in human history.
Is morality--its justification in our midst and its mode of
action--comprehended at all?--He replies to this question so daringly
and so uprightly, that at first his clearness may only bewilder us.
These terms "good" and "evil," he tells us, are merely a means to the
acquisition of power. And, indeed, in the very resistance we offer
when he attempts to criticise our notions of morality, we tacitly
acknowledge that in this morality our strength does actually reside.
"No greater power on earth was found by Zarathustra than good and
evil"[2] "No people could live without first valuing; if a people
will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour
valueth."[3]
In the last sentence we have seized Nietzsche's clue to the whole
question. If you would maintain yourself, you cannot and must not
value as your neighbour values. Good and evil, then, are not permanent
absolute values; they are transient, relative values, serving an end
which can be explained in terms of biology and anthropology.
But now let us halt a moment, for the sake of clearness, and let us
inquire precisely how Nietzsche himself was led to this conclusion.
In the summer of 1864, when he was in his twentieth year, he was given
some home work to do which he was expected to have ready by the end of
the holidays. It was to consist of a Latin thesis upon some optional
subject, and he chose "Theognis, the Aristocratic Poet of Megara."
While preparing the work he was struck with the author's use of the
words "good" and "bad" as synonymous with aristocratic and plebeian,
and it was this valuable hint which first set him on the right track.
Theognis and his friends, being desirous of making their power prevail,
were naturally compelled to regard any force which assailed that power
as bad--"bad," in the sense of "dangerous to their order of power"; and
thus it came to pass that Theognis, as an aristocrat in the heat of a
struggle between an oligarchy and a democracy, spoke of the democratic
values as "bad" and of those of his own party as "good."
The writing of this essay had other consequences which I shall only be
able to refer to in the next chapter; but at present let it suffice
to say that, in recognising the arbitrary use made by Theognis of the
epithets good and bad in designating the oligarchy and the democracy
respectively, Nietzsche was first induced to look upon morality merely
as a weapon in the struggle for power, and he thus freed himself from
all the usual bias which belongs to the absolutist's standpoint. Hence
his claim to the surname "amoralist," and his use of the phrase "Beyond
Good and Evil," as the title of one of his greatest works.
Let us, however, remember that although Nietzsche did undoubtedly
take up a position beyond good and evil, in order to free himself
temporarily from the gyves of all tradition, still this attitude was no
more than a momentary one, and he ultimately became as rigid a moralist
as the most exacting could desire. It was a new morality, however, or
perhaps a forgotten one, which he ultimately preached, and with the
view of preparing the ground for it he was in a measure obliged to
destroy old idols. "He who hath to be a creator in good and evil," says
Zarathustra, "verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and to break
values to pieces."[4]
Assuming the position of the relativist, then, Nietzsche observed
that, all morality, all use of the words "good" and "evil," is only an
artifice for acquiring power. Turning to the animal kingdom, he went
in search of support for his views, and very soon discovered that, in
biology at least, no fact was at variance with his general hypothesis.
In nature every species of organic being behaves as if its kind alone
ought ultimately to prevail on earth, and, whether it try to effect
this end by open aggression or cowardly dissimulation, the motive in
both cases is the same. The lion's good is the antelope's evil. If
the antelope believed the lion's good to be its good, it would go
and present itself without further ado before the lion's jaws. If
the lion believed the antelope's good to be its good it would adopt
vegetarianism forthwith and eschew its carnivorous habits for the rest
of its days. Again, no parasite could share the notions of good and
evil entertained by its victim, neither could the victims share the
notions of good and evil entertained by the parasite. Everywhere, then,
those modes of conduct are adopted and perpetuated by a species, which
most conduce to the prevalence and extension of their particular kind,
and that species which fails to discover the class of conduct best
calculated to preserve and strengthen it gets overcome in the war of
conduct which constitutes the incessant struggle for power.
Now, applying the knowledge to man, what did Nietzsche find? He found
there was also a war being waged between the different modes of conduct
which now prevail among men, and that what one man sets up as good is
called evil by another and _vice versâ_. But of this he soon became
convinced, that whenever and wherever good and evil had been set up as
absolute values, they had been thus elevated to power with the view of
preserving and multiplying one specific type of man.
All moralities, therefore, were but so many Trades Union banners flying
above the heads of different classes of men, woven and upheld by them
for their own needs and aspirations.
So far, so good. But then, if that were so, the character of a morality
must be determined by the class of men among whom it came into being.
We shall see that Nietzsche did not hesitate to accept this conclusion,
and that if for a moment he declared: "No one knoweth yet what is good
and what is evil!" the next minute he was asking himself this searching
question: "Is _our_ morality--that is to say, the particular table
of values which is gradually modifying us--compatible with an ideal
worthy of man's inheritance and past?"
If Nietzsche has been called dangerous, pernicious and immoral, it is
because people have deliberately overlooked this last question of his.
No thinker who states and honestly sets out to answer this question,
as Nietzsche did, deserves to be slandered, as he has been slandered,
by prejudiced and interested people intent on misunderstanding only
in order that they may fling mud more freely.
Nietzsche cast his critical eye very seriously around him, and the
sight of the modern world led him to ask these admittedly pertinent
questions: "Is that which we have for centuries held for good and evil,
really good and evil? Does our table of ethical principles seem to be
favouring the multiplication of a desirable type?"
In answering these two inquiries, Nietzsche unfortunately stormed
the most formidable strongholds of modern society--Christianity and
Democracy; and perhaps this accounts for the fact that his fight was so
uneven and so hopeless. The strength of modern Europe, if indeed there
be any strength in her, lies precisely on the side of Christianity and
Democracy, the grandmother and the mother of what is called "progress,"
"modernity"; and in assailing these, Nietzsche must have known that he
was engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with stony-hearted adversaries
unaccustomed to giving quarter and unscrupulous in their methods.
Nietzsche clearly saw that if all moral codes are but weapons
protecting and helping to universalise distinct species of men,
then the Christian religion with its ethical principles could be no
exception to the rule. It must have been created at some time and in
some place by one who had the interests of a certain type of man at
heart, and who desired to make that type paramount. Now if that were
really so, the next question that occurred to Nietzsche's mercilessly
logical mind was this: "Is the Christian religion, with its morality,
tending to preserve and multiply a _desirable_ type of man?"
To this last question Nietzsche replies most emphatically "_No!_"
But, before going into the reasons of this flat negative, let us first
pause to consider the age and the circumstances in which our author
wrote and thought.
Long before Nietzsche had reached his prime David Strauss had published
his _Life of Jesus_; in 1863, when Nietzsche was still in his teens,
Renan published his _Vie de Jésus_, and in the meantime Charles Darwin
had given his _Origin of Species_ to the world. These books had
been read by a Europe that had already studied Hume and Lamarck, Kant
and Schopenhauer, and in all directions a fine ear could not help
hearing the falling timbers of Christian dogma.
In the midst of this general work of destruction it was almost
impossible for Nietzsche to remain unmoved or indifferent, and very
soon he found that he too was drawn into the general stream of European
thought; but only to prove how completely he was independent of it, and
in every way superior to it.
He contemplated the work of the destroyers for some time with amused
interest; and then it suddenly occurred to him to inquire whether
these zealous and well-meaning housebreakers were really doing any
lasting good, or whether all their efforts were not perhaps a little
misguided. True, they were pulling the embellishments from the walls
and were casting the most cherished idols of the Christian Faith into
the dust. But the walls themselves, the actual design of the edifice,
remained untouched and as strong as ever. A few broken stones, a few
complaints from the priestly archæologists who wished to preserve
them, and then all the noise subsided! Europe remained as it was before
--that is to say, still in possession of a stronghold of Christianity,
merely divested of its superfluous ornament.
Nietzsche soon perceived that, in spite of all the rubbish and refuse
which such people as Kant, Schopenhauer, Strauss, Renan and others had
made of Christian dogma, the essential core of Christianity, the vital
organ of its body--its morality--had so far remained absolutely intact.
Nay, he saw that it was actually being plastered up and restored
by scholars and men of science who vowed that they could proffer
reasonable, rationalistic, and logical grounds in support of it.
Just as Christian dogma and metaphysics had been rationalised and
philosophically proved by the scholars of the Middle Ages, and even
as late as Leibnitz; so, now, Christian morality was being presented
in a purely philosophical garb by the intellects of Europe. Having
relinquished the dogma as no longer tenable, all scholars and men of
science were trying with redoubled vigour to bolster up Christian
ethics with elaborate text-books and learned treatises. There were
some who accepted it all as if it were innate in human nature, and
attributed it to a "moral sense"; there were others--good-natured
biologists--who were likewise desirous of leaving it whole, and who
declared with conviction that it was the natural outcome of the
feelings of pleasure and pain; and there were yet others who assumed
that it must have been evolved quite automatically out of expediency
and non-expediency.
Not one of these would-be rationalists, however, halted at the
Christian terms "good" and "bad" themselves, in order to ask himself
whether, like all the other notions of good and evil prevailing
elsewhere under the shelter of other religions, these, the Christian
notions, might not have been invented at some particular time by
a certain kind of man, simply with the view of preserving and
universalising his specific type. Breathless from their efforts at
getting rid of the dogma, they did not dream that perhaps the most
important part of the work still remained to be done.
Nietzsche went to the very foundation of the Christian edifice.
He pointed to its morality and said: if we are going to measure the
value of this religion, let us cease our petty quarrels concerning
the truth or falsehood of such stories as the loss of the Gadarene
swine, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and let us throw the
whole of Christian morality into the scales and appraise its precise
worth as a system of ethics. Nietzsche would have scorned to quarrel
with the Church, as Huxley did; for much more important issues were at
stake. The worth of a religion is measured by its morality; because by
its morality it moulds and rears men and reveals the type of man who
ultimately wishes to prevail by means of it.
With the metaphysics and the dogma of Christianity in ruins all around
him, therefore, Nietzsche took a step very far in advance of the
rationalistic iconoclasts of his age. He attacked Christian morals,
and declared them to be, like all other morals, merely a weapon in the
hands of a certain type of man, with which that type struggled for
power.
But bold as this step was, it constituted but the first of a series,
the next of which was to discover the type which had laid the
foundations of the Christian ideal. If it could be proved that these
Christian values had been created by a noble species with the object of
perpetuating that species, then Christianity would come forth from the
inquiry vindicated to the hilt, and fill the damage done to its dogma
would not have deterred Nietzsche from standing by it and upholding it
to his very last breath. Alas! Things turned out somewhat differently
and Nietzsche was not by any means the least pained by the result.
Pursuing the inquiry with his usual unflinching and uncompromising
honesty, and avoiding no conclusion however unpleasant or fatal,
Nietzsche, the scion of a profoundly religions house, the lover of
order and tradition, with the blood of generations of earnest believers
in his veins, finally found himself compelled to renounce and even to
condemn, root and branch, the faith which had been the strength and
hope of his forebears.
Before turning to the next chapter, where I shall explain how he
came to regard this step as inevitable, it should be said concerning
Nietzsche's philosophy in general, that it is essentially and through
and through religious and almost prophetic in spirit. No careful
reader of his works can doubt that Nietzsche was a deeply religious
man. A glance at _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ alone would convince any
one of this; while in his constant references to religion throughout
his works, as "a step to higher intellectuality,"[5] as "a means to
invaluable contentedness,"[6] as "a measure of discipline,"[7] as a
powerful social factor,[8] a more substantial confirmation of the fact
is to be found.
It is well to bear in mind, however, throughout our study of Nietzsche,
that he had a higher type always in view; that he was also well aware
that this type could only be attained by the strict observance of a
new morality, and that if he opposed other forms of morality--more
particularly the Christian form--it was because he earnestly believed
that they were rearing an undesirable and even despicable kind of man.
"Verily men have made for themselves all their good and evil. Verily
they did not take it: they did not find it: it did not come down as a
voice from heaven."[9]
"Behold, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up
their tables of values; the breaker, the law-breaker: he, however, is
the creator."[10]
"Verily a muddy stream is man. One must be at least a sea to be able to
absorb a muddy stream without becoming unclean."
"Behold, I teach you Superman: he is that sea; in him your great
contempt can sink."[11]
[1] See also D.D. Aph. 81.
[2] Z., p. 67.
[3] Z., p. 65.
[4] Z., p. 138.
[5] G. E., p. 81.
[6] G. E., p. 81.
[7] G. E., p. 80.
[8] G. M., 3rd Essay, Aph. 15.
[9] Z., p. 67.
[10] Z., p. 20.
[11] Z., p. 8.
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