Chapter 74 Chapter 25 Nietzsche

Nietzsche (Nietzsche, 1844-1900) considered himself Schopenhauer's successor, and he was right; however, he surpassed Schopenhauer in many respects, especially in the coherence and clarity of his theory.Schopenhauer's oriental ethic of absolute thought seems incompatible with his metaphysics of the omnipotence of the will; in Nietzsche, the will not only takes the first place in metaphysics, but also in ethics.Although Nietzsche was a professor, he was a literary philosopher, not an academic philosopher.He did not create any new specialized theory in ontology or epistemology; he was important first in ethics and second in that he was a keen historical critic.I shall confine myself almost entirely to his ethics and his criticism of religion below, since it was this aspect of his work that made him influential.

His life was simple.His father was a Protestant minister, and his upbringing was very religious.He excelled in the study of classical studies and linguistics at the university, and even before he had obtained his degree in 1869, Bazel University offered him a professorship of linguistics, which he accepted.His health was never poor, and after several periods of sick leave he was finally obliged to retire in 1879.Thereafter he lived in Switzerland and Italy; in 1888 he became insane and remained so until his death.He had great admiration for Wagner, but he had an argument with him again, nominally over "Pazival", because Nietzsche thought "Pazival" was too Christian and full of desperate spirit.After this controversy, he lashed out at Wagner, going so far as to accuse him of being a Jew.Still, his general views are very similar to those expressed by Wagner in The Ring of the Nibelung; Nietzsche's superman is exactly like Siegfried, only he knows Greek.This may seem odd, but it's not my fault.

Nietzsche was not consciously a Romantic; indeed, he was often harshly critical of Romantics.Consciously, his view is Greek, but omits the Orphic teachings.He admired all the philosophers before Socrates, with the exception of Pythagoras.He has a close kinship with the thought of Heraclitus.Aristotle's "magnanimous man" is very similar to Nietzsche's so-called "noble man", but generally speaking, he believes that Greek philosophers from Socrates and below are not comparable to their predecessors.He could not condone Socrates' humble birth; he called him a "roturier" and accused him of corrupting the noble youth of Athens with a democratic moral prejudice.Plato, in particular, was condemned by Nietzsche for his interest in edification.Nietzsche, however, was obviously not very happy to condemn him, and so, to excuse him, suggested that perhaps he did not really mean it, but promoted virtue as a means of keeping the lower classes in order.Nietzsche once referred to Plato as a "great Cagliostro".He liked Democritus and Epicurus, but his admiration for the latter would seem unreasonable if it were not interpreted as an admiration for Lucretius.

As might be expected, he had a low opinion of Kant, whom he called a "la Rousseau (Rousseau) moral fanatic". Although Nietzsche criticized the Romantics, he drew much of his insights from them; his views, like Byron's, were an aristocratic-anarchist one, and we are not moved to see him admiring Byron. Surprised.He intends to combine two sets of values ​​that are not easily reconcilable: on the one hand, he likes ruthlessness, war, and aristocratic pride; on the other hand, he is fond of philosophy, literature, art, and especially music.Historically, these values ​​have coexisted during the Renaissance; Pope Julius II, who fought for Brona and appointed Michelangelo, might serve as a counterpoint to Nietzsche's desire to see mastery. The kind of people in the regime.Despite some important differences between the two men, Nietzsche and Machiavelli, it is natural to compare Nietzsche with Machiavelli.As for the difference: Machiavelli was a man of practical affairs, his opinions were formed by close contact with public affairs, and were in harmony with his time; he was neither broad nor systematic, and his political philosophy was coherent whole.Nietzsche, on the other hand, was a university professor, an essentially academic figure, a philosopher who was consciously opposed to the political and ethical currents that seemed to prevail at the time.The similarities between the two go deeper, however.Nietzsche's political philosophy is similar to the political philosophy in "The Master's Guide" (not "Roman History"), although it is completed in detail and applied to a wider range.Both Nietzsche and Machiavelli had a power-hungry, deliberately anti-Christian ethic, although Nietzsche was more outspoken in this regard.Napoleon was to Nietzsche what Cesar Borgia was to Machiavelli: a giant defeated by a lesser adversary.

Nietzsche's critique of all schools of religion and philosophy is entirely motivated by ethical motives.He admires a certain disposition which he thinks (perhaps rightly) is possible in the aristocratic minority; in his opinion the majority should be only a means for the accomplishment of the superiority of the few, and they must not be thought to claim happiness or welfare. independent rights.He speaks of ordinary men, customarily called "crude ones," and that if their sufferings were necessary for the production of great men, he sees no objection to the matter.The whole importance of the period from 1789 to 1815 is thus summed up in Napoleon: "The French Revolution brought Napoleon into existence, and that is its justification. If the chaotic collapse of our whole civilization would result in this In return, we should hope for the collapse of chaos. Napoleon made nationalism possible, which is the reason for the latter.” He said that almost all the great hopes of this century came from Napoleon.

He likes to express his opinions in a paradoxical way, aiming to shock the conservative readers.His method is to use the words "good" and "evil" according to the usual meaning, and then say that he likes "evil" and not "good".His book, Beyond Good and Evil, actually aims to change the reader's idea of ​​good and evil, but except for some occasions, it claims to extol "evil" and depreciate "good".He says, for example, that it is wrong to regard the pursuit of the victory of good and the extinction of evil as an obligation; this is an English view, typical of "that fool John Stuart Mill"; He had a particularly vicious contempt for the man Müller.Regarding Mueller, he said:

"He said 'what is right to one man is right to another'; 'do not do to another what you would not have others do to you'; The vulgarity of the human being is abhorred. This principle is willing to base all human intercourse on mutual service, so that every action seems to be a cash reward for what we do. The assumptions in it are despicable as hell: It is taken for granted that there is a certain kind of comparison between my actions and your actions. " True virtue, as opposed to traditional virtue, is not for everyone, but should always be characteristic of an aristocratic minority.This virtue is neither profitable nor prudent; it separates those who possess it from others; it is hostile to order and injurious to inferiors.The superiors must wage war on the commoners and resist the democratic tendencies of the age, for on all sides there are mediocrities banding together to try to be masters. "Everything that connives, softens, and puts 'people' or 'women' in front is beneficial to universal suffrage—that is, the rule of 'bad' people." It is Rousseau who leads people into evil ways, Because he had fun talking about women; second Harriet Beecher Stowe and the slaves; second socialists fighting for the working man and the poor.All of these people should be resisted.

Nietzsche's ethic was not an ethic of self-indulgence in any usual sense; he believed in Spartan discipline, with both the capacity to inflict pain and the measure to endure it for great ends.He admired strength of will above all else.He said: "I test the strength of a will by the amount of resistance it can make, and the amount of pain and suffering it can endure, and I know how to make the most of it. I don't need the finger of reproach The sin and pain of existence, but the hope that one day life will be more sinful and more painful than it has been." He sees compassion as a weakness that must be resisted. "The goal is to achieve that vast capacity for greatness: man who can shape the future through discipline and also by exterminating millions of shoddy-makers, and yet avoid the consequences of seeing heading toward collapse with misery of a kind never seen before." With a certain ecstasy he prophesied an age of great war; we do not know if he had lived long enough to see his Not happy.

He wasn't a country admirer, though; by no means that.He was a fervent individualist, a man who believed in heroes.The misfortune of a whole people, he says, is less important than the misery of a great individual: "All these miseries of the little people, except in the affections of the mighty, do not together form a sum." Nietzsche was not a nationalist and did not show excessive admiration for Germany.He wanted an international ruling race to be the masters of the world: "a vast new aristocratic society based on the most rigorous self-discipline, in which there are powerful figures of philosophy and artistic talent. The will of the tyrant will be imprinted for thousands of years."

He is not a person who explicitly holds anti-Semitism, but he believes that Germany accommodates so many Jews that it cannot be assimilated no matter how many, so the Jews should not be allowed to continue to flow in.He hated the New Testament, but not the Old Testament, and he spoke of the Old Testament with the highest praise.To do Nietzsche's justice, we must stress that many recent developments which have some bearing on his general ethical views are contrary to what he expressly expressed. Two uses of his ethical thought are worth noting: the first is his contempt for women; the second is his ruthless criticism of Christianity.

He never tires of berating women.In his pseudo-prophetic work, Thus Spake Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), he says that women cannot yet talk about friendship; they are still cats, or birds, or at worst cows. "Men should be trained for war, women should be trained for the entertainment of warriors. All the rest is folly." If we can trust his strongest epigram on this subject: "Do you go to women? Don't forget your whip" , you know that the entertainment of soldiers must be a different kind of entertainment. His contempt for women was always the same, but not always so fierce.In (WilltoPower) he says: "We take pleasure in women as we take pleasure in an animal that may be finer, weaker, subtler. To meet animals whose hearts are only dancing, nonsense, finery What a joy! They have always been the joy of every tense and deep male soul." Even these qualities, however, are only found in women when they are kept in good order by manly men. to be found; as soon as they acquire any independence, it is intolerable. "Women have so many reasons to be ashamed of; women are so pedantic, superficial, peasant, petty pride, insolence, hidden indiscretion... It is really the fear of men that has so far combined these constraints and Very well controlled," he says in "Beyond Good and Evil," where he goes on to say that we should treat women as property, as the Orientals do.All his invectives against women were presented as self-evident truths, supported by neither historical evidence nor that of his own experience, which, as regards women, was almost confined to his sister. Nietzsche's objection to Christianity was that it accepted what he called "slave morality."It is wonderful to observe his arguments in contrast to those of the French philosophes (sages) before the French Revolution.The philosophes of France maintain that the teachings of Christianity are untrue; that Christianity teaches obedience to what is supposed to be the will of God, but that no self-respecting man should bow his head to any higher power; The enemies of democracy deny liberty and keep squeezing the blood of the poor.Nietzsche was not concerned with the metaphysical truth of Christianity or any other religion; he was convinced that no religion was actually true, and so he evaluated all religions solely in terms of their social effects.He agrees with philosophes, and also opposes obeying the hypothetical will of God, but he wants to replace the will of God with the will of the "artistic tyrant" in this world. Except for this superman, obedience is justified, but obedience to the Christian God is not.Regarding the Christian church as an ally of tyrants and an enemy of democracy, he said that was precisely the opposite of the truth.According to him, the French Revolution and socialism were essentially identical in spirit to Christianity, which he also opposed, for the same reason: that he did not want to treat all people as equals in any respect. He says that both Buddhism and Christianity are "nihilistic" religions in the sense that they deny any fundamental difference of value between one person and another; But of the two, Buddhism has much less to criticize.Christianity is depraved, full of rotten shit; its impetus is the revolt of the shoddy.This revolt was started by the Jews and brought into Christianity by "holy epileptics" like the dishonest St. Paul. "The New Testament is the gospel of a very mean class." Christianity is the deadliest, most seductive lie of all time.There is never a single well-known figure who resembles the Christian ideal; consider, for example, the heroes of Plutarch's Lives.Christianity is reprehensible because it denies "pride, distanced sorrow, great responsibility, exuberance, brilliance of bestiality, instinct of war and conquest, passionate apotheosis, vengeance, wrath, debauchery, adventure, knowledge" the value of.All this is good, but it is said to be bad by Christianity—so Nietzsche argued. He said that the purpose of Christianity is to tame people's hearts, but this is wrong.A beast has a certain splendor which is lost the moment it is tamed.The criminals Dosteevsky associated with were better than he, because they had more self-respect.Nietzsche loathed repentance and atonement so much that he called them eoliecirculaire (circular follies).It's hard to shake off the thought about human behavior: "We are the heirs of two thousand years of living conscience and self-crucifixion." Nietzsche's reasons for opposing Christianity are best expressed in this passage: "What is it that we object to in Christianity? It is designed to destroy the strong, to dampen their spirits, to take advantage of their moments of weariness and weakness, to convert their proud confidence into anxiety and conscience against which it knows how to poison and disease the noblest instincts, until its strength, its will to power, turns inwardly And death: that chilling way of dying, of which Bascal is the most famous example." Nietzsche wanted to see what he called the "noble" man in the place of the Christian saint, but the "noble" man was by no means a universal type of man, but a ruling aristocracy. A "noble" man is capable of cruel things, and sometimes of crimes in vulgar eyes; he recognizes duty only to his equals.He will protect artists, poets, and all who happen to be proficient in a craft, but he protects them as a member of a higher class than the man who knows how to do something.From the example of the soldiers, he will learn to connect death with the cause he is fighting for; learn to sacrifice the majority, and take his cause mercilessly; cunning.He would recognize the role of cruelty in aristocratic superiority: "Almost everything we call 'higher education' is based on the exaltation and intensification of cruelty." "Noble" human nature Above is the embodiment of the will to power. What should we think of Nietzsche's teaching?How true is this doctrine?Is it of any use?Is there something objective in it?Is it merely a sick power fantasy? It is undeniable that Nietzsche has always exerted a great influence among people with literary and artistic accomplishments, though not among professional philosophers.It must also be admitted that his various predictions about the future have so far proved to be closer to correct than those of liberals or socialists. If his thoughts were only symptoms of a disease which must be rife in the modern world. Yet there's still a lot about him that's just megalomaniac, which must be ignored.Of Spinoza he says: "How much cowardice and frailty this disguise of a sickly hermit reveals!" Exactly the same thing can be said of himself, since he says so without hesitation. Binoza, it is used to say that he is not reluctant.It was obvious that in his daydreams he was not a professor but a soldier; all the people he looked up to were soldiers.His evaluation of women, like that of every man, is the objectification of his own feeling for women, which is clearly an emotion of fear in him. "Don't forget your whip"--but nine out of ten women will get his whip off, and he knows it, so he avoids the women, and soothes his wounded vanity with sarcastic words . Nietzsche condemns Christian love because he sees it as the result of fear: I was afraid that the other person would hurt me, so I convinced him that I loved him.Had I been stronger and bolder, I would have openly expressed the contempt I must have felt for him.A universal love that one sincerely embraces seems impossible to Nietzsche, apparently because he himself harbors an almost universal hatred and fear, which he likes to disguise as lordly indifference.His "noble" man—himself in his daydreams—is a utterly devoid of empathy, ruthless, cunning, cruel, and concerned only with his own power.When King Lear was about to go mad, he said: I'm going to do that kind of thing—what I don't know yet—but it's going to be a terror to the whole world. This is the epitome of Nietzsche's philosophy. It never occurred to Nietzsche that the desire for power he bestows on his superman is itself the result of fear.A person who is not afraid of others sees no need to oppress others.People who have conquered fear do not have the madness of what Nietzsche called the "artistic despot" of Nero, the kind who tried to enjoy music and carnage while their hearts were filled with a sense of the inevitable. The horrors of a palace coup.I do not deny that the real world already closely resembles Nietzsche's nightmare, and this is partly the result of his theory; but this does not make the nightmare any less terrifying. It must be admitted that there is also a certain kind of Christian ethics to which Nietzsche's scathing criticism can be applied with justice.Both Baskar and Dosteyevsky - to use Nietzsche's own example - have a certain baseness of character.Bhaskar sacrificed his majestic mathematical intelligence to his god, and ascribed to the god a barbaric cruelty, which is the infinite expansion of Bhaskar's morbid mental pain.Dosteyevsky had nothing to do with "righteous pride"; he wanted to sin in order to repent and enjoy the joy of penitence.I don't want to discuss how much of such transgressions can justly be attributed to Christianity, but I will admit that I share Nietzsche's view of Dostoyevsky's demoralization as contemptible.It seems to me, too, that a certain nobility and pride, and even a certain self-righteousness, are elements of the best characters; and that none of the virtues rooted in fear is much admirable. There are two kinds of sages: sages by birth and sages out of fear.The born sage has a spontaneous love for mankind; he does good because it makes him happy. Conversely, the sage out of fear, like the man who refrains from stealing only because of the police, would do evil if he were not restrained by the fire of hell or the thought of revenge from others. Nietzsche can only imagine the second kind of sage; since he is filled with fear and hatred, spontaneous love for human beings seems impossible to him.It never occurred to him that a man, with superhuman audacity and stubborn self-respect, would not inflict pain, because he had no desire to do so.Does anyone think that Lincoln did what he did out of fear of hell?However, in Nietzsche's view, Lincoln was despicable, and Napoleon was great. It is also necessary to examine the main ethical question raised by Nietzsche, namely: Should our ethics be aristocratic?Or in some sense should all people be treated equally?According to the way I put it just now, this question is a question whose meaning is not very clear, so obviously the first step is to clarify the question. We must first distinguish aristocratic ethics from aristocratic political theory.A believer in Bentham's principle of greatest happiness for the greatest number has a democratic ethic, but he may think that an aristocratic form of government best promotes the happiness of the common man.This is not Nietzsche's view.He believed that the happiness of ordinary people was not part of the good itself.Everything that is good or evil in itself exists only on the side of the superior few; what happens to the rest is of indifference. The following question is: How is the superior few defined?In practice such persons have always been usually victorious gentes or hereditary aristocrats, and nobility, at least in theory, have usually always been descended from victorious gentes.I think Nietzsche would accept this definition. "There can be no morality without good birth," he told us.He said that the aristocracy was always originally a savage, but that every upward step of mankind has its origin in aristocratic society. I don't understand whether Nietzsche regards the superiority of the nobility as innate or caused by education and environment.If the latter, then it is difficult to justify excluding others from the advantages to which they are supposedly equally entitled.So I assume he thinks that victorious aristocrats and their descendants are biologically superior to the humans they rule in the same way that humans are superior to domestic animals, but only to a lesser extent. What does it mean to be "biologically superior"?In interpreting Nietzsche, the meaning is that individuals belonging to superior clans and their descendants are more likely to be "noble" in Nietzsche's sense of "noble": they will have more willpower, more courage, more More power impulses, less compassion, less fear, less tenderness. We can now describe Nietzsche's ethics.I think the following is a fair comment on his ethics. The victors of war and their descendants are often biologically superior to the losers. So it is desirable for them to hold full power and handle affairs entirely for their own benefit. There's also the word "wanted" to consider here.What is "to have" in Nietzsche's philosophy?From the standpoint of the spectator, what Nietzsche calls "wanting" is what Nietzsche wants.With this explanation, Nietzsche's doctrine might be stated more simply and honestly in the following sentence: "I wish I had lived in Athens in the time of Pericles or in Florence in the time of the Medici." But that's not a philosophy; it's a biographical fact about someone. The words "to have" and "what I want" are not synonymous; the word requires some general legislative provision, however vague that requirement may be.A theist might say that what is wanted is what God wants, but Nietzsche would not say that.He could have said that he knew what is good by virtue of ethical intuition, but he didn't want to say that because it was too Kantian.Extending the term "wanted," all he can say is this: "If people read my work, a certain percentage of people will have the same desires as I do about social organization; Inspired by the energies and determination that philosophy would give them, they could preserve and revive aristocratic society, either by themselves as aristocrats or (like me) as their sycophants. Thus they would have a better life than they could have had as servants of the people A more fulfilling life." There is also an element in Nietzsche's thinking that is very similar to the reason for opposing trade unions that the "radical individualists" urge.In the struggle of all against all, the victor may have certain qualities that Nietzsche admired, such as courage, resourcefulness, and strength of will.But if people who do not possess these aristocratic temperaments (they are the overwhelming majority) unite, they may win despite their individual inferiority.In this struggle of the collective canaille (fools) against the aristocracy, Christianity was the ideological front, as the French Revolution had been.We should therefore oppose all associations of weak individuals, lest their combined strength should overwhelm that of strong individuals; on the other hand, we should promote associations of the strong and vigorous elements of the population.The first step in initiating this union is to promote Nietzsche's philosophy.It can be seen that it is not an easy task to preserve the distinction between ethics and politics. If we wanted - and I did - to find some reasons against Nietzsche's ethics and politics, what reasons could we find? There are some strong practical reasons why, if one intended to achieve what he stated, one would actually achieve quite a different situation.The elite aristocracy is now discredited; the only viable form of aristocratic society is an organization like the Fascist or Nazi party.Such an organization arouses opposition, and may be defeated in war; but if it is not defeated, it must soon become a full-fledged police state, in which the rulers live in terror of assassination, and the heroes The characters were all sent to concentration camps.In this kind of society, faith, integrity and shame are destroyed by secrets, and the self-proclaimed superhuman aristocratic class degenerates into a group of trembling cowards. However, these are only modern truths; they would not have been applicable in a bygone era when aristocracy was not a problem.The government of Egypt has been governed for thousands of years according to Nietzschean principles.Until American Independence and the French Revolution, almost all great powers were governed by aristocracy.We must therefore ask ourselves whether there is any good reason why we prefer democracy over a regime with such a long history of success; Is there any objective basis for the ethics of maintaining aristocratic politics? The ethical question, as opposed to the political question, is a question of empathy.In the sense that the pain of others makes us unhappy, sympathy is always inherent in human beings to some extent; young children feel distressed when they hear other children crying. But the development of this feeling is very different in different people.Some people take pleasure in inflicting suffering on others; others, like the Tathagata, feel that they cannot be fully happy as long as any living being is suffering.Most people emotionally divide people into friends and foes, sympathizing with the latter but not with the former.An ethics like that of Christianity or Buddhism is based on universal sympathy; Nietzsche's ethics is based on the total absence of sympathy. (He often preached against sympathy, and in this we do not find it difficult for him to abide by his discipline.) The question is: If the Buddha and Nietzsche were confronted, could either party come up with something that should strike the heart of an impartial listener? What about the discussion?I am not referring to political discourse.We can imagine them appearing before the Almighty, as in the first chapter of the book of Job, to give their opinion on what kind of world God should create.What will the two of them say? The Tathagata began to talk about the misery of the lepers who were cast out of society; ; Orphans, abused by cruel guardians; Thoughts of disappointment and death are often haunting even the most successful minds.He would say that a way must be found beyond all these burdens of sorrow, and that liberation can only be attained through love. Nietzsche was a man only the Almighty God could have kept him from interjecting, and when it was his turn to speak, he would suddenly exclaim: "My God, man! You must learn to be tough. Why suffer because of petty people And weeping? Or, do you do it because great people suffer? Small people suffer trivially, great people suffer greatly, and great suffering should not be regretted, because this kind of suffering is noble .Your ideal is a purely negative ideal—the absence of pain, which can only be fully attained by non-existence.In contrast, I have positive ideals: I admire Alcibiadis, Emperor Friedrich II, and Napoleon For such a man, all misfortunes are worth it. Lord, I appeal to you, the greatest creative artist, do not let your artistic impulses be swayed by the depraved, clouded terror of this unfortunate psychopath Suppress the nagging." Tathagata Buddha learned all the history since his death in the court of the Paradise, and mastered the science. He was happy to have this knowledge, but he felt sorry for the way humans used this knowledge; Answer: "Professor Nietzsche, you are mistaken in thinking that my ideal is a purely negative ideal. It contains, of course, a negative element, the absence of pain; Seeing as much. Although I don't particularly admire Alcibiades and Napoleon, I have my heroes: Jesus, my successor, who told people to love their enemies; and those who discovered how to control nature. strength, those who obtain food with less labor; those physicians who tell men how to reduce disease; poets, artists, and musicians who have glimpsed God's benediction. Love and knowledge and the joy of beauty are not negativity; these are enough to fill The life of the greatest man of all time." Nietzsche replied: "Nevertheless, your world is always dull. You should study Heraclitus, whose works are preserved intact in the library of heaven. Your love is compassion, which is made of pain." Tricky; if you are honest, your truth is an unpleasant thing, and it is known through pain; and as for beauty, what is more beautiful than a tiger that shines with its fierceness? No, if my lord decides that your world is good, I'm afraid we'll all be bored to death. " Tathagata replied: "You may be like this, because you love pain, and your love for life is a fake love. But people who really love life will feel the kind of happiness that no one in this world can have in my world." As for me, I agree with the Tathagata Buddha I imagined above.But I don't know how to justify his opinion with the kind of arguments that can be used in mathematical or scientific problems.I hate Nietzsche because he likes to meditate on pain, because he elevates his conceit to an obligation, because the people he admires most are some conquerors, whose glory lies in their intelligence to kill people.But I think that the fundamental argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but coherent ethics, is not an appeal to fact, but an appeal to emotion.Nietzsche belittles universal love, which I feel is the driving force behind everything I wish for in this world.His disciples had had a period of prosperity, but we may hope that this period is soon drawing to a close.