In that case, then, he probably viewed us as mostly irrelevant to his philosophy.
As for John J. Reilly, BrainGlutton, I’m going to argue that the Nietzsche-fascism argument falls flat for two reasons:
It negates the whole of his philosophy by ripping the Concept of ‘‘Will to Power’’ out of context. Prior to ‘‘Will to Power’’ Nietzsche established his concept of the overman, which is specifically the creative endeavor of ideologically rising above the masses. Nietzsche was an individualist in its purest form, often ranted against systems of government for their tendency to impose the will of some upon others, and made specific remarks regarding the value of deviance in such a society. The physical embodiment of the overman was closer to a criminal than it was to a dictator. Overmen were not leaders, they were anti-heroes. He was interested in moral deviance and philosophical deviance for the purpose of self-liberation, but he didn’t suggest that deviance be imposed upon others.
It negates Nietzsche as a person, and as much as I think it’s necessary to understand the man behind the philosophy, in Nietzsche’s case I think it’s doubly so. By all accounts he was the meekest, most fastidious, sensitive guy you ever could meet. He had spent most of his life bullied by his cruel and domineering sister and aunt. He was physically fragile, prone to severe headaches and ‘‘weak’’ in every sense of the word… from the perspective of mainstream values. Nietzsche’s philosophy, I believe, was first and foremost an attempt to find power in his own situation, which is why he was so fascinated with early Christians and the way they inverted the morality of their day. Remember, they didn’t suddenly stop being slaves in the physical sense – their liberation occurred psychologically, in their ability to transform humility into a virtue.
Leaving that aside, one of Nietzsche’s last living acts as far as we know was to throw himself between a man and the horse that man was whipping in the middle of a public square. This is not a person who practiced cruelty in his own life. Indeed, quite the opposite.
Not only is Nietzsche not a precursor to fascism, I would argue that he would have despised fascism, specifically because it punished the deviants for daring to do their own thing.
Keep in mind I’m going on 2.5 hours of sleep here.
I am neither olivesmarch4th nor a Nietzsche fan, so I hope you won’t mind my intrusion.
“Fair” is certainly the wrong word to describe Russell’s stance in his great but not well-balanced book; his arguments against Nietzsche are mostly ad hominem or deal with the consequences he attributed to his philosophy: mainly, Nazism.
In his defense, he explicitly states “I dislike Nietzsche” and “His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.”
But that’s not the last time Russell talks about Nietzsche. In Wisdom of the West (1959), he shows a less emotional and more mellow approach towards the man and his philosophy. There, he states: “One might perhaps describe him [Nietzsche] as an aristocratic humanist in the literal sense.” And further more, he doesn’t blame him anymore for Nazism: “It may well be that tyrants have drawn some inspiration from Nietzsche, but it would be inappropriate to make him responsible for the misdeeds of men who have understood him at best superficially.”
I do understand, why Nietzsche can be misunderstood so easily; especially the idea of the “Übermensch” seems to trigger an immediate “eeekk, Nazi”-response that precludes any objective discussion. Russell and his disciples might be one of the sources of that reaction, but Nietzsche’s deliberately provocative writings aren’t innocent either. What is missed, is that the Übermensch is, in essence, an appeal towards the individual not a statement about races or peoples. And Nietzsche’s writings make it pretty clear that he was neither an anti-Semite nor a nationalist. He was a provocateur par excellence. And still seems to be.
Ah, I see that olivesmarch4th has already answered your question.
That falls flat after only two sentences. “Everything is permitted” just as much in a theistic universe too; you just need to say “God wants X”, instead of “I want X” or “the Führer wants X”; a principle that has often been applied by believers. Its not like God is going to show up and contradict them. Yes, you can say “there is no God so I can do whatever I want”; but you can also say “God favors me, so I can do whatever I want”. He’s trying to falsely equate theism and morality.
Nor was fascism “anti-theistic”; the opposite if anything; that’s why it got so much religious support against Godless Communism.
Perhaps Nietzsche’s ideas led to fascism, but not because of any anti-theism; theists have never had any trouble justifying amoral, ruthless, tyrannical behavior when so inclined; theocracies throughout history demonstrate this. Fascism is quite compatible with religion; something history demonstrated. This seems like nothing more than the standard practice of “something bad happened, let’s blame it on not believing in God”.
As well as a great many pop-culture and literary tropes that probably distort Nietzsche’s ideas just as much as the Nazis did. See Nietzsche Wannabe,Ubermensch, etc.
Oh, please. A progressive man for his times would have freed them. Slavery was controversial at the time; they were morally sophisticated enough to know it was wrong, they knew that it contradicted the very rhetoric they were spouting about “all men are created equal”. It violated their own moral standards; they just kept on doing it anyway, coming up with ever more elaborate and delusional justifications for it. Hypocrisy and willful self delusion is not a modern invention.
That’s an attitude that can be used to defend most anything, really. By that logic, you should be pro-abortion, since that’s generally acceptable in the attitudes of these times. But it’s unfortunetly bollocks, since as you stated in another thread;
My bolding. If you have a moral duty to improve society, then we most certainly may not judge your attitudes by the times. Likewise, Jefferson, too, you should consider to have had that moral duty, which he most assuredly failed. So far as I can tell, these two beliefs are rather in dissonance.
And, again, being “quite progressive” towards slaves doesn’t negate the fact that you own slaves. If he was, and I have no reason to believe that he was (so cite, in other words), a more kind slavemaster than others, that just makes him the nicest piece of shit in the turd heap. It’s not a reason to let him off, it’s not a reason to consider him a moral person, and it’s certainly not enough to declare that he is a good example of the ideal of human equality.
Edit: You seem to have missed my question. Does indebtedness negate the moral penalty for owning slaves?
I’m not him, but I’d say certainly not. No more than, say, assassinating people for cash or kidnapping people and selling their organs would be justified by debt.
OK, I’ve got my History of Western Philosophy to hand.
Russell notes that Nietzsche was not consciously a romantic and often severely criticizes the romantics. (Compare the excerpt in post #9, which places Nietzsche squarely within the romantic tradition at least in political terms; a conventional analysis that, in fact, entirely accords with and probably derives from Russell’s, as explicated more fully in other chapters of the same book.)
(In these terms, I suppose the truest heirs of Nietzsche now living are not neo-Nazis, but LaVeyan Satanists.)
Nietzsche, Russell says, is contemptuous of women, for the most part. He is also a bitter critic of Christianity.
Russell then proceeds to a kind of psychoanalysis of Nietzsche:
Russell next considers the main ethical problem raised by Nietzsche: “should our ethic be aristocratic, or should it, in some sense, treat all men alike?” (Unreflectingly sexist language – Russell, remember, is writing in 1945.) Russell notes in passing that an aristocratic ethic is not the same as an aristocratic political theory: A Benthamite might hold that an aristocratic form of government best promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number; but Nietzsche’s ethic discounts the happiness of the common people. “All that is good or bad in itself exists only in the superior few; what happens to the rest is of no account.”
Russell: sums Nietzsche’s sociopolitical ethic as follows: “Victors in war, and their descendants, are usually biologically superior to the vanquished. It is therefore desirable that they should hold all the power, and should manage affairs exclusively in their own interests.” Russell analyzes this to show that “desirable” in this context means only “desired by Nietzsche” and “this is not a philosophy; it is a biological fact about a certain individual.”
Russell sees a practical objection to this, that as nowadays the idea of aristocracies of birth are discredited, the only practicable form of aristocracy is something like the Fascist or Nazi party, which must arouse opposition and turn into “a police State, where the rulers live in terror of assassination, and the heroes are in concentration camps. In such a community faith and honour are sapped by delation, and the would-be aristocracy of supermen degenerates into a clique of trembling poltroons.” But this is a modern objection; practically all governments of large states before the American and French Revolutions were aristocratic, and the principle unquestioned.
The more important objection Russell sees is ethical, as to sympathy. “Sympathy, in the sense of being made unhappy by the sufferings of others, is to some extent natural in human beings; young children are troubled when they hear other children crying. But the development of this feeling is very different in different people. Some find pleasure in the infliction of torture; others, like Buddha, feel that they cannot be completely happy so long as any living thing is suffering.”
Russell concludes with an imaginary debate between Nietzsche and Buddha, before God, trying to persuade him as to what sort of world He should create, one based on love or strife. Nietzsche accuses Buddha of having a purely “negative” ideal, the absence of suffering, which is the stuff of boredom and death; while Nietzsche loves life, and excitement, and the beauty of predatory beasts like the tiger, and positive heroes like Alcibiades Emperor Frederick II and Napoleon. Buddha responds that he does have his own heroes – Jesus and saints and scientists and “the poets and artists and musicians who have caught glimpses of the Divine beatitude. Love and knowledge and delight in beauty are not negations; they are enough to fill the lives of the greatest men who have ever lived.” Nietzsche, he charges, loves pain, and his purported love of life is a sham.
So, olivesmarch4th: Does Russell have a fair understanding of what Nietzsche is all about? Or is he missing something?
I suggest you read the whole review, which also states:
I know almost nothing of Sorel and so will not debate that point. But just because Nietzsche was not a proto-fascist does not mean that Reilly is wrong on the point that fascism would have been impossible without him, or at least without the will-to-power view Neitzsche enunciated and celebrated. Reilly (who is a conservative Catholic, and definitely writing from that POV) says later in the same piece:
For the rest: Are seriously you suggesting that by the “Will to Power,” Nietzsche meant something other than power over others?! What do you base that on? Remember, he’s talking about power, not freedom, and what other forms of power are there that could be applicable to his philosophy? I can’t believe he meant anything like what the neopagan Starhawk refers to as “Power-With” (e.g., the power of social activists all together in a movement on an equal footing, etc.) as opposed to “Power-Over.” Scientists, engineers and inventors have a kind of power over matter and nature, but Nietzsche was completely uninterested in all of that AFAIK (despite the more-or-less-Nietzschean ravings one sometimes hears from “mad scientists” in popular entertainment). Politicians in a republic have a power to serve the people and make their lives better, but that is exactly the kind of thing Nietzsche expressly despises. Probably the “Power” Nietzsche speaks of includes an artist’s mostly harmless power to create beauty, but I can’t believe that encompasses the whole of it. No, olives, just practicing “moral deviance” or “doing your own thing” “for the purpose of self-liberation” would not be satisfactory self-actualization for a Nietzschean superman. There can be no supermen without submen.
All quite true, I’m sure; but none of that in any way negates the cruel content, nor the pernicious influence, of his philosophy. If anything, it just makes it all the more ridiculous. See Russell’s discussions above.
As an aside, I think that this is an important part of where people who portray ( notorious in popular entertainment ) any attempt to improve humanity as inevitably leading to something Nazi-like go wrong. Any plan to improve everyone immediately breaks the mold, because if you improve everyone, where are the “submen” for the “supermen” to sneer at and exploit? Even if as likely it can’t be done all at once, any ideal that calls for the eventual transformation of all of humanity into “supermen” doesn’t fit what you describing as the Nietzschean superman.
He used much of his ability to abolish slavery-he clearly believed slavery was wrong and called for gradual abolition. Also I do not think indebtedness excuses you for owning slaves.
If anything, I would argue that that makes his own ownership of slaves even worse. If he had simpy considered slavery acceptable, then his ownership would come straight from that ideal; vile, but an understandable act given his opinions. Believing slavery to be wrong, yet keeping slaves, not only means he committed the vile act but he did so while believing that what he was doing was wrong, a considerably more unpleasant situation.
The problem with saying “he clearly believed slavery was wrong” is that it’s way too vague. Apparently, he considered slavery acceptable for him, and his circumstances. For who else, and what other circumstances, would he be in favour of allowing slavery? Given that his own acts suggest there were some situations he considered it a fine practice, he was either a rather vast hypocrite or he had some standards beyond “slavery is always a moral wrong, and unacceptable”; and there really aren’t any looser standards beyond that which aren’t wrong.
Beyond even that, it’s worth mentioning that simply being against slavery did not in those days (nor, sadly, today) mean that Jefferson considered white and black people to be equal.
But it was first step to full racial equality. Also had the government compensated the slave owners he certainly would have supported a plan of gradual abolition.