FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche



Nietzsche's mature writings expound the doctrines of “will to power” (Wille zur Macht), perspectivism, the master and slave moralities, and the Superman (Übermensch). His presentation of these themes is dominated by unresolved tensions, a characteristic stylistic predilection that draws upon both Hegelian dialectic and his own themes of transvaluation and the rejection of ascetic binaries. The will to power rests at the core of causation and is, for Nietzsche, a validation of life (the ability to “say yes! to life”). The concept is adapted from Schopenhauer's “will to live.” It is from the will to power that the human motivations toward domination, love, violence, and search for truth derive, as well as nonhuman teleologies (Welshon, 2007).

Among Nietzsche's most radical ideas are the revaluation of all values, the death of God, the specter of nihilism in modern society, and the loss of European confidence, combined with a growing sense of meaninglessness and foreboding that would find a home in twentieth century existentialism and elsewhere. By the revaluation of all values, Nietzsche meant to initiate an examination of the hierarchies of value, given that human beings are in their very essence value-making creatures. Nietzsche discussed in great detail the revaluation of values that he believed took place with the invention of Judeo-Christian morality in the first millennium B.C.E. According to Nietzsche, the ancient Hebrews, in their unhappy exile and, before that, under slavery, invented a set of values diametrically opposed to the ancient warrior values of their captors and oppressors (Strong, 2007). The early Christians built on this invention and, like the Hebrews, coupled it with a powerful monotheistic religion. Whereas the older values of the ancient warriors and aristocrats celebrated the privileged superiority of their adherents, the new values of the Hebrews and Christians shifted privilege to the common man and emphasized an egalitarian morality which (unlike the morals of the ancient warriors and aristocrats) was available to any good person, regardless of his or her wealth, health, or place in society. Accordingly, it was a set of values that served the interests and self-respect of the “weak” and “mediocre” as opposed to a set of values that served the interests of the “strong” and “superior” specimens of humanity. What Nietzsche sought was a new revaluation of values that would reverse this older one and once again serve the interests of “the best,” “the higher men,” those who are most talented, those rare individuals who make a society great rather than simply comfortable (Safranski, 2001).

The timing of Nietzsche's campaign was crucial. That older revaluation, the one that shifted the emphasis and the privileges of society from the strong to the weak, depended on the powerful religions of Judaism and Christianity to maintain order, because (Nietzsche assumed) most people would be good only so long as there was a threat of divine punishment for wrongdoing or loss of faith. But Nietzsche saw clearly, as most of his contemporaries did not, that the rise of modern science and ...