Only because these processes carried on over countless ages did the things that we most value about our human existence come into being.
But then along came the so-called moralists like Socrates and Jesus and said that these values were all wrong - that
There should be laws to;
- protect the weak against the strong, and that
- justice should reign, not strength, and;
- the meek, not the enterprising should inherit the earth.
The very processes by which man had been raised above the animals, and civilization brought into being, were then put into reverse.
Natural leaders - the confident, the courageous, the innovators - were shackled by value systems that set them on equal terms with the mediocre mass of mankind.
The typical characteristics of slaves were hailed as virtues:
a life of service to others,
self-denial,
self-sacrifice.
Even gifted individuals were what Nietzsche calls "un-selfed" by this. And it was - all done in the name of morality - It is all, says Nietzsche, the worst possible decadence, a denial of everything that has produced culture and civilization.
If it is allowed to go on, it will put an end to everything that we value most in our world.
We must on no account continue with
these slave-moralities.
But when we reject them, how shall we then go about finding new morals and values to take their place, more genuine ones that we can authentically live by? Well, says Nietzsche, since there is no God, and no world other than this one, then morals, ethics, and values cannot be what is called transcendental: they cannot come to us from anywhere outside this world, for there is nowhere "else."
They must be human creations.
The slave-moralities that we abase ourselves
before are not handed down to us from some divine source,
they are put over on us by, among others
- the slaves
themselves, - the herd, - the rabble, in whose interests such
systems operate.
And it is, of course, only too easy to see why they want us to accept them.
The imaginative, the daring, the creative, the bold, the courageous, the curious and brave, nature's leaders of all kinds, should be free, untrammelled by slave moralities free to live life to the full, and to fulfil themselves.
Nietzsche called their drive to do this their "will to power," by which he was thinking not only of politics or conquests but of cultural activities as well.
A human being who thus develops his maximum potential becomes a sort of super-human-being, and for that reason Nietzsche coined the term "superman," which has now entered into most European languages, including English. By this term Nietzsche meant not only people like Napoleon but also people like Luther and Goethe - even Socrates, who, although Nietzsche so powerfully disapproved of what he did, undeniably carried out his life-project with immense personal strength and bravery. Acceptance of these values will bring a double benefit.
First, the creative potential of the human race will be given a free rein, so that in every area of life the highest achievable goals will be attained, and civilization will develop at the fastest possible rate - something which is self-evidently in the interests of mankind as a whole.
Second, the most gifted individuals will be able to live fulfilled lives, and thus experience personal happiness instead of frustration - happiness being understood by Nietzsche very much to mean self-fulfillment, not merely the enjoyment of transitory pleasures.
Say YES TO LIFE
So the central values that we should embrace, says Nietzsche, are those of life-assertion. Each one of us should be himself to the full, and live his life to the full, say yes to life, live all out, to the very top of his bent. One of the words he uses most frequently is "dare"; and perhaps his first commandment is: "Dare to become what you are." This is how all living creatures behave spontaneously in nature, after all. Of course it will bring us into conflict with one another, but what is wrong with that? The bold and adventurous find conflict exciting, they relish it, and it helps to stretch them to their utmost, which they also enjoy, and which develops their abilities.
Of course the weak will go under, but that is to be welcomed. To want to abolish strife, suffering, and defeat is just as uncomprehending and futile as it would be to want to abolish bad weather.
A LIVE CHALLENGE
Nietzsche judges all other values by this yardstick of life-assertion. "Good" is that which asserts life or assists life-assertion. Even "true" is that which is on the side of life, and not against life. A critic might say to Nietzsche: "But what is the point of it all? You say there is no life other than this, and no world other than this. What then does it matter what anyone does? The most triumphant and self-fulfilling of lives are still going to end quite soon in death, and then those individuals will exist no more, and all will be forgotten in the end. Everything goes down into eternal annihilation. So what does any of it matter?" To this Nietzsche gives a twofold reply.
First, his prescription is for a life which is fulfilling on its own terms, and therefore worth living for its own sake. Such a life does not seek to derive any of its meaning or significance from outside itself, and is not to be understood in terms of anything else. In this respect it is like a work of art, you might say. This fact has caused both Nietzsche and others to speak of him as having an aesthetic understanding of life - an unfortunate term that can be very misleading, for there is nothing arty about Nietzsche's attitude to life. The second part of ihis twofold reply is that everything, far from going down into eternal annihilation, is going to come back eternally: the passage of time moves in vast, cosmic epicycles, so that everything that has happened before will eventually come round again - and then again after that at another huge distance of time. By living to the utmost of our being we are living as we would wish to live eternally; and the eternal recurrence of time will bring us as near to eternal life as it is possible to get in a world that is finite and bounded.
In evaluating Nietzsche's philosophy a distinction has to be made between the challenge it presents and Nietzsche's own answer to that challenge. Most people have found the challenge legitimate and exceedingly powerful while rejecting Nietzsche's own response to it. The challenge is that if we no longer hold traditional religious beliefs it is illegitimate for us to go on embracing a morality and values that derive their justification from those beliefs. Our whole position, if we do that, is phony, false. We are under an obligation to, as Nietzsche puts it, reevaluate our values. In other words we need, from the bottom up, to carry out a radical reappraisal of our morals and our values on the basis of beliefs that we do really genuinely hold. This is a hair-raising challenge, and one of fundamental urgency in an increasingly irreligious world. Ever since Nietzsche put it before us, it has remained the supreme ethical challenge confronting not only the West but people everywhere who no longer have faith in a religion.
It set the moral agenda for the existentialist philosophies of the 20th century. And it remains unanswered in the minds of most people who have given it their serious consideration. Indeed, in the opinion of many it is the most important philosophical question that confronts us today. For this alone, Nietzsche stands at or near the head of those philosophers whom we ourselves have to come to terms with...
Story of Philosophy by Bryan Magee
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Philosophy-Bryan-Magee/dp/078947994X
The Master and Slave Moralities: what Nietzsche Really Meant
Why do we say that helping other people is good? Why do we assume that egotistical actions are evil? After all, wouldn’t acting egotistically be good for us?
These are some of the questions Nietzsche tries to answer in his book On the Genealogy of Morality. After reviewing some absurd answers that were offered in his day, Nietzsche rejects them and starts anew, with the goals not only of answering that question, but of determining where the ideas of good, bad, and evil even come from.
In his attempt to answer these questions he draws some shocking conclusions that have tremendous implications for how we view ourselves and the lives we choose to lead.
A tale of two moralities
To explain his ideas, Nietzsche gives us a story. He describes an ancient society with two classes, the Masters and the Slaves.
The Masters are strong, creative, wealthy, and powerful. They can do whatever they like. They love themselves and see themselves as good. They name the opposites of themselves, the weak and feeble, as bad. Being bad is just how a person is, they didn’t choose to be that way; they’re just losers.
The Slaves are less well off. Oppressed by the Masters, they cannot do what they like. They are weak, poor, and resentful. They initially view themselves as bad, as the Masters do, because they lack the concepts to do otherwise.
However, Nietzsche suggests that after some time, a “slave revolt” occurs. This is not a physical revolution, as the slaves are too weak for that kind of revenge, but a moral one. In this revolt, the slaves decide that they can only endure their suffering if they redefine it as both being good and a choice. The slaves begin to praise the meek, the poor, and those who are unable to end their suffering.
The Masters are dubbed evil for choosing to be wealthy, powerful, and capable. The Slaves become good for being the opposite of the Masters. This gives them the psychological strength to carry on and allows them to get back at the Masters by undermining the values system that encouraged them to exhibit their strengths.
What does the master morality entail?
The Master morality involves those with strengths of both mind and body seeing themselves as good. It values things like wealth, glory, ambition, excellence, and self-actualization. It affirms life and everything in it.
Since the master morality is favored by the powerful or those with some strength, its followers are few. However, those few are unconcerned with the disapproval of the many. This also means the masters are creative, as they have no desire to follow a prescribed life plan and are willing to experiment with new life choices that suit them despite widespread disapproval.
An example of a morality that tends towards this would be that of the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle’s ethics, for example, pay no mind to the poor and praise the powerful man who can live life fully. The Greek heroes are strong, glorious characters who make their will into reality no matter the cost. This might be why they turned the phrase “the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”
That seems a little harsh.
It is, but not all “Masters” would be vicious and oppressive. Nietzsche also places all the great artists, philosophers, and prophets in this category. This system isn’t a blank check for sociopathy, but it does have the issue where some people might need to step on others to actualize themselves. Nietzsche compares the problem to hawks having it in their nature to eat lambs. It is harsh, but it is also what the hawk needs to do to fully be a hawk.
What about the slave morality?
On the other hand, the slave morality condemns the strength that the hated masters possess and praises the weakness that they have. It is this act, the transvaluation of values, that Nietzsche sees as the key achievement of the slave revolt; he even praises it as an act of brilliance which succeeded in dominating western thinking for two thousand years.
After this revolt, things that the masters had were considered evil because the slaves used to lack them and the lack was made into something good. For example, Chasity was praised because the people writing the moral code couldn’t get the sex they wanted. Humility was held to be a virtue because they had nothing to be proud of. Endless generosity was praised because they needed help themselves. The slave morality is sour grapes made into a values system.
Of equally great importance to Nietzsche is the idea that the slave morality, under any guise, couldn’t stand any competing moral systems existing. Nietzsche posits that this is motivated by fear of what unchecked Masters might do. This leads to plans to take power, attempts to bring down the strong in the name of equality, the suppression of the minority who follow other moralities, the creation of stories about hell to terrify people into compliance, and the claim that the slave morality and way of life must apply to everyone.
Nietzsche thought the purest existing form of the slave morality was to be found in Christ’s teachings and explained that the Beatitudes best expressed the morality’s core ideas. He also saw the slave morality manifest in Buddhism, Democracy, Socialism, and other mass movements that sought to make everyone equal and encourage dull lives. Since the slave morality is often life-denying, he saw them all as part of the gradual slide into the nihilism which he feared.
So, Nietzsche liked the master morality best? Should we all follow that?
This isn’t likely, according to philosopher Walter Kaufman. While Nietzsche did write The Antichristleaving no doubts about his distaste for the slave morality, his descent into insanity prevented him from completing his four-part series about morality which would have included more details on the master morality. It’s probable that he would have critiqued it just as he critiqued the slave morality.
He also praised the slave morality for helping to foster the internal life of man, as the master morality, for all that was right with it, required little reflection to create.
Nietzsche’s concern was that through tools like the fear of hell, authoritarian political power, and a mob mentality people who could live their lives otherwise would be coerced into following a slave morality that they didn’t need. He understood that some people needed the comfort of the slave morality. His real objection was to the idea that we all do.
In any case, the Ubermensch, Nietzsche’s transhuman ideal, would be “Beyond Good and Evil” and not fully committed to either one of these moralities alone.
So, what can I learn from this?
What Nietzsche encourages to do is to “be noble.” While the Masters are explained to be nobler than the Slaves, a noble person could still choose to hold slavish values. Jesus Christ, who Nietzsche saw as a proto-Ubermensch, is given as an example of how that is possible.
The noble person will see their life as a project, in which they choose their own goals and drive towards them no matter what society, dogma, or the unwashed masses think. They are not afraid to have their worldview challenged or to take actions which they know are going to lead to them changing and growing as people. Nietzsche’s Superman, also known as the Ubermensch, is the embodiment of the noble way of life.
In a sense, Nietzsche’s often shocking writings can be seen as a hand extended to those of noble temperament; only the people willing to have their worldviews challenged are going to read them at all.
Master–slave morality (German: Herren- und Sklavenmoral) is a central theme of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, particularly in the first essay of his book On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche argues that there are two fundamental types of morality:
"master morality" and "slave morality," basing his theory on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Master-slave dialectic. Master morality values pride and power, while slave morality values kindness, empathy, and sympathy. Master morality judges actions as good or bad (e.g. the classical virtues of the noble man versus the vices of the rabble), unlike slave morality, which judges by a scale of good or evil intentions (e. g. Christian virtues and vices, Kantian deontology).
For Nietzsche, a morality is inseparable from the culture that
values it, meaning that each culture's language, codes, practices,
narratives, and institutions are informed by the struggle between
these two moral structures.
Master morality
Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. He criticizes the view (which he identifies with contemporary British ideology) that good is everything that is helpful, and bad is everything that is harmful. He argues proponents of this view have forgotten its origins and that it is based merely on habit: what is useful has always been defined as good, therefore usefulness is goodness as a value. He writes that in the prehistoric state "the value or non-value of an action was derived from its consequences" but that ultimately "[t]here are no moral phenomena at all, only moral interpretations of phenomena." For strong-willed men, the "good" is the noble, strong, and powerful, while the "bad" is the weak, cowardly, timid, and petty.
The essence of master morality is nobility. Other qualities that are often valued in master morality are open-mindedness, courageousness, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and an accurate sense of one's self-worth. Master morality begins in the "noble man", with a spontaneous idea of the good; then the idea of bad develops as what is not good. "The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, "what is harmful to me is harmful in itself"; it knows itself to be that which first accords honour to things; it is value-creating." In master morality, people define the good based on whether it benefits them and their pursuit of self-defined personal excellence. Insofar as something is helpful to the strong-willed man, it is like what he values in himself; therefore, the strong-willed man values such things as good because they aid him in a life-long process of self-actualization through the will to power.
Slave morality
According to Nietzsche, masters create morality; slaves respond to master morality with their slave morality. Unlike master morality, which is sentiment, slave morality is based on re-sentiment—devaluing what the master values and the slave does not have. As master morality originates in the strong, slave morality originates in the weak. Because slave morality is a reaction to oppression, it vilifies its oppressors. Slave morality is the inverse of master morality. As such, it is characterized by pessimism and cynicism. Slave morality is created in opposition to what master morality values as good.
Slave morality does not aim at exerting one's will by strength, but by careful subversion. It does not seek to transcend the masters, but to make them slaves as well. The essence of slave morality is utility: The good is what is most useful for the whole community, not just the strong. Nietzsche sees this as a contradiction. Since the powerful are few compared to the masses of the weak, the weak gain power by corrupting the strong into believing that the causes of slavery (viz., the will to power) are evil, as are the qualities the weak originally could not choose because of their weakness. By saying humility is voluntary, slave morality avoids admitting that their humility was in the beginning forced upon them by a master. Biblical principles of humility, charity, and pity are the result of universalizing the plight of the slave onto all humankind, and thus enslaving the masters as well. "The democratic movement is the heir to Christianity"—the political manifestation of slave morality because of its obsession with freedom and equality.
...the Jews achieved that miracle of inversion of values thanks to which life on earth has for a couple millennia acquired a new and dangerous fascination - their prophets fused "rich", "godless", "evil", "violent", "sensual" into one, and were the first to coin the word "world" as a term of infamy. It is this inversion of values (with which is involved the employment of the word for "poor" as a synonym for "holy" and "friend") that the significance of the Jewish people resides: With them, there begins the slave revolt in morals.
Society
According to Nietzsche, the struggle between master and slave moralities recurs historically. He noted that ancient Greek and Roman societies were grounded in master morality. The Homeric hero is the strong-willed man, and the classical roots of the Iliad and Odyssey exemplified Nietzsche's master morality. He calls the heroes "men of a noble culture", giving a substantive example of master morality. Historically, master morality was defeated, as Christianity's slave morality spread throughout the Roman Empire.
After the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD Judea completely lost its independence to Rome, and after the defeat of the Bar-Kokhba revolt in 136 AD it ceased to exist as a national state of Jewish people. The struggle between the polytheistic culture of the Rome (master, strong) and newly developed Christian monotheism in former Judea and surrounding territories in the Middle East (slave, weak) lasted continuously until 323, when Christianity became the Roman Empire's official religion. Nietzsche condemns the triumph of slave morality in the West, saying that the democratic movement is the "collective degeneration of man". He claims that the nascent democratic movement of his time was essentially slavish and weak.[citation needed] Weakness conquered strength, slave conquered master, re-sentiment conquered sentiment. This ressentiment Nietzsche calls "priestly vindictiveness", based on the jealous weak seeking to enslave the strong and thus erode the basis for power by pulling the powerful down. Such movements were, according to Nietzsche, inspired by "the most intelligent revenge" of the weak. Nietzsche saw democracy and Christianity as the same emasculating impulse, which sought to make everyone equal by making everyone a slave.
Nietzsche did not necessarily believe that everyone should adopt master morality as the "be-all, end-all" behavior. He thought that the revaluation of morals would correct the inconsistencies in both master and slave moralities. But he asserted that for the individual, master morality was preferable to slave morality.
https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/the-master-and-slave-moralities-what-nietzsche-really-meant/
Slave And Master Morality (From Chapter Ix Of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good And Evil)
Master Morality
In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light.
There is master-morality and slave-morality,—I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition—even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled—or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts.
In the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception “good,” it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis “good” and “bad” means practically the same as “noble” and “despicable”,—the antithesis “good” and “evil” is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:—it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. “We truthful ones”—the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves.
It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to men; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to actions; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, “Why have sympathetic actions been praised?” The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: What is injurious to me is injurious in itself; he knows that it is he himself only who confers honor on things; he is a creator of values. He honors whatever he recognizes in himself: such morality equals self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:—the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not—or scarcely—out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the superabundance of power. The noble man honors in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. “Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast,” says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly: “He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one.” The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in dèintèressement, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards “selflessness,” belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the “warm heart.”
It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition—all law rests on this double reverence,— the belief and prejudice in favor of ancestors and unfavorable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful; and if, reversely, men of “modern ideas” believe almost instinctively in “progress” and the “future,” and are more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these “ideas” has complacently betrayed itself thereby.
A morality of the ruling class, however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one’s equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or “as the heart desires,” and in any case “beyond good and evil”: it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place. The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge—both only within the circle of equals,—artfulness in retaliation, refinement of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance—in fact, in order to be a good friend): all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of “modern ideas,” and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and also to unearth and disclose.
Slave Morality
It is otherwise with the second type of morality, slave-morality. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with his situation. The slave has an unfavorable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust of everything “good” that is there honored—he would fain persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand, those qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honor; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility.
Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis “good” and “evil”:—power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the “evil” man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the “good” man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being.
The contrast attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation—it may be slight and well-intentioned—at last attaches itself to the “good” man of this morality; because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the safe man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendancy, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words “good” and “stupid.”
https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/slave-and-master-morality-by-nietzsche/
SUPERMAN ------------------------------
How I Killed Nietzsche’s Superman with Clark Kent
The following is an excerpt from New Genesis: Hyperspace Revelations now available on Amazon:
“God is dead.” — Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125
The Übermensch, or Superman, is a concept the 19th century German philosopher Nietzsche created that described a future individual who would overcome the values of the masses and create his or her own values based on a desire or will to power. In Nietzsche’s book The Genealogy of Morals, he describes two types of moralities: master and slave. Nietzsche famously attacked Christian values as being slave-morality or the values of the oppressed, some of these values being shame and humility. Slave-values were propagated while these masses lived under oppressive regimes. It was one way to empower themselves and collectively organize against their rulers. Master-morality is its converse, which includes values such as pride and strength. The importance of Nietzsche’s philosophy was to reveal that our sense of right and wrong is not all together natural. Good and evil are social constructs, he argues.
To Nietzsche, slave-morality has a genealogy or history that leads to Judaism which was under the rule of the Roman Empire, most importantly during the time of Christ. The Roman Empire had a different, more master-morality or code of ethics — that of the great Olympic pantheon. As some have argued, this pantheon goes back further than even the Greek to proto-civilizations where the highest god was Pan instead of Zeus. Nietzsche preferred this diversity of gods that the pantheon presented because it allowed the population to choose its own set of values from a plethora of gods. It was Christianity that, for many socio-economic reasons, became popular because of the rise of the merchant class. Democracy worked well with Christian values.
Christianity with its monotheist God later defeated the polytheist
pantheon in terms of belief amongst citizens and was even adopted
later by the great Roman emperor Constantine who, before a great
battle, famously saw a vision in the afternoon sky: a bright symbol
with the words “by this sign conquer.” It was a symbol that, to
Constantine, resembled a cross.
In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche also introduces the
dichotomy of the Apollonian vs. the Dionysian or the
rational and ordered vs. the creative and chaotic. Based on the
Greek gods, these concepts represented to him the duality of man’s
nature. He later regretted making such a clear dichotomy or
opposition between the two concepts. Nevertheless, more often,
Nietzsche chose to appeal to Dionysus. Man had gotten too
self-policing by taking on the slave-morality of Christianity, which
at the time had become the dominant force in the Western world and,
arguably, not the democratic version it was intended to be.
Dionysus, or the Dionysian, was a way out of slave-morality and back
to a will to power or production of greater men such as
the mighty warriors and leaders as told in Greek and Roman history
and folklore. Nietzsche, in some ways, was not only fighting
slave-morality but what he saw as the fascism of the Christian
church. He was a dreamer. The idea that the masses could take on
such other values was something Nietzsche himself knew was
idealistic at best. What Nietzsche was actually fighting was what
many had called the “truth” at the time –– blind faiths that did not
recognize how these truths were created by men. The Übermensch, as
an alternative solution, is a high goal or North Star a
person should try to work towards — it is a rare individual who
rises out of the herd, as Nietzsche liked to say in
reference to the bovine masses.
Unfortunately, this Übermensch has been interpreted in many erroneous ways. The Nazis famously used Nietzsche’s philosophy as part of their ideological platform, particularly because Nietzsche was a fellow Aryan-German. Today, American white supremacists, who are sometimes linked to the fringe of 2017 Trumpism, shout Heil Trump! at their rallies. They, too, refer to Nietzsche as being an important part of their philosophy. Many of these American white supremacists have abandoned their traditional Christian values and taken on ancient polytheistic Norse religions in which they worship Odin and Thor. They claim these warrior Norse gods represent a stronger, European master-morality that is more equipped to battle an America that they believe is leaving them behind. This worship of Odin is not limited to America, however. In 2011, the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, a fascist nationalist, killed 77 people with bombs and guns in an inexplicable massacre. In the courthouse after his sentencing, he defiantly shouted that he committed the atrocities in the name of Odin.
The grave mistake these people make is that they completely misread Nietzsche and his idea of the Übermensch. Nietzsche wrote how perturbed he was at the Aryan-racial nationalism and growing anti-semitism occurring in Germany during his time. The Übermensch, in fact, is the opposite of a fascist and nationalist. He would never associate himself with the politics of the herd. The Übermensch is strong, but as Nietzsche claimed, the Übermensch is a lone wolf who acts not on vengeance like a slave but from a noble position of power. Mercy, Nietzsche claimed, comes from great abundance of spirit or power –– not weakness. The Nazis and White Supremacists then, by acting collectively in terms of the common denominator of skin color or race, are the very herd of slaves that Nietzsche described. There is no nobility when one acts from a place of being wronged. The Übermensch acts without regard to the “oppressive powers,” harnessing his power from a daring free-spirit. The “wars” Nietzsche spoke of were in terms of values. His philosophy, as most academics are familiar with, was naturally disordered or Dionysian. Nietzsche later wished he had been an artist and not a philosopher. He saw the problem with ideology and explanation. Who would hear him clearly? Only the fortunate.
Nietzsche’s superhero was only relevant for the 19th century. It is a shame people still take the Übermensch so seriously. Our modern day Clark Kent Superman is much more interesting. DC's Superman has a different set of more realistic and complex problems: he flies into space with his superpower hearing, and all the cries from the people around the globe call out to him for help. Superman cannot rid himself of these voices in desperate need. What does he do? How does he decide? Surely, he must turn away from almost all the cries he hears — this inability to save them all is Superman’s greatest kryptonite that no desire or will to power can ever overcome. One thing is definite, however: he always saves Lois Lane.
Here, we will return to Nietzsche’s most misused and misunderstood
quote:
“God is dead.”
Now, let’s examine this quote in its totality:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall
we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”
— Nietzsche, The Gay Science
What Nietzsche truly meant was that our belief or faith in the gods had died. As man grew in his knowledge of the universe, he had a difficult time believing in the magic of the old gods. The rituals, sacrifices, and prayers did not always come to the rescue nor were they as convincing as explanations of nature. As civilization expanded and became more sophisticated, a god-like first cause was not needed to explain the workings of the world. Now, modern men are left alone with no gods that they can truly count on. Can we find comfort in this reality?
The true Übermensch of today is the person who can bring belief back, one that all men can have faith in including all the masters, slaves, and atheists as well. This Übermensch goes beyond what is thought possible, creating a new era in terms of belief and ethos. What can he do today in the aftermath of the death of God and the rise of the rule of mob?
We do not know what created this universe or if there was a “creator” in the conventional sense. What we do know, through scientific observation, is that a great mysterious universe exists. If we were to worship this great creation of the universe, would it not be giving applause to a creator also? Why would our perspective of a supreme being have him be so in need of narcissistic praise? If a supreme being is really there, it would have been around for 14 billion years — there’s not much we can do to cheer him any more. But why anthropomorphize this power? This is the folly of men. Perhaps, praise, then, in reality, is understanding the universe in the right way: to appreciate it.
As we look to cosmology and the various explanations of the origin and ultimate fate of the universe, we still have little idea of how much of the universe works. Even with our most advanced technology, we cannot figure out an elementary and ubiquitous force called gravity. Currently our universe is being sucked into a black hole called the Great Attractor, which some have theorized to have another universe like our own on the other side but much more massive. Perhaps there exists civilizations there, too, wondering the same things we do: how did we get here? How did this whole universe start? As they look for this origin or creator, think about it, and possibly even discover it, they might get to the final lock or origin that sustains life on all planets and creates universes from the start: a giant pulsar or black hole sun (quasar). From this star, all the universe expanded out. As the cosmos is a collective network of stars and matter, we must wonder if the cosmos itself has a “consciousness.” Research has shown that brainless, “unintelligent” organisms like plants and bacteria, when working in groups, combine to have a collective intelligence that is smart enough to help the survival of its species. This consciousness, however, is merely a behavior.
If our universe has an intelligence or behavior, the first black hole sun can be thought of as a type of virgin-fertilized egg. That first black hole sun may have simply popped into existence and said, “Here I am. So be it. Let there be light.” In a second, more likely scenario, this black hole sun would have slowly matured, growing into a larger and larger network of stars and galaxies, gaining more and more intelligence as it expanded. There would have been no first words or commands at the Big Bang — only the babbling of an infant. What was before this black hole sun? Nothing can exist in nothingness. You can see how and why humans have created explanations about this nothingness and how this void allows for a free-for-all in creations of myths. When will we stop looking? This is the end of the Genealogy of Morals.
Carl Sagan was correct: We humans “are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” This “creator,” then, is not a being at all but just a thing without personality or judgment that does what it’s supposed to do: become what it is.
Before we get over our heads, let us remember that man is not the master educator of the universe. It is not a vertical hierarchy. As Sagan noted in reference to a photo taken of Earth by the very space probe he helped launch:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
You could say we are infinitesimally small in the grand scheme of things. We should be humbled by our location and size in the universe. Yet, let us not be merely slaves. If we exist, then the conditions of this vast universe must have allowed it. No energy is wasted in an efficient system.
In his quest to destroy the values of the herd, Nietzsche succumbed to the Dionysian, never fully escaping the binary. He reverted to the values and myths of the past instead of viewing society contextually. This mistake, of looking back to an idealized past, is the same mistake white nationalists make today. It creates a grand narrative of the “great battle” that doesn’t describe reality accurately.
As Superman’s story has carried out over the decades, his popularity has fallen dramatically. One reason for this is because the old stories of good vs. evil that Superman has traditionally been involved with are no longer convincing. Superman has been met with challenges where what is right and wrong has become more difficult to discern. His enormous powers of superhuman strength, hearing, and speed have sometimes created a burden especially when he has to make a choice between two bad choices. These ethical decisions are never easy. Clark Kent, on the other hand, has many more choices. He sees that no matter what he does, the good, bad, and the in-between keep happening. He can’t save everyone or even himself from this fact. He must choose when he wants to fly and realize that the myths he has told himself were the source of his existential conundrum. They must die.
https://nuzen.medium.com/how-i-killed-nietzches-superman-with-clark-kent-c7789f7ae74c
Relation to the eternal recurrence - The Übermensch shares a place of prominence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra with another of Nietzsche's key concepts: the eternal recurrence of the same. Several interpretations for this fact have been offered. Laurence Lampert suggests that the eternal recurrence replaces the Übermensch as the object of serious aspiration. This is in part due to the fact that even the Übermensch can appear like an other-worldly hope. The Übermensch lies in the future — no historical figures have ever been Übermenschen — and so still represents a sort of eschatological redemption in some future time. Stanley Rosen, on the other hand, suggests that the doctrine of eternal return is an esoteric ruse meant to save the concept of the Übermensch from the charge of Idealism. Rather than positing an as-yet unexperienced perfection, Nietzsche would be the prophet of something that has occurred a countless number of times in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch
There is an interesting parallel to Heidegger, which proves instructive because on close inspection, it is the same question and the same ambiguity, and it derives in Heidegger from Nietzsche. Heidegger claims in his evaluation of ‘fallenness’ that “the term does not express any negative evaluation”. There is much discussion as to the extent to which he can be taken seriously in this claim, because he then treats the concept with undisguised contempt.
For Heidegger, fallenness means the tendency of social creatures to absorb passively the culture, mores and behaviors of society without analyzing them, without a critical approach. This is “guided by idle talk”, “inauthentic”, “tempting and tranquillizing” and represents a “downward plunge” into “groundlessness and nullity”. Heidegger’s only countervailing line is to accept that there is a certain inevitability to fallenness.
All of this is exactly parallel to the question at hand about Nietzsche, and this is so because in fact it is the same question. For what is fallenness for Heidegger other than the unavoidable and yet undesirable ascent of slave morality? Both philosophers see clearly the unfortunate effects of this slavishness and yet neither quite manage to be inhumane enough to condemn what the herd seems incapable of escaping.
https://timlshort.com/2010/06/22/does-nietzsche-favour-master-morality-over-slave-morality/
As you read the selections from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ask yourself how his protagonist anti-sage embodies and gives voice to these various conceptions:
“God is Dead”—Nietzsche by this did not mean that God had ever existed, but rather that the divine in any form is a human idea, one increasingly disappearing with the rise of modern science and cosmopolitanism. He saw the God-concept as one ultimately hostile to life as it could be lived. This is not to say that Nietzsche was entirely happy with this change. On the one hand, he prophesied a coming nihilistic culture that would follow from the West’s loss of its traditional metaphysics and ethics. On the other hand, he urged that new systems of values could be forged in the future once the old theism was jettisoned.
Apollo & Dionysus—Nietzsche saw these as two principles always existent in life. Dionysus represents the life-giving dynamism of life, one charged with an erotic and bodily energy able to create beauty and revitalize tired social conditions. Yet this force was also chaotic, destructive, and violent. Apollo, its opposite, represents the “principle of individuation,” the control of life’s dynamism giving it order and restoration. This force is able to harness the Dionysian energy to create works of art. It is the symbiosis of these two that makes the best culture in Nietzsche’s mind, for true aesthetics needs Dionysian energy with Apollonian restraint.
Master-Slave Morality—Nietzsche saw these as two moralities that always exist in tandem, sometimes even in the same person, though giving rise to the two classes of humanity-masters and slaves. Master morality is that which renews life through its high creativity, its energy, force, and hardness. It has the potential to determine new systems of values and human purpose. Slave morality, on the other hand, is the morality of the “herd,” the mass of mediocrity which suffers greatly, and therefore, enshrines those values that lessen its suffering—kindness, patience, pity, etc.
Resentment—This is the often psychologically unacknowledged desire for vengeance of the slave classes against their masters that expresses itself in a religion of damnation and divine justice, a system that is life-denying.
View of Christianity—Nietzsche held an especially strong hatred of Christianity, ironic perhaps since he was the son and grandson of ministers. He saw Christianity as embodying the worst in slave morality, a joyless religion that denies the value of life, the body, instinct, the passions, and beauty. He saw it as a faith that denied itself this life for a non-existent life to come. Ultimately, belief such as this is decadent and mad.
“Truth” as Perpetual Fiction—Nietzsche held that all claims to truth were in fact only fictions imposed on the universe. There is no uniform or universal system of ethics. Instead, all claims to knowledge are instruments of power that impose order on reality, giving it shape and understandability. All “truth” is interpretation crafted for the ends of power.
Transvaluation—“Beyond good and evil” as he called it. If all truth is fictional power plays, then “good” and “evil” are but names imposed by humans to map reality; therefore, new values can be created in the future. Human nature is ever plastic, so we may reimagine the past and reinvent what is to come.
Will to Power—By the will to power, Nietzsche meant a description of the world as it is, not a metaphysic of what should be. The will to power underlies everything that humans do and can explain why they do it. Willing itself becomes the basis for valuation. Life is ultimately not a question of “good” or “evil” but the form that aesthetics can give all of life. Tragedy is an aesthetic category not a moral one; suffering is given form, not dismissed as imperfect.
Ego/Self as Fiction—Not only are truths and ethics fictional willed constructions that order life’s chaotic energy, so are conceptions of self and the ego. They are convenient masks that explain our bodies’ needs and desires.
Uebermensch (Overman/Superman)—An expression of transcending life, the next stage in our evolutionary development. The overman rises above the herd, both politically and aesthetically—a sort of merger of Napoleon and of Goethe.
Eternal Recurrence—Nietzsche was both fascinated and horrified at the idea that nothing is new in life--that existence moves in gigantic, perpetual cycles. Thus, even the overman is but a part of the great circle of life. He, nevertheless, held hope that this idea preserved some since of continuity in life, gave some Being to an otherwise perpetual Becoming, and offered something like God without any hint of the transcendent.
