on Morality

2012

This study of Friedrich Nietzsche is primarily aimed at studying how morality is created. Specific moralities, such as Christian, English, anti-Semitic, etc. are all derived in the basic ideological foundation from ritual acts of suffering and cruelty inflicted on ourselves and others. In this analysis I will be mostly studying the second essay from On the Genealogy of Morals, however I will be backing up Nietzsche's assertions using quotations and ideas from all of his other books and written materials. In this way I hope to be able to analyse his conception of morality back to its roots causes and not become preoccupied with particular religious or societal moralities. His writing is so dense, poetic and, yes it must be admitted, sometimes so strange and unwieldy, that making any positive assertions to a system can fall apart with any analytic perspective. His entire corpus of writing is highly subjective in nature, and this can lead to some troubling philosophical claims and appeals to objective truth of dubious integrity ("The violence of much of Nietzsche's rhetoric is one of the features that distinguishes it from most of what generally counts of as philosophical speech… a second is that Nietzsche provides remarkable little in way of obvious unitary, coherent essays. Instead he tends to give us aphorisms and poems, and to rely heavily on metaphor and hyperbole. His work appears fragmentary rather than systematic." P6 Within Nietzsche's Labyrinth-Alan White-Routledge New York London-1990. He himself said, "I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity [Rechtschaffenheit]." Twilight of the Idols I:26). We can say, in agreement with Richard Schact that: Nietzsche's main point… is that all moralities are of extra-moral origin, and derive whatever force and standing they may have from factors and considerations which themselves are quite other than "moral" in nature; that no actual or possible morality is "absolute," none being anything more than a contingent, conditional set of rules of limited applicability; and that there are no underivatively "moral" values, and no intrinsically "moral" phenomena (p419/420 Nietzsche-Richard Schact, Routledge, New York and London, 1983). A fair summary, but one that does an injustice to the startling power, depth and beauty of what he says on morality, and one that declines to comment on the origin of morality, how it is transmitted, and to what end it pertains. From close careful scrutiny and analysis of his books, in particular focusing on Daybreak, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals I would suggest that Nietzsche intended us to conceive the beginning of morality as similar, even identical to, the festival joys experienced by mankind and the need for a social memory. Large parts of his thought and nearly all of the literature I have found written on him, are nothing more than explications of, and investigations into, what he deems to be wrong with society and religion. These analyses are derived from certain philosophical tenants that form a foundational structure to his entire range of philosophical meanderings, but which are seldom enquired into separately from his views on Christianity. The range of studies on Nietzschean morality either descend into semantically mistaken and therefore philosophically questionable generalizations on immorality and perspectivism, or else focus entirely on his, rather stringent views on Christianity and other master moralities. What I am interested in is a study looking into Nietzsche's philosophical foundations to his views on morality. To be more specific I would like to look into the nature of man and morality, and how it is connected to notions of festivity and suffering. I am going to refrain from having any precise real world examples; I believe that there is more than enough literature on his views on Christianity and the ancient Greeks, and his dislike of 18 th century Germany is so personal a better understanding of German history would be required. What I am interested in is the fact that, in my opinion, Nietzsche outlines a broad methodological system that connects his disparate analyses of these various societies. What is it that connects the moralities of these three worlds? Not the individual codes, conventions or social mores, but the system whereby morality is transmitted and generated. Strange words for a philologist or a philosopher to say; he seems to be more concerned with poetry. This passage is indicative of a deeper tendency in his writing. Nietzsche was, at least in his youthful period, fundamentally concerned with art and considered himself an artist above all. He didn't strive to create a metaphysical philosophical doctrine to give legitimacy to his assertions, instead he just wrote, clearly, personally and poetically about the various subjects that he felt needed to be expressed. He was one of the greatest prose stylists of the German language, and this poses problems for those who aim to turn his philosophy into a doctrine, or those who try to legitimate his beliefs. What I fundamentally wish to assert is that the majority of his writing is a personal response to various problems that has become apparent to Nietzsche. What he then tries to do is work his way through various aspects of these problems in a sustained discourse. The individual specifics of his views on Christianity, Germany, or the ancient Greeks, or even on art, festivity and suffering are merely responses to the immediate things pressing on his mind and his attempt to make sense of them. These attempts to talk through the problems and issues he encounters are essentially extended aphorisms. Everything he writes is an aphorism, or a metaphor, or a poem, some more expanded and essayistic than the others, but all are contingent on ingrained beliefs and habits he possesses. Underlying all his aphorisms and philosophical meanderings are systematic and coherent foundational beliefs that form a doctrine, however unconsciously intended. When Nietzsche spoke about himself he used grandiose, eloquent language perhaps more suited to a mentor or a hero whom one worships than oneself. Could it be read as megalomaniacal? Maybe. Humble? Never. It is perhaps in his descriptions of himself that one first encounters a problem with his philosophy. His use of hyperbole and exaggerated language create a problem with readers who take him too literally. His descriptions of himself as an immoralist, the antichrist, Dionysus, etc. allow him and what he believes to be taken out of context. The sin is not Nietzsche's. It is to do with those who read him and take what they want from it. The problem lies in the inherent aphoristic style of his work and his constant use of metaphors. When he says, "love forgives the beloved even his lust (p72, The Gay Science, translated by Josefine Nauckhoff, Cambridge university press, 2001. I found and chose this aphorism at random, hoping to be able to find traces of what I consider his Dominant in anything and everything he say. while I dislike those who believe they can dip into Nietzsche at random I found this tactic worked well enough to prove my point)," he is saying much more about the human condition than can be gleamed by taking it at surface value. After all, it isn't just about love or lust or even forgiveness. Of course it is about these things, but it also speaks about the human condition, about pain, suffering, degradation, and the inherent capacity of man to see in the actions or words of others something deeper than just what is immediately apparent. In the relations between two individuals, or between social bodies, there exists a pact, an understanding that permits actions or words that in other situations may be unjustified. So much of what he says is a metaphor that it becomes difficult to judge when he is speaking seriously or literally. Without expanding his aphorisms and metaphors out into the thoughts that occasioned them then any understanding of them will only be transitory and flawed. Those who read the aphorism: "The worst readers are those who proceed like plundering soldiers," and proceed to set fire to the book, as per the example, are not reading into the aphorism sufficiently to unravel the metaphor. (I am being purposely hyperbolic and perhaps exhibiting a touch of Nietzschean irony.) Likewise, when he labels himself the anti-Christ, or the crucified, he is applying to himself conceptual models of understanding that rely on previous mythological or religious icons. He labels himself using metaphorical language, the key to which is never to just take it at surface value. When he calls himself the anti-Christ he is stating that he exists in antithesis to the type of morality that permeates mankind and that is derived from the Judaeo/Christian morality of the bible. He isn't literally THE anti-Christ, the prophesised person who will lead the world against Christ and usher in the end of days. When he signed his final letters "the crucified," he isn't saying that he was literally crucified, or that he is Christ-like. It could be taken as the ravages of a syphilitic mind, but could also indicate his feelings of betrayal, of his sympathetic insights into how and why Christ was betrayed and crucified. On October 28, 1888 he formally broke relations with his former friend and confidant, Malwida von Meysenburg who had sent him a letter critical of The Wagner Case. How critical it was is unknown. Nietzsche apparently tore up her letters in a rage (p175 Nietzsche in Turin-The End of the Future-Lesley Chamberlain-Quartet Books-1996). We do have one of his responses to her. "I have gradually broken off nearly all my human relationships out of horror of being taken for something other than I am. Now it is your turn (p176 ibid)," he told her in a letter written roughly two months before his breakdown. Earlier that year he had sent a similar letter to an...

2016

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche adalah seorang filsuf Jerman yang cukup ternama dan berpengaruh. Lahir di Leipzig, Jerman, tahun 1844, lewat tulisantulisannya yang memiliki gaya dan tema yang berbeda dengan penulis lain, Nietzsche menyampaikan kritikannya terhadap kehidupan dan berbagai sistem yang diciptakan oleh manusia tentang moralitas dan kebenaran. Pikiran Nietzsche dinilai bertentangan dengan pendapat filsuf lain, seperti Immanuel Kant dan Plato. Namun, pikiran-pikirannya tersebut, terbukti telah membawa pengaruh cukup besar terhadap pemikir-pemikir lain, terutama dari aliran post-strukturalisme. Oleh karena itu, dapat dikatakan, Nietzsche adalah pelopor dalam aliran post-strukturalisme, yang mempengaruhi pemikir-pemikir berikutnya, seperti Michele Foucault dan Jacques Derrida. Kata kunci : Nietzsche, Post-Strukturalis, Foucault, Derrida

Philosophy in Review, 2010

Essays in Philosophy, 2003

Maybe we did not need another book on Nietzsche. The philosopher who famously despised scholarship and scholars has been the occasion of more ink spilled by academics than perhaps any other thinker of the modern period. And although much of the recent work on Nietzsche should be counted among the best books yet written on his thought-I am thinking of Kathleen Higgins' Comic Relief (2000), for example, and Brian Leiter's Nietzsche on Morality (2002)-one sometimes wonders if there is anything original left to say about what already has been so overwrought. But then along comes a book like Safranski's Nietzsche and the great German iconoclast (that's Nietzsche, not Safranski) is fresh for us again. Safranski is good at this: his well-received biographies of Schopenhauer and Heidegger were similarly refreshing books to read, tying together the life and thought of those two figures in a way that no one had successfully done before (indeed, when speaking of either Schopenhauer or Heidegger, one tends to avoid discussing their lives-especially in Heidegger's case). And although it is true that we have several good and-in the work of Curt Paul Janz, for exampleeven excellent biographies of Nietzsche, Safranski is the first to tease the strange and often shocking philosophical ideas of Nietzsche out of his rather comparatively mild and conservative life.

This paper intends to show that Friedrich Nietzsche’s approach to morality or ‘immorality’ involves an attempt to see moral beliefs as a product of human psychology, rather than as a set of metaphysical ‘truths’ that are somehow given to, or discoverable by, us. Nietzsche wants to replace the metaphysical (or supernatural) account of morality with a natural one, and his treatment of moral belief-systems, from the perspective of this concern, can be divided into (a) a psychological analysis of the true nature of moral action and agency, and (b) an historical/genealogical tracing of the real origins of moral values. In this paper I am going to focus on the second dimension of Nietzsche’s analysis through references from his polemical texts Beyond Good and Evil, Genealogy of Morals, Gay Science, and Will to Power. I will outline Nietzsche’s historical leitmotif on the morality of ressentiment or slave morality and will show how it figures as a point of departure for his revolutionary transvaluation of values, one that places a new order of morality which is disparagingly called ‘immoralism.’ Next, I will discuss Nietzsche’s treatment of bad conscience and posit that it involves two different stages: one is the present stage of the bad conscience as a feeling of guilt, and the other is an earlier stage. I shall argue that in order for this earlier stage to develop into the level of guilt, he needs another element, namely an indebtedness towards gods, which finds its most striking culmination in the Christian heritage of religious dogmatism. Finally, I will discuss how for Nietzsche Christianity as an ascetic ideal has promoted to preserve a declining life, i.e. a slave morality, for all of humanity.

Babette Babich, 'Querying Nietzsches Influence and Meaning Today' in: Ekaterina Polyakova and Yulia Sineokaya, eds., Фридрих Ницше: наследие и проект. М.: Культурная революция, / Friedrich Nietzsche: Heritage and Prospects (Moscow, Cultural Revolution, 2018), pp. 391-406.

Introduction In an ideal, ordered world, answering metaethical questions (such as " what is goodness? " and " how can we tell the good from the bad ") would lead to statements about morality (principles set out for making decisions, having intentions and taking actions). However, the world is not ideal or ordered, and in life principles for moral action are based on various beliefs, religions and cultures and most of all by the background of the actor him/herself. Those big words “should” and "ought" in ethics are not related to any ultimate standards. This corresponds to the view of the great German philosopher, Nietzsche. This paper summarises his view in detail.

Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 2011

Sutanoc, 2025

This study examines morality as the underlying element running across Nietzsche's philosophic enterprise. It also critiques Nietzsche's idea of morality, with a view to showing that irrespective of his radical attempts to exonerate mankind from moral absolutism, he fails in disuniting humanity from such a tradition. Morality for Nietzsche is the standard of value which exists in an individual interpretation. Hence, an idea is merely a perspective and the possibility of moral absolutism should be set aside. For him, 'one morality for all' is detrimental to higher men. It is anti-nature and a threat to human excellence. Attempts are made, in this study, to critique Nietzsche's approach to undermine moral absolutism, especially the metaphysical foundation on which moral absolutism is established. This study adopts the method of historical hermeneutics and textual analysis.