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Modern Consciousness Perry, Sources of the Western Tradition, pp. 273-78 The closing decades of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth witnessed a crisis in Western thought. Rejecting the Enlightenment belief in the essential rationality of human beings, thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud stressed the immense power of the nonrational in individual and social life. They held that subconscious drives, impulses, and instincts lay at the core of human nature, that people were moved more by religious mythic images and symbols than by logical thought, that feelings determine human conduct more than reason does. This new image of the individual led to unsettling conclusions. If human beings are not fundamentally rational, then what are the prospects of resolving the immense problems of modern industrial civilization? Although most thinkers shared the Enlightenment's visions of humanity's future progress, doubters were also heard. The crisis of thought also found expression in art and literature. Artists
like Pablo Picasso and writers like James Joyce and Franz Kafka exhibited a
growing fascination with the non-rational-with dreams, fantasies, sexual
conflicts, and guilt, with tortured, fragmented, and dislocated inner lives.
In the process, they rejected traditional esthetic standards established
during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and experimented with new forms
of artistic and literary representation. These developments in thought and culture produced insights into human
nature and society and opened up new possibilities in art and literature. But
such changes also contributed to the disorientation and insecurity that
characterized the twentieth century. The Overman and the Will to Power Few modern thinkers have aroused more controversy than the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Although scholars pay tribute to Nietzsche's originality and genius, they are often in sharp disagreement over the meaning and influence of his work. Nietzsche was a relentless critic of modern society. He attacked democracy, universal suffrage, equality, and socialism for suppressing a higher type of human existence. Nietzsche was also critical of the Western rational tradition. The theoretical outlook, the excessive intellectualizing of philosophers, he said, smothers the will, thereby stifling creativity and nobility; reason also falsifies life through the claim that it allows apprehension of universal truth. Nietzsche was not opposed to the critical use of the intellect, but like the romantics, he focused on the immense vitality of the emotions. He also held that life is a senseless flux devoid of any overarching purpose. There are no moral values revealed by God. Indeed, Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead. Nor are values and certainties woven into the fabric of nature that can be apprehended by reason-the "natural rights of man," for example. All the values taught by Christian and bourgeois thinkers are without foundation, said Nietzsche. There is only naked man living in a godless and absurd world. Nietzsche called for the emergence of the overman or superman, a higher type of man who asserts his will, gives order to chaotic passions, makes great demands on himself, and lives life with a fierce joy. The overman aspires to selfperfection. Without fear or guilt, he creates his own values and defines his own life. In this way, he overcomes nihilism-the belief that there is nothing of ultimate value. It is such rare individuals, the highest specimens of humanity, that concern Nietzsche, not the herdlike masses. The superman grasps the central reality of human existence-that
people instinctively, uncompromisingly, ceaselessly, strive for power. The
will to exert power is the determining factor in domestic politics, personal
relations, and international affairs. Life is a contest in which the enhancement
of power is the ultimate purpose of our actions; it brings supreme enjoyment:
"the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything-health,
food, a place to live, entertainment-they are and remain unhappy and
low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied. Take everything
from them and satisfy this and they are almost happy-as happy as men and
demons can be." Friedrich Nietzsche from The
Will to Power And The Antichrist Two of Nietzsche's works The
Will to Power and The Antichrist-are
represented in the following readings. First published in 1901, one year
after Nietzsche's death, The Will to Power consists of the author's notes
written in the years 1883 to 1888. The following passages from this work show
Nietzsche's contempt for democracy and socialism and proclaim the will to
power. THE WILL TO POWER 720 (1886-1887) The most fearful and fundamental desire in man, his drive for power-this drive is called "freedom"-must be held in check the longest. This is why ethics ... has hitherto aimed at holding the desire for power in check: it disparages the tyrannical individual and with its glorification of social welfare and patriotism emphasizes the power-instinct of the herd. 728 (March-June 1888) ... A society that definitely and instinctively gives up war and conquest is in decline: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers- In most cases, to be sure, assurances of peace are merely narcotics. 751 (March-June 1888) "The will to power" is so hated in democratic ages that their entire psychology seems directed toward belittling and defaming it. ... 752 (1884) ... Democracy represents the disbelief in great human beings and an elite society: "Everyone is equal to everyone else." "At bottom we are one and all self-seeking cattle and mob." 753(1885) I am opposed to 1. socialism, because it dreams quite naively of "the good, true, and beautiful" and of "equal rights" (- anarchism also desires the same ideal, but in a more brutal fashion); 2. parliamentary government and the press, because these are the means by which the herd animal becomes master. 762 (1885) European democracy represents a release of forces only to a very small degree. It is above all a release of laziness, of weariness, of weakness. 765 (Jan. 1888) ... Another Christian concept, no less crazy, has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the "equality of souls before God." This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights: mankind was first taught to stammer the proposition of equality in a religious context, and only later was it made into morality: no wonder that man ended by taking it seriously, taking it practically!-that is to say, politically, democratically, socialistically, in the spirit of the pessimism of indignation. 854 (1884) In the age of suffrage universel, i.e., when everyone may sit in judgment on everyone and everything, I feel impelled to reestablish order of rank. 855 (Spring-Pall 1887) What determines rank, sets off rank, is only quanta of power, and nothing else. 857 (Jan.-Pall 1888) I distinguish between a type of ascending life and another type of decay, disintegration, weakness. Is it credible that the question of the relative rank of these two types still needs to be posed? 858 (Nov. l887-March 1888) What determines your rank is the quantum of power you are: the rest is cowardice. 861 (1884) A declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed! Everywhere the mediocre are combining in order to make themselves master! Everything that makes soft and effeminate, that serves the ends of the "people" or the "feminine," works in favor of suffrage universel, i.e., the dominion of inferior men. But we should take reprisal and bring this whole affair (which in Europe commenced with Christianity) to light and to the bar of judgment. 862 (1884) A doctrine is needed powerful enough to work as a breeding agent: strengthening the strong, paralyzing and destructive for the world weary. The annihilation of the decaying races. Decay of Europe.-The annihilation of slavish evaluations.-Dominion over the earth as a means of producing a higher type.-The annihilation of the tartuffery [hypocrisy} called "morality." ... The annihilation of suffrage universel; i.e., the system through which the lowest natures prescribe themselves as laws for the higher.-The annihilation of mediocrity and its acceptance. (The onesided, individuals- peoples; to strive for fullness of nature through the pairing of opposites: race mixture to this end).-The new courage-no a priori [innate and universal} truths (such truths were sought by those accustomed to faith!), but a free subordination to a ruling idea that has its time: e.g., time as a property of space, etc. 870 (1884) The root of all evil: that the slavish morality of meekness, chastity, selflessness, absolute obedience, has triumphed-ruling natures were thus condemned (1) to hypocrisy, (2) to torments of conscience-creative natures felt like rebels against God, uncertain and inhibited by eternal values .... In summa: the best things have been slandered because the weak or the immoderate swine have cast a bad light on them-and the best men have remained hidden-and have often misunderstood themselves. 874 (1884) The degeneration of the rulers and the ruling classes has been the cause of the greatest mischief in history! Without the Roman Caesars and Roman society, the insanity of Christianity would never have come to power. When lesser men begin to doubt whether higher men exist, then the danger is great! And one ends by discovering that there is virtue also among the lowly and subjugated, the poor in spirit, and that before God men are equal-which has so far been the ... {height} of nonsense on earth! For ultimately, the higher men measured themselves according to the standard of virtue of slaves-found they were "proud," etc., found all their higher qualities reprehensible. 997 (1884) I teach: that there are higher and lower men, and that a single individual can under certain circumstances justify the existence of whole millennia-that is, a full, rich, great, whole human being in relation to countless incomplete fragmentary men. 998 (1884) The highest men live beyond the rulers, freed from all bonds; and in the rulers they have their instruments. 999 (1884) Order of rank: He who determines values and directs the will of millennia by giving direction to the highest natures is the highest man. 1001 (1884) Not "mankind" but overman is the goal! 1067 (1885) ... This world is the will to power-and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power-and nothing besides! Nietzsche regarded Christianity as a life denying religion that appeals to the masses. Fearful and resentful of their betters, he said, the masses espouse a faith that preaches equality and compassion. He maintained that Christianity has "waged a war to the death against (the) higher type of man." The following passages are from The Antichrist, written in 1888. The Antichrist 2. What is good?-All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to
power, power itself ln man. What is bad?-All that
proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?-The feeling that power increases-that
a resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all,
but war; not virtue, but proficiency (virtue in the Renaissance style, virtu, virtue free of moralic
acid). The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our
philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so. What is more harmful than any
vice?-Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak-Christianity.... 3. The problem I raise here is not what ought to succeed mankind in
the sequence of species (-the human being is an end-): but what type of human
being one ought to breed, ought to will, as more valuable, more worthy of life,
more certain of the future. This more valuable type has existed often enough
already: but as a lucky accident, as an exception, never as willed. He has
rather been the most feared, he has hitherto been virtually the thing to be
feared-and out of fear the reverse type has been willed, bred, achieved: the domestic
animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man-the Christian
.... 5. One should not embellish or dress up Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has excommunicated all the fundamental instincts of this type, it has distilled evil, the Evil One, out of these instincts-the strong human being as the type of reprehensibility, as the "outcast." Christianity has taken the side of everything weak, base, ill-constituted, it has made an ideal out of opposition to the preservative instincts of strong life; it has depraved the reason even of the intellectually strongest natures by teaching men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful, as misleading, as temptations. The most deplorable example: the depraving of Pascal who believed his reason had been depraved by original sin while it had only been depraved by his Christianity! ... 7. Christianity is called the religion of pity.-Pity stands in antithesis to the tonic emotions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: it has a depressive effect. One loses force when one pities .... 15. In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. Nothing but imaginary causes ("God," "soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will"-or "unfree will"): nothing but imaginary effects ("sin," "redemption," "grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of sins") .... 18. The Christian conception of God-God as God of the sick, God as spider, God as spirit-is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on earth: perhaps it even reply resents the low-water mark in the descending development of the God type. God degenerated to the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! In God a declaration of hostility towards life, nature, the will to life! God the formula for every calumny of "this world," for every lie about 'the next world'! In God, nothingness deified, the will to nothingness sanctified! ... 21. In Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed come into the foreground: it is the lowest classes which seek their salvation in it .... 43. The poison of the doctrine "equal rights for all"-this has been more thoroughly sowed by Christianity than by anything else; from the most secret recesses of base instincts, Christianity has waged a war to the death against every feeling of reverence and distance between man and man, against, that is, the precondition of every elevation, every increase in cultureit has forged out of the {resentment} of the masses its chief weapon against us, against everything noble, joyful, high-spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth .... "Immortality" granted to every Peter and Paul has been the greatest and most malicious outrage on noble mankind ever committed.-And let us not underestimate the fatality that has crept out of Christianity even into politics! No one any longer possesses today the courage to claim special privileges or the right to rule, the courage to feel a sense of reverence towards himself and towards his equals-the courage for a pathos of distance . ... Our politics is morbid from this lack of courage!-The aristocratic outlook has been undermined most deeply by the lie of equality of souls; and if the belief in the "prerogative of the majority" makes revolutions and will continue to make them-it is Christianity, let there be no doubt about it, Christian value judgement which translates every revolution into mere blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of everything that crawls along the ground directed against that which is elevated: the Gospel of the "lowly" makes low .... REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. Do you agree with Friedrich Nietzsche about a human being's most
elemental desire? 2. Why did Nietzsche attack democracy and socialism? How do you respond
to his attack? 3. What were Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity? How do you
respond to this attack? 4. How does Nietzsche's philosophy stand in relation to the
Enlightenment? |