Nietzsche and Darwin

This week we discussed Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, with a heavy emphasis on his master and slave morality and his Will to Power. I unfortunately missed the discussion on eternal recurrence. My apologies to the second group! 

My biggest issue with Nietzsche's master and slave morality is that it is an incredibly simple way of trying to explain an incredibly complex issue, human nature. Almost all of our understanding of human behavior (both from a micro and macro perspective) has come since Nietzsche's death. Therefore it makes little sense to take his master and slave morality very seriously in the modern world. While I do agree that these world views he introduces have manifested within humans throughout history, especially in the Western world (which is the direction of his criticism), however to say that this struggle is inherent in all humans couldn't be a bigger distortion of reality. This idea is what psychologists call essentialism, and it has been shown to be without evidence. There is nothing in the human personality that is essential, all behavior (and morality) manifests from a complex interaction of nature and nurture (and continues through life until death). We don't carry within us a master or slave morality, these simply manifest in certain kinds of societies; this dualistic moral code Nietzsche proposes usually only manifests itself when you have distinctly hierarchical societies, with the haves and the have nots (or bourgeois and proletariat). 

As Nietzsche recognized, in hierarchical societies, those in power have more say over what goes and what doesn't. And as he also recognized, those that are restricted from accessing or acquiring the ideals put forth by those in power have to create a new set of ideals for themselves. Humans are social creatures, and there is nothing we fear more (perhaps even more than death) than social exclusion. Put a prisoner in an isolated cell, away from all the other criminals and he goes crazy. He demands to be released back into society (the prison) because he cannot stand to feel ostracized, to feel like he doesn't belong. In this case it isn't the general population that is ostracizing him, but the power structures put in place, however it makes little difference to the person in isolation. 

I think this is a good point to stop and talk about Will to Power, so I can support my argument that it is anti-darwinian in nature. According to Darwin, a species goal is survival and according to Nietzsche it is power. These are very obviously different goals. To say that Nietzsche shared Darwin’s view of how evolution occurred would be to completely ignore Nietzsche’s idea of Will to Power, which is a core tenant in his philosophy. One cannot have both goals of survival and will to power, because there are instants where asserting your will might lead to your death. Nietzsche’s belief that the main point of life isn’t a will to live but a will to power is, at its core, anti-Darwinian. I find Nietzsche’s Will to Power argument a bit lacking. It explains some human behavior, if rather narrowly, however it doesn’t really apply to the rest of the universe. There are many things nature that give away their power in order to gain survival advantages. Some things work in concert together and others against each other. My gut flora isn’t trying to dominate me, or assert its will, it is working in unison with my digestive tract in order that it may survive and have an environment in which it might thrive. And if, as Nietzsche says, there are many truths and thus no singular truth, then I see life itself as the point (life being open-ended, power ascribing some kind of purpose; aka moralizing - hence my statement that it is a contradiction of his philosophy on truth) and I’ll have to side with Darwin.

I did want to share something I found online. It is from a later work of Nietzsche, found in one of his notebooks. It is from notes within a section for a book titled The Way to Wisdom--Hints for an Overcoming of Morality. 

"The first stage. To honor (and obey and learn) better than anyone. To gather all that is honorable in oneself, and let it conflict with oneself. To bear all that is heavy. Asceticism of the spirit--bravery, time of community.

The second stage. To break the adoring heart (when one is captivated most). The free spirit. Independence. Time of the desert. Criticism of all that is honored (idealization of the non-honored), attempt at inverted valuations.

The third stage.  Great decision, whether one is capable of a positive attitude, of affirmation. No longer any God, any man above me! The instinct of the creator who knows what he is creating. The great responsibility and the innocence. In order to enjoy a single thing, one has to affirm everything. Give oneself the right to act." 

Nietzsche associates the first stage with overcoming little evil inclinations, the second stage with overcoming the good inclinations as well, and the third stage with being beyond good and evil. He adds that the third stage is for the very few; most people perish in the second stage. 

This is comparable to Zen, though Zen would say it is pointless to try to be better than anyone at anything since Zen embraces the interdependence of everything in the world. In this light, self implies other. So how can you be better than yourself? The progression does seem to coincide very well with the eastern idea of non-duality (which being beyond good and evil implies). 

Nietzsche on Truth

Once again, I'd like to start my post off with an excerpt from an Alan Watts lecture. I hope some of you are finding his insights as powerful as I have.

It has been an interesting experience for me delving into Nietzsche. While I had read a little of Nietzsche previous to taking this class, my exposure to him was rather limited. I purchased a book over the summer that was about his basic philosophical ideas, but haven’t gotten around to reading it.

What I find most interesting about Nietzsche is that his conclusions are essentially a mirror of Taoist or Zen philosophy about life: especially Nietzsche’s conclusions that the world is just there (and life as well) and that it doesn’t make any sense to moralize and try to create an image of it that fits your desires. It is best to just leave it as it is and enjoy it. I think this is important because even though we may be free to move about and make decisions in the world, our power over it is fairly limited from the perspective of an individual, which we imagine ourselves to be. We have control over many of our urges and desires, and very little else. To spend all of our time trying to make the world into something it is not, simply to appease a notion we have about some transcendent experience that life is moving towards, is a complete waste of time. As Nietzsche points out, there is no such thing as absolute spirituality or pure reason, so it makes little sense to make your life a pursuit of it. Lao-Tzu put it as so:

“When the great Tao is abandoned, 

charity and righteousness appear. 

When intellectualism arises, 

hypocrisy is close behind.”

By attempting to make any way superior to another, you automatically have to deal with its opposite. Taoists have understood this concept for a millennia, and it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century, that Westerners really started to understand what this really means. You cannot understand the world through reason, because reason is ultimately self-referential. It cannot conceive a reality outside of the one it perceives. However in order to understand a transcendent reality (where reason ultimately originates), conceiving of this transcendent reality is exactly what one must do. And this is no different than what our culture has decided is important in pursuing something like capital accumulation. We are told from a young age that in order to be happy and find our place in the world, we must go out and make our mark upon it. We must work very hard, go to college and make lots of money. We must compete with our fellow man because our competing with each other is going to bring happiness to everyone. Of course this has been a dreadful hoax, because it's all wretch and no vomit, it never gets there. Happiness is always a relative and transitory experience and there is no great ladder that one must climb to reach the “highest point” of happiness. It isn’t like a game of pingpong, where we are to rack up the highest score. Life just is. Adding anything else to life is simply moralizing, creating something imaginary. You are creating a myth. 

Now of course there is nothing inherently wrong in myth creation, as long as one is honest about what is actually occurring. If you are going around making up all kinds of myths about the world, but have convinced yourself that it is truth, and perhaps are attempting to convert everyone to your truth, and that it is the real and only truth, then we have a problem. I think that is one of the bigger issues in the metaphysical debate today; all sides seem to know that they are true. And as Nietzsche said, convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. 

So let us not be so serious in our convictions, and bask in our collective ignorance about the nature of the world. Each of us shares this and if we would but accept it, I truly believe the world would change overnight; wars, famines and oppression would virtually disappear. Wouldn’t that be a nice experience.