Friedrich Nietzsche

The Antichrist

What is the purpose of life?

Background

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) was born in Röcken in Saxony in, what was then, Prussia and part of the German Confederation. He held the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel at the remarkably young age of 24. At the age of 44, he suffered a collapse and the loss of his mental faculties. He died at the age of 55 and was looked after for the rest of his life by his mother and sister.

After he died, his sister took charge of his work and often edited and changed it to fit in with her ultranationalist and anti-semitic opinions. This contradicted what Friedrich, who was explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism, himself had written. As a result, his work, unfortunately, became closely associated with fascism and Nazism. His work was often shocking and provocative, but he despised nationalism.

God is Dead

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

— Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann

The enlightenment and the scientific revolution appeared to bring an end to a reliance on the concept of God.

Prior to the enlightenment, values were seen in terms of hierarchy with God at the apex. God created us, and we lived for the sake of God. But this framework was replaced by Descartes’ mechanical philosophy.

But now that God was ‘dead’, what are we living for? What gives life its sense and purpose.

Yea-sayers

Nietzsche believed that the truths of, for example, the ancient Greek world of Homer had been turned upside down by Christianity. He thought that Homeric Greece (the Greece of Achilles and the Iliad) exemplified real worldly virtues: happiness, beauty, vitality, courage, power, success, ruthlessness, and defiance. This ‘yea‐saying’ ethos that glorified life in the world with all its dangers and tragedies.

What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness.

What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that a resistance is overcome.

—The Anti-Christ, section 2

Ressentiment

These truths were, he held, was displaced by the Judaeo‐Christian morality rooted in the slaves’ ressentiment of the masters.

This was an unnatural morality of good and evil, in which the (false) virtues of meekness, humility, chastity, submission, charity, pity, compassion, guilt, and piety were inculcated by promises of rewards in an afterlife.

Wherever the influence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts “true” and “false” are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called “true,” and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called “false.”...

Christianity was a ‘slave morality’. Christianity was organised on fear - we believe in God because we are afraid of death and we act well because we are afraid of death.

The One true Christian

Nietzsche was contemptuous of anyone who called themselves a Christian but didn't act like one, who acted with worldly egoism, pride, and will to power in opposition to Christianity's denial of the world. They knew, he thought, that sham and unnatural concepts such as 'God', 'moral world–order', 'sinner', 'Redeemer', 'free will', 'Last Judgment', and 'immortal soul' were just used to control people and maintain the power structure of the church and its priests.

At bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.... It is an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in "faith", and particularly in faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who died on the cross, is Christian.

—The Anti-Christ, section 39

Will to power

Nietzsche aimed to bring about a ‘transvaluation of values’ in which the supposed ethos of noble, vital, yea‐sayers will be revived, and Christian slave morality will be destroyed. This new world would pave the way for the supermen. Here 'superman' doesn't mean people with super powers, it means someone who is fully self-actualised. Someone who has gone beyond good and evil.

He argued, we should embrace the ‘will to power’. We should not be afraid of anything. We should not allow ourselves to be controlled by fear.

If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out of life into the ‘Beyond’ - into nothingness - one has deprived life as such of its centre of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct - all that is salutary, all that is life-enhancing, all that holds a guarantee of the future in the instincts henceforth excites mistrust. So to live that there is no longer any meaning in living: that now becomes the ‘meaning’ of life.

—The Anti-Christ, section 43

Achilles - the superman

This clip from the film Troy nicely exemplifies Nietzsche's approach. Brad Pitt plays Achilles, who was an archetypal 'superman' -someone powerful, courageous, ruthless. The words put into Achilles mouth also express a very Nietzschean idea: that it is our mortality that makes life valuable. Life is more beautiful because we are doomed.

Tasks

Why did Nietzsche declare that 'God is dead!'
What were, according to him, the true virtues, and what did Christianity represent?
Why did he believe that talk of an afterlife devalued life?
State one objection to Nietzsche's views.
What do you think of Nietzsche's views on life and Christiantiy? Explain you answer.

#Axiology

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