A critique of Friedrich Nietzsche

“You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.”
―P.G. Wodehouse, Carry on, Jeeves.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) is probably the world’s most famous – or should that be infamous – philosopher. Born in the small, German and humble village of Röcken with a Lutheran Pastor as a father, no less, he would write a series of scathing, revolutionary philosophical works: Nietzsche is one of the most controversial philosophers in human history. On the one hand, his style is captivating, passionate and aphoristic; conversely, his detractors allege that he is anti-Semitic and a misogynist.

It is my attempt, in around a thousand words, to give you, my delicate reader, an insight into his opinions in a biased and subjective a way as is possible – for Nietzsche wouldn’t want me to anything but true to myself, admitting my prejudices, as ridiculous as they are.

Was Nietzsche a misogynist?

From some cherry picked quotes, yes. Nietzsche can certainly appear to carry a sustained hatred of women in his philosophy. For example, “One-half of mankind is weak, chronic-ally sick, changeable, shifty.” One doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce which half of mankind Nietzsche is referring to; what we must consider, however, is this: is his contempt genuine? If so, does this diminish his epiphany inducing aphorisms?

I want you all to know that I have no pretensions about appearing as a psychiatric expert, and pop-psychology is very tiring. Nevertheless, the fact that Nietzsche was raised by women (his father died from a “brain ailment” when he was five) would have had a profound impact upon his attitude towards women.

He moved to Naumberg, where he lived with his maternal grandmother and her two unmarried sisters. As well as this, he had a younger sister. The young Nietzsche’s world would have been turned upside down – not by a piece of paper and a pen, as he would late profess – but by the death of his father, compounded with a replacement of his father with multiple female authority figures.

On another note, Nietzsche never married. There are rumours –but that is all they are – that Nietzsche contracted syphilis from a whorehouse. However, Nietzsche’s illness in later life may have been due to other medical reasons. We can only clutch blindly at straws to discover evidence of Nietzsche’s misogyny. What isn’t in doubt, however, is the fact that Nietzsche was an extremely solitary man, and that he was sexually frustrated as an individual.

Away from such speculation, one could read Nietzsche’s philosophical rants as cathartic honesty. Many of us think ridiculous, illogical, angry and prejudiced thoughts; Nietzsche, a modern genius, would have recognised his ridiculousness, but embraced it, rather than hiding it for the sake of social cohesion.

Was Nietzsche an anti-Semite?

The very short answer would be “no”. The long answer is “no, but this, and then no once more.” It is important to note that at the time of Nietzsche’s adult writing, a certain fashionable hysteria around what used to be referred to as The Jewish Question (not to dissimilar from modern Islamophobia) was part of the Germanic intellectual zeitgeist. His work really could have been much more damning of the Jewish people, and his criticisms are weighted and considered.

Amongst Nietzsche’s work, much praise for the Jews is included, “As a consequence of this [history], the psychological and spiritual resources of the Jews today are extraordinary.”

He also stated in reference to the Jews, “to whom we owe the noblest human being (Christ), the purest philosopher (Spinoza), the mightiest book, and the most effective moral code in the world.”

However, it must be noted that these quotes are from his earlier writing. His later philosophy was much more damning:

“Christianity, growing from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a product of this soil, represents a reaction against the morality of breeding, of race, of privilege-it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence.”

Nietzsche definitely believed in race, but not in the same sense as Adolph Hitler: “Every nation, every man has disagreeable, even dangerous characteristics; it is cruel to demand that the Jew should be an exception.”

To summarise, in my opinion, Fredrick Nietzsche criticised everyone, especially German society -- more than any other ethnic group. He thought that German society was weak; the moral values which dominated Germany at the time, that is to say Christian moral values, were repugnant to Nietzsche, because he thought it rose what is flabby, common and average as something of value. These values, of course, were drawn from Jewish background. This comprises some of his distaste towards the Jewish peoples.

However, his damning criticism of German society was far greater than his agitation against the Jews. Should we hold the Jews above everyone else, and say that hatred towards them is somehow worse than hatred towards Christianity, or his own people? Why should Christianity be an easy target? Are we indoctrinated to think that the Jews are lesser than the Christians, and therefore have to be immune from criticism? I don’t promote anti-Semitism, but I do advocate an even hand of criticism.

Nietzsche’s writings were manipulated by his surviving sister – an admirer of Hitler and the Nazis – and then, in turn, by the Nazis themselves. What is important to note is that they were manipulated to fit in with Nazi ideology. His earlier criticisms of anti-Semitism were airbrushed out, and his view of humanity, centred on elitism, fitted in well with Nazi racial superiority.

My admiration of Nietzsche:

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, unfortunately, has been blighted by history and has been misrepresented, time and time again. Fundamentally, I would like to have written about his literary style to a greater extent. Of course, having only around one thousand words to write about the revolutionary Friedrich Nietzsche is very limiting – but I would hope that I have allayed your fears and prejudices, and thus you are ready for a broader appreciation of his writing.

Samuel Mack-Poole

Friendship and Aloneness

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. - Rainer Maria Rilke

Only those who savour solitude are capable of true friendship. Only when two people do not need one another can they become friends in the deep meaning of the word. In this intimate dance of souls, the self becomes the other and the other becomes the self. And yet, it is the separateness of the two that propels the movement. At the heart of friendship lies the Gelassenheit, the letting go of the other. Inevitably this is followed by the expectation of their return, when it happens, if it happens. Whilst solitude is essential for cultivating a state of not needing the other, paradoxically it is precisely the other that enables us not to need. The word ‘alone’ derives from ‘all one’ and a friend is someone with whom we can be all one, with whom we can be alone. Whilst “we live as we dream — alone” (Conrad, Heart of Darkness), we delight in sharing our aloneness.

One might think of friendship as a camaraderie of ‘free spirits’, who, at every moment, make a conscious choice to be close to each other without the need to possess, to enslave or to serve. While slaves cannot be friends, tyrants cannot have friends. “What we commonly call friends and friendships”, says Montaigne, “are no more than acquaintanceships and familiarities, contracted either by chance or for advantage, which have brought our minds together. In the friendship I speak of, they mix and blend into one another in so perfect a union that the seam which has joined them is effaced and disappears.” Such union can only take place between individuals, between undivided selves.

Friendship was greatly valued by the ancient Greeks. Yet, according to Aristotle, no friend is to be preferred to truth, which is greater than any finite human being can be. He stated of his friendship with Plato: “Plato is my friend, but truth is a greater friend”. A true friend is not some incarnation of the nymph Echo that only tells us what we want to hear; a friend tells us what we daren’t see in ourselves. When a self-induced disaster befalls us, we can invoke his soft yet persistent probing: “Could you have done it differently?”

Nietzsche, like the ancients, held friendship above erotic love and considered agon (a contest) to be an indispensable ingredient of it: “in your friend you should have your best enemy”! In this he echoed W.R. Emerson: “let him be to thee a sort of beautiful enemy, untameable, devoutly revered and not a trivial convenience to be soon outgrown and cast aside” (from his essay Friendship). Hence, beware of those who echo you in a flattering fashion, and also of those who reduce you to an echo!

Friendship is about sharing an ideal, sometimes more precious than life itself. Such was the camaraderie of those who were facing death in the desolate trenches of the Great War. Saving a friend from extinction sometimes required the sacrifice of one’s own life; serving one’s country in peril was a higher ideal still. Every heroic endeavour implies readiness to die for the ideal that stands above the earthly existence of the individual. It dispenses with utility and transports us into the realm of the transcendental. Nietzsche extolled the ideal of friendship thus: “There is, to be sure, here and there on earth a kind of continuation of love in which the greedy desire of two persons for one another has given way to a new desire and a new greed, a common higher thirst for an ideal that stands above them: but who knows this love? Who has experienced it? Its rightful name is friendship” (The Gay Science; I:14). A sense of uniqueness is implied here, uniqueness of the ideal and uniqueness of the friend who shares this ideal with us.

A friend makes us feel fully ourselves without the fear of being judged or rejected; he is like a mirror that helps us to become ourselves. In his presence, we can discard the mask. A friend sees the good in us when the rest of the world doubts it, when we ourselves doubt it; a friend is someone who walks in when others walk out. For Hamlet, it was the loyal, unwavering Horatio who quietly gave him courage to face the hostile, treacherous world. He was also someone to whom Hamlet was not afraid to show the vulnerable, anguished and also loving side of himself. It was in Horatio’s arms that Hamlet died, and it was Horatio who was left to mourn the ‘sweet Prince’ and tell his story to the world. Perhaps “to become what one is”, even the great ones must have a ‘Horatio’ by their side? Especially the great. And this is what Nietzsche, the advocate of hardness, solitude and self-sufficiency, wrote to his ‘Horatio’: “My dear friend; what is this – our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbours, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from capsizing!” (in a letter to Franz Overbeck, November, 1881).

When we are in deep suffering and despair, no words can bring solace. The silent, compassionate presence of the other is all that is needed. This can be brief, but it must be sincere. A moment of shared, wordless stillness becomes a moment of friendship; it is also the moment when healing begins. We treasure the memories of these ‘spots of time’ in our hearts and return to them when despair returns to overwhelm us. To use the metaphor from Bergman’s unforgettable film of the same name, they become our “wild strawberries”.

Dr. Eva Cybulska

Human ‘Nature’?

It is almost with great reluctance that I write about this topic. So, why am I so unwilling? Those at the stall know me to be sociable – but is that due to my nature, or the nurture I have received? This is where we come to the rub of the situation. I think it is extremely hard to decide between the two options. Humans are extremely complex and diverse in their social etiquette, for example. Any anthropologist will tell you that. However, when we analyse the human body, we see that due to natural selection we have developed certain characteristics. Our eyes, placed at the front of our faces, would suggest that we are predators. If this is the case, why do we find that individuals, and entire societies, eat a diet that doesn’t contain meat? I mean, surely this goes against human nature, right?

Well, perhaps we should think again. When dealing with the world in a scientific sense, we have to accept that there are a lot of variables within any given situation. It seems that ‘human nature’, a term which is taken for granted, is not as simple as we would like to think. What does the phrase human nature mean, anyway? A ‘human’, scientifically, is an animal that belongs to the genus Homo Sapiens – meaning wise man. Does that mean, by definition, that it is in our nature to be wise? And what of the term ‘nature’? Well, as Wittgenstein will tell us, words mean different things in different contexts. However, in the context of the phrase, the word ‘nature’ can be defined as follows: “as a result of inborn or inherent qualities; innate.”

Peter Singer – a famous Australian philosopher, lauded by Dawkins as “the most moral man” he knows -- however, wouldn’t say that this makes someone human. It’s certainly an interesting question, isn’t it? What qualifies someone as a human? A lot of the people at our market stall say the ability to communicate, which, as far as we know, is the most developed amongst any species, makes us human. Also, our ability to think is more pronounced than any other species, too.

Nevertheless, Singer says it is our ability to think in an autobiographical sense that differentiates us from non-human animals. However, I think other examples are more interesting; literature, for instance, is unique to humans.  And Chekhov, a famous Russian dramatist once declared, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.” But how can man know what he is like, until he knows what he is?

Of course, when examining humanity, we have to remark about human diversity. A narrow way of looking at this is to examine the differences between men and women, for instance. Men have more testosterone than women. That is a scientific fact. As we know, this sex hormone leads to behavioural differences between men and women, in general.  Though this is not analogous, we see horses with higher levels of testosterone to be more muscular, faster, and even more aggressive. However, and there always seems to be a however, why do we see societies, even male-dominated ones such as the Amish, that don’t have a single recorded murder amongst them?

The reason is due to what evolutionary psychology’s great thinker, Henri Tafjel, would call social identify theory (this is better known as in group out group psychology). It is important to note, and please don’t think I’m trying to get you fantastic intellectuals to suck eggs here,  that psychological experiments study many humans to validate their claims. Thus, it can come as no surprise that psychology analyses trends, rather than absolutes. This makes my claim, the main theme of this humble piece of philosophy, relative, rather than absolute.

I believe that the nurture/nature debate is a little tired. Personally, I think we see differences in different countries/ societies due to human nature, rather than nurture. Nurture, for me, is a bubble within human nature, and please let me explain why, before rolling your eyes. Social identify theory proposes the idea that humans do the following:

“Tajfel proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world...

...to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong. For example, England is the best country in the world!  We can also increase our self-image by discriminating and holding prejudiced views against the out group (the group we don’t belong to). For example, the Americans, French etc. are a bunch of losers!”

Different tribes have different social conventions, or invent them, to differentiate themselves from other tribes. That iss why we have different etiquette, that’s why we have such a variety of different customs, cultures, values, and languages throughout the world. As humans, we are obsessed with our identity; whether you like it not, that is the one common feature of humanity. As this longing for identity transcends nurture, and is true of all societies, this conclusion, ultimately, must be true.

I’m not going to apologise for being so forthright. It’s in my nature, after all – and Nietzsche would say that my nature is determined by my “innate order of rank” due to my lineage. So, who would I be, as humble as I am, to argue with him?

Samuel Mack-Poole

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open topic' Issue 40

The Source of Meaning - By Kevin Solway

The Source of Meaning

The King is dead. Long live the King.

Religion is succeeded by the blind worship of science.  Scientism, the religion of "Science" - ironically distinct and remotely distant from real science - is becoming the source of meaning in our age. We scoundrels must of necessity choose our own values and meaning, but we invariably choose them to be dictated by the authority of fantasy.

Why do we live? "Because that's the purpose of our genes", say the adherents of scientism. Yet genes do not have purpose, says science and reason. Genes are mere bunches of atoms, that either replicate or not. They have no purpose, and Nature cares not what they do. Nature isn't the slightest bit pleased when things replicate, and nor is it at all concerned when they don't. Science, and not scientism, seeks to map this Nature - to reflect its form.

Science is descriptive, rather than prescriptive. It cannot tell us what is good or bad. It cannot provide us with value.  If we value truth, then we take that value with us to science.  We don't get it from science. There's no scientific experiment that can prove the value of truth, just as there's no scientific experiment that can prove the value of life or of death.  Scientism, however, is not science, and it has a proof for everything.

In scientism, truth and value are quite literally in numbers. "Many people believe X." "The consensus is X." "My colleagues agree." "There are a number of books on the subject." "I have received no complaints." "There is much support." Truth is by popular vote. The more Nature does it, the more right it is. It is the authority of DNA - the authority of the tradition of Nature itself. And whereas in ordinary religion the logical fallacy of choice is the appeal to the authority of some holy book, in scientism it is the appeal to the authority of the number (argumentum ad numerum).  For the adherents of scientism, numbers represent the only real value, and these become the very substance of their life.

People become numbers. The numbers become their horizon - their all. They are just copies.

                                                                                    - Kierkegaard

If you explain to these numerous fellows that they are constantly, in every waking moment, appealing to the fallacy of the number, you are wasting your breath, because they don't know anything except the number. They cannot hear you, because existence requires contrast. And for this same reason such people don't exist as individuals. They have no self, and no soul, since the soul is precisely the self, and is the genius in man.

Samuel Butler accurately describes this soulless culture - the culture of the number - in his novel Erewhon, when he visits the hallowed "Colleges of Unreason".

"It is not our business," he said, "to help students to think for themselves. Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to do. . . ." In some respects, however, he was thought to hold somewhat radical opinions, for he was President of the Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge, and for the Completer Obliteration of the Past.

                                               

Ours is an age in which the man who thinks for himself is deemed to be a dangerous megalomaniac, and if he should dare to share his thoughts with even one other person then he is also a "cult leader" to be feared and reviled. Ours is a culture that is geared to minimize such unpleasantness by discouraging, and denying the individual thinker, who creates his own values, shines his own light, and follows his own star.

The hate and the fear that the common people have for the individual thinker is the hate and the fear they have for their own true, buried, selves. What they see in the individual thinker is what they fear for themselves.

Can thou give thyself thine evil and thy good, setting up thy will as a law? Canst thou be thine own judge and the avenger of thine own law? Even so is a star cast out into the void, and into the icy breath of solitude. 

                           - Nietzsche, in "Thus Spake Zarathustra"

What people don't want to be reminded of, is that, to the degree that one has a mind at all, and to the degree that one makes conscious choices, then it is impossible to obtain values from anywhere other than oneself. For if a person gets their values from a book, then they are personally choosing to believe that book. And if they get their values from another person, then they are choosing to believe that person. And if they get their values from a dream, they are choosing to believe the dream. Therefore, for the sake of "sanity", and for the sake of "others", conscious choice is denied. Not only is the individual thinker denied, but the mind and the very self are denied. Human becomes machine, and the sleeper is lost in a dream.

Science arose by accident in the brief space when one great orthodoxy was loosening its hold and the new great orthodoxy had not yet reached its full strength. The first orthodoxy was that of religion which dominated the dark ages. The second orthodoxy is that of the belief in society, which is dominating the dark age now beginning.

                                                                           - Celia Green

By Kevin Solway

The Philosophy Takeaway 'The Meaning of Life' Issue 29