The following is an essay I wrote for a class on Political Theory I took at Duke University in 2020.
God Dies, and Morality with Him
In The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra Frederick Nietzsche clearly expresses his views on God, perhaps best summed up by the infamous line uttered by a madman in The Gay Science: “Whither is God...We have killed him” (95). Nietzsche believed that the ‘death of God’ had incredibly important implications for the world of philosophical thought. Morality had been construed by various groups across various periods of history to mean a multitude of different things; God’s ‘death’ completely eviscerated traditional conceptions of morality and ideals such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, and ‘truth’. In their place, Nietzsche proposes a new theory: life is the will to power, and all motivations and instincts for action are guided by this principal. With this understanding in mind, a new generation of philosophers could thus arise, unfettered by the clumsy theories of the past and usher in a new age of philosophic thought. To explore this phenomenon, we will examine Nietzsche’s thoughts on the subject in his novel Beyond Good and Evil. We will explore what the traditional conceptions of morality and other concepts are and where they stem from, the new formulation Nietzsche proposes, and then finally the ways in which philosophers have traditionally operated within these concepts and how a new breed could respond to Nietzsche’s reformulation of them.
Nietzsche does not dance around the issue of characterizing morality; he states quite plainly that “Morality in Europe today is herd animal morality-in other words, as we understand it, merely one type of human morality beside which, before which, and after which many other types, above all higher moralities, are, or ought to be, possible”. This quote summarizes two of Nietzsche’s main critiques of the traditional conception of morality: that morality is a concept that has developed in different ways over time and the use of morality by the weak as a sort of shield against the trials and tribulations of the world. Nietzsche’s characterization of the former is perhaps best encapsulated in his description of ‘master and slave morality’. Before describing this concept, Nietzsche emphasizes his point by adding that “in all the higher and more mixed cultures there also appear attempts at mediation between these two moralities” (204). Nietzsche states that master morality is determined by the ruling group and is defined by a valuation of ‘noble’ virtues such as pride and a contempt for “the cowardly, the anxious, the petty, those intent on narrow utility; also for the suspicious people who allow themselves to be maltreated, the begging flatterers, above all the liars” (205). Slave morality was developed in opposition to master morality, and reversed what was valued and what was held in contempt in order to “ease existence for those who suffer” (207). Nietzsche claims that slave morality is “the place for the origin of the opposition of ‘good’ and ‘evil’” (207). This conception of morality is problematic for Nietzsche, and is thus what he attempts to disprove with his own interpretation.
The characterization of morality that stems from slave morality is particularly problematic for Nietzsche because it is a choice between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, which are seen as opposites. Nietzsche himself questions the very idea of opposites: “For one may doubt, first, whether there are any opposites at all” (10). Rather than characterizing morality as occurring on a binary between good and evil, Nietzsche puts forth an entirely different understanding: “Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation” (203). Every living human being is driven not by morality but by will; Nietzsche claims that this will is “the will to power, which is after all the will of life” (203). Even traditionally religious figures such as the saint, were not immune to the concept of the will to power: the sight of the saint awakened a suspicion in them: such an enormity of denial, of anti-nature will not have been desired for nothing, they said to and asked themselves...it was the ‘will to power’ that made them stop before the saint” (65). This new understanding of the nature of human beings had profound consequences for Nietzsche’s idea of the ideal philosopher.
Because the understanding of morality was so different from the version Nietzsche proposed, he had some serious critiques of the philosophers before him that based their thoughts off of this:
With a stiff seriousness that inspires laughter, all our philosophers demanded something far more exalted, presumptuous, and solemn from themselves as soon as they approached the study of morality-and every philosopher so far has believed that he has provided such a foundation. Morality itself however, was accepted as “given”. (97)
Nietzsche claims that in the philosophical study of morality, the key component missing from this discourse was “the problem of morality itself; what was lacking was any suspicion that there was something problematic here” (98). In fact, “morality in the traditional sense...was a prejudice” (44). The failure of these philosophers to challenge the traditional conception of morality for Nietzsche “constitutes the typical prejudgment and prejudice which give away the metaphysicians of all ages” (10). The prejudices of philosophers is a particular point of contention with Nietzsche, something that he feels is endemic to the field of study: “Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir” (13). He claims that these philosophers are not so much explaining or exploring the truth but rather are “wily spokesmen for their prejudices which they baptize ‘truths’”, pushing their own conceptions of morality born of their own prejudices on the world. This is something that Nietzsche cannot abide, and something that is fundamentally at odds with his understanding of the world. As such, the new breed of philosophers Nietzsche envisions must be different in this regard.
To escape the bonds of traditional philosophical conceptions of morality and unleash one’s full potential for profound thought, Nietzsche urges a transition to a new way of thinking, starting with the characterization of the school of thought itself: “Don’t we stand at the threshold of a period which should be designated negatively, to begin with, as extra-moral?” (44). These new philosophers must reject the very idea of morality and consider the world with fresh eyes, free of naivete; the ‘death of God’ leaves open an entirely new realm of possibilities, that only those daring enough can exploit.