It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain
a thought without accepting it. – Aristotle
I was listening to our local classical station and they played a rendition of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, Opus 30.
Whenever I hear this music it brings to mind Kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey. But Richard Strauss composed his Opus 30 as a tone poem to accompany Friedrich Nietzsche’s book of the same name.
Nietzsche was an interesting fellow who certainly lived up to his first book The Birth of Tragedy; or in his case saving the tragedy for the end of his life.
During my undergraduate studies of western civilization he was hardly mentioned. I’m guessing that was due at least in part to his association with Germany’s National Socialist Party; but I’m not sure. Perhaps those associations were still too fresh. The substance of his thoughts sure seems in line with the expressed philosophy I encountered in college.
To give a bit of background on his life, here is a BBC biography of Nietzsche:
In case you missed that day in school, or had his books censored from your education, Nietzsche is the 19th century philosopher who posited the death of God and grappled with a morality not based on God’s existence. He contrasted the slave philosophy of devaluing what you don’t have and elevating victimhood, with the master philosophy of being strong-willed. For the slave, ‘good’ is due in the next life, so weak, cowardly and petty actions are valued. For the master ‘good’ is the noble, strong, and powerful. In the current milieu; masters seize the day and slaves pay for it.
Nietzsche dealt with the differences between society’s visions of good and evil in his text Beyond Good and Evil. In this book he argued against a single objective truth. He saw Philosophers of the past, as well as people of the present, as simply constructing their morality based on their own experiences. He also took a shot at the utilitarianists for promoting the greatest good for the greatest number (maybe this is why he’s censored). He sees hardship, suffering, and discipline as constituting what makes life worthwhile, not happiness. Happiness and contentment are a byproduct of overcoming adversity and rivals.
Nietzsche thought each person should live their life so they would consider it a blessing to repeat it over and over; even the bad parts. Never shy away from adversity and risk, embrace and overcome them. He believed true joy comes from the struggle and subsequent success in defeating rivals and adversity. To reach anything of value you must expend an extraordinary amount of effort. The person who climbs a mountain is much happier than the one who is transported to the top. To Nietzsche, it was not enough to experience hardship but one must personally overcome the pain.
He recorded his thoughts in allegorical form in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It was not a best seller. It was controversial partially because he degraded empathy and elevated initiative. It was a bit more scandalous in that he created the notion of Übermensch— the beyond-man or super-man as a goal for humanity to aspire to.
The super man was fully in line with the National Socialist concept of a master race. Nietzsche however was not singing the praises of a master race, he was pointing the way to what he thought would yield a moral people.
Nietzsche went from the tragedy of the Greeks through the Ubermensch of Zarathustra to thinking about the primacy of power. His superman was a forceful individual who relentlessly pursued power and defeated rivals. I’m not quite sure how a society of individuals relentlessly pursuing power would function, but perhaps I’m living in the prototype and more will be made clear in the fullness of time.
I am intrigued with how Nietzsche would view our current society. Like Mark Twain’s God’s death was exaggerated. In many ways God plays a bigger role in 21st century western culture than was true in the mid-20th century and I’m pretty sure even the late 19th century . We can’t travel without bowing to God, or at least showing our ID. Try to board a commercial air flight sometime, and think of God. Granted our relationship to God may have changed in the past century; or maybe not.
In a way I’m sorry that Nietzsche never finished his final work The Will to Power. His sister published his notes but the BBC documentary gave me the impression that Nietzsche would, at the very least, have made serious changes to his work. It’s intriguing to wonder what those changes would be.
Nietzsche wrote when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Did he, in words of Joseph Campbell, bring back a pearl from the abyss that changed his mind about the primacy of power? Or was there some more fundamental aspect of his life’s work that disturbed him? No matter, he ran out of time to tell us about it.
Nietzsche finally broke down mentally. Whether it was from Syphilis, as some claim, or perhaps the effects of looking into his personal abyss as he intimated, or something entirely different, we shall never know. Regardless, his ideas have informed some of the more prominent philosophical explanations of the 21st century, so that makes his work important.
Try to read some of his works, hold them up to your beliefs. You may find they reinforce what you believe, even as your reject what he wrote. Remember Aristotle’s admonition at the top of this post.