Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most controversial and influential thinkers of the last two centuries, period. We’ve talked about other philosophers who rebelled against previous philosophical systems (like Marx). But Nietzsche was unique. He rebelled against philosophers themselves. He rebelled against philosophy itself. Rather than write detailed philosophical theories, he wrote aphorisms and put his ideas in paragraphs or single pages. Soccio rightly labels Nietzsche “the Anti-Philosopher.” Indeed, much of Nietzsche’s writing reads more as literature than philosophy. Nietzsche was a colorful writer, this can be good or annoying depending on your perspective (and things are a matter of perspective for Nietzsche).

Still, Nietzsche had a strong, interesting, and complicated philosophy of his own. As we will see, a central point of his thought is the idea that existing values should be tested for their usefulness. He talked of “philosophizing with a hammer” metaphorically, meaning that every belief and value we have should be tested, “hammered”, to see whether or not it is worthy of being believed.

Nietzsche began his academic career as a philologist. Philology is a broad field, but generally philologists study and interpret language and texts. Although he was a brilliant philologist, there was no academic field that could contain Nietzsche’s thought, not even philosophy.

Schopenhauer (1788-1860 c.e.)

Nietzsche was fascinated with the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, a pessimist who thought life was meaningless and unnecessarily painful. Nietzsche was influenced by Schopenhauer but ultimately, Nietzsche would have a much less negative and less pessimistic philosophy. Schopenhauer thought that everything in the world was simply blind will playing itself out. By "blind will" he means some sort of force that is driven by pure chance, kind of like when you let go of a hose on full blast and it sprays in every direction uncontrollably. You wanting a slice of pizza, the cat wanting the mouse, the tide coming in—these are all examples of some blind will at the base of everything. Schopenhauer thought that humans are completely dominated by this will and that it is best to resign yourself to it. He envied animals because they live entirely in the present, following only immediate biological desires. Clearly, Schopenhauer was influenced by Eastern thought which sometimes treats the workings of the mind as a poison to human happiness.

As we will see, Nietzsche slightly changed Schopenhauer’s blind will into what Nietzsche called “Will to Power.”

Nietzsche championed something he called “perspectivism.” Basically, perspectivism is a form of relativism that says truth is a matter of perspective. However, Nietzsche realized the contradictions inherent in perspectivism. If truth is a matter of perspective, then Nietzsche’s ideas about truth are also a matter of perspective. But Nietzsche also said that in his perspectivism he was adopting points of view which were experiments. And he also made it clear that we all do this. Even science in its quest for objectivity is adopting a perspective. From different perspectives, different things seem right and wrong. Nietzsche adopted values which are often referred to as immoral or anti-moral, but this is only from the perspective of the dominant Christian value system of the time.

The Will to Power

Not only can we never discover objective truths in science and in the world, but we cannot discover objective truths about ourselves. We invent truths, according to Nietzsche, in an artistic, aesthetic way; scientists, philosophers, and religions alike invent truths. No dominant system of the 19th century was free from Nietzsche’s philosophical hammer. At the base of everything, said Nietzsche, is the will to power. Everyone wants and seeks power, from religions to universities to philosophers to servants. Has you ever seen the way grass and weeds sometimes grow out of the cracks in cement? This is an example of the will to power. The cement cannot contain the grass; the grass always seeks freedom, expression of itself. Another example: my father used to live in Gabon (Africa) and he told me once that, after trekking through the jungle one day with some others, they came upon a hotel that had been built by Europeans several decades before. The jungle was growing all over the remains of the hotel; the hotel had been reclaimed by the jungle. Again, the will to power here is the jungle’s raw “desire” for expansion.

Academics say they want truth, religions say they want peace and salvation, scientists say they want objectivity—these wants mask something else that is at the base of it all: the will to power. The spirit of Nietzsche’s time held that the objectivity of science and the morality of Christianity could save humanity, tame humanity. But Nietzsche saw these as false hopes. The will to power cannot be tamed! Science puts man and his world in a box, to be fit into some tidy system. Religion puts man and his world in a box too, in a different way, to act according to some tidy set of values.

Morality

Morality, too, is simply a perspective for Nietzsche, particularly dependent on the person who creates the moral system. Throughout the history of philosophy are examples of philosophers trying to found some sort of objective morality. But, as Nietzsche points out, all these attempts at an objective morality are hopelessly subjective, dependent on the person, the time, and the dominant belief system.

Nietzsche thought that to even begin to approach questions of morality, the moral systems of different peoples in different times should be studied and compared. Moreover, Nietzsche felt that any ethical system could not be universalized, could not be put in laundry-list form. You cannot extract a set of rules from Socrates’ life that anyone can follow. The moral system of Nietzsche’s time sought to curb human emotion, to “fix” some sort of inherent flaw in human nature. But why take the passion out of life? Why see human beings as creatures in need of “fixing”?

The Overman and the Death of God

Nietzsche thought a time would come when good and evil as a system itself was overcome. Pay close attention to what he was saying here. Nietzsche was not saying that some new moral system should be instated; he was saying that mankind has to go beyond morality itself to a further stage of human evolution. What will we call this greater man? The overman.

The overman is a consequence of the death of God for Nietzsche. You may have heard this phrase before, but I’m here to set you straight. The death of God does not imply a man with a white beard falling and gorging himself on the pearly gates. No, the death of God for Nietzsche is the death of an idea. We have killed the idea of God with our new faith in science and progress. The death of God marks the consequence of an incredible change in worldview brought on by Copernicus, Charles Darwin, and others. But the idea of the death of God is something that Nietzsche felt people are not ready for yet. Really God is dead, but people live as though he continues to exist. People cannot face his death, even though at bottom any faith in God they have is empty.

The first step beyond the death of God is nihilism, the belief that our lives and the world have no objective meaning. According to Nietzsche, after we come to accept God’s death, we move to a nihilistic point of view where we wallow in a sense of emptiness. But unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche thought that nihilism was a necessary stage in man’s evolution.

If God is dead and we have no objective foundation for values, where do we turn? For Nietzsche, this is the point when we create our own values. This is the point when we rise above the existing values. This is the point when the overman can emerge.

But it’s not quite that simple. For some, the death of God is a terrible disaster and will remain a terrible disaster. For others, it’s an opportunity. It all depends on what sort of person you are. The person who clings to God, even in the wake of his death, is weak according to Nietzsche. The weak person turns to the group or herd for comfort. But the person who rises above the nihilistic stage to create his identity and his values is beginning to grow beyond man as he was (as a creation in the image of God) to become the overman.

Slave Morality and Master Morality

Slave morality began when our natural instincts and passions were overrun by rules and customs. Slave morality is the morality of the weak, the dominant morality to this day. What is “good” is to be weak, passive, withdrawn, in control. These are all elements of slave morality for Nietzsche. The slave moralist is driven by guilt and fear. The slave moralist lives and behaves according to the herd, according to the way the masses live and behave. The slave moralist conforms and does not seek individuality. Nietzsche even goes so far as to say that slave morality grows out of a resentment (ressentiment--it is often stated in French) of the strong, a resentment of those who are creative. The slave moralist doesn’t really reject the traits of those considered “bad”; he secretly longs for them.

Both the slave moralist and the master moralist seek power (due to the will to power), but the master moralist fully admits his desire for power while the slave moralist hides behind a false image, pretending he doesn’t want power when in fact he does. The master moralist creates his own values, and builds his life as though it’s a work of art. Nietzsche, in fact, had a high opinion of art and creation.

Eternal Recurrence

Although Nietzsche didn’t devote much space to it in his works, he put forth the idea of eternal recurrence. What if you were forced to live your life over and over, again and again, an infinite amount of times? After you died, you just started it all over again.

Would you curse your fate if faced with this situation? Would you cry and moan and complain? The weak-minded slave moralist would. But the master moralist would affirm life, say “yes” to life. He would say “yes” to every moment, the painful and the happy, even if he had to live each moment an infinite amount of times.