Nietzsche has the reputation as possibly the most dense and hard to understand philosopher in existence (at least outside of really crazy Buddist/Hindu stuff); the truth is he is not so much hard to understand as simply contradictory… it’s fairly common to be reading something Nietzsche wrote and within three sentences have done a 360 degree philosophical arc. For example; Nietzsche is obsessed with European cultural identity, and his philosophical program more than anything is an attempt to rehab that identity. However, he also volubly disliked the germanic peoples, of which he was part, as well as feeling that Europe as a whole was anti-semitic and needed to be depopulated… which is especially mind boggling when you consider Nietzsche didn’t have an overall very positive understanding of Judaism, and in fact considered Jews to have instigated the development of slave morality, which he viewed as the primary factor in the decline of healthy morality globally, but especially in Europe.
His writings are full of these double/triple/quadruple recapitulations, which can make it hard to understand what his primary purpose in writing was. However, consistent themes if not answers can be found; Nietzsche is very concerned with the health of Europe on a spiritual and psychological level, he is largely disgusted by the prospect of modernity, and he is interested in the development of humans to or beyond their full potential (whatever that means). A philosophy might be said to be Nietzschen in nature if it contains these elements, regardless of what the specific content of the philosophy is.
The first of these points was the most surprising to me in researching this article; I think most people know Nietzsche As the “god is dead” guy and assume he was somewhat pro-that situation. The reality is that God is Dead is just the catchiest formulation of a point that Nietzsche made over and over: that there was a spiritual malaise in Europe, that seemingly continued to get worse with every disastrous war or religious controversy. Nietzsche’s entire corpus of writing is situated around this issue; while not every individual topic or theme is directly related to European identity, the point of the writings in a general sense is to arm readers with the foundational information required to personally transform in an environment of complete hopelessness.
Along with GiD (God is Dead), the other Nietzschen concept most of you will probably be familiar with is the “ubermensch”; like GiD, there are some fundamental misconceptions about this creature, mostly having to do with its relation to Nazi ideology. An actual ubermensch by Nietzsche’s own standards is more of a post-human than merely someone who believes in will-to-power; they have transcended the difference/barrier between humanity and it’s next stage of development, in the same way we have all transcended our apeish ancestors. This nitty-gritty of this process involves gaining complete self-understanding; one conditional element is the acceptance of the eternal return, amor fati, wherein all events, themes and elements in one’s life are repeated eternally; one must accept these themes in order to demonstrate the will necessary for crossing the human barrier.
All of these concepts sort of necessarily flow from one another: the solution to European hopelessness (in Nietzsche’s mind) is cultural uplift by a small number of ubermensch who have mastered the power of their will through amor fati. This isn’t because love of fate had any magical value, but because accepting the tragic recurrence of one’s life was viewed by Nietzsche as the greatest possible psychological burden; it was only by lifting the weight of this burden that the individual could develop the spiritual strength required to resist nihilism, both on a personal as well as societal level. Wait, resist nihilism? I thought Nietzsche was a nihilist!
While there’s some amount of debate over the issue, my interpretation based on the research I did for this article was that Nietzsche was very deliberately anti-Nihilist, in his writings and in the events of his personal life. Nietzsche believed in the necessity of tragedy for life to function properly and this view can often be confused with Nihilism or pessimism; however it is merely the recognition that good times must pass, beauty fade, etc…, not the belief that these things have no inherent value, or do not even exist. Rather the opposite as Nietzsche was obsessed with the philosophical concepts of health, strength, beauty, etc… Nietzsche’s master morality was in fact based on a conception of these traits as enumerating what was truly good, while slave morality focused essentially on one’s status as victim; the things one has endured and the lack of externally expressible power in one’s life.
There is a good deal to go over with regard to will to power’s association with the Nazi’s, but basically a large percentage of German intellectuals, who proportionally had many right wing members, found the concept of will to power interesting/influential in their works…but these ideas were generally influential in Germany and Nietzsche had been popular for decades at that point. Ironically there were a number of Jewish intellectuals who were highly impressed by Nietzsche And the will to power concept in particular. Do I personally think Nietzsche Is anti-semitic? This is one of the oddest questions in the entire corpus of Nietzsche research. In his writings, he was quite anti-semitic; some of his criticisms of the Jews as a group are quite scathing and don’t leave much to the imagination; Nietzsche however, was assiduous about decrying antisemitism both publicly and in his writings. Double-triple however, close friends say he really was an anti-semite and a quite vigorous one at that. To be completely honest I suspect some of his public statements are essentially Nietzsche Trying not to damage his relations with publishing industry Jews; they seem overly proclamative and kissy-kissy (“the purest human being, the noblest philosopher, the mightiest book”)…
If you read any substantive amount of Nietzsche’s work you know that he is closer to worshipping the opposite of these things…not in 1000 eternal returns would Nietzsche Sincerely call Christ the “purest human being”…Nietzsche Strongly disliked Christianity, and this dislike was not a veiled one as with Jews… the purest human being would be a strong genius, not Christ, according to Nietzsche’s worldviews. Similarly, while he was influenced by Spinoza, Nietzsche Also called Spinoza a “little twerpy wimp” (my own rephrasing) and probably lots of other shit that I couldn’t find. So, as per usual with Nietzsche, he flip-flops about three times, albeit while providing unparalleled explication of the flaws and virtues of both sides.
So, in summary, Nietzsche focused on a three part philosophical agenda, 1. Arm the reader against nihilism in their home culture, 2. Warn them of the dangers of modernity, 3. To the extent possible with the individual reader, help inform them of the nature of the journey involved in overcoming points 1 & 2. It seems as if Nietzsche ever only saw this journey being completed by extremely rare individuals, but the general dispersion of his philosophy globally seems to have expedited this process for many individuals, which was basically his goal in the first place.
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