Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

THEMES ON THIS PAGE:

1. SELF-CREATION

2. THE DEATH OF GOD

3. THE VIRTUE OF GIFT-GIVING

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. He was born near Leipzig, Prussia, and then studied philology (and for a while also theology) at the University of Bonn. In his early 20s he read the writings of Schopenhauer and became interested in philosophy. In 1869, at the age of 24, before finishing his doctorate, he became the youngest professor ever at the Philology Department of Basel University. In 1878 he resigned his position because of medical reasons, including ongoing migraines and digestion problems. From then on he lived from his university pension, and wrote intensely a number of important books, including his most famous book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” In 1889 he collapsed in Torino, Italy, and from then until his death suffered from debilitating mental illness.

Nietzsche’s influence on philosophy has been tremendous. He is regarded as one of the two fathers of Existentialism (alongside with Kierkegaard) – the important philosophical movement that included great thinkers such Jaspers, Sartre, Camus and others.

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche criticizes contemporary Western culture, its norms, beliefs, and values. Nietzsche’s main concern is how to live our life deeply and fully, given that there are no absolute truths and values (“God is dead”). For him, most people tend to live a shallow, trivial and empty life, motivated by weakness, fear, and herd mentality. In the past, religious values used to give us ideals to strive for, to overcome our small selves, and to live fully and passionately. But now that absolute values are dying, and values are becoming a matter of personal taste and nothing more, we face the danger of falling into a small life devoid of passion, courage, and yearning.

Much of Nietzsche’s philosophy addresses this problem, and envisions a new way of life that would enable us to live fully and nobly without absolute values. The prototype of this new way of living is the “over-man” – the person who overcomes himself, creates new values for himself, and transcends to greater heights. Such a life of self-creation is a tremendous task, and it may be that nobody is yet able to live like that. Nietzsche therefore sees himself as a prophet announcing a new period in history.

TOPIC 1: SELF-CREATION

In response to the superficiality of contemporary life, and to the challenge of “the death of God,” Nietzsche envisions the creator (an aspect of the “overman”): This is a person who rejects the superficial values of society, creates new values for himself (“his own evil and his own good,” or his own “virtue”), and lives fully and passionately to realize them. This means extreme loneliness. He can no longer rely on accepted standards – he must have his own “conscience,” and be his own judge and his own punisher (when he fails). He will therefore be attacked by fears and loneliness, as well as by criticisms and hate from the “herd” (the “good” people who follow the norms). To overcome them, he will obviously need courage and inner power. It does not matter which norm he throws away (“That doesn’t matter to Zarathustra”), as long as instead he creates his own value, and aspires to live it fully. What is important is overcoming your small self towards the heights, and it does not matter in which direction. Values are not important in themselves, they are not true or false – they only serve as arbitrary goals (“a god for yourself”) which enable you to go beyond yourself.

Thus, not anybody may rejects the values of society (the “yoke” of social norms), only somebody who has the creative power and the courage to invent a new value and follow it faithfully and passionately (with “bright eyes”). Nietzsche is not suggesting aimless anarchy. Freedom for him does not mean absence of “servitude,” but rather “servitude” to your OWN values. And this is a very difficult task.

Such a person must create out of nothing – like a “first movement” and a “wheel” that moves itself. He must “despise” his small and frightened self, and out of love for himself must transcend it (“overcome” it) towards a new higher self which he creates. In this sense, he “ascends” to become a “star,” or a light in the sky.

The following text is slightly adapted from the section “On the way of the creator,” which is one of the speeches of Zarathustra in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 1, published in 1883.

 

 ON THE WAY OF THE CREATOR

  Do you wish, my brother, to go into solitude? Do you wish to seek the way to yourself? Then stay a moment, and listen to me.

  Thus speaks the herd: “He who seeks, easily gets lost. Every loneliness means guilt.” And you have belonged to the herd for a long time. The voice of the herd can still be heard in you. And when you will say, “I no longer have a conscience that is common with you,” it will be a crying and a suffering. Behold, this suffering was born from the common conscience, and the last spark of that conscience still glows on your affliction. But do you want to go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength to do so. Are you a new strength and a new right? A first movement? A self-propelled wheel? Can you force the stars to revolve around you?

  […]

  You call yourself free? I want to hear your dominating thought, not to hear that you have escaped from a yoke. Are you one of those who has the RIGHT to escape from a yoke? Some people threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude.

  Free FROM what? That doesn’t matter to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: Free FOR what? Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good, and place your own will above yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and punisher of your law? It is terrible to be alone with the judge and punisher of one’s own law. That is how a star is thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude.

  Today you are still suffering from the crowd, since you are one; today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you exhausted, when your pride will bend down, and your courage will grind its teeth. And you will cry, “I am alone!” The time will come when what seems to you high will no longer be visible, and what seems low will be too near. Even what seems to you sublime will frighten you like a ghost. And you will cry, “Everything is false!”

  There are feelings which want to kill the lonely man. And if they are not successful, well, then they must die themselves. But are you capable of being a murderer? […]

  And be careful of those people who are good and just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue for themselves – they hate the lonely one. […] But the worse enemy you can encounter will always be you. […] Lonely one, you are going the way that leads to yourself. […] You must wish to consume yourself in your own flame. How can you wish to become new unless you first become ashes!

  Lonely one, you are going the way of the creator. You want to create a god for yourself out of your seven devils.

  Lonely one, you are going the way of the lover: You love yourself, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers despise. The lover will create because he despises. He who did not have to despise precisely what he loved, what does he know about love?

  Go into your loneliness with your love and with your creation, my brother, and only much later will justice limp after you.

  With my tears go into your loneliness, my brother. I love the one who wants to create over and beyond himself, and thus perishes.

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

 

TOPIC 2: THE DEATH OF GOD

A central idea in Nietzsche’s philosophy is the “death of God,” or more precisely: the death of the belief in God. Nietzsche observes that Western culture of the 19th century is starting to lose its belief in absolute truths and values (“God”), a belief which has been central throughout its history. Nietzsche’s reaction is ambivalent. On the one hand, since for him God is a fiction, he is glad that our culture will finally awaken from this self-deception, especially since its main European representative, Christianity, preaches (according to him) the values of self-negation and denial of life. On the other hand, in all cultures values serve a crucial function – to give people something to strive for, to struggle for, to overcome their small lives. Without truths to strive for, life would deteriorate into an empty, superficial life of comfort, pleasure, and herd mentality. The death of God is, therefore, an immense challenge which would require our culture to change radically.

The following two passages are from Nietzsche’s book THE GAY SCIENCE (also translated as “The Joyful Wisdom”) which was published in 1882, just before his main book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” In the first section below (section 125) Nietzsche pronounces the death of God, while in the second section (section 285) he explains the great challenge we face as a result.

SECTION 125: In the first section below, Nietzsche puts the news of the death of God in the mouth of a madman – who symbolizes somebody living outside society and noticing uncomfortable truths. At first, his audience laughs at him, because they do not understand how serious this is. The madman responds by telling them that killing God was a tremendous act. This is because historically, God has been for us the “sun” of absolute truth, the “horizon” that determines the high and the low, the good and the bad. Without God we would lose our orientation like a planet that has lost its sun and is wandering in the empty dark space.

A world without a god is a fundamentally different world, the madman tells his audience, and in order to live in it, our culture will need a completely different attitude to life – “a higher history.” Without a god, humans must “become gods,” in other words creators of values. The big question is whether they have the power to rise to such heights.

But the madman’s audience does not seem to understand him. They have not yet digested the meaning of the death of God. They may joke about God, but their lives are still guided by the old religious values. It takes time to fully digest the meaning of the death of God, just as it takes time for the light of the stars to reach our eyes, or the sound of the thunder to reach our ears.

 

 Section 125: THE MADMAN

  Haven’t you heard about that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"

  Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing nearby, he caused considerable laughter: "Have you lost him then?" said one. "Did he lose his way like a child?" said another. "Or is he hiding? Is he scared of us? Did he emigrate?" – so they shouted and laughed.

  The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Where has God gone?" he cried. "I will tell you: We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers! But how have we done this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is the earth moving now? Where are we moving now? Away from all suns? Aren't we perpetually falling – backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Aren't we drifting as if through an infinite nothing? Don’t we feel the breath of empty space? Hasn't it become colder? Isn't more and more night coming all the time? Shouldn’t lanterns be lit in the morning? Don’t we hear yet the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Don’t we smell yet God’s decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

  “How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? The holiest and most powerful thing which the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives — who will wipe away this blood us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games will we need to invent? Isn't the greatness of this act too great for us? Must we not become gods ourselves simply to seem worthy of it?

  "There has never been a greater act, and whoever will be born after us, because of this act he will be part of a higher history than all of history so far."

  Here the madman fell silent and again looked at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground and it shattered and went out. "I come too early," he said then, "my time hasn't arrived yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still traveling — it has not yet reached human ears. Lightning and thunder need time, actions need time, even after they were done, before they can be seen and heard. This act is still more distant from them than the most distant stars — and yet we have done it ourselves."

 

SECTION 285: How, then, can we live without a god, without an absolute truth to “adore,” without faith in “ultimate wisdom” or in “ultimate goodness” or “in ultimate power”? How can we live without believing in a god that will tell us what is right and wrong, and will give us meaning and peace and eternal life?

One possibility (which Nietzsche rejects in other passages) is to live without high values. This would mean a shallow and empty life of small satisfactions, comfort, and fun. Indeed, if we look at our own society today, we will see what Nietzsche meant, and what he was afraid would happen to us: Without high ideals and values to strive for, life would sink to the bottom. At most we would invent “idols” to adore, such as money or professional success.

Nietzsche message is: If we want to live without self-deception, if we want to live a life that is full, high, noble, then we must learn to “renounce” the comforts that gods give us. We must continue to struggle and search – after all, this is what gives us meaning – but without any given goal, without a heaven to reach, without an absolute ideal to follow.

But is this humanly possible? Can we live without absolute truths and values (high “mountains”)? Can we live fully in a world that is empty of good and bad, struggling to overcome our small self without any ultimate result, without a “resting place”? In the last paragraph below, Nietzsche suggests that if we stop directing our energies and hopes (the “water of a lake”) towards a god, then we might rise high enough for such a heroic life.

 

 Section 285: EXCELSIOR!

  “You will never pray again, never adore again, never again rest in endless trust. You do not let yourself stop before any ultimate wisdom, ultimate goodness, ultimate power, while you liberate your thoughts. You have no perpetual guardian and friend for your seven solitudes. You live without a view of mountains with snow on their peaks and fire in their hearts. There is no avenger for you, no eternal improvement. There is no longer any reason in what happens, no love in what will happen to you; no resting place for your heart, where it could just find and no longer have to seek. You resist any ultimate peace; you seek the eternal repetition of war and peace. Man of renunciation, do you wish to renounce all this? Who will give you the strength for that? Nobody yet has had this strength.”

  There is a lake which one day refused to flow out, and it erected a dam in the place where it used to flow out. Since then, this lake has been rising higher and higher. Perhaps this renunciation will give us the strength to bear the renunciation itself. Perhaps man will keep rising higher once he stops flowing into a god.

 

TOPIC 3: THE VIRTUE OF GIFT-GIVING

Nietzsche’s book THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA is structured around a storyline: After years of solitary contemplation on the mountains, Zarathustra comes down to human society to teach people from his wisdom. Here he gives speeches to the people he meets, to the crowd in the towns, as well as to the pupils who follow him. Most of this four-part book is made of Zarathustra’s speeches which express Nietzsche’s philosophy.

In the last section of Part I of the book, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue,” Zarathustra says goodbye to his students and gives them two pieces of wisdom. The first is that those who are powerful, find their fulfillment in giving from their fullness to others. This giving is a form of selfishness, because it is done for self-fulfillment, but it is a noble selfishness, different from the low selfishness of wanting to steal from others. The following passages are from this section (slightly adapted):

 

 1

  When Zarathustra has said farewell to the town to which his heart was attached, and which was named “The Motley Cow,” many who called themselves his disciples followed him and escorted him. When they came to a crossroad, Zarathustra told them that now he wanted to walk alone, because he liked to walk alone. […] Then he spoke to his disciples:

  Tell me: Why did gold attain the highest value? Because it is unusual and useless and shiny and gentle in its splendor. It always gives itself. Gold attained the highest value as an image of the highest virtue. […] The highest virtue is unusual and useless. It is shiny and gentle in its splendor: The virtue of gift-giving is the highest virtue.

  Truly, my disciples, I have discovered who you are: You strive, like me, to have the virtue of gift-giving. What do you have in common with cats and wolves? This is your thirst: to become sacrifices and gifts. And that is why you thirst to accumulate all treasures in your soul. Your soul strives for treasures and gems, because your virtue is thirsty to give them. You force all things into yourself so that they would flow back out of your well, as the gifts of your love. […] This is selfishness which I regard as whole and holy.

  There is also a different kind of selfishness, a poor and hungry selfishness that always wants to steal – this is the selfishness of the sick: sick selfishness. With the eyes of a thief it looks at everything that is splendid. With the greed of hunger it inspects those who have much to eat. And always it sneaks around the table of those who give. Sickness speaks from such craving and invisible degeneration. The thief-like greed of this selfishness indicates a diseased body. Tell me, my brothers, what do we regard as bad and as the worst of all? Isn’t it degeneration? And degeneration is what we always infer where there is no gift-giving soul. Our way goes upward. But we shudder at the degenerate sense which says, “Everything for me.” Our sense flies upwards; in this way it is a parable of elevation. Parables of such elevations are the names of the virtues.

The second message of Zarathustra is that good students must, at some stage, leave their teacher and seek their own way. You are a good student not when you continue to adore your teacher, but when you know that it is time to turn your back to your teacher and go beyond him.

3

After Zarathustra said these words he became silent, like somebody who has not yet said his last word. For a long time he weighed his staff in his hand, doubtfully. At last he spoke, and the tone of this voice changed.

Now I go alone, my disciples. You too go now, alone. This is how I want it. Truly, I counsel you: go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you. A person of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains just a pupil. […] You revere me, but what if your reverence falls down one day? Be careful that the statue doesn’t kill you. You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter? You are my believers – but what do all believers matter? You had not yet searched yourselves, and you found me. This is what all believers do. Therefore, faith is worth very little. Now I ask you to lose me and find yourselves. And only when you have all denied me, then I will return to you. Truly, my brothers, I will then seek my lost ones with different eyes. I will then love you with a different love.