Part II of paraphrasing Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, this time focusing on Section 5 of the Preface. I want to record my initial impressions of reading Nietzsche without much knowledge of other people’s analysis—mainly for the reason he describes here: trying to get to the underlying commonalities in various theories before getting attached to a theory. Especially because I’ve found 20c intellectuals made a lot of errors interpreting the 19c, and I like to use 19c primary sources. This part (section 5 of the preface) seems pretty important.
In reality I had set my heart at that time on something much more important than the nature of the theories of myself or others concerning the origin of morality (or, more precisely, the real function from my view of these theories was to point an end to which they were one among many means).
Nietzsche (who I will abbreviate as N from now on) makes it clear that he’s trying to call attention not to the theories themselves, but what they had in common, to get at what was solid and underlying them. They would be picking up on the same things in different ways where they were valid. The source of these insights was the key, and it could be discovered from different angles. Below, he says this source was “the value” of morality—why do people care so much about defining morality to begin with? That’s the key.
The issue for me was the value of morality, and on that subject I had to place myself in a state of abstraction, in which I was almost alone with my great teacher Schopenhauer,
So being in a state of abstraction was anomalous for him and rare in general. I’m pretty sure what he means in this: he had to dismiss all his assumptions so that the could see past the theories to the essence: what they had in common. He had to discover it from the ground up like someone who never internalized any theories. Fieldwork; investigation. Apparently he learned how to do this mostly from Schopenhauer’s example.
to whom that book, with all its passion and inherent contradiction (for that book also was a polemic), turned for present help as though he were still alive.
N makes a point of emphasizing both this book and his first one are polemics. Let’s stop and think about this, because this is why I think modern interpretations of N are so off. Modern western thinking doesn’t really acknowledge this exact concept, which was central to 19c writing, almost none of which had the tone we now associate with serious or scientific writing—neutral, objective, professional, bureaucratic, etc. It’s not that it wasn’t serious, but it was inherently playful or engaging, meandering, not technical. That was just considered normal—some were much better than others at it, more interesting or clever, but it wasn’t significant that someone wrote this way. There were also a lot of allusions, used as shorthand, instead of jargon like we use today. This is still common in official correspondence in some parts of the world—I’ve noticed many Americans read statements by the CCP and wonder why it sounds “religious” or “inspirational.” This is simply default 19c intellectual language, often referred to with bafflement as “flowery” or “romantic” now (which was often quite combative and blunt by our standards.) It was pretty influenced by religion, specifically Biblical and classical language, and western works translated documents from Asia or the Middle East using the same framework. When I use a term like playful, I don’t mean anyone was joking. Just that they aren’t making entirely literal or factual statements, like you would find in an instruction manual—that was considered inappropriate outside of very specific circumstances, like giving instructions for a simple process. You can’t just stop at face value.
Some definitions, for clarity:
A polemic is an aggressive, uncompromisingly critical verbal assault.
Polemical is the adjective form of the noun polemic, which itself comes from the Greek word, polemos, meaning “war.”
A polemic is something that stirs up controversy by having a negative opinion, usually aimed at a particular group.
polemic (/pəˈlɛmɪk/) is contentious rhetoric that is intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and undermining of the opposing position.
So N was explicitly assuming a stance, which was common at the time, to tear apart a specific target, not merely offering his ideas spontaneously. He was responding. I realize this is obvious to many, but I’ve noticed this understanding is absent in a lot of later analysis of 19c stuff. A polemic is consciously an attack and is shaped as such, but modern critics will say a polemicist was biased as though this is significant and makes the work less credible. N’s first two books, at least, can only be understood in this context: in light of what he was specifically opposing and reacting to, which necessarily set the terms of the debate. This would explain focus and emphasis. He also notes the first book was full of inherent contradiction.
I haven’t read much Schopenhauer, but will make a mental note to do so. I can tell from reading most of the available summaries that the general understanding of him is confused, because they’re all contradictory in predictable ways. He was used in service of a variety of competing philosophies later on, and various fields, resulting in essentially many alleged versions of Schopenhauer. What I take from it is that he believed that appearance and reality were different things, and that some sort of Buddhist-like detachment was advisable, rather than the romanticism of his time, which assumed people could know and do more than they could. So, life is full of suffering, so resign oneself to that instead of trying to control everything and torturing oneself with desire and being overly rational. But he was more empirical than mystical, demanding evidence for beliefs, and atheistic. I’m sure that is an extreme simplification and at least partly wrong, but that’s the only thing that seems solidly supported by all the sources. And he wrote a lot of polemics, especially towards Hegel’s positions, which of course modern sources fail to appreciate, and therefore spend a lot of time complaining that Schopenhauer was pushy and biased and personally fixated—which was the entire point. He was trying to take down contemporaries he thought were wrong. They all also imply that he “coincidentally” generated ideas similar to Buddhism, as though he could not have been aware of its existence and been informed by it, o commented on the similarities and differences—philosophers at this time knew what Buddhism was, and many studied it. Anyway.
As N notes, Schopenhauer (S from now on) was an outlier at this time, especially in the German intellectual world, and he found his style attractive. But not the content. S had idealized the instincts of pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice, making them sound inherently valuable by building such a vivid case for them. He sincerely believed in these ideals, “on the strength of which he uttered both to Life and to himself his own negation,” N says.
But against these very instincts there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a scepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct I saw the great danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and seduction seduction to what? to nothingness? in these very instincts I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes backwards, the will turning against Life, the last illness announcing itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our modern European civilisation; I realised that it was the route along which that civilisation slid on its way to a new Buddhism? a European Buddhism?—Nihilism? This exaggerated estimation in which modern philosophers have held pity, is quite a new phenomenon: up to that time philosophers were absolutely unanimous as to the worthlessness of pity. I need only mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant—four minds as mutually different as is possible, but united on one point; their contempt of pity.
So, I guess as he read S for help with his strategy, he became deeply disturbed by the implications—again, his inner self detected something very wrong. If one started thinking this way—and I think this is related to concerns about the dangers of intellectually-minded people getting into the habit of mainly abstract thought and building air castles, since he seems to think the state of abstraction somewhat odd and associates with S—all that is solid dissolves into abstractions; there’s no life, nothing seems wort it; one can see that everything is futile, that nothing can be known enough to justify the confidence to act. And it appears also a complacency (“stability”?), where all you can do is look back because there’s no future imaginable. And then depression and moralization and nihilism. He could see how easy it was to fall down this path, and even if it seemed logical, the results were clearly abnormal historically and bad in their overall outcome. Obviously, N is familiar with Buddhism and makes the connection easily. (It isn’t clear that he opposes Buddhism itself, but a bastardized version of it alien to Europe.) Then he connects this with the larger, less intellectual/abstract problem of the “morality of pity” that was spreading through people throughout “our modern European civilisation” (wonder what he thought about America at this point in comparison?) and “even philosophers.” He is noting an ongoing change, a stark break with the past, specifically in modern Europe. It is “quite new,” a problem of modern philosophy. And it is a sharp reversal—something people should be very suspicious of when we’re talking about the fundamentals of life—what does it mean when humanity changes its mind about such a thing? It’s at the very least calling out for closer analysis.
Also important is that he keeps returning to the significance of different theorists having commonalities, and the value one would expect to find in the commonalities, which likely correspond to something real they are all picking up on. And N considers them all very different. And they all think pity is useless (as in, not helpful or admirable, not something to encourage).
Just for reference, Plato lived in ancient Greece, much earlier than the rest. Kant lived in the 1700s, the other two in the 1600s. So we’re probably talking about a shift that happened, at earliest, in the late 1700s, and most likely in N’s own century, the 1800s.
Attempt to understand Nietzsche and paraphrase him, since it seems a lot of people are interpreting him various ways that strike me as incorrect and even absurd. I may be the one who is wrong, but I want to sketch it out. (Some academics likely have it right, but their stuff isn’t easily accessible.)
Genealogy of Morals
Preface
People don’t reflect enough on what it is they’re doing in life—this part strikes me as weirdly vague in its phrasing. I’m not quite sure if he’s saying they don’t know what they really want, or what their purpose is, or what it is they are supposed to be understanding. I gather from what he says about the hive that he believes something like the purpose of human life is to acquire knowledge that provides meaningful satisfaction to the human spirit. But this is clearly a brief intro which will be expanded upon.
He then talks about how he has been exploring where morality came from for years at this point, and writing about it, and he’s happy to see his ideas cohering—they fit together, which means he is on to something real. This strikes me as very important and a generally underappreciated aspect of Nietzsche and philosophy in general—way too many people think they can pick and choose individual sentences and understand what is going on, but these things are part of a coherent value system connected to a larger truth. You really have to absorb and marinate in this type of writing, not take it at face value. They can be extremely dysfunctional or just useless if used out of context. They’re “of a piece.” Extremely important passage:
The next part was slightly confusing to me, but basically he says that from a very young age, he was obsessed with why something was considered right or wrong, and what made it so. He felt he had to question things, in a way so at odds with the behavior of people around him that he thought he was somehow unique or unprecedented (a priori). His personality/nature would cause him to freeze and analyze any inconsistency until he reconciled it or could explain the concept, pretty much. I am the same way; Lincoln said something similar. He explored philosophical problems that were commonly presented to students at that time, and sounds quite similar to Emerson here in saying he decided to argue God created evil and thought he was quite clear. Emerson told his schoolmaster that he trusted his instincts, and was asked what if they came from the devil. He then said “well, I guess I’m a creature of the devil, then, and have to follow my nature.” Note that Emerson was from a long line of preachers and in a New England Christian community in the early 1800s, so that was risky. Nietzsche seems more neurotic, and so wonders what in his nature caused him to make that argument, which was “immoral” or “at least amoral.” What about his constitution resisted simply accepting that evil came from the Devil, not God? Was it just being clever, or was that what he really believed deep down at age 13? He notes his inner self spoke to him in categorical imperatives, insisting on one consistent rule, no inconsistency. Took me a minute to figure out the “Kantian article” reference. Info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_peace Still not sure exactly the point—simply that his own argument wasn’t so insistent on doing the morally good thing? That it was freaky to consider that God created evil, and all its implications? Yeah, it appears he was stressed about violating Christian teachings, but soon learned how to take a secular approach, and seems to imply he became an atheist. No longer thought supernatural origins were in play.
Instead, values were created by men—not God or the Devil—and the question is on what basis did they generate them, are they actually valuable, and do they help or hinder humanity? The “helping” view would mean “is it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future?” This is what Nietzsche considers valuable.
He basically then says he dove into the problem and constructed an elaborate intellectual framework over some period of time, and relished the satisfaction of playing around with his discoveries, but kept it mostly quiet, until inspired to publish by an interesting book on morals, that expressed the polar opposite of his own views and thus fascinated him. Despite disagreement on everything, he read it without getting worked up—I assume he means the approach of the author was “fair” and well-reasoned, so he could respect it intellectually and really grasp it. It was the first time he’d encountered this value system clearly and coherently—he makes a point of saying this was the English kind, which he finds alien. That book inspired him to write his later books—to refute its arguments and discuss the origin of morality. Note to self: read the book described as follows:
Note on timeline: Nietzsche mentions he spent a lot of time thinking this stuff over in the 1870s, especially mid-late. Have to look at what was going on, but I believe Bismarck was doing his thing. Emerson was alive but failing. The U.S. was just starting to become modern, at a rapid pace, in terms of big business especially, then sliding into imperialism and government-by-expert. I think Europe was reasonably stable (excepting Russia?), but I’ll probably turn out to be very wrong on that.
Nietzsche makes a point of noting he takes a positive approach—meaning he wants to build a case for the correct system, not negate others’. So where he thought something made an unlikely assumption relative to his own, he spelled that out, admitting he was wrong at times and that his ideas took a while to express effectively, but have stayed consistent. Interesting that he thinks he needed jargon—not sure which special subjects/language he means, but I could see how certain things would be useful shorthand. Also, this must have been translated into German, which may have made things a little weird when talking about certain concepts and technical terms.
Will continue with Part 5.