How Does Nietzsche Critique Morality - Essay Example

1. What, for Nietzsche, is the value of morality? What is morality, for Nietzsche? How does Nietzsche critique morality? Under what circumstances do we create morality- why is this an important question for Nietzsche? What is the difference between good and bad and good and evil? How does he regard guilt and bad conscience? Would he like us to return to master morality? Has morality had any benefits for us? Morality literally means the degree to which something is right or wrong, good or bad or evil according to moral principles. Societies set standards of behavior to be followed by all and deviation from these standards is considered immoral or abnormal. Most of these moral values are derived from religious faith and writings such as the Quran and the Bible. For example, the bible gives the Ten Commandments to be followed and doing contrary to this (such as murder) is considered evil. Behaviors or virtues such as honesty, integrity, courage, and compassion are considered good or given in different societies while vices such as deceit and dishonesty are taken as bad. Though Friedrich Nietzsche does not dispute these moral values, he questions the origin of such values and their moral worth and believes that values can be ranked in order of their worth or value. For him, morality entails being able to discern and take responsibility for our actions or to act based on free will (Genealogy of Morals, 35). This is because men are thinking beings if what Rene Descartes asserted during his meditations (I think, therefore I am) is something to go by and hence able to make and keep promises hence become reliable beings. Without this sense of responsibility, moral values would be useless as no one would feel guilty for not abiding by their promises or adopting Kant’s categorical imperative, “act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”(Genealogy of morals, 5: cited from Groundwork, Section I). Morality thus is a problematic concept for Nietzsche and it may be the reason to “blame if man, as species, never reached their highest potential power and splendor” (p.8). This is because it leads men to prefer to will nothingness hence life-denial and loathing of oneself. This essay will seek to understand the value of morality and under what conditions morality was created. This will be achieved by first looking at the binaries ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and ‘good’ and ‘evil’ which are the essence of master morality and slave morality. Secondly, it will look at how guilt and bad conscience arise and how Nietzsche regards them. Lastly, the benefits of morality will be discussed in order to understand why Nietzsche would not like us to return to master morality. What is the value of morality? This is the central question that Nietzsche deals with. To a lay man, morality is having good behavior or acting in a way that does not cause harm to others. For example, being compassionate or honest is taken naturally as being good and acting contrary to this is bad. Moral values in this case are given virtues which men should possess. Being evil is always associated with the devil and involves actions that cause great harm to others such as murder, theft, and robbery. Nietzsche studied this behavior especially from Arthur Schopenhauer whose morality was based on unegoistic values such as compassion, self-denial and self-sacrifice and he took it too far by saying no to life and to himself (Genealogy of morals, 5). He could not understand how morals could be so life-denying and causing people to suffer hence he embarked on an enquiry as to the origin of morality and especially evil. At first, he blamed God just like other philosophers for bringing evil to the world but after much inquiry he changed his perspective. Instead of asking why God brought evil into the world, he embarked on finding out how the idea of evil itself came into the world. This thus entailed questioning the moral values that people hold using the process of genealogy. Genealogy which involved tracing the history of social institution or set of values to understand its descent and its changing meaning led Nietzsche to discover that things in society did not always have the same meaning as they do now. He discovered that unlike what we believe that good came from whom goodness is shown, it is “the ‘good’ themselves, that is, the noble, mighty, highly-placed and high-minded who saw and judged themselves and actions as good” (p. 11). They also judged the actions of those inferior to them, the lowly and lowly-minded as bad. It is thus those in authority or aristocrats that developed the concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in order to dominate others. The usefulness of the values possessed was thus not matter of their concern; they could create values and gives them names hence define and order value judgments. In this sense, moral values have a social origin as they arose from power relations in society. Master morality for Nietzsche involved ranking values as ’good’ or ‘bad’ depending on the person in authority such as aristocrats, warriors and priests. Masters were thus considered good people and possessed characteristics such as being strong, bold, truthful, noble, free or pure and they celebrated in having such traits; they were self-affirming. The concept ‘bad’ in this case was an afterthought and it referred to those who were under the masters or slaves. Bad thus was the opposite of what was good and involved being weak, base, low, and ignoble and often comprised the dark people and Jews while masters were blond. The concepts ‘ good’ and ‘bad’ used in this way did not have a moral connotation and no one bore responsibility for not being good; instead, slaves were viewed with pity by the masters just like the lambs could not blame eagles for taking them. Nietzsche engaged in etymology to find out the meaning of good and discovered that all languages considered good to mean noble and aristocratic and developed parallel with one which transferred common ‘low’ into ‘bad.’ For example, German word Schlecht (bad) was identical to Schlicht (plain, simple) but the meaning changed to current usage during the Thirty Years War. The aristocracy called themselves truthful and the common man deceitful. Another case is the Latin word Malus (dark man) used to refer to commons. The next question that needs answering is, if these words did not have a moral connotation, where did the sense of right or wrong come from? Nietzsche answers this question by looking at contradictions within society. Modern morality assumes that human beings have the power to reason and know what is good or bad and take responsibility for one’s actions but as Nietzsche has shown, such words did not bear sense of responsibility or guilt. They just referred to what masters considered and celebrated as good in themselves and the opposite of such behaviors. Nietzsche argues that moralization of words was a result of power struggles in society and especially the priests and warriors (p. 15). He argues that at first, men or slaves must have been made to have a memory so as not to forget to act in good way just like creditors were made to punish debtors who failed to pay debts with worst kind of cruelty such as sacrifice of first-borns, castration, chopping body parts or what Nietzsche refers as mnemonic techniques. In this technique, “a thing must be burnt in so that it stays in the memory” (p. 38). To make memory for himself, man thus suffered blood, torments and sacrifices and the most horrible violence. He cites an example of Germans who instilled memory through stoning, boiling criminals in oil or wine, ripping apart and trampling to death by horses. Memory in turn allowed man to be uniform, orderly and predictable; a person who could make promises and honor them. It also involved ascetism whereby ideas are made ineradicable and unforgettable or fixed. These procedures such as penal laws make man to have a single idea or will and forget all other drives or instincts. Man thus though mnemonics developed the conscience of guilt or the bad conscience. For example the German word Schulden (guilt) developed from material concept Schulden (debt) showing that guilt conscience had a social origin and punishment in early socities was not meted out because the criminal was held responsible for his act but out of some anger that had been suffered or payments owed. Inflicting pain was a form of compensation of debtors to creditors and creditors took pleasure in inflicting such pain. If violence acts were not considered wrong in early societies, where did evil emanate from? Nietzsche asserts that all human beings have instincts just like Freud talks of our primitive instincts such as anger and which demand immediate gratification. However, these instincts have to be controlled if a human has to choose to do what is right and bear the consequences for his/her actions. The masters are able to express their will freely as they are the ones who determine what is good or bad but the slaves were made to submit to these ideals through violence and had to control their instincts to avoid punishment. As such, slaves could not express their will freely hence became frustrated and began hating the masters for restricting them. They thus began viewing the masters as evil and themselves as good thus producing what Nietzsche called slave morality. Good in this case was a negation of what slaves saw as evil in masters. Read More