Nietzsche: Philosophy in an Hour

Paul Strathern

• Publisher: HarperPress
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780007466108
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Neitzsche in just one hour.

Further Information

Nietzsche’s Key Philosophical Concepts

Nietzsche’s philosophy was written mainly in aphorisms and is not methodical. His attitude remains largely consistent, but his thought is constantly developing in different directions. This means that he frequently appears to contradict himself, or leaves himself open to conflicting interpretations. His was a philosophy of penetrating insights, not a system. Yet certain words and concepts recur again and again in his work. In these the elements of a system are detectable.

The Will to Power

This is the major concept in Nietzsche’s philosophy. He developed it from two main sources: Schopenhauer and the ancient Greeks. Schopenhauer had adopted the oriental idea that the universe was driven by a vast blind will. Nietzsche recognised the force of this idea and adapted it to human terms. In the course of Nietzsche’s studies of the ancient Greeks, he concluded that the driving force of their civilisation had been the search for power rather than anything useful or immediately beneficial.

Nietzsche concluded that humanity was driven by a Will to Power. The basic impulse for all our acts could be traced back to this one source. Often it became transformed from its primary expression, or even perverted, but it was always there. Christianity appeared to preach the very opposite, with its ideas of humility, brotherly love, and compassion. But in fact this was no more than a subtle perversion of the Will to Power. Christianity was a religion born out of slavery in the Roman era, and it had never lost its slave mentality. This was the Will to Power of slaves rather than the more recognisable Will to Power of the powerful.

Nietzsche’s Will to Power proved a very useful tool when he came to analysing human motive. Acts which had previously appeared noble or honorably disinterested were now often revealed as decadent or sick.

But Nietzsche failed to answer two main objections. If the Will to Power was the only yardstick, how could actions that appeared not to follow its immediate dictates be other than degenerate or perverted? Take, for instance, the life of a saint or an ascetic philosopher such as Spinoza (whom Nietzsche admired). To say that the saint or ascetic philosopher was exercising his Will to Power on himself was surely to render the concept so flexible as to be almost meaningless. Second, Nietzsche’s notion of the Will to Power was circular: if our attempt to understand the universe was inspired by the Will to Power, surely the concept of the Will to Power was inspired by Nietzsche’s attempt to understand the universe.

But the last word on this penetrating but dangerous concept should remain Nietzsche’s: “The manner of this lust for power has changed through the centuries, but its source is still the same volcano…. What we once did ‘for the sake of God’ we now do for the sake of money…. This is what at present gives the highest feeling of power” [Die Morgenrote (The Dawn), 204].

Eternal Recurrence

According to Nietzsche, we should act as if the life we are living will go on recurring forever. Each moment we have lived through we will have to relive again and again for eternity.

This is essentially a metaphysical moral fable. But Nietzsche insisted on treating it as if he believed in it. He described it as his “formula for the greatness of a human being.”

This supreme and impossibly romantic stress on the importance of the moment is intended as an exhortation to live our lives to the full. As a passing poetic idea, it has some force. As a philosophical or moral idea, it is essentially superficial. It simply doesn’t bear thinking through. The cliché “Live life to the full” at least means something, however vague. The idea of eternal recurrence turns out on inspection to be meaningless. Do we remember each of these recurring lives? If we do, we would surely make changes. If we don’t, they are of no relevance. Even an arresting poetic image – and this is one – must have more substance if it is to be regarded as more than mere poetry. It is simply too nebulous to be used as a principle, as Nietzsche intended.

The Superman

Nietzsche’s superman had nothing whatsoever to do with the cloaked figure who flies through the skies of comic books. It might have been better if Nietzsche’s hero had adopted a few of his namesake’s comic values. Clark Kent at least has a naive morality, which he attempts to impose on a rough-and-ready world of good guys and bad guys. Nietzsche’s superman had no truck with such constraints as morality. His only “morality” was the Will to Power. Yet curiously, Nietzsche’s descriptions of his superman show him inhabiting a world as filled with naive simplicities as any comic.

The prototype for Nietzsche’s superman was his Zarathustra – an impossibly earnest and boring fellow, whose behaviour exhibited dangerous psychotic symptoms. Admittedly the tale of Zarathustra was intended as a parable. But a parable of what? As a parable of behaviour. The parables that Christ preached in the Sermon on the Mount appear childishly simple – but on reflection are neither childish nor simple. They are profound. The parable of Zarathustra is childishly simple, and on reflection remains so. Yet its message is profound, despite this. Nietzsche preaches nothing less than the overthrow of Christian values: each individual must take absolute responsibility for his own actions in a godless world. He must make his own values in unfettered freedom. There is no sanction, divine or otherwise, for his actions. Nietzsche foresaw this as the twentieth-century condition. Unfortunately he also made prescriptions as to how we should behave in this condition. Those who followed his prescriptions (the tedious antics of Zarathustra) would become supermen.

Alas, Nietzsche’s superman was to develop into more than the figure of comic fun that he so richly deserved to become. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche announces (through the mouth of his hero): “What is the ape to man? A figure of fun or an embarrassment. Man will appear exactly the same to the superman” [Thus Spake Zarathustra, First Part, Zarathustra’s Prologue, Part 3]. Elsewhere he proclaims: “The goal of humanity cannot lie in its end but in its highest specimens” [Genealogy of Morals, 2nd Meditation, Section 9]. In this context he begins loosely and misguidedly linking the superman to such notions as “nobility” and “blood.” But he was not talking in aristocratic racial terms. He refers at one point to “the Almanac de Gotha: an enclosure for asses” [Will to Power, 942-revised edition 1906 or 1911; in the Härtle edition this remark has been le...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Nietzsche’s Life and Works
• Afterword
• Further Information
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher