Nietzsche (1844 1900) - Heroic Individualism

Heroic Individualism or Aristocratic Anarchism - Management by Will

References:
J. Carroll, Breakout from the Crystal Palace, RKP, 1974
D. Cooper, Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsches Educational Philosophy, Routledge, 1983
R. Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life, Penguin, 1980
F. Lea, The Tragic Philosopher, Athlone, 1993
B. Magee, The Great Philosophers, Oxford, 1989
B. Magnus & K. Higgins (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, Cambridge, 1996
F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morality, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Penguins, 1990
J. Richardson, Nietzsches System, Oxford, 1996
T. Sprigge, Theories of Existence, Penguin, 1987
R. Solomon & K. Higgins (eds.) Reading Nietzsche, Oxford, 1988
M. Tanner, Nietzsche, Oxford, 1994
L. P. Thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche & the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism,
Princeton, 1990
Key Concepts:
The Kantian Revolution
Schopenhauers Modification
Max Stirners Radical Egoism
Nietzche

Kantian Revolution
Newtonian Physics cannot explain causality, and we claim the truth of Newtonian Physics, as induction is not
logical.

Rationalist position: Mathematics works because the world is structured mathematically.

Idealist position: We invented mathematics, imposed it on the world, and hence it works (tautologically).
Biological Idealism: Evolution gives us just enough truth about the world to survive. Out world is only what we
know about the world through our sense organs. Other animals have different sense organs, hence different
perspectives on the world. What we perceive as the structure of the world is only our perspective of it.

Kant agreed with Romantics that the world has no structure, except what we impose upon it.

Schopenhauers Modification
The world attempts to resist any form of structure we place upon it. (World-will, as the desire to be rid of our
present state and in another state)

Max Stirners Radical Egoism

His book The Individual and his Possessions is a book about full-blooded egoism/selfishness.

I myself am my power. I believe in nothing, except myself, my own individuality (uniqueness) and my
property.

The Egoist is self-originating and self caused. Therefore I have founded my life on nothing.

We are taught at a young age to bow to God, humanity, Mankind, philosophy, religion. The egoist recognises
no duties either towards himself or others. All abstractions (spooks) devalue the individual, and were just
dreamed up to protect the weak. Stirner would have rejected Nietzsches proposal for higher values/quest for
perfection.

The father of existentialism existence comes before essence. Tabula Rasa you are born empty, and you
fashion your own essence. There is no innate personality
Like Machiavelli, Stirner & Nietsche believe (Christian) religion is a slave morality, developed by slaves for
slaves (the ultimate anti-Christian). Christianity forces individuals into feeling of guilt and this make men weak.
Like Nietzche, Stirner said God is Dead.

You should not put your will (hopes & dreams) into the hands of another (e.g. God, a leader). This is
subordinating yourself to that leader. You cannot allow any other person (or abstract concept) subordinate you.
Dont trust groups, as you will lose your individuality. (Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also encourages
his followers not to follow him, but to follow themselves.

Man loves another person, not to make the other person feel better, but for the benefits he received from them.
Stirner enjoyed the feeling of love (state of loving). He would have relationships while they felt good. When
you grow tired of that person, just move on; they were never that relevant in the first place

Stirner is not interested in logic, being dreamt up by frightened weak people. Not interested in truth/reason;
Interested in motivation. If you are frightened by Stirners Egoism, you would pull back and withdraw into
science or religion

The indomitable will, and the absence of structures brings an end to romanticism

Stirner says there is only one will mine. Stirner wants to see how honest we can be. Philosophy of truth based
on will

Stirner says there is no mind conscious or unconscious; In this sense he leads onto Sartre

When you come up against a structure smash it (either physically, philosophically or poetically)

Nihilism: I am the measure of all things

The group/herd resents the (heroic) individual, and tries to bring them down. Egoists need to prevent that, hence
a Machiavellian philosophy philosophy of power. (Need power to do as my will dictates.)

Problem is that egoism needs a limit, else murder would be OK for that person if it was to his pleasure. There is
no morality in egoism, as egoism refuses to subordinate the individual to the spook of ethics. (Stirner is not
interested in discovering the moral art by which health could be restored to a sick civilisation.)

Nietzsche: Heroic Individualism

Key Concepts
Christianity supports the weak; Pity for suffering should be checked in the interests of self development.
Hence Aristocratic Management
God is Dead Nihilism One must be a nihilist before one can be an individual
Will to Power We should recognise will to power as our own essence and that of the cosmos at large and
develop a new morality upon this basis
Superman Man should regard himself as a bridge between ape and bermensch (superman)
Eternal Recurrence of time

Nietzsche was born in Germany, and is a synthesis of Schopenhauer and Stirner. He is a romantic.

He hates systems. Considered himself dynamite as he would blow apart any dichotomy (realism/idealism,
inner/outer, being/nothing, subjective/objective). (How do you philosophise with a hammer)

He is not interested in training he is more interested in education; real educators can be nothing more than
liberators. And this is the real secret of all education

One way of going from Nietzsche is existentialism (a synthesis of Schopenhauer & Nietzsche)
The 4 Traditions Attacked
1. Christian Morality
Christianity is the agent through which the weak have inherited the earth and robbed the strong of their
birthright. Christianity furthers the underdog, who cannot stand on his own feet.

All positive values of Christianity are criticised and rejected; i.e. love thy neighbour, compassion for those in
need

Nietzsche despises supporting the weak. The weak could infect the strong with a value system by which the
weak themselves were evaluated. They make the strong feel that their proper task was to use their superior
powers to tend the weak. The strong lost the capacity to enjoy a life devoted to the development of their own
powers and became ashamed of their virtues. They saw their role as being to serve the community in general, in
which the weak were the majority

The greatest victory ever won by the weak over the strong came with Christianity. Christianity was originally
the religion of an oppressed race, and then slaves

The main resources of humanity go to tending the weak, who can contribute little to the development of human
excellence.

The chief legacy of Christianity is that the weak have in effect become the strong. As individuals they remain
weak and pathetic, but as a group they have come to dominate those who would otherwise be the strong. It was
the sick & dying who created the notion of heaven & earth

2. Secular Moralities
Appeal to generalities; meaning common or average. An appeal to the common denominator in men is an
appeal to the lowest in them.

3. Ordinary Everyday Morality of the Unintellectual Mass of Mankind (Herd Values)

Laws are matters for the common herd
The individual great man/hero should be a law unto himself

4. Philosophy of Ancient Greece

With Socrates, strength, goodwill, beauty replaced by reason. Ancient insights into tragic existence replaced by
trivialising practice of rationalising everything.

Summary: God is Dead

In Thus spake Zarathustra Nietzsche cried God is Dead!. Neitzsche meant God is Dead because man has
killed him by his science and his reason. The church was trying to justify miracles by using science. If the
church felt the need to justify itself, science is seen as superior.

The value, morals and standards which we have inherited were based on a belief in God who had given them to
us and who would judge us by our success or failure in living up to them. But weve lost our belief in God and
in religion generally, and that means that weve lost belief in the very foundations of our value system. Yet
weve failed to face up to the fact. We go on trying to relate our lives to a value system whose foundations we
have ceased to believe in; and that makes our lives unauthentic. If were to have an authentic value system,
weve got to carry out a complete re-evaluation of our values.

The main motivation of Nietzsches thought is to arouse people to the need for a radically new system of values
by which to steer their lives (a transvaluation of values); Need something else in life which to say YES to life.
His message here is directed to the strong human beings rather than weak ones. His aim is to make people fully
aware of what they know, but are reluctant to face up to that God is Dead. By this he means that the belief in
God has either been abandoned, or is kept up as a kind of surface belief which is discounted at deeper levels.

We live in an age of despair, because we still think of value and significance in life as something which must
derive from some source outside ourselves. Nietzsche believed that Western Civilisation as we know it would
be lost forever, unless ruled by an elite (aristocratic manager)
Man will turn against itself for having done away with God. This self-hatred would see man punish himself for
having done away with God. There will be wars such a never been waged on earth. There will be nothing left
which is of value. The dominant philosophy will be nihilism (No important differences in anything)

We can only save ourselves from despair (nihilism: by some radically new approach to the whole question of
values and morality. His answer is to enjoy the passing moment, to be yourself; to live your life fully; to live it
adventurously

Nietzsches 4 Themes
1. The Will to Power
Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche agree that will is the very essence of man, and ultimately cosmos at large.
However, where Schopenhauer regarded the will as the source of all the evil (unhappiness) in the world,
Nietzsche regards will as the origin and source of mans strength.

Nietzche sees salvation in the acceptance that one is essentially a will seeking to assert itself. Merely to survive
is far from ones main aim; domination and control of whatever there is in the world is the aim

The difficulty here is that it brings you into conflict with other people. The will to power becomes a will to self-
assertion; a will to the usurpation of others. Nietzsche was fully conscious of the fact that it would create
conflict, but he welcomed that.

The will to power also turns itself inwards destroying all that is weak within the self. You must conquer all
that is comfortable, all that is cowardly, all that is less than adventurous within yourself. This takes us to the
self-creation of our values.

Appeal to selfhood, elan vital, to the life within the person lived to the full.

Will to overcome. People with strong will are born to be master, opposite of born to slavery.

2. The Eternal Recurrence of Time

The whole process of cosmic history consists in a series of total cosmic states of the Universe that repeats itself
again and again. History moves in cycles so that everything comes round again and again

A moral theory that our actions, our willing, our intentions, our thoughts should have such grandeur that we
should be able and willing to repeat them over and over again ad infinitum

The Eternal Recurrence says we shall have this life over & over again. Only one who had known such deep
fulfilling of joy would welcome it. The man who has experienced such joy, and who is thus a yea-sayer to the
whole of things, is close to the level of the superman. The thought of eternal recurrence is the litmus test as to
whether one has really found joy or not in this life, because only extraordinary endowed and courageous beings
can pass this test

Nietzsche believed that most people would find the thought of the eternal recurrence quite horrifying. They
would reflect on all the sufferings experienced by themselves and would be aghast at the idea that those would
come back again forever.

I perform the great experiment: Who can bear the idea of Eternal Recurrence?

A kind of spiritual Darwinian test to select the spiritually fittest. Those who cannot bear the thought of Eternal
Recurrence ought to perish

3. The bermensch (Superman)

After the death of God, what is there left to create? The bermensch! Nothing short of the transvaluation of all
values can save us. The superman is the man who lives all that the will to power will secure him. He lives life
to the full and is capable of repeating his own willing ad infinitum
We should set ourselves to live as vivid and fulfilling a life in the present moment as we can. What Nietzsche
was trying to get at was the notion of the unrepressed man. bermensch is a human being whose natural
instincts are not repressed. He has re-evaluated his values and lives his life according to his own created values.
(will naturally avoid doing things evil a wholly generous spirit).

The best thing is to be an bermensch oneself; but if this is beyond us, then we should serve those who are
capable of becoming one

The Ubermensch affirms life; says life is valuable (opposes Schopenhauers Pessimism). Morality of the future
will be autonomist; undertake self realisation; follow yourself to become what you are.

If you accept concept of will to power and eternal return, you are candidate for bermensch.

Hierarchical self-actualisation, as per Maslow. Respect for aristocracy.

4. Aesthetic Understanding of Life (Amor Fati)

If there is no transcendental realm (no heaven), then life cannot have any purpose beyond itself. Its meaning
must come from life. Life is arduous, painful. Once you accept that, you value life. This is in rejection of the
Socratics, and in celebration of the ancient heroics, who could turn tragic life into a dramatic tale.

Summary
In Homeric time, the Apollonian (Right Brain - pattern perception) and the Dionysian (will) sections of his brain
dominated the human. These sublimated each other.
Apollonian (Right Brain - pattern perception) Intuition, pattern perception, induction.
Dionysian (Lower Brain - will) Impulses, drives.

With Socrates, the left brain came into play Language, Logic, Analysis. Our brains are now dominated by the
left brain, and Christianity encourages this. The reason humanity is so neurotic is that we are so rational, hence
repressed.

If rationalism (science) fails, we would have nothing left, because before it goes, it would have killed off
religion. When that happens, we will have nowhere to turn, as heroism has already been destroyed by Socrates.

Definitions
Aesthetics Appreciation of works of art and the study of the beautiful
Atheism The rejection of belief in God
Axiology The study of Values
Elan Vital Where the life within the person is lived to the full (German)
Hedonism A moral theory that emphasises pleasure as the goal individuals should seek in order to be
happy
Nihilism View that there are no values, standards, meanings or truths. There are no important
differences in anything.

Perspectivism The external world is interpreted through a different system of concepts and values and there
is no independent criterion for determining that one system is more valid than another
WEEK 9 NIETZSCHE

Heroic Individualism

Aristocratic Management
1. Summary
Nietzsche considered that 19th century culture denied the dionysian (the
symbol of passion and vital forces) with life denying Christian pieties, and
was incapable of providing man with a real moral basis. While the
Apollonian (symbol of order, form, synthesis and restraint) and Dionysian
elements were previously in balance, the introduction of the Socratic view
(analysis, language, logic and science) crushed or repressed the Apollonian
and Dionysian values.

Nietzsche believes that this will result in nihilism and proposed a

philosophy to get out of nihilism.

2. Failure of Empiricism and Rationalism

Empiricism
Failed because Hume thought them that our common sense belief that
the objects of the world had not been validated by observation or by
logic or by any combination of the two. Therefore, any belief you have
about an object in the world is a metaphysical belief, things can only be
demonstrated deductively.
We cant know the rock exists, we can only know that we experience a
rock, a thought of a rock, for which there is no way out

Rationalism
Rejected the idea that innate ideas are invented and stuck in the mind
It also subordinates the will by its nature, which they reject
Said that the rock is there because we have an idea of a rock

3. Emergence of Idealism
Out of these rejections come Idealism
the rock does not exist, we create them, there is no structure to the
world, it is all our creation
but Idealism is found to be rubbish as the proposition that the thought
of a rock turns out to be a rock, but we know that rocks do exist

Because of this, the idea of naturalism grows as we assume there is a real

world out there and we are part of it -Naturalistic Romantics (Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche).

When Schopenhauer says of the will, he is referring to it as your body as

part of nature

4. Max Stirner - Radical egoism

Not a philosophy of individualism - only himself
 Whole thesis based on Goethes idea that I base my whole life or
existence on nothing, except me ie no god, liberty etc anything that
would subordinate the individual
Is a complete anarchist as he refuses to subordinate himself to any
general proposition
Relies on most people being part of the herd and holds people who are
motivated by others in complete contempt, as slaves
My existence comes first, my will or ego is free and there is no
collective Will
Existence comes before essence (existentialism). (Was anticipation
of existentialism in Fichte.)
Advocates return to heroic values - might, his might, is right
Acceptable for egoists to enter into coalitions with other egoists and to
terminate those alliances when it suits

5. Nietzsche - Aristocratic anarchism

Was a philologist - student of ancient Greece, studied in Greek
Believed, as did Herder, that what counts for truth in one culture will
differ to another culture
Following Stirner he thought therefore that you could never feel
comfortable with any abstraction since it was part of a perspective, and
therefore there could no question of there being an atomic form, let
alone pure being or pure nothingness
Did not believe that we could arrive at truth through language, for
example
Every word is a preconceived judgment; there lies hidden within
language a philosophical mythology which breaks out at every
moment, no matter how careful man may be
Says that all sentences are metaphors which means they are
not literally true; therefore they are false, therefore if
Nietzsche is right he is wrong
Thus attacks the basis of Western philosophy
Says truth is a mobile of army of metaphors and anthropomorphism
(projecting a human trait on to a non human world eg The flower
reaches for the light - it literally cant, but we assign the human term
reach to it) - language is reduced to poetry and is quite frivolous.
For Nietzsche everything is false, there is no order in the world for
things to correspond to, therefore to a truth corresponds to the facts is
wrong, since there are no facts, there are only interpretations.
Common sense then becomes the metaphysics of the herd
From Hume he takes the view that there is no subject and that we cant
know objects, only interpretations and he applies this to writing in that
no author can know all the meanings of what they are writing, e.g. To
be or not to be could not be interpreted as existentialist by
Shakespeare
Disagrees with Descartes Cogito ergo sum and thinks it should be vollo
ergo sum (I will because I am) and Will to power, willing produces
me
Will to power - will acting on wills. He is not saying you have a will to
 power, he is saying you are will to power and nothing else besides, it
is wills fighting wills, not only man against you, but nations against
nations and within the individual, eg when you get sick you dont have
sufficient will to power to overcome the sickness. A lions will to
power is stronger than a zebras.
agrees with Schopenhauer that we are born with our will
Nietzscheans are the type of people who love adversity, who never run
away from a fight, they are Homeric, Machiavellian, Romantic figures
who will roll right over anybody who gets in their way - the modern
Machiavelli
Nietzsche aristocratic anarchy - elitist, power, never explain, never
apologise (the classic characteristics of aristocrats

6. Nietzschean Model
The ancients had achieved a balance between dionysian and
apollonian side. Without the apollianian elements we would be
animals.
But Socrates split the harmony by adding a third element, the
Socratic element. He introduced analysis, language, logic and
science, that is he broke things up and so achieved the opposite of
synthesis.
This changed the balance and the Socratic values crushed or
repressed the apollonian and dionysian values.
The dionysian drives atrophied.
Nietzsche believes this will end in nihlism where there are no
important differences in anything.
Must start with nihilism.
Has contempt for passive nihilists
Active nihilists (echoing Schopenhauer) need to be pessimists to be
optimistic.
Need to be aristocratic group to fight themselves actively out of
nihilism.
Has sheer contempt for the herd who are average, are in a state of
drugged tranquillity, averaging public thought (democracy)
Plato/Christians - life negaters. This life is second rate compared to
heaven. They should be life affirmers.
Hierarchy: Active nihilists

Fight through and reject homo sapien

Transcendent self/overcome self

(Existential message/artistic road

Aesthetic self transcendence

(Ubermensch)
You are what you are because of your will to power (not because of
your role).
Right for the strong to subjugate the weak.
Ubermensch will take man out of nililism. Is an unrepressed human
 being who has shed weakness.
Must be able to take life on its own terms. Doctrine of Recurrent
events.
Believes Schopenhauer should have said yes when he said no.
Writing about a culture, not a society
Puts us back in Homers day without the group.

Socratic Apollonian
Analysis Synthesis
Language Pattern Perception
Logic Intuition
Science

Dionysian
Drives
Impulses
(Will)
'One must be a nihilist before one can be an individualist. Critically discuss this quotation with reference to the
views of Nietzsche.

There is no doubt that Nietzsche was one of the most radical thinkers of philosophy, who questioned the very
basis of philosophical endeavour. Rightly considered, Nietzsche is not so much a philosopher as a poet and a
cultural critic, except that his conception of culture (and therefore, his criticism) spans the entire range of human
activity ; and thus, his criticism of philosophy is not a criticism on philosophical grounds, but on
human grounds.
Nietzsche is notorious for proclaiming the 'death of god' and he is considered to be, if not the harbinger of
nihilism, at least someone welcoming of it. This is far from the truth, as we shall see. When we encounter
Nietzsche proclaiming that 'God is dead', many modern readers may think that Nietzsche is proclaiming the
death of a bearded figure in the sky who most of don't even really care about. The true meaning of Nietzsche's
statement is far more deeper and far more radical than that. He is saying that the progress of science (and
particularly, Darwin) has demolished our faith in the traditional God, but what Nietzsche realized is that with
the death of the traditional God, all of our other pseudo-Gods 9such as truth, history, progress, family, nation,
and even humanity itself as considered as some kind of an abstract ideal) become suspect. For all of these act as
reference points that get their 'staying power' from the ultimate reference point, i.e. God.
Thus, the death of God means that humanity has been exposed to to the void of meaninglessness, to the absence
of any structuring influence that had guided humanity's energies, dreams and hopes for millennia ; we are left
adrift without the benefit of any reference-point. This abandonment means that mankind have only themselves
to rely on, their situatedness within a concrete world that is right here and right now.
It is this situation that Nietzsche terms as nihilism ; but here, a major misconception must be clarified. When
Nietzsche talks about nihilism, many assume that he is gleefully encouraging the absolute lack of value in all
things forever more. This is a caricature. For Nietzsche, nihilism is always relative. Simply because the current
meaning of the world has been discredited, and 'washed away', does not mean that the world is valueless. This
would be a fallacy. What has been 'washed away' is only a particular strain of valuation. This valuation, which
has held sway for millenia, Nietzsche attributes to the work of the 'herd' ; and in order to clearly elucidate the
connections between nihilism and individualism, we need to clarify how nihilism and individualism are opposed
to each other in Nietzsche's thinking.
For Nietzsche, the meaning that the world has had so far is the meaning that has been given to it by the herd ;
that is to say, the majority of the human race, either too stupid or lazy or cowardly to posit values of their own.
Thus, their values are majority values of safety, public decency, and stability ; in other words, theirs are values
which have been made values on the basis of a negation of actual values. The positers of these actual values,
Nietzsche calls 'strong' or 'the Superman' ; a term notorious for its slippery interpretation.
As we have seen, the slow-approaching nihilistic epoch that we in the early 21st century seem to be living in has
shown the repudiation of the values of the herd ; the repudiation of the values of stability, efficiency, and
eternality (the pinnacle of which would be 'God'). However, Nietzsche can be said to have welcomed nihilism
only in the sense that he viewed such a phenomenon as a transitory epoch that would 'sweep away' the last
vestiges of what he considered an unhealthy and sickly value-regime. That the world has been drained of
meaning only means that the world is hereby fresh for an influx of new meaning.
Nietzsche would definitely agree with the statement that one must be a nihilist before one can be an
individualist. Nihilism, for Nietzsche, is not a metaphysical phenomenon as much as it is a social phenomenon
(and one can even extend the argument, as Foucault has done, and say that all metaphysics is eventually social
phenomena), and what is more, all value-infusions that stem from this social metaphysic are backed up by a
millenia-old majority rule. Thus, for Nietzsche, one must completely break free of the majority-imposed
metaphysics of value (and all of its subtle accompaniments) and undergo for himself personally the transitory
period of nihilism (which is always a relative phenomenon i.e. relative to the value paradigm of the individual's
society) before he is able to be posit values afresh, before he is able to be a true individual, rather than an
individual element.
Of course one can always argue that no human is every truly individual, that human psychology is so constituted
that even our subjectivity, our sense of 'self', is constituted publicly ; and that no individual can ever truly mount
an effective struggle against society. These rejoinders miss the point, in my opinion. Firstly, they misinterpret
Nietzsche's project ; Nietzsche is not a philosopher relying on logical argumentation so much as he is a poet
with a message. Secondly, that men should rather distract themselves rather than struggle against the growing
meaninglessness of their societies, shows up in an unexpectedly clear light, the incipient nihilism of any societal
formation and the resurgent optimism of a thinker who has been accused of being pessimistic.