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Transcript of jan.ucc.nau.edujan.ucc.nau.edu/nehrg-p/Friedrich Nietzsche BGE reading... · Web viewNietzsche...
Friedrich NietzscheBeyond Good and EvilReading Guide
Part One. On the Prejudices of the Philosophers
1. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil is considered one of his mature works in
ethics. As the title makes clear, he has philosophical questions about the
distinction between what is considered good and evil, and he is trying to move
beyond past ways of conceiving of the distinction. The book is quite puzzling—
especially on a first reading. In order to understand the text, some background
will be helpful. Part of the background that is needed is an understanding of the
history of Western culture—especially as it takes shape in the classical period of
the Greeks. Another part of the background that is needed is an understanding of
the history of philosophy in the Western tradition. Nietzsche suggests that a
number of the problems that philosophers consider to be “timeless” questions
about the truth are really best understood in terms of the particular questions that
arose in a culture at some point in its history. For instance, questions about the
nature of truth itself and whether it has some timeless character arose within
Greek culture in the writings of Plato, Aristotle and others. There are reasons that
these questions were pressing for the classical Greek philosophers, and we need to
understand those reasons in order to appreciate the questions they were trying to
answer.
2. Here is some background for understanding what Nietzsche is doing in Beyond
Good and Evil. If we look at the history of Western cultures, we see different
cultures coming into ascendency and then dissipating at different historical
periods. Consider the following timeline across some of the history of Western
cultures, along with the names of famous philosophers from each period:
a. Ancient Greek culture of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (600-300 BC)
b. Roman culture of Cicero and the Stoics (300BC-400 AD)
c. Medieval European culture of St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and
William of Ockham (500AD-1400AD)
d. Modern European Culture of Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and
Immanuel Kant (1500-1800AD)
e. 19th Century and Contemporary Culture of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich
Nietzsche.
3. All of these philosophers were trying to find the truth about what we can know
and how we ought to live. As such, virtually all of these philosophers take their
cue from the kinds of questions Plato raises in the Socratic dialogues.
a. In the Euthyprho, Plato portrays Socrates as asking: what is the nature of
piety, justice and, more generally, virtue? Before he examines the answers
that Euthyphro offers, Socrates articulates three key assumptions: first,
piety is the same and alike in every action that is pious; second, piety and
impiety are opposites; third, piety has one form or appearance. Each of
these assumptions express the idea that there is a truth about the real
nature of virtue. For example, we take it to be true that piety and justice
are good, and that impiety and injustice are wrong. As such, the fact that
piety and impiety, justice and injustice, and virtue and vice are opposites
is, in some sense, rooted in the idea that truth and falsity are opposites.
4. Nietzsche starts by posing a series of questions that anyone who is engaged in
philosophical inquiry should be able to answer. The first key questions surface
in chapter 1: Who really is it that here questions us? What really is it in us that
wants ‘the truth’? One reason he seems to pose the questions in this style is that
he would like for us to take the questions in a personal way. Are we trying to
answer questions posed by others? Or, are these questions that we must ask
ourselves? What is in us that gives rise to these questions in the first place? The
last version of the question seems to call out for an answer that is given in terms
of the basic faculties that are involved in our cognition. Is the source of the
questions our reason, will, feelings, imagination, or something else?
5. In the Apology, Socrates tries to understand the meaning of the Oracle of Delphi,
and he tries to do this by working from the interpretative assumption that the
oracle is a riddle. The priestess at the temple of Apollo were asked the question
“Who is the wisest in all of Athens?” and the answer they gave was “Socrates is
wisest.” After questioning the politicians, poets and craftsmen, Socrates came to
the conclusion that none of these people could answer the most important
questions: “What is justice? What is wisdom? What is virtue?” But all three
groups of people took themselves to know the answers to the questions. The only
sense in which Socrates is wiser than these people who had reputations for
wisdom is that he did not assume that he already knew the answers to the
questions. As such, the politicians, poets and craftsmen took themselves to have
knowledge but they were really ignorant. Socrates, on the other hand, knew that
he did not have such wisdom. The advantage of knowing this about oneself is
that, by seeing that one does not already have adequate answers to the questions,
one will thereby have the motivation needed to go in search for the right answers.
Those who take themselves to have wisdom but who lack it will have no motive
to start the search.
6. Nietzsche seems to be drawing on these Socratic dialogues as a way of raising
some fundamental questions about the impulses that are needed to engage in
honest inquiry in search of the truth. We who live in the contemporary period
take truth to be the aim of all real inquiry. Our model of the most successful kind
of inquiry is found in the empirical sciences. Philosophers in the modern period,
such as Hume, Kant and Mill, are modeling philosophical inquiry about questions
in ethics, logic, metaphysics and epistemology on the scientific method.
Nietzsche is asking these philosophers—and us—what the value is of having a
will that takes truth as its main aim? Granted that, like any good scientist, we are
all in the search for the truth, why should we value truth higher than untruth? Or,
to put it in clearer terms: what is the value of uncertainty, ignorance and error in
comparison to the value of truth? We might think that the ignorance and error are
the very things we’re trying to avoid. The truth has a positive value, but
ignorance and error lack any such positive value. As such, we have pretty good
reasons for trying to avoid these things.
7. Nietzsche suggests that this assumption that truth has positive value and that
ignorance and error lack any positive value might very well turn out to be a
mistake. When it comes to the most fundamental principles that are at the
foundations of modern culture—including the logical principles of non-
contradiction and excluded middle, and the metaphysical principles of causality
and sufficient reason, and the moral principles that govern our ideas of good and
evil--it might turn out that these principles are not literally true. Having said that ,
these principles may have value independent of being literally true. Nietzsche
wants to examine the value that such principles might have if we think of them as
something like a guess or a conjecture.
8. Starting in the second section of Part One, Nietzsche characterizes a discussion
that goes back and forth between those, like the modern philosophers, who say
that they are in the search for truth, and those, like Nietzsche, who insist on
starting with these questions about the value of uncertainty, ignorance and error.
9. In chapter 2, he poses a key question: “How could something originate in its
antithesis?” Nietzsche asks this general question because he is trying to
understand how something like truth might originate in something like error, or
how freedom might originate in processes of brute causation, or how rationality
might originate in animal impulses. In response to these questions: the other
philosophers respond by saying that it is impossible for something to originate
from its opposite. As such, Nietzsche claims that the fundamental faith of other
philosophers is in antithetical values. They take the opposition between central
conceptions, such as the oppositions between truth and falsity and between good
and evil as givens. These things, in their very nature, appear to be dichotomies.
Part Two: The Free Spirit
1. Nietzsche starts off with the kind of assumptions that we find Socrates making in
the Apology in response to the Oracle of Delphi. Instead of assuming—as many
other philosophers have done—that we know much. Nietzsche takes same stance
the Socrates adopts in response to the Oracle. He wants to start from the
assumption that he knows very little. This assumption is one of relative
ignorance: we should assume that we do not have knowledge of the most
important matters—such as how to live our lives. By starting from this
assumption of ignorance, we can then ask the questions honestly and engage in
inquiry with the aim of finding the strongest answers.
2. This starting point is different from what we find in many philosophical works.
In Descartes’ Meditations, for instance, he starts by trying to isolate those claims
that we can hold with complete certainty. On his account, we can have such
certainty about our own nature as a thinking self that exists. While the starting
points are very different, the guiding assumptions behind Hume’s radical
empiricism are very similar. Hume doubts that the principles of reason can
supply us with certainty about any matters of fact. As such, he turns to the
evidence of the senses. The content of our impressions are something, on Hume’s
account, that we simply cannot doubt. If I have an impression of red when
looking at a stop sign, the claim that it is a quality of redness that is before my
mind is something about which I can have complete certainty. The reason is that,
when it comes to the quality of any given impression, there is no possibility of
error.
3. This is the place where Nietzsche wants to question other philosophers and the
assumptions they have adopted as starting points. Instead of making an
assumption that there are some things that are immune from error, Nietzsche
wants to question the very basis of what makes some claims correct and other
claims erroneous. The apparent antithesis that is woven through the fabric of the
languages we use to express our claims about matters of fact is the opposition
between truth and falsity. Nietzsche claims that this opposition hides something
from us. What it hides is the fact that this opposition—like every antithesis
present in the way we think and act—may very well have evolved slowly over
time. If that is the case, then the opposition between every thesis and antithesis
may have grown oppositions by a continuous process from ideas that did not
express such dichotomies.
4. This gives rise to a key question: how is it possible for an opposition between
thesis and antithesis—such as the opposition between truth and falsity or between
good and evil—to evolve in a continuous manner from ideas that did not express
such oppositions? The stark contrast between those ideas that do not express
oppositions—such as the contrast between more and less plausible, or the contrast
between better and worse—and those ideas that do express oppositions seems to
suggest that there is a dramatic discontinuity between the two kinds of ideas.
Nietzsche claims that these are competing hypotheses, and that we see which
provides a better explanation of the data.
5. Nietzsche shifts his attention from these questions about truth and falsity to
questions about aesthetics. These are questions that he addressed in a series of
earlier essays and books, including “On Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral
Sense,” and On the Birth of Tragedy. The reason he shifts attention from a theory
of cognition to aesthetics is that he thinks there are prior questions that need to be
addressed before we can evaluate the competing hypotheses concerning the nature
of the opposition between truth and falsity. On his account, every philosophy
starts out as a tragedy. In his earlier work on the origins of the tragic spirit in
ancient Greek culture, Nietzsche examined the contrast between the Apollonian
and Dionysian impulses. The Dionysian impulse is a symbol for the general drive
for totality among the enormous diversity of qualities found in our experience.
The Apollonian impulse, on the other hand, is a symbol for the general drive for
unity of an individual. On Nietzsche’s account, the epic poetry of Homer
represents the growth of the drive for unity of aesthetic experience in the
Apollonian spirit. The lyric poetry of Archilochus represents the growth of the
drive for totality in aesthetic experience in the Dionysian spirit. The birth of
tragedy in the poetry of Aeschylus, and the development of this form of art in
Sophocles, represents a drive to bring these two impulses into harmony with one
another.
6. For some time, the poetry of the ancient Greeks embodied a healthy growth of
both the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses—and the combination of the two
in tragedy. In the poetry of Euripides, however, there is a shift in attention to
expressing the way things actually are. Instead of celebrating the great deeds of
heroes such as Odysseus and the tragic fall of figures such as Oedipus in works of
art that are staged in a world of the ideal, the poetry of Euripides was designed to
portray the wants and beliefs, along with the struggles and failings of human
beings as we find them in the world of the actual. This shift in the art of the
classical Greeks from the ideal to the actual paved the way for a philosopher like
Socrates to search for the reasons that explain what is true. As such, Niezsche has
developed an evolutionary account of the gradual development of an impulse to
the truth in “scientific” works—such as we find in the writings of Plato and
Aristotle—from artistic works of fiction that are designed to portray and celebrate
a fictional world of the ideal.
7. Nietzsche is engaged in two projects. One is a negative project of trying to
understand where things have, in one way or another, gone awry. In many cases,
he is examining a particular culture at a particular time. As such, he is asking,
where did the classical Greeks go wrong, or the Romans, or where are we
moderns going wrong. Other philosophers are engaged in the same kind of
criticism of the ideas and principles present in a given culture. For the most part,
however, they have focused mainly on this kind of question: “what is the truth of
the matter—and how did this or that culture arrive at a falsehood?” In addition to
asking that question, Nietzsche is also asking a question that he thinks is more
fundamental: did a given set of questions and a purported set of answers
represent a growth of the vitality of the soul of the individuals in that culture and
the spirit present in the society as a whole, or did they undermine that vitality and
lead to a weakening of the spirit?”
8. One reason that he often shifts the question is that Nietzsche believes all ideas—
including especially our values—can and should be introduced as conjectures as a
part of an ongoing series of experiments. The experimental method depends upon
a willingness to introduce ideas that may, on further inspection, turn out to be
false. At the initial phases of the inquiry, however, we are not in a position to say
what is true or what is false. Rather, we have some surprising phenomena that
calls out for explanation, and our initial explanations are introduced as conjectures
or guesses. Nietzsche is examining the marks of a good conjecture. What makes
a guess a good conjecture, especially when it is about a fundamental question that
has no obvious answer?
9. In the Platonic dialogues, Socrates asks a general question: how ought one to
live? The question is addressed to all, and he thinks that there are general
constraints that are imposed on any purported answer. In the search for an
adequate answer, we should always act on the argument that seems, on reflection,
to be supported by the strongest reasons. Nietzsche wants to stress a point that
Socrates makes in the Crito, which is that the evaluation of an argument must
always be something that is done by the individual person who is making the
decision. As he sits in the jail cell and faces the decision of whether to escape the
prison and go into exile or stay and accept the death penalty, Socrates says that he
ought to choose the option that is supported by the argument that seems the
strongest “to him.”
10. In stressing this point, Nietzsche claims that every evaluation of a particular
action or of a form of life must be made from one perspective or another. It is an
unwarranted dogmatism to suggest that we can appeal directly to universal truths
and, by doing so, make judgments that somehow avoid the perspective one has in
making an evaluation. He claim can be understood in the following way. Every
judgment we make is shaped by the background beliefs and values we accept. It
is not possible to make an evaluation that is somehow free of such a background.
More to point, however, Nietzsche agrees with Kant that every moral principle is
a general rule that must be interpreted in light of an ideal. The application of the
general principle to a particular case requires an ideal—otherwise it is not
possible to exercise proper judgment over the particular case.
a. In his account of judgment, Nietzsche insists that our personal ideals only
make sense in terms of larger ideals that are held by larger communities.
As such, the vision of life that you or I happen to hold in high esteem with
respect to the kind of life we think it is best to live is really a part of a
much larger set of ideals that have shaped the societal institutions and
practices in our culture. We see these larger ideals expressed in our
literature, science, religion, and morality. They are the product of a long
cultural history in which the particular ideals of individuals in the society
have been shaped by the larger ideals that are expressed in the institutions
and practices of the society and, vice versa, the larger ideals that are
expressed in the institutions and practices of the society are shaped ever so
slowly by changes in the particular ideals of individuals living in that
society.
b. The individuals who have had the greatest impact on the evoluation of the
larger social ideals founds in the institutions and practices of the culture
are those individuals who are most exceptional. We can take this quite
literally in order to form a first approximation of what Nietzsche means.
Those individuals who stand out as deviating strongly from the rule have
disproportionate impact on the subsequent changes in the meaning of the
rule.
11. We can frame a key question in terms of rules and exceptions: which has priority
with respect to the origins of our values—the rule or the exception? Many
philosophers, such as Aquinas and Kant, claim that our moral rules are grounded
on fundamental principles that are universal and necessary. Nietzsche is
suggesting that we can explain the origin of the rules that are embodied in our
values by appealing to exceptional cases of individual actions. In order for a rule
to grow from an action that is exceptional, the action must be representative of
something great. In the upcoming sections, he will examine the requirements for
what makes an exceptional action something that is representative.
Part Three. The Religious Nature
1. Nietzsche begins his discussion of religion in this section by examining two
things: the rule of different religions in different cultures and, the role of
philosophers in drawing on religious ideas in their attempt to answer
philosophical questions. Pascal is a philosopher who wanted to answer the
following question. Given the evidence that is before us, is it rational to believe
in God, or is it rational to deny the reality of God?
2. Philosophers have argued for each of these positions on epistemological and
metaphysical grounds. Pascal offers a practical argument that is stated in the
terms of the following wager. One of the following must be the case. Either there
is a God that is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, or there is not. Let’s
consider the first of these possibilities. If there is such a God and I believe in him
and follow his commands, then it is reasonable to think that I will, at the end of
my life here on this earth, be rewarded with the infinite blessings of heaven. If
there is such a God and I don’t believe in him, then it is reasonable to think that I
will be punish with the infinite suffering of hell. Next, let’s consider the second
of the two possibilities. If there is no God and I believe there is, then I have one
(more) false belief. If there is no God and I do not believe in him, there I have
one (more) true believe. Given the enormity of the blessings and sufferings in
heaven and hell, these far outweigh any advantage we might gain from having one
more true belief or any disadvantage we might suffer from having one more false
belief. Consequently, there are strong practical reasons to belief in the reality of
God.
3. Nietzsche raises a question about the impulses guiding this philosophical inquiry
into the reality of God. Is Pascal asking this question because he has a genuine
curiosity that drives him to find the truth? Or, is he driven by some other kind fo
motive? Nietzsche wants to point out that the wager itself is predicated on two
motives: a desire for the pleasures one might obtain in heaven, and a fear of the
painful experiences one might suffer in hell. Neither of these motives, Nietzsche
suggests, are evidence of a courageous soul that is willing to sacrifice what is
needed in order to find the truth. Rather, these motives are marks of a soul that is
passive—one that is waiting to receive punishments or rewards from something
that stands over it with a power that makes the human will seem small and
insignificant. By posing the question about the reality of God in these practical
terms, Nietzsche suggests that Pascal’s own intellectual conscience is profound,
wounded, and monstrous. (45)
4. Nietzsche claims that, if we turn to the roots of the Christian religion itself, we
can see that it was founded from it beginning on the notion of sacrifice. In order
to show proper humility before God, Christians must sacrifice their freedom,
pride and self-confidence of spirit. Considered as an ideal that gives guidance for
the lives of Christians, he suggests that the idea of perfectly knowing, powerful
and good God is rooted in a willingness on the part of Christians to suffer. Early
Christians were made to suffer for their faith by the Romans who ruled over them.
They were persecuted, tortured, and put to death if they were unwilling to express
a loyalty to the supremacy of the Roman rulers and values and renounce their
faith in the supremacy of the values embodied in the Christian God. Instead of
fighting against this persecution, their faith taught them to turn the other cheek
and to accept the suffering. This represents a monstrous denial of their own will.
That is, it represents a paradoxical denial and acceptance of the values they have
given to themselves as Christians. It is a denial of the idea that the values have a
worth that is worth fighting for, but an acceptance of the idea the values dictate
that they should be willing to die in accordance with those values as an expression
that they have given their lives over to something other than themselves.
Nietzsche finds this absurd in the same way that some works of art are an
expression of the absurdism.
5. Nietzsche points out that the Christian values were interpreted in different ways
by the Northern and Southern European cultures. The Northern cultures of the
Germans, for instance, have taken a very serious attitude toward their Christian
values. As a result, the Protestant forms of Christianity that is dominant in
Germanic society represent a serious response to the Catholic values that were
dominant in the early Christian church. The Catholicism of the Southern “Latin”
cultures, on the other hand, represents a more vibrant and colorful celebration of
Christian values. The color and vibrancy found in the traditions of South
American societies such as Argentina and Brazil are a nice illustration of this
point. This helps to illustrate Nietzsche’s claim that all values—including those
that appear to be most conservative—are interpreted in light of the larger ideals
that are found in the fabric of different societies. (48)
6. If we think of the values of Western societies as having an evolutionary history,
then we can examine the movement from the values of classical Greek and
Roman cultures to the values of medieval and modern Christian cultures as
something that represents a continuous process of change. Nietzsche wants to
suggest that the highest ideals of classical Greek culture represented many things
that were healthy and vital for the Greek spirit. The evolution of the values
embodied in these classical Greek ideals into the values embodied in the later
Christian ideals is a change that has taken place by a process of revaluation. This
gives rise to a key question: as the ideals and values have evolved, how have the
attached sentiments and emotions developed? Has the process of the evolution of
values given rise to a spirit in the culture that is deeper and richer in its capacities
for meaning, or have the changes in the values resulted in a spirit that is, in some
respects, shallow and dull?
7. Exercising his own judgment in these matters, Nietzsche suggests that much that
was great and powerful in the spirit of the classical Greeks has been inverted—
literally turned upside down—in the spirit of the modern Christians. Those
capacities for feeling that were strong and robust have, over the course of many
centuries, become weak and small. What is more, the modern Christians have
inverted the order of things by calling what is weak and small “good” and
“intrinsically valuable.”
8. Nietzsche takes a step back from his evaluation of the changes that have been
wrought in our values by this evolutionary process, and he asks if there is a deeper
philosophical explanation of what these changes signify. On his account, the
revaluations in the modern history of modern Christianity are but the outward
signs of a long process of attentat in which the ancient opposition between the
subject and predicate concepts that give form to every judgment has been
subjected to a violent attack. Let’s consider what this explanation entails.
a. In the philosophical tradition that runs from classical works of Aristotle,
up through medieval writings of Aquinas, and into the modern critique of
Kant, there has been an long and detailed examination of the grounds of
judgment in every area of inquiry and action—from the scientific
judgments made in physics, biology and psychology, to the practical
judgments made in morality, politics and law. Exercising our scientific
judgment, modern scientists say that every mass is subject to brute forces,
that every living thing evolves by a process of adaptation and selection,
and that every thought obeys certain laws of association. Exercising our
practical judgment, modern practioners say that philanthropy is virtuous,
that democracy protects the rights of the people and that the rule of law is
essential for a just legal system.
b. Nietzsche sees that Kant’s critique of our grounds of judgment in theory
and practice is something that follows from and builds upon a long
tradition of questioning the grounds of judgments of our judgment. Kant
claims that this is something that grows from the exercise of our reflective
capacities. Every time each of us makes a judgment, we must ask
ourselves: why ought to think or act in this way? In asking this question,
we draw on the particular conceptions—such as the conceptions of force,
life, association, virtue, rights and justice above--that form the predicates
in the judgments that are made. In addition to reflecting on the marks
contained in the particular conceptions, Kant maintains that we must also
reflect on the general conditions that pertain to each kind of judgment we
make. There are general conditions that pertain to any theoretical
judgment, and there are general conditions that pertain to any practical
judgment. On this account, the general categories of substance, cause and
effect and reciprocity, for instance, and the particular conditions of
referring to things as being at a time, are the conditions that pertain to the
validity of every theoretical judgment. The general conceptions of abiding
by principles having the form of a categorical imperative and the end of
respecting the humanity of all are the conditions that pertain to the validity
of every theoretical judgment. This kind of reflection is something that
Kant calls “transcendental reflection.”
9. Nietzsche is asking a question about the very division between the object and the
subject that is found in every judgment. The key question is: has the relentless
philosophical questioning and criticism of the grounds of judgment done violence
to the division between the division between subject and object in our power of
judgment? As Kant points out, all rational beings are under a condition of totality
which imposes a demand that they bring their judgments into a systematic
harmony. The demand is not something that we are able, at any point in time, to
meet. Nevertheless, it is something that we must strive towards. What kind of
violence must be done to the opposition between object and subject in order to
make this endless striving possible?
10. It is widely recognized by the philosophers that the highest conception in our
general inventory of conception is that of God. It is the most general idea, it is the
most abstract, it is a conception of what is best, and a conception of what is most
complete. As such, Kant suggests that the conception of God is an Idea of reason
that embodies our response to the rational demand for totality in our every
judgment. Nietzsche is pressing the question: what has been happening to the
conception of God as result of the persistent philosophical questioning of the
grounds of judgment? Do we any longer believe that there is one Idea of reason
that has the power to bring every possible practical and theoretical judgment into
systematic unity?
a. Nietzsche asks: “Why atheism today?” The ancient Jewish notion of the
“Father” that rules, commands and punishes has been transformed over the
course of the history of Christianity. In the modern period, this conception
of God is no longer clear. Nietzsche says that God “seems incapable of
making himself clearly understood: is he himself vague about what he
means?” That, at least, is the question he has asked himself over the
course of his many conversations in which he has asked about the causes
of the decline of European theism. As he has listened for answers to these
questions, this is the philosophical conjecture he is offering as a possible
answer. Is it the correct answer?
11. Nietzsche offers and image of how we might understand the evolution of values
and the resulting transformation of our ideals. He says that man is surrounded by
a great space and that there are stars shining in the distance. Human beings can
navigate by these stars and thereby give their lives direction and meaning. Over
time, as the human beings have gained spiritual sight and insight, this distance
around them has expanded and ever new stars have come into view. In order to
gain greater spiritual sight, their spirit must continue to grow in its strength and
playfulness. He refers to the key images of the camel questioning the accepted
values, the lion fighting against those values that can’t stand up to the
questioning, and the playfulness of the child in creating new values in order to say
what is necessary for the growth of spirit (56-8).
Part Four. Maxims and Interludes
1. Over the course of the text, Nietzsche has been raising a number of questions
about how a philosopher should write in order to address the questions that he
thinks are pressing. At the same time, he is also raising questions about how a
reader should interpret what he has written. The reason these questions are so
pressing for Nietzsche is that he fully acknowledges that his writing is very
personal—that is, he is expressing ideas that are drawn from his own personal
perspective on these matters. Given the fact that one of the key points he wants to
make is that different people can and should interpret their values from different
perspectives, what choice does Nietzsche have when it comes to writing in a
personal style?
2. One of the forms of writing that he uses in the middle of the text is that of an
aphorism. These very short passages might appear to be entirely fragmentary and
disjointed, but looks can be deceiving. One reason Nietzsche might be writing in
this aphoristic style is that is his illustrating for the reader how his own ideas on
these matters have arisen. They do not arise in a fully developed and systematic
form. Rather, they are the seeds from which more developed ideas might grow.
In order to develop the latent conceptions, he will first need to water and nurture
the first expressions of the ideas. In time, however, they will need to be pounded
and shaped into a more durable form. The maxims expressed in this interlude are,
one might think, at different stages in this process. Some are relatively new,
while others have been hammered into their present form for some time.
3. Let us consider two of these aphorisms as examples. In section 97, Nietzsche
asks the following question: “What? A Great man? I always see only the actor
and his ideal.” (97) We know from his many statements that Nietzsche spent
considerable time studying the writings of the American essayist and poet, Ralph
Waldo Emerson. In fact, he says that Emerson’s writings were so close to his
own heart that he found it difficult to criticize those ideas in the regular manner.
In an series of essays on Representative Men, Emerson offers examples of great
people who he thinks are representative of our highest capacities. Plato is the
representative of “The Philosopher,” and Shakespeare is the represenative of “The
Poet,” Goethe is the representative of “The Writer” and Napoleon is the
representative of “The Man of the World.” Nietzsche agrees with Emerson in
thinking that these man are greater not as individuals, but as actors striving for an
ideal. In their striving for an ideal, they are representative of what is great in the
highest aspirations of mankind. This aphorism is a reminder that, like all writers
with high aspirations, Nietzsche is drawing on other writers—especially those
whose writings seem to him to have special meaning. This puts the reader in the
position of needing to interpret these writings in light of an ongoing conversation
that is taking place between a number of writers—which each has their own
perspective on the questions at hand.
4. In another aphorism, Nietzsche says that “there are no moral phenomena at all,
only a moral interpretation of the phenomena” (108). One of the points he is
making is that, strictly speaking, our moral values are not the only perspective
from which we can or should interpret the phenomena that seem to call out for
explanation. There are logical values, and aesthetic, and religious values and
political—and so on. What is more, the moral values we currently hold are not
the only moral values that we can draw from when interpreting the phenomena
before us. We are capable of thinking from the perspectives of the classical
Greeks and the medieval Christians, or from the perspectives of the modern
Germans, or the contemporary Americans. How, we should ask, is it possible to
move from one perspective to another when interpreting the moral phenomena
that call out for explanation.