Some key themes . Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Some key themes

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Ruthless skepticism

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Genealogical method

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Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Non-transparency of attitudes/motives

“We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers — and with good reason… Tie so-called ‘experiences’ , — who of us ever has enough seriousness for them? or enough time? I fear we have never really been ‘with it’ in such matters: our heart is simply not in it — and not even our ear! On the contrary, like somebody divinely absent-minded and sunk in his own thoughts… we, too, afuerwards rub our ears and ask, astonished, taken aback, ‘What did we actually experience then?’ or even, ‘Who are we, in fact?’ … [W]e remain strangers to ourselves our of necessity, we do not understand ourselves… [W]e are not ‘knowers’ when it comes to

• urselves…”

(On the Genealogy of Morality, P:)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Response: Ruthless questioning

We must question even our deepest, most central values. Perhaps we’ll come to endorse them upon further refmection. But we must be prepared to reject them if they prove to be based on a false or unhealthy conception of the world.

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Response: Ruthless questioning

“Intellectual conscience. — … Tie great majority lacks an intellectual conscience… To the great majority it is not contemptible to believe this

• r that and to live accordingly without fjrst becoming aware of the fjnal

and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afuerwards.” (Tie Gay Science, §) “[O]bjectivity” is “having in our power the ability to control one’s Pros and Cons and to dispose of them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and afgective interpretations in the service of knowledge… [T]he more afgects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, difgerent eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our… ‘objectivity,’ be.” (On the Genealogy of Morality, III:)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Response: Ruthless questioning (cont’d)

Tie truth about ourselves and the world may be ugly. We may not like what we see. Tie pursuit of truth requires strength of will and intellectual honesty: “A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one’s convictions!” (Note, Spring ) It is “the desire for certainty… which separates the higher human beings from the lower!” (Tie Gay Science, §). It’s a measure of strength how much “terrible insight into reality” one can bear and affjrm: “Error… is not blindness, error is cowardice.” Nietzsche’s human exemplar “conceives reality as it is, being strong enough to do so.” (Ecce Homo, Z:, P:, IV:)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Hazards

“If this book is incomprehensible to anyone and jars on his ears, the fault, it seems to me, is not necessarily mine. It is clear enough, assuming, as I do assume, that one has fjrst read my earlier writings and has not spared some trouble in doing so: for they are, indeed, not easy to penetrate.” (On the Genealogy of Morality, P:) “[I]n the midst of an age of ‘work’ , that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to ‘get everything done’ at once, including every old or new book: — this art [of reading well] does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and afu, with reservations, with doors lefu open, with delicate eyes and fjngers… My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!” (Daybreak, P:)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Some key themes



Ruthless skepticism



Genealogical method



Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Method of “genealogy”

Methodological naturalism: Philosophical inquiry — e.g., philosophical investigation of our moral beliefs — should be continuous with empirical scientifjc inquiry. Our philosophical conclusions should be supported by, or at least consistent with, the fjndings in our best sciences. Philosophical strategy: use the scientifjcally informed truths about the psychological (sociocultural, historical) origins of our beliefs/attitudes/values as a basis for philosophically critiquing them

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value”

Against “hypothesis mongering”

“My real concern is something much more important than hypothesis-mongering, whether my own or other people’s, on the origin

• f morality… What is at stake is the value of morality.” (Genealogy, P:)

Two components: empirical/scientifjc and normative/evaluative Tie empirical inquiry into the naturalist origins of (e.g.) our moral practices/attitudes is in the service of “much more important” philosophical ends. Tie ultimate goal is constructive: discerning what to value, how to live, what kind of person to be, and why. (not necessarily “debunking”)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Some key themes



Ruthless skepticism



Genealogical method



Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Questioning our core values and commitments

“One has taken the value of these ‘values’ as given, as factual, as beyond all question; one has hitherto never doubted or hesitated in the slightest degree in supposing ‘the good man’ to be of greater value than ‘the evil man,’ of greater value in the sense of furthering the advancement and prosperity of man in general (the future of man included). But what if the opposite were true?” “What was especially at stake was the value of the ‘unegoistic,’ the instincts of pity, self-abnegation, self-sacrifjce… on the basis of which [traditional morality] said No to life… It was precisely here that I saw the great danger to mankind… the will turning against life… I understood the ever spreading morality of pity… as the most sinister symptom of a European culture that had itself become sinister, perhaps as its by-pass to… — nihilism?” (Genealogy, P:, )

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Evaluative critiques of values (cont’d)

Genealogical method: What kind of psychology or “moral outlook” do traditional moral values express? “Let us articulate this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must fjrst be called in question — and for that there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed.” (Genealogy, P:) Basis for assessing values: to what extent they “further the advance and prosperity of man in general (the future of man included),” and promote human fmourishing, excellence, and an unqualifjed “affjrmation

• f life”

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Evaluative critiques of values (cont’d)

Nietzsche’s skepticism: We can’t take the value of modern morality for

• granted. We must question whether dominant moral values are

genuinely valuable — i.e., whether we actually ought to accept and promote them. Key question: Do dominant moral values promote fmourishing, strength, human excellence, and an affjrmation of life? Are they good for those individuals capable of excellence? Or is a morality of selfmessness and pity ultimately dangerous to humanity? Does it inhibit human fmourishing and the development of human excellence? Could it be that certain traits ofuen deemed “evil” are in fact worth promoting? Could it be that certain allegedly “evil” motives/acts/etc. are in fact genuinely good/valuable?

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

On the Genealogy of Morality, Essay II: Cruelty and guilt

What is the value of “conscience” and “guilt”? Naturalistic inquiry: How did human beings come to have a capacity for self-assessment? How did this capacity become moralized in the form of a guilty conscience? “the conscience… is not, as people may believe, ‘the voice of God in man’: it is the instinct of cruelty that turns back afuer it can no longer discharge itself externally. Cruelty is here exposed for the fjrst time as one of the most ancient and basic substrata of culture that simply cannot be imagined away.” (Ecce Homo, GM) Rather than starting by explaining (bad) conscience as being “the voice of God in man,” Nietzsche posits a naturalistic mechanism to explain it: internalized cruelty.

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Tie origins of guilt (overview)

Nietzsche’s answer (roughly): Human beings have natural aggressive and cruel impulses. Tiese impulses confmict with our needs and impulses for cooperative, communal life. So we must ofuen repress our natural impulses for cruelty. Tiese impulses must be discharged somehow; but since they can’t be expressed outwardly, we internalize them and express them toward ourselves. Specifjcally, we express them via self-loathing prompted by an awareness of our debts and

• shortcomings. With the aid of already existing religious concepts, this

feeling of debt can become moralized into a feeling of guilt. Bad conscience is an expression of cruelty toward oneself. (Genealogy, Essay II)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

An instinct for cruelty

Psychological hypothesis I: Human beings have a natural impulse for cruelty. Inference to the best explanation: Tiis hypothesis helps explain the widespread premoralized practice of punishing debtors. Infmicting cruelty is seen as compensation because it brings pleasure…

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

An instinct for cruelty (cont’d)

Puzzling practices of extreme physical cruelty as punishment “think of old German punishments such as stoning ( — even the legend drops the millstone on the guilty person’s head), breaking

• n the wheel…, impaling, ripping apart and trampling to death by

horses (‘quartering’), boiling of the criminal in oil or wine…, the popular fmaying…, cutting out fmesh from the breast; and, of course, coating the wrong-doer with honey and leaving him to the fmies in the scorching sun.” (Genealogy, II:) “Compensation is made up of a warrant and entitlement to cruelty.” Tiis cruelty constitutes repayment because it’s “a kind of pleasure” to the creditor. (Genealogy, II:, ) Mark Twain: “Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that infmicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Repression

We aren’t always able or willing to express our aggressive/cruel impulses

• utwardly

confmicts with social norms confmicts with our impulses for cooperation Psychological hypothesis II: repression “ All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward — this is what I call the internalization of man.” (Genealogy, II:) Instincts must be expressed somehow or other. When instincts are denied outward expression, they turn inward…

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Bad conscience

Internalized cruelty ⇒ “bad conscience”: “ All those instincts of wild, free, prowling man turned backward against man himself. Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in change, in destruction — all this turned against the possessors of such instincts: that is the origin of the ‘bad conscience’.” (Genealogy, II:) Since we aren’t always in a position to express our instinct for cruelty

• utwardly in action, we express it on ourselves. Tiis instinct for cruelty

fjnds a natural outlet as a result of one’s awareness of one’s debts to

• neself and others — awareness of failing to measure up to certain

internally or externally imposed standards or ideals.

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

From bad conscience to guilt

One way of internalizing cruelty: exploiting already existing religious concepts to infmict greater punishment on ourselves Our bad conscience, and disposition for internalizing cruelty takes a feeling of debt toward God and transforms it into a feeling of

• guilt. By moralizing our feeling of debt we can infmict more pain
• n ourselves…

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

From bad conscience to guilt (cont’d)

Whence ascetic ideals? “Tiis man of the bad conscience has seized upon the presupposition of religion so as to drive his self-torture to its most gruesome pitch of severity and rigor. Guilt before God: this thought becomes an instrument of torture to him — He apprehends in ‘God’ the ultimate antithesis of his own ineluctable animal instincts; he reinterprets these animal instincts themselves as a form of guilt before God… In this psychical cruelty there resides a madness of the will which is absolutely unexampled: the will of man to fjnd himself guilty and reprehensible to a degree that can never be atoned for; his will to think himself punished without any possibility of the punishment becoming equal to the guilt; … his will to erect an ideal — and in the face of it to feel the palpable certainty of his own absolute unworthiness.” (Genealogy, II:)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

From bad conscience to guilt (cont’d)

Ideals of “selfmessness, self-denial, self-sacrifjce,” ideals contrary to

• ur natural instincts and impulses, are explained in part by the

pleasure in self-cruelty — the relief from having a (readily available) outlet for one’s impulses for cruelty.

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Evaluative critique?

If, as matter of psychological fact cruelty is a basic human instinct, and traditional moral values are explicitly opposed to cruelty, could morality still be fundamentally affjrming of life and human nature? Could they promote human psychological stability, unity, and health? Or would they foster a kind of pessimism, an “icy No of disgust with life,” “shame of all [one’s] instincts” (Genealogy, II:)?

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Counterpoint

Tie results of bad conscience aren’t all bad: Tiey’re the basis for culture, for our “inner world,” for regulative ideals against which we compare and potentially better ourselves (II:). We may not be able to escape our cruel instincts, and perhaps we can’t keep from internalizing them. But perhaps can keep them from expressing themselves destructively in the form of self-loathing and self-punishment. Next steps: use the empirical information about our psychologies to help construct a positive ideal and system of values that better promotes psychic unity, health, and well-being…

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Toward a positive ideal

Just as (i) humans may co-opt existing material resources in the service of expressing an instinct for cruelty outwardly, and sometimes develop those resources in ever more creative/destructive ways of punishing others, likewise (ii) in some cases humans co-opted existing conceptual resources (e.g. religious concepts) in the service of expressing an instinct for cruelty inwardly, and sometimes further developed those resources in ever more creative/destructive ways of punishing ourselves.

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Toward a positive ideal (cont’d)

On the fmip side, just as (i) we can ask how we might instead use/develop material resources in the service of outwardly expressing an instinct for cruelty in a more constructive way, to improve peoples’ circumstances, likewise (ii) we can ask how we might instead use/develop religious concepts and concepts of ideals in the service of internalizing an instinct for cruelty in a more constructive way, to better and improve ourselves.

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Toward a positive ideal (cont’d)

Task: Construct a system of values that channels and exploits our natural instincts and impulses in the service of values that promote psychic unity and human excellence and fmourishing — positive, life-affjrming values that express the “ultimate, most joyous, most wantonly extravagant Yes to life” (Ecce Homo, BT:). How can we keep bad conscience from leading to attitudes of self-loathing and practices of self-punishment? How might we exploit social/cultural/religious concepts and ideals instead as instruments for “keeping bad conscience at bay”? How might we express an (internalized) instinct for cruelty in a healthier, more psychologically/socially constructive way?

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it

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Ruthless skepticism Genealogical method Tie “problem of value” Evaluative critiques of values Application: Cruelty, bad conscience, guilt Against nihilism

Toward a positive ideal (cont’d)

“An attempt at [affjrming our natural inclinations] would in itself be possible — but who is strong enough for it? — that is, to wed the bad conscience to all the unnatural inclinations, all those aspirations to the beyond, to that which runs counter to sense, instinct, nature, animal, in short all ideals hitherto, which are one and all hostile to life and ideals that slander the world… Tie attainment of this goal would require a difgerent kind of spirit from that likely to appear in this present age: spirits strengthened by war and victory, for whom conquest, adventure, danger, and even pain have become needs — it would require even a kind of sublime wickedness, an ultimate, supremely self-confjdent mischievousness in knowledge that goes with great health; it would require, in brief and alas, precisely this great health! — [T]his Antichrist and antinihilist; this victor over God and nothingness — he must come one day.—” (Genealogy, II:)

 /  Alex Silk Nietzsche on human nature and what to do about it