Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ideas About Good and Evil

What is good and what is bad? Before Nietzsche, no one seriously thought it necessary to question premises underlying our thoughts on morality.

Nietzsche Went to the Source of Good and Bad

Is ‘good’ really good? Is ‘bad’ really bad? Friedrich Nietzsche firmly rejected this notion. Why? Because he went to the source of these concepts, to their origins in history and language, and revealed the disturbing truth about them. Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas about good and evil went far beyond conventional common sense and undermined the way humanity thought about good and evil.

The dichotomy of good and bad, Nietzsche discovered, is ridden with biases formed out of the power relations of society. In history, it was the powerful and the wealthy, the aristocratic, who chose to call themselves good. They called the common people the poor, the lowly, the bad.

Reading the above, you might think, “Well, Nietzsche is a Marxist” or “he is a postmodernist.” However, his worldview is more complex than these specific ideological categories and still not a coherent ideology.

The basic premise upon which Nietzsche anchors his three essays compiled under the title, Genealogy of Morals, is that we do not know or understand ourselves. We gather and go through many experiences yet we often do not understand them and do not even bother to be aware, in a knowing sense, of them as they come.

Only at a later time might we get struck by the oddity and mystery of all these experiences and try to make meaning out of them. Nietzsche says that in such an attempt, we are always bound to fail because our perceptions are based on what we are taught about good, bad, and morality.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ideas About Good and Evil: The Criticism of Human Agency

Nietzsche thinks that we are burdened and bound by the untenable and non-existing claim that humans have agency. He sees a natural perfection in humans that has nothing to do with agency and argues that this perfection is corrupted by certain existing values and notions of morality—the idea of good and evil. Nietzsche remarks that

[T]he longing to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for your actions yourself and to relieve God, world, ancestors, chance, and society of the burden—all this means nothing less than being that very causa sui and, with a courage greater than Münchhausen’s, pulling yourself by the hair from the swamp of nothingness up into existence. (Beyond Good and Evil, 21)

The Class Struggle of Good and Bad

Nietzsche asked about the source of our moral beliefs or more precisely prejudices, the origin of good and evil. This is what he realised: historically, in all etymological discourses about ‘good,’ there is a correlation between ‘noble’ and aristocratic,’ and in all etymological discourses about ‘bad,’ there is an unmistakable correlation with the ‘plebeian’ and ‘low.’

Nietzsche says that this is so because there is a prejudice, a logical faultline in our thinking when it comes to the questions related to the origin of ideas. Political superiority always relates to psychological superiority and leads to higher classes thinking that they are clean and that the lower classes are unclean.

Christianity’s Moral World

Christianity was the turning point in the scheme of things discussed above, says Nietzsche. As is evidenced by reactions to the early Christians, this religion was truly a revolt of the slaves, the lowly, the poor, and the wretched against the aristocracy to stake their claim over the realm of ‘good.’ For the first time in history, thus, it came about that being poor, wretched, sick, and suffering is what is ‘good.’ Nietzsche calls this the triumph of weakness over strength, of slaves over their masters.

So far, this argument seems to align with Marxism and the struggle of the classes that it talks about. However, Nietzsche does not see this as exactly beneficial for humanity. He calls it a pathology of slavehood, weakness, and suffering, which in the long run could not be beneficial for humanity.

The weak begin to see themselves as good against those stronger than them, thus providing themselves a dogma that is bound to fail humanity in the long run, since the reality remains that they choose that dogma because they are weak. Thus obedience becomes good, and meekness becomes good. So, Marxists could take Nietzsche only with, well, not a pinch, but a full jar of salt.

Nietzsche’s Vision for a New Morality

Nietzsche wanted morality to be based on our life force, and not on our guilt and weakness. What Christianity has done is to make all of us sinners, all carrying the eternal guilt of being alive, the guilt of having a lust for life, and being free. He contrasts this with the religion practised by ancient Greeks who saw evil acts as follies of men and not as sins, which is closer to reality if we ponder it deeply since evil presupposes agency. However, the problem with this is that being an evil person is most often not a conscious choice but a creation of genetic and social factors.

It is the power of human beings’ life force that has created an advanced civilization and created culture and art. The dogma of weakness and suffering denies this life force and tries to replace it with subjugation. The free will of humans is erased in the process. Nietzsche wants to free that life force and that free will and dreams that such an unleashing will help humanity achieve its full potential.

Postmodernism and Nietzsche

Postmodernists were quite fascinated by Nietzsche, despite his proposing a grand narrative of morality, whereas postmodernists are dead against such metanarratives. However, many of Nietzsche’s thoughts would lead history to see him as the prototype philosopher of postmodernism.

Nietzsche was offering different perspectives to look at a value system engraved into our consciousness as on solid rock. Nietzsche was the subversive force that broke our monolithic moral world into pieces so that multiple voices could be heard. The chaotic philosophical world that Nietzsche created was good soil for postmodernism which blossomed with a diversity of perspectives.

The Biology of Good and Evil

Nietzsche’s concept of the life force encourages us to view good and bad from a biological perspective. Nietzsche’s theories are very close to the idea that humans are wired in certain ways by nature itself. Martin Heidegger was one philosopher who saw through the apparent biologism of Nietzsche.

He said that Nietzsche perceived life from a metaphysical, human-centred perspective and not as an organic phenomenon. It is the will to power rather than the organic life force that matters to Nietzsche, observed Heidegger. Heidegger pointed out that Nietzsche's arguments are, “humanly” and “nonbiologically” oriented.

Nietzsche’s arguments logically lead to a position that we are not responsible for our actions, whether good or evil. We have no agency. We are controlled by our genetics and biology. Secondly, he identifies certain people as ‘higher’ types, who are full of health, vitality, and the ability to flourish.

Exclusivity and lack of agency in this theoretical approach were criticised in Nietzsche’s time—and still are now—by many scholars and philosophers. The fact is, once we even begin to talk about morality, once we begin to use the very word, we assume human agency. So, even if Nietzsche is talking about a higher morality, his arguments contradict themselves.

Also, Nietzsche’s contempt for weakness has been a pain point that almost all succeeding philosophers disagreed with, especially in a world where physical strength and intellectual superiority are not virtues that ensure preferential treatment, a world that acknowledges the value of diversity and inclusion.

The above failings do not rule out Nietzsche as one of the greatest philosophers the world has seen. He questioned and toppled a notion of morality that had existed for centuries. As Nietzsche had observed, “We need a critique of moral values, the value of these values should itself, for once, be examined­” (On the Genealogy of Morality, Preface, 6). As we progress as a civilisation, we need minds such as Nietzsche’s to question prevailing moral norms, which are the products of a prevailing social hierarchy, and to trigger a rethinking and redefining.

How Nietzsche’s Thought About Good and Evil Influences Current Debates

Philosophers continue to debate what Nietzsche meant by talking about the ‘highest’ human type. The term he used was Übermensch which can be translated as ‘superhuman.’ Some contemporary analyses even trace the origin of the comic character, Superman, to Nietzsche’s ideas (Ross, 2019).

The philosophers and ordinary readers of Nietzsche agree on one fact: many of his arguments are ambiguous. Yet they continue to inspire and still originate sparks of fiery debates. Nietzsche saw compassion as a human weakness but also proclaimed the possibility of a higher level of existence for humans (though not for all, not necessarily for women!). The blow he imparted on Romanticism was the need of the times he lived through and led to a more truthful exploration of human ideals and values.

References

Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gutenberg Project.

Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gutenberg Project.

Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, Alex Ross, 7 October 2019, newyorker.com

Heidegger’s Nietzsche: European Modernity and the Philosophy of the Future, Jose Daniel Parra, 2019, Lexington Books.