36 pages • 1 hour read
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ed. Walter Kaufmann, Transl. R.J. HollingdaleThe Will to Power
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1901A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 2, Parts 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2, Part 2, Section 1 Summary: “Origin of Moral Valuations”
Nietzsche now examines moral values in general. He says of every morality that “it is a fruit by which I recognize the soil from which it sprang” (149). In other words, Nietzsche’s analysis of moralities, and “moral tables,” is based on a historical account of their origins and how those origins relate to a particular way of life. Nietzsche argues that morality is “a system of evaluations that partially coincides with the conditions of a creature’s life” (148). For example, Nietzsche sees Christian-European morality as the reflection of physiological decline and life-weariness.
It follows that all moral evaluations are made from the viewpoint of a specific interest in self-preservation, which can be the interest of an individual, a community of faith, or an entire race and culture. While there are many moral systems, none is correct “in itself.” This view on the nature of morality is opposed to the commonly held thesis that moral action is defined by disinterestedness, impartiality, and universal validity.
For Nietzsche, morality is not a purely “good” phenomenon. Rather, the origins of morality, how it comes into being and gains ascendency, are often what would later be considered “bad” or “evil.” For instance, the origin and establishment of a moral code may involve violent punishments, the cynical interests of certain groups such as priests, and a great deal of untruth and deception. Later, when the origins are forgotten, further lies present them as “pure” and divinely sanctioned. Over time, moralities are internalized to the point where “they seem instinctive, like inner commands” (155), and are felt to be intuitively right.
Book 2, Part 2, Section 2 Summary: “The Herd”
The problem with morality, for Nietzsche, and the “unconditional obedience to morality” (157), is that it prevents one from “making one’s own evaluations” (157). Values are set up as absolute, whereas in truth they favor the preservation of the “herd” or group over the individual, especially the exceptional individual. For example, modesty and obedience are promoted while strength and dominance are disparaged. The absolute authority of herd values is sanctioned first by the idea of a God then, when this belief begins to weaken, by a concept of universal reason. Nevertheless, Nietzsche stresses that he does not advocate “an individualistic morality” but rather “an ordering of rank” (162). In other words, herd morality should rule amongst the herd, but should not be imposed on all. The problem with herd morality comes when it starts to affect those who are above the herd.
Book 2, Part 3 Summary: “Critique of Philosophy”
In the final part of Book 2, Nietzsche criticizes philosophy as it relates to, and is bound up with, morality. Part of this critique is that philosophy and philosophers have often tried to justify and rationalize established moral values. For example, Kant’s moral philosophy is an attempt to give a rational basis to Christian moral values. On a deeper level, however, philosophy is bound to morality in so far as it imagines a world “behind” or “beyond” the ostensibly chaotic, irrational, and amoral “apparent” world of the senses. For such philosophers, “the world is an error which can be known to be an error” (222). The world of concepts is taken to be “real” while the real world of observable, material objects is taken to be “illusory.” This inversion can be seen in Plato’s theory of forms, Kant’s notion of the “thing-in-itself,” and philosophy’s general concern with abstract concepts.
Further, like religious and moral thought, philosophical thought has imagined that its origins were pure, as if the “drive for knowledge” (227) could be cut off from interests, needs, and human psychology. The drive for knowledge is, in fact, always bound up with the person who seeks knowledge, and particularly with that person’s drive to appropriate and conquer. Thus, impartial knowledge is, in fact, a system of motivated valuations.
Book 2, Parts 2-3 Analysis
Nietzsche’s critique of morality is one of the most potentially confusing aspects of The Will to Power. One might be able to understand, if not necessarily accept, his critique of Christian values. But what does it mean to critique morality in general? To see Nietzsche’s issue with morality, and not just Christian morality, is it is necessary to dispel some possible misunderstandings. First, Nietzsche does not say that any attempt to distinguish between good and bad is flawed or that one should do without systems of value altogether. They are essential aspects of human life. As he says, “our world is colored by them” (150). Evaluating is, like breathing, something that human beings naturally do, and our lives are unthinkable without it. Further, Nietzsche would court paradox if he meant to negatively evaluate the act of evaluating. The theory would contradict itself.
Nor does Nietzsche advocate a total removal of moral constraints on our behavior, a position that has sometimes been attributed to him. On this view, Nietzsche sees the problem with moralities being that they limit the fulfillment of our desires, and hence cause us to become repressed and “sick.” The solution is to return to a state of pre-moral, instinctual freedom, where all our desires, especially aggressive ones, can find satisfaction. Such an interpretation is simplistic at best. Nietzsche indeed sees the process whereby aggressive instincts were checked by early moral systems as a traumatic one. Human docility was achieved through brutal punishments for recalcitrance and the turning of these instincts “inward” so that we experienced guilt and shame at the thought of performing actions that are normal for our species. As Nietzsche says, “we have conjoined the natural inclinations and a bad conscience” (166). However, as he acknowledges, this process was a necessary condition for the development of complex societies. Without restraints on violent desires, and a sense that they are somehow wrong, life in large groups would be impossible. In this way, “morality was needed that man might prevail in his struggle with nature and the ‘wild animal’” (218). Mastering the world around them, and advancing as a species, meant first mastering the “wildness” in themselves.
Nietzsche does not object to moral systems per se but to the process whereby they suppress their origins. As he says, “for moral values to gain dominion they must be assisted by lots of immoral forces and affects” (152). The creation of morality was accomplished by deception and intense physical and psychological violence. Thus, they created systems and individuals that contain “a vast confusion of contradictory valuations and consequently of contradictory drives” (149). Morality did not remove the aggressive and destructive “evil” instincts that are part of our nature. Rather, it made us “good,” in an external sense, only by turning our need for cruelty and domination inward upon ourselves.
Moral systems disguise their origins, creating a myth of the purified and benign “good man” who is entirely without such darkness (191). They wish “that the good should renounce and oppose the evil down to its ultimate roots” (192). They wish that we acknowledge our compassion, but not our egotism, our love but not our hatred, our desire for peace, but not for war. In this way, they create a one-sided and self-deceiving image of the human. They store up psychological problems and illness amongst those caught in this mindset and, more importantly as far as Nietzsche is concerned, they prevent the creation of new value systems and ways of looking at the world. They prevent philosophers and free spirits from creating moralities that will push the human species to new heights. Such achievement will be achieved only when a true understanding of the origin of morality is brought to light, only when we recognize that “the highest values hitherto are a special case of the will to power” and that “morality itself is a special case of immorality” (254).
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