Friedrich Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols

Click here for a brief overview of Nietzsche's philosophy.

On the first page of this book Nietzsche famously writes: "Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger."  [This is an obvious lie and might be regarded as evidence of Nietzsche's hysteria.  For more on this see below.]

Nietzsche's goal is a revaluation of all values, a thorough checking of the old inherited beliefs.  He is not rejecting all old values, but sounding them out to see which ones are hollow.  This is what doing philosophy with a hammer means.  Like Mill he suspects that much, if not all, past moral philosophy has merely dressed up unquestioned values in the language of reason.

Unlike Mill, he thinks that what people really want is not pleasure but some sense of meaning in life.  For this they will suffer almost any hardship or pain.

"The will to a system is a lack of integrity."  The desire for a system, a consistent theory (such as utilitarianism) is a desire for a kind of neatness not found in oneself.  It is a fantasy, and a hypocritical one at that.  We do not really want consistency, we want exceptions.  [This is what I think he means, anyway.]

It is honorable to be honest because one hates dishonesty, but cowardly to be honest because God forbids dishonesty.  [So much for Mill's first external sanction.]

Morality must not be rejected, but it must be challenged in order for it to stay healthy and strong.  [Mill argued something similar about true beliefs in On Liberty.]

For ages wise men have said that life is no good.  Should we accept this because they are so wise, or, on the contrary, should we question their wisdom because what they say is so sick?  Socrates and Plato thought it was better to be dead than alive.  So much the worse for them.  How can we even judge life at all, since we cannot step outside it to judge objectively? 

Socratic dialectic puts the common person on the same level as the élite.  But it is not a powerful tool, since it tends to seem sophistical and be unpersuasive.  So why use it?  Surely only because one is weak and wants to do down those on top who are strong.  his is just resentment.

Socrates' placing of reason over instinct suggests that he was sick in some way.  Healthy people have good instincts and value them.  It is unhealthy to reject this world, the senses, the body, change, and history.  We should NOT crave some supernatural ideal but enjoy what is real.  "The 'apparent' world is the only one: the 'true' world is merely added by a lie."  [This is a rejection most obviously of Plato's metaphysics, but also of Christianity.]

Science comes from accepting the senses.  Philosophers though abstract and abstract until all contact with reality is gone.  The ultimate abstract concept is God.

"I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar."  Nietzsche seems to mean that we have faith that nouns name objects (or at least something like this).  So we think of the will as something that causes things to happen.  And we think similarly of the cause of all things as the divine will, God.  BUT "will" is only a word (and so, presumably, is "God").

The healthy thing to do is to accept this world, saying "Yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible."  [This is what I think of as Nietzsche's hysterical stoicism.  Stoicism is, very roughly, that we should accept whatever happens without complaint, combined with the idea that we cannot change the course of events anyway.  Stoics tend to be grim (think Clint Eastwood in many of his roles or the hero in the movie Gladiator).  Nietzsche's view is similar but instead of merely accepting the world he revels in it, even in its worst horrors.  This is the part that seems hysterical.]  This is the attitude that Nietzsche calls Dionysian.

The roots of passion are the roots of life.  We must not attack them as Christians and Stoics have.  BUT we need not just accept them either, since they can be stupid and case us problems.  Self-control is possible for the strong and healthy.  [BUT does Nietzsche mean we can control what we do or only how we feel or think about things?]  Temperance can be a value.  Indeed we must have some values.  Life (human nature?) forces them on us.  The question is what values to have.  We cannot judge life or mankind in general.  We are what we are.  Our choice is simply to condemn (which is degenerate, "moral", and sick) or to affirm (which is "immoral", positive, and healthy). 

[If this is our only real choice then we control only our attitudes, not our actions, as the Stoics seem to have believed.  I read Nietzsche as a kind of determinist, like the Stoics, but the best commentators on his work seem to agree that he denied both free will and determinism.  If by "determinism" we mean the idea that every event has a cause then Nietzsche might not be one because he rejects the idea that there really are such things as separate events.  Otherwise he does seem to be a determinist.  Since this is a controversial claim, I need some good evidence.  Here's my reason for saying he denies events but is otherwise a determinist (or Stoic):

"The single human being is a piece of fatum from the front and from the rear, one law more, one necessity more for all that is yet to come and to be. To say to him, "Change yourself!" is to demand that everything be changed, even retroactively."] 

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The "Four Great Errors" are i) confusing cause and consequence, ii) false causality, iii) imaginary causes, and iv) free will.

Religion and morality say: Do this and you will be happy.  Nietzsche says: Be happy and you will do this.

We have no reason to believe in causality. We get the idea from how things seem to us, that we cause our own actions by means of the will.  But the will does not cause events [see above--it is not an object that could cause events according to Nietzsche].  It is fear of the unfamiliar that leads us to think of events as acts, and hence to believe in God as the agent behind all events.  A desire to explain leads us to think we must deserve all our suffering.  "The whole realm of morality and religion belongs under the concept of imaginary causes."

Free will is an error, a myth to blame and punish people who can the be held responsible for their acts.  The "doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment,..."  "Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman."  BUT we are NOT responsible for our environment or our innate nature or our existence.  There is no goal, end, or purpose to life as such.  There is simply life as it is, and the whole cannot be changed.  [more evidence of a kind of stoicism]  We redeem the world by denying God.

There are no moral facts.  "Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena--more precisely, a misinterpretation."  Religion and morality tame men, they do not improve us.

The ultimate Aryan morality is breeding for "pure blood," which inevitably treats the 'impure" inhumanely.  [Nietzsche is not a racial purist like his Nazi admirers.] Christianity is the opposite of such cruelty, but it too is a lie.  It is the revolt of the poor and downtrodden, disguised as love.

Alcohol and Christianity have made the Germans stupid.  [Nietzsche was not a German nationalist, again unlike the Nazis.]  The science-industry (i.e. scientism, infatuation with technology, and the utilitarian idea of progress) has despiritualized Germany.  [Nietzsche seems to admire science--the discovery of truths about the world--but not scientism--the idea that science can answer every kind of problem.  Or perhaps there is no judgment meant here, only description.]  If your energy goes into the quest for power, money, and military strength, then it will NOT go into understanding, seriousness, and self-overcoming.  [So was Nietzsche a kind of pacifist?  He certainly believed in self-overcoming.  Again he sounds very unlike a Nazi here.]  We only have so much energy.  Great culture requires political decline.   

"All great, all beautiful things can never be common property."  [Nietzsche clearly opposes Mill's ideas about education.]  Higher education for the masses is a contradiction in terms.   

To become spiritual you must learn to see, to see things as they are, NOT how you want them to be or assume they are.  This requires a will that can suspend itself, which requires great strength.  Without such a will we are slaves to every impulse, we fall into every vice.  [This is reminiscent of some of Plato's views on ethics.]  

Education should teach us to think, i.e. to dance with concepts, and to write, i.e. to dance with words. 

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Nietzsche's refers to Mill's "insulting clarity."  [He doesn't say what he means by this exactly, but Mill tries to be objective, almost scientific, about morality and all that makes life seem worth living.  Perhaps it is this that Nietzsche objects to.]   

In England, Nietzsche says, people reject God but cling to Christian morality.  They have no right to do this.  Christianity is a system that "stands and falls with faith in God."  Without God, what sense do the commandments make?  We might feel that this or that is right or wrong, BUT this is the effect of centuries of Christianity.  These feelings will go in time, and then morality --how to live, what to do-- will be felt or seen as a problem.  The truth is that it is already a problem right now.

We should not take nature as our guide if by that we mean whatever we happen to come across when we pay attention to nature.  Instead we should express ourselves, our whole nature, not this or that but the main features [the essence?].  If we move beyond good and evil to an aesthetic ethic, we should act in a frenzy, an energetic drive to express our main features.  "[I]n art man enjoys himself as perfection."

Darwin is wrong: animals rarely struggle for mere existence.  We struggle for power.  And this struggle does not lead to improvements.  The weak outnumber the strong and so prevail, using cunning if necessary.  [cf. Callicles]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  By seeing the world in our own terms, we make it beautiful to ourselves.  So beauty comes down to us: "Nothing is beautiful, except man alone."  Art is not a distraction from physical reality BUT an expression of it that "incites procreation." All art praises, glorifies, chooses, prefers.  Even tragic art is positive: it shows fearlessness in the face of terrors.

Our true experiences are unique and personal, but language is shared and public.  So we cannot communicate these experiences.  A communicable ethic would be mediocre and vulgar, like the ethics of philosophers.  Kant's ethics is the most boring, teaching us to put duty above all instinctive feelings.  This is ethics as taming.

In contrast, Nietzsche might seem to be advocating a form of egoism.  BUT he says that self-interest can be unworthy and contemptible.  It depends on the self in question.  What matters is whether the person is sick and in decay, or instead represents a step upward or forward.

"Complaining is never any good: it stems from weakness.  Whether one charges one's misfortune to others or to oneself--the socialist does the former; the Christian, for example, the latter--really makes no difference.  The common and, let us add, the unworthy, thing is that it is supposed to be somebody's fault that one is suffering..."

Altruism [putting others before oneself] is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a bad sign.  "Instinctively to choose what is harmful for oneself, to feel attracted by 'disinterested' motives, that is virtually the formula of decadence."  BUT, as we have seen, Nietzsche is not an all-out egoist.  He believes in egoism for a certain type of person, a person that is artistic, i.e. frenziedly self-expressive.  [More hysteria?]

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We think we have progressed since the past, that we are more sensitive, more sympathetic.  BUT every age thinks it is better than past ages.  Our morals are fit for our age.  We could not bear to live in another age (with slavery, for instance).  This makes our morals right for our age BUT impossible for others.  It does NOT make our morals better than others.  "[I]n itself, no morality has any value." 

We can look down on the selfishness and insensitivity of earlier ages, BUT they would laugh at our weakness.  Our equality is not a sign of progress but of mediocrity, which we treat as a virtue BUT which happened inevitably, NOT because we believed in it.

True freedom is the ability to put up with hardship, even death (others' or one's own) for one's cause.  "The free man is a warrior."  Those who fight for freedom are free, those who grow up comfortable and complacent are not.  

Institutions need the instincts out of which they grow.  These instincts are anti-liberal: "the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come..."  The freedom to do what one wants, irresponsibly, destroys all institutions.  Look at marriage, for instance.  [More stoicism?]

The body is primary, not the soul.  "Christianity, which despised the body, has been the greatest misfortune of humanity so far."

So what is Nietzsche for?  The writer Goethe is the example he gives (adding that Kant is the opposite of Goethe).  Goethe, allegedly, said Yes to everything.  He created himself, he was strong, well-educated, and self-controlled.  He despised nothing, seeing each thing as part of the whole, and the whole as good.  This is Dionysian.

Dionysus is all about sexuality--sex, birth, procreation.  It was Christianity that spread the idea that sex is somehow unclean.  This idea is, of course, anti-life.  The pro-life idea is that the whole cycle of birth and death is good.  

Tragedy celebrates the goodness even of pain and death.