I've been teaching about Nietzsche this week, along with a handful of other late 19th century intellectuals who explored the human will. I had my students read his Parable of the Madman to get us started.
Some pieces finally clicked into place for me, this time around:
Nietzsche and Freud share the major assumption that life is struggle. They also identify the essence of the struggle as between our interior selves and the external world. They both claim that concepts of good and evil originate outside our selves and press in on us, creating a war within. We feel bound and constrained by this external morality that haunts us.
So far, so good. I am in total agreement. I do believe that ideas of good and evil originated outside of myself. They may now be planted in my soul, but I know that I did not define them--I would have preferred a more self-serving morality.
Here's where I diverge:
From my best understanding of his thought, Nietzsche decides that earlier societies invented a god and a morality to cope with the struggle of life. In his European context, he argues that they took refuge in a weak god who sacrifices himself. These early Christians could not face the struggle of life and so they fashioned a future heaven and hell to make themselves feel better. This led to the development of what he calls a "slave morality."
Therefore, Nietzsche continues, the truer man discards the cage or crutch of an earlier invention and molds his own reality. He releases his own will to power and fashions the world to please his own self. The real man simply ignores the bars that some earlier group decided should bind him. For the first time, I really understood why Nietzsche titled his most famous work Thus Spake Zarathustra. Zarathustra's Parsi religion is predicated on an epic, eternal battle between the forces of light and dark, of good and evil. This is the battle that Nietzsche rejects as madness, as a human invention.
So here's my problem with Nietzsche's line of thinking: Why did the first people who fashioned a morality feel a need for it? What was the nature of their struggle? Who was oppressing them? See, I agree that our struggle is between our interior selves and an external morality. I just think that God created this morality and we fight to reject it. I absolutely agree with Nietzsche that life's essential struggle is a struggle of the will, a wrestling with a morality we find difficult to act out.
He sees the answer in breaking the bars ourselves, in insisting that we can mold our own sense of right and wrong. The issue here is that I know my self too well. I know that however I define right and wrong, whichever rules I choose, I will not be able to follow them. I am weak. I am hypocritical. So, too, I would argue, are you.
This is why, for late 19th century intellectuals, I will choose Dostoevsky as a more true model. He wrestles directly with Nietzsche's superman in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, a young and impoverished man, kills his landlady. He is not caught, but the guilt tears away at his soul until he turns himself in to the police. As he explores the psyche of the murderer Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky demonstrates beyond any doubt (in my mind, at least) that we cannot live if we try to purge our selves of all sense of morality.
The answer can not be to discard the struggle between our own wills and this externally-originated morality. If the morality came from outside ourselves, so, too, must the resolution to this struggle. Dostoevsky introduces the character of Sonia to represent the need for an external source of redemption. Raskolnikov cannot bear the weight of his own pressing sense of guilt. Sonia enters his life, knows him, and loves him still. This forgiveness and love are what finally liberate him and create a new life for him.
We wrestle against these bars of right and wrong, I think, mostly because we grow blind to the, well, goodness of the morality God has fashioned. If He created the universe in love, justice, and mercy, then wouldn't his laws of morality also foster love, justice, and mercy? How do I know He created a universe that ought to embody these ideals? Look at these laws that would "oppress" us: Do not lie, do not steal, do not envy, do not cheat on your spouse....or conversely, love the truth, respect others' property, be happy when others have what you do not, give yourself wholly to your spouse...is this really the stuff of oppression?
We only experience this struggle to be moral as oppressive because our wills do not want to surrender to someone else's Will. Nietzsche believed the answer lay in giving our own wills free rein. I believe the answer lies in surrendering to the God who created me, my will, and morality itself. He, like Sonia, knows all of me, loves me still, and creates new life in me that enables me to love his laws. More than this, as I learn to know God, I am able to bring my interior self more in line with this external morality and the struggle diminishes. I find peace and rest and joy.
Some pieces finally clicked into place for me, this time around:
Nietzsche and Freud share the major assumption that life is struggle. They also identify the essence of the struggle as between our interior selves and the external world. They both claim that concepts of good and evil originate outside our selves and press in on us, creating a war within. We feel bound and constrained by this external morality that haunts us.
So far, so good. I am in total agreement. I do believe that ideas of good and evil originated outside of myself. They may now be planted in my soul, but I know that I did not define them--I would have preferred a more self-serving morality.
Here's where I diverge:
From my best understanding of his thought, Nietzsche decides that earlier societies invented a god and a morality to cope with the struggle of life. In his European context, he argues that they took refuge in a weak god who sacrifices himself. These early Christians could not face the struggle of life and so they fashioned a future heaven and hell to make themselves feel better. This led to the development of what he calls a "slave morality."
Therefore, Nietzsche continues, the truer man discards the cage or crutch of an earlier invention and molds his own reality. He releases his own will to power and fashions the world to please his own self. The real man simply ignores the bars that some earlier group decided should bind him. For the first time, I really understood why Nietzsche titled his most famous work Thus Spake Zarathustra. Zarathustra's Parsi religion is predicated on an epic, eternal battle between the forces of light and dark, of good and evil. This is the battle that Nietzsche rejects as madness, as a human invention.
So here's my problem with Nietzsche's line of thinking: Why did the first people who fashioned a morality feel a need for it? What was the nature of their struggle? Who was oppressing them? See, I agree that our struggle is between our interior selves and an external morality. I just think that God created this morality and we fight to reject it. I absolutely agree with Nietzsche that life's essential struggle is a struggle of the will, a wrestling with a morality we find difficult to act out.
He sees the answer in breaking the bars ourselves, in insisting that we can mold our own sense of right and wrong. The issue here is that I know my self too well. I know that however I define right and wrong, whichever rules I choose, I will not be able to follow them. I am weak. I am hypocritical. So, too, I would argue, are you.
This is why, for late 19th century intellectuals, I will choose Dostoevsky as a more true model. He wrestles directly with Nietzsche's superman in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, a young and impoverished man, kills his landlady. He is not caught, but the guilt tears away at his soul until he turns himself in to the police. As he explores the psyche of the murderer Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky demonstrates beyond any doubt (in my mind, at least) that we cannot live if we try to purge our selves of all sense of morality.
The answer can not be to discard the struggle between our own wills and this externally-originated morality. If the morality came from outside ourselves, so, too, must the resolution to this struggle. Dostoevsky introduces the character of Sonia to represent the need for an external source of redemption. Raskolnikov cannot bear the weight of his own pressing sense of guilt. Sonia enters his life, knows him, and loves him still. This forgiveness and love are what finally liberate him and create a new life for him.
We wrestle against these bars of right and wrong, I think, mostly because we grow blind to the, well, goodness of the morality God has fashioned. If He created the universe in love, justice, and mercy, then wouldn't his laws of morality also foster love, justice, and mercy? How do I know He created a universe that ought to embody these ideals? Look at these laws that would "oppress" us: Do not lie, do not steal, do not envy, do not cheat on your spouse....or conversely, love the truth, respect others' property, be happy when others have what you do not, give yourself wholly to your spouse...is this really the stuff of oppression?
We only experience this struggle to be moral as oppressive because our wills do not want to surrender to someone else's Will. Nietzsche believed the answer lay in giving our own wills free rein. I believe the answer lies in surrendering to the God who created me, my will, and morality itself. He, like Sonia, knows all of me, loves me still, and creates new life in me that enables me to love his laws. More than this, as I learn to know God, I am able to bring my interior self more in line with this external morality and the struggle diminishes. I find peace and rest and joy.
