Nietzsche challenges traditional good and evil

[amrhima]

Nietzsche challanges the values we hold up so high, according to him they originated in the despised instincts and not in God or reason. In fact he says that God and reason themselves are mere justifications of moralities which are dictated by instincts. While most philosophers try to defend and justify these values, Nietzsche tries to uncover them. Who do you side with? What argument do you have for your position?

[hue-man]

I haven't read Nietzsche's work on ethics yet. I've only read "Human, all to Human", and that really didn't deal with his views on morality. The books to read are "Beyond Good and Evil", "Daybreak", and "On the Genealogy of Morals".

Nietzsche's problem was that he never really proposed a moral theory himself. He only dealt in the negative by constantly reducing morality. His views seem to have been very close to nihilism. Reducing morality to instincts isn't justification for bad behavior, nor is it reason to negate the concept of good behavior; and by bad behavior I mean behavior that hurts other people or hurts the agent themselves.

[amrhima]

Originally Posted by hue-man

Nietzsche's problem was that he never really proposed a moral theory himself. He only dealt in the negative by constantly reducing morality. His views seem to have been very close to nihilism. Reducing morality to instincts isn't justification for bad behavior, nor is it reason to negate the concept of good behavior; and by bad behavior I mean behavior that hurts other people or hurts the agent themselves.

That is not true at all, Nietzsche has a criteria for good and bad behaviour, Read "thus spoke zarathustra" or "beyond good and evil". Read this article: www.philosophy-essays.net/Nietzsche

[Bones-O!]

I haven't read anything of Nietzsche that suggested common morality was driven by instinct. In 'On the Genealogy of Morals' he cites weakness as the driving force. Christian morality was espoused by the weak, in his view, because it makes a virtue out of weakness. But like I said, I haven't read much else of Nietzsche. Coincidentally, Zarathustra just arrived in the mail. His book, not the prophet himself.

[amrhima]

"On the despisers of the body" in zarathustra, he talks about instinct metaphorically, he is far clearer in 'beyond good and evil': "-3-With all the value that may adhere to the true, the genuine, the selfless, it could be possible that a higher, more fundemental value to deception, to selfishness and to appetite" this is one of many qoutes referring to this fact that morality is instinct dictated.

And whether it is weakness or strength depends on WHICH instincts one decides to satisfy, in case of slave morality it is when one wants to live, to becomfortable, to be safe. master moralists on the other hand want to be powerful, they act from a strong perspective, and it is not as some people would say "seeking power"...they are trying to reach a certain spiritiual level where they act powerful not try to get power from the world, but their own power inside.

[jeeprs]

I only have one primitive and extremely crude aphorism about Neitzsche, which is that he was an extremely bad advertisement for philosophy.

---------- Post added at 10:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 PM ----------

because he did not exhibit wisdom

[hue-man]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

I only have one primitive and extremely crude aphorism about Neitzsche, which is that he was an extremely bad advertisement for philosophy.

---------- Post added at 10:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 PM ----------

because he did not exhibit wisdom

Interesting . . . define wisdom and why you believe that Nietzsche didn't posses it?

[jgweed]

Whether Nietzsche ever developed an ethical position is certainly open to debate. [This usually depends on the extent to which the eternal recurrence of the same is taken as a significant] But what he did accomplish was to call into question all the traditional bases for ethics (and truth, for that matter). In Genealogy of Morals, for example, he attempts to derive the two dichotomies good/bad, good/evil from different uses of the will to power, and distinguishes between noble morality and derived slave morality. Morality is explained by psychology. Obviously, he considers the origin of morality as strictly human in origin, and without objective or natural justification: "There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena."
His rejection of any absolute standard of morality parallels his rejection of any absolute or or objective standard of Truth in Beyond Good and Evil.

[jeeprs]

Interesting . . . define wisdom and why you believe that Nietzsche didn't posses it?

Well it was kind of a throw-away line...but I have to admit that I always suspected that Nietzsche's descent into insanity might be connected with his mode of thought. (I believe, although haven't got a source right at hand, that the idea that his madness was caused by tertiary syphilis has been discredited. And of course, I acknowledge that I can't make a serious argument for the proposition I am putting here.) But insofar as wisdom is the opposite of madness, then Nietzche's permanent and irreversible psychotic breakdown would indicate that his 'philosophical project' did not, in his case, have a happy outcome. (Unlike, for example, A.N. Whitehead, whose personality was said to personify the best qualities of his philosophical outlook.)


As for a definition of wisdom -apart from it being 'the opposite of madness', I doubt that I would be able to define it in such a way that others would agree on it. I think of it in terms of 'the sapiential tradition' as defined by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

---------- Post added at 02:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:17 PM ----------

I suppose I could add - wisdom is something which has to be attained; it is something which relies on the ability to see beyond appearances and opinions; it is an attribute of maturity; and many are without it.

[jgweed]

As far as I know, the diagnosis of syphilis still stands; at the very least it seems acknowledged that his breakdown had physical causes.
Even if the opposite is eventually proven, this in itself would not invalidate his philosophical thinking. That his writings have been of significant influence in later European religious, psychoanalytical, and philosophical thinking supports this.

Whether or not his philosophy contains "wisdom" is a matter of definition. Whether, though, one agrees or disagrees with some of his positions, it does seem that in his questioning of many of the "philosophical prejudices" of the past, and in his challenging of his readers to think through problems for themselves, and indeed to see problems where there were none before encountering his thinking, there is something akin to an undogmatic , even Socratic "wisdom."