The Failure of Philosophy and the Project of the Genealogy

1. The Failure of Philosophy and the Project of the Genealogy “Family failing of philosophers. – All philosophers have the common failing of starting out from man as he is now and thinking they can reach their goal through an analysis of him. They involuntarily think of ‘man’ as an aeterna veritas, as something that remains constant in the midst of all flux, as a sure measure of things. Everything the philosopher has declared about man is, however, at bottom no more than a testimony as to the man of a very limited period of time. Lack of historical sense is the family failing of all philosophers.” This is one respect in which Nietzsche and MacIntyre agree. The philosophical analysis of morality will be impoverished if it is not historically informed. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1, §2.

2. The Project of the Genealogy “Would anyone like to have a little look down into the secret of how ideals are fabricated on this earth?” Ideals are human creations. Nietzsche believes that it is only by looking at the origins and history of our moral ideals that we will be able to appreciate their true nature. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Essay 1, § 14.

3. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality Stage 1 Aristocratic Morality (Ancient Greece) • The morality of the strong. • GOOD vs. Bad. • Based on self-affirmation. • The aristocratic equation: Good=aristocratic=beautiful=happy=loved by the gods. Stage 2 Slave Morality (Ancient Judaism) • The morality of the weak. • Good vs. EVIL. • Based on resentment. • Sustained by a revenge-fantasy. • Places emphasis on free will, especially as evidenced through self-denial. • Places supreme value on pity. Stage 3 Slave Revolt in Morals (Christianity) •The morality of the weak is foisted on the strong by a priestly caste. • The aristocrats become sick with self-hatred. • The belief in a soul helps man to become “an interesting animal.” • Self-assertion still happens in sublimated forms (e.g. religious art). Stage 4 Modernity (Death of God) • A Christian asceticism lingers amongst those who have abandoned Christianity. • The gradual emergence of “the most contemptible human being,” the Last Man, incapable of greatness and concerned only with pleasure and the relief of suffering. • Nietzsche awaits the coming of the Übermensch, who will overcome nihilism.

4. The Beatitudes And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; And they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all. And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets. The Gospel According to St. Luke, Chapter 6, verses 17-26 (KJV)

5. Nietzschean Themes Ayn Rand’s is strongly influenced by Nietzsche. A famous passage from her novel Atlas Shrugged echoes Nietzsche’s theme that the idea that self-denial for the sake of others is the highest moral good can be a debilitating doctrine: “If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders – what would you tell him to do?” “I… don't know. What… could he do? What would you tell him?” “To shrug.” Rand had read deeply in Nietzsche’s works, although her attitude toward him was not one of unqualified admiration. She had planned to use a quotation from Nietzsche as the epigraph for her novel The Fountainhead, but she changed her mind because she believed that there was a dangerously irrationalist element in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Dutton, 1992), 455.

6. Nietzschean Themes The Third Man is adapted from a novel by Graham Greene, but the film’s most famous speech was added to the screenplay by Orson Welles: “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed – they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Nietzsche is not celebrating war or murder, but he does think that a culture should be judged on the strength of its creative achievements rather than the absence of conflict. The Third Man

7. Nietzschean Themes James Baldwin wrote in his memoir No Name in the Street: “People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.” Nietzsche does not believe that there is a universal moral law, nor does he believe that we shall be rewarded or punished in an afterlife. But he believes that it still matters what we do. We must become who we are. James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (New York: The Dial Press, 1972), 55.