As odd as it
is, I want to read more Nietzsche. I
found several interesting excerpts when I was researching for my group’s
presentation, which made me want to further investigate his work. The excerpts
are inflammatory and confusing; they make me feel like I don’t understand
Nietzsche at all even after reading every selection in our text. I want to pin Nietzsche down and figure him
out. What I found in The Will to Power suggests that he would
approve of genocide, as he calls the will to power: “the great cultivating
idea: the races that cannot bear it stand condemned; those who find it the
greatest benefit are chosen to rule… I want to teach the idea that gives many
the right to erase themselves…” section 1053 & 1056. Yet Nietzsche also specified that those who
suspect him of Darwinism are educated morons (Ecce Homo, 41). He’s not simple, which is irritating as a logician but intriguing as an artist. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche talks about finding
the Overman in the Machiavellian Prince, which I understand to be controversial
even though I don’t remember the details of Machiavelli’s propositions. It’s tantalizing because Nietzsche’s meaning
of the Overman wasn’t laid out in the text selections. I want to read more so I can iron out the
apparent inconsistencies and see how Nietzsche defines his terms.
Another thing I'm stuck on is why Nietzsche hates God and religion. I know there are legitimate reasons to hate
God and religion, but I don’t understand Nietzsche’s reasons or even his
concept of God. In the “Error of
Freewill” in Twilight of the Idols, he
says that if “we deny God, we deny the responsibility that originates from God:
and thereby we redeem the world.” First
of all, I have a problem with the idea that if I deny something then it will go
away. Secondly, if negation or denial
did work for some things, I think God would be too big and powerful to be
subject to our negation. Aside from
that, Nietzsche’s statement has all sorts of interesting implications. He says that the world needs us to redeem
ourselves from our responsibility. He
seems to say that responsibility condemns us and we have the power to save
ourselves by denying God. This confused me at first because I was
thinking of redemption, responsibility, and God in the Christian way—a personal
God, self-indictment by trespassing laws, the need for a savior. But then I remembered that Nietzsche doesn’t
talk about God as a personal being. He
sees God as a figment of our consciousness.
There is no real trespassing, the only self-indictment is breaking our
own self-made rules. So we’re condemning ourselves with a figment of our
self-created morality and we can knock it off if we so choose, thereby redeeming
ourselves.
But if
responsibility and redemption really are that arbitrary, I don’t see why I can’t
just as easily deny Nietzsche as Nietzsche can deny God. He says that I need to reconcile to the idea
of eternal recurrence by accepting the will to power, but I’m able to deny that
idea as well as that method of acceptance. If
the universe is a circle, then the things that make him determinist are the
same things that make me libertarian.
Essentially, realizing the eternal recurrence “means” nothing—Nietzsche
cannot indicate an alternative. The moralists HAVE TO try to force their custom on others, the noblemen HAVE TO resist descending into the rabble, the utilitarians HAVE TO cling to their figment of God. I assume that if Nietzsche tells me something about how the world works, then
there is a purpose in his telling. But I
don’t see a change to make or “should” to follow. I don’t see the point in revealing this
underworld, the ring of eternal recurrence.
Why should I will to power? If the
universe really is a circle of non-progressing mutation, so what? More reading!
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