by Roy Jackson
Nietzsche’s morality permeates all of his works, but the most systematic works of moral philosophy are Beyond Good and Evil and its ‘sequel’, On the Genealogy of Morals.
Nietzsche and moral philosophy
‘The overcoming of morality, or even (in a certain sense) the self-overcoming of morality: let that be the name for the long, clandestine work that was kept in reserve for the most subtle and honest (and also the most malicious) people of conscience today, living touchstones of the human heart.’
Beyond Good and Evil, 32
Morality is the branch of philosophy that studies what is good and what is right. It is usually studied from two different perspectives: normative ethics and meta-ethics. Whereas normative ethics is concerned with what sort of things are good and in providing guidance for moral decision making, meta-ethics (also referred to as analytic ethics) is primarily concerned with what we mean when, for example, we say ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘just’.
• Normative ethics may advise us on whether or not an action is morally good or bad – say, to have an abortion – and, in this respect, it can be seen as more concrete and practical.
• Meta-ethics is more concerned with the language we use – that is, how we define ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when we say, for example, ‘abortion is good’ or ‘abortion is bad’ – and, in this way, it is of a more abstract nature.
However, just because meta-ethics may be more abstract does not mean that it is any less important: some philosophers would argue that there is little point in looking for guidance as to what is good without understanding what we mean by using the term ‘good’. More specifically, meta-ethics attempts to answer such questions as: Where do our morals come from? Are they a product of our culture and history or, when we use the term ‘good’, for example, are we in some way tapping into a universal goodness that is a law of the universe in perhaps the same way as certain mathematical laws appear to be? If it is the former, then morality is a subjective human invention; if it is the latter, then humans can, theoretically at least, discover objective facts about the universe.
The distinction between normative and meta-ethics is not always a clear one, and certainly many moral philosophers would not have made such a distinction. Whereas meta-ethics has been dominant in twentieth-century moral philosophy, especially in Britain and America, its origins actually rest with the beginning of philosophy proper and the work of Plato (and probably Socrates) some 2,500 years ago. Therefore, there is nothing ‘new’ about meta-ethics apart from the terminology and a more sophisticated development.
‘Moral judgement belongs, as does religious judgement, to a level of ignorance at which even the concept of the real, the distinction between the real and imaginary, is lacking.’
Twilight of the Idols, vii, 1
Spotlight
When Beyond Good and Evil was first published, it did not sell well. Nietzsche therefore decided to write ‘an expansion and elaboration’ of this work, which he called On the Genealogy of Morals. He wrote this short work in 1887. In that year there was a major earthquake on the French Riviera, where Nietzsche was residing at the time, which claimed some 2,000 lives. Yet, while people panicked and fled their residences, Nietzsche himself slept through the quake and, upon waking, strolled through Nice, helping out where he could. He said that he did not experience fear but instead a large amount of irony – a reference to the fact that his Beyond Good and Evil failed to achieve the earthquake in ideas that he had so hoped for.
The death of God
Nietzsche is not so much concerned with the fact that our beliefs are false, but rather with the belief about these beliefs. That is, why should we hold the beliefs that we do? At the beginning of Nietzsche’s epitome Beyond Good and Evil, he raises the question of why we want truth: why not untruth? It is frequently the career of philosophers to seek for truth, and Nietzsche targets them for his main criticism. He believed the most important question should not be what is true or not but the extent to which a belief supports life and maintains a species. When philosophers make claims to truth, they are merely presenting a preconceived dogma that tells you more about the philosopher’s beliefs than anything to do with truths. For Nietzsche, this is especially true in the case of moral philosophy: an attempt to make a science of morals, to establish an objective morality.
‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’
The Gay Science, 125
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche first declares that God is dead. By this, he means that society no longer has a use for God; the belief does not in any way help the survival of the species; rather, it hinders it. The implications of this are important for ethics, for with the death of God comes the death of religious, especially Christian, morality: a morality that has underpinned Western culture since the fourth century.
Nietzsche’s naturalism
Nietzsche is as much a psychologist as he is a philosopher. His interest is in not so much the truth or falsehood of a moral belief, but rather in why human beings prefer one form of morality to another. Nietzsche’s philosophy influenced two significant thinkers: the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and the philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–84). Yet, as the Nietzsche scholar Brian Leiter has noted, these two thinkers interpret Nietzsche very differently. On the one hand, Freud saw Nietzsche as a philosopher who revealed deep, hidden facts about human nature that help to explain what we are, while, on the other hand, Foucault praises Nietzsche for denying that there are any facts about human nature! Which of these views is the more accurate understanding of Nietzsche?
The question is an important one in terms of his views on morality because so many moral philosophers before Nietzsche have attempted to establish a moral outlook in the belief that there are facts about human nature. The view that our morality can be based in some way on our nature is referred to as ethical naturalism. Famous philosophers who would be considered ethical naturalists include the British utilitarians Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–73), and also the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). However, naturalism has its origins with the ancient Greeks, as so much of philosophy does: Aristotle (384–322 BCE) could also be considered a naturalist in his ethics.
As an example of how naturalism works, we can take Bentham’s utilitarianism, which works on the principle that it is human nature to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. Given this supposed fact of human nature, Bentham argues that moral decisions should be based on the amount of pain and pleasure the act causes: the greater the amount of happiness, the more morally right the act. Kant, for his part, focused on the rational element of human nature – rather than emotions – and on that basis argued that the best moral decisions are rational decisions. This is an all-too-simplistic account of what are extremely complex ethical theories, but the point is that, if we can determine what is fundamental about our human nature – what makes us tick, so to speak – then we have a sound psychological, semi-scientific basis for our actions.
Spotlight
Jeremy Bentham left his entire estate to University College London after his death. His body is embalmed and sits in a cabinet in the college, although his real head was damaged and so the body now has a wax head. On rare occasions, Bentham is taken out of the cabinet and wheeled into board meetings, where he is recorded as ‘present, but not voting’.
The modern view regards Nietzsche also as an ethical naturalist as opposed to Foucault’s conception of Nietzsche as denying that there are any facts about nature. It is the ‘modern’ view because scholarship regarding Nietzsche has changed over the years and certainly in the mid-twentieth century Nietzsche was considered more the champion of existentialism (see Chapter 11): existence precedes essence, we are what we make of ourselves and have no ‘function’ or ‘purpose’ aside from what we give ourselves. While it is correct to say that there are existential characteristics of Nietzsche’s philosophy, he is perhaps in other respects more of a traditionalist than people mi
ght have imagined, despite his ‘God is dead’ declaration.
We can say with certainty that Nietzsche opposes attempts to find moral truths in some transcendent metaphysics, such as that presented by Plato. Yet it seems curious that Nietzsche is both very critical of the moral philosophical tradition and yet at the same time seems very much a part of it, at least in the naturalist sense. He thinks that every moral system so far produced is naive and, in the case of utilitarianism, ‘boneheaded’. Such extreme scepticism and malevolent language understandably suggest that Nietzsche has no time for attempts at moral systems, but the following from Beyond Good and Evil gives a different impression:
‘For to return man to nature; to master the many conceited and gushing interpretations and secondary meanings that have heretofore been scribbled and painted over that eternal original text homo natura; to ensure that henceforth man faces man in the same way that currently, grown tough with the discipline of science, he faces the other nature…’
Beyond Good and Evil, 230
Commentaries often emphasize Nietzsche’s reference to the ‘discipline of science’ in the above quote, and so it has been argued that Nietzsche intends his moral philosophy to be in line with scientific, empirical enquiry. However, while it is one thing to say that metaphysical speculation should be rejected – and this rejection seems a correct reading of Nietzsche – it may be going too far to say that Nietzsche intended his moral philosophy to be based upon scientific discoveries (and by ‘scientific’ here is meant discoveries in human physiology and psychology especially).
A more accurate reading of the quote above is that Nietzsche wanted moral investigation to be as rigorous as scientific method, not a reflection of scientific discoveries. However, this reading is also somewhat unsatisfactory because, if we are not able to make any reference to scientific facts about nature, it is difficult to see how human beings can be ‘translated back into nature’. At best, all Nietzsche seems to be saying here is that we should avoid idle metaphysical speculation, and he often uses terms in his texts such as ‘observe better’ and ‘study more’, which suggests that we need to be more disciplined and rigorous in our approach to moral investigation in a way analogous to scientific method.
However, how we are to be ‘more disciplined’ is not altogether clear, nor is it apparent whether such attempts at scientific rigour would produce positive results. If Nietzsche is simply saying that we should copy scientific methods (in terms of detecting cause and effect) in determining moral actions, then it could well be argued that other suspect disciplines, such as astrology for instance, are justified in their methods. An astrologer looks for causes for actions: the fact that he or she believes those causes to be inherent within the alignment of stars is irrelevant, unless you want to argue that such claims must also be supported by scientific evidence. Therefore, it is not just the method that is important, but the results must also be continuous with the results of science. Only then can we say that astrology is ‘bad science’.
However, as shall be shown later in this chapter, Nietzsche makes a number of claims about morality (and other things such as the will to power) that have little or no basis in scientific or empirical evidence. As with his talk of the will to power (see Chapter 6), it seems that we have to see Nietzsche’s moral philosophy as an attempt to get us to react, to present a psychological thesis, rather than to argue for any factual account of morality, in which case Nietzsche does not seem to be a naturalist at all, and Foucault may well have been right in his interpretation!
The debate over the degree to which Nietzsche is an ethical naturalist or not is an ongoing one and requires a closer analysis than we have space for here.
Case study: the problem with ethical naturalism: the naturalistic fallacy
Another problem with ethical naturalism more generally, but one that can also be specifically addressed towards Nietzsche if he is a naturalist, is that he could then be accused of what is known as the naturalistic fallacy. The Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume (1711–76) famously wrote:
‘In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds from some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.’
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
What Hume is suggesting here is that moral philosophers are responsible for an error in logic when they move from factual statements to value statements: from an ‘is’ (fact) to an ‘ought’ (value). For example, consider the following argument:
1 There are many poor people in the world.
2 The wealthy nations have the financial means to end world poverty.
3 Therefore, the wealthy nations should end world poverty.
Given the first two factual statements above, Hume observes that the conclusion does not logically follow. You could quite easily replace the conclusion with, for example, ‘Therefore, the wealthy nations should get wealthier!’ While we may be morally outraged by this conclusion, there is nothing logically necessary in the statement that rich nations should help poor nations. For the argument to be logically necessary, it requires deduction – for example:
1 There are many poor people in the world.
2 John is poor.
3 Therefore, John is one of many poor people in the world.
This is a deductive argument because, given factual statements 1 and 2, factual statement 3 follows logically. Importantly here, an ‘ought’ is not being introduced, just factual statements. The rightness or wrongness of the facts is not an issue here. If you consider utilitarianism again, of which Nietzsche was so critical:
1 Human beings have a given nature.
2 The nature of human beings is to avoid pain and pursue pleasure.
3 Therefore, human beings ought to avoid pain and pursue pleasure.
The first two statements are factual (although they could, of course, be wrong), but the third is a value statement. Hume brilliantly highlighted a crucial error here, which applies equally to Kant (we are rational, therefore we ought to be rational) and Aristotle (we have a function, therefore we ought to fulfil our function). If Nietzsche is also a naturalist, he can be accused of making the same logical error.
Slave morality
Two years after The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche wrote Ecce Homo, in which he states the intention of his first essay of Genealogy:
‘The truth of the first essay is the psychology of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of ressentiment, not, as is no doubt believed, out of the ‘spirit’ – essentially a counter-movement, the great revolt against the domination of noble values’.
Ecce Homo, ‘On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic’
In fact, Essay 1 is an elaboration of the relatively lengthy Section 260 of Beyond Good and Evil. The very title of the book, with the use of the word ‘genealogy’, is important, as it was provocative at the time to so much as suggest that morals have a genealogy – that is, a history and development – rather than adopting the view that morals are just ‘there’ waiting to be discovered. This, then, is Nietzsche’s main argument in the whole text but, as stated in Essay 1, morals are not universal and immutable, but historical products that are therefore contingent creations of particular people at particular times with particular motives. The emphasis on motives is important here, because where Nietzsche is particularly original is in getting us to question the va
lue of our morals rather than to assume that moral values are intrinsically valuable.
This enterprise is also indicated in the title Beyond Good and Evil: to understand what we mean when we use moral terms such as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ we need to go beyond them. In addition, Nietzsche thinks moral philosophers are wrong in believing that modern man is morally better than past generations and he especially attacks utilitarianism, the dominant moral theory at the time.
The fact that Nietzsche claims that our morality has a traceable, evolved ancestry at all would have shocked many a reader in his time, for morals were seen as given by the divine lawgiver God and so there is no genealogy to trace. If the lawgiver disappears, then so does the law and the fear that what will result will be moral anarchy. Yet Nietzsche argues that morality can be explained in naturalistic terms, without the need for a God or gods. They are natural phenomena that have evolved as a result of the need to keep societies together and to check instinctual drives that would destroy the unity of the group if they were allowed free rein. Therefore, morality is a result of circumstance – and it is the circumstance that comes first, which is then followed by morality, not the other way around.
For Nietzsche, therefore, morality:
• is a result of circumstance, not the other way round
• serves a useful function in that it binds the fabric of the group
• can, however, outlive its use and become a hindering custom.