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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power,
This review is from: Beyond Good and Evil (Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future) (Paperback)
This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities.Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of a "will to power" is central to his philosophical beliefs, and a recurring theme in his book "Beyond Good and Evil." When Nietzsche was a budding philosopher, he admired and was influenced by the writings of another philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. However, Schopenhauer, like most scientists and philosophers of his day, attributed the "will to live" as the highest motivational life force in nature. Nietzsche observed that the "will to live" was not life affirming enough and that humankind needed a higher power. Therefore, Nietzsche theorized that living beings were not just motivated by a survival instinct to live. He understood that beings had a higher need, which he called the "will to power." One can easily interpret Nietzsche's "will to power" as a method by which people strive to grow and nurture their creative energies, and interact with the world. Nietzsche thinks that "will to power" was coupled with humankind's innate nature and passion to create. Nietzsche thinks that this "will to power" was the true driving force of humankind. "A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power, self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results" (Nietzsche Aphorism 13). The "will to power" causes humans to dominate and impose their will on others. Thus for Nietzsche, humankind's "will to power" meant that life and will is the exploitation of others, and it has been since the beginning of time, immemorial (Nietzsche Aphorism 258). In fact, Nietzsche believed that one could take his concept of the "will to power" one-step further, and use it to explain the motivations of whole societies, and nation states, as well as the individual (Nietzsche aphorism 257, 259). Nietzsche tends to be very passionate and absolutist in his aphorisms. He wrote so much that one could find plenty of instances in his works where he has contradicted himself. Nietzsche's concept of "will to power" is a philosophic thought, which led to many interpretations. To assume that Nietzsche thought that the primary instincts of the human being came down to violence and little else, amounts to a gross underestimation of Nietzsche's views of humankind. However, most of his writings on the concept of a "will to power," if interpreted as being violent, have to be understood more in vain with what he saw as the constant struggle of overcoming one's individual weaknesses (Nietzsche aphorism 22, 260). Nietzsche envisioned his "will to power" more along the lines of applying one's will in self-overcoming. Nietzsche's writings about violence are usually meant as violence against giving in to the herd or slave morality. The herd, as Nietzsche names it, is the vast majority of humans who throughout history have obeyed and followed the status quo. The herd has stymied human development with their slave morality (Nietzsche aphorism 198, 199). The slave morality invented the dichotomy of good and evil. "Moral judgments and condemnations constitute the favorite revenge of the spiritually limited against those less limited" (Nietzsche aphorism 219). The herd morality causes people to sublimate their creative drive. Thus, Nietzsche is imploring the few noble humans--the few geniuses to struggle against following the herd morality. Nietzsche wants the noble people to invent their own morality and values to live their lives by, and to fulfill their own "will to power" and not indulge in an effort to attract others to their values (Nietzsche aphorism 199, 201, 260). Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, history, and psychology.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Profound Book,
By
This review is from: Beyond Good and Evil (Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future) (Paperback)
By Samuel T Goldberg, MD, psychiatrist/psychoanalyst Columbia Maryland sglmn61@aol.comIn the early chapters of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche in effect wipes the slate clean, showing how previous philosophers and moralities were in their grasp inadequate. There is a "definite fundamental sch...eme of possible philosophies"(Aphorism 20), as there is of possible moralities (260), and particular philosphers and moralists merely fill in their respective places on these spectrums. Nietzsche offers a comprehensive critique of all such systems. The philosophers are unable to perceive even what in themselves wishes for truth, and they do not see that truth and virtue may in fact derive from deceptiveness and wickedness, which may be necessary functions for life itself. (Aph. 2-4) The will to truth may be merely a refinement of the will to ignorance. (24) Certain falsehoods may be nourishing and necessary physiologically. Deceptive appearance is necessary for life itself. (34) In a voice of irony, he acknowledges that we might need mathematical science, despite its falsehood. Philosophers and scientists wish to impose their morality, their ideal, their concepts on nature out of their pride, wishing to appropriate nature. Less the truthfulness of their concepts than this underlying will to power motivates the self-deceptively put "will to truth". It is but an old moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance, or even that there is in reality any opposition between "truth" and "falsehood" at all. They may be merely shades of the same thing, "degrees of appearance".(34) The very existence of "stuff" or matter that underlies the "real world" is highly doubtful. Likewise, even the basic assumptions of a unitary "self" that thinks, of an "I", is also but an old falsifying superstition to which we cling for comfort and vanity. Again, " free will" being an illusion shows the importance of intentionality to be illusory. "The decisive value of an intention lies precisely in what is unintentional in it." (32) In this, he anticipates psychoanalysis. Thinking about and questioning morality is itself immoral. (228) We have, after all, pluripotential access within to every barbarism(223). Morals, we've discovered, are a mere phenomenon of nature, not absolute nor above nature; there are no universal goods or values (194).Our modern "scientific", historic, scholarly observations and evaluations of all moralities and cultures, then, puts us in the position at best of being parodists of all moralities, undermining every one.(223) Our "transcendent" position is empty. Thus, our intrinsic, physiological aggression (will to power), manifested as "scientific skepticism", has relentlessly critiqued all that we loved or worshipped, utterly destroying each in turn. Having diagnosed our new condition, that we have assassinated not only the "old soul concept", ie, the "subject", showing that it is a questionable mere appearance as much as the "object", Nietzsche then sketches out the grim consequences . We have sacrificed ourselves, reality, finally even God himself, leaving us with only the Nothing to worship, "the final cruelty."(55) Recognizing that there is no objective foundation for morality in the world, that there is no universal moral law (186) , that the inner essence of nature and man is no more than raw will to power, instills profound pessimism. The truth that there is no truth may be deadly, as Leo Strauss put it. It is better that only few people realize that there is no truth; the general propogation of this insight could be calamitous; Thus, it is good that the study of morality is boring. (228) Can there nevertheless somehow be life-affirmation from this insight? Finding or asserting this seems a principle goal of Nietche's. The strength of drives per se, of the will to power, which includes the capacity to sublimate, train and cultivate that raw will to higher forms of "spirituality", may be a way out. But, without any absolute nor objective standard from any source other than the one who wills, the ultimate value of what is willed can derive only from the source of will itself; it is self-posited. The one who wills most strongly creates values, creates the orientation of better and worse, and need not refer nor resort to any standard independently of his own nobility. Nietszche seems to celebrate this, but he recognizes the dangers, describing even proto-Nazism (208). The "philosopher of the future" , with these insights in hand, creates truth and value, rules and legislates, becoming himself the telos of mankind .(211) Man is both creature and Creator(225), in the image of God most literally; man created God in his own image. The"philosopher of the future" extends the sphere of his responsibility to include the all; he might undertake "audacious and painful experiments" that "the softhearted and the effeminate tastes of democracy could not approve... They will be harder (and perhaps not always only against themselves) than humane people might wish." (210) He raises the question: Is cruelty itself a good, merely a necessity, or merely to be recognized as a primary reality of nature, or of life? Men and values are not equal, and according to the self-posited valuation of the great men, since they are themselves the Whither and Wherefore of mankind, what is right for one is hardly fair for all. Exploitation of others might be necessary; As opposed to Kant's moral imperative, by which each human consciousness must be only regarded always as an end in itself, never a means, this new morality, truer to the nature of things, unhinged from any absolute, has all lower men as only means to the ends of the men with the strongest wills. We can see how this is a "dangerous" book, which, if misinterpreted or misrepresented, as in fact it was for political ends by some Germans in the 1930's, might be used to pervert Nietcszche, making him seem to promote the worst outrages, when in fact he was merely the sad herald.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Posthumous Man,
By
This review is from: Beyond Good and Evil (Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future) (Paperback)
Nietzsche is the most inspiring of all modern philosophers excepting Ayn Rand, who used a very different approach for exposing her philosophy (The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). Beyond Good and Evil is often touted as Nietzsche's greatest work, but I like Geneology of Morals ( On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo) at least as much, since I think it asks some questions that are at least as interesting as these, especially "Meaning of the Aesthetic Ideal". Some people imagine that philosophers are boring, and of course this book, like all important books, does take some work, but I often find myself laughing out loud when reading Nietzsche, since he has a really funny and often unexpected turn of phrase.The important concepts in this book include the difference between slave morality and master morality. Nietzsche tries to help the reader understand that there are no absolutes and that everything can be understood differently from a different point of view. He sees the greatest danger as the mindless, instinctive herd, and warns strongly against it, including especially the flawed and oxymoronic concept of the "common good". Since the rise of the Jacobins, more people have been murdered, starved to death or enslaved for the "common good" than for any other excuse. After Nietzsche went insane from syphillus, his sister tried to "reengineer" his works and portray him as anti-Semitic, which he definitely was not. The Nazis also propagandized that he was, or would have been, one of them. None of this was true, but it led many to avoid his work. What IS true is that he was an anti-Christian (read The Anti-Christ and Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All) and THAT has led to his shunning by a different group. Read Nietzsche for yourself and don't depend on some guide to tell you what he says. Ignore the boring Cliff Notes and get any translation by Walter Kaufmann, who is a terrific translator and famous Nietzsche scholar.
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