Evaluation of the success of Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of Morality

 

Introduction

If you were to design a machine for endless debate and disagreement you would still be less successful than Nietzsche. His critique of morality, On the Genealogy of Morals, ‘GM’ from here onwards, paints a picture of the complex road that led us to our current value systems and the characters and instincts that caused it. The following evaluation looks at how effective Nietzsche was with this critique, arguing the although he succeeds in part there are also areas where more recent advances in our understanding of ourselves offer a better explanation.

Evaluating Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s preface sets out what he wishes to achieve in producing a polemic, “a piece of writing or a speech in which a person strongly attacks or defends a particular opinion, person, idea, or set of beliefs” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2023), on morality via the method of genealogy, the conditions that would cause humans to invent Good and Evil. The Genealogy built upon his previous work and Nietzsche contends that one must have an emotional connection to them, not just one of knowledge (Nietzsche, 2012). As such we must carefully consider the way in which we evaluate the work and even then, as noted by Spector, there are so many disparate views on Nietzsche, “one cannot agree with them all”, and we should be suspicious of the source itself given the result it has caused (Spector, 1995).

Generally, we consider morality or ethics as a system of values which enable us to determine the rightness or wrongness of thoughts and actions (Taylor, 2005). Although this can be associated with myriad areas, I will aim to limit the evaluation to specifically what Nietzsche criticises and the method he uses to do it.

‘Genealogy’ is a form of historical critique that, by tracing the components of an idea, it reveals their true nature and the actors involved, often providing a new previously hidden perspective. Nietzsche’s method relies on psychological explanations of our behaviour and thoughts on supposedly well understood beliefs, such as religion (Hill, 1991). As such the ‘history’ Nietzsche presents is unlikely to be accurate but rather it sets out a series of developmental stages ideas go through within an individual or a group. It is in the use of the concepts Nietzsche lays out and not his ability as a historian that should be the benchmark of his success.

General Themes of GM

In GM Nietzsche asks: “How was it that humility and meekness, modesty and denial of the flesh – and, in a way, the wholesale denial of the self – were turned into values? How can one explain that these became the compass-setting gauges by which people steered the courses of their lives?” (Nietzsche, 2012)

The answer to those questions forms part of his no-saying phase after his yes-saying phase: the latter being completed by Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche, 2007). GM is more of a blueprint for ‘overcoming’ morality, that human, all too human invention (Large, 1995).

The scope of the critique, which heavily targets Christian, Kantian and Utilitarian philosophy, is actually aimed at the ideas that each of them have that cause damage to an individual or a societies will to life, ultimately damaging ‘higher individuals’ for the benefit of ‘lower individuals. The value systems that GM highlights that should be mistrusted are ones that consider themselves to be universal, give individuals free will (Free Will Thesis), visible inner worlds (Transparency of Self Thesis) and claim that we are created equal (Similarity Thesis) (Lieter, 2020).

Value systems do have the effect of differentiating the good from the bad, or evil, which would create a caste of higher or lower individuals. The value system would be brought about by a wider system of beliefs which means the level to which you are convinced is based on your acceptance of Nietzsche’s belief that the ‘will to life’ should be our primary measure of value over other possible objectives . The general point is that the differentiation and origin of value systems must be questioned. That corrosive norms can erode societies, or at the very least change them, is a persuasive notion (Lieter, 2020).This is not to say we should not have obligations and agreements between one another but the basis for these should not be universal or anti-life (Geuss, 1997).

The existence of - or nonexistence of - free will based on the reasons Nietzsche puts forward, that we lack freedom as we are ‘causa sui’ or caused by, are simple and have been both supported and countered with neither side gaining a clear upper hand (Nietzsche, 2012). However, the view that we are a fixed type of person is not entirely true; our brains tune and prune themselves throughout their life and large changes in individuals do occur (Barrett, 2020).

I concur with Nietzsche’s rejection of the Transparency of Self Thesis, that we do not have perfect understanding and control of our inner world, as seen through both akratic and recalcitrant behaviour (McCumiskey, 2020) (McCumiskey, 2022). Our thoughts come when they wish, not when we wish for them (Lieter, 2020). As such, any attempt to build a value system that relies on us understanding all of our thoughts and actions will be lead us to make poor judgements.

Just as the view that there is not a universal morality within GM, the view that these systems rely on showing equality amongst individuals is also well argued for (Geuss, 1997). We are all different in some aspect whether it be our physical appearance, thoughts, or actions. We may be grouped but a grouping capable of joining us all together under one standard is easily dismissed, supporting Nietzsche’s view that any value system that exalts a sameness across all that reality does not support through observation leading to the rejection of the Similarity Thesis.

GM builds a grand and often imprecise narrative. Although the core narrative is persuasive, it is difficult to grasp at exactly why, especially if we look at recorded history. This kind of system is well described by Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach where he show how there are generally two type of system, one that gives some of the truth and no falsehood and another that gives us all of the truth but some of its results are false (Hofstadter, 1979). GM overall falls into the second type as it aims at trying to capture all aspects morality needs but in doing so any insights gained from detailed analysis needs be used with caution.

The ‘slave revolt’ in morality

“The truth of the first essay is the psychology of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of ressentiment, not, as is believed, out of the ‘spirit’, – a countermovement in its very essence, the great revolt against the dominance of noble values” (Nietzsche, 2007).

The second essay starts with English psychologists seeking immortal truth but not in the right way. They look at the concept of goodness and not those who are good; they look too deeply and do not question the concept of good itself. Nietzsche argues that those who are truly good, the nobles, have been brought down and their virtues forgotten by our ‘herd instinct’ and that tells us we need no ego. Part of the ruling class become priestly, panderers to the poor, who use their worst instincts against them and the nobles. This process takes place over many years and has been brought about by many doctrines (Jews, Christians, Plebs), driven by resentful creativity due to a ‘lack of’ rather than a triumphant striving. Leaving what was previously good, or triumphant not just as bad but as evil, as those systems lead to denying or causing suffering to others. Noble ideas can lead to bad individuals such as Napoleon but unlike slave morality they do not lead to evil ones (Nietzsche, 2012).

In his strategic view Jay argues this is untenable, the revolt is for the weak to harm the powerful, resentment is great enough to cause action. He asks why would the weak use a roundabout way of harming the powerful? I would argue Jay has straw-manned Nietzsche’s conceptual framework as a described plan enacted by an individual or group consciously as opposed to the end result of a more complex system, Wallace notes this but still disagrees (Wallace, 2007). The study of the spread of emergent behaviour through the spread of ideas or memes is now well understood and would support Nietzsche’s characterisation (Lynch, 1998). Even so there are specific political movements that now do table new sets of values. For example, Populism, best personified by Donald Trump in American politics (Hunston, n.d.), or Social Justice movements started by critical race theory (Britannica, 2022); both propose a ruling elite group that are not just bad but are evil in some way and portray negative traits of which the members of the down-trodden party hold positive opposite traits (Mueller, 2016).

Jay has a preferred proposal: his ‘Expressive interpretation’ which details how resentment at a moral psychological level would lead to the slave revolt, to which I agree is a reasonable view as peoples will and emotions when aggregated could drive them to take action in order to change their circumstance (Wallace, 2007).

The emergence of bad conscience and guilt

“The second essay gives the psychology of the conscience: conscience is not, as is believed, ‘the voice of God in man’, – it is the instinct of cruelty that is turned inwards after it cannot discharge itself outwards anymore. Cruelty is first brought to light here as one of the oldest and most persistent underpinnings of culture” (Nietzsche, 2007).

Nietzsche explains how Humans are the animal that can promise, that as a group can have a morality of custom. These promises we can make to ourselves and others and through our memory brings about the emergence of our conscience. This conscience can be made to punish those who feel they owe another or themselves. This creditor/debtor relationship goes from practical trading to a suffering on behalf of those who are owed; the suffering becomes the payment. We are given a way out not through paying debts but increased suffering. A further step paints suffering as the purpose of life, and such a view is attributed to Christianity. Nietzsche argues we should actually aim for prosperity amongst creditors to forgive or ignore debts. Instead, doctrines of revenge disguised as justice demand payment, even when not needed, and these are entrenched through codification into religious doctrine and laws. The codified system of constraints forces individuals’ energies to be internalised causing our instincts for freedom to produce a bad conscience towards our thoughts and actions. For all these internalised debts now need an ultimate creditor, so we create God (Nietzsche, 2012).

In analysing the second essay Risse provides a view from Nietzsche that explains how a complex structure must have isolatable roots, of which each of the essays identifies a root of Morality. He agrees with Nietzsche about the fundamentals of instincts, our inner world and the debt we incur to ancestors and gods and that the death of God will allow us to find a new better way (Risse, 2001).

Risse’s account is questioned by Ridley (Ridley, 2005) and Leiter (Leiter, 2014). The question is if  whether God comes before guilt or guilt comes before God? Risse’s account and following defence of it relies too much on weaker external sources and unanswerable quirks of language, leaving the likelihood of common consensus on this part of the genealogy unlikely to ever resolve itself (McCumiskey, 2021).

A more interesting critique of the emergence of the bad conscience is the more modern idea of the Selfish gene. Richard Dawkins builds a compelling case for how genes, via an evolutionary process, would survive if they cause altruistic behaviour that allows them to spread in a population (Dawkins, 2016). This presents a counter to Nietzsche’s idea of the guilty conscience, firstly by showing altruistic behavioural drivers as pre-dating Christianity or indeed any concept of God, and secondly by showing our fundamental instincts and drivers are not necessarily aggressive, much rather that they are tuned towards effective cooperation. We can sacrifice for the greater good of the collective and accept that some will be masters whilst others become slaves if we as a whole prosper.

The ascetic ideal

“The third essay gives the answer to the question of how the ascetic ideal, the priestly ideal, acquired such incredible power despite the fact that it is the detrimental ideal par excellence, a will to the end, a decadence ideal” (Nietzsche, 2007).

Nietzsche explains how we will nothingness rather than not will. This instinct leads us to ascetic ideals. He paves the road to those ideals through a range of characters. Philosophers, for example, start to see things as only if they can be seen as such without interest or emotion, as things in themselves. This, Nietzsche asserts, is a case of philosophers denying life to themselves in order to suffer for the truth, a truth they may never even be able to achieve. These types of movement start to be guided by priests who spread these resentful and hostile ideals to harness the power of slaves. They place life as against death, preserving life but limiting it. The limiters then hold themselves up as something to strive for, a gold standard over nobles, but they only anaesthetise rather than cure, keeping their followers forever ill. Nietzsche also explains how philosophers and scientists look like they are the answer, but in reality they are just the next phase of the ascetic ideals as they merely have a metaphysical faith not a love of life, affirming another world but not the one we must live in (Nietzsche, 2012).

These Ascetic Ideals adopted by philosophers, artists, priests and most people are driven by striving for optimal conditions and to maximise their power. Given that suffering is unavoidable and meaningless, suffering is unbearable; anything that gives meaning to suffering is something life will choose as meaningless suffering is the worst fate we can suffer (Leiter, 2014). This leaves us convincingly, if we leave to one side for the moment the premise that humans are inherently cruel and all of life is suffering, the need for new ideals to replace the ascetic ones. Science, immoralism and Antichrists look promising but Nietzsche exposes each as ascetic in disguise. It is reasonable that science cannot produce values beyond pursuing truth. Leiter highlights that the changes to science to seek knowledge not just truth and to accept that truth will always be beyond its reach gives us the best chance to move forward alongside a proposal that we should seek ‘amor fati’, a love of fate. Han-Pile points out key issues with amor fati for agapeic love as our values once transfigured would not seek such a kind of love (Han-Pile, 2011).

The third essay is vastly speculative beyond its effective arguments against our existing value systems and how they are unlikely to truly deliver for us but offering no deeply insightful critiques of Morality.

Conclusion

Nietzsche’s critique is not exhaustive but well focussed on key roots of our concept of morality. The powerful genealogical method feels like it can give us all the truth but makes it hard to see its falsehoods. The Free Will Thesis, Transparency of self-thesis and Similarity Thesis convincingly make us question what we need to understand from any system of values we subscribe to. The first essay’s revolt as real-world corollaries that we could apply Nietzsche’s framework to question and understand todays views on Morality. The second essay relies on an underlying cruelty that does not seem to fit with the latest understanding of what drives our instincts. With the third essay once more raising key questions we should pose to any value system. Nietzsche succeeds in his nay-saying but not all of his reasoning is valid or sound. His limited yes-saying is too cryptic to leave us with a clear route forward and will remain a topic of debate until the end of time.

References

Barrett, L. F., 2020. Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. s.l.:Picador.

Britannica, 2022. Critical race theory. [Online]
Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory
[Accessed 18 January 2023].

Cambridge Dictionary, 2023. Polemic. [Online]
Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/polemic
[Accessed 16 January 2023].

Dawkins, R., 2016. The Selfish Gene. 40th Anniversary edition ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Geuss, R., 1997. Nietzsche and Morality. European Journal of Philosophy, 5(1), pp. 1-20.

Han-Pile, B., 2011. Nietzsche and Amor Fati. European journal of philosophy, Volume 19, pp. 224-261.

Hill, K., 1991. Genealogy. [Online]
Available at: https://www-rep-routledge-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/articles/thematic/genealogy/v-1
[Accessed 16 January 2023].

Hofstadter, D., 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books.

Hunston, S., n.d. Donald Trump and the language of populism. [Online]
Available at: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/donald-trump-language-of-populism.aspx
[Accessed 18 January 2023].

Large, D., 1995. On the Genealogy of Morals. Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 9/10(Spring/Autumn), p. 192.

Leiter, B., 2014. Nietzsche on Morality. London: Routledge.

Leiter, B., 2020. Nietzsche's Moral & Political Philosophy. [Online]
Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/
[Accessed 16 January 2023].

Lynch, A., 1998. Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society: The New Science of Memes: How Ideas Act Like Viruses. s.l.:Basic Books.

McCumiskey, T., 2020. Does the Perceptual Model offer a Successful account of Recalcitrant Emotion. [Online]
Available at: https://investigationofthings.blogspot.com/2020/11/does-perceptual-model-offer-successful.html
[Accessed 21 January 2023].

McCumiskey, T., 2021. An Evaluation of Risse’s account of the emergence of the guilty conscience in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. [Online]
Available at: https://investigationofthings.blogspot.com/2021/01/an-evaluation-of-risses-account-of.html
[Accessed 18 January 2023].

McCumiskey, T., 2022. Can Akrasia Ever Be Rational. [Online]
Available at: https://investigationofthings.blogspot.com/2022/11/can-akrasia-ever-be-rational.html
[Accessed 21 January 2023].

Mueller, J.-W., 2016. What is Populism?. [Online]
Available at: https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/events/political-theory-workshop/what-populism
[Accessed 18 Janurary 2023].

Nietzsche, F., 2007. Ecce Homo: How To Become What You Are. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nietzsche, F., 2012. The Genealogy of Morals. s.l.:Dover Publications.

Ridley, A., 2005. Guilt Before God, or God Before Guilt? The Second Essay of Nietzsche's Genealogy. Journal of Nietzsche Studies, pp. 35-45.

Risse, M., 2001. The Second Treatise in In the Genealogy of Morality: Nietzsche on the Origin of the Bad Conscience. European Journal of Philosophy.

Spector, S. J., 1995. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. The Germanic Review, Issue Fall, p. 177.

Taylor, C., 2005. Ethics. In: E. Craig, ed. The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Oxford: Routledge, pp. 242-245.

Wallace, R. J., 2007. Ressentiment, Value, and Self-Vindication: Making Sense of Nietzsche’s Slave Revolt. In: Nietzsche and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 110-137.