NIETZSCHE'S BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

A book extract by Professor Keith Ansell Pearson, Department of Philosophy

Written by the University of Warwick's Prof Keith Ansell Pearson and Hunter College's Prof Christa Davis Acampora, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: A Reader's Guide is a student-friendly introduction to one of Nietzche's most widely-read texts. In this extract, taken from Chapter 3, Part I: On The Prejudices of the Philosophers, Professor Ansell Pearson shows us what Nietzsche meant by the term 'will', and examines the philosopher's attitude towards pessimism.

While immensely influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche had his own ideas about the concept of will and the activity of willing, which are indicated in part I, such as in his critiques of “immediate certainties” and the distinction between the real and the apparent worlds; his complex conception of soul, and his challenge to the ideas of causality upon which Schopenhauer’s views depend. But what are most indicative of Nietzsche’s pull away from Schopenhauer are his views about the complexity of what we synthesize and bring together under the simple term ‘will’, and his rejection of Schopenhauer’s particular form of pessimism. However, there’s an important twist to note right away: Nietzsche’s main problem with Schopenhauer’s pessimism is that he does not take it far enough, he isn’t honest enough to pursue it to its final conclusions (such honesty, in the form of what Nietzsche calls “intellectual conscience,” is discussed in chapters 7 and 8). Thus, in many respects, Nietzsche retains a deep commitment to a central dimension of Schopenhauer’s philosophy (particularly, his view that the world itself is valueless and lacks ultimate, positive purpose), but he tries to take those ideas even further. Nietzsche thinks his own conception of the world as will to power accomplishes this and allows him to explore a host of questions Schopenhauer did not, could not, including “the problem of morality” and how it is possible nevertheless to affirm life, to love it.⁴

A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power.

Before turning directly to the issue of Nietzsche’s pessimism, we should clarify the claim that Nietzsche does not preserve the distinction between appearances and reality that plays a major role in the views advanced by Kant and Schopenhauer. Thus, Nietzsche’s “will to power” is not his candidate or substitute for the “in-itself,” the real world of noumena behind everything else. “Will to power” is descriptive of the overall tendency of what he calls “life”—everything seeks expansion of life, its conditions to live. It is also important to notice here that ‘expansion’ and ‘preservation’ are not necessarily identical; indeed, sometimes (perhaps often) expansion is pursued even at the risk of preservation, as Nietzsche writes in the section in which he formally introduces the idea of ‘will to power’: “Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. 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.” We return to these ideas in greater detail below in consideration of what Nietzsche thinks it would be possible to recognize if we were not blinded by some of the specific prejudices and views toward life he thinks have characterized much of philosophy and were free to conceive our own selves, motives, and future possibilities in new and different ways.

Challenges we face in rising to this task include pessimism—the view that life is not worth living—and nihilism—the view that there are no values, that nothing has any value (including life). For Nietzsche, these are gravely serious matters because they bear quite directly on the nature of our constitutions. He is interested in the psycho-physiological effects these have: these dispositions and beliefs express the relation of drives we are. A pessimistic constitution can be indicative of a life form in decline, in which the entity is not so strongly motivated by continuation or preservation, much less cultivation and enhancement of life.⁵ Such an organism might be dysfunctional, with disintegrating instincts, what Nietzsche calls a “weaker” will. Someone who expresses nihilism might lack reasons to pursue anything in particular, have any particular sort of order, prefer anything above anything else. Nietzsche thinks modern human beings are especially susceptible to these conditions.

All human beings have faced pessimism. There is plenty in life that is difficult.

All human beings have faced pessimism. There is plenty in life that is difficult. We all suffer, and in the end, we all die. Moreover, this cycle—including the various turns that make up the momentous occasions in our lives—just repeats itself in countless iterations: it is the same drama just with different actors, as Nietzsche writes in WS 58. Viewed from the perspective of life (and all eternity), our problems, challenges, and accomplishments are utterly mundane and insignificant. And it is not just our own suffering that induces stress and distress: the suffering of others also bothers most of us, compounding our suffering as we suffer because of the fact that others do. Our disposition toward suffering is especially telling, Nietzsche thinks, of our judgment of the value of life. Given suffering, which seems inescapable, is life worth it? Whether we answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is indicative of the relative strength of our constitutions, he suggests, indicative of the relative strength of will to power we express.

Most of us find ways to console ourselves, compensate for, or redeem suffering. Familiar strategies include distracting ourselves (e.g., celebrity gossip and politics), escaping it (e.g., alcohol and other narcotics, or religious fixation on an “afterlife”), and ignoring it by putting on a cheery face (though this might be the least successful strategy given how pervasive and persistent suffering can be). Another approach is to seek redemption or compensation for suffering, which might utilize one of the other strategies above, as for example in the redemption of the life of suffering in this world through a perfectly cheerful afterlife. We shall discuss this at greater length in the next chapter when considering Nietzsche’s thoughts about how art might offer a kind of redemption in this life rather than an afterlife, and thus potentially be a way of overcoming pessimism without escaping or ignoring it, which was a theme explored in his first book.

References:

4. Discussion of Nietzsche’s relation to Schopenhauer is helpfully discussed in Christopher Janaway, Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

5. In subsequent work, the added fifth part of The Gay Science, Nietzsche distinguishes kinds of pessimism, their origins and motivations, to show the differences between what he calls romantic pessimism (which he associates with Schopenhauer) and a pessimism of strength (which he associates with the ancient Greeks and his own retrieval of some of those ideas, including what he calls the ‘Dionysian’).