n is not dead

Nietzsche is not dead
Anonymous. The Economist. London: Oct 15, 1994.Vol.333, Iss. 7885; pg. 117, 2 pgs
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Subjects:
addSubject("Personal profiles")
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Personal profiles, Morality, History, Philosophy, Intellectuals, Anniversaries
Classification Codes
9175 Western Europe, 9160 Biographical treatment, 1200 Social policy
Locations:
Germany
People:
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), Nietzsche, Friedrich
Author(s):
Anonymous
Publication title:
The Economist. London: Oct 15, 1994. Vol. 333, Iss. 7885; pg. 117, 2 pgs
Source type:
Periodical
ISSN/ISBN:
00130613
ProQuest document ID:
13613
Text Word Count
895
Document URL:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=13613&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=19371&RQT=309&VName=PQD
Abstract (Document Summary)
Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most disturbing and influential thinkers of modern times, was born in Rocken, Germany, in 1844. To mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, a Nietzsche museum was opened on October 9, 1994. Interest in Nietzsche is reviving as "values" come into the forefront of political debate.
Full Text (895 words)
Copyright Economist Newspaper Group, Incorporated Oct 15, 1994
FANS of P.G. Wodehouse will recall that in "Jeeves Takes Charge" Bertie Wooster falls briefly for the bookish Honoria Glossop. To impress her he asks his butler, Jeeves, to get him the works of her favourite thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche. Jeeves demurs: "You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound."
Until lately most people would have agreed with that judgment. Nietzsche, one of the most disturbing and influential thinkers of modern times, was born in 1844 at Rocken in Germany. To mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, a Nietzsche museum was opened in nearby Naumburg on October 9th. He died in 1900, after ten years of insanity, leaving 12 polemical works of moral philosophy.
Along with Marx and Freud, Nietzsche was one of the great destroyers of 19th-century certitude. Each in his own way doubted the liberal vision of society as a set of rational and responsible individuals. Removal men have come for Marx and in places Freud is being shifted to back shelves, but interest in Nietzsche is reviving as "values" come into the forefront of political debate, both inside nations and between them.
Even among analytical philosophers in Britain and America--the hard-headed lot who hold that soundness matters--the standard view of Nietzsche is changing. His famous challenge to moral philosophers "But what good do morals do us?"--is accepted as needing an answer.
Part of the trouble with Nietzsche is that there are so many of him. The Nietzsche of legend is everything that prompts common sense or decency to sigh, "Oh dear": a brilliant but wild writer, an immoralist and nihilist, an elitist and nationalist, a despiser of women and Jews. In 1914 English Jingos attacked his ideas as a cause of the first world war; Hitler and his intellectual cronies welcomed them as a herald of Nazism.
Although Nietzsche was not a nationalist, and arguably neither a misogynist nor an anti-Semite, parts of the standard picture of him are true. He said cruelty had done more for mankind than pity. He lauded the ubergehende Mensch (higher person or superman) and bemoaned "superfluous" people. Bits of him need to be read with a giggle or with two fingers to the nose. If his meaning was often misread, that was partly his fault. His style was aphoristic and he poured out vehement asides on so many subjects that religious believers, atheists, fascists, socialists, naturists, Alpinists, vegetarians and fox-hunters can all plunder his writings for their cause.
Another Nietzsche, the philosophical relativist, stamped 20th-century thinking on the European continent and in literature departments across Britain and America. But Anglo-American philosophers have never taken well to the notion that in matters of fact we believe what we want. For them it is Nietzsche's immoralism that demands attention.
Nietzsche took the child's question--"Why should I be good?"--seriously and pushed his answers to the limit. The idea that moral values, unlike facts about the world, are up to us is not new. But Nietzsche took moral scepticism to new depths. Values, in his view, were not so much up to us as up to me.
He questioned whether they could or should be impartial moral rules applying all round. Why hobble exceptional people by holding them to ordinary standards? Morality, he suggested in his analysis of altruism, was an attempt by powerless Christian slaves to tame the strong.
Nietzsche, then, was not without values of his own against which to gauge the moralities he attacked. The Nietzschean virtues are drive, creativity, self-discipline, ambition: anything, as he would see it, that "enhanced life". To be consistent, Nietzsche had to accept that his favoured virtues could not be foisted on anyone else either. It was, he would have claimed, up to each of us whether to be strivers or slackers.
Some, bemoaning the individualism of modern societies, think Nietzsche's ideas have already bitten too deep, whether people realise it or not. Others think his ideas have not gone far enough. This is true of thinkers of different perspectives.
"The End of History and the Last Man", a celebrated book by Francis Fukuyama, contains a little-noticed Nietzschean subtheme which clouds his otherwise sunny optimism about the triumph of democracy and markets: without heroic projects and overarching ambitions even successful democracies risk decay.
A noted British philosopher, Bernard Williams, comes at Nietzsche's notion of life-enhancing virtues from a more philosophical angle. It is usual, he observes, to suspend the normal rules for exceptional people, or feel unsure which rules to apply: the brilliant painter who neglects his family, for instance. But if respect for all individual lives is to be taken seriously--and is that not part of what defines a true liberal?--then ought not personal integrity (ie, what each of us is trying to make of our life) often trump the ordinary rules, too?
Another noted analytical philosopher, Philippa Foot, argues that Nietzsche's moral philosophy is in the end defective because it leaves little room for moral persuasion and no room at all for justice: no way, in other words, to ensure that we all respect each other's life-projects. But she pleads for his moral scepticism to be grappled with, and refuted, not just conveniently ignored.
The best philosophers always bully their undertakers. That is true of Nietzsche. Who knows, the supposed destroyer of moral philosophy may be contributing to its revival. The choleric sage from Rocken might even laugh.