what if everything you knew about right and wrong good and evil just and unjust what if it was all wrong this was the radical thought proposed by German philosopher and reason I had a terrible mustache for a year friederick ner he was one of the first philosophers to look at our moral system with its value on sympathy kindness selflessness and altruism and say that this is not only arbitrary but actually undesirable it is this that has earned him his reputation as the philosopher par excelance for edgy teenage boys rebelling against their parents but rarely do
we stop to consider just how radical his view on morality is and how it turned the world of philosophy inside out in this video we'll learn why Nicha hated Christian morals how being a good person can make you miserable and why so-called moral people are secretly Liars but first let's learn exactly how NE thought our current moral system came about one ne's history of Morality In The Peter shaer play Amadeus the composer saleri develops an obsession and an Envy of Wolf Gang Amadeus Mozart where saleri had to work hard to become a successful composer Mozart
writes far greater music than he ever did seemingly with no effort enraged and resentful saleri sets out to ruin Mozart's tarnish his career and eventually murder him with poison since the plays premere saleri has become a near Universal symbol of the destructive power of resentment saleri gains no joy in his Vengeance his resentment ultimately destroys him just as much as it destroys Mozart because it was not aimed towards becoming better it was aimed at bringing Mozart down to his level his his life's mission was not the betterment of himself but the constraint of others on
ne's view our entire moral system was constructed by resentful people just like saleri he paints a picture of history that is somewhat fictional but is meant to chart the general course of the creation of a moral system initially when man is just beginning to form tribes and societies the most powerful people rise to the top and it is they who get to decide what is good and they don't have a hard time deciding they immediately Define good as all the qualities that they possess that is strength competence and the ability to dominate nature is quick
to emphasize that this is not all crude individualistic Hedonism with strength and competence comes the ability to be dependable and useful and with the ability to dominate also comes the ability to protect and provide both for oneself and for one's fellows at this point it is not selflessness or altruism and certainly not weakness that is desirable it is instead personal Excellence this is what nature refers to as Noble morality or Master morality for nature the morality's defining characteristic is that it is constructive it starts by defining good practically out of nothing it also has a
concept of bad but only in the sense of a lack of the qualities that are considered good it is almost like an afterthought this is why n thought this type of morality was life affirming it gave people something to strive towards it was active energetic and strengthened people's Wills on a wider scale it led to successful societies who were able to conquer Rivals subjugating them and ensuring the prosperity of their own civilization but with conquering and the will to dominate others in inevitably emerges some form of cast system there are the conquerors and the conquered
the powerful and the powerless or as nature puts it the master and the slave and just as there is Master morality over time there will emerge slave morality the subjugated class will not put up with their treatment forever it will cause them to resent their dominators as a result anything the master morality deems good the slave morality will consider to be evil where the Aristocrat values strength the surf will value weakness where the master values a will to dominate the slave will value submission and obedience and where the nobleman values the ability to do great
Deeds both for good and for ill the servant will instead value harmlessness NE thought that all of this was perfectly understandable after all if you've been dominated you know how unpleasant it feels and you're going to find it very difficult to Value domination but n points out a fundamental difference between this slave morality and the former Master morality where is the powerful defined good out of nothing and only then moved on to Define bad in opposition to that the starting point of the moral ity of the powerless is to demonize anything that the powerful have
there is no aspiration here at all apart from to weakness and incompetence at least according to n and for n this slave morality found its Pinnacle in Christianity all the Christian values helping others loving your enemies praying for The Souls of your tormentors the idea of the meek inheriting the Earth all of it is aimed at demonizing strength and domination in favor of passivity and submission it is the quintessential example of a slave morality and N points out that it has overcome the whole of Europe and Beyond a key concept to introduce here is the
will to power nature thought that every human had in them a will to dominate other people and their environment to enforce their will on the universe to change things and reshape the world as they would want it it is this will that makes the powerful want to dominate the powerless and it is the same Instinct that makes the powerless take their Revenge by slowly switching the values of society so to recap nature thought that our current moral system was brought about in effect by a resentful Revolt where the subjugated had their revenge on their dominators
by slowly morphing the values of society so the highest good was no longer defined by the powerful but by the powerless it's a strange picture to get your head round now you might say but so what should we not encourage altruism selflessness and helping other people and Ne would say this is a fair question but he says there are huge problems with making these our Universal moral Concepts and that is what we shall move on to next and if you want more on philosophy and the art of learning subscribe to my email list the link
is in the description two the consequences of mediocrity in dov's Notes From The Underground it tells the tale of a man whose life has been torn apart by passivity and mediocrity he makes endless promises to himself about everything from great Deeds he will commit to evil acts he will undertake what he actually wishes is besides the point what's important is what happens next which is nothing he does not act and he does not attempt to change the world in any way it would not matter whether the man from the underground was the evilest creature in
history or the kindest soul to walk the earth he is ineffectual so it's simply does not matter either way he has no will no strength and no ability to make things happen and this is what nature is worried will happen to us if we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into slave morality according to Nature the two factors that drive slave morality are resentment and fear of strength we will discuss resentment later but for now let's focus on this intense fear of the powerful and even of power itself nature points out the profound and the obvious that in
order to achieve anything you need to be powerful any person who has done anything of significance by necessity had to have extreme strength or extreme competence or both unless they changed the face of the World by complete accident this is true for the generous philanthropist who uses their great resources to help others and the imperialist general who uses the same resources to subjugate Millions the point for n is you cannot have one without the other you cannot create extraordinary men without creating extraordinary monsters sometimes they might even come in the same package famously NE described
Napoleon as a great mix of monster and Superior man ficha a fear of power is only going to suppress those people who are able to Rise Above the Rest and become extraordinary if Napoleon had adopted the belief that it was better to be powerless and meek than powerful and strong then he would have never changed the face of Europe forever according to n the moment we fear power we are working against ourselves our societies and the overall success of the species at the beginning of the genealogy of morals n says he is going to put
aspects of our morality to the test to see if they promote greater utility and prosperity both to the individual and to the society they belong to for nature the fear of power fails on both counts in the case of the individual it means that only those who have no vision will end up happy or fulfilled and in the case of society it means it will never produce people able to make great leaps forward for the sake of their communities had Napoleon just been a bit more skilled he might have conquered the whole of Europe and
I would be speaking French right now n asks us whether Napoleon would have succeeded had France not been inculcated with centuries of Christian values so n encourages us to let go of our fear of power if we do not then we are dooming both ourselves and our societies to insignificance it is only a matter of time but perhaps this strikes you as a little bit speculative I must say that it seems a bit of a stretch to me at points outwardly Christian societies have been some of the most successful and Powerful in history although NE
would say that that is only because they had not yet completely embraced slave morality however n makes a further critical argument slave morality will make us miserable three resentment self-destruction and morality I talked a little bit earlier about the idea of our system of values coming from the powerless resenting the powerful but for building anything on a foundation of resentment like this is complete disaster this is because it alienates us from the very thing we want to become and makes us Miserable as a result this is all a bit abstract so let's bring it down
to earth with a story often used to illustrate this point eso's Fable of the sour grapes ESOP tells of a fox who is jumping to get some grapes that hang off a nearby tree having failed to catch them a number of times the fox gives up and remarks that the grapes were probably sour anyway this soothes the fox in the moment but fundamentally it Dooms him to never getting the grapes if another Fox were to come along and somehow manage to catch the grapes our hero would become resentful he would on the one hand still
desire The Grapes but on the other hand he is demonizing the grapes as not worth having this contradiction will eat him up inside as long as he continues to deny his will to grapes now replace grapes with something much more significant like power or achievement or influence these are things nature thinks all people want to a greater or lesser degree but they're also the very things condemned by slave morality the trouble is just saying they're evil is not enough to get people to stop wanting them for nature it is basically impossible to stop wanting them
because they stem from the base human instinct aligned at preserving and bettering Our Lives the will to power far from actually stemming the urge the person living under slave morality is told that a fundamental and unchangeable part of themselves is evil and that they are reprehensible for having it this may stop them from following their will to power but it will also torture them inside it will create generations of miserable self-hating people who have had their aspirations to Greatness crushed it condemns us both to Despair and to mediocrity and when we are living our mediocre
lives we will look at those whose Will To Power has not been suppressed who are out in the world achieving great things or just trying to achieve great things and we will be deeply resentful we will look at those more powerful or successful than us and tell ourselves that they must be evil or that what they have is not worth our time we will tell those struggling to fulfill their potential as human beings that they are wasting their lives and that they will never get anywhere who knows maybe in both cases we'll be right but
whether right or wrong we will continue to say it because the alternative is deeply painful that we once had the potential to strive for greater things in life but now this has passed and we are condemned to live out the same monotonous days until we die an unfulfilled death for n a substantial critique of our current moral system is that it does not do what it proclaims to do being good is meant to be useful and life fulfilling but in n's analysis being Meek mild passive and selfless does none of those things all it does
is condemn us to a life of constant frustration as we deny our Will To Power it is in his view a deeply dishonest way to live and that is exactly what we're going to move on to next four the moral man we all know someone who through their moral system has become completely insufferable the kind of person who will lecture you over dinner and hold everyone around them to Impossible moral standards that they have not agreed to they display no interest in constructing their own novel ideas but are largely occupied with condemning the people around
them for various sins especially those who have more joyful lives than they do this is n's idea of the moral person who he invokes at various points both in Beyond Good and Evil and the genealogy of morals from one perspective they're doing something perfectly unobjectionable they're simply upholding the values of their moral system but n does not buy this story in the slightest he charges the moral person with a fundamental dishonesty about their motivations righteous anger is a familiar concept it's essentially when someone gets angry and attempts to change another person's Behavior but from from
a moral standpoint this sort of anger has motivated everything from the expansion of human rights to the massacring of different religious denominations looking at it as a historical phenomenon n notes that it is basically an amoral force it is simply one group of people attempting to enforce their morality on others in other words it is the angry person's expression of their Will To Power and it is important to note that n doesn't see anything inherently wrong with this he thinks it is only natural to want to assert your will against others he would not judge
any of these people for their wish to change the world to better themselves and people like them he merely points out that far from being a crusade for metaphysical truth or Justice all it is is the will to power with a good PR campaign but the trouble with this dishonesty is that it fundamentally limits the will to power it means we can only assert our will when we come up with some theoretical justification for it and if we're stuck in slave morality these constraints will be very tight indeed again n points out the stifling effect
of morality on those he considered exceptional the very thing that made Napoleon great in the eyes of n was his assertion of his will to power despite having no moral justification for wanting to conquer the whole of Europe it was his ability to act Beyond Good and Evil that set him apart from the rest if he had instead spent his time ringing his hands over whether he was acting morally he would have never made his mark on history and this is part of what makes reading nature on morality so difficult it is hard to overstate
just how radical a departure this is from previous philosophical analyses of good whereas Aristotle John Stewart Mill and K all asked what good was in and of itself nature treats morality as a set of Concepts humans use and simply describes it highlighting the elements where it may work against us rather than for us whereas philosophy has tended to ask what is good NE asks what is good for but there is one question we must all now ask ourselves what do we do with neer's analysis five what next Nature's analysis of morality is one of the
most controversial thesis in philosophy it is anti-democratic anti-egalitarian and stands against almost everything we intuitively consider good and this is by Design but what we do with this information are we to abandon our old values and Forge new ones that prioritize strength will and domination well that is what some people take from it but if you don't want to go that far and not many people do there is still brilliant insight to be found in n's thoughts here firstly it shows how strength and power do not need to be bad things the ability to be
a great benefactor to humanity goes hand inhand with the ability to do great harm a morality that glorifies weakness and meekness to the exclusion of self- betterment and competence is doing a disservice to its followers by actively making their lives worse secondly it suggests that we should perhaps be a little more skeptical of those who build their identity around being moral Nature's observation that professions of goodness can cloak a hidden Will To Power is a wonderful piece of cynical wisdom be wearing the person who wields morality Like a Knife is pretty good advice for our
interpersonal lives and lastly and most importantly it shows that we should not take our fundamental concepts for granted as if they were above criticism good and evil truth and falsity appearance and reality these are not holy relics Beyond critique We can question them interrogate them and see if they're doing the job we want them to do we don't have to outright abandon them but we may want to alter them slightly for the betterment of ourselves and our societies ner more than any other Western philosopher before him reminds us of our freedom to choose our values
the subtitle of n's book Twilight of the idols is how to philosophize with a hammer and this sums up n's approach wonderfully n is destroying the old philosophical assumptions that goodness and evil exist or even that goodness is good and he makes way for a new type of philosopher one that will brush away the smashed fragments of these old systems and create new ones ones that encourage an engagement with the world that is powerful active loving and above all life affirming I do encourage you to read n for yourself to get your own insights here
as I've had to skip over much of the detail the two key texts to pick up for this aspect of his philosophy are Beyond Good and Evil and the genealogy of morals and if he wants a more constructive nian philosophy then click here to learn about his radical doctrine of loving one's fate no matter what happens and stick around for more on thinking to improve your life
