Friedrich Nietzsche was a famous antimoralist who critiqued morality on three levels: limiting its scope, critiquing its content, and critiquing its basic concepts. For Nietzsche, Christian morality has made modern society sick by promoting equality and mediocrity. According to Nietzsche, the fundamental drive of all things is the will to power, which society should cultivate to develop a higher type of personality. Nietzsche used a genealogical method to trace the descent of moral values like good and evil, arguing they originated from the weak to express ressentiment against the strong and ultimately promote human flourishing.

1. Nietzsche and the Critique of
Morality
Week 11
GM = On the Genealogy of Morality
BGE = Beyond Good and Evil

2. Antimoralism
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is a famous antimoralist
Antimoralism = moral claims are false, or deceptive
There are three broad types of antimoralism:
1. scope limitation: some individuals are exempt from moral standards that apply to the rest of us
2. content critique: a rejection of a basic moral principle (e.g. compassion, democracy)
3. formal critique: a rejection of a basic moral concept (e.g. duty, free will, guilt)
Nietzsche’s writings combine all three types of antimoralism

3. Some general themes in Nietzsche
Christian morality has made modern society sick
This sickness also engulfs politics
‘[T]he democratic movement is heir to the Christian movement’ (Beyond Good and Evil, § 202)
Nietzsche writes to resurrect an aristocratic culture

4. Will to power
For Nietzsche, the fundamental character of all being is 'will to power' (GM 2:12), the drive
to overcome an existing level of strength, or self-overcoming
It embraces 'the spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, re-interpreting, re-directing … forces'
(GM 2:12)
The will to power links all things in the world in struggle
The will to power also provides the perspective from which all evaluation takes place

5. Implications of will to power
Consequently:
All universal morality is an illusion
Society's task is to develop a higher type of personality
‘[W]ar is as much a necessity for the state as the slave for society'
(The Greek State, in the book On the Genealogy of Morality)
It is unavoidable most people will toil for others' benefit and merely survive. But the
culture of sacrifice induced by war can promote genius

6. Nietzsche’s genealogical method
Genealogy literally means ‘tracing of descent’.
The subtitle of the book is: 'A Polemic'.
Its question is: 'under what conditions did man invent the value judgments good and evil?
and what value do they themselves have? Have they obstructed or promoted human
flourishing' (Preface § 3)
A genealogy will need to reveal other values in order to explain existing ones
This will affect the self-confidence with which existing values are held
Other values can then be presented as according better with will to power

7. First essay: how does a belief in good arise?
Good (in both utilitarianism and Christianity) is action that benefits others
But ‘the judgment “good” does not emanate from those to whom goodness is shown'
(GM 1:2)
A recipient’s perspective, and belief in free will, are later inventions of society
Originally, good relates to the actor, and to their whole person. It is a matter of rank.
The traits of the first in rank differ between peoples: physical strength (warrior
peoples e.g. the Romans) or purity (priestly peoples e.g. the Jews). They will clash.
After the warriors enslave all others, the priests' will to power is expressed in
imagination

8. Ressentiment
The emotion of wanting to inflict intellectual pain on an attacker by reversing their values,
and thereby restoring to oneself a feeling of superiority
It is confined to the weak: ‘lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey’, but birds of
prey do not begrudge lambs; 'in fact we love them, nothing is tastier’ (GM1:13)
Hatred is increased by a belief in free will that results from the ‘seduction of language’
(GM 1:13)
‘the man of ressentiment … has conceived of the “evil enemy” as a basic idea to which he
now thinks up a counterpart, the “good one” - himself!’ (GM 1:10)
Evil = to deliberately inflict pain on others; good = to show compassion

9. Ressentiment and the belief in God
Under continued domination, the weak learn ‘all about keeping quiet, not forgetting,
waiting’ (GM 1:10) and indefinite suffering can only be born by a universal morality
As the weak cannot themselves end their oppression, they must invent god: ‘let us be
different from evil people, let us be good! And a good person is anyone who .... does not
harm anyone ... does not retaliate, who leaves revenge to God’ (GM 1:13)
By means of God, the weak are just as cruel: 'the whole old world and all it gave birth to
are consumed in one fire ... At which shall I exalt, when I see so many kings ... groaning in
the deepest darkness ... to some extent we have such things already through faith' (GM
1:15)

10. Nietzsche’s diagnosis of democracy
Christian obedience involves a kind of debase equality that dissolves political ranks
Ressentiment also arises among the lowest in political rank, against legal privileges
But notions of human equality are illusory, and simply foster mediocrity:
‘The more the feeling of their unity with their fellow humans wins out over men, the
more uniform they will become, the more rigorously they will feel any difference as
immoral. Humanity's sanding thus necessarily appears: all the same, very small, very
round. Up until now, Christianity and democracy have brought humanity furthest onto
the path of this metamorphosis into sand.’ (Fragment, Spring 1880)