Nietzsche was ignorant and stupid but could read some ancient and foreign languages well enough. Still, he wasn't a philosopher. He was a syphilitic nutter.
Writing for Aeon, Alexander Prescott-Couch argues other wise
In Human, All Too Human (1878), Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that ‘A lack of historical sense is the original failing of all philosophers.’
Nietzsche had no historical sense. That didn't matter. What mattered was that he didn't understand his own age. Nobody gave a fuck about Christianity. Darwin and Geology had kicked the thing in the crotch. What changed philosophy was the mathematics of people like Hermann Glassmann (who also translated the Rg Veda) and William Clifford. In 1869, when the nutter Nietzsche, for some paltry reason of academic politics, was appointed Professor of philology, J.J Sylvester communicated Clifford's ideas about the fourth dimension to the British Association. The future lay with those who understood Mathematics and Physics. Any maniac could systematically misunderstand ancient Greek or Hebrew texts and write spiteful nonsense about the spirit of the age.
In accusing philosophy of lacking historical sense, Nietzsche
who was unaware that Space had just been united to Time in the fourth dimension
was echoing broader trends in 19th-century thought.
Stupid trends. Wagner had set up as a philosopher. His shite wasn't notably shittier than that of a lot of professional pedants.
In comparison with the ‘philosophical’ 18th century,
during which history reached a turning point and actually turned
the 19th century
during which, in Europe, it failed to turn. It just dithered.
is sometimes described as the ‘historical’ century, one in which investigation into more universal features of human reason gave way to increased focus on how particular historical trajectories influence language, culture and moral assumptions.
No. The Nineteenth century saw more investigation into 'universal features of human reason'- e.g. deductive and inductive logic, grammar, mathematics, statistics etc. It also saw more historical, anthropological, sociological and economic research. Yet more significantly, the number of people who farted at any given moment rose. This was because populations and prosperity tended to rise over the course of the century.
The 19th century is also what one might call the ‘philological century’.
The big philological discoveries and hermeneutic advances had already been made. The Nineteenth century merely carried this forward.
Philology is the critical study of written sources, including their linguistic features, history of reception and cultural context.
This was a big feature of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century. By the time Nietzsche was appointed a Professor, the thing was played out and had turned silly.
Today, the term sounds outmoded, evoking dusty, learned tomes of fastidious source criticism. However, philology was a leading intellectual discipline in 19th-century Germany due to a flurry of methodological developments
the seminar system was developed originally for Sanskrit.
that revolutionised our understanding of ancient and sacred texts. New rigorous techniques of verifying sources were developed, merely speculative hypotheses were discouraged,
Nietzsche's nuttiness was a reaction to that.
more detailed comparative studies of language were conducted. While such methods were scholarly, sometimes bordering on scholastic,
studies of mythology drew particular derision. In 1827 Jean-Baptiste Peres proved Napoleon was a solar myth. So, of course, was Max Mueller. Dr. Casaubon in 'Middlemarch' had wasted his life.
their application had significant cultural impact, spilling out of scholarly journals into broader public consciousness.
Where it became deeply silly.
Nietzsche imbibed these trends as a young man.
He was supposed to become a Clergymen like his Dad.
An all-round talented student (mathematics was a notable exception), he gained admittance as a 14-year-old to Schulpforta, one of the most prestigious humanistic schools in Germany.
He didn't get in on grades. He got a scholarship because his Dad had been a pastor of the Established Church- i.e. a civil servant.
A training ground for scholars and teachers, the school’s specialty was classical antiquity, and Nietzsche received a rigorous education in Greek and Latin,
he did poorly in Physics and Math
read historical works by Voltaire and Cicero, and wrote philological treatises on topics such as the saga of Ermanarich and the Greek poet Theognis.
I suppose you have to study that shite if you are going to have to teach it.
This philological education informed not only his early works that deal directly with Greek antiquity, such as The Birth of Tragedy (1872),
His job was to pretend that that shite mattered.
but also his later books on morality and moral psychology.
Germans had none. This may not have been obvious at the time but as Christianity relaxed its hold on the country, its language was all set to become, as George Steiner said, the native language of Hell.
Appreciating this philological influence is crucial for understanding the significance of his philosophically most important work, On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), and the ‘genealogical’ method of philosophy it has inspired.
No. What we must appreciate is that the guy was as stupid as shit. He was living in the age of Darwin while bullshitting about ancient Greek literature. Evolutionary theory tells us that it is the fitness landscape, not genealogy, which matters. As for morality- that's about economics.
On the Genealogy of Morality is a puzzling book.
It is stupid. Still, contemporaries understood what the nutter was getting at. Affluence was rising though this also meant middle class men had to put off marriage without being able to just fuck a grisette or their housekeeper as had been the custom previously. Meanwhile, Science had fucked Theology in the ass and those with money could increasingly defy customary morality when it came to sexual matters. For Nietzsche, Darwin and eugenics and so forth was 'English' and 'psychological' or rather, utilitarian. Nietzsche should have understood from the story of the Gothic King Ermanaric that a guy could be considered an aristocrat and excellent in his own field while also being considered a bad person. Apparently the dude put the wife of an enemy to death in a particularly cruel manner and thus had a bad reputation. Nietzsche, nutter that he was, had a theory that the powerful would have a theory of 'good' which suited them. Thus Nero would have made it fashionable to set fire to your City and then playing the fiddle while it burned down. Like many philologists, Nietzsche did not understand the meaning of ordinary words in his own language.
It deals with many classic topics of moral philosophy, such as the concept of good, free will, moral responsibility and guilt.
These nutters don't understand the meaning of these words. It is a different matter that a guy can use a word of this sort as a label for some shitty 'concept' they have come up with. Consider the concept of 'niceness'. Obviously this involves farting appreciatively any time some one comes into the room. This is the 'concept' of niceness. True, you may say 'Mum is nice' when the fact is Mum doesn't fart when in company. But this isn't her fault. She has a real small dick and peeps with tiny todgers are obliged to fart in a different dimension- if they really are nice and aren't faking it.
However, it does not investigate them in a typical philosophical fashion – for instance, by asking ‘What is good?’ or ‘Do we have free will?’ Rather, it takes a historical approach, asking where our ideas about the good, or free will, or guilt, have come from.
Lizard peeps from the planet X to whom farts are deadly. It is they who, throughout human history, have sought to create a 'slave morality' involving feelings of shame for farting or, as I find is increasingly the case, sharting appreciatively when meeting the new boss.
Nietzsche’s answers to these historical questions were and continue to be, to put it mildly, controversial.
They were and continue to be paranoid shite. Did you know that Jesus Christ was paid by the Air Freshener industry to discourage farting ? Indeed, the Eleventh Commandment of Moses was 'Fart vigorously when talking to the Boss'. This is because God thinks a room always smells better after I have farted. Crack a Bible sometime.
Not for nothing did he describe himself as ‘dynamite’.
I describe myself as 'silent but deadly'.
For instance, he argued that contemporary Western egalitarian and altruistic assumptions were a form of ‘slave morality’ that emerged from the frustrations and ressentiment (roughly, resentment) of a priestly caste.
Also, why are people pretending they don't want to sodomize and eat babies? Who do they think they are fooling? Did you know there's a bloke in my Department who has received two weeks 'paternity leave'? That's political correctness gone mad! As if it takes two weeks to rape, kill, cook and eat a new born baby!
This slave morality was a reaction against what Nietzsche calls ‘master morality’, an archaic ethics that emphasises virtues of excellence, health and respect for social hierarchy.
and being thoroughly grateful to your son if he bashes in your head to take over the ancestral property on the grounds that your reflexes aren't as sharp as they used to be.
Master morality valorises strength and denigrates the meekness and bookish intellectualism of the religious leaders of the priestly caste.
Strong people can kill the weak. Why bother kicking sand in their face?
In response, according to Nietzsche, the religious leaders invented
the machine gun?
a new evaluative framework in which they come out on top
anybody can do that. My evaluative framework features flatulence- a field where I come out on top. This hasn't helped me any.
– one in which aggressiveness is classified as ‘evil’
which is what aggressive people classify their aggression as if it results in their head getting kicked in
and meekness and altruism as ‘good’ –
which is what we all classify such things as when we gain reputationally and socially and affectionally as a result of meekly doing our job and being nice to everybody as a result of which we get promoted.
a revaluation of existing values.
Which anybody can do at any time- more particularly if they are in a lunatic asylum. Why do the nurses not let me eat my own shit? Is it because they know it will give me super powers?
These moral assumptions are then taken up by the lower slave caste, as they valorised their lowly status and enabled them to reinterpret their impotence as principled choice.
Nietzsche noticed that starving whores kept saying 'I'm very meek and altruistic. It is not the case that I'm sucking people off so as to get something to eat and avoid having my throat slit by my pimp.'
In sum, on Nietzsche’s view, many of our fundamental moral assumptions derive from archaic status competition.
Which derived from the competition to survive. The fact is people who were strong, brave, thrifty, sexually continent rather than riddled with syphilis etc. were more likely to thrive and reproduce. Morality certainly has a lot to do with 'Tardean mimetics'. When I was a kid, the only people we knew who took drugs were famous pop-stars or intellectuals like Huxley and Leary. That's what made drugs cool. By the time I got to Collidge, drugs were visibly associated with smelly losers panhandling on the street. On the other hand, Richard Branson was on his way to becoming a billionaire. He was the role-model for my generation. The point about pop-music is that it makes money and thus can be a stepping stone to something yet more crass and boring.
What has puzzled many readers of Nietzsche’s genealogy is how these historical claims are supposed to be relevant to philosophical questions about morality.
They aren't. The lad was as mad as a hatter. He should have stuck with blaming the Jews for inventing a dude named Jesus Christ who prevented decent, upstanding, Nordic dudes from raping their sisters and eating the babies that resulted from such incest.
Nietzsche states that his ultimate aim is to assess ‘the value of our values’,
from the perspective of, not utility, but eating your own shit.
but it is not clear how his historical claims could or should contribute to this assessment.
What is the point of being the youngest professor of a shite discipline if you don't write stupider and more ignorant shite than peeps wot never went to Collidge?
In turning to history, it might seem that Nietzsche is simply shifting the subject of moral philosophy, following the adage that if you don’t like what is being said, then you should change the conversation.
By shitting your pants and then reaching around and helping yourself to that 'chocolate cake'.
After all, the question of where our values come from
oikeiosis- our natural 'belonging' or socialization. Education and profession also matter.
just seems like a different question from philosophical questions about their nature, value and authority.
Paranoia isn't philosophy.
If Nietzsche is trying to use this history to answer these philosophical questions, then it might seem he is committing a fallacy, the ‘genetic fallacy’.
He is telling a stupid lie. It isn't really true that most people want to sodomize and eat their babies. On the contrary, they want to give it kisses, cuddles and a 529 College savings plan which, sadly, will prove ludicrous inadequate.
The genetic fallacy is the purported mistake of evaluating something on the basis of its origin or past characteristics.
It may be obligatory to do so for certain purposes. You aren't allowed to hire a teacher for your primary school if he has a long string of convictions for pedophilia.
For instance, imagine a friend tells you that you should not wear a wedding ring because wedding rings originally symbolised ankle chains worn by women to prevent them from running away from their husbands (the example is from Attacking Faulty Reasoning (7th ed, 2012) by T Edward Damer).
Lots of men wear wedding rings even if they aren't married to men.
Even if wedding rings have such a dubious history, this history does not show that it is bad or objectionable to wear them now.
It would be objectionable to wear a thick iron ankle ring more particularly if you are African American and your spouse, who is White, owns a mansion in the deep South and calls you Aunt Jemima.
When Nietzsche suggests that he should reevaluate Christian morality on the basis of this origin story, we might suspect he is employing a similar type of fallacious reasoning.
No. We know he is talking nonsense. The fact is the Jews rebelled against the Romans. The Roman Catholic Church didn't like rebels. 'Resist not evil' involves not making a fuss about the sale of indulgences like that fucker Luther.
Concerns about falling prey to the genetic fallacy are part of what explain moral philosophy’s lack of a historical sense.
Only if it is 'categorical'- i.e. has a unique model. But we might all arrive at such a thing sometime in the future.
Showing that something has a bad origin isn’t sufficient to show that it is bad, as the previous examples indicate.
In some situations, it is the only relevant factor- e.g. the doctrine of 'fruit of the poisoned tree' in law. Suppose I enter into a contract in bad faith. The thing can be voided even if I now claim to want to go ahead with it.
Neither does examining the origins of our values seem necessary for evaluating them.
If their origin really is bad, then that is a relevant factor. Suppose I value virginity not for some spiritual reason but for the purpose of sacrifice as part of a Satanic ritual. My daughter might have a good reason to reject my values in this respect.
To evaluate our moral beliefs and practices, it seems that we need only look at the reasons for and against them, not the causes of our beliefs in them.
Nonsense! How you got a belief is highly relevant. Suppose it was by hypnosis you did not consent to. Then you have bigger problems than evaluating shit.
For instance, to criticise egalitarianism, we should consider potential objections to egalitarian attitudes, such as that they recommend levelling down, prevent the achievement of human excellence, or fail to honour supposed differences in moral desert.
Why bother? Just say 'all public servants must hold the same rank and receive the same remuneration. The same should apply to all private enterprises or institutions which claim to believe in equality. Start from there. Then we will see if the thing should be made compulsory in the private sector.
Whatever one thinks of these criticisms, it seems that making and assessing them does not require looking at the history of our values.
It may seem so to cretins, but nobody else. We do in fact shout 'Commie cunt' at people who start talking that type of bollocks.
If these points are correct, we can see why moral philosophy would proceed ahistorically: if
it wants to be utterly useless- sure. The fact is we don't know what 'models' of a deontic logic are 'compossible' save by consulting the historical record. In other words, we have some idea of what can work under particular historical circumstances.
moral philosophy aims to critically scrutinise the value of our values,
No. There can be different 'meta-languages'- e.g. a soteriological or economic or political 'meta-language' for a given 'normative language'. Thus, we might say 'being a Churchgoer' gets you to heaven- that's a soteriological value. But it also gets you a reputation as a God-fearing person likely to honor your debts and other obligations. That is an economic value. We might also say that Church attendance inculcates civic virtues- e.g. readiness to participate in local politics- and that has a political value. But the value of the value of Church attendance is just the value of Church attendance, nothing more.
and origin stories are neither necessary nor sufficient for this purpose, then origin stories are irrelevant to moral philosophy.
Only in the sense that such moral philosophy is irrelevant ab ovo.
Nietzsche thought this reasoning mistaken, although exactly why he thought so is a matter of scholarly dispute.
The thing is obvious enough. Religion had a political aspect and had influence in the Academy. But German Religions were historical and historicist. Nietzsche initially admired Bismarck but opposed the Kulturkampf which would have imposed a gloomy Protestantism- like that of his father- on the Nation as a whole.
His historical critique is typically understood in one of two ways: either he held that historical information was directly relevant to the authority or justification of moral norms, or he held it was indirectly relevant by providing evidence that moral attitudes are motivated by ressentiment and/or hinder great human achievements.
Why not both or neither or whatever dude- who actually gives a fuck?
To grasp how history might be directly relevant to the status of our values, we might begin by acknowledging that the value of many human artefacts depends on their history – Picasso paintings are more valuable than perfect replicas because they come from Picasso and not from a copyist,
unless that copyist was Adolf Hitler
and your family heirlooms hold special value because of their historical connection to your family.
Unless your family is as common as muck in which case you pretend you stole them from Bucking Palace that one time the Queen invited you over for a three way with Mary Poppins. What? Stuff like that happened to me all the time back in the Sixties.
Something similar may be true of our values.
For instance, if our values include or imply commands, then their history might be relevant to their authority, our obligation to obey them. Many commands depend for their authority on the authority of the commander, and vengeful clergy with status anxiety do not seem like authoritative commanders
Like the Pope?
. More specifically, one might think that the authority of moral commands depends on their coming from God or pure reason,
but through some Prophet or Pope or Philosopher
so insofar as historical investigation reveals that they derive from a secular ‘human, all too human’ source, then history might undermine their authority.
Or reinforce it. History has shown Kant was wrong.
If Christian values turn out to have been born from resentment,
Christians may well have resented being thrown to the lions.
then that, on this sort of argument, undermines their value to us today.
Did you know Christ was Jewish? If that's not a good enough reason for pogroms, what is?
In a similar way, philological work that traces the Bible back to secular origins might undermine the authority of the moral teachings contained within it by undermining the claim that those teachings come from God or Jesus.
Not really. The sillier bits in the Bible appear less silly if we know that the relevant myths had been around thousands of years previously.
Another way that the status of our values may depend directly on their history is if they include or imply beliefs about value claims, as historical information can affect whether our beliefs are justified.
If they were helpful to people similar to yourself in the past, then, ceteris paribus, 0+
I might destabilise a belief by coming to know that the process by which I acquired that belief is unreliable. For instance, say I believe a rumour that my grandfather used to pilfer money from the church collection jar, and I acquired this belief from my father. However, I then learn that my father heard this rumour from his brother, who is a notorious liar and resentful of his strict religious upbringing. Given that my belief traces back to an unreliable source, I might reasonably think that my belief is no longer justified.
Equally, you might reasonably think that you have no actual beliefs in this regard because you don't give a shit about the matter.
Similarly, it might be that we acquired our moral beliefs from our parents (and broader culture), who acquired them from their parents (and broader culture), all the way back to the vengeful clergy.
Oikieosis is more like active appropriation. If we believe Mummy & Daddy & the Church were wonderful- because they were wonderful to us- we might well retain some prejudices which the ignorance of a former age consecrated as Holy Writ.
But if vengeful clergy are not a reliable guide to the moral truth, then I should distrust my parents’ teachings and therefore my moral beliefs.
Unless you distrust yourself yet more. Reliability is a matter of degree.
Nietzsche’s historical story might therefore help emancipate us from illusions by exposing information that challenges our faith in cherished but unjustified assumptions.
Or it might encourage us to do stupid shit.
These points about authority and justification are points that philosophers sometimes make about the relevance of history for moral philosophy,
which is vitiated by being stupid shit
and it is possible that Nietzsche was making points of this kind. However, this interpretation does not capture what many commentators and lay readers typically take to be the main insights of Nietzsche’s text.
viz. you too can talk paranoid bollocks. You don't have to be edumicated to bitterly berate Society for trying to stop people from eating their own shit.
For instance, when undergraduates read the Genealogy, they usually take with them the idea that Nietzsche’s history shows that much avowed concern with virtue, rightness and justice is less noble than it purports to be – it is motivated by some concoction of petty vengefulness, self-valorisation and resentment against powerful and high-status others.
The thing is hypocritical and deeply boring. If you have to study that shite, chances are sycophancy and the willingness to do boring, hypocritical, shite are your only relevant work skills.
Here, it is Nietzsche’s claims about the particular interests and motives of the priests, warriors and slaves that is crucial, not merely the fact that none of these figures is divine or reliable.
Why not look at the particular interests of technocratic entrepreneurs who want to use STEM subjects to raise productivity and create a virtuous circle of rising affluence and security? Oh. That would be 'English' & 'Philistine'.
How might these interests and motives play a role in Nietzsche’s critique of morality?
He was ignorant of any such interests or motives. Still, he hated Germany almost as much as Edward Lear. Sadly, his nonsense had less literary merit.
Perhaps Nietzsche is assuming that, if moral norms were originally motivated by ressentiment, then this directly renders them objectionable by ‘tainting’ them in some fashion, even if those who conform to them nowadays are not motivated in the same manner.
If those 'conforming' to them were German, then they were shit. This is a sound enough Teutonic judgment on itself.
However, Nietzsche need not make this assumption. It is more likely that Nietzsche sees his historical story as relevant in a more indirect manner, as evidence of similar psychological dynamics in contemporary society.
Sadly, Bismarck allied with Lasalle to wage a Kulturkampf against the Catholics.
On such a view, genealogy is relevant to a critique of morality because it provides evidence that contemporary morality has objectionable features, such as bad motives, that are not themselves historical.
Motives are either ergodic- i.e. economic- or else hysteresis based- i.e. historic and what Pareto would call 'residues and derivations'. Pareto and Mosca gassed on about the 'circulation of elites'. Poor, mad, Nietzsche was interpreted by people like George Bernard Shaw as championing a like elitism.
The idea that many avowed moral views have dubious motives is not a hard sell, particularly given modern internet culture. So one might wonder why one need turn to history to make this observation.
Because of 'hysteresis' or 'path dependence'. Ergodicity is about 'memoryless' economic equilibrium. It is 'English' and utilitarian. I should explain that 'psychologism' was associated with John Stuart Mill and the tradition he represented.
There are two reasons. First, Nietzsche’s history helps us see these dynamics more clearly by telling a historical story in which they are present in a simple and unmasked form.
Like David Icke except Nietzsche made less money and had stupider votaries.
While contemporary morality is overlaid with complexities and rationalisations,
and looks askance at the practice of eating your own shit.
if we look to the past, we can better see psychological dynamics that have now been obscured.
e.g. the Pope slut shaming Voltaire till he stopped eating his own shit.
History, on this interpretation, is used to unmask the present.
It is a 'Just-so' story told by a paranoid imbecile.
Second, because we are less personally and emotionally invested in viewing past situations in a particular manner,
We don't care if some paranoid imbecile starts banging on about how the Pyramids were built by Homosexual actuaries. A lot of people think it was the Illuminati but it wasn't them. They were too busy building the Great Wall of China except it wasn't originally in China. It was in Kilburn.
we are better able to take a less credulous, more realistic perspective of it.
Fuck that. We don't care about shit which happened long long ago unless it was in a Galaxy far far away and featured Jar Jar Binks, in which case we feel violated and seek professional counselling.
While we might bristle at thinking that our political convictions are motivated by ressentiment, we are more likely to recognise this dynamic in historically distant others, which then enables us to recognise it more easily in ourselves.
Jar Jar Binks made me want to kill myself.
Historical perspective prevents us from giving in to wishful thinking.
I wished I was Jabba the Hutt. I'd have licked Princess Leia but good.
These points form an important strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
Ignorance was the only strand in his thinking.
However, there are challenges to reading Nietzsche as using history in this indirect, evidential manner. Such interpretations treat the past as merely a simplified version of the present, differing from contemporary society only in minor ways. Consequently, this approach overlooks the kinds of significant historical change and contingency that are central to historicist perspectives on our social practices.
Homosexual actuaries used to be really good at building pyramids. Nowadays, they can't be arsed to even build me a Taj Mahal.
If this account of Nietzsche’s genealogy were the whole story, it would seem that Nietzsche himself would lack a historical sense. If we want to understand how Nietzsche’s Genealogy might honour such historicist assumptions, we should turn to the history of Nietzsche’s genealogical method itself. That is, we should return to philology.
Which had already been superseded by Archaeology and the decipherment of ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Elamite etc. Philology was passe. There were diminishing or even negative returns to further translations or dictionaries or grammars of classical languages. The low lying fruit had been ripe and sweet. Further labor in that vineyard yielded but bitter lees.
Much philological research in Nietzsche’s time was interested in investigating the way in which ancient and sacred texts are complex composites, with diverging elements stitched together from conflicting sources.
That was done and dusted. Nietzsche might have had some importance as pushing back against 'higher criticism' and David Strauss. But, after Darwin, nobody gave a fuck. The question was whether Nietzsche could be assimilated to eugenics and racial pseudo-science. The answer was no. He was too crazy. Still, his sister was smart enough to sign up with the Anti-Semites. After all, Christ was a Jew. That's why he cheated us Aryans out of our Might-made-Right to eat our own shit and thus overthrow the Capitalist hegemony of Big Food.
For instance, Julius Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch, the Hebrew Bible, was a human artefact that could be decomposed into four independent sources, each of which originated significantly after Moses (who was previously thought to be the sole author, a kind of ghostwriter for the divine).
This didn't matter because different people at different times could be divinely inspired to say or write exactly the same thing. Also God could plant evidence of dinosaurs just to mess with us.
This source criticism enables us to see the Hebrew Bible less as a unified work and more as an amalgam of distinct elements with differing histories.
In other words, the Bible could be way more boring and stupid than even your Vicar can make it.
This information discourages looking to the Bible for a unified theology, and therefore encouraged taking a less theological approach to the Bible generally.
The problem with proving that ancient literature was always boring, stupid, and written by various people so boring and stupid that nobody bothered to record or remember their names, is that it destroys the prestige of philology. Why bother with that shite when the STEM subjects come up with exciting discoveries every day?
As a teenager at Schulpforta, Nietzsche learned this broad philological approach to ancient texts.
As a German, Nietzsche learned how to make everything boring and stupid. That's a good reason to get syphilis and start ranting in a stupid and boring, but deeply paranoid, manner.
For instance, his teacher Friedrich August Koberstein (himself a revered scholar and historian) suggested that he research a poem on the saga of the 4th-century Ostrogoth King Ermanarich. The poem is puzzling because some parts describe Ermanarich as a noble hero while others describe him as a coward and someone who murdered his wife.
What is the puzzle? King Arthur's wife, too, committed adultery. True, he didn't have her killed in a gruesome manner but then he was a bit of a wimp;
It is not obvious how readers are supposed to evaluate Ermanarich.
If you have a King who kicks ass and who conquers lots of territory the big drawback is that he might become more and more cruel and tyrannical. This in turn means that if the barbarians invade, people may be reluctant to fight for him. In other words, short-term you gain. Long-term you lose. Sometimes, King Log is better than King Stork.
Adopting a historical perspective, young Nietzsche argued that these conflicts arise from the fact that the poem does not have a single author but rather derives from a variety of sources – it is a layered construction with some parts from the Near East, others from Germany, as well as some from Denmark and Britain.
D'uh! Still, it is likely that there would have been one written version to which all others could be traced. But this would scarcely be of anygrea
This broad approach to texts informs Nietzsche’s thinking about contemporary morality,
which was pretty elastic.
which he describes in the Genealogy’s preface as a ‘long, hard-to-decipher hieroglyphic script’.
Except, it was no such thing. Morality was then, and is now, context and status dependent. One may as well speak of contemporary notions of cuteness or coolness.
When we look at our contemporary values, there are some ostensible tensions.
There is obvious hypocrisy. I think it is wrong to look at videos of young women scissoring each other. I have certainly never done any such thing. This proves the CIA has been tampering with my browser history.
For instance, many believe that excellent human achievements deserve special admiration and rewards, but also that it is only fair to receive special rewards for things that one has earned.
Stuff you earn or otherwise acquire aint a 'special reward'.
But excellent human achievements are often due, at least partially, to innate talents that are not earned, so these views seem in tension.
One can call anything at all an 'innate talent'- e.g. the talent to work long hours and save up all your money and make really smart investment decisions.
Much moral philosophy involves teasing out such intuitive judgments,
by being more boring and stupid than anyone had previously thought possible
finding tensions among them, and considering ways of resolving these tensions,
in a manner exponentially more boring and stupid
much like a theological approach to the Bible involves identifying explicit and implicit theological claims in the text,
like 'God is really nice. He will fuck you over, if you don't agree.'
finding tensions among them, and considering ways of resolving them.
by sucking cock? I wouldn't mind if some nice young lady resolved my tensions in that way. Fuck that. I'd prefer it if she just did the washing up and some light hoovering.
However, Nietzsche’s philological approach is different. Like Wellhausen’s historical analysis of the Hebrew Bible, Nietzsche traces back different aspects of our moral framework to distinct sources.
His anus being the most prominent.
The perfectionist elements come from the warrior caste,
Thinks nobody at all. Warriors just need to kill the other guy before they sustain too much damage. A sculptor may be a perfectionist. What matters is the cost of error. Only if this is very high- e.g. having to throw away a ton of marble if you get the nose of the Emperor wrong- is there an incentive to be perfectionist.
the egalitarian ones from the priestly caste
Utterly mad! Priests are highly hierarchical.
and slave caste, and other aspects of our moral framework – such as respect for ancestors – have still other sources.
The silly sausage didn't get that, in Germany, Princes had decided which Church would get to take tithes from the populace in return for spiritual and moral instruction.
Rather than simply different strands coming together, we have a ‘document’ that has been rewritten and reinterpreted over time, often by those with complex and conflicting motivations.
Different people, at different times, asking where the toilet is, don't compose a 'document' even if their motivations are different- e.g. one guy wants to piss, another guy wants to piss, while a third just wants to wash his hands or have a wank.
A philological approach to morality understands it as a complex amalgam rather than a unified evaluative framework.
Whereas a geologic approach understands it as a complex amalgam of rocks and sand and other such stuff. Both approaches are as stupid as shit. That's why no philologist or geologist bothers to provide an 'evaluative framework' for morality, music, or making miaow miaow noises.
This historical approach differs from more typical forms of moral philosophy because it does not assume that there is a unified answer to questions like ‘What is the good?’
because 'go fuck yourself' is just as good an answer as 'it is the nice except it has a College degree.'
at least if that answer is supposed to fit with many of our intuitive judgments.
Our intuitive judgment is that moral philosophy is a waste of time. Still, in the interests of Diversity and Inclusivity it may be a good thing tat some cretins become Professors of worthless shite.
Rather, it brings out the competing strands of our moral thinking by providing an explanation of their presence that suggests that there won’t be a way to reconcile them.
What would reconcile me to moral thinking would be getting paid lots of money to do so. Otherwise, I feel a bit foolish for continually saying 'it is immoral of super-models not to form an orderly queue outside my bedroom door'.
That is, just as a scientific philology of the Bible might undermine the presuppositions of Christian theology
only if you are too stupid to understand that if God is all powerful then He could have divinely inspired different people at different places such that the eternally pre-existing Revelation could appear to be pieced together from them.
– that one will be able to construct a unified theology that fits sacred texts
If theology acknowledges 'mysteries' then it isn't unified because it is necessarily logically incomplete
– so too a philology of morality undermines a presupposition of a certain strand of moral philosophy, that there is a unified moral theory that will make sense of our moral assumptions and practices.
There can always be an arbitrary theory which is unified.
When one takes the historical perspective, much moral philosophy looks like it is engaged in a hopeless apologetic project of trying to reconcile what cannot be reconciled.
which is fine so long as it gets paid.
There is no higher compromise between masters and slaves.
Slavery is wrong. Otherwise Beyonce would definitely have made me her sex-slave by now.
Now, if Nietzsche’s philological approach were relevant only to philosophical methodology,
It isn't. It is too stupid.
it might seem of little interest outside academic debate. However, this approach to morality does not just highlight a problem for contemporary moral philosophy.
Which nobody is interested in except those who think dolphins are currently underrepresented on the boards of Fortune 500 companies.
It also highlights a problem for us. For the fact that our modern moral views are fragmented and disunified itself poses problems. It means that it is difficult to act effectively and consistently,
Unless you are in fact effective and consistent and thus successful in your professional or personal life.
as there is no overarching framework for reconciling competing considerations in practical decision-making.
Thinks nobody at all. Mummy was very good at keeping us kids- with our 'competing claims'- in line. Some kisses or sweeties reconciled us to this quickly enough.
It means that we might be committed to assessing ourselves according to conflicting criteria, ensuring that we are never able to measure up to the standards we set for ourselves.
Which is why my cock isn't long enough to knock the moon out of its orbit.
It sets us against ourselves. Nietzsche considered this kind of fragmentation and tension in our views a kind of illness, one of the ways in which modern society is sick.
But it wasn't the way he was sick. He had syphilis.
Once one sees how the tools of philology can be applied to morality, it is easy to see how they can be extended to other parts of contemporary culture.
Physics is wrong. My cock can knock the moon out of its orbit. Philology told me so.
If we examine the history of the norms that structure various social identities, we are often able to make salient forms of internal conflict that are latent in everyday life. For example,
my cock knocks the Moon out of its orbit but my jizz soaks it and thus pulls it back into orbit.
by examining the history of gender norms, we may more clearly discern tensions within contemporary conceptions of gender – eg, if you’re a woman, you are supposed to be both an angel of the house and a girlboss,
as opposed to a sofa. Vance will fuck you if you are a sofa.
and if you’re a man, you need to be an alpha while avoiding being toxically masculine.
i.e. don't fuck the sofa.
These competing norms often create conflicts within those who are invested in these identities, and clarifying the conflict may help avoid fruitless and frustrating attempts to reconcile these competing elements.
e.g. by fucking the sofa only when your wife is sitting on it.
Of course, fragmentation and tension need not always be negative – there can be productive tensions, as Nietzsche recognised.
e.g. fucking the sofa and getting it pregnant so it gives birth to an ottoman.
Later theorists who have wanted to apply this philological approach to the cultural sphere have often aimed to emphasise its emancipatory potential.
Sofas which have been fucked by a Vice-Presidential candidate can go on Oprah.
For example, understanding national histories as multifaceted genealogies, yielding political communities that are complex composites rather than unified cultures, enables one to appreciate the dynamism of cultural richness and challenge simplistic views of cultural homogeneity.
Did you know sofas come from Persia? Vance is fucking Iranian types of furniture! You can't say hillbilly culture is homogeneous. The stereotype of the redneck fucking his La-Z-boy doesn't do justice to the rich and diverse culture of fucking furniture in the Appalachians.
Stepping back, a central puzzle about Nietzsche is why a self-styled ‘philosopher of the future’ should be so interested in the past.
He thought he knew a bit about the past but he didn't really.
By examining the history of Nietzsche’s historicism, we can discern an answer. If employed critically, philology is not merely a tool for exploring the past but one for actively shaping the future.
by telling stupid lies. David Icke is our Nietzsche. But he didn't go to Collidge and so will be spared articles like this a century from now.
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