Nietzsche: Neither Amoral nor Immoral, says Dr. Pierce

Nietzsche: Neither Amoral nor Immoral
by Andrew Macdonald


From Instauration magazine, page 6, August 1991:

Regarding the article in the May issue by A.F. Svenson, “Ethics and White Liberation,” I agree wholeheartedly with Svenson's principal conclusion: namely, that we need a firm moral basis for our liberation struggle. I would like to point out, however, that one of his theses is faulty. Svenson asserts, in essence, that Nietzsche was amoral, that the philosopher of the Superman was nothing more than a survivalist and that he provided only a “cavalier treatment of moral values.” This leaves the reader with the impression that Nietzsche was nothing more than a watered-down Germanic copy of Ayn Rand.

           

Nietzsche's writings are voluminous, with commentaries on a large number of topics. As with the Bible, they may be selectively used by persons with preconceived notions to “prove” almost anything about the philosopher's views. What is unarguable is that Nietzsche was an iconoclast, with Christian icons being particular objects of wrath. Many traditionalists have never forgiven him for that.

           

It is also true that Nietzsche, who referred to himself as “the Immoralist,” wrote of the need to “overcome morality.” Many people, I am sure, have simply accepted that at face value and not understood that he preached against the established and conventional ideas of ethics in order to replace them with a new and higher conception of morality. All of his writing is moral in nature.

************************

Christian morality...is Semitic in its origin and essence.

The Christian's morality is anchored in his desire

for eternal bliss and his fear of damnation.

************************

In truth, Nietzsche demanded a more exacting morality-and a more unselfish one-than any other ethicist. Christian morality -- the morality against which Nietzsche most often preached -- is Semitic in its origin and essence. The Christian's morality is anchored in his desire for eternal bliss and his fear of damnation. The Christian does good works and abstains from sin in the hope of a very personal reward, even if he must pass into the next world to obtain it. Nietzsche, by way of contrast, imposed upon us the burden of preparing the way for the coming of the Superman, and promised us no personal reward for accepting our responsibility for this task. Or, to look at it another way, the virtue that Nietzsche preached is its own reward.

           

A very superficial reading of Nietzsche has left many with the impression that he preached hedonism and egoism. This is an utterly false impression. In truth, he preached a selfless love of what man can become and of what the world can become. He also preached an active love that requires self-mastery and truthfulness before it can be effective, a love which requires a casting off of superstition and a contempt for all folly and weakness and decadence.

           

This message, or parts of it, can be found in a thousand places in Nietzsche's writings, but perhaps nowhere more explicitly than in the prologue to Thus Spake Zarathustra:

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal;

what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.

I love those that I know not how to live except as down-goers,

for they are the over-goers.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers

and arrows of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars

for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves

to the earth that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know

in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who laboreth and inventeth, that he may build the

house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant,

for thus seeketh he his own down-going...

I love all who are heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud

that lowereth over man; they herald the coming of the

lightning and succumb as heralds.

Lo, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop out of the cloud;

the lightning, however, is the Superman.

Svenson might have hit closer to the truth if he had admitted that Nietzsche's morality is too exalted for the average man. He might have pointed out more forcefully the folly of climbing out of the pit of Christian superstition and Semitic morality, only to fall into the pit of egoism and hedonism. He is utterly right in cautioning us that if we throw morality overboard, we lose our greatest source of strength for the liberation struggle. But he is utterly wrong in rejecting -- or in failing to understand, or perhaps even to see-the morality of Nietzsche. It may be that Nietzsche's morality is beyond the grasp of the average man, and that none of us is advanced enough to live fully in accord with it. Nevertheless, it is the morality which can sustain our struggle to a victorious conclusion.

************************

He also preached an active love that requires self-mastery and

truthfulness before it can be effective, a love which

requires a casting off of superstition and a

contempt for all folly and weakness and decadence.

************************

Link to the May 1991 Instauration magazine; on pages 11 and 12 is the article written by A.F. Svenson: http://www.instaurationonline.com/pdf-files/Instauration-1991-05-May.pdf