On Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols
Father Edward Coyle once said:
"Normal people never accomplish anything."
This may be the one statement from a priest Nietzsche would agree with. Throughout his works, Nietzsche points out the power of nihilism throughout civilization. Throughout the Greeks, the Romans, and the German people, Nietzsche points out that society's hopelessness and decay drove excess. The truth of the matter is that, as a nation continues to survive, a divide begins to develop between political and cultural circles. Instead of asserting higher standards in education, Nietzsche was cautious of the qualifications of professors. Nietzsche insisted on the need to rationalize before proceeding on impulse, the ability to think critically, and the ability to debate rational thought. Instead, the insistence on Socratic dialogue allows weaker arguments more power than Nietzsche believes they are worth. Like a family that pretends the father never drank too much and the mother never had a nervous breakdown, Nietzsche sees the German people moving on as if their issues are all a bad dream they do not remember, even as they carry around the baggage of that dysfunction to this day. From Nietzsche's point of view, "immoralists" are the only ones who see the fragility of German nationalism and the sickness of western civilization. Such insights lead the reader to an interesting question: isn't it overt to go mad when everyone around is persistently trying to ensure that you fit into their idea of normal?
Nietzsche criticizes the German culture as unsophisticated, decadent and nihilistic, and shoots some disapproving arrows at critical French, British, and Italian cultural figures representing similar tendencies. In contrast to all these alleged cultural "decadence" alleged representatives, Nietzsche applauds Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Thucydides, and the Sophists as healthier and more active types. The book states the transmutation of all values as Nietzsche's final and most important project, giving a view of antiquity where the Romans for once take precedence over the ancient Greeks, albeit only in the field of literature.
Nietzsche asserts that the most intelligent seem to have shared a collective conviction that life is worthless throughout history. Nietzsche argues that this concept was not a symptom of a healthy society but one in decay. Nietzsche explains that philosophers such as Socrates and Plato shared a common physiological disposition to feel negative about life, which reflected the decay of the superior Greek culture that preceded them.
Nietzsche holds Socrates in particular condescension. Socrates, he believes, was subject to all manner of wickedness and lustful impulses and was a product of society's "lower orders." Nietzsche singles out two specific ideas of Socrates to prove his claim. The first is the interrelation of reason, virtue, and happiness. The second is Socrates's induction of the dialectic method to philosophy. Nietzsche thought that the dialectic allowed frailer philosophical positions and less sophisticated thinkers to gain too large a foothold in society. Nietzsche's program valued intuition over reason, but because of Socrates and the dialectic, Greek culture now became "absurdly rational."[i] A crucial part of Nietzsche's thesis is that "happiness and instinct are one," but reason stands in direct opposition to instinct. Ultimately, Nietzsche insisted that life's value cannot be estimated, and any judgment concerning it only reveals the person's life-denying or life-affirming tendencies.[ii]
In examining his day's German society, Nietzsche attributes any advantage Germans hold over other European countries to essential principled virtues and not to any cultural sophistication. Nietzsche accredits the decline he sees in the sophistication in German thought to prioritizing politics over acumen. The state and nation are in tension because one of the pair thrives at the other's expense.[iii]
Nietzsche also attributes the decline in German intellect to nuisances he saw in higher education in his day. First, Nietzsche calls into question the prerequisites of college instructors, insisting on the need for adequately educated educators. Educators, he argues, are vital to teaching three critical proficiencies: seeing (the ability to rationalize before proceeding on impulse), thinking ("Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned."), Moreover, rhetoric ("One has to be able to dance with the pen."). Second, he is critical of opening colleges and universities to all social classes because when stripped of its "privilege," higher education's eminence deteriorates. "All higher education belongs to the exceptions alone: one must be privileged to have a right to so high a privilege. Great and fine things can never be common property."[iv]
Nietzsche denies many of Plato's ideas, precisely that of Being and Becoming, the forms' world, and the senses' fallibility. Specifically, he does not believe that one should rebut the senses, as Plato did.[v] This concept goes against Nietzsche's ideals of human excellence in that it is a symptom of personal decadence.[vi] By decadence, Nietzsche refers to a fading of life, vitality, and an embrace of feebleness. In Nietzsche's view, if one has accepted a non-corporal, static world as superior and our sensory world as inferior, one has adopted an abhorrence of nature and a hatred of the physical world. Nietzsche suggests that only one who is insubstantial, ignoble, or weak would advocate for such a belief.
Nietzsche goes on to link this obsession with the non-physical field to Christianity and the concept of Heaven. Nietzsche suggests that the belief in the Christian God is a similar dissolution and hatred of life.[vii] Since Christians believe in Heaven, which is in concept comparable to Plato's ideas of the world of forms and that Christians divide the world into the "real" and the apparent world, they too hate nature.
Nietzsche is not a pleasure seeker, arguing that any passions in excess can "drag their victim down with the weight of their folly." However, he maintains that the passions can become "spiritualized ultimately." Christianity, he criticizes, instead deals with excessive passions by attempting to obliterate the passion. Nietzsche claims in an analogy that the Christian approach to morality is not much different than how an unskilled dentist might treat tooth pain by removing the tooth entirely rather than pursue other less aggressive and equally effective treatments. Christianity does not attempt to "spiritualize, beautify, deify a desire," which leads Nietzsche to conclude that the Christian Church is "hostile to life." Taking an emotional turn, Nietzsche writes that people who want to eliminate specific passions outright do so because they are "too weak-willed, too degenerate to impose moderation" upon their selves.[viii]
Nietzsche fosters his idea of spiritualizing the passions through studying the concepts of tenderness and enmity. Love, he claims, is the "spiritualization of sensuality." On the other hand, enmity spiritualizes the state of having enemies since having opponents helps us define and strengthen our positions. Even with the anti-Christian sentiment that saturates his thinking, Nietzsche clarifies that he has no interest in eliminating the Christian Church. Instead, he recognizes that his philosophical program would be neither as useful nor vital without it. If the Church denies the "instincts of life," this helps him develop a position that affirms them. Using dogmatic language, Nietzsche insists that the real "blasphemy" is the Christian "rebellion against life." Christian ethics is ultimately indicative of a "declining, debilitated, weary, condemned life."
Nietzsche concludes by asserting people must be one way, and not another leads to a form of bigotry, devaluing the goodness of human diversity. Also, the belief that people can genuinely change their nature disregards that anyone is a portion of fate. A person cannot dissociate themselves from past actions or current settings, allowing them to be who they are. Nietzsche closes by stating it is "immoralists" such as himself who have the highest respect for individuals' inherent worth because they do not value one person's approach to life over any others.[ix]
[i] Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, (New York: Random House, 2003), 43.
[ii] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 40, 55.
[iii] Ibid, 74
[iv] Ibid, 75
[v] Ibid, 45
[vi] Ibid, 49.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Ibid, 52
[ix] Ibid, 56-67