Nietzsche's Most Controversial Idea | Beyond Good and Evil

What if everything you knew about right and wrong, right and wrong, right and wrong, what if it was all wrong? This was the radical thought proposed by the German philosopher and reason. I had a terrible mustache for a year. Friederick Ner 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 quintessential philosopher of nervous teenagers who rebel against their parents but rarely do so. We stop to consider how radical his view of morality is and how it changed the world of philosophy.

In this video we will learn why Nicha hated Christian morality, how being a

good

person can make you miserable and why so-called moral people. They are secret liars, but first let's learn exactly how NE thought our current moral system emerged from NE's history of morality. In Peter Shaer's work Amadeus, composer Saleri develops an obsession with and envy of Wolf Gang Amadeus Mozart, which Saleri had to work hard to become. A successful composer, Mozart writes much better music than ever before, seemingly effortlessly. An enraged and resentful Saleri sets out to ruin Mozart's career and ultimately murder him with poison, as the work premere saleri has become an al

most

universal symbol of the destructive power of Ressentiment.

Saleri derives no joy from Revenge of him. His resentment ultimately destroys him as much as he destroys Mozart because he didn't aim to improve, he aimed to bring Mozart down to his level. His life's mission was not to improve himself, but from ne's point of view, our entire moral system was built by resentful people, just like Saleri, he paints a picture of history that is somewhat fictional, but which aims to trace the general course of the creation of a moral system initially, when man is just beginning to In tribes and societies, the

most

powerful people rise to the top and it is they who decide what is

good

and it is not difficult for them to decide.

They immediately define the good as all the qualities they possess, that is, strength, competence and the ability to dominate nature. He is quick to emphasize that not all of this is crude individualism. Hedonism with strength and competence comes with the ability to be trustworthy and useful and with the ability to dominate also comes the ability to protect and provide for both oneself and one's fellow human beings. At this point, it is neither altruism nor altruism and it is certainly not weakness that is desirable, but personal excellence. This is what nature refers to as noble morality or master morality for nature.

The defining characteristic of morality is that it is constructive. It begins by defining good practically. You're welcome also has a concept of

evil

, but only in the sense of a lack of the qualities that are considered good, it's almost like an afterthought, which is why I thought this type of morality was life-affirming, gave people people something to strive for. It was active, energetic and strengthened the wills of the people on a broader scale, it led to successful societies that were able to conquer the rivals that subjugated them and ensure the prosperity of their own civilization, but with conquest and the will to dominate For others, some form of distribution system inevitably arises there.

The conquerors and the conquered are the powerful and the powerless or as nature says the master and the slave and just as there is a Master morality, over time a slave morality will emerge, the subjugated class will not endure their treatment forever, it will cause them to resent his dominators as a result whatever the master's morality considers good, the slave's morality will consider bad where the aristocrat values ​​strength, the surge will value weakness where the master values ​​the will to dominate the slave will value submission and obedience and where the noble values ​​the ability to do great actions both for good and

evil

, the servant will instead value harmlessness.

NE thought that all this was perfectly understandable after all, if you have been dominated you know how unpleasant it feels and you are going to find it. very difficult to value domination, but it points out a fundamental difference between this slave morality and the old master morality, where the powerful define good from nothing and only then we move on to define evil in opposition to that, the starting point of the morality of the powerless is to demonize whatever the powerful have there is no aspiration here other than weakness and incompetence at least according to n and for n this slave morality found its pinnacle in christianity all christian values ​​help others love your enemies pray for the Souls of your executioners the

idea

of ​​the meek inheriting the Earth all of it aims to demonize strength and domination in favor of passivity and submission is the quintessential example of a slave morality and N points out that it has surpassed all of Europe and beyond a key concept to introduce here is the will to power, nature thought that each human being had within itself the will to dominate other people and their environment to impose its will on the universe to change things and reshape the world however they wanted.

It is this will that makes the powerful want to dominate the powerless and it is the same Instinct that makes the powerless Take Revenge by slowly changing the values ​​of society to recapitulate nature. We think that our current moral system was in effect created by a resentful. Revolt in which the subjugated took revenge on their dominators by slowly transforming the values ​​of society so that the highest good was no longer defined by the powerful but by the powerless. It's a strange picture to understand now, you might say, but what should we do? We don't 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's what we'll move on to next and if you want more about philosophy and the 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 tells the story of a man whose life has been destroyed by passivity and mediocrity, he makes endless promises to himself, especially of great deeds, he will commit to evil acts, he will undertake what he really wants, it is beside the point, the important thing is what happens next, which is nothing, he does not act and he does not try change the world in any way, it wouldn't matter if the underground man was the most evil creature in history or the kindest soul to walk the earth, it's ineffective so it just doesn't matter either way, he has no will, no strength nor the ability to make things happen and this is what worries nature.

It 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 force. We'll talk about 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 obvious that to achieve something you need to be powerful, anyone who did anything significant necessarily had to have extreme strength or extreme competence, or both, unless they changed the face of the world completely. accident. This is true for the generous philanthropist who uses his vast resources to help others and the imperialist general who uses the same resources to subjugate millions.

The point is that you can't have one without the other, you can't create extraordinary men without creating extraordinary monsters, sometimes they might even come in the same package: NE described Napoleon as a great mix of monster and superior man. It was better to be powerless and meek than powerful and strong, then it would never have 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 century. genealogy of morality n says that it will test aspects of our morality to see if they promote greater usefulness and prosperity for both the individual and the society to which they naturally belong fear of power fails on both counts in the case of the individual means that only those who have no vision will end up happy or fulfilled and in the case of society it means that it will never produce people capable of making great leaps forward for the good of their communities.

If Napoleon had been a little more skillful, he might have conquered all of Europe and I would be speaking French right now. He asks us if Napoleon would have been successful if France had not been instilled with centuries of Christian values. He encourages us to let go of our fear of power if we do. No, then we are condemning ourselves and our societies to insignificance, it is just a matter of time, but perhaps this seems a bit speculative to you. I must say that it seems a bit exaggerated to me at some points, outwardly Christian societies have been some of the most successful and powerful in history, although NE would say that is only because they had not yet fully embraced slave morality , however, n presents an additional critical argument: slave morality will make us miserable, three resentments, self-destruction, and morality.

I talked a little. I've already talked about the

idea

that our value system comes from the powerless who resent the powerful, but building something on a foundation of resentment like this is a complete disaster, this is because it takes us away from who we want to be. and it makes us miserable as human beings. As a result, this is all a bit abstract, so let's bring things down to earth with a story that is often used to illustrate this point. The fable about sour grapes ESOP tells of a fox who jumps to grab some grapes hanging from a nearby tree and fails to do so. catching them several times the fox gives up and comments that the grapes were probably sour anyway this calms the fox in the moment but fundamentally dooms him to never get the grapes if another fox appears and somehow manages to catch the grapes. our hero would be resentful, on the one hand he would still want The Grapes, but on the other hand, he is demonizing the grapes because they are not worth having.

This contradiction will eat him up inside as long as he continues to deny his will that grapes now replace grapes. with something much more significant like power, achievement, or influence, these are things that nature believes all people want to a greater or lesser degree, but they are also the same things condemned by slave morality. The problem is that simply saying they are evil is not enough to get people to stop loving them by nature, it is basically impossible to stop loving them because they come from basic human instinct aligned with the preservation and improvement of Our Lives, the will to power, Far from actually curbing the impulse to tell the person living under slave morality that a fundamental, immutable part of themselves is evil and that they are reprehensible for having it, this may prevent 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 aspired to Greatness crushed condemns us to both despair and mediocrity and when we live our mediocre lives we will look to those whose Will to Power has not been suppressed who They 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 bad or that what they have is not worth our time. We will tell those who struggle. to reach their potential as human beings who are wasting their lives and will never get anywhere, who knows, maybe in both cases we are right, but whether we are right or not, 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 the same monotonous days until we die an unsatisfied death because a substantial criticism of our current moral system is that it does not do what it proclaims to be good it must be useful and be life. satisfying, but in n's analysis, being meek, soft, passive and selfless does none of those things, all it does is condemn us to a life of constant frustration while we deny our Will to Power;

In his opinion, it is a deeply dishonest way to live and that is exactly what we are going to move on to the next four the moral man we all know, someone who through his moral system has become completely unbearable, the kind of person who He will lecture you at dinner and hold everyone around him to impossible moral standards that they don't have. They agree that they show 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 happier lives than them. This is the idea that n has of the moral person whom he invokes inseveral points.

In Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy of Morals from one perspective, they are doing something perfectly unobjectionable, they are simply defending the values ​​of their moral system, but this story is not believed in the slightest, it accuses the moral person of fundamental dishonesty. About its motivations, righteous anger is a familiar concept, it's essentially when someone gets angry and tries to change another person's behavior, but from a moral standpoint, this type of anger has motivated everything from the expansion of human rights. humans to the massacre of different religious denominations. as a historical phenomenon n points out that it is basically an amoral force, it is simply a group of people who try to impose their morality on others, in other words, it is the angry person's expression of his will to power and it is important to note that he does not see nothing intrinsically wrong with this.

He thinks it is natural to want to assert his will against others. I wouldn't judge any of these people for their desire to change the world to better themselves and people like them, simply pointing out that far from being a crusade for metaphysical truth or justice, all it is is a will to power with a Good PR campaign, but the problem with this dishonesty is that it fundamentally limits the will to improve. power means that we can only assert our will when we find some theoretical justification for it and if we are trapped in slave morality, these limitations will be very strict again pointing out the suffocating effect of morality on those he considered exceptional.

What made Napoleon great in n's eyes was his assertion of his will to power despite having no moral justification for wanting to conquer all of Europe. It was his ability to act beyond good and evil that distinguished him from the rest. Instead, he had spent time probing his hands to determine if he was acting morally; would never have left its mark on history, and this is part of what makes reading nature in terms of morality so difficult that it is difficult to overstate how radical this departure is from earlier philosophical analyzes of the good, while Aristotle John Stewart Mill and K asked what good was in and of itself, nature treats morality as a set of concepts that humans use and simply describes it by highlighting the elements in which it can work against us rather than for us. of us, while philosophy has tended to ask what is good NE asks what it is good for but there is a question that we must now all ask ourselves what do we do with Neer's analysis five what is next The analysis of the morality of nature is one of The most

controversial

theses in philosophy is anti-Democratic, anti-egalitarian and opposes almost everything that we intuitively consider good and this is by design, but what we do with this information is abandon our old values ​​and forge new ones that prioritize strength, will and domination, that's what some people take. of this, but if you don't want to go that far and not many people do, you can still find a brilliant idea in n's thoughts here, firstly it shows how strength and power don't have to be things bad, the ability to be a great benefactor of humanity goes hand in hand with the ability to cause great harm a morality that glorifies weakness and meekness to the exclusion of self-improvement and competition does its followers a disservice by getting worse. actively their lives;

Second, it suggests that perhaps we should be a little more skeptical of those who build their identity around being moral. Nature's observation that professions of kindness can conceal a hidden will to power is a wonderful piece of cynical wisdom. Using the person who exercises morality as a knife is very good advice for our interpersonal relationships. 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 falsehood appearance and reality these are not sacred relics Beyond criticism We can question them, interrogate them and see if we are doing the job we want them to do, we don't have to abandon them completely, but we may want to modify them slightly for the betterment of ourselves and our societies.

More than any other Western philosopher before him, we are reminded of our freedom to choose our values ​​by the subtitle of n's book Twilight of the Idols is How to Philosophize with a Hammer and this beautifully sums up n's approach. n is destroying old philosophical assumptions that good and evil exist or even that good is good and making way for a new kind of philosopher, one who will remove the shattered fragments of these old systems and create new ones that foster a compromise with the world that is powerful, active loving and, above all, life-affirming. I encourage you to read n for yourself to get your My own ideas here, as I have had to leave out much of the detail, the two key texts to choose for this aspect of his philosophy are Beyond Good and Evil and the genealogy of morality, and if you want a more constructive nian philosophy, click here. to learn about his radical doctrine of loving one's destiny no matter what and stay to learn more about how to improve your life.