Zadok Paper S95 Autumn 1998
Nietzsche: insight and immorality
by Greg Restall

The Paper: Twentieth Century philosophy and culture is profoundly indebted to the writings of Friederich Nietzche. His influence on poets and novelists such as Rilke, Yeats, Shaw, Hesse, Gide and Malraux has been much commented upon, as has his effect on the philosophy of Camus, Sartre, Spengler and Tillich. Recent critical theorists such as Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan are incalculably indebted to him. Greg Restall, however, focuses on Nietzsche's notorious criticisms of Christianity, found particularly in The Antichrist, and asks what a genuine Christian engagement with his thought might be, and whether we have the courage to apply Nietzsche's critique to ourselves.

The Author: Greg Restall lectures at the School of History, Philosophy and Politics, Macquarie University, Sydney. He is not a Nietzchian scholar, rather his disciplines are logic, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of religion. The author wishes to thank Fernando Gros and to Christine Parker for their thoughtful comments and encouragement.

Introduction

OF THE MODERN CRITICS of religious belief, Nietzsche, together with Freud, Feuerbach and Marx, present important criticisms which form a part of the fabric of the contemporary philosophy of religion. The way that Christians (and other religious believers) respond to these contemporary critics of religion is very important. So, my aim in this paper is not only to give a short introduction to what Nietzsche has to say about Christian faith, but also to examine what might be an appropriate response for believers.

Nietzsche lived from 1844 to 1900. He was born a Prussian, the son of a Lutheran minister. He was educated at the University of Bonn, studying in theology and classical philology. In 1865 he gave up theology and moved to Leipzig, where he was influenced by Schopenhauer. Called to the University of Basel at the early age of 24, despite not receiving his doctorate, he taught there from 1869 to 1879, retiring due to ill-health. He kept writing until 1889, when his condition deteriorated further. He did not regain his sanity, and he died in 1900.

In his writings, Nietzsche launched a devastating critique of traditional morality and traditional religion. Running through Nietzsche's work from beginning to end is his own clear ethic, involving intellectual integrity and self-fulfilment or human flourishing. It's on the fulcrum of this sort of ethic that Nietzsche 'leverages' his critique of traditional morality and traditional religion.

(Some take Nietzsche to be a relativist, but I agree with Berkowitz1 that this is mistaken. Admittedly, Nietzsche talks of the transvaluation of all values, and it is clear that he is aware of the relativity of moral systems. Different moralities give different answers to the question 'what is good?' However, Nietzsche goes on to judge different moralities on the basis of particular criteria. Nietzsche is not the simple-minded relativist for whom anything goes in the area of morality or epistemology.)

What does Nietzsche say about morality? From his early work, including On the Genealogy of Morals, to the end of his life with Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche distinguishes two forms of morality. Master morality involves the distinction between good and bad. Slave morality uses the distinction between good and evil. Good functions differently in either form of morality, depending on whether its opposite is bad or evil. For master morality, good is defined in terms of excellence or human flourishing. Strength, power and proficiency are all aspects of what is good. Then the bad is the lack of this sort of good; it is the weak, the deprived, the lazy and those who don't measure up.
Nietzche writes: "The man who has the power to requite goodness with goodness, evil with evil, and really does practice requital by being grateful and vengeful, is called 'good'. The man who is unpowerful and cannot requite is taken for bad . . . Good and bad are for a time equivalent to noble and base, master and slave."2

Slave morality is quite different. For Nietzsche, slave morality is a construction of the weak and the powerless, it begins by defining the other as evil, as the other is seen to be the cause of the weakness and powerlessness of the slave. "Then, in the souls of the oppressed, powerless men, every other man is taken for hostile, inconsiderate, exploitative, cruel, sly, whether he be noble or base. Evil is an epithet for man, indeed for every possible living being, even, for example, for a god . . ."3

And since the others are so evil, we, the weak and powerless must be seen as good. Nietzsche's following quote gives a fitting illustration using the imagery of powerful birds of prey and the helpless lambs on which they feed: "if the lambs say among themselves: 'these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb-would he not be good?' there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it ironically and say: 'we don't dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb'."4

To: A 'spiritual revenge'