Ethical Egoism and Nietzsche s Philosophy of Morality

Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morality”

Introduction

Nietzsche’s focus on the opposing meanings of “good” serves as the basis of his “On the Genealogy of Morality,” wherein the First Treatise contrasts the Roman “good/bad” paradigm with the Judaic/Christian “good/evil” paradigm. The former, according to Nietzsche, is assertive, noble and strong—taking pride in its strength; the latter is weak, bitter, and envious—seeking refuge in the “soul” out of a shameful sense of oppression and resentment. The “good/bad” paradigm is associated with an ancient aristocracy stemming from the Aryan race of warriors, the original Celts, in Nietzsche’s view. The “slave morality” of the Jews and Christians was born out of the fact that the oppressed, weaker people resented the aristocracy and their pride and strength and perverted the notion of “the good” to reflect their own inferiority. This is why Nietzsche refers to Christian and Jewish morality as “slave morality” for in his view it does not reflect anything noble, self-asserting, or self-determining; instead, it reflects only the humiliation of the weak and conquered, teaching as it does self-renunciation rather than self-love. Nietzsche believes that the master race is a noble, self-loving, self-asserting race because it refuses to be weak; it makes enemies and relishes in the fact. For Nietzsche, there is no good/evil paradigm, for he rejects the values of the Jews and Christians; for him, there is only the good/bad paradigm. For this reason, Nietzsche is an Ethical Egoist. This paper will explain Nietzsche’s Ethical Egoism by critically analyzing the First Treatise of “On the Genealogy of Morality” and identifying its rejection of virtue ethics and deontology in favor of egoism.

Who Are We?

When Nietzsche opens in his Introduction to his First Treatise with the statement, “We are unknown to ourselves…” he does so in order to attack the traditional ethical norms that Western society had cultivated over the course of thousands of years—from the ancient Greeks through the Christianization of the West and into the modern era (3). His argument is that by embracing a false paradigm of morality—a good/evil paradigm engendered primarily by Jews (an outcast and often subjugated people) and Christians (persecuted for hundreds of years prior to their ascent under Constantine)—“we knowers” have lost knowledge of our true selves and the true natural law (3). The law is not one of good and evil, but rather of good and bad, he states. What is good is the self; what is bad is destruction of the self in Nietzsche’s ethical view.

Nietzsche lays out this view by first identifying the problem as one that “relates to morality and to all that hitherto on earth has been celebrated as morality” (4). He questions the legitimacy of this morality by asking about the origin of the terms “good” and “evil” and looking not in theology and ethics for the answers but rather to history. He finds in history a deviation from the original paradigm of good and bad, a deviation that resulted in the paradigm of good and evil taking hold in society. The original paradigm, he asserts, is the true, natural paradigm: “The pathos of nobility and distance…the continuing and predominant feeling of complete and fundamental superiority of a higher ruling kind in relation to a lower kind, to those ‘below’ – that is the origin of the antithesis ‘good’ and ‘bad’” (Nietzsche 12). It is this natural order of things—of a ruling people holding power over a weaker people—that Nietzsche views as the correct perspective on history. It is used to support his view of Ethical Egoism, because it is rooted in the idea of the ruling class coming to power simply by having the will to take power and retain it. Nietzsche admires this toughness of the will and sees it as the epitome of goodness. In the modern era, he despises the weak, the soft, the compassionate, as he sees these as attributes of a person constrained by the slave morality of the good/evil paradigm. We are driven by egoism to take for ourselves what we want and to rule over others as best we can—and this, Nietzsche claims, is good.

Nietzsche’s Egoism

The presupposition of Nietzsche is that the good/evil paradigm of slave morality is ahistorical. He views it as outside the true origins of human endeavors—as a perversion of historical thought. The good/evil paradigm, however, has its own history and cosmology, and it posits that the human race is fallen, due to sin against God, and that good and evil do in fact exist in reality because these are the two forces in opposition to one another. It is explained by Christians and Jews according to their own religious contexts, but other peoples throughout history have explained these terms in accordance with their own cosmologies. Nietzsche’s presupposition, lurking behind his view, is that good and evil are not real but are, rather, fabrications of weak minds that refuse to harness their own will to power and assert themselves. Nietzsche believes their use of the term “good” to be unoriginal and his use of the term “good” to be consistent with its true original definition. And for that reason, he asserts, “It is because of this origin that from the outset, the word ‘good’ is absolutely not necessarily attached to ‘unegoistic’ actions: as the superstition of these moral genealogists would have it” (12). Thus, he argues that good should not be divorced from egoism—but it is because moral slaves are afraid of the ego.

The ego was represented by the aristocracy, in Nietzsche’s mind, because the aristocracy was strong, powerful and on top. The aristocracy possessed enough egoism to know that it had to rule or be ruled. But then the aristocracy itself fell to slave morality thinking: “It is only with a decline of aristocratic value judgments that this whole antithesis between ‘egoistic’ and ‘unegoistic’ forces itself more and more on man’s conscience, – it is, to use my language, the herd instinct which, with that, finally gets its word in (and makes words)” (12). With the decline of proper value judgments, the herd mentality of the masses of slaves pushed their form of the “good” into the lexicon and shifted the world from the original good/bad paradigm to the good/evil paradigm. Such is Nietzsche’s argument.

The conception of virtue at play here is not that of the classical system of virtue ethics—or rather, Nietzsche’s conception of virtue is not that: virtue ethics is denounced, as is deontology, because both clash with Ethical Egoism, which is the ethical framework that Nietzsche promotes. In this framework, it is virtuous to pursue one’s ends by whatever means are handiest. In Ethical Egoism, there is no good/evil paradigm; there is only good/bad. If it succeeds in getting one what one wants, it is good. If it does not, it is bad. The ultimate virtue in life is to be self-serving, in Nietzsche’s philosophy. It is the exact opposite of the classical system of virtue ethics.

Blaming the Jews and Jesus

Nietzsche blames the arrival of the good/evil paradigm on the Jews: “It was the Jews who, rejecting the aristocratic value equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = blessed) ventured, with awe-inspiring consistency, to bring about a reversal and held it in the teeth of the most unfathomable hatred (the hatred of the powerless)” (17). They did this by promoting a value system that was the exact opposite in Nietzsche’s eyes: they stated that suffering is good, that the poor and powerless are good, and that salvation is only for the lowly whereas the rich and powerful and beautiful are only to be seen as lustful, wretched and cursed. One can or at least should see a great deal of spite and venom in Nietzsche’s words, as well as a great deal of over-simplification of the views and value systems of the Jews and the Christians who came after them. Nietzsche’s over-simplification of the Jewish belief system, which is predicated on the notion of man being helpless because of the Fall and the effects of the Original Sin, allows him to condemn the system as a whole. He condemns it because he sees nothing noble in it, nothing beautiful, nothing uplifting, but ultimately because he sees nothing self-centered in it.

Nietzsche’s predicament, if it might be called that, is that he is caught between loving the good, the true and the beautiful, and loving himself. He wants to reconcile these two, but as the course of his own life will show, he is never really able to do so. In his attempt to pursue egoism, he becomes the very weak, pathetic and oppressed individual he criticizes in the opening pages of the First Treatise. The Jews and Christians at least recognized the need for a Savior; Nietzsche rejected this view and asserted that every man must be his own savior, for that is what makes man noble, beautiful and good.