Nietzsche's Ethical Egoism in 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": 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 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 explains 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? The Problem of False Morality

When Nietzsche opens his Introduction to the 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 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. What is good is the self; what is bad is the 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," looking not to 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, and the compassionate, seeing 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 Ethical Egoism

Nietzsche's presupposition 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, positing that the human race is fallen due to sin against God, and that good and evil do in fact exist in reality as two forces in opposition to one another. Christians and Jews explain these terms according to their own religious contexts, but other peoples throughout history have explained them 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 own use of the term to be consistent with its true original definition. 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 deliberately rejects that framework. Virtue ethics is denounced, as is deontology, because both clash with Ethical Egoism, which is the ethical framework Nietzsche promotes. In this framework, it is virtuous to pursue one's ends by whatever means are most readily available. 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 — the exact opposite of the classical system of virtue ethics.

Conclusion

In Nietzsche's philosophy, the concept of the good can only be properly understood in terms of the good/bad paradigm — the good being that which gets one what he wants; the bad being that which gets in the way. In Nietzsche's view, the slave morality of the Jews and Christians perverted the original good/bad paradigm of human nature and substituted a good/evil paradigm, in which the good was defined as self-sacrificing and evil as self-centeredness (egoism). Nietzsche promoted Egoism because in his view, the noblest of the noble were Egoists — rulers who did not bow and scrape and chastise themselves, but rather asserted themselves to take what they wanted and to maintain it. The presumption at the heart of Nietzsche's view was that man was not fallen. Ultimately, he was a man opposed to the idea of God and the need for redemption.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. University of California, Santa Cruz.