Nietzsche, misread.

Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the greatest philosophers whose works are still impactful today, the author of oft-quoted works like Beyond Good and Evil, The Antichrist and Thus Spake Zarathustra, is also perhaps the most misread author of the 19th century, some would even say, of all time. The ideas of geniuses are so original, that it is understandably tempting for a reader to fit them into pre-formed templates through which he has learned to see the world. This calls for slicing them up where necessary, distorting their shape or intent, and even breathing ideological fervour into them.

“It is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly.”  - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

In order to be able to reach somewhere, one must run the risk of thinking freely no matter where it may lead you. Conclusions are to be drawn out of the observations, rather than the other way round. Observations are not to be shaped to substantiate pre-existing conceptions or conclusions. Of course, this means that one may not always like the conclusions, especially if they stand in contradiction to one’s political principles. Nietzsche took this risk knowingly. 

Of course, the misappropriation of Nietzsche’s ideas has been argued to have been carried out on a historical scale by the Nazis. But what I’m interested in is how today’s world, in which sophistication and nuance is a matter of modern pride, is party to the misinterpreting and misappropriating of Nietzsche.

The Death of God

Let’s begin with the most obvious one. The most notorious example is Nietzsche’s realisation: “God is dead.” A simple-minded reader who hasn’t outgrown the atheistic charm of our younger, rational(?) years (let’s face it, we’ve all been there) might mistake this claim to be a triumphant one. Far from being an optimistic proclamation, it was, instead, a lament. The madman in The Gay Science (the work in which the proclamation first appears) expresses grief about the consequences little understood by the modern man who rushes to crown rational thought as the highest ideal after the death of God. 

Perhaps the full quote captures Nietzsche’s sentiment better than the synecdoche: 

‘“Where is God gone?” he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction?—for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it?”’

Now, one might say: “Finally, we can put aside the oppressive indoctrination that religion carried out on little children to turn them into soldiers who would fight wars in the name of religion if it came to that. 

Nietzsche was a strong critic of religion, especially of Catholicism, I’ll give you that. But he wasn’t the conspiracy theorist that the misreader makes him out to be. I’m fond of playing the devil’s advocate. Looking on the brighter side of things, Nietzsche did say that the death of God had the potential to usher in an age where the Übermensch could come forth - strong, independent and with the capacity to transcend himself - and this would perhaps give meaning to the inevitably disillusioned generation deprived of the transcendental.

A misreader (especially one with progressive leanings) might say: “Now that God is dead, we can focus on human values like liberty and equality from a more rational perspective instead of chasing illusions of Heaven promised by an invisible deity in the sky.”

But how? Many of these values had roots in religion essentially. Equality before law came from the idea of every man made in His image. How do we expect great humanitarian ideals to manifest in the societies all the while hacking away at the foundations of morality itself? The moral and the rational choice are not necessarily the same. In fact, I would go so far as to say they may even be opposite. 

Even a scientific field of medicine requires scientists and practitioners to make everyday moral (not rational) choices. Why not let tuberculosis kill man? Is the bacterium not “equal” to the man in its innate need and right to survive? Even as the most hardened, fact-concerned doctor administers the penicillin, he makes a moral choice - to save man.

Master-slave Morality

A second example would be the master-slave morality on which Nietzsche wrote extensively in several of his works. Had Nietzsche lived and published in today’s time, his works would have been cancelled over and over again, for he dares not only to make distinctions between master and slave identities, but also to openly advocate in favour of master morality and show disdain for slave morality. Somewhere in the outrage of it all, his message got lost.

A master morality is a kind of identity, in which various values and behaviours are bundled together. For instance, the Masters are strong-willed, noble, independent and nonconforming. The Slaves are weak-willed, timid and resentful. The Masters create values - they judge for themselves what is good or bad. The Slaves conform to this hierarchy of values, albeit resentfully. Inevitably, the Slaves assert their will to power by subversion, and redefine their choices as the more moral position. 

The misreader would argue that Nietzsche is in favour of the more powerful oppressing the less powerful. But Nietzsche is not necessarily talking of actual masters and slaves. It would be useful to see the master-slave moralities as mindsets rather than lived experiences. The category of masters do not only contain the powerful or wealthy; Nietzsche would place artists, writers and thinkers here too.

Another point that is overlooked by the misreader is that even the Slaves have a stake in power. They simply assert it differently. (Nietzsche believed the Will to Power as being the main driving force of humans.)

When Nietzsche expresses contempt for slave morality, and praises master morality, he does so because he believed that the former was the precursor of nihilism due to its insistence on pulling down competing values, levelling the playing field and making mice out of men. People willing to question their precious worldviews and entertain controversial, but thought-provoking ideas like these, in a sense, people wishing to look beyond good and evil might belong to the noble temperament that Nietzsche considered distinctive of master morality, which might have been his own playful motive behind making his meaning elusive. 

Nietzsche, the Nihilist

People may differ far and wide when it comes to the specifics of Nietzsche’s works, but one thing they all agree on, one thing that is apparent even after reading just a few pages - Nietzsche is ruthless. Whatever topic he chose to write on ( he is famous for his non-specialisation), his take is trenchant, and often emphatic. Reading a work like The Gay Science, in which he covers a vast range of topics, a misreader may be inclined to think that Nietzsche denounces everything and strips everything of meaning. In that, he may term Nietzsche as a nihilist.

Nietzsche’s caustic tone, his repudiation of the tables of values and critique of Christianity are all taken to be arguments cited when seeking to establish his “supposed” nihilism. Without going into an interminable discussion on the many meanings of nihilism, it is clear that for Nietzsche, nihilism was more than a contemplative ‘what’s the point of life’ utterance followed by a collective sigh reverberating in the confines of day to day life. Rather, it was the negation of life itself. It was the ultimate “nay” as Nietzsche would say. 

Nietzsche affirms life, despite everything. The concept of the Übermensch flies in the face of nihilism. What else could a strong, free-thinking individual that strives forward to create new values, posited by Nietzsche as the very goal for the scoffing, God-deprived human race, be, except a solution to nihilism itself?