Bi-Weekly Discussion - Do We Need Some Nietzsche?

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Click on the Zoom link below at the scheduled date/time to log in...

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NIETZSCHE'S RELEVANCE TO OUR CURRENT POLITICAL MOMENT

INTRODUCTION:

As some of our regular members may have noticed, I often post lectures hosted by the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia that cover Enlightenment-era thinkers like Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Montesquieu, etc, that influenced the Founders. I thought it might be useful to supplement this with discussions on some other influential political philosophers, and so for this meetup we'll be addressing Friedrich Nietzsche.

For those who don't know, Nietzsche (pronounced "NEE-chuh") was a philosopher who was born in a small Prussian town outside Leipzig in 1844 and raised by his mother, grandmother & maiden aunts after his father - a Luthern pastor - died when he was just six. He lost his religious faith at a young age and became an outspoken atheist. Despite living during the tumultuous period of German unification, he had a conflicted relationship to German nationalism and militarism - coming to view them as too Phillistine despite his attraction to masculine heroics and vitalism. As a young man, he served briefly in the military during the Franco-Prussian War but was discharged after contracting diptheria & dysentery. He then worked as a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland from 1869 to 1879 before leaving due to ill health. Living off his pension, he completed much of his core writing in the following decade, often alone & struggling with deteriorating eyesight and migraines. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and became insane - perhaps due to advanced syphillis contracted in a brothel - and died in 1900 as a little-known philosopher.

Nietzsche's works received more attention in the following decades, attracting admiration in America from both the socialist writer Jack London and the conservative social critic H.L. Mencken. Unfortunately, after Nietzsche's death, his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche edited his unpublished writings to highlight anti-semitic themes to endear herself to the German far right, which led to his works being adopted by the Nazis and mostly dismissed in America during & shortly after WW2. However, her forgeries were discovered and his work was later rehabilitated by several writers, most notably the translator Walter Kaufmann, who saw Nietzsche as an ideological forerunner of existentialists like Sartre and Camus. Nietzsche's philosophy was then picked up by French poststructuralist writers like Michel Foucault and Giles Deleuze in the 1960s-70s who found his "Geneology of Morals" and "Gay Science" in particular to prefigure their work on deconstructing metanarratives and playing with different perspectives. Through the postmodernists, Nietzsche gained some popularity among certain cadres of left-wing intellectuals, particularly atheist activists & transhumanists. But he was mostly ignored or condemned by the postwar American right due to his association with fascism and attacks on Christianity, although some libertarians like Ayn Rand developed an appreciation for Nietzsche and saw his bold vision as compatible with a capitalist economy driven by "titans of industry" where "survival of the fittest" reigned.

Nietzsche is best known for some unique concepts emphasized across several of his major works, most notably the "will to power", the claim that "God is dead", the distinction between "master and slave moralities', and a radical perspectivism embodied in his famous phrase "there are no facts, only interpretations". Other concepts appear rarely, or are confined to one or two major works, yet are considered centerpieces of his philosophy, such as the "Übermensch" (a.k.a. superman) and the thought of "eternal recurrence". His later works involved a sustained attack on Christian morality, and he seemed to be working toward what he called the "transvaluation of all values" that would move humanity "beyond good and evil".

While Nietzsche is often associated in the public mind with fatalism & nihilism, Nietzsche himself viewed his project as an attempt to overcome the pessimism of the early 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who had influenced his earlier writings. Schopenhauer combined Kant's transcendental idealism with Buddhist metaphysics, and his pessimism stemmed from his acceptance of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths - i.e. "life is suffering" and "suffering is due to desire" - and his realization that Christianity's asceticism had similar roots. This led Nietzsche to condemn both Christianity and Buddhism as "world-denying" and "life-negating" in contrast to the tragic yet "life-affirming" worldview of the ancient Greeks & Romans he admired.

In the first section of our discussion, we'll look at how & why Nietzsche's philosophy has recently been appropriated by the atheist faction of the "alt-right" who disdain Christianity and "neo-reactionaries" like Costin Alamariu - a.k.a. Bronze Age Pervert, author of the book "Bronze Age Mindset" (2018). This has led to debates among liberals & centrists about whether these people are actually misinterpreting Nietzsche's concepts of "master morality" and "slave morality", or whether his work has always had more of an affinity to fascism than his liberal admirers would like to admit. A lot of these arguments tend to hinge on who needs to read Nietzsche. Eites may read him and wrongly conclude they are the Nietzschean "Ubermensch", making them even more insufferable & arrogant. But those who are currently struggling may find that Nietzsche can help them overcome a tendency towards self-effacement, feeling sorry for themselves, or blaming others for their predicament, and they can embrace a healthier mindset more conducive to self-empowerment & thriving on adversity.

In the second section, we'll look at some recent articles that make the case that Nietzsche's philosophy is - if seen in the proper light - more compatible with the West's liberal democracy than the authoritarian governments of Russia & China. Essentially, this is because the political churn of democracy and the "creative destruction" of capitalism offers a more dynamic society in which the smartest & most capable people can rise, while authoritarian societies tend to be kleptocratic and averse to dramatic change. These "enlightened centrist" fans of Nietzsche also argue that the antintellectualism of the alt-right populists makes them people Nietzsche would've despised as Phillistines and demagogues, motivated by base "resentment" of those who are more successful.

In the third section, we'll look at the arguments made by some Christian conservatives that Nietzsche is at least partly to blame for "wokeness" (i.e. left-wing identity politics) because his radical perspectivism inspired the French postmodernists. They spead the idea that there's no universal truths, only perspectives, and that attempts to promulgate such truths are invariably a mask for collective interests. However, as we'll see, others have countered by arguing that "wokeness" is ultimately rooted in Christianity's valorization of suffering & poverty (i.e. Nietzsche's "slave morality") and/or with the inevitable social tensions that exist among what Nietzsche described as the "last men" in liberal democracies. These "last men" are surrounded by material comforts but still crave social recognition, leading to clashes of identitarian factions that Francis Fukuyama described in his 2018 book "Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment".

DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over Nietzsche's philosophy and its relevance to our current politics. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all of them prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just read on article from each section. The others are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I've listed some questions under each section to stimulate discussion. We'll do our best to address most of them, as well as whatever other questions our members raise. I figure we'll spend about 40 minutes on each section.

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I. DOES NIETZSCHE'S CRITIQUE OF "SLAVE MORALITY" CELEBRATE CONQUEST & CRUELTY IN A WAY THAT ENABLES FASCISM, OR DOES IT MERELY PROMOTE THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE & RADICAL INDIVIDUALISM?

1a) Sean Illing, "The alt-right is drunk on bad readings of Nietzsche. The Nazis were too." (Vox)

1b) Scott Alexander, "Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman" (Astral Codex Ten)

• Note: If you have time, you can check out the highlights from the reader comments & response articles to Scott Alexander's Nietzsche essay

II. IS THERE A MODERATE VERSION OF NIETZSCHEAN MORALITY THAT IS COMPATIBLE WITH LIBERAL DEMOCRACY & CAPITALISM - EVEN THOUGH NIETZSCHE DISDAINED BOTH?

2a) Richard Hanania, "The Reactionary Case for Democracy: Towards a Nietzschean Liberalism" (Substack)

2b) Matthew Schmitz, "Nietzscheans and Normies" (American Conservative)

2c) Sean Illing w/ Hugo Drochon, "What Nietzsche's philosophy can tell us about why Brexit and Trump won" (Vox)

III. IS NIETZSCHE'S PERSPECTIVISM PARTLY TO BLAME FOR THE POSTMODERN RELATIVISM THAT GAVE US "WOKENESS", OR IS WOKENESS MORE ROOTED IN CHRISTIANITY'S VIEW OF THE OPPRESSED AS SAINTLY (I.E. SLAVE MORALITY) AND/OR IDENTITARIAN TENSIONS WITHIN LIBERALISM?

3a) Giles Fraser, "How woke is Nietzsche? He believed in self-ID before it was cool" (Unherd)

3b) Stephen G. Adubato, "Our Culture War Is Two Sides of the Same Nietzschean Coin" (Newsweek)

3c) Yael Levin Hungerford, "Wokeness and the 'Sick Animal': Nietzsche can help us understand the phenomenon of self-abasement." (City Journal)

3d) Francis Fukuyama, "Identity and The End of History" (American Interest)

• Note: If you have time, one of the best articles that traces the connection between "wokeness" & secular progressivism to the "social gospel" of 19th-cent. Protestant Christianity is Sheluyang Peng's article in American Affairs, "More Christian than the Christians"

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