< Volker Marz, again One of the most striking features of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was his passionate commitment to the evolutionary point of view. For Nietzsche it was simply a fact of biology that humans had evolved from amoeba via a continuous process of development through higher and higher species. This was an endlessly violent affair whose central principle was the survival of the fittest. 'Higher' creatures are constantly eliminating 'lower' creatures. Superior beings are perpetually murdering and exploiting inferior beings. This is where all philosophy must begin. This is how Nietzsche made the point in his famous book Beyond Good and Evil. Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of the strange and weaker, suppression, severity, imposition of one's own forms . . . Exploitation does not pertain to a corrupt or imperfect or primitive society: it pertains to the essence of the living thing as a fundamental organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will of life. Granted this is a novelty as a theory - as a reality it is the primordial fact of all history: let us be at least that honest with ourselves!2
Now let's be honest says Friedrich. Let's be frank. If we really believe that the world can be boiled down to a twitching, violent and nasty 'nature' that has emerged gradually from the primeval soup then how must we live?
Let's not be sentimental. Let's bravely reconsider our place in this evolving habitat. It is in the light of this naturalistic mindset that Nietzsche articulated his infamous comments about slavery, caste, breeding, aristocracy and supermen. Let's take evolution seriously and see where this leads us.
Nietzsche famously asserted that 'God is dead' and this immediately alerts us to the central thrust of his thought. If the world has come into being by a process of unintelligent natural causes then it follows that God does not exist. There are many atheists who would nod their heads approvingly and congratulate the German author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra for this perceptive remark. Patting him on the shoulder they might murmur - "Well done Freddy old boy, have another glass of champagne and enjoy the expensive Havana cigars. It's time to celebrate the victory of atheism." Their cheerful, sanguine responses would be premature.
Nietzsche not only despised the Christian religion but he also attacked atheists who remained attached to Christian morality. For example the famous novelist George Eliot once said, "God, immortality, duty -- how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third." In this quote Eliot was communicating a perspective that Freddy found odious and contemptible. It was indeed an irrational half-way house between Christian orthodoxy and the radical naturalism of 19th century evolutionary thinking. Eliot wanted Christian love and moral obligation without believing in the Christian God.
	Nietzsche was having none of it. Christianity only makes sense as a complete system and if you cut out God, you must also cut out all the commandments as well. The moral injunction to refrain from murder is intimately connected to a God who issues these laws. Nietzsche was scathing about the Ten Commandments and he urged his followers to 'shatter the old law-tables.' In his most famous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra he wrote as follows: 'You shall not steal! You shall not kill!' - such words were once called holy; in their presence people bowed their knees and their heads and removed their shoes.
But I ask you: Where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been? Is there not in all life itself - stealing and killing? And when such words were called holy was not truth itself - killed? Or was it a sermon of death that called holy that which contradicted and opposed all life? - O my brothers, shatter, shatter the old law-tables!'
		How exactly was truth killed when priests taught their flocks that they shouldn't steal and murder? If life is in essence 'exploitation and injury' then it becomes a lie to teach people that they should refrain from murder, robbery and organised crime.
Isn't it only natural for lions to pounce on gazelles, kill them and then devour them at their leisure. Imagine a lion teaching his fellow lions to obey moral laws and embrace the way of virtue and compassion for the weak. How ridiculous! Isn't it also only natural for strong humans to pounce on weaker humans, kill them, appropriate their property and move on to further plunder. Completely natural that Gudron should carefully chain his two young slaves to their wooden beds. This is the 'primordial fact of all history'. Nature red in tooth and claw. The fundamental thrust of Nietzsche is the radical and disturbing intrusion of naturalistic thinking into every nook and cranny of the human condition.
Consider Nietzsche's famous deliberations on master and slave morality. Master morality emerged from rulers and aristocrats. In ancient times strong, powerful men developed a moral perspective that was fundamentally attuned to the cruelty of evolution. These noble aristocrats associated goodness with pride, forcefulness and self-glorification.
These rulers despised what is meek, timid and weak. They loathed dull, mediocre underlings; slaves who begged, grovelled and flattered. These superior men basked in their power and intellectual magnificence.
They worshipped themselves as gods and flooded the earth with rumours of their glory. These noble ones were hard and supremely self-disciplined. Soft living was rebuffed and spurned. Pity for the miseries of the weak and powerless was entirely absent. We could say that these noble creatures had firmly grasped the radical implications of autonomy. As gods it was their intrinsic right to create morality. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche declared that - "Precisely this is godliness, that there are gods but no God!" Masters are those rare human beings who understand that they have usurped God's place. Now that God is dead, they can begin to rule. For Nietzsche master morality distils the very essence of nature itself. The master embraces life in all its vitality and hardness. His moral evaluations are attuned to the deepest stirrings of the evolutionary process.
Part 3 >