Nietzsche's Post-Modern Pragmatism

Nietzsche’s interpretation of the past was inextricably connected with his vision for the future. Just as Marx saw communism as the synthesis of preexisting thought and practice, Nietzsche saw in the future of European thought a change that would finally reverse what he saw as the ill effects of centuries of classical Christianity. Judaism and Christianity had turned the natural values of strength and nobility on their head, but modernism provided no real challenge to this reversal based on its commitment to moralism. It would be the task of the next generation of philosophers would set this inverted world back on its proper foundation. Throughout his work, Nietzsche lamented that “the philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated man” (205; see our first post for Works Cited). In his view, of course, neither is to be trusted, the modernist because of his view of objective truth, and the religious because of his belief in a transcendent God. Having therefore dismissed both rationalism and Christianity (see Nietzsche 188), the philosophers of the future would need to develop a new system of thought that was consistent with his interpretation of history and the development of moral principles.

It is in this sense that one can rightfully speak of Nietzsche’s post-modernism. Built in to his rejection of Enlightenment and Christian morality is his rejection of Enlightenment and Christian epistemology. His goal, then, was a complete revolution in morals, rejecting the bulk of both schools, but forging a third way that was substantially different from either. While modernism is relatively recent and trusts entirely too much in the human mind, pre-modern traditionalism is old and fantastic and relies too much on ‘divine revelation.’ Nietzsche therefore seeks to overcome both approaches by adopting the method of the first (independent reasoning) and the confidence of the second (faith), while rejecting any of their qualifications (particularly a logical and moral framework accountable to both God and the community).

What results is a new, post-modern, amoral pragmatism. To Nietzsche, “it is high time to replace the Kantian question, “How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?” by another question, “Why is belief in such judgments necessary?” Instead, modern man “should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments” (11)! Nietzsche, of course, bases such a conclusion on his view of human nature as revealed through history, as well as his conviction that “the psychological demands of humanity lie beyond the indifference of nature” (Kirkland 604).

The path to ‘free’ thought is therefore partly a return to the glorious ancients (insofar as they differ from dogmatic moralists), and partly a progressive plan for the future of philosophy. Nietzsche therefore seeks to free pessimism from “the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity” that he believes characterize it (56) by pointing out the glorious historical and moral reality of the will to power. For true philosophy rid of the prejudiced search for “truth,” “one must await the new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent—philosophers of the dangerous ‘Perhaps’ in every sense of the term” (Nietzsche 2). Not only would such a world finally rid itself of the feigned existence of objective truth, it would even defy the gregarious, utilitarian conception of moral relativism, declaring that, “My opinion is my opinion: another person has not easily a right to it” (Nietzsche 43). Nietzsche therefore found he and his peers “standing on the threshold of a period,” “which would be distinguished negatively as ultra-moral,” in which he and his “immoralists” reassert that “the decisive value of an action lies precisely in that which is not intentional” but instead draws its authority from the simple fact that it has been asserted (32).

The concept of nobility is at the heart of both Nietzsche’s historical interpretation and his hopes for the future. Though most recognize that only a few people will ever be truly ‘great’, Nietzsche gives this fact ethical weight and therefore finds two separate laws for human behavior, which he dubs “master-morality and slave-morality” (260). “It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong” (Nietzsche 29). In Nietzsche’s mind, greatness is defined not by the truthfulness of one’s ideas or his strength of character, but in the recognition that “egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul” and must be employed in exploiting the weakness of others (265; see 259). In other words, “All claims will be understood not according to their correspondence with truth, but according to what seeks to gain power by making that claim” (Kirkland 587). True greatness, then, will only be attained when these elites “gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us” (Nietzsche 116). It is on this basis, that Nietzsche condemns the European rulers of his day, who “know of no other way of protecting themselves from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older and higher orders . . . by maxims from the current opinions of the herd, as ‘first servants of their people,’ or ‘instruments of the public weal’” (199). He therefore sees “gradations of rank” as an essential prerequisite for true philosophy, and the goal of his own work as the development of “a new ruling caste for Europe” (219, 251).

Nietzsche’s elitist views, then, were more than a mere historical ideal or philosophical abstraction. In fact, he viewed “the rearing of a new ruling cast for Europe” as his most “serious topic,” which he referred to in a proto-National Socialist manner as “the ‘European problem” (251). Nietzsche sought to “galvanize the dormant aristocratic element and revive Europe” by recasting their moral thought, so that when “a great danger” presented itself, it “would awaken men from their utilitarian slumber and call forth the desire to fight and conquer” (Wiker 111). The true leader would therefore rediscover that “he is a creator of values” and philosophers of the past would be overthrown by “commanders and law-givers,” who say, “Thus shall it be” (Nietzsche 260, 211)! As Kirkland states, “Once the illusory task of positioning oneself beyond mere illusions is abandoned in the face of nihilism, the task of philosophy becomes that of ‘great politics,’ transforming humanity by legislating values” (581).

Surprisingly, Nietzsche still finds a role for religion in this new world order. As he himself states, “Modern philosophy, as epistemological skepticism, is secretly or openly anti-Christian, although . . . by no means anti-religious” (54). In other words, though Christianity is impossible in a world without divine revelation, objective truth or the classical sensus communis, religions based on the same foundation of his new amoral pragmatism will remain vital to social vitality—that is, when all things are subjected to the powerful and the powerful realize that they themselves have become gods. “The philosopher . . . will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions” (Nietzsche 61). As Kirkland states, then, Nietzsche tears down one cosmic story in order to prepare “the future for new myths” thereby demonstrating in reality what had only existed before as theory, that “the untruth of mythological interpretations . . . is wholly subordinate to the question of their service to a noble way of life” (600-601). Nietzsche the great man has therefore become what he feared the most: a pragmatic utilitarian.

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