What's Up Nietzsche? Pt. 2



Power is an incredibly motivating force. Power gives one the ability to achieve most other things that might motivate us; whether that be money, success, influence. Power is instrumental in all of that. According to Nietzsche, power is also instrumental in morality. Morality, as he says, started with people, not actions. And who were these people? The powerful. Nietzsche is not saying that certain people were inherently more powerful than others. In fact, Nietzsche does not believe in inherent morality at all. Nietzsche is saying that people were acting, and it was powerful people who had the influence to name actions moral or immoral. They acted and were able to call those actions moral, in their own best interest, and they were also able to punish those who acted in ways that went against their interest, thus imposing their morality onto others. This process had nothing to do with actual, inherent morals, but had everything to do with power.

At this point, I’m pretty much on board with what Nietzsche is going on about. But I think what he fails to consider is that just because what we call morality is based on power, that does not necessarily mean that there isn’t also objective morality. Like we could have this system of ethics that’s based on nothing other than the interests of the powerful, and there could still, separately, be objective morality. What the powerful decide is moral is often contradictory or nonsensical, and it’s constantly changing as new figures come into power and as social dynamics change. I’m not saying there definitely is objective morality, but if there was, it could exist completely outside of this “morality” based on power structures alone.

But anyway, Nietzsche wants us to stop following blindly the moral structures set up for us, and instead follow what will benefit us the most. And once again, Nietzsche kind of has me, except for the part where he kind of doesn’t at all. On one hand, I agree that making your choice based on a system of morality that has been set up by people in power that may or may not have any benefit to anybody except the people at the top of those power structures, doesn’t actually seem like a good reason to do anything. Saying “I’m not going to do x because I’ve been told x is wrong” with no further justification or independent thought seems wrong to me. But he loses me once again with what he thinks follows from that. The notion that we should just take whatever power we can get and that those who don’t are weak and don’t matter is pretty disturbing. Even disregarding morality, Nietzsche’s world doesn’t seem very practically appealing. I want to believe that we can avoid being blind followers without also being ruthless. I think morality can exist outside of the confines of our religious and societal institutions.

There’s so much more to delve into, but I want to finish by saying that my favorite anecdote from class is what Ben’s friend said about Nietzsche’s main problem being that he’s too optimistic. Initially this made no sense to me and honestly seemed like a claim someone makes to be edgy and play devil’s advocate but has no substance behind it. But by the end of the discussion, I was convinced. Nietzsche seems to believe that we can all move beyond the confines of society and structured existence and be our own islands of morality. Maybe he’s right, but I’m not convinced.


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