Void House Book Club: Beyond Good and Evil

Reading is like building a tower: in order to achieve great heights, you must lay a strong and wide foundation which can handle the weight. Every great work of literature is built on the works that came before, such that to properly understand them, one must have intimate knowledge of that tradition in which they were written. I’m currently in the process of building this foundation, and for this reason I made the controversial decision to focus on reading many different authors instead of just one. I understand this “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” approach might leave me with only a superficial understanding of the books I discuss, but I feel that a superficial understanding is a necessary step towards eventual mastery. We all know someone ignorant of many topics because they only know one familiarly.

It is therefore a great compliment to Nietzsche that Beyond Good and Evil is the third book of his I read. I hope the above paragraph justifies my calling Nietzsche my “favorite author” when I have only just scraped the surface of his work. In my defense, the three books of his I’ve chosen — The Genealogy of Morality, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and now Beyond Good and Evil — represent the most important and exhaustive entrants to his catalogue. These three are more or less different approaches to the same material. Genealogy of Morality is instructive, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is aphoristic, and Beyond Good and Evil is polemical, but they all address similar themes and make similar arguments. I contend that Nietzsche wrote the same book three times because he understood that his ethics were extremely unusual and confusing, and he chose to communicate in multiple styles so that many different people could understand them. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is likely closest to what he actually believed, but most difficult to grasp. Genealogy of Morality is the most comprehensible, but also the most superficial. Beyond Good and Evil is a compromise between these approaches.

Sadly, despite his efforts, Nietzsche is deeply misunderstood. He might be the most misunderstood philosopher, which I hope my readers will agree is a high bar to clear. A good writer would at this point insert some common misconceptions of Nietzsche and counter them. Unfortunately, I don’t believe there are common misconceptions of Nietzsche. I’ve never heard two people misunderstand Nietzsche in precisely the same way twice, with perhaps the exception that many people believe he was a nihilist. It’s true that Nietzsche despaired of death, but it wasn’t because he believed it robbed life of meaning. He hated death because he thought life was in fact too meaningful, and that there was too much to enjoy in life that one loses in death. Our choices aren’t irrelevant because they end in death; rather, because we only have so many choices to make, we must make the most of them.

This sort of life-affirming philosophy directly contradicts Christianity. Christians aren’t nihilists, but the natural consequence of their philosophy is the same. Because the Christian afterlife is eternal where life is temporary, and because it is so much more pleasant than life on Earth, Christians (at least, internally consistent Christians) argue that one’s experiences on Earth deteriorate to pointlessness the same way constants grow negligible as functions grow to infinity. This fundamental difference between Nietzsche and the Christians (whose ethics had been dominant in Europe for over a millennium when Nietzsche wrote) is the core of Nietzsche’s thought, out of which everything else grew. The most interesting consequence is that, because Nietzsche believes only in life on Earth, his ethics center on making life on Earth more palatable. If we make choices to be happy, and we can find happiness only in our material life on Earth, then it follows logically that our choices should be those which make our material life as fulfilling as possible. Nietzsche was vague about which specific virtues people ought to hold — he advocated for a class called the ubermensch, who would create their own values — but they seem broadly to promote achievement, excellence, and appreciation for life. This contrasts with values like humility, sacrifice, simplicity, and charity that you see in Jewish and Christian thought. Nietzsche found these repugnant because they reduced the scope and enjoyability of experiences that a human could have — in his own language, they failed to “affirm” life. Nietzsche theorized that Jews developed these values because they are useful to enslaved peoples and because they were the opposite of values held by their masters, who they resented. Christians, who worship a Jew and derive their morality from Jews, held the same values, which became deeply ingrained in western culture and consequently western law. This is the great flaw for which Nietzsche criticized western society. Additionally, I don’t believe Nietzsche himself said (or ever cared about) this, but I contend that these values more effectively improve the world. People live better lives through achievement, not kindness. People today have a high quality of life because of the work of scientists, artists, political leaders, and other great achievers who did great things for the betterment of humanity, even when they were only interested in personal gain. Consider how inventions improve our quality of life, even though the inventors are often not motivated altruistically. Their achievement is what made life better, not their niceness. Even charity, which certainly gives the impression of improving lives, offers only superficial solutions. Charity does not solve the structural problem which necessitates charity in the first place. Charitable men donate a million candles; virtuous men invent the light bulb.

Beyond Good and Evil does not cover the full scope of Nietzschean thought. It is so disconnected from any other existing tradition that it constitutes a school of its own, and who can contain an entire school in one book? Actually, it doesn’t even have a core argument. The first chapter tricks readers into thinking that it will, because there is a rough sense of progression through a series of arguments, but the second chapter abandons this. There might be the most tangential theme grouping vignettes together, but for the most part they can be read independently. I would not recommend reading the book as I did, starting at the beginning and plowing through to the end. It’s a set of aphorisms, like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations or Confucius’ Analects, so any one passage may be read independently of the others. I recommend opening the book every day, reading a random vignette, and turning it over in your mind the rest of the day through.

There is nonsense in this book. Nietzsche was oddly preoccupied with the characteristics of different European ethnic groups, and devoted a not insignificant amount of text to explaining why, say, Germans are so inclined to piety, or why the French are so spirited. There is also a lengthy digression in which Nietzsche criticizes women. No earnest discussion of the book would focus on this — it’s immaterial to the real themes at play here — but it is striking to modern sensibilities. Wikipedia devotes a couple sentences to it, which is more than it should. Still, the broad argument in favor of the ubermensch and ethics of greatness (which is how I interpret the will to power) is so cogent that I don’t let these inconsistencies distract me from the value of the book. My only real criticism is that the book is already intensely obscure, and these off-topic sections only serve to exacerbate that.

There is so much more that can be said about Beyond Good and Evil. There is so much more that can be said about Nietzsche. This blog probably will say more about Nietzsche; you recall he’s my favorite author. Of the books of his I’ve read, Beyond Good and Evil captured me least. Genealogy of Morality presents his case in such a thorough and digestible way that I can’t see someone walking away from it in disagreement. Zarathustra is a novel and has an aesthetic quality that the other two lack. Beyond Good and Evil is perhaps better as a guide book, or a “word a day” calendar, not really just something to be read and experienced. Still, if your choice is Beyond Good and Evil or no Nietzsche whatsoever, I plead for your own benefit to pick the former.