Nietzsche, the Decadence of the West, and a New Morality

[Tony_Block]

Over one hundred years ago Friedrich Nietzsche issued his thunderous polemic against the decadence of bourgeois democratic values. Liberal democracy, based on the principles of universal human dignity and equal rights, was only a secular derivation of the Christian principle of equal human dignity in the eyes of God. Christianity, in its turn, was only a “slave morality” born of resentment by the inferior against the superior, an effort to level the natural hierarchy of worth and rights that exists within the human species. The two thousand-year Western tradition of Christian-democratic ethics represented not moral progress and Enlightenment but unequivocal human deterioration. Nietzsche longed for a massive “Revaluation of all Values,” an annihilation of democratic morality and its replacement by a radically in-equalitarian value system which would put humanity on the path of ascending life and involve the evolution of man into a higher being—the Superman. Nietzsche freely admitted his inability to perform this task, viewing his own philosophy as a “prelude to the philosophy of the future,” razing the old, decadent values to make way for the new ones he hoped were on the horizon.
The philosophy contained herein extends and completes Nietzsche’s project of transforming values by answering the most fundamental philosophical question—that of the ultimate purpose of human life itself. For ideologies, ethical codes, value systems, or whatever terms man uses to describe his ability to place worth on all things—especially on human beings themselves—can be established only in relation to a supreme human goal, and the current crisis of Western Civilization is fundamentally a crisis of purpose. In order to arrive at a morality which leads indisputably to human progress, we must first understand what human progress really means. Nietzsche, the father of modern nihilism, may himself have believed that the ability to define values depended, in the end, only on the strength and will of those doing the defining, that there was no such thing as an “objective” human goal from which to derive an eternally true moral perspective. But if so he was simply wrong, for there does exist a rationally definable and absolute human purpose, the identification of which completes not only Nietzsche’s project but the age-old and unfulfilled Platonic effort to identify the “good-in-itself.” Only when man realizes his true destiny can the deterioration of the West be reversed, and only then will he become able to direct his full energy towards an upward path to greatness laid down by the immutable order of the natural universe.

Please read the rest of the essay at moralenlightenment.net/

[Trevor_W]

I agree that Nietzche was resentful toward the inherited morality we “good christians” had and was a key proponet of a new morality, one defined by the idividual and not by a state or religious faction, one which had man as the source of reason and reason as the guide. The way i view morality is as a hierarchy of values developed over the years hich seem benefitial to all men. But, how do i know what is benefitial to most men?

One value that i would assume the majority of people have is the value for ones life, we strive initially for survival , like any other animal. Now, the fact that human life is immensly more complicated, in the sense of our obligations and responsibility and capacity for complex actions , opens a whole new realm of things which we can value. Man also strives for freedom(if opposed), and control(if deemed necessary)

Slavery is one of the greatest blunders of man kind and yet it gives us a much more objective basis for defining freedom. Man is born free from obligation but also under the control of a gaurdian. When a person becomes self-sufficiant, able to sustain themselves independent of any assistance(disregardin the interdependency of the consumer driven market), at this point the take on a range of responsibilities.

Throughout ones life there are innumerable instances in which choice is required, this gives the illusion of freedom.

Only when man realizes his true destiny can the deterioration of the West be reversed, and only then will he become able to direct his full energy towards an upward path to greatness laid down by the immutable order of the natural universe.

Man has no true destiny, we forge an image of ourselves in the fire of actions and beliefs, if people oppose these beliefs we say they are immoral or incorrect, if people oppose our actions we enter into a competition for control. Mans purpose is derivitave of his own ambition or aspiration viewed in lieu of future action and is a product of past knowledge(beliefs).

[Impious]

If human historical progress can only be objectively viewed in terms of increasing our advantage with respect to the rest of nature, if this process is but a directional extension of human biological evolution, then the only possible final purpose or end to human existence must be the extension of human power over all of nature, not just over our little planet, but over the entire natural universe…

…What must be realized—indeed, the perpetuation and advancement of the human species depends upon the acceptance of this fact—is that the mastery of the natural universe is itself the supreme moral principle of human existence.

Mastery of the universe may be the direction the species is headed in but that doesn’t make it the goal we ought to be aiming towards. As Hume said, ‘no ought from is’.