Nietzsche, Morality and Religion

When considering the (hopefully) small proportion of my life that I’ve experienced so far, religion has never been particularly important, so reading Nietzsche’s work with my cultural background is not significantly shocking. I’m sure for the readers of the day, Nietzsche’s glorification of the lifestyles of the Greeks and condemnation of all that Christianity holds dear was possibly quite confounding. 

Nietzsche’s key claim seems to be that historical narratives have served to promote the interests of the slave morality, and that the conceptions of morality so deeply embedded in our society today are as a result of this cultural phenomena. Instead of being a measure for goodness, adhering to religious values has instead smothered its believers and caused a society filled with self-loathing and the values of the ‘weak’. Rather than valuing power, we have gradually descended into a society that values meekness, humility and surrendering to God. Instead of being inherently right, in fact it was through the use of force and a will to power that these values came to be seen as superior. The man of ressentiment and his values have overcome noble ones to be seen as absolute - even though, according to Nietzsche, they cause death rather than life.

The nature of morality as explored by Nietzche in ‘The Genealogy of Morals’ was never a question I’d properly considered, which made reading it of great interest. His proclamation that ‘God is Dead’ is well-known no matter what country you’re in, but this was previously about the furthest I’d delved into reading his work. Perhaps the fact that I was considerably more confused by his refusal to tolerate the ‘English’ temperament (as an English person myself) and constant put-downs perfectly illustrates that views on religion and morality in today’s society really have evolved. However, although secularism and atheism are both concepts that permeate pretty much all aspects of our world today, even inescapable to devout followers of religion, it can be said that traditional ‘Christian’ values and what Nietzsche terms the ‘slave morality’ still disseminate their influence on most people’s behaviour.

It just so happened that on the same day that I was meant to be submitting this blog post, I was doing an exposé in my class ‘Droit, Société et Religion’ on how religion and state interact within different European states. After giving a nerve-ridden speech in very mumbled French, I started pondering how I could maybe kill two birds with one stone and try and put my work into a philosophical context to do this blog post. In essence, my presentation focused on how countries that had a state religion and those that accorded preference to a religion were undergoing a process of deconfessionalisation, in favour of creating more of a separation between affairs of the State, and affairs of the Church. There are many reasons for this, including increasing religious pluralism, atheism and the growing influence of the European Union. But on the other hand, that isn’t to say that secular nations aren’t without their problems - the French notion of laicité, for example, has been controversial due to its role in measures that are seen to limit religious freedom.

But does this seemingly decreasing influence of religion on the law and the affairs of the state mean that we as a community are finally beginning to see God as the father of evil and are in the process of abolishing metaphysical notions? Furthermore, has this official change from the overarching leaders of communities resulted in our conceptions of morality changing or do they remain deeply rooted in Christianity due to its historical dominance?

In answering these questions, it is perhaps helpful to consider what Nietzsche might have thought if he were still alive today. Are we on the right path to reverse our course of following the slave morality by becoming  increasingly secular?  From reading the Genealogy of Morals it seems that despite the growth of secularism and religious diversity, the valuation of the slave morality does in fact still permeate the entirety of European culture. We continue to oppress natural instincts, which he considers to represent a regression of mankind, and in a society constantly surrounded by technological advancements there is always the worry of political correctness or being exposed and ridiculed if you put a foot wrong. How is one meant to avoid feelings of guilt when they are forced onto him at every turn? The democratic system is at this point pretty embedded in European culture - another aspect Nietzsche might not have been too fond of, if his consideration of the ‘democratic prejudice’ is anything to go by. Today’s capitalist culture does not seem to promote the values that he considered to promote creativity and power, and instead money seems to drive most people’s actions, prisons are overflowing, while new criminal offences seem to pop up daily that declare what is ‘bad’ rather than what is ‘good’. Advancements in education, science and technology mean that as a collective community the people of Europe are probably the cleverest they have ever been. But at what price?

Nietzsche declares that ‘we are weary of man’ - and it seems that this is still the case. As a whole, the decreasing influence of religion seems to correspond with the potentially more liberal values that are on the rise. The rising lack of faith in God and Christianity’s lesser importance in spheres such as law and politics means that fewer people experience the feelings of guilty indebtedness to God. But beliefs in what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ are still rife - even if incorrectly so - and are so deeply embedded that they do not look to be evolving quickly. Even if there is no guilt before god, our instincts are not the drivers of our actions, the conception of the ‘bad conscience’ still exists, and moralistic ideals that can never be adhered to still seem to promote feelings of unworthiness.  Rather than having a God to follow, we now have to follow supposedly intellectual superior beings (i.e. political leaders) who get to decide what is bad and then disseminate this to the wider community. Perhaps as a result of the significantly longer period of time that the values of the man of ressentiment have been valued, this rise in atheism has not served to get rid of our notions of morality - and who knows if it ever will? At least Nietzsche attempts to value the realms of possibility for the future, and maybe that’s just what we will have to do too.

Existentialism issues in “True Detective” (season 1)

Philosophical interrogations can be found everywhere, even into a US crime drama series like “True Detective”. 

The main character, Rust Cohle, is very complex. He struggles with a troubled past and seems to be overwhelmed by dark thoughts. His whole life turns around his work. He lost his family, has neither friends nor hobbies… nothing but the investigations he works on. He has thus a very settled vision of human condition.

“-  I think human consciousness, is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight - brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

-          So what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?

-       I tell myself I bear witness, the real answer is it’s obviously my programming and I lack the constitution to commit suicide.”

According to Rust Cohle, life is devoid of intrinsic meaning or value: human species is insignificant, without any purpose… we should simply not exist. Rust demonstrates here a sort of cold consciousness of the meaninglessness of life. He clearly denies the importance of the existence. In this sense, we can easily make a parallel with the existentialist nihilism: “it is futile to seek or to affirm meaning where none can be found” (Donald A. Crusby)

 Throughout the series, we notice that Rust is somehow disconnected from the world he lives in, from the people around him and their concerns, their conception of the good and the evil, their faith in God... In many ways, he seems to be really far from them, a little bit like if he didn't belong to this world. He is disenchanted because he is convinced to have discovered the truth (--> human species is a kind of anomaly that shouldn’t exist) and doesn’t expect anything from the life.

If he was a character in Waiting for Godot, he would without any doubt embody Vladimir. Like him, he is the only one to realize the futility of the existence. Besides, both are forced to keep living, even though they don’t give any value to the human life. Indeed, in the end of Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and his friend try to kill themselves but they cannot achieve their project because the rope that they use to hang themselves breaks down. Whereas in True Detective, Rust Cohle asserts that he is programmed to live. In other words, the human survival instinct is extremely strong and suicide is against the human nature. Day after day, both characters must thus wake up the morning and live one more day a life they consider as pointless. 

 “Action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things”, I has chosen this sentence of The birth of the tragedy, to be the title of my post because I agreed with Nietzsche. When we have knowledge, we know that the fact of acting is useless, in the sense that, we can act, but it will not make a difference. Because if we “look truly into the essense of thing”, we know the horrible truth of things. We can find this idea in Lorenzaccio of De Musset. Lorenzo knows his actions are ineffective, because he knows the real human nature, he knows perfectly after he will kill Alexandre de Medicis, there will be no changes. Indeed, nothing changes, another Medicis acquires the throne, it’s the eternal circle, the eternal return, but nothing else. Nietzsche explains that, to act, human beings need illusion, and Lorenzo has lost his illusions.

It's the same structure with the dionysian man, Hamlet and Phil. Hamlet can’t act, he tries to, but he can’t, he hasn’t any illusion, only at the end of theatre play, he manages to kill his uncle, and why ? Because he knows he is dying, he has to deliver on his promise, but especially because he is upset with his uncle. It’s the same case with the Dionysian man, both repudiate their existence. Phil, in Groundhog day, tries, at the beginning, when he discovers he is reliving the same day, to change things, by hitting an old acquaintance, by commiting a suicide or by attempting to save the homeless man, for example. But he fails, “action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things”. As the four seasons, which tirelessly, are always the same.

 

Nevertheless, Nietzsche, stipulates that, art saves mens, art would be a “saving sorceress”, but in Hamlet or in Lorenzaccio, art can’t achieve to save them. In my point of view, when someone knows the real human nature, art is unable to save him. It can divert a person who has looked the depths of man, but it can make her forget what she knows. So, there has a solution? Lorenzo has chosen the death. To my mind, death isn’t the solution, commit a suicide is to deny the fact of being human, and after all we are human. Maybe, we just have wait, as Phil...

Oedipus, Warhol, Nietzsche and Kanye: What is Art?

Art has always been an object of fascination for me, as I am often drawn to things I don’t understand. Art is a particular case as it holds such importance in our society, being one part of humanity that we still have in common with our ancestors, though its uses and forms have varied greatly over time. It is rather uncanny how art surrounds me constantly in my everyday life; walking to school I pass monuments that are recorded in art history textbooks, and up-and-coming exhibitions make necessary regular appearances in the cultured conversations of hipsters everywhere. But in the midst of this infatuation with art in our culture, how can we explain the undeniable taboo that surrounds the very concept of art? Even the least cultured folk can point at the Mona Lisa and identify it as a masterpiece, but is it not odd that only a very few percentage of its admirers can understand and explain in a comprehensive way why some woman’s portrait has become a priceless symbol of artistic genius? 

However after reading Nietzsche, I feel like some light has been shed on my confusion with an adequate answer. Avoiding both fluffy admiration (“ahh, I love the pretty colours”) and culture-snob jargon (“Warhol’s Campbell Soup prints pierce in to our souls and is obviously meant to overwhelm us with a rejuvenating critique of a cross between modern-day commercialism and the clash between social classes”), Nietzsche’s understanding of art provides an explanation we can all relate to: our untimely death.  

Grim as it may be, Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Tragedy aligns with his “Pro life-affirming” philosophy, in that it states that art both celebrates and acknowledges the Truth that we will all eventually die. While most of our humanly efforts aim to make us forget about our inevitable destiny by appropriating our experiences and turning metaphors into truths (basically our conceived truths are just a bunch of illusions from translating images and feelings into imperfect words) to suit our needs, art is able to bring us back down from our anthropocentric pedestal and meet our fate face-to-face. 

However if this is truly to be the definition of art, we need to accept the fact that while there is good Truth-proclaiming art out there, there are a lot of wannabes. While Oedipus reminds us of the dangers of rejecting our fate, I cannot say with confidence that the same applies to the lyrical proclamations of today’s Top 20 Hits applies…

Thus Nietzsche singles out Greek Tragedies as his idea of the highest forms of art. Ancient Greek culture is life-affirming in that it embraces ALL of life—good and bad. For example, Zeus’ lustful urges are actively pursued rather than repressed, despite the abhorrent connotation that his actions may hold according to our modern-day society. Tragedies are especially valued because while they force us to confront our death, they give us tools to cope so that we may continue on living our lives avoiding constant despair (namely, amor fati: the love of our fate through cheerful passivity, and transgression, accepting responsibility for our fate through cheerfulness of activity).

 While Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Tragedy certainly helps me to understand the mystery of art, I can’t help but question whether this is an adequate standard to judge all art as a whole. Must we cast away all of the beloved treasures that remain, for example, from the time of Catholic patronage? Should we cover up the Sistine Chapel with a fresco of Oedipus gorging his eyes out? Perhaps Zarathustra would say yes, though he may agree that great corpus of human artistry is one of the many tainted metaphysical values that humanity is not yet ready to scrap.