Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Summary of the five differences [Section 33 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]

[This is Section 33 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

33. Summary of the five differences

We have five significant partings of the ways between Nietzsche and the Nazis:

1. The Nazis believe the German Aryan to be racially superior—while Nietzsche believes that the superior types can be manifested in any racial type.

2. The Nazis believe contemporary German culture to be the highest and the best hope for the world—while Nietzsche holds contemporary German culture to be degenerate and to be infecting the rest of the world.

3. The Nazis are enthusiastically anti-Semitic—while Nietzsche sees anti-Semitism to be a moral sickness.

4. The Nazis hate all things Jewish—while Nietzsche praises the Jews for their toughness, their intelligence, and their sheer survival ability.

5. And finally, the Nazis see Christianity to be radically different and much superior to Judaism—while Nietzsche believes Judaism and Christianity to be essentially the same, with Christianity being in fact a worse and more dangerous variation of Judaism.

Those five points identify important differences and lend support to those interpreters of Nietzsche who complain about simplistic identifications of Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi philosopher.[106]

But there are equally important ways in which the Nazis were right on target in seeing Nietzsche as an intellectual ally.

References

[106] E.g., Walter Kaufmann 1954, p. 14.

[Bibliography]

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Herder on multicultural relativism

[This excerpt is from Chapter 4 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault]

Herder on multicultural relativism

Sometimes called the “German Rousseau,”[57] Johann Herder had studied philosophy and theology at Königsberg University. Kant was his professor of philosophy; and while at Königsberg Herder also became a disciple of Johann Hamann.

Herder is Kantian in his disdain for the intellect, though unlike the static and rigid Kant he adds a Hamannian activist and emotionalist component “I am not here to think,” Herder wrote, “but to be, feel, live!”[58]

Herder’s distinctiveness lies not in his epistemology but in his analysis of history and the destiny of humankind. What meaning, he asks, can we discern in history? Is there a plan or is it merely a random happening of chance events?

There is a plan.[59] History, Herder argues, is moved by a necessary dynamic development that pushes man progressively toward victory over nature. This necessary development culminates in the achievements of science, arts, and freedom. So far Herder is not original. Christianity held that God’s plan for the world gives a necessary dynamic to the development of history, that history is going somewhere. And the Enlightenment thinkers projected the victory of civilization over the brutish forces of nature.

But the Enlightenment thinkers had posited a universal human nature, and they had held that human reason could develop equally in all cultures. From this they inferred that all cultures eventually could achieve the same degree of progress, and that when that happened humans would eliminate all of the irrational superstitions and prejudices that had driven them apart, and that mankind would then achieve a cosmopolitan and peaceful liberal social order.[60]

Not so, says Herder. Instead, each Volk is a unique “family writ large.”[61] Each possesses a distinctive culture and is itself an organic community stretching backward and forward in time. Each has its own genius, its own special traits. And, necessarily, these cultures are opposed to each other. As each fulfills its own destiny, its unique developmental path will conflict with other cultures’ developmental paths.

Is this conflict wrong or bad? No. According to Herder, one cannot make such judgments. Judgments of good and bad are defined culturally and internally, in terms of each culture’s own goals and aspirations. Each culture’s standards originate and develop from its particular needs and circumstances, not from a universal set of principles; so, Herder concluded, “let us have no more generalizations about improvement.”[62] Herder thus insisted “on a strictly relativist interpretation of progress and human perfectibility.”[63] Accordingly, each culture can be judged only by its own standards. One cannot judge one culture from the perspective of another; one can only sympathetically immerse oneself in the other’s cultural manifestations and judge them on their own terms.

However, according to Herder, attempting to understand other cultures is not really a good idea. And attempting to incorporate other cultures’ elements into one’s own leads to the decay of one’s own culture: “The moment men start dwelling in wishful dreams of foreign lands from whence they seek hope and salvation they reveal the first symptoms of disease, of flatulence, of unhealthy opulence, of approaching death!”[64] To be vigorous, creative, and alive, Herder argued, one must avoid mixing one’s own culture with those of others, and instead steep oneself in one’s own culture and absorb it into oneself.

For the Germans, accordingly, given their cultural traditions, attempting to graft Enlightenment branches onto German stock has been and would always be a disaster. “Voltaire’s philosophy has spread, but mainly to the detriment of the world.”[65] The German is not suited for sophistication, liberalism, science, and so on, and so the German should stick to his local traditions, language, and sentiments. For the German, low culture is better than high culture; being unspoiled by books and learning is best. Scientific knowledge is artificial; instead Germans should be natural and rooted in the soil. For the German, the parable of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden is true: Don’t eat of that tree! Live! Don’t think! Don’t analyze!

Herder did not argue that the German way is the best and that it is justifiable for the Germans to become imperialistic and impose their culture upon others—that step was taken by his followers. He argued simply as a German in favor of the German people and urged them to go their own way, as opposed to following the Enlightenment.

Herder is relevant because of his enormous influence on the nationalist movements that were shortly to take off all over central and eastern Europe. He is also relevant to understanding how far from Enlightenment thinking the German Counter-Enlightenment was. If Kant is partially attracted to Enlightenment themes, Herder rejects those elements of Kant’s philosophy. While Herder is broadly Kantian epistemologically, he rejects Kant’s universalism: for Herder, how reason shapes and structures is culturally relative. And in contrast to Kant’s vision of an ultimately peaceful, cosmopolitan future, Herder projects a future of multicultural conflict. Thus, in the context of the German intellectual debate, one was offered a choice—Kant at the semi-Enlightenment end of the spectrum and Herder at the other.

References

[57] Barnard 1965, 18.

[58] In Berlin 1980, 14.

[59] Herder 1774, 188.

[60] Herder 1774, 187.

[61] In Barnard 1965, 54.

[62] Herder 1774, 205.

[63] Barnard 1965, 136.

[64] Herder 1774, 187.

[65] Herder 1769, 95; see also 102.

Bibliography.

[This is an excerpt from Stephen Hicks's Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing, 2004, 2011). The full book is available in hardcover or e-book at Amazon.com. See also the Explaining Postmodernism page.]

On the Jews: admirable or despicable? [Section 31 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]

[This is Section 31 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

31. On the Jews: admirable or despicable?

But how does this fit with the harsh things we know Nietzsche said about the Jews? This takes us to a fourth point of difference between Nietzsche and the Nazis.

For all of the negative things Nietzsche says about the Jews, he also respects them and gives them high praise.

Here is a representative quotation from Beyond Good and Evil: “The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe.”[96]

Here is another, from The Antichrist: “Psychologically considered, the Jewish people are a people endowed with the toughest vital energy, who, placed in impossible circumstances . . . divined a power in these instincts with which one could prevail against ‘the world.’”[97]

He again praises the Jews for having the strength to rule Europe if they chose to: “That the Jews, if they wanted it—or if they were forced into it, which seems to be what the anti-Semites want—could even now have preponderance, indeed quite literally mastery over Europe, that is certain; that they are not working and planning for that is equally certain.”[98]

And in another book, Nietzsche compares the Jews favorably to the Germans—in fact, he identifies a way in which the Jews are superior to the Germans: “Europe owes the Jews no small thanks for making its people more logical, for cleaner intellectual habits—none more so than the Germans, as a lamentably deraisonnable race that even today first needs to be given a good mental drubbing.”[99]

But how can all this praise of the Jews fit with the rest of what he says about the Jews?

One important distinction here is between blaming the Jews of several millennia ago for devising the slave morality and foisting it upon the world—and between evaluating the Jews of today as inheritors of a cultural tradition that has enabled them to survive and even flourish despite great adversity. In the former case, Nietzsche assigns blame to the Jews and condemns them for subverting human greatness—but in the second case he would at the very least have to grant, however grudgingly, that the Jews have hit upon a survival strategy and kept their cultural identity for well over two thousand years. How many other cultures can make that claim? The list is extremely short. And for that the Jews deserve praise.

References

[96] BGE 251.

[97] A 24.

[98] BGE 251.

[99] GS 348.

[Bibliography]

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On anti-Semitism: valid or disgusting?

[This is Section 30 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

30. On anti-Semitism: valid or disgusting?

The most repulsive sign of Germany’s decline, Nietzsche writes—and this may be initially surprising—is its hatred of the Jews, its virulent and almost-irrational anti-Semitism.

Nietzsche, we know, has said some harsh things about the Jews—but again, that is a set of issues that is easily misinterpreted, so we must be careful.

In connection with all of the negative things Nietzsche has said about the Jews, we must also note the following.

Nietzsche speaks of “the anti-Jewish stupidity” of the Germans.[92] He speaks of those psychologically disturbed individuals who are most consumed with self-hatred and envy. He uses the French word ressentiment to describe such nauseating individuals and says that such ressentiment is “studied most easily in anarchists and anti-Semites.”[93]

Pathological dishonesty is a symptom of such repulsive characters: “An antisemite certainly is not any more decent because he lies as a matter of principle.”[94]

So, to summarize: Nietzsche saves some of his most condemnatory language for Germans who hate Jews—he considers them to be liars, stupid, disturbed, self-hating pathological cases for psychologists with strong stomachs to study.

So it seems a reasonable inference that Nietzsche would have been disgusted by the Nazis, for the Nazis absorbed into their ideology the worst possible kind of anti-Semitism and pursued their anti-Jew policies almost to the point of self-destruction.[95]

References

[92] BGE 251.

[93] GM 2:11.

[94] A 55.

[95] Connecting here to the fascinating “What-if” history question: What if the Nazis had put the Holocaust on hold and devoted the vast resources used there instead to military purposes where needed in WWII?

[Bibliography]

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Five differences between Nietzsche and the Nazis

[This is Section 27 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

Part 6. Nietzsche against the Nazis

27. Five differences

Now we can ask the big pay-off question. After surveying National Socialist theory and practice and engaging with Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, we can ask: How much do Nietzsche and the Nazis have in common? Or to put it another way: To what extent were the Nazis justified in seeing Nietzsche as a precursor of their movement?

We know that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and most of the major intellectuals of National Socialism were admirers of Nietzsche’s philosophy. They read him avidly during their formative years, recommended him to their peers, and incorporated themes and sayings from Nietzsche into their own writings, speeches, and policies. To what extent were they accurate and justified in doing so?

In my judgment on this complicated question, a split decision is called for. In several very important respects, the Nazis were perfectly justified in seeing Nietzsche as a forerunner and as an intellectual ally. And in several important respects, Nietzsche would properly have been horrified at the misuse of his philosophy by the Nazis.

Let us start with the key differences between Nietzsche and the Nazis. Here I want to focus on five important points.

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On the “blond beast” and racism [Section 28 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]

[This is Section 28 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

28. On the “blond beast” and racism

Take the phrase “the blond beast.”

In recoiling from what he saw as a flaccid nineteenth-century European culture, Nietzsche often called longingly for “some pack of blond beasts of prey, a conqueror and master race which, organized for war and with the ability to organize, unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws upon a populace.”[87] And he spoke of “[t]he deep and icy mistrust the German still arouses today whenever he gets into a position of power is an echo of that inextinguishable horror with which Europe observed for centuries that raging of the Blond Germanic beast.” And again inspirationally about what one finds “at the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.”[88]

What are we to make of these regular positive mentions of the “blond beast”? It is clear what the Nazis made of them—an endorsement by Nietzsche of the racial superiority of the German Aryan type.

But for those who have read the original Nietzsche, that interpretation clearly takes Nietzsche’s words out of context. In context, the “blond beast” that Nietzsche refers to is the lion, the great feline predator with the shaggy blond mane and the terrific roar. Nietzsche does believe that the Germans once, a long time ago, manifested the spirit of the lion—but they were not unique in that regard. The spirit and power of the lion have been manifested by peoples of many races.

To see this, let us put one of the quotations in full context. The quotation begins this way: “at the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness …”

Now let us complete the sentence as Nietzsche wrote it: “the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings—they all shared this need.”[89]

So Nietzsche clearly is using the lion analogically and comparing its predatory power to the predatory power that humans of many different racial types have manifested. Nietzsche here lists six different racial and ethnic groups, and the Germans are not special in that list. So while Nietzsche does endorse a strongly biological basis for cultures, he does not endorse racism of the sort that says any one race is biologically necessarily superior to any other.

This is a clear difference with the Nazis. The Nazis were racist and thought of the Germanic racial type as superior to all others the world over. Nietzsche disagreed.

This leads us directly to a second major point of difference.

[Update: The entire Nietzsche and the Nazis in hardcover and Kindle at Amazon.]

References

[87] GM 2:17.

[88] GM 1:11.

[89] GM 1:11.

[Bibliography.]

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Nietzsche on contemporary Germans

[This is Section 29 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

29. On contemporary Germans: the world’s hope or contemptible?

While the Nazis put the German-Aryan racial type first, Nietzsche is almost never complimentary about his fellow Germans. In Nietzsche’s view, Germany has slipped into flabbiness and whininess. Germany once was something to be awed and feared, but Germany in the nineteenth century has become a nation of religious revivalism, socialism, and movements towards democracy and equality.

Whatever special endowments the Germans once possessed they have lost. Nietzsche makes this clear when speaking about the Germany of the nineteenth-century: “between the old Germanic tribes and us Germans there exists hardly a conceptual relationship, let alone one of blood.”[90] So rather than being proud of their ancient history and accomplishments, Nietzsche believes Germans of his day should feel ashamed by comparison.

At the same time, German intellectual and cultural life is prominent the world over—and Nietzsche deplores that fact. Contemporary Germany is a center of softness and slow decay, so Nietzsche believes that Germany’s weaknesses are infecting the rest of the world. As he puts it in The Will to Power, “Aryan influence has corrupted all the world.”[91]

So rather than celebrating contemporary Germany and its power, as the Nazis would do, Nietzsche is disgusted by contemporary Germany.

This leads us to a third major point of difference.

References

[90] GM 1:11.

[91] WP 142; 145.

[Bibliography.]

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Masters and slaves [Section 24 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]

[This is Section 24 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

24. Masters and slaves

Part of the answer, says Nietzsche, is biological.

All of organic nature is divided into two broad species-types—those animals that are naturally herd animals and those that are naturally loners—those that are prey and those that are predators. Some animals are by nature sheep, field mice, or cows—and some animals are by nature wolves, hawks, or lions. Psychologically and physically, this divide also runs right through the human species. Some people are born fearful and inclined to join a herd—and some are born fearless and inclined to seek lonely heights. Some are born sedentary and sluggish—and some are born crackling with purpose and craving adventure.[53] Some of us, to use Nietzsche’s language, are born to be slaves, and some are born to be masters.

And which type you are—there is little you can do about it. There is a brute biological fact here: Each of us is the product of a long line of evolution, and our traits are evolutionarily bred into us. Just as a sheep cannot help but be sheepish and a hawk cannot help but be hawkish, each of us inherits from our parents and from their parents before them a long line of inbuilt traits. “It cannot be erased from a man’s soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done.”[54]

The master types live by strength, creativity, independence, assertiveness, and related traits. They respect power, courage, boldness, risk-taking, even recklessness. It is natural for them to follow their own path no matter what, to rebel against social pressure and conformity.[55]

The slave types live in conformity. They tend to passivity, dependence, meekness. It is natural for them to stick together for a sense of security, just as herd animals do.[56]

Now, Nietzsche says, let’s talk about morality, about good and bad, right and wrong. For a long time we have been taught that morality is a matter of religious commandments set in stone thousands of years ago.

Not so, says Nietzsche. What we take to be moral depends on our biological nature—and different biological natures dictate different moral codes.

Think of it this way: If you are a sheep, then what will seem good to you as a sheep? Being able to graze peacefully, sticking close together with others just like you, being part of the herd and not straying off. What will seem bad to you? Well, wolves will seem bad, and anything wolf-like, predatory, aggressive. But what if you are a wolf? Then strength, viciousness, and contempt for the sheep will come naturally to you and seem good. There is nothing the wolves and the sheep can agree on morally—their natures are different, as are their needs and goals, as is what feels good to them. Of course it would be good for the sheep if they could convince the wolves to be more sheep-like—but what self-respecting wolf would fall for that?

“That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no grounds for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: ‘these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb—would he not be good?’ there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: ‘we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.’”[57]

The same point holds for humans. The divide between strong and weak, assertive and timid, runs straight through the human species. The key question to ask about morality is not: Is such and such a value universally and intrinsically good? Rather the question is: What kind of person finds this value to be valuable?

In Nietzsche’s words, one’s moral code is a “decisive witness to who he is,” to the “innermost drives of his nature.”[58] “Moral judgments,” Nietzsche says, are “symptoms and sign languages which betray the process of physiological prosperity or failure.”[59]

So: one’s moral code is a function of one’s psychological make-up, and one’s psychological make-up is a function of one’s biological make-up.

The biological language and examples in those quotations show that biology is crucial to Nietzsche’s views on morality. Nietzsche was a precocious fifteen years old when Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. Evolutionary ideas had been in the air for a long time before Darwin, and much of the intellectual world was moving away from thinking of the reality in terms of timeless, unchanging absolutes to viewing it in terms of process and change. All of this applies to morality too.

Moral codes, Nietzsche is here suggesting, are part of a biological type’s life strategy of survival, and the more we look at the history of morality evolutionarily and biologically, the more we are struck by the diversity of circumstances and how dramatically beliefs about values have changed across time.

This is precisely our key problem culturally, Nietzsche argues. The evidence shows that we once prized excellence and power and looked down upon the humble and the lowly. Now the meek, the common man, the kindly neighbor are the “good guys” while the aggressive, the powerful, the strong, the proud are “evil.”[60]

Think of it this way: Suppose I gave you the following list of traits and urged them upon you positively.

It is good to be proud of yourself, to have a healthy sense of self-esteem.

Wealth is good, for it gives you the power to live as you wish.

Be ambitious and bold, and seek your highest dream.

Don’t take any nonsense from other people—make it clear that you will take vengeance and exact justice against those who mess with you.

Seek to improve your life and devote yourself only to things that will profit you; don’t waste your time or resources.

Seek great challenges, great pleasures, including sensual pleasures of the body, and go your own independent way in life, embracing whatever risks you must to develop a full and realized sense of yourself as an individual.

And when you accomplish something great, admire yourself for what you have done and indulge yourself in the rewards that greatness deserves.

Now consider the elements in this list together as a package. Does that list resonate with you? Do you feel in your bones that if more people lived this way they would live more active, fuller lives and they and the human species would realize its highest potential?

Now consider a different list of traits, and let me urge them upon you positively too.

One should be humble, for pride goeth before the fall. The meek shall inherit the earth, and blessed are the poor. As for wealth and the rich, it shall be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. Instead of seeking profit, one should sacrifice and give to charity. Be patient and forgiving. Turn the other cheek. Be aware of one’s weaknesses and sins, and be ashamed and self-deprecating as a result. Practice self-restraint, particularly with respect to your lower, impure, and often disgusting physical desires. Play it safe, think of other people’s needs and don’t rock the boat, and realize that we’re all dependent upon each other. Obey your parents and your preacher and the politicians.

Does the list on the right resonate with you? Do you feel that if more people lived that way they would live better lives and they and the human species would realize its highest potential?

Nietzsche is crystal clear about the list on the right—that list is dangerous to human potential. It reeks of weakness, even sickness and unhealthiness. It undermines the human potential for greatness, and it is, tragically, the dominant morality of our time. In our time, the traits that ennoble man are condemned, and all the traits that weaken man are praised. Morality, as Nietzsche puts it paradoxically, has become a bad thing; morality has become immoral: “precisely morality would be to blame if the highest power and splendor actually possible to the type man was never in fact attained? So that precisely morality was the danger of dangers?”[61]

Accordingly, Nietzsche concludes, “we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must first be called in question—and for that there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed.”[62]

References

[53] TI “Skirmishes” 33, 35.

[54] BGE 264.

[55] GM 1:6.

[56] BGE 199.

[57] GM 1:13.

[58] BGE 6.

[59] WP 258. See also D 542 and BGE 221.

[60] GM 1:4.

[61] GM Preface 6.

[62] GM Preface 6.

[Bibliography.]

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