Nietzsche: His Life and Works

by Anthony M. Ludovici

The writing of this essay had other consequences which I shall only be able to refer to in the next chapter; but at present let it suffice to say that, in recognising the arbitrary use made by Theognis of the epithets good and bad in designating the oligarchy and the democracy respectively, Nietzsche was first induced to look upon morality merely as a weapon in the struggle for power, and he thus freed himself from all the usual bias which belongs to the absolutist's standpoint. Hence his claim to the surname "amoralist," and his use of the phrase "Beyond Good and Evil," as the title of one of his greatest works.

Let us, however, remember that although Nietzsche did undoubtedly take up a position beyond good and evil, in order to free himself temporarily from the gyves of all tradition, still this attitude was no more than a momentary one, and he ultimately became as rigid a moralist as the most exacting could desire. It was a new morality, however, or perhaps a forgotten one, which he ultimately preached, and with the view of preparing the ground for it he was in a measure obliged to destroy old idols. "He who hath to be a creator in good and evil," says Zarathustra, "verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and to break values to pieces."[4]

Assuming the position of the relativist, then, Nietzsche observed that, all morality, all use of the words "good" and "evil," is only an artifice for acquiring power. Turning to the animal kingdom, he went in search of support for his views, and very soon discovered that, in biology at least, no fact was at variance with his general hypothesis.

In nature every species of organic being behaves as if its kind alone ought ultimately to prevail on earth, and, whether it try to effect this end by open aggression or cowardly dissimulation, the motive in both cases is the same. The lion's good is the antelope's evil. If the antelope believed the lion's good to be its good, it would go and present itself without further ado before the lion's jaws. If the lion believed the antelope's good to be its good it would adopt vegetarianism forthwith and eschew its carnivorous habits for the rest of its days. Again, no parasite could share the notions of good and evil entertained by its victim, neither could the victims share the notions of good and evil entertained by the parasite. Everywhere, then, those modes of conduct are adopted and perpetuated by a species, which most conduce to the prevalence and extension of their particular kind, and that species which fails to discover the class of conduct best calculated to preserve and strengthen it gets overcome in the war of conduct which constitutes the incessant struggle for power.

Now, applying the knowledge to man, what did Nietzsche find? He found there was also a war being waged between the different modes of conduct which now prevail among men, and that what one man sets up as good is called evil by another and vice versâ. But of this he soon became convinced, that whenever and wherever good and evil had been set up as absolute values, they had been thus elevated to power with the view of preserving and multiplying one specific type of man.

All moralities, therefore, were but so many Trades Union banners flying above the heads of different classes of men, woven and upheld by them for their own needs and aspirations.

So far, so good. But then, if that were so, the character of a morality must be determined by the class of men among" whom it came into being.

We shall see that Nietzsche did not hesitate to accept this conclusion, and that if for a moment he declared: "No one knoweth yet what is good and what is evil!" the next minute he was asking himself this searching question: "Is our morality—that is to say, the particular table of values which is gradually modifying us—compatible with an ideal worthy of man's inheritance and past?"

If Nietzsche has been called dangerous, pernicious and immoral, it is because people have deliberately overlooked this last question of his. No thinker who states and honestly sets out to answer this question, as Nietzsche did, deserves to be slandered, as he has been slandered, by prejudiced and interested people intent on misunderstanding only in order that they may fling mud more freely.

Nietzsche cast his critical eye very seriously around him, and the sight of the modern world led him to ask these admittedly pertinent questions: "Is that which we have for centuries held for good and evil, really good and evil? Does our table of ethical principles seem to be favouring the multiplication of a desirable type?"