Am I right to criticize Nietzche's Evolution of Morality?

Question

Correct me if I am wrong because I am recalling this from Philosophy class a year ago.

Nietzche believed the Strong only knew good and bad. The Weak, who are more numerous, developed good and evil and placed the Strong's concept of good under its own definition of evil.

Would I be justified in rejecting Nietzche if instead of approaching the view of the world as divided into the Strong and Weak, I said...

Strong and Weak can be terms applied to the individual. What if the weak came together, formed the social contract and as a society, was more powerful than the individually strong? Could this coming together of the weak form an identity stronger than the Strong and thus could be considered the new Strong? Would then, morality be developed not to exclude the Strong, but instead to maintain the Strong Society?

I dont know if this makes any sense to anyone but if you did follow, I wanted to bring Scientific Evolution, applied in a Sociological way to determine the....

...into becoming the philosophy of how a person should act; mainly, to keep society going.

YOur opinions? does my reasoning just sound the same as Nietzches or something different?

Would my reasoning not be the basis of Jesuit tradition?

Answer 1

Of course you're right to crtiticise. Any idea that can't stand up to criticism is wrong on its face.

Answer 2

It's been a long time since I read Nietche but I think you need to look at your own question/answer. If the weak are developing their own definition of good or evil, are they not making a decision one way or the other?

I think that he was talking about those in power, not the strong or the weak per se. The ones in power make the decisions but it is up the the one's without power that make up the masses to decide to follow those in power or reject their ways.

Most people follow their leader, whether they see it as right or wrong. So those in power are able to push their agenda without a huge amount of resistance for the most part. This means that the weak continue to give the strong the power needed to preside over them.

It is the few within the masses that fuel resistance and will make change.

This doesn't make the strong or the weak right or wrong, it just depends on what plays out through history.

Look at the state of America 50 years ago. Whites had the power and discriminated against people of all colors. Did that make them right? No. The masses disagreed and made change. It's not a utopia by any means but the "weaker" masses forced change in those in power even though whites would have been completely happy to continue their ways.

Eventually the people who are right will prevail, strong or weak.

Answer 3

Well, you're certainly right to criticize Nietzsche. Any thought which you accept without criticism becomes dogma.

Nietzsche would certainly find your idea abhorent. Your thoughts are very Christian, at least according to Nietzsche's definition of Christian. What you're suggesting is that the weak band together to form a herd that is strong by its sheer number. That is precicely what Nietzsche thought Christianity had done over the centuries.

Nietzsche was an individualist who strongly believed in competition and social stratification. He viewed 'the good of the many' as an immoral idea, because the quality of the few strong morally outwheighed the happiness of the herd. He is very contemptuous of common people.

At the complete opposite of Christianity, strangely enough, it has been suggested the ideas of Nietzsche gave birth to Nazism in Germany. In a way, I think a number of Nazis believed they were following a Nietzschean ideal of strength with their movement, a collective declaration of will to power.

However, I am certain Nietzsche himself would have found the Nazis contemptible. Nietzsche didn't believe in ever finding comfort in an identity, for man had to eternally surpass himself. Plus the strong are individualists and competitive. The warrior's ideals contained in the works of Nietzsche remind one more of the chivalric idea of personnal glory than the collective victories brought about by the march of armies.

A professor of philosophy of mine when I was studying at the university had worked on a project as to what a society following nietzschean precepts would look like. Their research concluded no such society was possible, because Nietzsche was simply too much of an individualist.

So it's certainly interesting food for thought on Nietzsche. I'm certain he would never have accepted the idea of 'collectively strong', however.

Answer 4

The weak do not possess the courage or vitality which Nietzche was proclaiming. They merely suffocate it by virtue of the superiority of their numbers. Being able to join together to impose a life disavowing culture is not the strength Nietzche was considering.

Answer 5

'Nietzche believed the Strong only knew good and bad. The Weak, who are more numerous, developed good and evil and placed the Strong's concept of good under its own definition of evil. '

Not having those definitions at hand, I could not say nor judge them. It is like the other question concerning Candide and his notion that this is the best of all possibilities, that there could be no better, but that is like saying there could be no worse, and that is not wise.

Morality is resistence to change, but not knowing those determinants for change, we could not judge a morality and knowingly do the right thing. So, the strong should be the strong of mind and of the will to learn. But this could go on forever.

Here is some weird stuff to read.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phc2cc.htm

Φ 671. Absolute Spirit enters existence merely at the culminating point at which its pure knowledge about itself is the opposition and interchange with itself. Knowing that its pure knowledge is the abstract essential reality, Absolute Spirit is this knowing duty in absolute opposition to the knowledge which knows itself, qua absolute singleness of self, to be the essentially real. The former is the pure continuity of the universal, which knows the individuality, that knows itself the real, to be inherently naught, to be evil. The latter, again, is absolute discreteness, which knows itself absolute in its pure oneness, and knows the universal is the unreal which exists only for others. Both aspects are refined and clarified to this degree of purity, where there is no self-less existence left, no negative of consciousness in either of them, where, instead, the one element of “duty” is the self-identical character of its self-knowledge, and the other element of “evil” equally has its purpose in its own inner being and its reality in its own mode of utterance. The content of this utterance is the substance that gives this spirit subsistence; the utterance is the assurance of the certainty of spirit within its own self.

These spirits, both certain of themselves, have each no other purpose than its own pure self, and no other reality and existence than just this pure self. But they are still different, and the difference is absolute, because holding within this element of the pure notion. The difference is absolute, too, not merely for us [tracing the experience], but for the notions themselves which stand in this opposition. For while these notions are indeed determinate and specific relatively to one another, they are at the same time in themselves universal, so that they fill out the whole range of the self; and this self has no other content than this its own determinate constitution, which neither transcends the self nor is more restricted than it. For the one factor, the absolutely universal, is pure self-knowledge as well as the other, the absolute discreteness of single individuality, and both are merely this pure self-knowledge. Both determinate factors, then, are cognizing pure notions which know qua notions, whose very determinateness is immediately knowing, or, in other words, whose relationship and opposition is the Ego. Because of this they are for one another these absolute opposites; it is what is completely inner that has in this way come into opposition to itself and entered objective existence; they constitute pure knowledge, which, owing to this opposition, takes the form of consciousness. But as yet it is not self-consciousness. It obtains this actualization in the course of the process through which this opposition passes. For this opposition is really itself the indiscrete continuity and identity of ego=ego; and each by itself inherently cancels itself just through the contradiction in its pure universality, which, while implying continuity and identity, at the same time still resists its identity with the other, and separates itself from it. Through this relinquishment of separate selfhood, the knowledge, which in its existence is in a state of diremption, returns into the unity of the self; it is the concrete actual Ego, universal knowledge of self in its absolute opposite, in the knowledge which is internal to and within the self, and which, because of the very purity of its separate subjective existence, is itself completely universal. The reconciling affirmation, the “yes”, with which both egos desist from their existence in opposition, is the existence of the ego expanded into a duality, an ego which remains therein one and identical with itself, and possesses the certainty of itself in its complete relinquishment and its opposite: it is God appearing in the midst of those who know themselves in the form of pure knowledge.

Answer 6

you have no right to reject nietzche in any way (period).