Nietzsche on Morailty as Anti-Nature?

Question

Can anyone give me a little summary of the main idea of "morailty as Anti-Nature" a section in Twilight of the Idols? I am having a hard time interpreting it and I just want a little insight as to where to begin!~

Thanks!

Answer 1

That is a particularly good section to get to the core of some of Nietzsche's common themes. His arguments go roughly like this:

All living things are given desires by nature. These desires exist as part of who we are. They define us in a way; they can aid us and they can also do us great harm.

A strong-willed and reasonable person, then, can dip into a passion. He can reap the benefits but avoid the drawbacks because he is in control. This would seem to obviously be the best position to be in.

There are many, however, who are not so strong. Their passions get the better of them and they suffer for it. The only way they can control the situation is to abstain from the passion altogether.

Weakest of all are those who cannot even resist the temptation of their passion. To them, their passions are horrible oppressors... so they craft moralities that label the passion itself as evil instead of their weakness. They deny the very essence of their nature (these are the un-natural moralities he refers to in the title).

To Nietzsche, denying your own passions is like denying reality. If your passions were a tiger, a strong man would catch the tiger and tame it. A weak man would at least run away. But it is only a fool who pretends that the tiger doesn't exist. The greatest of moralities are those that accomodate nature... the weakest of moralities are those that deny it.

Nietzsche particularly makes the point that this is so not only for 'good' passions, but for ALL of them. So just as well-controlled love is better than unbridled love and abstaining from love, so too is well-controlled hostility better than unbridled hostility and abstaining from hostility altogether.

Answer 2

Morality As Anti-nature

Answer 3

Nietzsche Sparknotes

Answer 4

Hello:

I have not read this text specifically, however from what I know of Nietzsche.

What is morality? It is a system of values that tells you what you should do. It comes (usually) from an external source from somewhere in society. I am sure you know what morality is so I just wanted to make the broad point.

As for what is natural...look to how nature itself acts. Animals act only from their self interest and if they act on behalf of another or a group it is almost exclusively because there is a self-interest involved.

This at the very beginning puts the two at odds if for no other reason that morality (unless a personal moral code...even this is influenced by others) originates from outside the self while instinct and self interest are part of our core.

Thats just to give you a jumping off point.

On the same hand I personally don't think animals do anything all that immoral, just wanted to add that there.

I hope this Helps

Rev Phil

Answer 5

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RE:
Nietzsche on Morailty as Anti-Nature?
Can anyone give me a little summary of the main idea of "morailty as Anti-Nature" a section in Twilight of the Idols? I am having a hard time interpreting it and I just want a little insight as to where to begin!~

Thanks!

Answer 6

I think what Nietzsche was getting at was that strong, healthy people who also posses self-control can follow their natural inclinations without getting in trouble. They can rule their passions.

Then there are people who are strong and healthy but don't posses self-control. Their passions rule them.

These are the people who create the arguement for weak, washed-out people who can't follow their natural inclinations. They decide that following the passions are bad and use examples of people without self-control to drive home their message and reign in even those who are cabable of governing themselves.

Answer 7

Well, I did a little checking in some sources, and in MasterFile there are several articles on this particular work, though in an EBSCO search using the title and the word morality, there were no results.

Depending on the Library resources you have available to you, I'd recommend Google Scholar, EBSCO Masterfile as well as Humanities International Complete for full text material.

In the print medium, I'd suggest Philosophy reference books, using your Card catalog or Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC, long generic term for online catalogs that usually have names unique to the library or system they serve) and searching Frederick Nietzsche as a subject, this will pull up biographical information as well as criticism. Nietzsche, Frederick--Criticism and Interpretation would be the subject heading I'd try first.

As to search strategy, I'd be as direct as possible with the online sources, and widen your search if you aren't finding enough. I call this casting a wider net. For instance, with the search for Twilight of the Idols AND morality, producing no results, I widened the search by eliminating the Boolean operator AND and the word morality from the search.

I haven't read Nietzsche so I don't feel qualified to conjecture on his work.