Zeal For Truth

The problem with values is that they are dependent upon specific beliefs. For instance, the concept of valuating concepts depends upon the belief that concepts can be evaluated and “judged” according to some set of principles. There is also the dependency of those particular principles. Theoretically, if the required beliefs are removed, the values based on them should fall, much like the removal of a foundation.

This is one of the premises behind Nietzsche’s sustained attack on Christianity. According to John Wilcox’s seminal work on metaethical analysis of Nietzsche, Truth and Value in Nietzsche, this attack centers around five beliefs: the existence of God, the existence of another world, free will, a moral order to the world, and a purely moral motivation. While each of these would be worth exploration, for now we will focus on one in two parts: freedom and the will.

Freedom
Nietzsche is dead-set against any kind of real “freedom” in actions. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche writes that the new doctrine of the “immoralists” is that “no one gives man his qualities–neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself” (VI, 8). The last part is important here: one does not even give oneself one’s qualities. In other words, one is unable to determine who/what/how one is. In Human, All-Too-Human, Nietzsche iterates the same concept of Laplace: “In looking at a waterfall we imagine that there is freedom of will and fancy in the countless turnings, twistings, and breakings of the waves; but everything is compulsory, every movement can be mathematically calculated. So it is also with human actions…” (106). There is no freedom in Nietzsche primarily because the will is not a faculty of one’s actions. In other words, one does not will. Instead, one’s will compels one to action; there is no real choice because it had been decided before a choice was even possible.

Der Wille
Nietzsche conceives of the will differently than most Westerners have in the past two hundred years. As I mentioned just above, the will is not an agent of action for Nietzsche. The ability to choose one’s fancy (e.g. caesar vs ranch dressing) is not really a matter of the will.

This misunderstanding began back before Plato and Socrates as thinkers began to associate the will as the cause of an action. This transformed into the idea that the consciousness was the actual cause. Finally, in Descartes, we have the ultimate error: the ego (the self) as the cause of an action. Nietzsche writes in Twilight, “Men were considered ‘free’ so that they might be judged and punished–so that they might become guilty: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental counterfeit in psychologicis was made the principle of psychology itself).” In other words, for the values of “good and evil” in the bad conscience of Christianity to work, it required man to be responsible for his actions, which further required the will as an agent of the self.

Values
In order to understand what Nietzsche means by his title Beyond Good and Evil as well as his designation as an “immoralist,” one must understand how Nietzsche conceives of the will and freedom. Nietzsche is not advocating a view “beyond morals” at all, but rather a view in which guilt is redeemed as a result of the will. Nietzsche’s concept of redemption can be seen in both Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Antichrist: “To redeem what is past in man and to re-create all ‘it was’ until the will says, ‘Thus I willed it! Thus I shall will it!’” Redemption in this perspective of Nietzsche I am presenting (there are other ones that may all be contradictory) is the value of affirmation. The final stage of man is not the lion who roars “No!” to laws but rather the child who innocently speaks “Yes!” to new values. This is why Nietzsche respects the Jewish priests and Paul even though they become the epitome of ressentiment: they created values.