Nietzsche

Ken Taylor
Welcome, I’m Ken Taylor.

John Perry
And I’m John Perry, Coming up, right after the news, it’s Philosophy Talk. What’s the topic this week, Ken?

Ken Taylor
The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially his views about the origins of morality, John.

John Perry
That explains the music. Nietzsche on morality… Didn’t Nietzsche think that morality was something of a confidence game, where kind of naturally weak people like you can trap natural aristocrats like myself into being nice to them, otherwise we’ll feel guilty?

Ken Taylor
Something like that, John. He did think it was important that the strog not the taken in by the morality of the week. That’s true.

John Perry
Now you don’t really believe that stuff about morality being only for the weak do you, Ken?

Ken Taylor
I don’t know. But what if I said I did, John.?

John Perry
Well, I’d be very careful when I was around you.

Ken Taylor
Oh, John. Stay with us as we examine Nietzsche’s provocative views about the source of morality. First, the news.

Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the wonderful studios of KALW Information Radio in San Francisco.

John Perry
But we like to imagine ourselves sitting on the grass or at Philosophers Corner, a shady oasis on the campus of Stanford University. There’s plenty of room so sit right down and join us.

Ken Taylor
Today we’ll be examining some of the views of the 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, especially his views about the origin of morality.

John Perry
Well, Frederick Nietzsche was born just about 100 years before I was born. He was born in 1844. And he was young enough to be influenced by Darwin. And by the time he died, we actually stopped writing long before he died because he had a mental illness. He had produced works that have been extraordinarily influential, influential, excuse me on the on the 20th century.

Ken Taylor
Supposedly, he influenced the Nazis.

John Perry
Well, that’s often said, but that’s probably a misreading of Nietzsche. At least that’s what I’ve been told.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, me too. So why don’t we get to the correct reading of Nietzsche? Let’s think about Nietzsche his views about the nature of morality a little bit.

John Perry
Well, what you’re more of a scholar than I am. What are the kind of views about the origins of morality that philosophers have held? Where do we fit Nietzsche into this group?

Ken Taylor
Well, there’s the one I learned at my mother’s knee and in Sunday school, that God dictates the laws of morality. So the divine commandment theory of morality.

John Perry
Your mother had talking knees,Ken? That’s pretty impressive. The divine command I don’t think that was Nietzsche. Nietzsche is famous for saying God is dead. And now I suppose God could have first issued his divine commands and then died. But that doesn’t sound like the Nietzsche.

Ken Taylor
I know. That’s not the Nietzsche. But there’s also the will there’s sort of a divine command made eminent. That’s kind of Kant’s view. The management Yeah, like famous or not, instead of transcendent. Good, the commandments of morality are the commandments of reason. They come from our own rationality. This is your man Conte. Yeah, that’s my man. And I bet he ends up finding the 10 commandments right there in reason. Yeah, yeah, that’s not that’s not a Nietzschean view, either. Obviously, yeah.

John Perry
Well, how about how about what’s the next view?

Ken Taylor
Yeah, there’s your man who, who kind of, you know, David Hume, that British philosopher who’s kind of a naturalist about morality, somehow rooted in human nature.

John Perry
David Hume, 18th century philosopher, we have this natural sympathy, that just part of nature and morality is built on that. Yeah, that I mean, Nietzsche was a Darwinian, and he was definitely not a supernaturalist. So maybe he wasn’t a naturalist.

Ken Taylor
Could be. I learned in graduate school, I have to say that Nietzsche was actually a moral skeptic, that you didn’t really believe they were moral facts. I remember taking this course at the University of Chicago, but that doesn’t that might not that might not be right, but a little bit. Brian Leiter will join us and he’ll he’ll straighten us.

John Perry
Before we get the expert opinion on Nietzsche, we’re gonna learn a little about the New Jersey opinion on Nietzsche. I think part of it is expert and part of it is not so expert. Our Roving Philosophical Reporter didn’t have to go to New Jersey. She just got on the phone and called Princeton and turned on her TV and tuned in to an episode of The Sopranos.

The Sporanos
What did you just say? Death just shows the ultimate absurdity of life. What is this? Are you trying to get me to lose my temper? Because I’m about to put you through that god damn window. See, that’s what I mean. Life is absurd. Don’t say that. God forgive you. There is no God. Hey!

Amy Standen
In the second season of The Sopranos, AJ Soprano, an awkward sullen teenager discovers existential philosophy. And he tells his parents that he won’t be getting confirmed in the Catholic Church or any church anytime soon.

The Sporanos
Alright, what’s going on with you? Nothing. That “no God” shit. That upset your mother very much. It’s not “no God”—just God is dead. Who said that? Nitsch. He’s an 18th century philosopher from Germany. Anyway, that’s what I’m not getting confirmed. Enough with that shit, alright? Your confirmation’s coming up this week and you are getting confirmed!

Alexander Nehamas
There is a sense in which the true voices a complaint that you are more likely to hear from adolescence and from mature grownups.

Amy Standen
Alexander Nehamas is a professor of the humanities at Princeton University. He once called Nietzsche—or “Nitsch,” as AJ soprano calls him—a philosopher of adolescence.

Alexander Nehamas
The traditional adolescent complained that you know, I am not like you, let me be who I am. And to some extent, I think Nietzsche is voicing that kind of complained about contemporary culture, contemporary civilization. He believes that morality in particular Christian morality, of which he is a great enemy, is designed precisely to make everyone act the same way as everyone else. He believes that a few people at least, not only do not need these rules, the rules official morality, but living by those rules, deprives them of their most valuable aspects of their individuality of their creativity.

Amy Standen
The Nietzschean hero, or Superman, is constantly recreating himself—questioning everything, being an artist of life. Back to the Sopranos…

The Sopranos
You’re up next. Nah, I just want to watch. Sometimes you got to do things you don’t want to. Why? Because your parents say so, and it’s part of your tradition. That’s not wha Nitch says.Who? Nietzsche.

Speaker 4
You might not describe AJ Soprano as an artist of life, but he’s got a touch of the Superman. He’s breaking the rules, refusing convention. Still, he’s got an attitude problem. Nietzsche did believe that life is ultimately absurd, but for him that was cause for celebration—for art, creativity, not sullen teenagerly angst. Again, Alexander Nehamas.

Alexander Nehamas
No rule by which we live—none, and he is very clear about that—no moral rule, no religious rule, no social rule,no legal rule is unbreakable. Who you are, is not necessarily what you have been made to be by your society, your family, your parents, your religion, your schooling, your social class, it can always be something else.

Amy Standen
For Philosophy Talk, this is Amy Standen.

John Perry
Thanks, Amy. Hey, Ken, if the Sopranos can have an HBO series and talk about Nietzsche, couldn’t we have an HBO program maybe “The Philosophers?” I could be the star and you could be featured.

Ken Taylor
John, you have the looks for radio. So anyway, joining us to talk about Nietzsche is Brian Leiter. Professor Leiter teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Joseph D. Jamail Centennial Chair law. He is also by the way a professor of philosophy. He has written he has written widely on both jurisprudence and on Nietzsche, including the book “Nietzsche on Morality,” published by Rutledge in 2002. He joins us from this studios of KUT in Austin. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Brian.

Brian Leiter
Thank you, Ken. Pleasure to be here.

John Perry
Hi, Brian, John Perry here.

Brian Leiter
Hi, John. How are you?

John Perry
Oh, I’m pretty good. But I’m a little confused about your man Nietzsche. Now, Nietzsche was dismissive of what he called the herd morality. And he seemed to think most of us belong to that. He sounds to me like a little bit of a moral skeptic and my friends and literature, putting right up there with Foucault and kind of deconstructing everything that we ordinarily believe in. But I know in your book, you defend the idea that Nietzsche was really a naturalist, so So tell us about Nietzsche and your take on Nietzsche on morality?

Brian Leiter
Sure. Well, naturalism, of course, is a term that means a lot of different things and philosophies. Both both you and Ken No. But why don’t we start with Hume, whom you mentioned in your introductory remarks? Hume has this idea which, which I think he shares with Nietzsche that a lot of what we ordinarily believe, can’t be rationally explained to rationally justified, and therefore we have to find some other way to explain why do we believe these things? Why do we believe in the morality we believe in if it has no rational foundation? Why do we believe in causation if there’s no rational foundation for our beliefs and causation? So both Hume and Nietzsche, I think, are responding to the same problem. But Hume comes at it from a slightly different perspective than Nietzsche, it’s fair to say. Hume assumes that we have certain natural dispositions that lead us to believe the conventional moral beliefs that we’re all familiar with these natural dispositions of sympathy as it were, yeah. Nietzsche, on the other hand, has a psychological story about why we accept the morality we accept. And that’s psychological story tends to undermine or debunk the the status of our moral commitments and our moral beliefs.

John Perry
So Brian, see if this is right, we could we could say they’re both naturalist in the sense that they think if there’s anything to morality, whatever there is to morality, it’s got to be found in nature, no supernatural deliverance from God, or to a, you know, some mysterious reason it’s got to be found right there in nature, it’s just that they find different things in humans is a little bit more. fitting with the traditional morality and niches is a little bit of more of a story about why we believe it without necessarily making it true. Is that about right?

Brian Leiter
Right, Nietzsche’s aim is to undermine morality. I mean, his most famous book on the subject, the genealogy of morality is called the polemic. And it’s a polemic whose aim is to tell us things about how we arrived at our moral beliefs, but the things he’s trying to tell us are supposed to shake us out of our conviction that we ought to accept those beliefs.

Ken Taylor
So I mean, that that says, I mean, then so you said nature’s aim is to undermine morality. So that does that mean? We shouldn’t be moral? I mean, we should just how should we live in the absence of lead? Let’s I just want to know a little bit more about what the morality is that he’s trying to undermine. And once it’s undermined what’s supposed to be left, just anything goes? I mean, what’s, what’s the story?

Brian Leiter
Well, those are those are the big questions that that Nietzsche his work sets us. Let’s take the first part of that. That is what’s he, What’s he trying to undermine? And he describes the target a lot of different ways. He often speaks about Christian morality, what we would now call Judeo Christian morality, the famous morality of the Judeo Christians. We would, he sometimes talks about philosophical views about morality, Kant’s, utilitarianism, and so on. I think he we can think of him as aiming at a set of moral views that he captures with this idea of the aesthetic ideal, that is an aesthetic morality, a morality that, in his view, condemns suffering thinks that suffering must be alleviated that condemned selfishness and self interest adness. That’s hostile to inequality. It’s basically in a egalitarian morality, that’s hostile to instinctual gratification, sexual gratification, being paramount among that.

Ken Taylor
So he thinks, if you believe in equality, if you think suffering is bad, and you should have sympathy for all beings and try to alleviate their suffering, suffering, you’re somehow making some terrible mistake. Is that Is that how I should understand what you’re saying?

Brian Leiter
Well, I’m not sure we would think we ought to say that he thinks you’re making a mistake, because that would assume and this goes back to the earlier question raised about whether he’s a moral skeptic, he is a kind of moral skeptic in the sense that I think he doesn’t think any of these moral judgments are objectively true or false. And I think he thinks that about his own moral judgments as well, something we can come back to, if the conversation leads us there.

John Perry
Let me ask this question, Brian, there is a I don’t know whether it’s a popular picture of Nietzsche, where this whole idea of a Superman is very important. And I know Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the idea that the really exceptional person should shouldn’t be bound by moral principles. A lot of people find this pretty disturbing and not very attractive is that that doesn’t sound like it was a central Nietzschean point from from what you’ve told us.

Brian Leiter
Not in the form in which it’s become popularized. I mean, it’s one of the unfortunate things about the popular reception of Nietzsche that everybody immediately associates him with the Uber match the Superman or the overmanned. In fact, the character of the Uber man, Shapiro, essentially, and only one of nature’s books, though it’s one of his most famous Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but in every book he wrote, subsequent to that, including his genealogy, beyond good and evil, and many other famous works, he never mentioned that idea. Again, it simply drops out of the corpus.

Ken Taylor
But he doesn’t even mention, I mean, he mentioned the noble spirits and all that stuff, time and time again, and the person of the higher of higher qualities we shouldn’t be taken in and governed by this herd morality that’s trying to bring him down kind of thing.

Brian Leiter
And, and that’s absolutely right. I think there’s no question and this brings us back to the question, What’s wrong with that morality that we were we were just talking about? What I take it Nietzsche thinks is wrong with that morality, is that that kind of morality is incompatible with a certain kind of human flourishing that would be available to the highest types of human beings as he calls them. But the highest types of human beings aren’t Nietzsche, Superman. In fact, if you look at Nietzsche, his corpus, his favorite example, again and again and again, is the great German writer gorta. His second favorite example is Nietzsche.

John Perry
You know, we’re sounds like when we started the show with us this theme from 2001. That’s really was maybe a little misleading. It was the spreads there through strip. But maybe that’s not as central as we thought. We’ll come back to this. But first, I think we’re going to take a break.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, we’re gonna take a little break. We’d like you to join us. You can give us a call at 415-841-4134 that’s 415-841-4134 or you can go to our website, philosophytalk.org. Click on the comments link up at the right hand corner there. And we’ll read your question on the air. This is Philosophy Talk. We’ll be right back

R.E.M.
I am Superman, and I can do anything.

John Perry
I’m sure all you Nietzscheans out there will recognize R.E.M. from their album “Life’s Rich Pageant, “I am Superman.” Actually, I am John Perry. And this is Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. And I’m Ken Taylor. Our guest is Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. We’re talking about Nietzsche’s views about the origin of morality. We’d like you to join our conversation, give us a call. That’s 415-841-4134 that’s 415-841-4134 or go to our website, philosophytalk.org, and send us a comment via email.

John Perry
Here’s some questions for you to ponder. Where does morality really come from? Is it just a confidence game imposed by the weak on the strong or are Nietzsche’s views wrongheaded morally repugnant and best forgotten?

Ken Taylor
So Brian, I want to talk more about this. Suppose that destructiveness of morality, I mean, I think of morality as a thing that enables people to live together and therefore have common, common flourishing. Tell me more about why Nietzsche thought that the as it were the herd morality, as he liked to dismissively call it was so disruptive to the higher types.

Brian Leiter
Yeah, well, I think that is the crucial thing to emphasize that Nietzsche is worried about the effects of morality on certain people. He’s not necessarily seeking, at least not in my view, a sort of general moral revolution in society, society as a whole. I take it, what he’s worried about is that somebody somebody couldn’t be garter. Somebody couldn’t be Beethoven. Somebody couldn’t be Nietzsche. If they structured their life, around a set of moral imperatives about altruism always do for others. If they viewed happiness as utilitarians do as the, the highest goal, Nietzsche’s thought is that to be a great creative genius, and that is, I think, ultimately, clearly his favorite example of the sort of higher human beings he’s interested in, to be to be that kind of person. You can’t be a hedonist and you also can’t be an altruist. And we could go, we could go on and on with others.

John Perry
That sounds pretty plausible. And maybe to have the you know, the Gurdas Nietzsche’s, it’s worth having that insight. But sometimes, he talks more like he’s talking about the aristocrats versus the masses. I think somewhere he says, maybe in Beyond Good and Evil, the notion of equality and of of taking in another person’s interest is equal to your own that that applies among the aristocrats that was never intended to apply between them and the rest of us Riff Raff.

Brian Leiter
Yeah. Well, he doesn’t quite say it wasn’t intended to apply. But he certainly makes the historical point. And this is, in a way, the subject of the first essay of Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality. He makes the historical point that that moralities can be traced back to their origins in certain sorts of social classes. So that what he calls master morality really did trace he thinks to the ruling classes in well, in the case of the genealogy, the Roman Empire, yeah, though, he’s concerned with the periods before that.

John Perry
It’s more of a genealogical point than his advocacy that the aristocrat should still behave.

Ken Taylor
I don’t think it’s just a doe logical point. But you know, I’m gonna let some colors in here, we know these aristocrats, we’ll see. Bishara in Berkeley, did I get that right, Bishara?

Bishara
Yeah, you gotta try. Thank you for allowing me to come on board. This is interesting, because this is exactly what I wanted to ask. I’m writing a small article, and I wanted to ask what is the relationship between self? And if you want to say community, meaning self and the rest of humanity? Do you have one? Yeah, I mean, morally speaking,

Ken Taylor
Do you mean for Nietzsche, or just you want to want to answer to that agenda.

Bishara
I know that I came into the program and you guys are discussing Nietzsche. But I think somebody must have some sort of opinion at least from the collective reading. When does cell take precedence? When does community take precedence and also Based on the issue that you were, that you guys were talking about in terms of the class,

Ken Taylor
okay, thanks. Thanks, Bishara. Brian, Bishara raises I think an interesting question. I’ve actually always wondered about this. And Nietzsche, I mean, what view can he have about how these aristocrats how these noble spirits are supposed to fit in with the rest of us? I mean, what’s the what’s the theory of community of communal life in Egypt?

Brian Leiter
Well, I’ll tell you what my view about this is that Nietzsche doesn’t have one. That Nietzsche the best way to think about Nietzsche is what you might call an esoteric moralist. He’s got a certain message that he wants certain people to get. And he wants to affect the transformation of their consciousness, how they think about morality, but his aim is not as it were a general transformation of society as as a whole. Now, this, of course, runs against certain people who want to treat Nietzsche as as having a radically inegalitarian political philosophy. It seems to me that reads way too much into relatively little that Nietzsche says on these topics. He’s just not interested in the community as a whole. And that as it were, as a fact about him.

Ken Taylor
That’s strange. So we have we have callers from all over the country here. Actually, Robert in Detroit, Michigan’s Robert Welch, welcome to Philosophy Talk, Robert.

Robert
Morning. Good afternoon. Again, I think in discussing Eetzi it’s always important to keep in mind with Sartre said he’s no philosopher. He was trained as a philologist. And I want to know why Professor Leiter doesn’t think he’s committing a genetic fallacy, the way he criticizes Judeo Christian morality. I mean, someone could accept the psychological account, say, yeah, there’s a little bit of resentment there at the core. But I mean, this doesn’t invalidate any of those systems.

John Perry
Maybe we better make sure the listeners are up to date on what the genetic fallacy as long as you explain it again.

Ken Taylor
Why don’t you explain it? Brian, since you’re being accused of it, okay, right.

Brian Leiter
Well, I’m not only only niches right, the genetic fallacy, and Nietzsche, Nietzsche was well aware of it, and was very careful to say he was avoiding the genetic fallacy is the thought that you’ve shown something about the truth of a belief by showing us something about its origin. And Nietzsche is very keen to say that the origin of a belief is one thing, its truth value is another. And that of course, then raises the question, why did he write a history or genealogy of morality? And I take it, you could think of it this way, and in very simple terms, which is that if you learn that your beliefs were arrived at the wrong kind of way, that ought to make you suspicious about them. If it turns out that, that I recommend the particular restaurant to you, and that it turns out I part owner of the restaurant, that raises a question about whether my recommendation of the great food at this restaurant is really credible. And I take it that’s what Nietzsche is, after he wants to say, look where morality came from, and where it came from isn’t so wonderful. Maybe you ought to rethink your commitment to it. But that leaves open the question whether it’s really true, whether we ought to accept it, and so on.

Ken Taylor
Okay. That’s, I think that’s a nice response. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Our guest is Brian lighter from the University of Texas at Austin, author of morality on Nietzsche. John, you wanted to respond, I think.

John Perry
I just, I agree with Brian’s question, Brian’s answer to the astute question, I think, in general, although the genetic fallacy is a fallacy, that’s still the genesis of an idea can somehow sometimes be illuminating. It’s not that the fact that an idea has a kind of a funny psychological or even psychoanalytic or even nutty origin, doesn’t mean that it’s false. But it may help us to understand the idea better, and may help us to understand what what some other good argument against in might be.

Ken Taylor
Well, that’s right. But you know, there is this distinction between how you come across an idea or a thought and how you confirm it, or disconfirm it I mean, Copernicus, you know, thought just couldn’t stand to see that the, that the sun was not at the center of things, because he was some kind of sun worship or something. But that doesn’t make the thought that he had that the Earth goes around the sun falls.

John Perry
But if you think you origin of your view is that it came pretty directly from God by way of the Bible or a priest. It’s true. Then somebody says, No, actually, it’s just a hurt morality idea that was a response to the situations in the Roman Empire. That’s gonna affect your view of its validity.

Ken Taylor
We have lots of callers—again, from all around the country. Arpin in Austin, Texas, from where you hail John—I mean Brian. Welcome, Arpin, to Philosophy Talk.

Arpin
Good afternoon, Dr. Leiter.

Brian Leiter
Good afternoon.

Arpin
Sir, in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche remarks that there are no moral phenomena, but there are only moral interpretations of phenomena. Could you explain what role interpretation plays in Nietzsche’s view of normative theory?

Ken Taylor
Thanks. I think this is one of your fans or something.

John Perry
Let’s make sure, Brian, you explain normative theory on your way to answering it.

Brian Leiter
Right. Okay. Well, that, of course, is a big question. When Nietzsche says that there are no moral phenomena, there are no moral facts. There are just moral interpretations. I know what he means specifically in context of that of that remark. But it illustrates the point more generally, he means that people interpret the behavior of other human beings as though it makes sense to view them as morally responsible for what they do, because they have free will. In fact, Nietzsche thinks people don’t have free will, people aren’t free enough such that they can be responsible for their actions, therefore, to interpret them as morally responsible is to impose an interpretation that the facts of the case don’t warrant. And that’s often the way Nietzsche looks at thing he says, on the one hand, there’s a correct naturalistic explanation for what’s going on how what human behavior is really like what its sources are. And then on the other hand, there are these moral and religious interpretations we impose upon the natural phenomena which Miss describe it.

John Perry
So we’re getting some really interesting phone calls here, our number is 415-841-4134. Brian, I want to just go back to the to the theme of the Gurkhas and the Supermen and so forth. Now, you’re in a philosophy department. It’s no doubt a bunch of really nice men and women that never have a harsh word for each other. But many of us in philosophy occasionally meet. Maybe I should say, the humanities, maybe I should say in academia, occasionally. Yeah, well, maybe not, but occasionally meet self satisfied, self important, pompous twits, who kind of think that they should be treated. As as Nietzschean Supermen somebody else should clean up after them, someone else should do their xeroxing, and so forth and so on. Now, how does one of us who feels like that? What test can we have to know whether we really are a Gurkha? That oughta break the rules are just another slob that ought to pay attention to him.

Brian Leiter
This is really a question for Applied Nietzsche his moral, which is an undeveloped discipline. We’re developing right here, Nietzsche, Nietzsche has an answer. Right? Nietzsche? His answer is, can you will the eternal return? Right? This is one of nature’s again, very famous doctrines, it’s actually one that was important to him. Right? Nietzsche says, Can you live in such a way that you would be willing to have your life repeated over and over again, exactly in every detail. And if you’re living in such a way that you’d be willing, that you could tolerate the thought of having the whole thing occur again, and again and again, then you are living the life of Nietzsche’s higher human.

Ken Taylor
But that’s not a very good test. Because if I’m a schmuck to put it in crude terms, I could. And I, and I, and I, you know, I loaded over everybody, and they all resent me and hate me. And I’m but I think, well, this is pretty cool. Then I could will it over and over again, but nobody else would will do it over and over again. I mean, what’s that the test of that’s just a test of my self-satisfaction.

John Perry
It’s whether you’re shmuck or shlemazel, as it was explained to me, but I probably got the pronunciation wrong.

Ken Taylor
I don’t quite see what that would be a test.

Brian Leiter
Well, I think I think you’re right. I think you’re right that it couldn’t be the sole criterion. Though. Nietzsche often talks as though it’s the most distinctive one. I suppose we’d have to question whether whether our self satisfied schlemiel is, as you put it, really could be so self satisfied that they could bear the thought of the eternal return. I think the reality of course, is that self satisfied show meals are often self satisfied on the surface, and deeply worried underneath the surface. Yeah. But that’s a quest. This is armchair psychology, and I probably can’t do much better than okay.

Ken Taylor
Rigoletto in San Francisco’s on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk Rigoletto.

Rigoletto
Hi, good afternoon, I’ve had an observation to make concerning your earlier remarks about suffering. Pardon me, I got a call.

Ken Taylor
Are you on a cell phone? Connection is a little bad.

John Perry
But you are suffering with a cold. So it’s very, very appropriate question.

Rigoletto
I had thought I read him many years ago. But I thought that he meant by suffering that being in the company of people who suffered whether from illness or for other reasons, could corrupt an aristocratic personality. But I have another question as well, if you want to respond to that’s fine. But my other question was kind of in two parts. Is it true that one or more of his texts, as published were possibly corrupted or altered by his sister? And secondly, what? What translation is considered the better one in English? I’ll pick an answer.

Ken Taylor
You’ve asked three questions here. Brian, you want to respond quickly to those?

Brian Leiter
Sure. On the first point, it’s certainly true that Nietzsche thinks that pity for the suffering can be damaging why he thinks that is a complex psychological story we probably shouldn’t go into. But he also thinks that suffering itself is a good thing. If you read his autobiography. He has nothing but gratitude for how much he himself suffered. He had terrible physical health problems throughout his life and he thought it was an enormous stimulus to his own creativity. On the question of niches tax, there’s a well known book called The will to power which was compiled after his mental breakdown by his sister and and a friend. It is a non book as people often say that it is it isn’t a book he intended to write. He didn’t intend to write a book called The will to power. It simply collects material that was in his notebooks.

Ken Taylor
And I understand that’s where the charge of anti semitism and all that stuff gets going right from the Nazi reading of that text or something. Am I right about that?

Brian Leiter
It’s not that text certainly played a role. There’s a more complex story, his sister took control of his estate. His sister was a proto, Nazi and anti Semite. She issued very selective editions of all his works to emphasize themes sympathetic to German nationalism. She had the purge, for example, all the stuff where Nietzsche disparages Germans, because the one the one group of people that Nietzsche really hated were German that had to get cut out of the corpus.

Ken Taylor
We have right now we have, we have callers calling in from all over the country. And I want to give them a chance to get in here we have Aaron from Chapel Hill, North Carolina on the line. Aaron, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Aaron
Hello, thank you for Philosophy Talk.

Ken Taylor
Thank you.

Aaron
I have a question like Nietzsche describes it in, I believe it’s in the Gianni Genealogy of Morals, about the revolt of slave morality, as describing the rise of the Judeo Christian ethic. I’m wondering what was there not? Or perhaps it was was very subtle. Was there a slave morality in the the American history of slavery? And when they were emancipated? Did it come to the surface and becomes sort of a master morality as a result?

Ken Taylor
Thanks, Aaron. I’m not sure about him. But I think it’s slave morality. And Anita is the morality of sort of democratic egalitarianism. Am I not right about that?

Brian Leiter
Well, I think he thinks the morality of democratic egalitarianism arises out of a morality that in the first instance, was genuinely a morality of slaves. And he’s referring to a simple historical fact, namely, that Christianity first took hold in the oppressed classes of the Roman Empire. But I also think it’s very important for Nietzsche to then see that that morality severs its tie with a particular social class, so that one slave morality triumphs, we find lots of middle and upper middle class folks like you and me, subscribing to slave morality is as well.

John Perry
Anyway, we should say historically, that Christianity played a very complicated role in American slavery. On the one hand, it probably did have the function to a certain extent of making people accommodate with suffering and protest. But on the other hand, there was a definitely a cohesive foundations of protest movement that’s owed to the church. Brian, I wanted to just briefly get back to the good question about what people should read what editions now I was brought up on Walter Kaufman’s translations in the modern library. Selection, is that still a good place to start?

Brian Leiter
Kaufman’s translations are certainly a very good place to start. Kaufman. Kaufman is gifted at capturing the flavor of Nietzsche’s German in English. Scholars will sometimes complain that he takes liberties with some of the German but I think for the general reader Kaufman’s translations are the best place to start. More recently, Cambridge University Press has been publishing new translations which are pretty uniformly of high quality.

Ken Taylor
Oh, coming up soon, we’ll talk about some of Nietzsche’s inspirations and particularly Arthur Schopenhauer who, I guess John and he—Nietzsche—share a love both as teenagers you both loved Schopenhauer.

John Perry
Yes, I gather that he loved Schopenhauer as a teenager because his his early writings say nice things about Schopenhauer. I like Schopenhauer because he’s such a grouchy hated women. He hated men. He hated students. He hated professors. He was just grouchy about everything and for some reason when I was a teenager that really fit my mood now of course I’m just kind of a happy go lucky he loves everybody kind of guy. Yeah, right but we’re gonna hear something about Schopenhauer, aren’t we Ken?

Ken Taylor
Yeah from Ian Shoales our Sixty-Second Philosopher. We’ll be right back.

Jerry Butler
You gotta be a man, you gotta stake a stand.

John Perry
Soul sensation Jerry Butler and only the strong survive. My partner Ken Taylor is kind of a soul sensation of soul phenomenon in his own right.

Ken Taylor
You got that, John.

John Perry
I’m John Perry. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. So I’m getting quite an earful here about Nietzsche, morality, Superman and the like. Let’s dig a little bit deeper. Let’s look at the background a little bit.

John Perry
Today Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second philosopher tells us about Schopenhauer, who was a big influence on Nietzsche.

Ken Taylor
Prepare yourself. Ready? Go.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… Immanuel Kant posited and unknowable reality behind our observed reality. Arthur Schopenhauer, or in 1788 died. 1860 claimed to know that unknowable reality it is the will, the human will rules the intellect tormenting us with our own desires. We do not live life for the pleasure of it but because the will to live is irresistible, instinctive and irrational. This philosophy appealed greatly to two of his later fans, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ricard Wagner Schopenhauer as a young man was apprenticed to German merchants expected to take over his father’s business. Then his father died, apparently a suicide in 1807. And the inheritance made it possible for Schopenhauer to pursue the life of the mind. He was the first western philosopher to incorporate Eastern thought. His themes involved real life, not abstract philosophical puzzles, and unlike previous philosophies, Schopenhauer has revealed a deep pessimism in Schopenhauer was time unfortunately for him, readers preferred Hegel his colleague at Heidelberg University Schopenhauer hated Hegel for their for his philosophy or his popularity is not clear he did write whoever quote if I were to say that the so called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a pseudo philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all your thinking, and by the most outrageous misuse of language putting in its place the Holocaust most senseless, thoughtless, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right, unquote. Unlike many philosophers, Schopenhauer wrote in a direct manner, and was often quite funny, especially when he was being nasty and he wasn’t nasty man being antisocial, curmudgeonly and misogynist read his essay on women if you dare. He considered five six of all humanity worth only contempt. The story goes that he pushed an old woman down a flight of stairs because they’re chatting with a friend irritated him. She broke her leg and he was forced to provide her pension for the remainder of her life. When she died. The story continues, he replied to the letter giving him the news, obit onus Abbott’s she dies the burden departs. In later life, he found fame, but it did not dent his bitter self regard. After a heart attack he told a friend quote, if at times I find myself unfortunate it is because of a confusion and error I have mistaken myself for someone else. Who am I really I am the author of the world as will and representation I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of being the occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am and who can dispute it and the years of life that still remain for me on quote. He died soon after. Schopenhauer had a major influence not only on Nietzsche, but Vidkun, Stein, Jung, Freud, Einstein, Thomas mind, and he don’t have her. I gotta go.

John Perry
Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second philosopher describing the life of Arthur Schopenhauer, a major influence on the man of the hour here on Philosophy Talk, Frederick Nietzsche. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Our guest is Brian Leiter from the University of Texas at Austin. And I gotta tell you, one of my favorite lines from TJ is his reputation. In the end, you know, he rejected Schopenhauer is pessimism. And his he said he does it. I love I love this. He says Schopenhauer was such a pessimist, but he played the flute every day after dinner. He stopped me for morality or something like that. But he played the flute. And how’s that for a better reputation?

John Perry
I think it’s just a wonderful reputation. You know, it’s probably one of the most valid arguments Nietzsche ever came up with. Oops, I better be careful, we’ve got Brian Leiter on the line.

Ken Taylor
So Brian, I had a thought about this heard morality thing. You know, Nietzsche criticizes it. But it seems to me, you got these artiste around of themselves, these these superior noble people. If I if I’m one of the herd, I think herd morality is a darn good thing. How else am I to keep these folks in check? So I mean, it’s not. I mean, he just seems to me, he’s just pointing out a fact. And from the herds perspective, a darn good fact about their morality?

Brian Leiter
Well, my response is, in fact, I think that’s exactly how Nietzsche looks at it, which is one of the reasons I said before, I don’t think he anticipates a general moral revolution in society. One of his one of the lines he uses he says, herd morality for the herd, but let it not reach out beyond. And if that, in fact, this is his attitude, the explanation might be exactly the one you gave.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, so maybe the picture we get, tell me if I’m reading this, right, maybe the picture we get is a I mean, human life is going to be constant struggle. There’ll be the herd, there’ll be the nope, the nobles, as it were, and there’s never going to be a kind of modus vivendi kind of shared life among them. But there’s always this tension. And that’s life. That’s that’s the way it is.

Brian Leiter
I think, I mean, I think to some extent, that is, is what niches niches picture. Picture is, what he’s really concerned about is he thinks that in a culture that took morality very seriously, we wouldn’t have any of these sort of higher individuals, right? If we wouldn’t have any of these garages, or these niches or these or these Beethoven’s or pick your favorite example. Everybody would be in the grips of the utilitarian, altruistic, selfless mindset. And there would be enormous cultural costs. And at the end of the day, Nietzsche likes high culture.

John Perry
Yeah, that that seems to be the case now, not just hearing about Schopenhauer and being reminded of his anti women views. How did Nietzsche stack up on that? I don’t remember him discussing to many women in his books did he have a anti woman bias like Schopenhauer.

Brian Leiter
It is often said and famous passages can be reduced here and there that that Nietzsche is a misogynist. It seems to me the reality of it is a bit more complex. Because it turns out that a great deal of what Nietzsche says about women involves exploiting certain 19th century stereotypes about women, for example, that they are instinctual rather than rational. But then if you think about Nietzsche, you realize that, in fact, he thinks that’s the right valuation, that it’s much better, to be instinctual and to be essentially, excessively prone to Ratiocination about everything. So he exploited the stereotypes, it sounds like he’s being derogatory, but it clearly in many contexts, I don’t want to say all in many contexts, it’s it’s part of a subversive project. And in a way he thinks the women have exactly the stereotypical traits of the women as 19th century Europeans would have thought about it are exactly the traits with the higher value.

Ken Taylor
So we’re getting near the bottom of the show. I’m gonna take one more caller here. Anna in San Francisco is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Anna
Hi, John Ken, Brian, thanks for taking my call. I’m recommending a book called Thou Shalt Not Be aware by a psycho analyst or former psychoanalyst named Alice Miller, a German writer who looked into the life of Nietzsche. And I know you’re going to accuse me of the genetic fallacy, but I do think that a life can illuminate the philosophy that comes out of it. And Nietzsche was, in fact, throughout his life, pretty much under the control of his mother and his sister. To the extent that, as we know, the wield power, and his sister’s pushing his thought into the Nazi mold, he was did say some extraordinarily misogynistic things, including, you know, are you going to the women, don’t forget the whip.

John Perry
So you think he may have had—

Brian Leiter
Context does count.

Anna
He himself had no free will in freeing himself from the women in his life.

John Perry
Yeah, thanks. Very interesting, very interesting recommendation there.

Brian Leiter
Nietzsche is certainly a ripe topic for psychoanalysis. He, of course, had an enormous impact upon how Freud thought about, about these kinds of questions. The one factual point I would like to correct it’s certainly true that after his mental collapse, he was literally under the control of his sister and his mother. But for most of his adult life, he essentially lived on his own, traveling between different ends in northern Italy, in southern France, and Switzerland.

John Perry
So there’s one center on biography a little bit there’s one thing that always intrigued me about Nietzsche, as I understand it, he volunteered to fight with the Prussians in the Franco Prussian war when he had a good job in Switzerland. Why why did he do that?

Brian Leiter
I don’t have a good answer to that question. I’m sure it must have had something to do with the the cultural ethos of the time and a feeling of you know, Prussian pride.

John Perry
I guess he didn’t really fight, I misspoke. He was an ambulance driver or something.

Brian Leiter
He was an ambulance orderly he was, in fact, injured relatively quickly, since he was never blessed with good health that the minor injury quickly knocked him out. So I think his entire military service lasted less than about two months, and perhaps, put a damper on his enthusiasm for military conflict.

Ken Taylor
Oh, Brian, I’m gonna ask you one last philosophical point. How to whom? Is this higher morality accessible? How do I know? I mean, this goes back to something John said earlier is are people just destined to be, you know, one of the herd? Or is every human born with the potential to reach something higher so that if every human were born with the potential then Nietzsche would be recommending to all human beings, you know, live in this noble way? I mean, what, what what’s—

Brian Leiter
Well, I think Nietzsche is often read, especially when he’s read as a precursor of the existentialists as somebody who thinks that everybody does have this capacity to sort of transform themselves X ne Hillel out of nothing into into something new. In many ways, I’m skeptical that that’s actually his view. And this partly has to do with the influence of other views in the sciences at the time, which I think led Nietzsche to think that a lot more of this was predetermined from the outset. He’s what we’d call today sort of a genetic determinist. Yeah, but of course, that wasn’t his way of conceptualizing the point. And so in that sense the the options we have to create ourselves may be much more limited than we’d ordinarily like to thank

John Perry
Brian, it’s been great talking to you before Ken gives you the official goodbye. I just want to say that your your website, The Philosophical Gourmet, offers just a lot of information and some thoughtful opinion. And I personally want to thank you for it. And all it does to help encourage people to study philosophy and gives them some guidelines about where and how they can do it.

Brian Leiter
Thank you, I appreciate that.

Ken Taylor
We’ve been talking with Brian Leiter, the University of Texas at Austin, author of “Nietzsche and Morality.” Brian, thanks so much for joining us. It’s been a pleasure having you.

Brian Leiter
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

John Perry
So long, Ryan.

Ken Taylor
So John, how you how you wisely and you learn something new about morality?

John Perry
Well, I learned a lot new about Nietzsche, you know, Nietzsche, I really liked as an undergraduate and then is became a kind of a professional philosopher in graduate school and earning tenure and writing. You know, analytical philosophy. I got sick of him but now I’m sort of a fan again.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, we got a lot of Nietzsche scholars in our department so yeah, we hear about this stuff a lot. This has been fun though.

John—I hear drumming!

John Perry
That’s not drumming Ken—that’s conun-drumming! The conundrum announces our conundrums which we have each week at this time. Conundrums are puzzles, maybe just an intellectual puzzle, or maybe something about your daily life. Ken and I will give you some philosophical advice. It probably won’t help. But it may be amusing.

Ken Taylor
We have a caller on the line now. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Andrea.

Andrea
Hello.

Ken Taylor
Where are you calling from, Andrea?

Andrea
San Francisco.

Ken Taylor
What do you do in that lovely city?

Andrea
I’m a biologist, actually.

John Perry
Oh, well, you’re going to ask some kind of question about DNA or something?

Andrea
Well, it is biology related.

Ken Taylor
Let’s hear it. What’s What’s your conundrum?

Andrea
Well, I live here in San Francisco, and it’s sort of a gay Mecca. A little bit? Yeah. I’ve known quite a few gay people. And the question comes up, why are people gay? How does that come about? And I’ve tried to argue that could be a choice. But gay people seem to say no, well, it’s not a choice, because I wouldn’t choose it. Because, you know, society’s hard on gay people. That whether there’s a genetic component or not, choice should sort of supersede biology. I just wonder if I should just shut up about the whole argument.

Ken Taylor
Let me ask you a question. Do you choose to be heterosexual?

Andrea
Well, that’s what I’m, I’m wondering, like, if I woke up one morning, and I just had this urge to be with a woman, I feel like part of me would just like fight it, I would be like, No, I have this other lifestyle I’m living and you know, it’s been good to me so far. Why? Why go there.

Ken Taylor
That’s true. You can often override your urges, you can often war against your urges or your desires or something like that. But I think many times gay people find themselves doing just that for a long time, and then finally giving up that fight, because they recognize there’s something authentic and real and deep above their gayness. So that doesn’t mean that you can fight against it. It doesn’t make it a choice.

John Perry
Looks to me pretty genetic. Because some of these people have no, they don’t want to be gay. They’re embarrassed by it. They don’t want to talk to their parents about it. It’s hard to imagine what it would be except just innate preference.

Ken Taylor
So my philosophical advice to you. I don’t know if John would agree is that you wondered if you should shut up about this. I don’t think you should shut up about anything, but I do. I don’t think you should be so confident that you know, what’s going on? I think it’s a deep puzzle. deep question.

John Perry
How do you feel about tomatoes, Andreea?

Andrea
Well, I remember my parents telling me that you’ve stuff I didn’t like and I just would say you can’t make me.

John Perry
Right, well, so even then you didn’t take the cop out. I didn’t say that. I’ve got this terrible allergy tomatoes. You just said it’s my choice back off. Yeah, that’s true. But not everybody’s like that. So you got to appreciate that about people.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for joining us.

Andrea
Thank you, bye bye.

Ken Taylor
Surely there would be some perplexing issue in your life that a little philosophical examination might help. If you have a challenging Conundrum, it’s easy to reach us.

John Perry
Just head over to our website, philosophytalk.org and click on the button at the top right called Conundrums. Once again, that’s www.philosophy talk.org. We’d love to hear from you, especially with a conundrum. Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Mani.la productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University copyright 2004.

Ken Taylor
Executive producer Gordon Earle

John Perry
Special Thanks Nicole Sawaya, Roman Mars, and Alan Farley.

Ken Taylor
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from the Hoover Institution, the Greenwall Foundation and the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association.

John Perry
And various groups at Stanford, the friends of Philosophy Talk, the members of KALW information radio San Francisco, where our program originates.

Ken Taylor
The views expressed on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our funders or of anybody else for that matter.

John Perry
The conversation can continue on our website, www.philosophytalk.org. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Just go there and click on the forums button. Next week we’ll ask the question has science replaced religion? Thank you for listening

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.