IEP 508: Nature in Romantic and European Thought

AWAYMAVE - The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Week 8. Nietzsche (continued)

I. Humanity, nature and the Ubermensch

Apart from Nietzsche's own conception of nature in The Will to Power, he has much to say - obliquely - about nature in relation to human beings. This comes up, firstly, with respect to his account of the Ubermensch. So let's now go into this in a bit more depth.

As we saw above, Nietzsche believes that the overhuman would be someone who has gone beyond the human - someone who has overcome their own humanity. [cf. Uber-mensch means over-human from the German words uber and Mensch]. This idea of the overhuman is introduced in the Prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is the first of your readings for this (second) part of the Nietzsche block.

NB. Nietzsche's high estimation of this book: “Within my writings, my Zarathustra stands by itself. I have with this book given mankind the greatest gift that has ever been given it. With a voice that speaks across millennia, it is not only the most exalted book that exists, the actual book of the air of the heights.…it is also the profoundest, born out of the innermost abundance of truth, an inexhaustible well” (Ecce Homo 5).

Please now read the Prologue - as you do so, try to bear in mind the questions you think this idea of the Ubermensch raises for the relationship between humanity, animal, and beyond-the-human.

The narrative - a resume.

After going down from the mountain to be again among humans, Zarathustra first encounters an old man then arrives in a town where he preaches his doctrine of the Ubermensch, taking advantage of a crowd having gathered to watch someone walk a tightrope. He sees the human as in the position of the rope over which the tight-rope walker has to go (to become the Ubermensch) [which raises a bit of a puzzle about what the philosophical status of the tight-rope walker himself is]. Finding his prophesies falling on deaf ears, he criticises the people for being 'ultimate men' - their only desire is for their own comfort and, they are incapable of creating anything beyond themselves. This too falls on deaf ears. Now, however, the tight-rope walker begins, but halfway across a 'buffoon' appears, gets onto the rope, leaps over him and causes him to fall. The man dies, and Zarathustra buries him. He retreats into the forest, buries the dead man, and realises that he needs not to preach to a general crowd but to attract a definite band of companions.

Some questions about the text.

(1) When in section 3 Nietzsche/Zarathustra says that ‘man is something that should be overcome’, what do you think (from reading the whole prologue) that it is about ‘man’ (or humanity) that he wishes to overcome?

(2) In section 4 Zarathustra says: ‘Man is a rope, fastened between animal and superman – a rope over an abyss’. What does he mean? Why do you think he calls man the rope rather than the tight-rope walker?

(3) Who are the ‘ultimate men’ – who do you think Nietzsche is criticising here? (section 5)

(4) What do you think is the philosophical significance of the episode in which the buffoon jumps over the tightrope-walker? (section 6) [i.e., if this passage is to be read as an allegory for some philosophical point, then what if anything do you think that philosophical point might be?]

Some general questions.

As an overcoming of humanity, the Ubermensch stands to humanity as does humanity to animal [cf. Nietzsche's comments in the third section about the relation between humans and apes]. Does Nietzsche have in mind some sort of Darwinian evolution? His critical remarks about Darwin (some of which occur in the reading you had from the Will to Power for the block) suggest not. Still, others have thought that perhaps current technological developments could facilitate the transformation of human into over-human. It's not clear whether Nietzsche had anything like this in mind, though. He seems to think of the transition more in terms of a cultural and psychological process of overcoming those features in ourselves which render us human.

[There are some interesting discussions of these issues about contemporary technology and Nietzsche in Keith Ansell-Pearson's Viroid Life].

So then the question is, what is a human? Fundamentally, Nietzsche does not seem to see the answer as lying in biology. From a biological point of view, the human is after all an animal. What makes us human is what distinguishes us from animals - and this, for Nietzsche, is the cultural evolution we have gone through and in particular the cultural processes which have made us moral beings. Our morality goes together with our religious belief, moreover, and so we are partly human in virtue of faith in various religions (and of course for many of us in the west, Christianity). The transition to the Ubermensch is some kind of transcending of this cultural heritage - not, however, to return to the animal.

Having said that, Nietzsche does seem to see the Ubermensch as closer to animals in certain respects. Hence he stresses that the Ubermensch would 'stay true to the earth' and would not despise their body. Rather than a return to an animal state, though, Nietzsche sees this as some kind of new corporeality which would arise out of the rejection and overcoming of the hatred of the body instilled by centuries of morality and Christian religion.

This raises a number of questions which are best thought about in conjunction with Nietzsche's other ideas that concern nature. For instance, in what sense are and are not humans animals? Is 'fidelity to the earth' a new ethics, and if so what kind of ethics if it is no longer premised on the separation from the body which for Nietzsche all previous moralities have been? Would the Ubermensch be closer to nature and the animal, or further away from them even than the human? Or, to put all this together - would the Ubermensch be someone who practises a kind of environmental ethic, or would they be even further away from nature than we are now?

Based on your reading of this section of Zarathustra, what sense do you have of where Nietzsche stands on these issues? If you have formed any definite impression from the text, then please post your thoughts to the discussion site.

II. Nature and ethics

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil includes some interesting considerations of ethics in relation to nature.

Section 9. Nietzsche considers the idea that one ought to live 'according to nature'. To this, he seems to be making two objections: (i) nature is morally indifferent - it doesn't provide any rules for conduct but is 'indifferent'; (ii) the Stoics (or others who believe in living according to nature) are simply projecting onto nature the moral values to which they antecedently subscribe. This, far from following nature, is a piece of tyranny over nature.

But note that Nietzsche seems to think that tyrannising over nature is wrong. Or does he? He also suggests that we all cannot help but attempt to tyrannise - indeed, that the urge to do so stems from the will to power itself. So we naturally give a moral interpretation of nature - yet such interpretations are never grounded in nature itself.

Given what Nietzsche says in this passage, and what he said above about the will to power, what do you think he means by saying that the will to power in humans must manifest itself as a will to impose interpretations on nature tyrannically? That is, how would you analyse out what he is saying with such a claim?

Section 22. Nietzsche pursues some of the paradoxes of the section we've just looked at. He notes that he himself, in describing humans as composed of will to power, is offering yet another moral interpretation of the world. But he thinks there is nothing wrong with that - it's inevitable after all that he should do so, according to his own metaphysics. There's a curious circle here somewhere, isn't there?

Where if anywhere do you think the circle lies? Is it a problem?

Section 36. Nietzsche provides one of the classic statements of his theory of will to power. Yet here he seems to speak as if he did believe in 'wills' throughout nature similar to the sort of 'free will' we ordinarily hypothesise to exist in human agents. However, this is the interpretation of will to power that he moved beyond in The Will to Power. One interesting question is whether there is a way of reading this paragraph so that it becomes compatible with what Nietzsche said there.

Section 37. How does this relate to section 36? Evidently part of its purpose is to undermine the apparent seriousness with which Nietzsche advanced his metaphysical claims about the world in 36. But in exactly what way? Moreover, perhaps Nietzsche is saying that people might object to his metaphysics that it denies God and so puts us in a nihilistic situation where everything is fundamentally meaningless. He seems to wish to deny this - perhaps because the denial of God can open up a view of nature as creative and dynamic which is itself positive in some way, worthy of being affirmed.

Section 188. Again, the theme of moral interpretations as a tyrannising over nature. Here, though, Nietzsche is more focused on the way they tyrannise over human nature. Instincts have to be suppressed through moral codes, as part of the evolution of humanity itself. [Note how this ties in to Nietzsche's not operating with a biological definition of humanity.] Yet this suppression still itself arises out of nature, what Nietzsche continues to call the 'indifference' of nature - its cruelty. Morality, then, is anti-natural and yet also natural.

How do you think Nietzsche can make both claims? is he using the concept of nature in two different senses?

Section 230. Nietzsche expresses the desire to treat humanity again as part of nature - avoiding the 'metaphysical bird-song' which portrays humanity as something more than nature, higher and superior. Man is to be translated back into nature, he says. But how does this fit with the idea that through the imposition of moral codes and interpretations humanity has really made itself different from nature, transformed itself out of its original animal mode of being?

One question that arises from all this is to what extent Nietzsche can be said to have consistent views at all. Some interpreters have concluded that he simply isn't worried about consistency, and that it would be a falsification of his thought to attempt to construct any consistency from it. But perhaps we can't dispense with the need for consistent thought that easily! - In reading Nietzsche, you could try to put his thoughts together in the way that seems best to you - to produce a position that you find desirable on philosophical grounds. Some bits of his thought might need to be dropped, but if this produces an overall picture that is desirable, then maybe that is no real loss.

III. Nietzsche and environmental philosophy

There has been quite a bit of discussion about how Nietzsche's ideas bear on environmental ethics. Some of the contributions to these debates are these:

Graham Parkes, 'Staying Loyal to the Earth: Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker', in Nietzsche's Futures, ed. John Lippitt (MacMillan, 1998)

'Human/Nature in Nietzsche and Taoism', in Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, ed. Callicott and Ames (SUNY Press, 1989).

Max Hallman, 'Nietzsche's Environmental Ethics', in Environmental Ethics 13 (1991), pp. 99-125

Ralph Acampora, 'Using and Abusing Nietzsche for Environmental Ethics', Environmental Ethics 16 (1994), pp. 187-194.

Martin Drenthen, 'The Paradox of Environmental Ethics: Nietzsche's View of Nature and the Wild', in Environmental Ethics 21 (1999), pp. 163-175

Various contributions to Nietzsche's Ecology, special section of New Nietzsche Studies 5: 1 (2002).

Any of you who are thinking of writing an essay on Nietzsche might well like to follow some of this literature up. To help, I want to indicate here what some of the themes/concerns are that have arisen out of these debates. It should by now be quite apparent how they emerge out of tensions and questions in Nietzsche's own writing/thinking.

Nietzsche is perhaps allied to environmental thinking in virtue of:

(i) his rejection of Christianity and of belief in a 'true world' beyond this one

(ii) his re-situating of humanity within nature

(iii) his concept of will to power can be seen as positing an interrelatedness within all nature similar to ecosystems thinking. (This point is made by Max Hallman)

But Nietzsche is perhaps opposed to environmental thinking in virtue of:

(i) his claim that all of nature consists in dominating (and that humans also can't help participate in this and in engaging in activities of 'tyrannising')

(ii) he denies that nature has any normative significance (i.e., he describes it as indifferent - it imposes no moral claims on us and hence presumably no claims on us such that we have to show respect to natural things or attempt to preserve or care for them)

(iii) he values the fact that some humans can transcend their nature, have a creative ability to go beyond themselves (towards becoming Ubermenschen). Thus although he relocates humanity as natural, he still looks forward to some sort of overcoming of nature.

One possible response to these dilemmas (proposed by Martin Drenthen) is that in affirming the violence of all interpretations of nature, Nietzsche exposes that they are always inadequate to the full reality of nature itself (which he captures by referring to its indifference; beyond our projections, as Graham Parkes also suggest, we are left with nature as 'chaos'). Thus he suggests that nature is always beyond our grasp, is in some way fully other to us. Yet this opens up the prospect of trying to produce better interpretations of it - even though they can only ever be interpretations for us. [Perhaps the remaining question, then, is in what sense some such interpretations can ever be better than others?]

Basing yourself on some currents in environmental ethical thought with which you are already familiar, what similarities and contrasts can you find between Nietzsche's thought about nature and the way in which nature is conceived within environmental ethics?

You might also like to reflect on what these similarities and contrasts suggest about the ways in which continental philosophy of nature both converges and diverges with environmental ethics as it has been predominantly carried out from within the analytic philosophical tradition. By now you should be in a better position to reflect on this issue!

Web notes by Alison Stone Updated March 2005