WEBVTT NOTE A Nietzschean Critique of the State 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:21.000 Nietzsche and critique of the state? It's hopeless. Thank you very much. So it's pretty clear that Nietzsche did not have a real systematic political philosophy, but he did have quite a few things to say about the state, much of it highly critical. 2 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.280 So, this paper is me trying to make a little more sense of some of the scattered remarks 3 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:29.560 that I found about the state. 4 00:00:29.560 --> 00:00:36.440 Particularly, I was inspired by one section from thus spoke Zarathustra, the section called 5 00:00:36.440 --> 00:00:44.040 On the New Idol, The New Idol is the State, and it reminded me of something that Murray 6 00:00:44.040 --> 00:00:47.980 Rothbard wrote in For a New Liberty. 7 00:00:47.980 --> 00:00:54.240 He says, the libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to 8 00:00:54.240 --> 00:01:00.900 spread the demystification and desanctification of the state among its hapless subjects. His 9 00:01:00.900 --> 00:01:06.320 task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in-depth that not only the emperor but even the democratic 10 00:01:06.320 --> 00:01:11.540 state has no clothes. 11 00:01:11.540 --> 00:01:15.860 Okay so now that I've made the connection to Murray Rothbard and got your attention, 12 00:01:15.860 --> 00:01:25.540 I can move on with my findings. What I found was that it seems that Nietzsche's critique 13 00:01:25.540 --> 00:01:32.140 of the state parallels his critique of morality and I found two components to each. The first 14 00:01:32.140 --> 00:01:39.740 one I call demystification. The second one I will call the Nietzschean evaluation. I'm 15 00:01:39.740 --> 00:01:45.060 going to discuss these and I hope I have time to make some comments about the relationship 16 00:01:45.060 --> 00:01:52.220 between Nietzsche's critique and classical liberal thought in the end. 17 00:01:52.220 --> 00:01:54.320 So what do I mean by demystification? 18 00:01:54.320 --> 00:02:02.120 So X is demystified when, first of all, X is an entity that has a mystique, which means 19 00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:06.660 that it tends to have a special kind of status in the minds of many, and that it is believed 20 00:02:06.660 --> 00:02:13.100 to have a mysterious, supernatural, extra-pure or otherwise higher nature, or to have properties 21 00:02:13.100 --> 00:02:32.460 So, Nietzsche's demystification of morality, what his aim is to reveal the harsh, ugly, 22 00:02:32.460 --> 00:02:38.440 unpleasant, unchristian immoral truth about modern moral values. 23 00:02:38.440 --> 00:02:45.240 By modern moral values, we mean the values such as altruism, humility, pacifism, and 24 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:53.760 so forth. That's the target of his attack, roughly. And there's two aspects of it. One 25 00:02:53.760 --> 00:03:05.840 I call his naturalism, where he tries to show that on the micro level, the adoption and 26 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:14.160 The promotion of these moral values is a result of, he sees a weaker type of human being, 27 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:20.160 and it is a result of their psychological resentment against the higher classes. It's 28 00:03:20.160 --> 00:03:25.880 their way of calling them evil because they're the opposite of these modern moral values. 29 00:03:25.880 --> 00:03:31.120 It's also prudent for them to promote these values because it's in their best interest 30 00:03:31.120 --> 00:03:35.000 to live in a society in which these values are promoted. 31 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:43.440 Okay, so the second aspect is in the first essay of his Genealogy of Morality, he kind 32 00:03:43.440 --> 00:03:48.920 of shows how throughout history these values have become prominent as a result of a kind 33 00:03:48.920 --> 00:03:51.680 of class warfare. 34 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:56.640 So basically, I'm not going to get into it, but he shows by showing that these moral values 35 00:03:56.640 --> 00:04:14.640 Morality isn't really what we thought it was. It wasn't handed down from on high. So in doing so, he demystifies it. 36 00:04:14.640 --> 00:04:21.640 So is demystification of the state? So I argue that Nietzsche demystifies the state in a similar fashion as he does with morality. 37 00:04:21.640 --> 00:04:26.040 While the state perhaps does not have the same sort of mystique as morality, is nonetheless 38 00:04:26.040 --> 00:04:30.720 an entity that has a very special status in the minds of many. This is evident in the 39 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:35.920 fact that states, or those acting in its name, often perform with impunity many actions that 40 00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:41.280 would hardly be considered justified if performed by a private individual. Yet very few of us 41 00:04:41.280 --> 00:04:48.280 question this asymmetry in moral standards. Not us, but everyone else. Further evidence 42 00:04:48.280 --> 00:04:51.960 Further evidence of the state's mystique is that it is often believed to be the special 43 00:04:51.960 --> 00:04:57.000 product of a voluntary agreement reached by the people in order to carry out their collective 44 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:02.120 will, and thus those constituting the state are said to have a special mandate. 45 00:05:02.120 --> 00:05:08.080 So Nietzsche saw that the state had this mystique. We can see it in the skating treatment of 46 00:05:08.080 --> 00:05:12.840 the state found in the section I just talked about, and thus spoke Zarathustra called On 47 00:05:12.840 --> 00:05:14.480 on the New Idol. 48 00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:20.120 As the section title suggests, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, Zarathustra is a character in 49 00:05:20.120 --> 00:05:25.000 the book, sort of a mouthpiece for him, I'm not going to get into that, but I'll either 50 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:29.920 say Nietzsche says or his Zarathustra the character. 51 00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:34.880 So Nietzsche's Zarathustra observes that the state has assumed a god-like status and seems 52 00:05:34.880 --> 00:05:40.040 to have replaced the Judeo-Christian god in whom Europeans were banning belief at the 53 00:05:40.040 --> 00:05:41.040 time. 54 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:47.040 Beniche is aware that the state's divine status, its mystique, is based on deception. 55 00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:49.980 He says, whatever it tells you, it lies. 56 00:05:49.980 --> 00:05:51.680 This lie crawls out of its mouth. 57 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:54.000 I, the state, am the people. 58 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:57.560 I think Obama said something like that recently. 59 00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:02.720 It also declares, on earth, there is nothing greater than I, the ordaining finger of God 60 00:06:02.720 --> 00:06:03.720 am I. 61 00:06:03.720 --> 00:06:10.240 And it legitimizes these claims by surrounding itself with a facade of heroes and honorable 62 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:19.640 In the second treatise of Nietzsche's genealogy, he articulates a very important truth about 63 00:06:19.640 --> 00:06:26.160 the state and describing its origin. He says, The oldest state, accordingly made its appearance 64 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:32.000 as a terrible tyranny, as a crushing and ruthless machinery. I use the word state. It goes without 65 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:38.380 saying who was meant by this, a race of conquerors and lords, which, organized in a warlike manner 66 00:06:38.380 --> 00:06:43.920 and with the power to organize, unhesitatingly lays its terrible paws on a population. It 67 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:50.920 is in this manner then that the state begins on earth. So the state thus understood is 68 00:06:50.920 --> 00:06:56.240 no creation of the people and as he also says further, it is not the product of any sort 69 00:06:56.240 --> 00:07:03.240 of contract either. So just as he does with morality, Nietzsche is demystifying the state 70 00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:22.800 What is the role and significance of Nietzsche's demystification? 71 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:28.140 Some might think that he's committing the genetic fallacy or arguing ad hominem. 72 00:07:28.140 --> 00:07:33.500 You might think, oh, even if modern moral values, they are the product of these terrible 73 00:07:33.500 --> 00:07:37.780 historical processes and these resentments and hatreds, that doesn't necessarily mean 74 00:07:37.780 --> 00:07:39.540 that the values themselves are bad. 75 00:07:39.540 --> 00:07:45.420 They might actually be the correct or right or good moral values nonetheless. 76 00:07:45.420 --> 00:07:50.860 The same thing one might say about the state, yeah, it has terrible origins. 77 00:07:50.860 --> 00:07:55.860 There's a lot of creepy people that work for it, but maybe it's a necessary and just 78 00:07:55.860 --> 00:07:59.420 Invest Institution, anyways. 79 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:03.780 But one interpretation is that these things that he's saying, his demystification, is 80 00:08:03.780 --> 00:08:08.060 actually not meant to be his argument at all. 81 00:08:08.060 --> 00:08:14.380 It's rhetoric, and he's making all these comments to kind of prime his readers for the real 82 00:08:14.380 --> 00:08:20.260 aspect of his critique, which I'll move on to. 83 00:08:20.260 --> 00:08:27.880 So what he wants to do is, his readers, to get them to look at the state or to look at 84 00:08:27.880 --> 00:08:35.620 morality with a more skeptical or realistic eye before moving on to these other aspects. 85 00:08:35.620 --> 00:08:42.940 But one implication of this is that, I guess, in pointing out the deceptive and violent nature 86 00:08:42.940 --> 00:08:50.660 of the State, then if that's not really central to his critique, and he doesn't quite have 87 00:08:50.660 --> 00:08:56.100 anything, any problems with that in itself, then we should be careful before we start 88 00:08:56.100 --> 00:09:02.620 interpreting Nietzsche's critique as something akin to a classical liberal critique. And 89 00:09:02.620 --> 00:09:04.940 I'll, hopefully I can return to this at the end. 90 00:09:04.940 --> 00:09:12.420 Okay, so on to the second part of the critique, Nietzschean evaluation. Okay, and the preface 91 00:09:12.420 --> 00:09:18.060 To the genealogy, he explains that the whole point of his book is to discover the value 92 00:09:18.060 --> 00:09:19.540 of morality. 93 00:09:19.540 --> 00:09:24.340 And it seems that for Nietzsche, this question of the value of morality can be translated 94 00:09:24.340 --> 00:09:26.460 into the following more specific questions. 95 00:09:26.460 --> 00:09:31.620 And he says, I quote, have modern moral values inhibited or furthered human flourishing up 96 00:09:31.620 --> 00:09:32.620 until now? 97 00:09:32.620 --> 00:09:36.740 Are they a sign of distress, of impoverishment, of the degeneration of life? 98 00:09:36.740 --> 00:09:42.060 Or conversely, do they betray the fullness, the power, the will of life, its courage, 99 00:09:42.060 --> 00:09:44.500 It's confidence, it's future. 100 00:09:44.500 --> 00:09:50.800 His main concern is whether the moral values and their prominence in society, is it conducive 101 00:09:50.800 --> 00:09:52.940 or not to human flourishing. 102 00:09:52.940 --> 00:09:56.180 But he's not worried about human flourishing of everyone. 103 00:09:56.180 --> 00:10:01.460 He says later, some comments he makes later suggested he's only concerned with the higher 104 00:10:01.460 --> 00:10:08.660 types of human being, which is a very small minority of elite human beings, and that is 105 00:10:08.660 --> 00:10:13.660 This is his main concern about morality. 106 00:10:13.660 --> 00:10:22.660 If my interpretation of this is correct, it seems that Nietzsche is a sort of utilitarian. 107 00:10:22.660 --> 00:10:26.660 This Nietzschean brand of utilitarianism seems to be committed to the following principles. 108 00:10:26.660 --> 00:10:33.660 First, the development and flourishing of higher types of human beings is the highest value. 109 00:10:33.660 --> 00:10:39.860 Secondly, the value of X is determined by its conduciveness to the development and flourishing 110 00:10:39.860 --> 00:10:45.660 of higher types of human beings. And I think that X can range over codes of values, such 111 00:10:45.660 --> 00:10:52.100 as morality or institutions, such as the state, and perhaps even individual actions and persons, 112 00:10:52.100 --> 00:10:56.060 but we'll be talking about the state mostly today. 113 00:10:56.060 --> 00:11:02.640 So Nietzsche's evaluation of morality real quick. Basically, in the genealogy, what he 114 00:11:02.640 --> 00:11:11.640 What he tries to show is that as moral values become prevalent in society, they become dangerously enticing to the potential higher types, 115 00:11:11.640 --> 00:11:18.640 and the result is that they end up devoting their energies and abilities to more compassionate and altruistic endeavors. 116 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:31.640 They lose focus on the self-discipline and individualism and creativity that are essential to fully developed higher types as he envisions them. 117 00:11:31.640 --> 00:11:36.920 So, my suggestion is that if Nietzsche bases his negative evaluation of modern moral values 118 00:11:36.920 --> 00:11:41.240 on the fact that they inhibit the development and flourishing of higher types as described 119 00:11:41.240 --> 00:11:46.320 above, then he's also committed to making a similar negative evaluation of the state. 120 00:11:46.320 --> 00:11:51.360 And on the New Idol, Zarathustra describes the state as a great enticer of those with 121 00:11:51.360 --> 00:11:57.480 the potential to flourish as higher men. He says, Oh, even to you, you great souls, it 122 00:11:57.480 --> 00:12:03.700 whispers its dark lies. Unfortunately it detects the rich hearts who gladly squander themselves. 123 00:12:03.700 --> 00:12:08.580 It wants to gather heroes and honorable men around itself, this new idol. Gladly it suns 124 00:12:08.580 --> 00:12:13.700 itself in the sunshine of your good consciences, the cold monster." So it's trying to suck 125 00:12:13.700 --> 00:12:22.060 in these higher types to use for its own good, similarly as we saw morality did. 126 00:12:22.060 --> 00:12:26.920 So what the state does is, I quote, steal the works of the inventors and the treasurers 127 00:12:26.920 --> 00:12:31.920 of the Wise. It needs them and their energies as suggested earlier for its own legitimacy 128 00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:37.280 and perhaps also in order to survive and function. The state redirects these great souls and 129 00:12:37.280 --> 00:12:42.400 heroes from their own individualistic creative pursuits and recruits them for its own stately 130 00:12:42.400 --> 00:12:48.840 collectivist endeavors, which might be nationalistic, totalitarian or egalitarian in nature. A more 131 00:12:48.840 --> 00:12:53.840 specific danger the state needs to suggest is that it can turn great men into politicians. 132 00:12:53.840 --> 00:13:03.600 I quote, watch them scramble, these swift monkeys, they scramble all over each other 133 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:06.960 and thus drag one another down into the mud and depths. 134 00:13:06.960 --> 00:13:09.840 They all want to get to the throne, it is their madness. 135 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:14.840 As if happiness sat on the throne, often mud sits on the throne, and often too the throne 136 00:13:14.840 --> 00:13:17.040 on mud. 137 00:13:17.040 --> 00:13:22.940 So the state and the politics associated with it provide great men with an arena for competition, 138 00:13:22.940 --> 00:13:29.620 But unlike other types of competition in which competitors push each other to new excellences, 139 00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:34.540 political competition is a race to the bottom. It is a dirty business and so sitting in a 140 00:13:34.540 --> 00:13:40.100 political office is akin to sitting in mud, or in other words, politics is monkey business, 141 00:13:40.100 --> 00:13:46.820 a degrading, less than human activity. In addition to sucking the higher types and their energies 142 00:13:46.820 --> 00:13:50.940 and abilities into its own service, the state also undermines the development of those who 143 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:58.940 You do not become part of its apparatus. It does this by imposing values from above, which 144 00:13:58.940 --> 00:14:05.900 is directly in contradiction to what Nietzsche thinks is one of the most important activities 145 00:14:05.900 --> 00:14:15.840 for human beings. He thinks it's almost essential. In Zarathustra, it says, no greater marketplace 146 00:14:15.840 --> 00:14:21.240 Based on Earth, did Zarathustra find, then good and evil? No people could live that did 147 00:14:21.240 --> 00:14:26.640 not first esteem, and esteem is a kind of value creation. Humans first place value into 148 00:14:26.640 --> 00:14:30.360 things in order to preserve themselves, that is why they call themselves human, that is 149 00:14:30.360 --> 00:14:36.800 esteemer. Esteeming is creating, he's kind of equating this with, it's in our nature 150 00:14:36.800 --> 00:14:44.520 to create values, and he sees this happening in individuals, we create our own values, 151 00:14:44.520 --> 00:14:53.560 and Communities as well. And he sees the state as imposing values from above and kind of undermining 152 00:14:53.560 --> 00:15:01.360 this very important human activity. And so he sees this as a danger. For one, the state 153 00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:05.280 relieves them of their need to create their own values and thus enables them to evade 154 00:15:05.280 --> 00:15:11.120 this important activity. As a philosopher Lester Hunt describes it, the state provides us with 155 00:15:11.120 --> 00:15:15.020 are the very attractive opportunity to commit this fatal evasion. 156 00:15:15.020 --> 00:15:19.960 In doing so, the state becomes a source of self-alienation, of estrangement from our 157 00:15:19.960 --> 00:15:20.960 true nature. 158 00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:27.440 Secondly, the state is very unlikely to promote such values which are conducive to the flourishing 159 00:15:27.440 --> 00:15:28.440 of higher types. 160 00:15:28.440 --> 00:15:33.160 Rather, it's more likely to promote values that are democratic, egalitarian in nature, 161 00:15:33.160 --> 00:15:36.460 or socialist, or nationalist collectivist. 162 00:15:36.460 --> 00:15:46.520 So the types meant to redirect these, so these values are meant to redirect the energies 163 00:15:46.520 --> 00:15:53.860 of great men to the goals of the collective and reduce them to the level of the herd. 164 00:15:53.860 --> 00:16:00.100 And so basically the concluding words of this section, Nietzsche says, my brothers do you 165 00:16:00.100 --> 00:16:04.780 want to choke in the reek of their snouts and cravings, smash the windows and leap out 166 00:16:04.780 --> 00:16:10.860 into the open, get out of the way of the bad smell, there where the state ends, only there 167 00:16:10.860 --> 00:16:15.840 begins the human being who is not superfluous, there where the state ends, the rainbow and 168 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:20.660 bridges of the overman, and the overman is kind of ideal, which we're not going to discuss 169 00:16:20.660 --> 00:16:21.660 here. 170 00:16:21.660 --> 00:16:28.980 So basically, when we hold the state to Nietzsche's standard of value, namely his brand of consequentialism 171 00:16:28.980 --> 00:16:33.940 that I described a bit ago, we see that the state is a great danger, much like morality, 172 00:16:33.940 --> 00:16:38.780 of the State is a danger in that it entices potential higher types of men, puts them into 173 00:16:38.780 --> 00:16:42.980 the service of its own ideals, and thus undermines their flourishing and their pursuit of higher, 174 00:16:42.980 --> 00:16:45.100 more creative endeavors. 175 00:16:45.100 --> 00:16:51.260 So in conclusion, in presenting this Nietzschean critique of the state, I hope to have achieved 176 00:16:51.260 --> 00:16:53.660 a few modest goals. 177 00:16:53.660 --> 00:16:58.220 First, I hope to have shed a little light on an area of Nietzsche's work that gets 178 00:16:58.220 --> 00:17:00.660 less attention than, say, his critique of morality. 179 00:17:00.660 --> 00:17:03.820 I hope to have made a bit more sense of the relatively small amount that Nietzsche did 180 00:17:03.820 --> 00:17:09.620 say about the state by considering it in light of the method he uses in his critique of morality. 181 00:17:09.620 --> 00:17:14.300 In doing so, I have perhaps shown that Nietzsche's critical attitude toward the state actually 182 00:17:14.300 --> 00:17:18.620 does fit coherently with another important aspect of his thought, namely his critique 183 00:17:18.620 --> 00:17:19.620 of morality. 184 00:17:19.620 --> 00:17:25.500 I'm about to get the shaft, so I hope in Q&A someone can ask me about the connection between 185 00:17:25.500 --> 00:17:33.500 and Nietzsche's critique and classical liberal values. So thank you very much and if you'd 186 00:17:33.500 --> 00:17:37.180 like a draft or want to send me some comments or praise, that's my email address. Thank 187 00:17:37.180 --> 00:17:37.700 you very much.