Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher who has been regarded
as providing intellectual support to anti-Semitism and Nazism. However, a close
reading of his works does little to support this view. The blame for his views
being misinterpreted lies very largely with his sister Elizabeth, who edited
his work and used it as backing for her own beliefs, which were blatantly in
favour of Germany’s National Socialists. When she died in 1935, Adolf Hitler
attended her funeral.
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in a small town in
Saxony which was then part of Prussia. The son of a Protestant minister, he
became a professor at the University of Basel but had to retire after only ten
years due to ill health. He then wandered across Europe, devoting himself to writing
and trying to recover his health. In 1889 he suffered a complete relapse into
insanity, dying in 1900 at the age of 55.
Shortly after his death, his writings were edited and
published by his sister under the title “The Will to Power”, but there is plenty
of evidence to show alterations to his original texts, which has done much to
mar the reception of Nietzsche’s thought ever since.
Nietzsche’s writings are varied and cover diverse topics,
but he is most renowned for his concept of “the will to power”. He saw that the
fundamental driving force of the individual is expressed in the need to
dominate and control the external forces operating upon him. He seeks the power
to be master of his own destiny.
The frustration of this urge, according to Nietzsche, is
responsible for the existence of various moral systems and religious
institutions, all of which attempt to bind and subdue the will. This view made
Nietzsche particularly hostile to Christianity, which he termed a “slave
morality”.
Friedrich Nietzsche saw the will to power as something to be
pursued and affirmed, and not to be resisted. However, he did not advocate the
dominance of the strong over the weak, nor suggest that mastery of the will to
power belongs to some special elite by virtue of birth. The absence of such
statements in his work make clear that the Nazis were entirely wrong in their
interpretation of his philosophy.
What Nietzsche actually said was that strength is necessary
to the evolutionary progress of the human being. But strength, as he understood
it, was not constituted in physical but in psychological force. The strong are
those who are more complete as human beings because they have learnt to control
their passions and have channelled the will to power into a creative force.
Nietzsche used the term “superman”, but his concept had more
to do with Aristotle’s notion of a man of virtue than of the Aryan superhero of
Nazi philosophy.
Nietzsche’s moral philosophy did not advocate “master
morality”, although he clearly believed that being a master was better than
being a slave. The point about being strong was that one was then in a position
to help the weak, and that was the duty of the man of virtue. Helping the weak
was not to be done from a sense of pity, but as a result of the natural urge to
have power over one’s own development.
It has to be hoped that in future Nietzsche’s reputation
will depend on what he actually wrote rather than on what others may have
supposed he did.
© John Welford
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