Nietzsche's nonfoundationalism: "There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective 'knowing'; and the [more] eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will [our] objectivity be."(Genealogy)
Regarding science: "physics, too, is only an interpretation" (BGE pp. 21-22)
Regarding morality
N's response to nonfoundationalism
Early N's aesthetic response
art for art's sake: "we have our highest dignity in our significance as works of art--for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified."(Birth of Tragedy)
anti-intellectual streak and criticism of Socratic intellectualism: "While in all productive men it is instinct that is the creative-affirmative force, and consciousness acts critically and dissuasively, in Socrates it is instinct that becomes the critic, and consciousness that becomes the creator--truly a monstrosity."(BofT)
Later N: genealogy
what genealogy is
the genealogy of morals
the argument: morality arises as a reaction by the weak, the slaves, to the strong, the noble, in response to the former's fear. "Now it is plain to me [that the] source of the concept good has been sought and established in the wrong place: the judgment good did not originate with those to whom goodness was shown! Rather, it was the good themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed, and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as good...'noble and aristocratic' in the social sense, is the basic concept from which 'good' [d]eveloped: a development which always runs parallel with that other in which 'common', 'low' are finally transformed into the concept 'bad'."(Genealogy sec. 1:2)
ressentiment
etymological evidence: good meant noble; bad (schlecht) meant plain, simple (schlicht); with transvaluation of values, "the wretched alone are the good" and "you, the powerful and noble, are on the contrary the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless and damned."
master and slave moralities
master morality: "Faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a fundamental hostility and irony against 'selflessness' belong just as definitely to noble morality as does a slight disdain and caution regarding compassionate feelings and a 'warm heart'." "Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness,... exploitation--but why should one always use those words in which a slanderous intent has been imprinted for ages."
slave morality: honors pity, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility, and friendliness, "for these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence."
genealogy as a science (scholarly) but not 'bad science'--it is not detached. Bad science is a "hiding place": "The proficiency of our finest scholars, their heedless industry, their heads smoking day and night...how often the real meaning of all this lies in the desire to keep something hidden from oneself."(Genealogy)
genealogy as unmasking: "That you take this or that judgment for the voice of conscience--in other words, that you feel something to be right-may be due to the fact that you have never thought much about yourself and simply have accepted blindly that what you had been told ever since your childhood was right."(Gay Science, p. 264. See handout)
Nietzsche's morality of authenticity
N's standard of judgment: an authentic will to power
Traditional moralities reflect an inauthentic will to power
Reflects will to power
Stoics
Kant's categorical imperative (Gay Science, p. 265)
But inauthentically; traditional moralists are self-deceived
morality as an illness: "Yes, my friends, regarding all the moral chatter of some about others it is time to feel nauseous. Sitting in moral judgment should offend our taste...We, however, want to become those we are--human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves."(Gay Science, p. 266)
Judeo-Christian morality as counter to the will to life
Legal order and the state are hostile to life
Genealogy of Morals: "legal conditions [of just and unjust] constitute a partial restriction of the will of life"
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: the state "devours [the masses] and chews them, and ruminates!...Only there, where the state ceases, does the human being who is not superfluous begin."
