Beyond Good and Evil

2024-12-27

In his book, Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche begins by framing philosophers’ age-old pursuit of Truth as wish fulfillment. Each philosopher instinctually desires a particular outcome or other and frames all of their rational thought around that implicit, unspoken desire.

Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; […] And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter 1, Paragraph 3

And then, Nietzsche makes the striking observation that the things which are most fundamentally relevant for us humans are not of necessity relevant for “truth” — whatever that means.

For example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than “truth” such valuations, in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of niaiserie, such as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves.

Then, Nietzsche points out that to believe that the things most important to us are the most important things is identical to regarding man as the “measure of [all] things.”

Phrased that way, it reveals a lot of philosophical thought — including much of my own — as quite brazen! Maybe man really is the measure of all things; but shall we continually take that for granted?

It also comes just shy of disputing that old religion, upon which the idea of the ascendance of man has often been blamed to rest.

God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27, WEB

Darwinians contend that separating man from animals is biologically unsound; but where go our institutions of morality and justice if we don’t regard man as somehow special? After all, we don’t afford the same legal rights to dolphins as to children; And pets cannot own their masters, except insofar as they capture their masters’ attention.

But looking again at that verse in Genesis, Nietzsche doesn’t refute it directly — at least, not here! One may retain his Christian faith and still grasp Nietzsche’s point by affirming, “God is the measure of all things; we are merely observers who happen to parallel Him, thanks to His own design.”

However, Nietzsche’s statement contents more severely with the very next text of that scripture:

God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so. Genesis 1:27-30

My long-time, instinctual reading of this verse is that God has vested in us humans authority over the whole earth, and that we are subject only to Him for how we exercise that authority. In particular, that explains how the things we do or have done to the environment which now horrify us can fit within the moral framework of the Bible despite contradicting our best perception of Godly morality.

However, that interpretation is literally not in the text! It does say that we’ve been given authority over all life. Who cares about a bunch of nonliving things, anyway? Isn’t it just a bunch of rocks? Well, aside from the fact that our entire modern era is based around rocks like silicon, concrete and steel? And, aside from the fact that nearly all food involves growing something in tiny rocks called dirt?

Ok, so rocks are important to us. What else? It is interesting that one of the most controversial and dreaded stories of our time is called climate change. That’s not bounded within the dominion of life at all!

That we would have dominion over all life (and only life) coincides brilliantly with Nietzsche’s line of argument, wherein he often describes the prevailing mode of philosophical thought as life-affirming; he relies on phrases like “life-furthering, life-preserving”; “maintenance of a definite mode of life”; “[pre]condition of life” all as shorthands for human-life-affirming, or perhaps, affirming the kind of life humans would most like to indulge in.

If God gave us dominion over life, it’s no wonder if we’re too preoccupied with its understanding to notice anything else.