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5. Natural History of Morals
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beyond Good and Evil, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Good and Evil
Knowledge, Truth, and Untruth
The Individual and the Crowd
The Dark Side of Modernity
Women and Men
Summary
Analysis
Now applying a more specific lens to science and scholarship, Nietzsche expresses his concern over a disturbing development: the scholar’s rejection of philosophy. Young scholars have begun to reject and consider themselves independent of philosophy, for a variety of reasons, some shallow and some more significant. Nietzsche grants that much of the blame is philosophy’s, as modern philosophy has failed to provide modern science with guiding ideas. While science continues to grow and develop, philosophy is a shell of itself, unable to instruct other branches of knowledge.
Having alluded previously to the relationship between the sciences and philosophies in an era of materialism, Nietzsche now tackles this problem directly. As he has already demonstrated, philosophy in the modern era has most certainly failed at its task. This has not only led to science overtaking it, however, but has also distorted science too, a failure that Nietzsche argues most people have failed to notice. The reader should note that “science” here refers to scholarship in general, including the humanities and social sciences as well as the natural sciences.
Themes
Nietzsche expounds upon the obstacles to the development of the modern philosopher, beginning with scientific specialization. As a specialist the philosopher quickly becomes siloed in his discipline and is unable to attain a commanding view over the sciences, the necessary vantage point for genuine philosophy. In a herd society the philosopher is nothing more than a hermit, one who does not feel they have the right to pass judgement. This, to Nietzsche, is precisely backwards. A true philosopher must engage in society as much as they stand apart from it, despite and indeed because of the risk such a lifestyle requires.
Nietzsche argues that the breakdown of the relationship is closely connected to specialization, itself a product of modern herd society. Too focused on minutiae, philosophers cannot create values, so they instead take materialist theories of the world as given explanations. Nietzsche returns to his earlier claim that the philosopher must carefully negotiate their relationship to the crowd, engaging with it, but from a distance.
Themes
In opposition to the philosopher, Nietzsche provides a sketch of the scientific man. This individual is not “noble” and independent but accepts their place in society and works industriously in a narrow field. A mediocre person, the scientific man seeks to repress everything uncommon and unusual. While Nietzsche welcomes the spirit of objectivity that the scientific man ushers in, this spirit instrumentalizes the individual: they are but “the most sublime type of slave” and cannot serve as an example to humanity at large. The scientific man is a skeptic by default, as skepticism expresses the degeneration of the will in the weak modern individual, a degeneration that extends to many other individuals and parts of society too.
Nietzsche finds the degeneration of the will in Europe to be closely connected to national and racial identity, and the mixture of the latter in particular. He finds France to have the weakest will and strongest skepticism, while Germany, England, and Spain still possess stronger wills. Italy is as yet undecided. The most powerful will by far, however, Nietzsche finds in Russia. Nietzsche sees Russia as a likely conqueror of a weak, sickly Europe, though he would prefer that the threat of domination would force Europe to become strong once again. Either way, he predicts that the politics of the 20th century will take place on a much greater scale: that of dominating the entire world.
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Nietzsche offers in contrast a different, distinctly German kind of skepticism, drawing on the example of Frederick the Great. This skepticism has an “audacious manliness” and conquers despite its reservations, never losing its sense of self in the process. To Nietzsche, this is precisely what is most vital and redeemable in the German spirit, unlike romanticism. This spirit will be embodied by the philosophers of the future, although it will not suffice to explain them. Nietzsche also calls these philosophers critics and experimenters; as critics they are distinguished from skeptics by their firm methods, values, and goals. Critics, however, are merely instruments of philosophy, one among many aspects of true philosophers.
Themes
Establishing a distinction between philosophical laborers—scientific men—and philosophers, Nietzsche returns to the idea that the philosopher must look down from a great height; only from there can the philosopher “create values.” Philosophical laborers, on the other hand, work with values already given to create new, temporary truths, and do not express the will to power like true philosophers. The philosopher of the future, rather, is by definition opposed to the present and is tasked with “being the bad conscience of their time.” Opposing specialization, the philosopher must choose greatness: being noble, independent, different, and apart.
Themes
Being a philosopher cannot be taught but must be learned from experience. Experience, however, is devalued in modern society, making the creation of new philosophers a demanding and difficult task. Here Nietzsche finds an instructive example in great artists, who, like the philosophers of the future, understand that the freedom of creation is experienced as necessity and constraint. Reaffirming his belief in an order of rank of the soul, Nietzsche claims that the highest, most difficult philosophical problems will repel those who are not destined to solve them. A right to philosophy must be cultivated in an individual, who is the expression of generations of the development of virtues.
Themes
