Insights from Nietzsche's Maxims - Part 1

"He who is a teacher from the very heart takes all things seriously only with reference to his students ‑ even himself."

A teacher's primary focus should be his/her object partner--in that case, the students. This requires self-examination of biases--something Friedrich Nietzsche extensively discusses. To take oneself seriously requires thinking about the very act of thinking. If a teacher asks the students to think, in what way is the student assumed to be thinking? For Nietzsche, this is an immediate danger that quickly veers towards indoctrination. Nietzsche sees Europe's populace as moralists driven by skepticism, refusing to leave what he calls a "slave morality."

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"'Knowledge for its own sake' ‑ this is the last snare set by morality: one therewith gets completely entangled with it once more."

Nietzsche continuously criticizes the scientists. He views them as devious skeptics, who keeps society down. Nietzsche believed that the skeptic spirit would fuel Russia's desire for domination over Europe, and that the next century's wars would be about domination of the entire world. Nietzsche's fearful prophecy proved right. Europe continued to lose its spirit while Russia underwent tremendous change. World War I, started by the assassination Archduke Ferdinand, brought the entire West to fight. People forget, however, that historians have identified Europe's population as an anxious one. Major wars were less common than ever before in Europe's recent memory. Nietzsche offers a deep insight: Europe's spirit was grounded in the wrong stuff. It was grounded in knowledge for knowledge's sake, and power in virtue's simply for power's sake. Europe's institutions, whether academic, scientific, or religious, all treated virtues in the wrong way in Nietzsche's view.

Why did Nietzsche call this phenomenon the last snare given by morality? In a sense, the aftermath of the two world wars (one could include the Cold War as well) produced an entirely new political and moral order in society, for better or for worse. The old European skepticism was totally transformed. And yet, from another point of view, we haven't overcome slave morality and knowledge for knowledge's sake at all. Virtue signaling, marxism, and critical theory all purvey the moral landscape in the West's colleges, universities, governing bodies, and scientific disciplines. A new form of Nietzsche's sceptic has been dominating the 21st century landscape.

However, Nietzsche refuses to offer any direct description of the child-like morality that results from getting out of a slave morality through the transvaluation of values. The resulting society of human beings, or Ubermensches, is undefined intentionally, modeling itself after a newborn, neutral (in his view) child. The new morality must be clearly defined; the standard of this morality must also be clear. Knowledge must always serve a higher purpose, or at the very least a higher element of sorts.

The marxists and critical theorists do have a higher purpose: the elimination of all forms of struggle. They give a guiding light to its moral adherents so bright that Nietzsche's slave morality is an irrelevant concern: freedom of speech, religion, the right to bear arms--all such rights given by documents such as the U.S Constitution are sacrificed for the sake of eliminating struggle. That's the weakness: embracing slave morality in order to ensure its elimination--or permanent, twisted implementation. Only the future will tell...

If any systems of philosophy, theology, or what's truly needed--a new Truth encompassing the unity of science and religion--hopes to have any chance in such a transitory climate as today, it must offer a clear, better higher purpose to become a guiding light to transcend the current moral landscape.

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"The charm of knowledge would be small if so much shame did not have to be overcome on the road to it."

Many athletes testify to the power of enjoying the process of training to learn a sport--football, basketball, etc. All sports require a rigorous training process. The same is true of a Truth-Seeker. Seeking the truth requires a process not just of reading, studying, and synthesizing, but of inner reflection: what biases do I have? What is my method of thinking? How do my morals ruin or validate my religious faith?

The difficulty in self-reflection comes not just from the act of reflection, but the genuine fruits of its process. Its fruits are both positive and negative (which then becomes a positive). One such negative fruit is shame: shame in our actions, shame at who we are as a person, shame at our current morality. Imagine receiving knowledge without this process? It becomes knowledge for knowledge's sake. A rocky road to traverse, with the treasure trove of knowledge lying at the end, is a process I'd like to be apart of.




**Quotes taken from Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil**