Nietzsche and Habermas: Contrasting Philosophies on Western Culture
Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Culture
Nietzsche’s philosophy is a critique of Western civilization as a whole. Since the time of ancient Greece, he believed that European culture has been fundamentally flawed because it despises life.
His critique is directed against morality, religion, and philosophy. He criticized the resignation to life, the triumph of reason over life, and the loss of the old values of ancient Greece. He pointed to Socrates and Plato as the culprits who broke this balance by introducing rationality.
Nietzsche raises the question of the decadence of Western culture in his concern for the German cultural and political situation of the moment. However, this decline does not only affect Germany but is a global phenomenon of degeneration of Western culture. This loss of meaning of existence, the decline of the real values of life, is what Nietzsche called nihilism. He held Catholicism responsible.
In his critique of philosophy, Nietzsche thinks that the decline and error began with Socrates, because he imposed rationality against vital impulses. Plato postulated the existence of two separate worlds: the sensible and the intelligible, devaluing the first and affirming the existence of a transcendent world. These authors imposed the moral and rational. From them, philosophy has disguised the truth and the meaning of life, settling in Western culture a false worldview and life-denying.
Nietzsche finds its expression in the attack and critique of religion, especially Christianity. He describes Christianity as the religion of compassion, something that weakens the human and is life-denying. Christian theologians are responsible for the decline of the human being by spreading the idea of a faith that leads men to close their eyes to reality. Christianity represents everything he despises. In short, Christianity is the disregard for life. To survive the deception, it is necessary to assume the death of God, which will bring the freedom of human beings.
In his critique of morality, Nietzsche claims that the decline of Western culture stems from the reversal of moral values produced by Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian religion. In his work, he exposes two types of morality that are mixed in every culture and that can sometimes occur in the same individual:
- The morality of the Lords: This is the morality of the strong and is active because the values are implanted. The Lord lives independently because he trusts in himself and has a considered will to power. From his height, he judges the weak, dependent, and rational.
- The slave morality: This is the morality of the weak, the cowardly, and is passive because they create moral values but do not take them. The slave is weak and cowardly and defends the values of humility, forgiveness, sacrifice, and patience.
For Nietzsche, the only solution left to the West is to truly love life as it is, not as we dreamed it would be in an ideal world. He defends, then, the will that says yes to life, but this requires the emergence of a new man, a superior being to undertake the transmutation of values: the superman.
Habermas
Habermas is aware of three real circumstances of our time:
- Individuals and companies no longer have traditional references that granted universal value.
- Cultures have widespread forms of life, with very different moral conditions and values.
- Ideologies and political ideologies affect citizens in matters of great moral depth.
However, he believes that despite these differences, humans have no choice but to understand each other. Hence his intention to formulate a method for agreements that we cannot resign from.
Habermas presents a critique of Enlightenment rationality, the concept of enlightened progress. According to this, reason is to guide history, and thus expresses progress in technological and political developments.
He makes a study contending that the only knowledge of reality is scientific knowledge based on facts. On the other hand, he also criticizes the views of Marx, as their concepts are not valid to be applied to the analysis of the twentieth century after two world wars, with major economic, social, and degeneration of many communist systems.
In his “Knowledge and Interest,” he starts from the idea that knowledge is structured and guided by an interest that drives reason itself to solve specific problems of our life. He distinguishes between:
- Technical interest: This is what guides knowledge towards the domain of nature and is characteristic of empirical science.
- Practical interest: This guides toward understanding people and is characteristic of hermeneutics.
- Critical interest: This is the self-interest of the moral sciences.
Habermas argues that current experience confirms the belief that reason is expressed through highly heterogeneous expressions. It is hard to understand, but we cannot avoid understanding each other.
To achieve this, he proposes a methodology based on the language of discourse. For him, speech should have a pragmatic function; it must produce real effects in the world. This is what he calls universal pragmatics.
The purpose of communicative discourse is the will to reach agreements. For this, all should be respected as legitimate rules that contribute to objectivity.
Agreements should be considered for all regulatory requirements, aiming at their application to as many partners as possible so they can be integrated socially and endowed with legitimacy to serve as principles to systems of laws and regulations. Hence, discourse ethics can serve as a basis for communicative action.
Habermas distinguishes two major types of human actions:
- Rational-purposive action: This is the activity we do in life, planning the means to achieve objectives.
- Communicative action: This is the interaction of humans mediated by language; it involves a willingness to reach agreements and to coordinate their own plans with those of others. This action must be based on the pragmatics of discourse.
The ethics of Habermas, therefore, is political since it allows for peaceful coexistence among men. It is universal, as the consensus affects us all, and it is formal because its content is not fixed.