Nietzsche’s Critique of Traditional Morality and the Transmutation of Values
Nietzsche’s Critique of Traditional Morality
Nietzsche argues that traditional morality, particularly Christian morality, is unnatural because it is born from the weak and resentful, those who reject the body and its passions. It affirms the reality of a “higher world” to which we must sacrifice our earthly existence. This morality is unnatural because its laws oppose the fundamental tendencies of life. It is a morality of resentment against natural instincts and the biological world, which are deemed low and sinful. Christianity, in Nietzsche’s view, invented the concepts of sin and freedom to control and suppress natural human impulses.
However, Nietzsche sees Christianity as a continuation of a pattern that originated in ancient Greece with Socrates. In his work, Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche investigates the origins of morality and concludes that the Greeks before Socrates identified virtue with the joy of living. This mentality shifted with Socrates, who severed the equivalence between virtue and joy. For Socrates, virtue stems from knowledge and reason; we are good because we know what is good. Living well, according to Socrates, is not about being happy in life but about cultivating rationality and stifling passion and instinct. Thus, Socrates introduced a model of wisdom identified with reason and opposed to instincts, leading to an unnatural morality.
Unnatural morality, as Nietzsche sees it, stands in opposition to natural morality, which is the morality of the strong, based on the will to power and the value of earthly life. Unnatural morality arises from the resentment of the weak towards the strong and aims to turn their weaknesses (cowardice, resignation, etc.) into virtues. Any morality that demands sacrifice and mortification in this life to earn another life in the hereafter is, for Nietzsche, an unnatural morality.
The Transmutation of Values
With the concept of transmutation, or revaluation of all values, Nietzsche calls for the replacement of traditional values, particularly Christian and bourgeois values, with a new set of values centered on life and the desire to live fully and intensely. This is necessary for the end of traditional morality (or slave morality) and the emergence of the Superman.
Nietzsche seeks to invert the traditional table of values. He aims to overcome the Western morality of resignation and resentment towards life by establishing a new table of values that are integral to life itself. He proposes substituting the slave morality of Christianity and Judaism with an aristocratic morality, which he believed was found in the ancient Greek world. Christianity, in his view, fosters the morality of the weak, those who seek to escape the rigors of life by inventing an objective world of rest and justice.
The transmutation of values involves overcoming this slave morality to reclaim the aristocratic morality, paving the way for the triumph of the Superman’s moral code. Nietzsche blames Socratic morality for the decline of Western culture and the abandonment of the values of the early Greeks. Socrates’ assertion that knowledge leads to virtue, making the wise man the ideal, is harshly criticized by Nietzsche. He advocates for the development of the vital and instinctive aspects of human beings.
Against Socratic morality, Nietzsche proposes a healthy, natural morality that affirms the mere existence of this life and encourages living it fully and intensely, without the suffocating constraints of a false heavenly world. The healthier the morality, the superior the man, according to Nietzsche.