Can someone provide me with some secondary literature dealing with Nietzsche's perception of evil? I'm especially interested on why he prefers abandoning the concept of good and evil for good instead of actually reflecting on the possibility for a radical evil (as an entity) to exist within the world and human nature, and the implicatons of this point of view
>>8012466
>okay guys, instead of recognizing that there are serious flaws in the idea of separating things into good and evil things, let's just double-down on it instead. We'll call it radical.
I wonder...
>>8012472
not personally saying that there are no serious flaws in that idea, but it has been a central idea in philosophy for a great many centuries, and some great philosophy (especially kant) has materialized around that whole dichotomy. Just wondering about Nietzsches argument as to why that is a stupid and useless dichotomy, and what those arguments apply for morality and society
>>8012466
The long and the short of it: Good and evil are just perceptions. There is no such thing as a moral action, only a moral perception of an action. Circumstance and tradition can make even some of the most evil acts acceptable.
For example in Britain there was a case where a bunch of stranded sailors ended up eating a cabinboy which gave them the strength to survive until they were rescued. The courts determined that anyone would have done what they did in their situation, but sentenced them to hang anyways because they ought not to have done it. There was a public outcry over the obvious absurdity of the sentence and it was commuted. Murder (technically, the boy was in a semi-comatose state when they killed him) and cannibalism became in the public perception a morally acceptable act, in part because the men told the truth about it and were quite clearly ashamed.
And of course cannibalism is an acceptable action in other societies. Had Europe developed under different conditions or circumstances cannibalism might have been ethical or even mandatory, as it is among some of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon who viewed the western practice of burying corpses barbaric compared to eating the flesh of their dead kin.
He rejects offhand then that there could be an evil entity. Nietzsche is much more about becoming than being and as such if evil actions do not exist, evil beings do not. We can judge them as such but since we are all wrapped up in our perceptions and how our bodies and cultures shape them, no human could actually identify abject evil even if it were to exist.
>>8012682
but doesnt this sort of ethical relativism give way to an arbitrary justification of violent, oppresive and enslaving acts?
>>8012722
Yes. What wrong with that?
>>8012742
the arbitrary violent, oppressive and enslaving acts.
>>8012747
Holy fuck, is it ever pleb hour in here.
Go reread Nietzsche again, and don't post about him until you do.
>>8012751
What profit is there in not being spooked by moral law and a conscience if it will lead to situations that are almost certainly probably undesirable
>>8012745
>>8012759
To speak in terms of "profit" Fucking more bitches, getting more money
At no point does unspooking yourself imply that you should lack foresight
>>8012722
>an arbitrary justification of violent, oppresive and enslaving acts
How else could they be justified, really?
>>8012751
not that guy (op), but this is exactly my question: how does he justify the practical consequences of this line of thought, or does he at all?
>>8012774
>living only to cum - but without even reaching the natural end of cumming
>money being an end rather than a means
spooked
>>8012778
Evil actions are typically just more primal expressions of the same innate motivating force behind good actions. Nietzsche was an amoralist and while he disapproved of things such as pogroms, anti-semitism and the penal system, he did so based on the demonstrable negative outcomes of these things rather than claiming that these things were evil.
He actually doesn't really give a shit about slavery though, he correctly notes in HATH that it was frequently the case that slaves and serfs were furnished with better material conditions than wageslaves in factories, and he casts doubt on the notion that the factory workers are actually any freer. He fundamentally agrees with Stirner's identification as rights and privileges as spooks. He is in favor of aristocratic privileges only because they allow for an idle class and an idle class is essential to produce a high culture.
>>8012775
Profit?
>>8012778
Nietzsche wasn't trying to outline a "guideline for action".
He expanded an etymological argument with observations, demonstrating the " real reasons" that people use to judge right and wrong aren't actually grounded methods of evaluation.
In a way, you could say that Nietzsche understood the practical consequences though, because he calls for alternative methods of valuing actions
>>8012797
>he did so based on the demonstrable negative outcomes of these things rather than claiming that these things were evil.
isn't this just saying it's bad without using the word evil
>>8012809
obviously bad and evil aren't necessarily mutual. You could be in an unfortunate (bad) situation but the cause is not evil.
>>8012814
isn't evil essentially performing actions you know will bring about bad outcomes. If he disapproves of certain things based on these terms surely it is an evaluation of what evil means it's just on his own terms
>>8012821
It's not, and you'd know why if you read Nietzsche
>>8012821
Read BGE and GM if you want the fully story here but essentially this is how master morality defines good and evil, to the master morality evil doesn't really exist, evil is just bad.
Good: I do something and it benefits me
Bad: I do something and it harms me
This is the core of master morality, and is essentially the moral system of an animal. However humans have a second kind of morality, the slave morality, which is based in ressentiment. The slave is impotent so the slave (who's highest expression is that of the priestly caste) becomes hateful and resentful towards those who exert power over him.
The slave inverts the values of the master in order to express his will to power. That which is good for the master becomes an evil. The weak cannot transcend or usurp the master so instead they corrupt his senses, appeal to the human weakness of pity, and eventually make him a slave as well under the framework of utility.
Nietzsche does not reject slave morality offhand because he recognizes that it is in a sense what makes people interesting. But he worried that its expression was too heavily rooted in resentment and that it eroded the higher type of man in the name of utility. Nietzsche didn't endorse the master morality because it was clearly less than capable of guiding human behavior in the same way that slave morality was less than capable of promoting human excellence.
This is why he calls for the revaluation of all values, the creation of a new moral system that goes beyond good and evil.
>>8012842
good point, well made
>>8012821
>isn't evil essentially performing actions you know will bring about bad outcomes.
so eating too many hamburgers is evil but being a hannibal-like psychopath is not? Or if hannibal is evil because he knows that the other people will perceive a bad being done to them yet does it anyway, doesn't that mean that the people who imprison hannibal also are evil as they are doing a bad to him from his point of view?
>>8012853
>so eating too many hamburgers is evil but being a hannibal-like psychopath is not?
what on earth are you on about
>>8012857
use you're brains Ronald
>>8012857
if you eat too many hamburgers you become fat, which is generally common knowledge, which is bad for pretty much anyone
if you're hannibal you kill a lot of people but it's not bad for you because you're playing it safe
>>8012863
yes, bad is relative, that's the point. hannibal probably doesn't think of what he's doing as bad on his own terms so he's not performing actions which will bring about bad outcomes in his judgement
>>8012875
yeah so hannibal isn't evil but hamburger man is
which makes the whole thing fucking stupid because you're so far away from the standard concept of good and evil you might as well name it wublort because it has nothing in common with the common understanding anymore
>>8012892
yeh, I don't agree with (what I guess is) Hannibal's moral compass either. Illuminating critique.
Like the above poster said there are things which we find reprehensible that other cultures find common/great so it's not clear what good and bad is or what evil is as a standard conception so I made my definition very specific i.e. essentially performing actions you know will bring about bad outcomes.
>>8012778
It is exactly BY the practical consequences of this line of thought that it is justified.
>>8012747
Read On the Genealogy of Morals (you can find a translation for free, and it's short).
You are Christian slave morality atm desu.
>>8012851
>>good
>>bad
Not even. Good and bad are arbitrary values set by nobles. Be rich, don't be poor. Be strong, don't be weak. Why? Cuz we'll kick your ass m8.
Good and Evil come about after the resentment-fueled slave uprising (read GM faggot) . "Evil" is what happens when slaves gain power and essentially say "everything the nobles said was good is now evil, and we're the opposite of evil" which is how good is now redefined.
TLDR: read On the Genealogy of Morals, master morality good and bad are dictated by value-creating powerful nobles, slave morality good and evil are resentment-fueled reflections of the master morality good and bad.
>>8012722
but doesnt this sort of ethical relativism give way to an arbitrary justification of benevolent, beneficial and liberating acts?
>>8012722
He's not a moral relativist. He's a moral non-realist.
>>8012797
It had more do with with him caring about the psychological reasons behind actions than the consequences those actions had. You do can x and Nietzsche would love you for it, or you could do x for different reasons and he would hate you for it.
>>8012821
He disapproves of the term evil because for him it implies a moral realism. Good and bad are the terms he uses to try to talk about what one should do outside of moral realism. When you are dealing with Nietzsche you have to understand the way he uses the terms that he does and not any other way.
>>8012466
>I'm especially interested on why he prefers abandoning the concept of good and evil
based on the arbitrary, has no basis, evil as entity is unsupportable, hence the need to move beyond the arbitrary, the pointless, to stop seeing things as either good or evil outside of situation.
pity or praise the man who can not transcend the idea of objective evil.
>elevating the will over truth
>>8013330
>truth leads to nothingness
>will leads to life (if not necessarily as truth)
a synthesis must be made
>>8012682
>The long and the short of it: Good and evil are just perceptions. There is no such thing as a moral action, only a moral perception of an action. Circumstance and tradition can make even some of the most evil acts acceptable.
Didn't Hume already do a better job of arguing for that?
All this edgy high school relativism. I wonder how Nietzsche would have felt about his uptake. Probably would have burned all his stuff if he'd known.
>>8013485
Nietzsche differs with Hume in many, many ways though of course they come to similar conclusions in some areas.
For just a few examples, Nietzsche radically disagrees with Hume on man across time and place, Hume says humans are all somewhat similar while Nietzsche says each man is his own type. Their historical accounts of the history of morality are also radically different, GM is largely developed as a response to Hume's history and ones like it. It was an attempt to, as much as possible, escape present day morality when examining ancient morality.
>>8013502
>Nietzsche says each man is his own type
What nonsense. He applies singular psychological-moral diagnoses across huge swaths of people. There is no way to do that if they were not similar.
>>8012466
he's not "abandoning" anything. he's explain that good and evil have causes which transcend them but which are immanent to life itself, rather than idealistic.
>>8012722
>give justification
no.
Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard
