Written in 1886, Beyond
Good and Evil is one of the most well-known and expansive works by German
author and philosopher, Fredrich Nietzsche. The text is made up of 296 relatively
short aphorisms, separated by topics and categorized into nine distinct chapters.
In kicking the book off, Nietzsche is quick to attack religious and
philosophical dogmatic thinking (something he claimed was self-serving to ones
own prejudices), before moving on to his criticism of traditional moral
systems. Nietzsche believed that there were differing levels of spiritual
strength among people and that because of this disparity it would be
unreasonable to force everyone to follow the same moral codes. Later on in the
book, Nietzsche criticizes both nationalism and anti-Semitism – an important section
to note for studies of Nietzsche’s work as a whole. No matter what ones
personal opinion on the philosophy of Nietzsche is, it is crucial to not let
the usage of his (selected) work by supporters of the Third Reich cloud fair
and impartial judgment of his ideas. Finally, he concludes the book with an idealized
story of a “noble” figure that has rejected the commonplace ideas and accepted
customs of their society and as a result must suffer from their elevation above
the rest of society. Overall the book deals with several themes, among which
the ideas of morality and “goodness” are especially interesting. Nietzsche
viewed both good and evil as arbitrary terms made up to describe the morals of
different people at different points and history. Nietzsche wanted philosophers
of the future to move beyond these ideas (hence the title of the book) and
focus more on the their own biases and internal prejudices. He believed that
the morals of good and evil as espoused by both Christianity and Marxism were
designed to keep the strongest members of society under the control of the weak
and petty masses. This idea has been applied to several important world figures
including Plato and ironically, Jesus Christ himself, as they both rejected the
norms of their society and rose beyond good and evil – only to put a new system
of morality in place.
http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2015/11/noah-silver-8-blog-post-2.html
Citations: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/beyondgood/section1.rhtml
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl_258/Lecture%20Notes/beyond_good_and_evil.htm
I don't think there's an explicit Marxist critique in BGE, but Nietzsche does target "socialistic fools"... in any case, a consistent Nietzschean would reject all ideological thinking as hostile to his Ubermenschen. But going "beyond good and evil" will always be problematic from a humanistic standpoing, as hostile to humanity as such. It's hard not to finally see N as a misanthrope. "'Good' is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a 'common good'!" But how can there not be?
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