Benevolence

Jean-Michel Zazzi: Friedrich Nietzsche (2019) 

artsper.com

To read what one commentator writes, you'd think that Nietzsche's entire project (assuming it's possible to ascribe such a notion of purity and wholeness to his work) was based on the concept of Schadenfreude and that the greatest thing about his revaluation of values was that it allowed one to revel in the misfortune of others - including malignant ex-girlfriends - in good conscience.*

That would be very much mistaken, however.

For whilst it's true that Nietzsche rejects the Christian virtue of pity [Mitleiden] and speaks of the positive role that cruelty has played in the formation of man (often using Grausamkeit as synonymous with Kultur), so too does he privilege terms such as Wohlwollen in his text - what we in English-speaking countries term benevolence.

For Nietzsche, like the rest of us, doesn't merely 'deal in damage and joy', he also deals in goodwill and affirms the idea of having a cheerful, friendly disposition. This is particularly true in his mid-period writings.

In Human, All Too Human, for example, Nietzsche writes of those little, daily acts of kindness that, although frequent, are often overlooked by those who study morals and manners; those smiling eyes and warm handshakes, etc., that display what D. H. Lawrence terms phallic tenderness, but Nietzsche simply calls politeness of the heart.**  

These things have played a far more important role in the micropolitics of everyday life and the construction of community than those more celebrated virtues such as sympathy, charity, and self-sacrifice.

Of course the power of malice also plays a key role in human relations - and Nietzsche affirms an emotional economy of the whole - but, as I have said, it's profoundly mistaken to read from this that he is some kind of sadistic psychopath.

In other words, moving beyond good and evil does not mean behaving like an unethical little shit and I would remind Dr Solomon that "the state in which we hurt others is rarely as agreeable [...] as that in which we benefit others; it is a sign that we are still lacking power".**

Criminal lunatics who carry out atrocities and seek to justify their actions by calling on Nietzsche's name are invariably bad and/or partial readers; individuals as confused in their thinking as they are unrestrained and immoderate in their actions.  

* See the remarks made by Simon Solomon following my recent post on the subject of schadenfreude: click here.

** Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), I. 2. 49.

** Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), I. 13. 

I Care - But I'm Not Mother Teresa

I care - but I'm not Mother Teresa.

What do I mean by this? 

I mean that, for me, there is nothing remotely uplifting about looking after someone who is in need of care and I'm not about to sacrifice myself entirely to this tiring and depressing task in the mistaken belief that by so doing I demonstrate Christian virtue.

For unlike Mother T - a woman once described by Christopher Hitchens as a corrupt Albanian dwarf who exploited the poor and dying as extras in her own obscene morality play - I don't confuse or conflate excremental reality with transcendental fantasy. 

Indeed, I agree with Hitchens that it's deeply offensive to fetishize pain and poverty and develop a voracious appetite for human wretchedness; to literally feed off shit and gain personal salvation via the suffering of others.

We have to demoralize our idea of sympathy; i.e. free it from ideal notions of pity and charity which transport us to the foot of the Cross.

And, ultimately, all it takes to do the right thing is a little politeness of the heart or what Nietzsche terms benevolence; kindness, kisses and kuddlz have played a far greater role in building a libidinal culture of compassion or phallic tenderness, than those more celebrated values preached by the Good.  

Sensitive Hands on a Cyclops

Eric Drass: Nietzsche and the Horse (2011)
www.saatchionline.com

Pity in a man of knowledge seems ludicrous, says Nietzsche. Indeed, it can even tip a philosopher into madness and make them fling their arms round the neck of an old carthorse, causing a public commotion.

He should, of course, have known better: for Nietzsche warned repeatedly against the non-egotistical instincts and singled out the Christian virtue of pity as the most fundamentally dangerous of all such feelings; something that weakens the individual who surrenders to it and ultimately fails to benefit the one who is the object of their pity.

Pity, says Nietzsche, is anti-life: for pity attempts to preserve what is ripe for destruction or belongs in the knacker's yard. It is the great seduction into nihilism; the most sublime form of decadence. And yet one can't help loving Nietzsche for attempting to protect some nag from cruelty; for ultimately being just a little allzumenschliche and displaying a feminine incapacity to remain a passive spectator when confronted by the suffering of a fellow creature.

Becoming-hard like the diamond, does not mean becoming an insensitive moron who knows nothing of kindness or the politeness of the heart; rejecting the moral ideal of pity does not mean one should not feel compassion or sympathy in the noble sense. If it did, one would hardly bother to read Nietzsche.