I.
All sides seem to agree that violent crime is on the increase in London and other metropolitan areas. But there's not the same level of consensus concerning the causes or solutions to this problem. Some blame gang culture, drug use or social media; others talk about inequality, cuts in social funding and reduced police numbers.
It would, however, take a courageous - and unusually philosophical - politician, police chief, or commentator to adopt the Nietzschean perspective on this issue: to suggest that what motivates those who commit crimes of violence, including murder, is a thirsting for the happiness of the knife ...
All sides seem to agree that violent crime is on the increase in London and other metropolitan areas. But there's not the same level of consensus concerning the causes or solutions to this problem. Some blame gang culture, drug use or social media; others talk about inequality, cuts in social funding and reduced police numbers.
It would, however, take a courageous - and unusually philosophical - politician, police chief, or commentator to adopt the Nietzschean perspective on this issue: to suggest that what motivates those who commit crimes of violence, including murder, is a thirsting for the happiness of the knife ...
II.
Zarathustra says that judges need to dig deeper into human psychology if they wish to truly understand the lunacy that precedes the criminal deed. For more often than not, the thief who savagely beats, tortures, or kills his victim enjoys the cruelty and the bloodshed; they steal only to ease their own conscience.
In other words, reason persuades them to steal in the process of committing murder or provide some other rational justification - such as the taking of revenge, for example. For no one, says Zarathustra, wishes to shamefully admit to madness.
III.
Similarly, though on a wider geo-political scale, we might even argue - as Jordan Peterson argues having studied Nietzsche - that Hitler provoked a world war only to disguise his true aims of genocide and chaos.
Hitler didn't care about victory; if he'd really wanted to win the war and build his Thousand Year Reich, then surely he'd have enslaved the Jews and exploited their labour and their genius. Perhaps afterwards, when the war was won, he might have had them killed. But to initiate the Final Solution in 1942 and devote significant resources to a programme of extermination ... well, that simply doesn't make military or economic sense.
In other words, reason persuades them to steal in the process of committing murder or provide some other rational justification - such as the taking of revenge, for example. For no one, says Zarathustra, wishes to shamefully admit to madness.
III.
Similarly, though on a wider geo-political scale, we might even argue - as Jordan Peterson argues having studied Nietzsche - that Hitler provoked a world war only to disguise his true aims of genocide and chaos.
Hitler didn't care about victory; if he'd really wanted to win the war and build his Thousand Year Reich, then surely he'd have enslaved the Jews and exploited their labour and their genius. Perhaps afterwards, when the war was won, he might have had them killed. But to initiate the Final Solution in 1942 and devote significant resources to a programme of extermination ... well, that simply doesn't make military or economic sense.
But, as Peterson points out, that's exactly what Hitler chose to do; accelerate the misery and the mayhem, whilst insisting that everything he did he did either in the name of Love (for Germany and the German people), or so as to establish a great empire rich in materials and artistic treasures.
In a sense, we might describe Hitler as the palest of all pale criminals. Or, as Nietzsche would say, a type of strong human being made sick due to unfavourable conditions. The question remains of course: what are we to do with such people?
See: Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969), Pt. 1: Of the Pale Criminal.
Watch: Jordan B. Peterson, '2017 Maps of Meaning 11: The Flood and the Tower', YouTube: click here.
