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Nietzsche on Freedom
Editor’s Note: The following is section no. 38 of “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Twilight of the Idols
38. My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.
These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one’s cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of “pleasure.” The human being who has become free — and how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.
How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by “tyrants” are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong.
Those large hothouses for the strong — for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known — the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has or does not have, something one wants, something one conquers.
The TOQ Classics Corner
The TOQ Classics Corner reprints classic articles of interest to racially aware white people.
“How might Nietzsche be used to explain why America’s founding generation and the presidents drawn from it were greater than every subsequent generation brought up under the system they created?”
My gut response to this is that the Founders had something to fight for, something that focused their energy and attention. Once they acheived it their successors would gradually begin to indulge in the superficially “rewarding” but ultimately self-defeating activity of resting on their laurels. Worse, they were resting on SOMEONE ELSES laurels.
But instead of reducing the whole thing to “Weren’t the Founders great? And aren’t the ones we have now just terrible”; it might be better to take a step or two back and look at it all from right angles, so to speak.
I think the whole thing points to what Orientations actually do. They help us engage with Reailty. But what happens to them, or to us? Well, Orientations are designed to solve problems at a particular time; if we adhere to the letter of their law and not to the demands of Reality we ignore the latter while applying too much pressure on the former. And that in fact is what is happening now, and has been happening. I think THIS is bottom we are hitting. I think THIS is what Obama truly represents.
But if you look at it from Human Behavior and Cultural History the matter clears up at once. Philosophically the Enlightenment thinkers were still dealing with ideas that they thought were Constitutive, ie; an idea that expressed the way the world really was. As opposed to the next step taken by Romanticism that developed a more Instrumental metaphysics. It is no coincidence that figures like Darwin and Nietzsche came out of Romanticism.
In fact, Nietzsche gets right to it in the first paragraph above.
“Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained:”
Of course; because the ideas used to attain their goal were created to deal with another time and another situation.
Right or Left, God or Nature, Heaven or Society, etc. are two sides of the same coin. Or, as a co-worker once said to me in relation to the Left and Right, “The pendulum swings.”
To which I replied, “Yes, and it’s the PENDULUM that has to go!”
And just as it’s no conincidence that Darwin and Neitzsche came out of the 19th Century, so too is it NO coincidence that the Left and Right came out of the 18th.
These two groups have been holding us hostage for far too long.
This explains Neitzsche’s next line,
“later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions”
Of course. It should be obvious what a shamlbes Middle Class Enlightenment Politics and Culture and Business have made of Society. What a dysfunctional, mal-adaptive culture they’ve created. Intellectually shallow, Spiritually vacant society run on the mindless pursuit of the all might dollar which, in fact, is far from almighty today. Far from it, it’s as anemic as the spiritual condition of the people who want it so badly. Ask them why they want it so badly and they will look at you like your nuts.
Because they think the answer is SELF-EVIDENT!!!!!!
THAT’S the Enlightenment for you. Make everything easy by saying it’s “Natural” or “Ordained by God” or “Self-Evident”.
So it MUST be right and true and good. Like the Self-Correcting Market!!!!!
My goodness, no wonder we’re in the position we’re in today.
We need a new Exodus from Houndsditch!