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Nietzsche looked at the morality of his age and called it ‘the danger of dangers.’ This lecture from Academy of Ideas explains why, using his famous contrast between the higher man and the herd. It traces how a life-denying ‘herd morality’ grew out of the resentment and envy of the weak — and how, in modern forms like socialism and social justice, it still wages war on everything rare and strong. Against the leveling tide, Nietzsche urged a revaluation of all values: let the herd keep its rules for the herd, but the great individual must write his own law.
Full Video Transcript
In the preface to his classic work on the genealogy of morality, Nietzsche wrote,
was the danger of dangers.
Most people do not question why things are considered morally good or evil,
rather uncritically and largely unconsciously.
They adopt the value judgments of good and evil, dominant within their society.
For the past 2,000 years, the dominant morality in the West, according to Nietzsche,
has been an anti-natural morality, which, in his words,
turns against the instincts of life.
Nietzsche foresaw this morality as reigning over the western world for the foreseeable future
And was to him the danger of dangers
A morality in which all individuals, even those with the potential to rise above the mediocre mass
Are pressured into becoming a smaller, almost ridiculous type
A herd animal, something eager to please, sickly and mediocre
Why has an anti-natural morality, a poison which has spread through the entire body of mankind
gained a dominion over Western civilization? To answer this question
Nietzsche’s categorization of individuals into two distinct types, the
higher human beings and those who belong to the herd, must be examined. Within the
category of the higher human beings there are two main types. There are
creative geniuses, the men of great creativity, the really great men
according to my understanding, who through a rare combination of nature and
nurture are able to devote their life to a craft and bestow upon the world
astounding works of beauty. Along with creative geniuses there are the more
numerous higher humans who do not scale the heights of genius and thus hidden
from the public eye their lives are without songs and singers. Yet the lives
of these higher humans are not qualitatively different from the life of
the creative genius. Both share similar character traits which separate them
from the herd. Higher humans have a unifying life project and are consumed by the drive to
actualize their lofty goals. This unifying project is not undertaken for short-term gratification,
but as a result of the higher man’s vast historical perspective is a form of work
performed under the eye of centuries, a goal whose effects will remain long after the physical death
of the higher man. As Nietzsche wrote in Human All Too Human, the modern individual focuses too
narrowly on his own short lifespan, and wants to pluck the fruit himself from the tree he plants,
and so no longer likes to plant those trees that demand a century of constant tending,
and are intended to provide shade for long successions of generations. For this type of
lofty work the higher man requires his solitude and freedom from the herd, the innumerable small
and pitiable men. As Nietzsche wrote, the concept of greatness entails being noble,
Wanting to be by oneself
Being able to be different
Standing alone and having to live independently
Standing alone and living independently
The higher man remains oblivious to the petty concerns which occupy the herd
And is immune to both the praise and criticism emanating from the mouths of the many
There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame
His own justice that is beyond appeal
Aware of the momentous task which lies before him
and the potential for greatness which lies within him
the higher man feels a sense of reverence towards himself
and even in the presence of great suffering
affirms life as a proud and well-turned-out human being
who says yes, who is sure of the future, who guarantees the future
In contrast to these higher humans, there exist the many, the herd
The herd is composed of two types, the last man and the slave
The last man is the quintessential mediocre man, striving solely for comfort and contentment, an end which makes him lazy and contemptible.
The last man is wholly devoid of any creative urge within, and blind to higher values which render creativity possible.
The slave, in contrast, is a weak and sickly human being, who suffers from himself and is filled with what Nietzsche called resantimon,
A festering hatred of life generated by feelings of impotence
in the face of an external reality he feels to be overpowering and threatening.
There is among men, wrote Nietzsche,
as in every other animal species, an excess of failures,
of the sick, degenerating, infirm, who suffer necessarily.
The successful cases are, among men, too, always the exception.
The presence of resentment conjures feelings of envy within the slave
towards all those who do not suffer as they do, namely the higher human beings. This envy
motivates the slave to take vengeance on the higher humans, banding together to obtain a
communal feeling of power, the only type of power available to the slave, and under the pretext of
calls for equality, the slave attempts to bring down to a more mediocre level all those higher
than him through the construction of a slave or herd morality. The morality that would unselfman
is the morality of decline par excellence, the fact I am declining transposed into the imperative,
all of you ought to decline. This only morality that has been taught so far, that of unselfing,
reveals a will to the end. Fundamentally, it negates life. A herd morality inverts the
natural values of life. The individual who is strong and independent, who attains feelings
of power spontaneously through their creative endeavors and great health, is deemed by herd
morality to be evil. On the other hand, all those who belong to the herd, the mediocre
last men and the weak and impotent slaves, the vengeful disguised as judges, are deemed
to be good. As Nietzsche put it in Ecce Homo,
Finally, this is what is most terrible of all. The concept of the good man signifies
that one sides with all that is weak, sick, failure, suffering of itself.
The principle of selection is crossed.
An ideal is fabricated from the contradiction against the proud and well-turned-out human
being who says yes, who is sure of the future, who guarantees the future.
And he is now called evil.
And all this was believed as morality.
Herd morality is the danger of dangers because of its ability to seduce those anxious and
fearful in the face of the uncertainty and isolation associated with striving for greatness.
In the confusion of their development, longing to rest from themselves for once so as to be free
from what oppresses them, herd morality acts as a siren’s voice which offers the potential higher
man a way to escape from his burdensome fate into the comfort of mediocrity and immersion in the
mass. If herd morality becomes too effective in bringing down all that is higher and extraordinary,
nihilism will creep over the world. Without the higher values embodied by the higher men,
creativity, works of astounding beauty, and the capacity to strive for ideals will be absent.
Instead, the values of comfort and contentment, so cherished by the herd, will be worshipped as
the supreme values, and as a result the herd will engulf all of mankind, and existence will
be deprived of its great character. Nietzsche’s fears of such a world were expounded in a passage
from On the Genealogy of Morality. We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater. We
suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become thinner, more good-natured,
more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent. Here precisely is what has
become a fatality. Together with the fear of man, we have also lost our love of him,
our reverence for him, our hopes for him, even the will to him.
The sight of man now makes us weary.
What is nihilism today if it is not that?
We are weary of man.
In the attempt to prevent future generations from succumbing to this all-engulfing leveling effect,
Nietzsche spent much time in his writings performing a revaluation of values,
hoping to lessen the effect of herd morality on the development of higher men.
Such a re-evaluation of values is dependent upon the realization that herd morality is not an objective and universal morality binding on all, but is merely one type of human morality beside which, before which, and after which many other types, above all higher moralities, are or ought to be possible.
While herd morality says stubbornly, I am morality itself and nothing besides is morality, the higher individual must realize that the ideas of the herd should rule in the herd, but not reach out beyond it.
He must pay no attention to herd morality’s claims of universality, its values and moral oughts, but instead must discover his own higher values to assist him in accomplishing his unifying life project.
In discovering his own higher values, the higher man must realize that as a highly differentiated individual with a unique vision of life, his good is his alone, and therefore he must not preach or impose his higher morality on others.
As Zarathustra advised,
My brother, if you have a virtue and she is your virtue, then you have her in common with nobody.
Even naming one’s virtue would make her too common.
If one must speak of her it should be this is my good this I love it
Pleases me wholly thus alone. Do I will the good I do not will it the law of a god
I do not will it as human statute and need in Nietzsche’s time as in ours
There exists a plethora of individuals who desire to persecute and bring down those who rise above the mediocre mass
masking their envy with calls for equality these ideas will therefore seem elitist and
distasteful to the great majority of people. But for Nietzsche these ideas
were not meant for the many. Our highest insights must and should, he wrote, sound
like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission
by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them. Nietzsche was
gravely concerned with ensuring the world would remain fertile for the
growth of true human excellence. Thus he wrote for the higher man alone, urging
to overcome the temptations of herd morality and instead to proceed on his own heroic life path
and in doing so provide inspiration for future generations of potential higher men.
But Nietzsche was not optimistic that the future would be kind to the existence of higher humans.
Herd morality is a powerful beast with the force of the majority behind it
and for the last two millennia has waged a common war on all that is rare,
strange, privileged, the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility,
and the abundance of creative power and masterfulness.
Herd morality underpins not only socialist ideologies, the proponents of which Nietzsche
called socialist dolts and flatheads, who wish to bring about the degeneration and diminution of man
into the perfect herd animal, but also the numerous social justice movements,
which threaten to engulf the western world with a new wave of herd morality.
Given that herd morality is alive and well in the modern day, we can, with Nietzsche,
pose a question he believed highly pertinent in his times, and which remains so in ours.
Today, is greatness possible? But apart from the question as to whether true greatness is
possible today, the fact that herd morality is alive and well must be a cause of concern
from another angle. For the slave, despite the innocent facade he displays with his herd morality
and calls for equality, does not desire to change the world for the better. Instead,
driven by resentment and envy, he seeks to gain social and political power for the purpose
of provoking destruction as compensation for his own personal impotencies and failures.
The following insight of Nietzsche’s proves to be a pertinent warning for the modern world.
When some men fail to accomplish what they desire to do, they exclaim angrily, may the
whole world perish. This repulsive emotion is the pinnacle of envy, whose implication
is, if I cannot have something, no one can have anything. No one is to be anything.
Source: Academy of Ideas