Nietzsche and "moral responsibility"

Jennifer Frances Armstrong

December 15, 2011 at 5:31 pm | #44

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Patrick :
In his defense, if it hadn’t been for the crisis, Person A’ not being a star likely wouldn’t matter – so, in that respect, he is a victim of circumstance. What separates him from the rest is that he didn’t use it as a crutch. And he took concrete actions to improve and prevent.

Having totally moved out of any kind of moralistic mode of analysing the world, as a process of doing my PhD, I can no longer relate to the conceptualizing of any part of reality as “a crutch”. It seems to me that one only needs an excuse in the face of a hostile parent figure who demands that one account for oneself. In the absence of such a figure, the concept of a crutch has no meaning at all. The concept of “whining” about anything also has no meaning. For instance, who would one’s whining be heard by, should one engage in this activity? Unless it is heard by some omnipotent being, it would serve no purpose at all.

Even if we remove the conceptual mode one step away from this quasi-religious perspective, the metaphysical attitude of making oneself a “victim of circumstance” still makes no sense. Nietzsche’s view is to get under the way that grammar shapes our consciousness, so that we see that there is no moral universe — even though language itself would tend to bind us to a moral perspective.

The way reality works, according to Nietzsche, is actually different from the way language lures us into thinking. “Free will” is a phantom of language. In Nietzsche’s view, there is neither ‘free’ nor ‘unfree’ will. There is only the measure of energy and power stored in you as an individual, which has the apparent expression of “will”.

Taking it down to a more concrete level, Person A obviously had a lot of this force stored up within him, so he pressed through and came out on top. This sounds a little like I’m choosing deliberately unfamiliar language in order to make the same point that language compels us into making — that is, that Person A had more “free will” than others. I don’t mean to say that at all. Rather, the accumulation of historical energies of different sorts — and not just Person A’s individual excellence — all led to this positive outcome. To make it even clearer: that is to say that the leftist point of view, that historical forces can either hold us back or propel us forward, is also relevant.

The point where Nietzsche’s point of view differs from that of a typical liberal is in the sense that it acknowledges that even if history has “held you back”, the universe does not care one iota. It doesn’t owe you anything. Also there is nobody to complain to about that. The very perspective that “whining” or “having a crutch” are morally meaningful is undermined.

SAVAGE Gender activism, intellectual shamanism