15. Nietzsche Requires Preventing Extinction, Not Rejecting Policy

Figure 17: Diagnosing the misreading of Nietzsche to avoid repugnant irresponsibility to atrocity.

1. Preventing extinction outweighs as a precondition for every form of overcoming. Connolly (1991) argues nuclear weapons change the terms of Nietzsche's project: "the failure to 'preserve man' could also extinguish the human basis for the struggle Nietzsche named 'overman.' Preservation and overcoming are now drawn closer together." Nietzsche never weighed his critique against a species-ending war, and no one can affirm suffering after they are dead. Nor can any life be judged worthless in advance, since "no final evaluation of a life can be made until, at least, the life is over" (White 1990). Extinction makes that premature judgment for everyone. Value to life also gives policymakers no workable standard. Szacki (1995) argues that resolving the dispute among conceptions of life "is attainable only by a totalitarian enslavement of society," so "the government does not treat them as equals if it prefers one conception to another." Extinction ends every citizen's ability to decide what makes life worth living; the alternative imposes one answer on all of them. Nietzsche's critique of slave morality does not mean preventing suffering is bad. Withdrawing from politics because suffering is inevitable is not neutral. Marcel (2006) frames the choice as "facing reality or living in a rose colored bubble," noting that "a little political change and social justice will make a lot of people very, very happy." Morality is rooted in natural selection, not constructed: “morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are [...] [R]oots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys [...] Social living requires empathy [...] that takes the interests of the entire community into account.” (Wade, 2007). The alternative's pessimism is also wrong about the world. Pinker (2014) reports that armed conflict is declining, and suffering has decreased from disease to poverty. Centuries of slave morality have not produced life-denial, and great artists can still suffer. The critique is already incorporated into society as personal self-help, not to block public policy. Critics repugnantly contrive Nietzsche to oppose any policy solving war and justify atrocity using vague jargon sophistry. Hales (1995) reads Nietzsche as a consequentialist whose quarrel with utilitarianism is about hedonism, not consequences: "While Nietzsche employs the language of consequentialism, he rejects the Benthamite summum bonum as a mistake." He concludes that "if anything has intrinsic value, then the only thing that does so is life." Leiter (2004) adds that for Nietzsche "the value of suffering [...] is only extrinsic," so a morality to reduce suffering "could perfectly well allow an exception for those individuals whose own suffering is essential to the realization of central life projects." Reducing suffering of those who never chose it takes nothing away from us.

2. Debate is like a dance that we do to affirm what we value, but their cynicism would always win as it is self-justifying asceticism. “Without certain rules, there would be no competition since the same potent, high-ranking, and hostile players would always win. Those aggressive players may not be free spirits but ascetic priests. Even Nietzsche would have to realize that in order for a contest to be genuine, rules have to be in place to ensure fair competition.” (Rosenberg 2004). A critique that rejects the plan as life-denying finds it wanting, which is judgmental ressentiment of the research that gives our lives value. Tallis (1997) distinguishes plans to survive from utopianism: “we cannot live without explicitly Utopian ideals [...] even if never achieved, as an asymptote approached by huge numbers of small advances. [...] It is difficult to be anti-Utopian without being against progress itself; for there is no clear or sharp distinction between arrogant claims to provide universal - in both senses of 'global' and 'universally applicable' - solutions to the woes of mankind and wanting to contribute, however modestly, to making the world overall a better place.” The affirmative does not reject the negative's views; it affirms its own among others. Hatab (1995) explains that for Nietzsche, evaluations of life “are local estimations that serve the interests of a certain perspective but that cannot stand as a global measure to cancel out other estimations.” The critique therefore "cannot amount to a project of refutation or erasure, but rather a 'plea by an interested party.'" Even perspectives the negative calls life-denying are forms of willing: "all forms of human life seek to will their meaning." That makes the permutation the most Nietzschean option. Any issues remaining are material for self-overcoming, not something to discard: tradition's “debris need not be rejected, but may rather be used in the reconstruction of the new self. [...] [F]or Nietzsche, certain features of a tradition previously regarded as repressive may in fact be reappropriated.” (Magnus 1996). Dillon and Campbell (1993) argue that "for life to be affirmed resistance to despotism is vital," and "there is no passivity or quietism entailed in this affirmation. We can act. We do act."

3. Nietzsche's critique is not relativism and gives no license to stop judging harms. Engle (2007) argues that "Nietzsche is no nihilist; in fact, he was passionate about truth," and that relativism "risks degeneration into fascism--if truth is unknowable and moral values relative, then only force exists." Hatab (1995) warns that "an inability to affirm everyday conditions may be no less problematical than traditional refusals to affirm existential finitude," that Nietzsche "may have lost sight of his own warnings against teleological metanarratives," and that "after all is said and done, we should let people live the life they want to live." Camus makes the same point. Smolkin (1989) explains he faulted Nietzsche's super-humanity, like Marx's classless society, for replacing "The Beyond by the Later On," loving a utopian idealized overcoming of slave morality, while sacrificing those in the present. Camus called instead for rebels to "work for justice and for a decrease in suffering," so "each individual has the leisure and freedom to pursue his own search for meaning." Preventing death makes self-creation possible for everyone. Dropping moral standards hands value to the market: it "elevates market values as the only objective scientific value" and reinforces "the hierarchy of the rich as more valuable than the poor." White (1990) shows the death of God makes ethics more urgent: universal permissibility "makes such reflection the more pressing." Nietzsche (1881/1911) himself agrees that "many actions which are called immoral should be avoided and resisted [...] but [...] from motives other than those which have prevailed up to the present time." Debating policy change is itself life-affirming. May (2005) argues that "there can be no such thing as a sad revolutionary. To seek to change the world is to offer a new form of life-celebration," while "to refuse to experiment is to resign oneself to the intolerable. [...] The only question is whether you will take up the world that you are of, or leave it to others, to those others who would be more than willing to take your world up for you." Nietzsche also gives no reason to reject the state. Hatab (2002) explains it is "a mistake [...] to read Nietzsche in simple terms as being against institutions and the rule of law," because creativity "is not an abandonment of constraint, but a disruption of structure that still needs structure." Debating how to work around institutions and persuade the public is the "dancing in chains" Nietzsche calls creative.

4. In answering yet another later-day philosopher, Deleuze’s post-structuralism fails to confront concrete institutions of exploitation or to seek tangible change via public persuasion. “Deleuze offers few resources for thinking the consequences of what happens within the actually existing world […] By posing the question of politics in the starkly dualistic terms of war machine or state [...] Deleuze's philosophy amounts to little more than utopian distraction. Although no small number of enthusiasts continue to devote much energy and ingenuity to the task, the truth is that Deleuze's work is essentially indifferent to the politics of this world. A philosophy based on deterritorialisation, dissipation and flight can offer only the most immaterial and evanescent grip on the mechanisms of exploitation and domination […] [I]n places like Palestine, Haiti and Iraq, the agents of imperialism have more to learn from Deleuzian rhizomatics than do their opponents. […] because it disables action in favour of contemplation. […] They embrace it because what feeling 'preserves is always in a state of detachment in relation to action’ […] But those of us who still seek to change our world and to empower its inhabitants will need to look for our inspiration elsewhere.” (Hallward 2006, pp. 162-4). Framing politics as a choice between the state and a radically different world substitutes utopian speculation for practical political strategy. This orientation privileges contemplation over effective action, weakening opponents of imperialism while leaving imperial powers free to exploit the same decentralized, flexible methods.