Revaluation of all values
The revaluation of all values is a catchphrase coined by Friedrich Nietzsche and a central concept of his philosophy and moral criticism.
The concept
In the modern world of his time, Nietzsche noted a decline in culture , which was expressed in a widespread loss of values . This was due to the increasing insight that on the one hand the concept of truth could not be filled with content (“Nothing is true, everything is permitted” ( Zur Genealogy der Moral = GM III, 24)), and on the other hand the belief in a God as a guiding idea for the meaning of life was more and more lost. As a consequence, Nietzsche saw a growing nihilism as the "worthlessness of the highest values".
Nietzsche viewed values as relative . In perspective, they are oriented towards the respective “ rule structure”. The basic problem of value formation, which for him lay in the wrong idea of the subject , he formulated in Beyond Good and Evil :
“One may doubt, firstly, whether there are any opposites at all, and secondly, whether those popular valuations and opposites on which the metaphysicians have put their seal are not perhaps only foreground estimates, only provisional perspectives, perhaps moreover from an angle, perhaps from below, frog perspectives as it were, in order to borrow an expression that is familiar to the painters? With all the worth that may be accorded to the true, the truthful , the selfless : it would be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for all life would have to be ascribed to appearances, the will to deceive , selfishness and desire . It would even still be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and revered things would consist precisely in being captively related, connected, crocheted, perhaps even of the same essence, to those bad, apparently opposite things. Maybe! - But who is willing to take care of such dangerous perhaps things! To do this one must wait for the arrival of a new breed of philosophers, those who have some other taste and inclination opposite to those of the past - philosophers of the dangerous perhaps in every understanding. - And speaking in all seriousness: I see such new philosophers coming up. "(Beyond good and evil = JGB 2)
The origin of the decline of culture congested Nietzsche in a religious-historical analysis of religion to. Religion denies the positive of the aristocratic and wages a fight in favor of the weak. This is the first revaluation of values in history, which can also be described as devaluation.
“The chivalrous-aristocratic values have for their presupposition a powerful corporeality, a flourishing, rich, self-effervescent health, together with that which necessitates its maintenance, war , adventure, hunting, dance, fighting games and everything in general that is strong, free, cheerful Action includes itself. The priestly and noble manner of valuation has - we saw it - other requirements: bad enough for them when it comes to war! As is known, the priests are the worst enemies - why should they? Because they are the most powerless. From their powerlessness their hatred grows into the monstrous and the uncanny, into the most spiritual and poisonous . The really great haters in world history have always been priests, even the most ingenious haters: - against the spirit of priestly vengeance , any remaining spirit is hardly considered. Human history would be too stupid a thing without the spirit that came into it from the powerless: - let us immediately take the greatest example. Everything that has been done on earth against "the noble," "the mighty," "the lords", "the rulers" is not worth mentioning in comparison with what the Jews did against them: the Jews, that priestly people who ultimately only knew how to get satisfaction from their enemies and overpowerers through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most spiritual vengeance. "(GM I, 7)
The defense of the weak inherent in Jewish religion and social philosophy continues in Christianity . This, too, calls for a "revaluation of all ancient values" (JGB 3, 46). Education for tolerance , as it was handed down from the Roman Empire , is replaced by the "loyal and bear-biting belief in subjects " of Luther , Cromwell or some other "Nordic belief" Barbarians of the Spirit ”. The Enlightenment is an essential step in the process of decline, which ends in passive nihilism and whose prelude was the French Revolution . This "slave revolt" is a victory for the egalitarianism of the weak.
Nietzsche saw a necessity of history in the decline up to nihilism. But he also saw a way in which man can come out of decline and make progress. Democracy does not only mean the decline of political organization, but also the decline and downsizing of people. It requires the breeding and breeding of noble and outstanding leaders (see “ Übermensch ”) who can overcome nihilism.
“It is the image of such leaders that floats before our eyes: - may I say it aloud, you free spirits? The circumstances which one would have to partly create and partly take advantage of in order to arise; the presumptuous ways and trials, by virtue of which a soul grows up to such a height and violence that it feels compelled to perform these tasks; a revaluation of values, under the new pressure and hammer of which a conscience would be steeled, a heart would be turned into bronze, so that it would bear the weight of such a responsibility; on the other hand, the need for such leaders, the terrible danger that they might fail or fail and degenerate - these are our real worries and gloom, you know it, you free spirits? "(JGB 5, 203)
The background of the concept of the revaluation of all values is Nietzsche's theory of the will to power , which underlies all things (as a kind of entelechy ). The will to power as a driving force strives to become independent, to destroy all existing values and to raise itself to the highest value. It thus leads to the dissolution of conventional morality . The new revaluation of all values means giving life a meaning, “putting a new meaning into what has become meaningless” (Estate 2 (106), KSA 12, 113). It is a transition from passive to active nihilism. This can only be done by the superman who has freed himself from traditional values, particularly religion and belief in a truth. The human being becomes "homo natura", something that creates itself from nature . Revaluation does not mean the creation of new values, but a return to the values before the decline, i.e. H. to the values of antiquity before Socrates and Plato , who took the first step towards enlightenment through philosophical questions and through the use of reason and thus initiated decline. The yardstick is no longer God's will, but the will to power inherent in man's nature. Nietzsche does not want a new morality, as represented by Socrates, Plato and Judaism, but demands a detachment from morality. He represents an immoralism for which the revaluation means a rejection of ethical values.
Representation in Zarathustra
Without using the term “revaluation of all values”, the basic idea can already be found in Nietzsche's poetic-philosophical work Also sprach Zarathustra (= ZA) in the speech “Of the three metamorphoses” (KSA 4, ZA 29-31). The mind goes through three stages of development. The first is the solitude in which the mind goes into the desert and as a camel , the humility and the ability to suffer learning. Diffuse invisibility prevails. The aim of the mind is to learn the right thing. Then comes the level of stubbornness. The spirit becomes a lion who defends itself against the counterfeit and kills the dragon of ignorance. What was previously sacred is rejected as stupid and ridiculous. Finally, in the third level of amusement, the spirit becomes a child who has left the struggle behind and encounters life in innocence like "a wheel rolling out of itself". In this process of eternal return , a revaluation of all values takes place at the same time in the development stages.
In the III. Volume of Zarathustra writes Nietzsche:
“To redeem the past in people and to recreate everything“ It was ”until the will speaks:“ But that's how I wanted it! That's how I'll want it - "
- This is what I called them redemption , this alone I taught them to be called redemption: “(Thus spoke Zarathustra III, From old and new tables, 3 KSA 4, 249)
Illustration in the further work
Nietzsche repeatedly took up the idea of revaluing all values in his later work. Further quotations are:
- "Let us not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a 'revaluation of all values', a physical declaration of war and victory to all the old terms of 'true' and 'untrue'" ( Der Antichrist , KSA 6 179 )
- “Christianity, from Jewish roots and only understandable as a plant of this soil, represents the counter-movement against any moral of breeding, of race, of privilege: - it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence: Christianity is the revaluation of all Aryan values, victory the chandala values, the gospel preached to the poor, the lowly, the Total Area-revolt of all the downtrodden, miserable, Missrathenen, underprivileged against the 'race' - the immortal chandala vengeance as a religion of love ... "( twilight of the idols ," The "improvers" of mankind ", 4)
- “And with that I touch again the place from which I once started - the 'birth of tragedy' was my first revaluation of all values: with that I put myself back on the ground from which my will, my ability grows - me, who last disciples of the philosopher Dionysus, - I, the teacher of the eternal return ... "( Twilight of the Idols ," What I owe to the ancients ", 5)
- “The Germans robbed Europe of the last great cultural harvest that Europe had to bring home - that of the Renaissance. Do you finally understand, do you want to understand what the Renaissance was? The revaluation of Christian values, the attempt, undertaken with all means, with all instincts, with all genius, to bring the counter-values, the noble values to victory ... "( Der Antichrist , 61)
- “But my truth is terrible, because until now the lie was called the truth. - Revaluation of all values, that is my formula for an act of the highest self-reflection of humanity, which has become flesh and genius in me. "( Ecce Homo ," Why I am a fate ", 1, KSA 6, 365)
The use of “revaluation of all values” as a subtitle for The Antichrist and for the compilation of a legacy part of the book The Will to Power (1906) are explained in the latter article. During the Nazi era , Friedrich Würzbach , then President of the Nietzsche Society , which existed until 1943, published an expanded compilation of texts from Nietzsche's estate with 2397 aphorisms under the title The Legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche in 1940 . An attempt at an interpretation of all events and a revaluation of all values issued. This edition was reprinted in 1969 and 1977. It has been obsolete since the Critical Complete Edition was published .
reception
At the beginning of the 20th century, Nietzsche was particularly well received in conservative , anti-democratic circles. Oswald Spengler , for example, emphasized the importance of the idea of the revaluation of all values in the fall of the West :
“When Nietzsche first wrote the word 'revaluation of all values', the spiritual movement of these centuries, in the midst of which we live, had finally found its formula. Revaluation of all values - that is the innermost character of any civilization. It begins with re-shaping all forms of the previous culture, understanding them differently, handling them differently. It no longer generates, it just reinterprets. "
Georg Simmel , who, in his philosophy of money , saw the capitalist orientation of society as one of the main causes of the loss of values and thus the revaluation of traditional values, hoped for an opposing revaluation of all values in the course of the ideas of 1914 through the First World War , when the start of the war was a rejection of the “adoration of money and the monetary value of things” and “ mammonism ”, which he described as “the golden calf becoming transcendent”.
Nietzsche's thesis of the revaluation of all values was the subject of the value philosophy initiated by Rudolf Hermann Lotze , which was worked out in particular in Neo-Kantianism and in the material ethics of values by Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann . Heinrich Rickert reproached Nietzsche for not having a clear concept of value. In addition, the revaluation of values is not the subject of philosophy as a science, which is about recognizing values. After all, a revaluation of values is not possible because it is not the values that change, but the opinions of people on the values. Hartmann's criticism is similarly focused on the relativism of values that lies in the idea of revaluing values.
On October 15, 1934, Nietzsche's 90th birthday, the Völkischer Beobachter claimed that Nietzsche was the “pioneer of the Third Reich ”, the “hero of the will to power”, the “founder of a new ethic” who, through the revaluation of all values, became one "Made the first breach in the walls of outdated world views ". According to Joseph Goebbels, the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” “rightly bears the name of the German revolution, because it is in fact a matter of a revaluation of all values, of the overthrow of a world of thought.” Without really dealing with Nietzsche's philosophy, Nietzsche went along with it his catchphrases like the “blond beast” and used to justify the “new values” that arose from the Nazi ideology, and for which Nietzsche found places like racism , anti-Semitism and the justification for war. In order to enforce the new values, the National Socialists relied on systematic value education, above all through their youth organizations, but also through political education camps for everyone who wanted a job in the civil service.
Ernst Cassirer saw Arthur de Gobineau already destroying traditional values, which can be traced back to Nietzsche, by völkisch - National Socialist thoughts :
“Our modern political myths destroyed all of these ideas and ideals before they began their work. You have no opposition to fear from this side. In our analysis of Gobineau's book, we have studied the methods by which this opposition has been broken. The myth of races acted like a powerful catalyst, and it succeeded in dissolving and destroying all other values. "
Martin Heidegger , who traced Nietzsche's philosophy back to the idea of the "eternal return of the same", classified the revaluation of values in an overall context of Nietzsche's metaphysics and emphasized their inner context:
“Nietzsche recognizes that with the devaluation of the previous highest values for the world, the world itself remains and that first of all the world that has become worthless inevitably urges a new valuation. The new value setting changes after the previous top values have become obsolete, with regard to the previous values to a ›revaluation of all values‹ ”.
“The five main titles mentioned -› Nihilism ‹,› Revaluation of all previous values ‹,› Will to power ‹,› Eternal return of the same ‹,› Übermensch ‹- each show Nietzsche's metaphysics in one respect, but each determining the whole. [...] What is 'nihilism' in Nietzsche's sense can only be known if we understand at the same time and in its context what is 'revaluation of all previous values', what 'will to power', what 'eternal return of the same', what the ›superman‹ is. "
"If we do not think in terms of developing a question that is capable of comprehending the doctrine of the eternal return of the same, of the will to power and these two doctrines in their innermost context as a unified revaluation, and if we do not move on to this basic question at the same time in its course as something necessary for Western metaphysics, then we will never grasp Nietzsche's philosophy, and we understand nothing of the 20th century and the centuries to come, we understand nothing of what our metaphysical task is. "
Heidegger criticized that Nietzsche remains stuck in value thinking and thus does not find his way out of metaphysics because he does not ask the basic question of the being of beings.
“But Nietzsche understands the metaphysics of the will to power precisely as overcoming nihilism. Indeed, as long as nihilism is understood only as the devaluation of the highest values and the will to power is thought of as the principle of the revaluation of all values from a re-establishment of the highest values, the metaphysics of the will to power is an overcoming of nihilism. But in this overcoming, value thinking becomes a principle. "
Ultimately, Heidegger sees Nietzsche as an affirmation of nihilism, even if a new nihilism arises after the revaluation of all values. He himself strove for a reversal that goes beyond:
"Now, however, there is a need for the great reversal that is beyond all 'revaluation of all values', that reversal in which not beings are founded from human beings, but humanity from being."
Karl Löwith referred to the skeptical approach on which Nietzsche's philosophy is based:
“The basic experimental character of Nietzsche's philosophy also determines the special meaning of his criticism and skepticism : Both are in the service of testing. His criticism is an 'attempt' to reevaluate all previous values and his skepticism is that of 'daring' masculinity. "
The attribution of the revaluation of all values by religion as the starting point for cultural decline has been taken up on the side of theology and partially absorbed and turned positively for its own understanding. “Can one even imagine a greater revaluation of values than that which was revealed in Jesus Christ?” Adolf von Harnack reversed the meaning of Nietzsche's criticism when he demanded: “Learn from the gospel of Jesus to become superhuman - not in the sense that my compatriot thought when he used the word for those who grow up at the expense of others. [...] But you will do it by revaluing all values so that [...] he who gives his life truly wins it. "In this sense, Gottfried Traub also expresses himself:" The revaluation of all values begins, when the highest value, the only value is "God". "
literature
In addition to the general descriptions of Nietzsche's philosophy, the following are particularly concerned with:
- Karl Brose: slave morality. Nietzsche's social philosophy . Bonn 1990
- Nicolai von Bubnoff: Friedrich Nietzsche's cultural philosophy and doctrine of revaluation . Leipzig 1924
- Jörg Salaquarda: Revaluation of all values . In: Archive for Conceptual History, Vol. 22. Bonn 1978. pp. 154–174.
- Andreas Urs Sommer : What (s) creates the revaluation of all values? On Nietzsche's creativity myths . In: Oliver Krüger u. a. (Ed.): Myths of Creativity: the creative between innovation and hubris, Frankfurt 2003, 196-206.
- Max Werner Vogel: About Nietzsche's concept of value and the revaluation of all values . In: ders .: Nietzsche's back of the head. Essen 1995, pp. 49-71
Web links
- Georges Goedert: From Nietzsche's "Umwertung aller Werthe" (PDF; 98 kB): Aspects of his criticism of Christianity
Individual evidence
- ^ Martin Heidegger: Holzwege, Klostermann, Frankfurt 1994, 223.
- ↑ Volker Gerhard: The morality of immoralism. Nietzsche's contribution to a foundation of ethics. In: Günter Abel and Jörg Salaquarda (eds.): Krisis der Metaphysik, de Gruyter, Berlin 1989, 417-447, and Andreas Urs Sommer: Umwertung der Werthe, in: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche-Handbuch. Life - Work - Effect, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, pp. 345–346.
- ^ Marcin Milkowski: Freedom as ethics in Nietzsche. In: changing times - changing values. International Congress on the 100th anniversary of Friedrich Nietzsche's death, ed. by Renate Reschke, Akademie, Berlin 2001, 335-338.
- ↑ David Marc Hoffmann: On the history of the Nietzsche archive: Chronicle, studies and documents, de Gruyter, Berlin 1991, 118.
- ^ Oswald Spengler: Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich 1918, 448-449.
- ↑ Georg Simmel: The war and the intellectual decisions. Speeches and Essays (1917). In: Complete Edition, Volume 16, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / Main 1999, 7-58, 17.
- ↑ Heinrich Rickert: The Philosophy of Life, Mohr, Tübingen 1920, 185-186.
- ^ Nikolai Hartmann: Ethik, de Gruyter, Berlin 1925, 46-47.
- ↑ Quoted from: Joop Wekking: Studies on the Reception of the National Socialist Weltanschauung in the denominational periodicals of the Netherlands 1933-1940, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1990, 342.
- ^ Foreword to Joseph Goebbels: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, Munich 1934, 7; quoted from: Dieter Rebentisch: Constitutional change and administrative state before and after the National Socialist seizure of power. In: Gerhard Schulz, Jürgen Heideking, Gerhard Hufnagel, Franz Knipping (eds.): Paths into contemporary history: Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Gerhard Schulz, de Gruyter, Berlin 1989, 123–150, 136.
- ^ Ernst Cassirer: Vom Mythus des Staates [1949], Meiner, Hamburg 2002, 375.
- ^ Martin Heidegger: Holzwege, Klostermann, Frankfurt 1994, 223.
- ^ Martin Heidegger: Nietzsche II, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1980, 40.
- ^ Martin Heidegger: Nietzsche I, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1980, 25-26.
- ^ Martin Heidegger: Holzwege, Klostermann, Frankfurt 1994, 259.
- ^ Martin Heidegger: Contributions to Philosophy (from the event), HGA Volume 65, Klostermann, Frankfurt 2003, 184.
- ↑ Karl Löwith: Nietzsche's philosophy of the eternal return of the same, Berlin 1935 (2nd edition 1956), 16.
- ↑ Kurt Koch: Being a window for God. Saint Paul 2002, 245.
- ↑ Adolf von Harnackk: How should one study history, especially the history of religion? Theses and transcripts of a lecture on October 19, 1910 in Christiana / Oslo, ed. by Christoph Markschies, in: Zeitschrift für neuere Theologiegeschichte 2 (1995), 148–159, 159.
- ↑ Gottfried Traub: Ethics and Capitalism. Basics of a Social Ethics, BiblioBezaar 2008, 68.
- ↑ cf. Brian Pools: Nicolai from Bubnoff. His cultural-philosophical view of Russian emigration, in Karl Schlögel Hg .: Russian Emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European Civil War. Oldenbourg Akademie, Munich 1995 ISBN 3050028017 pp. 279-294
