Otterites, I have returned! Been a busy couple of Mondays but I’m carving out time to post and stir up shit. I tend to be good at it.

I have been looking into more on Nietzsche and morality, and it is some complicated business. Remember, he explicitly rejects religious and especially Christian notions of morality and ethics. To further complicate matters, for Nietzsche there is no absolute truth either. Everything is based in perspectives. One of his most famous aphorisms is that truth is a function of power. Those who have power, who control how narratives are presented, are the ones who get to decide what the truth is. Therefore it is a hollow base on which to build an ethical system, and for Freddie, the Christian moral system collapsed into that hole already.

As Otterites know, context is meaningful. It isn’t everything, but our times, their customs and mores, shape our perspectives. Freddie was living in a period of admiration for “great men”. Men like Napoleon and Bismarck had remade Europe. Creativity, courageousness, and power were the attributes of the higher beings. Fear, weakness, banality were the traits of lesser creatures.

Individuality and non-conformism was critical for Fred, as these were the paths to higher ethics, and being above the herd in a meritorious way. These are of course part of his famous master vs. slave moral concepts. These are seriously loaded terms in our world today, rightly so, but if we can step back from the charged meanings in today’s discourse, I think Fred was driving for something called “aristocratic radicalism”. A radical individualism that wasn’t about license, or doing what felt good without societal disapproval, but instead a radical individualism geared toward growth, achievement and making the most of one’s abilities. Values like equality of outcomes, sharing with others, charity, these are the values of the weak, who seek revenge on those whom they feel have wronged them. Envy, covetousness, these were the failings of the herd.

Now, all sorts of nastiness lies down this path, and you can’t separate intent from results. Even weirder to try to take these ideas and make a political system from them. Still, Nietzsche feels almost incomplete, like he didn’t finish his thoughts and everything is still a bit fuzzy. His thought emerged over time, and really he wasn’t striving to develop a cogent, comprehensive moral theory. He was commenting on his era and how he felt it should continue to develop. And trying to work toward a political or social theory from his writings is difficult and contradictory. Hard to shake the kaleidoscope into any kind of real picture.

Still, old Fred is fascinating and I’m seriously a neophyte moral philosopher and this brief dip of the metaphorical toe doesn’t come close to covering the ground Nietzsche laid out before us.

You guys realize that I do this to make sure I’m stirring up Robert and Francis right? I’m just still in awe of Freddie’s boss moustache.