The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche · en
To put it more simply, Nietzsche offers the gospel of prudent and
intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter individualism. "One
must learn," sang Zarathustra, "how to love oneself, with a whole and
hearty love, that one may find life with oneself endurable, and not go
gadding about. This gadding about is familiar: it is called loving
one's neighbor.'"[3] His ideal was an aristocracy which regarded the
proletariat merely as a conglomeration of draft animals made to be
driven, enslaved and exploited. "A good and healthy aristocracy,"
he said, "must acquiesce, with a good conscience, in the sacrifice
of a legion of individuals, who, for its benefit, must be reduced
to slaves and tools. The masses have no right to exist on their own
account: their sole excuse for living lies in their usefulness as a
sort of superstructure or scaffolding, upon which a more select race
of beings may be elevated."[4] Rejecting all permanent rules of good
and evil and all notions of brotherhood, Nietzsche held that the
aristocratic individualist--and it was to the aristocrat only that he
gave, unreservedly, the name of human being--must seek every possible
opportunity to increase and exalt his own sense of efficiency, of
success, of mastery, of power. Whatever tended to impair him, or to
decrease his efficiency, was bad. Whatever tended to increase it--at
no matter what cost to others--was good. There must be a complete
surrender to the law of natural selection--that invariable natural law
which ordains that the fit shall survive and the unfit shall perish.
All growth must occur at the top. The strong must grow stronger, and
that they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain task of
trying to lift up the weak.