Marx and Nietzsche: A Critical Analysis of Power, Morality, and Alienation
Historical materialism.
2.2. In the social production of their existence, humans enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; relations of production which correspond to a certain degree of development of material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the general process of social, political, and spiritual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, conversely, their social being that determines their consciousness.
Karl Marx,Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, prologue
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Life and the will to power. The Apollonian and Dionysian.
2.3. “What value do our moral evaluations and tables of goods have? What will determine their sustainability? Who? Compared to what? Answer: a life. But what is life? Here, there is a need for a new and more accurate concept of life. My formula is this: life is the will to power. What is a moral value in itself? Do they refer to another world, a metaphysical world? Answer: Moral values are an explanation, a kind of interpretation. The same explanation is a symptom of a specific physiological state, and also of a certain level of dominant drives.”
Nietzsche,On the Genealogy of Morality, 254.
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“The rebellion of slaves in morality begins when ressentiment becomes creative and even generates values: the resentment of those beings who are prohibited from true reaction, the reaction of action, and whose revenge is merely imaginary revenge. While all noble morality springs from a triumphant “yes” said to itself, the morality of slaves says “no” at the outset, a “no” to an “other,” an “I” and this is what constitutes its creative action. This reversal of the gaze that re-establishes values is necessary to turn outward instead of turning inward; precisely ressentiment: to be born, slave morality always needs the other as an opposite and external; it is necessary, speaking physiologically, external stimuli in order to act at all; its action is, at root, reaction.”
Friedrich Nietzsche,On the Genealogy of Morality, first essay, section 10.
Understanding and explanation of the text’s theme.
The essay also develops the following topic: Nihilism in Nietzsche.
“The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and spiritual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, conversely, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.”
Karl Marx,Preface to the Critique of Political Economy.
Understanding and explanation of the text’s theme.
The essay also develops the following topic: Alienation: Economic Alienation.
2.3. “Radical nihilism is the conviction that there is absolutely nothing to be said for the highest values that have been recognized, and that we have no right to constitute a ‘beyond’ or ‘itself’ of things—it is the divine moral truth. This conclusion is a consequence of the ‘will to truth’ instilled in man, or it is a consequence of faith in morality.”
Friedrich Nietzsche,Will to Power, 24.
Understanding and explanation of the text’s theme.
The essay also develops the following topic:The doctrine of the Superman.
The following excerpt from Nietzsche composes a text on the subject:Critique of Western Culture (Metaphysics, Morality, and Religion).
How the “real world” finally became a fable. The story of an error.
1. The real world, attainable to the wise, the pious, the virtuous—this is the real world. (The earliest form of the idea, relatively naive, simple, convincing. A transcription of the proposition “I, Plato, am the truth.”)
2. The real world, unattainable for now, but promised to the wise, the pious, the virtuous (“the sinner doing penance”) (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more slippery, more elusive—it becomes a woman, it becomes Christian…)
3. The real world, unattainable, undemonstrable, unpromisable, but thought of as a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (Essentially the old sun, seen more dimly through the mist of skepticism; the idea becomes sublime, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian)
4. The real world—unattainable? In any case, unattained. What is unattained is also unknown.
As a result, neither comforter, redeemer, obliging, nor able to force something unknown? … (Gray morning. Yawning. First reason. The cock crows: positivism)
5. The “real world”—an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that is no longer even desired—an idea that has become useless, superfluous, a refuted idea: let us eliminate it! (Bright day; breakfast; the return of common sense and joy; the flushing of Plato; the devilish roar of all free spirits)
6. We have eliminated the real world: what world was it? The apparent world, perhaps? … Of course! With the real world, we have also eliminated the apparent world! (Noon; the moment of the shortest shadow; the end of the long error; the apogee of humanity: incipit Zarathustra).
Friedrich Nietzsche,Twilight of the Idols.
The meaning of alienation in Marx and its forms.
2.2. “Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man, into the relation of man to himself. But the relation of man to himself is nothing other than the relation of man to the world. Feuerbach’s mistake is that he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary,’ ‘practical-critical’ activity. Feuerbach reduces the religious act to the act of self-consciousness, to the act of self-alienation. But the act of self-alienation is itself a practical act. The religious world is only a reflection of the real world. The abolition of the religious world is therefore the abolition of the real world. The criticism of religion is therefore the criticism of the profane world.”
Karl Marx,Theses on Feuerbach XI, IV.
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Nihilism and the transmutation of values.
2.3. We, who are of another faith, we who regard the democratic movement not merely as a form of political decadence, but as a form of decadence that diminishes man, that makes him mediocre, and that degrades his value—where do we go with our hopes? The new philosophers, the spirits strong enough to create, evaluate, and re-evaluate, to reverse the “eternal values,” the precursors, the men of the future who will push forward, despite the coercion of thousands of years, toward new paths. To teach man that man’s future is his will, that it depends on human will, and to prepare for great risks and global tests of discipline and selection to end that awful field of nonsense and accident that until now has been called “history.” The absurdity of the “greatest good” is merely its latest form.
Friedrich Nietzsche,Beyond Good and Evil, 203.