Nietzsche: Morality and "Great Politics" (1973) by Alain de Benoist

Originally written under the pseudonym “Robert de Herte,” Alain de Benoist’s "Nietzsche: Morality and Great Politics" delves deeply into Friedrich Nietzsche's revolutionary critique of morality and its intersections with politics. The work examines how Nietzsche dismantled traditional moral frameworks, revealing their origins in societal power dynamics and cultural constructs rather than inherent truths. Nietzsche challenges the conventional dichotomies of "good" and "evil," arguing that morality serves as a tool for the powerful to assert dominance or for the weak to exact revenge on strength through ressentiment.

The text also explores Nietzsche's concept of "great politics," which envisions a transformative, Europe-wide renaissance led by an elite capable of transcending mediocrity and egalitarianism. This future hinges on the emergence of the Übermensch, a figure embodying self-overcoming, creativity, and the will to power. Benoist connects Nietzsche’s philosophical ambitions to the broader historical and cultural crises of the modern era, emphasizing the philosopher’s enduring relevance in critiquing the moral and political structures of contemporary society.

Translated by Alexander Raynor

About 13500 words

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction

• Nietzsche and the Genealogy of Morality

• Nietzsche’s "Great Politics"

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Introduction

"It is the fundamental idea of Greco-Roman wisdom that man cannot save himself alone. He must enroll in a school. He must undergo initiation. Those whose initiator is Friedrich Nietzsche are truly blessed by the gods."
— Gabriel Matzneff

Through his critique of morality, Nietzsche created something remarkably innovative, to an extent that remains underappreciated today: he questioned what once seemed self-evident. Before him, morality exerted a terrible seductive power; it was the "Circe of philosophers." It was spoken of as a natural fact, eternal, valid in all times and places. The value of moral values was considered "given, real, beyond all questioning." Nietzsche realized that this "fact" had only relative consistency. "Good and evil," he writes, "have been the subject of the poorest reflection thus far" (Dawn). He therefore chose to investigate "the value of this medicine, the most famous of all, called morality."

At first glance, the emperor has no clothes. Questioning the value of morality already frames the moral fact as plural. Classical, institutionalized morality is but one morality among others, one that has overthrown others to impose itself.

The entire distinction between "moral" and "immoral" is already based on the erroneous idea that every act is "freely spontaneous." However, "there are no moral acts, no immoral acts" (The Will to Power, vol. 2). There are only acts classified as such by moralities according to their preferences: "There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena" (Beyond Good and Evil).

The great crime of moralists, in Nietzsche's view, was providing suffering with a poisonous explanation: if one suffers, it is because one has committed a fault, a sin. "Innocence has been taken away from suffering," he writes in The Will to Power (vol. 1). At the same time, priests "stigmatized all intense pleasures as sinful and seductive," "lent the most sacred names to feelings of weakness," "perverted love into self-abandonment (and altruism)," "saw greatness as denial," and "treated life as punishment, happiness as temptation, passion as something diabolical, and self-confidence as impious" (ibid.).

This helps explain why, contrary to popular belief, "morality" is not in decline. Our era is characterized by the collapse of human distance (both literally and figuratively), as a hallmark of social energy. This collapse reflects contemporary humanity’s inability to be tough (starting with themselves). Nietzsche also saw it as evidence of morality's progress. The inability to be tough, he writes, reveals "a different, later, weaker, more delicate constitution that necessarily produces a morality full of consideration… We live in an age of weakness. This weakness produces and demands our virtues" (Twilight of the Idols).

Nietzsche did not reject all morality. In fact, he despised disbelief, which he did not confuse with skepticism, critical spirit, or rejection of false values, etc.

"I do not deny," he emphasizes, "as is self-evident, that it is necessary to avoid and combat many actions deemed immoral; just as it is necessary to carry out and encourage many deemed moral. But I believe we must do these things for reasons different from those used so far. We must change our way of seeing—so that, perhaps very late, we can finally change our way of feeling" (Dawn). This is a pivotal statement often overlooked by Nietzsche’s critics.

Nietzsche’s critique of morality is immediately tied to "politics." It is a kind of prelude to action, which explains the inclusion of the following two texts under one cover. Destroy to rebuild: the place does not change.

Friedrich Nietzsche himself emphasized the correlation between these two fundamental aspects of his work. It is, he says, "from the chaos following the fall of false gods that unity and the regeneration of Europe will emerge" (Ecce Homo).

Disillusioned by his era, he preached for the future—the age of the Übermensch, who would both continue and contradict humanity, characterized by "amorality," sovereign power, splendor, solitude, and joy. But this future is not beyond reach. It will only have meaning if it becomes part of the everyday. Zarathustra proclaims: "I love those who do not seek, beyond the stars, a reason to perish or sacrifice themselves, but who instead sacrifice themselves for the earth so that one day, on earth, the reign of the Übermensch may come."

Nietzsche expressed his faith in 20th-century Europe, which he believed would regenerate "after enormous socialist crises" (The Will to Power, vol. 2).

In this future Europe, which he envisioned rising from the golden ruins of merchant society and the crumbling remnants of narrow nationalisms, he foresaw natural alliances and new contours. "There are two kinds of genius," he asserts: "one primarily creative and procreative; the other, which loves to be fertilized and to give birth. Similarly, among peoples of genius, there are those who are destined to the feminine role of gestation and the secret task of shaping, maturing, and perfecting: the Greeks were such a people, as were the French; others feel called to generate and implant new orders in life: such are the Jews, the Romans, and, I ask modestly, perhaps the Germans. These peoples know the torments and ecstasies of unknown fevers. They are irresistibly driven to transcend themselves, enamored of foreign races they desire (those who love to be fertilized) while simultaneously eager to dominate, like all who feel brimming with generative energy and therefore ‘chosen by the grace of God.’ These two kinds of genius seek each other out like men and women but also misunderstand each other like men and women" (Beyond Good and Evil).

The secret of eternal return lies in Stefan George’s 1916 words: "Victors are those who know how to transform themselves."

— “Robert de Herte”

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Nietzsche and the Genealogy of Morality

“We need a critique of moral values. The value of these values must first be questioned. For this, it is absolutely necessary to know the conditions and environments in which they were born, developed, and distorted (morality as consequence, symptom, mask, hypocrisy, illness, or misunderstanding; but also as cause, remedy, stimulus, obstacle, or poison)—knowledge of a kind hitherto unprecedented.”
— The Genealogy of Morality

Many authors have attempted to divide Friedrich Nietzsche's life and work into a few major, significant periods. I will only briefly mention names such as Raoul Richter, Henri Lichtenberger, Lou Andreas-Salomé, and Carl-Albrecht Bernoulli for historical context.

Perhaps the most interesting proposal is that of Charles Andler, who identifies three main eras:

1. The Era of Romantic Pessimism (1869–1875): During this period, Nietzsche, loyal to the spirit of Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, seeks to justify a new system of values through the moral attitudes that higher humanity might adopt toward the world: sanctity, heroism, and the intuition of artistic genius.

2. The Era of Skeptical Positivism (1876–1881): Enriched by new methods of analysis that Nietzsche borrows from French moralists and English utilitarianism, his philosophy dominates his writings during this time. He respects and allows only the freedom of the spirit, bound to a truth that may be terrifying to uncover but which our dignity obliges us to know.

3. The Era of Reconstruction (1882–1888): Freed even from the illusion of eternal truths, Nietzsche dedicates himself to the life-affirming values necessary for life to persist, transform, and grow in strength. He now champions “mythical” values that sustain vitality and courageously faces the life-denying aspects of truth itself.

The Genealogy of Morality (Zur Genealogie der Moral) was written and published in 1887. The book bears the subtitle: “A Polemic. By way of complement and clarification to my most recent book, Beyond Good and Evil” (Eine Streitschrift: Jenseits von Gut und Böse zur Ergänzung und Verdeutlichung beigegeben). Together with Beyond Good and Evil and The Twilight of the Idols, it forms a cohesive body of work.

This was the time when Nietzsche cast aside the mask of Zarathustra and stepped forward himself to reveal the meaning of his enterprise. On November 20, 1888, he wrote to Georg Brandes:
“The work I have here is the curtain-raiser to the Transvaluation of All Values.”

It was also a period of astounding productivity for Nietzsche. In the span of a few months, he wrote Dionysian Dithyrambs, The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, and The Twilight of the Idols. During this whirlwind, he traveled constantly: Zurich, Sils-Maria, Nice, Venice. On January 3, 1889, in Turin, he was found unconscious in the street.

In The Genealogy of Morality, as in The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche “philosophized with a hammer” (mit dem Hammer philosophiert). This imagery was familiar to him; in his earlier drafts for The Will to Power, the hammer had appeared repeatedly as a metaphor. The hammer is used to elicit a distinctive hollow sound, revealing inflated and empty interiors. It forces what seeks silence to speak.