Nietzsche was a psychologist, above all. Not in the modern sense, but what interested him the most was how we humans tend to make cocoons around ourselves, in the name of morality. These limit us in various ways, for instance in terms of perspective, in terms of action and also in the sense that we ourselves start to apply the same limitations to others.

In Will to Power, Nietzsche constantly pursues as strategy to “break everything open”. This is the entire underlying logic that can be found in this book. The problem he finds is twofold, however:

1. To break open human experience to other kinds of interpretations, apart from that of morality leads to a kind of explosive destruction of what exists. This is akin to splitting the atom.
2. Breaking things open in this way does not allow human structures to remain, or to develop, in such a way that one could exert one’s “will to power” over them.

One might look at it in this way: in the first instance, individual humans are released from the constraints of morality, and can pursue their own “will to power”.

BUT! Human society is made of a collective. It is not per se “individualistic”. Therefore, one needs to maintain the existing moral structures, if one is to stand above them. One is not to criticize them, but to conserve them. So here we encounter an extreme philosophical inconsistency, which no doubt Nietzsche tried to resolve for the rest of his life (like the proverbial skydiver who couldn’t find his rip cord and spent the rest of his life looking for it).

Be that as it may, at the level of a psychological analysis of the limitations imposed by moral reasoning, Nietzsche did not put a foot wrong. It’s just that he couldn’t make a philosophy out of it, at least not one that is coherent. Perhaps this is as it needs to be. His insights, taken independently from each other are still extremely liberating.

The two opposing aims that caused Nietzsche so much trouble are, however, liberating in different ways. On the one side (point 1) it can become very clear (at least it is to me) that moral reasoning can stop us from seeing how deeply we are all entrenched in political circumstances. These two forms or reasoning — moral and political — tend to take us in very opposite directions in terms of how we think about the world, and those who are too invested in the moral style of reasoning will generally be blinded as to how much politics enfolds us. (They will claim otherwise, but the evidence points to the contrary.)

Regarding the strategy entailed in point two, the desire is to create a sense of theodicy, of all being well, and of everything having its place. Once again, this sense of being at peace with “how things are” is absolutely necessary, psychologically, if one is to have one’s own peace of mind.

-In all the difficulties Nietzsche had, in creating a philosophy, can be understood in the light of trying to do the best thing possible for a human being to do, but not having the tools already at his disposal. (These had to be invented or “come up with”.)

I can understand, deeply, Nietzsche’s struggle, because in many ways it has been like my own. I’ve also had political mechanisms used against me, whilst being blindsided by them because I was in my own moral cocoon. I’ve also taken immense efforts to break out (and each time been rewarded by that, with better health, and greater creativity). Every instance of backsliding on my part, toward a moral paradigm has led to a severe decline in my health.

I also understand Nietzsche’s benev

Well, this very morning I read the opposite opinion from Nietzsche. He said that a specific brand of very highly intellectual people (such as himself) would be able to gain more from the sensual world than those who had a “fleshy heart” (in other words, more than out-and-out sensualists). But he also made it very clear that subscribing to thinner and more abstract moral notions took one in the wrong direction. It just made things thinner and more abstract.

To put it in other words, “a real piece of art is NOT a window into the transcendent” (especially since there is no particular realm of being that is in itself “transcendent”). But rather, a really great piece of art reunites us with “the terrible and questionable aspects of existence”, in that it makes us realize that we need to incorporate these terrible things as part of what it means to be human and alive.

Have a look at the different parts of the sentence. The subject is right at the beginning, usually a pronoun like “I”. This “I” might “see” (verb) “something”. The thing that “I” see is the “object”.

Things get a bit trickier, however, from this point on, because there are many different philosophical positions on what is “subjective” and “objective”. An extremely common, but fallacious notion, is that “objectivity” is superior to “subjectivity”. Another extremely common notion is that “other people” (generally defined as onlookers, or in other instances as the masses) are necessarily “objective”, whereas one is oneself “merely” subjective, when describing one’s situation or point of view.

The fallacy here is “equivocation”, because it is based on a trick of grammar. That is to say, if “I” (that is, myself) appear in the “subject” part of the the sentence, then “I” (once again my actual self) must be lacking in true knowledge (i.e. devoid of “objectivity”, but only because I am the (grammatical) subject” in this particular sentence.

This is why when I “self-report”, for instance “I saw this…” “I noticed this…” or “I heard this…” one may tend to be a bit disbelieved, or treated with caution or suspicion. On the other hand, so long as others are attributed a passive role — for instance, as observers of my action, they can be deemed to have possession of the truth about any matter.

In the end, it seems that we are all easily fooled, and often, just because of the way in which we are obliged to construct sentences. We falsely equate the capacity to DO something with the capacity to be deceived about “the truth”. And at the same time we also simultaneously falsely equate the relatively passivity of spectatorship as if it could, by virtue of being passive, claim ownership of “objective truth”.

Not in itself, no. But words can mesmerize us, because the way we hear them can seem so absolute and even set in stone. (Another word for this is “metaphysical”.)

The problem with any human language, but especially with one that has taken on a quality of being “universal”, like English, is that when we apply words to our experiences, we an be misled by the feeling that we have, that the words OUGHT to be universal, and OUGHT to be capable of directly “getting at” something. Alas, this is not true.

What happens instead is that when I, for instance, mention my experiences, the other party who is listening in turn scans their own immediate environment (and perhaps their past memories) for similar experiences. When they hear my words, they then apply their meanings to the situations of their own environment, rather than to mine.

This is problematic indeed, because their experience (no matter how interesting and important) can never be my experience. But language nonetheless can seem to cast a spell, which temporarily equates the two things, and makes them seem to be unified or “one”. (And this is not so much a problem where one already shares similar cultures, experiences, and values, but becomes really of significance when the cultures, values, experiences and ideas are not already similar enough to be justify being deemed “the same”.)

Anyway, there is no doubt that on occasion the tricks of language can catch us up in other people’s issues of “conscience”. But this, that I have been describing above is more an issue of “consciousness” than, more narrowly, of “conscience”.