The Problem with Nietzsche

I was browsing Casey Woolf’s Facebook page several months ago when I stumbled upon the following quote:

      Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
                Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find the entire idea of an “instinctive morality” highly disturbing.  If we are to shrink and over-simplify our entire moral code down to the existence of a single instinct, we do great harm to its purpose and application.  

First, let us establish what our “herd instinct” truly is.  After searching for a few hours, I have been unable to come up with a succinct definition as defined by psychologists.  It just so happens we cannot really agree about something so primal.  Nonetheless, there are two general attributes that I will attempt to establish.  A working definition of the instinct is as follows:

   1.  An instinct or inclination in people and/or animals to believe or think or behave like [or for] the majority.[1]
   2.  Stems from the desire to belong & to be accepted by the herd and reap respective benefits.

Now that we have some sort of idea of what this “herd instinct” implies, let us approach an alternative to Nietzsche’s argument:

        Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know

what it feels like to be prompted by instinct – by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires – one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to runaway. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely keys.
            C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I will first attempt to clarify the fundamental difference between Nietzsche’s and Lewis’s ideas of morality and then assert my position on which is the more reasonable.  

In sum, Nietzsche is presenting a view of morality that is entirely instinctive.  His point is that altruism, defined as a “disinterested and selfless concern for others” by the New Oxford American Dictionary, stems entirely from the fact that we are social creatures.  There is “safety in numbers,” so we will logically do whatever is possible to maintain that security – for ourselves and for our children.  Many evolutionary biologists claim that this is the result of “instincts and intuitions that were selected for in the past because they aided survival and reproduction”[2].  Makes sense, right?

In contrast, Lewis asserts that while we do have instinctive behaviors, they are too primal to explain away our rather complicated moral code.  Our “herd instinct” largely developed – I would conjecture – by the evolutionary processes described above.  It’s sound Darwinian science.  It is, however, only addressing one half of the equation.  Let us revisit Lewis for just a moment:

        [We] sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But [wanting] to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not.

Let us examine this in a practical application.  I will take the same plot that Lewis presents, but I will attempt to flesh it out a bit more.  Hopefully this will make a rather dry subject more intimate, but my point is still serious.
       
        Enter – Scott Reed.  (Only because he so happened to be sitting beside me when I drafted this essay.)  Scott is a rather decent fellow, much like any other man.  He enjoys a good steak – preferably a hearty fillet cooked medium-well and slightly singed on both sides, a baked potato – cooked to perfection in the heat of an oven and immediately served with a bit of butter, a dollop of sour cream, and a few bits of bacon, and a good bottle of pop – usually of the faux-fruit variety.  He’s an ample chap of great ambitions, appetites, and aspirations for all things good, noble, and bold.  Until one day  ... one fateful day.

        We find our dearest Scott sitting in his big, purple chair under his big, purple umbrella enjoying a big, [not purple] baked potato, adorned with its characteristic butter, sour cream, and mechanically-processed not-so-bacon bacon bits.  He squeezes the sand between his toes and inhales the deep, clean, salty air as seagulls flutter above heralding the arrival of eventide.  The sun slowly disappears from view, gracefully setting beneath the horizon with its last beams of light reflecting off of the calm ocean waves.  

        Then – he hears it: the sound that will change his life forever.  It is the blood-curdling, eardrum-bursting, nails-down-a-chalkboard, damsel-in-distress wail of a woman!  There she is, floating out in the middle of the vast, glassy plane of water, her black silhouette visible in contrast to the red-orange sun behind her.  The fin of a shark slowly orbits around her.  In his horror, Scott’s instincts take over:

And this is where the story gets a little more fun.  (Who doesn’t love a healthy helping of Scott Reed anyway?)  I am going to present two separate endings for this story, sort of like one of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books except a bit less interactive.  Here goes!

ENDING ONE
        He finishes his baked potato.  After all, if Scott is going to go do battle with a bunch of sharks, he had better have enough energy to fight them!  Now finished with all of that finger-licking goodness, Scott springs into action.  And then, he freezes, standing at the water’s edge.  Stunned by fear, he scrambles to find someone else to do the job.  No one is around, however; the beach is oddly vacant, and the lifeguards have all retired for the evening.  Nonetheless, game is still afoot.  The woman’s screams grow louder and more desperate with each passing moment.

        Scott’s mind races.  He is sore afraid.  If he decides to save her, he will have helped another human being.  However, he could also lose his life.  Both of them could lose their lives!  With this revelation, the futility of his help overwhelms him.  It’s simply not worth the risk.  After all, he has lots of stuff to do with his life!  He can’t just... die!  After all, Scott likes living – and baked potatoes.

        Luckily enough for Scott, this woman packs a punch.  With crazy, insane karate moves, she chops that little shark up like broiled flounder.  The woman then swims to the shore and collapses on the sand, completely exhausted from her shark war.  Scott is still standing there, dumbfounded.  But!  He’s alive!  And she’s alive!  Hooray!

        Double hooray, to be precise.  From a completely un-biased, platonic, narrative perspective, this woman is rather attractive.  Scott considers her “darn sexy.”  And there she is, lying on the ground, practically unconscious.  

        Scott figures, “Hey!  What the heck?  There she is.  Here I am.  I’m turned on.”  He proceeds to... well, you can figure it out.  We’ll just say it was a very special kiss.

If you’re disturbed, just think how I feel writing about it!  Misconduct notwithstanding, here is the second scenario.

ENDING TWO
        In his dismay, the paper plate slips out of his hands.  Scott springs into action.  And then, he freezes, standing at the water’s edge.  Stunned by fear, he scrambles to find someone else to do the job.  No one is around, however; the beach is oddly vacant, and the lifeguards have all retired for the evening.  Nonetheless, game is still afoot.  The woman’s screams grow louder and more desperate with each passing moment.

        Scott’s mind races.  He is sore afraid.  If he decides to save her, he will have helped another human being.  However, he could also lose his life.  Both of them could lose their lives!  With this revelation, the futility of his help overwhelms him.  It’s simply not worth the risk.  After all, he has lots of stuff to do with his life!  He can’t just... die!  After all, Scott likes living – and baked potatoes.

        And then something miraculous happens.  Jiminy Cricket jumps right out of the potato!

        “Let your conscience be your guide!” the little cricket exclaims.

        “But I’m just so afraid!  What if I die?  I don’t want to risk my life!  I want to raise a family!”

        “Aren’t you concerned about her safety?”

        “Why should I care about her?  I don’t know her.  She hasn’t ever done anything for me.”

        “But you know that you ought to help her, don’t you, Scott?”

        “Well, she is sort of helpless out there all alone.”

        “Then go save her!”

        And at the urging of this odd little cricket in a suit-and-tie, Scott does just that.  He fights away that shark with all of the strength he can muster!  He then grabs the woman’s waist and swims back to shore.  She is exhausted but still very much alive.  Though it would have been incredibly easy for Scott to have taken advantage of her position, he decides against it – once again, at the behest of Mister Jiminy Cricket.  Scott was finding that this little guy was coming in handy.

So, that ending’s a bit better; wouldn’t you agree?  I understand this was exaggerated, but in order to examine an image pixel-by-pixel, one must zoom-in a bit.  Through this little narrative, we see the two different views of morality:

   1.  Morality based upon INSTINCTS, in which the stronger instinct always wins.
   2.  Morality based upon a TRANSCENDENT LAW, in which one instinct is preferable over the other, even when the instinct is naturally weaker.

To further break this down, Scott faces 2 basic choices/temptations in this story: 1) to save the woman at the possible expense of his own life and 2) to take advantage of the woman.  If morality is as simple as Nietzsche asserts – that all that is necessary is man’s “herd instinct” – then we end up with Ending One.  Because man is inherently selfish, he is predisposed to favor his “instinct of self-preservation” over his “herd instinct.”  Without anything more, that’s where we stand.

By adding our consciences – or what Lewis terms “The Law of Human Nature” – to the equation, we have a new realm of possible outcomes.  Though Scott’s “herd instinct” is weaker than his “instinct of self-preservation” – and I am not saying that there aren’t some instances in which the reverse would be true – “The Law of Human Nature” tells him that he ought to save the woman even if he doesn’t want to.  

The yellow words explain to us through language what our minds have difficulty understanding through pure reason.  Our instincts tell us what we want to do.  Our morals tell us what we ought to do, even if we don’t want to.  As I hinted above, I am not asserting that there are times when we want to do something moral, such as saving the woman.  This, however, is not "The Law of Human Nature" and is largely context-driven.  There are plenty of wonderful stories about heroes.  I promise you, however, that there are just as many stories about people who now wonder, “What would’ve happened if...”

Thus, I hope I have made a competent case for “The Law of Human Nature” being distinct from our “herd instinct,” as Nietzsche suggests.  Want and ought are two entirely different concepts.

There are those, however, who would agree that morality is more than a mere “herd instinct” but that it merely evolved like our other features.  (This is usually called “evolutionary ethics” or “sociobiology.”)  Proponents of this school of thought (morality = biologically evolved in some way) explain altruistic behavior away by saying it’s an attractive quality for a mate, therefore fitting into the Darwinistic idea of “survival (and/or propagation) of the fittest.”

I beg to differ.  First, the problems with the “survival of the fittest” explanation:

Foremost, this does not account for radically altruistic things done either without hope of reward or in secret.  Case in point? St. Maximillian Kolbe [3], a Roman Catholic priest from Poland also known as Auschwitz I “prisoner #16670,” who volunteered to take the place of a man selected for execution, starving himself until he was finally killed with an injection of carbolic acid.  Let us keep mind that Social Darwinism – the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals [4] – is the embodiment of “Darwinian Morality” executed in society.  We saw it implemented in Nazi Germany, but did we call it moral?  Of course not.  They oughtn’t have done what they did.

Explaining the existence of morality away via “the propagation of the fittest” (if you’re a good person, you have better chances of finding a mate with whom to reproduce and “propagate”) does not fair any better.  In his play Man and

Superman [5], George Bernard Shaw argues that we are driven by an eternal quest for the “Life Force.”  Men and women – but particularly women according to Shaw – are constantly sizing people up as mates.  (Notice: “mate,” not partner or husband)  In their most unadulterated state-of-mind, women are still searching for a testosterone-driven male because it is a woman’s primal belief/breeding/instinct to go after a character we would call a “bad boy.”  This is because the “bad boy” is the meanest, strongest, most passionate, most likely to succeed, and most capable of killing in order to protect her; this is the person who help her continue reproducing.  “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” accepted by religious and humanist leaders alike [6] as the “sum of human morality,” does not mesh well with qualities oft-sought by the “Life Force.”  Therefore, the “propagation of the fittest” argument for morality falls through.

Here’s my point: seeing an “evolution of thought” (in this case, the philosophic understanding of morality) does not make the thought a product of “biological evolution.”  I agree – as does C. S. Lewis – that “The Law of Human Nature” has a biological element (the keys on the keyboard).  It is not, however, biology.  It is philosophy.  To say anything less is to grievously over-simplify.

In conclusion, consider the words of Thomas Huxley – a man renowned as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his passionate support of Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution.

"The propounders of what are called the "ethics of evolution," when the "evolution of ethics" would usually better express the object of their speculations, adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before." [7]

Thank you for taking the time to step through this issue with me!  I pray you are in some way affected.  (Negative or positive, either is preferable to apathy.)  May all have a blessed holiday season and a Merry Christmas!

And may Almighty God, by whose providence our Savior Christ came among us in great humility, sanctify you with the light of his blessing and set you free from all sin. [8] Amen.

FOOTNOTES

[1] This is the definition given by the New Oxford American Dictionary and defines “applied” herd instincts.

[2] This definition is actually the result of a conversation with Ethan Fulwood; thanks Ethan!  The precise wording of the phrase comes from an excellent Wikipedia article on the subject.

[3] This example is cited by The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy published by the University of Tennessee at Martin.  More information about St. Kolbe and his incredible story is available at Wikipedia (click the link).

[4] This is the definition given by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

[5] My thanks to Mrs. Jean Burkhart for her assistance here.  have simply paraphrased and edited some of her thoughts.  The content largely belongs to her.

[6] This is also known as the “Golden Rule.”  As for a religious perspective: Matt. 22:37-40 – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’  As for a humanistic perspective, see Michael Shermer’s (editor-in-chief of Skeptic Magazine and director of the Skeptics Society) affirmation during PBS’s “The Question of God.” [ Transcript ]

[7] This quote is from Thomas Huxley’s Evolutionary Ethics, 1893.

[8] This is an Advent blessing in the Anglican tradition.  May your darkness end with Light.