Necessity and Value

Last class Dr. J mentioned an asphorism from The Gay Science about necessity. Here's a part of that asphorism:

"But how could we presume to blame or praise the universe? Let us be on our guard against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites; it is neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man! It is altogether unaffected by our aesthetic and moral judgments! Neither has it any self-preservative instinct, nor instinct at all; it also knows no law. Let us be on our guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. When you know that there is no design, you know also that there is no chance: for it is only where there is a world of design that the word 'chance' has a meaning" (Book III, paragraph 109).

Nietzsche's point here is similar to the one he makes in the Geneology of Morals about the strong acting strong and the weak acting week. It is absurd (says Nietzsche) to fault the strong for being strong. It is who they are. In both texts, what Neitzsche is basically saying is that there is no such thing as an 'ought' claim, only 'is' claims. Saying something ought to be a certain way can be true regardless of whether that thing is that way or not. For Neitzsche, this is complete fiction. We may be able to imagine the ability to make such claims, but they have no relationship to the real world. According to this logic, morality is meaningless because it prescribes normative claims about the way we should act.

By arguing this, Nietzsche’s critique goes beyond the current ‘slavish’ moral systems we have today. Yes, asking the strong to be weak is absurd, but in a way, so is asking them to be strong. If Nietzsche is right, then ‘asking’ to do anything is not appropriate, regardless of what we are asking. The insight that ‘there are only necessities’ not only questions the legitimacy of slave morality, but also any kind morality in general. It questions the possibility of values in general. If everything is necessity, then my choosing to value something as good or bad (or any other value for that matter) is also a necessity. In this way, the noble morality falls into a similar problem if it is articulated as the principle ‘might is right’ or ‘might determines right.’ What this principle assumes is that the strong deserve to make choices about what good and bad mean. But this is just as problematic as allowing the weak to determine good and evil.

Perhaps this is why in addition to warning us that we shouldn’t think of the world as perfect, eautiful, or noble, we should also “guard against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason.” The universe is neither organized nor unorganized, it just is. This appears to me to be a very strange metaphysical stance. It seems like such a world is devoid of any meaning. While many have argued that Nietzsche is a nihilist, Nietzsche himself says that nihilism is one of the worst consequences of slave morality and is something he wants to avoid.

How can Nietzsche advocate for a particular way of looking at the world when there is only necessity? Nietzsche often uses medical metaphors, arguing that people in the modern world are ‘sick.’ How can Nietzsche make a judgment claim about sickness? Why not prefer sickness to health? Sickness, after all, is a natural phenomenon. Isn’t it ‘necessary’ for people in the modern world to be sick?