6: Weakness Corrupts

Hello to all you free spirits out there. This is Essential Salt. Checking in from out here on the road. I'm out of town, uh driving through the southwest of the good old US of A for some well needed vacation. But I didn't want to leave uh you with no content, so I went ahead and recorded um a couple extra things before I left. And this is the first um

Of the two that I'm going to release. And so the title of the episode is Weakness Corrupts. And basically I uh you know, I had this idea of a really simple easy formulation for understanding will to power, which is a Nietzschean concept, but i in the form of a psychological principle, particularly understanding it in the psychological domain,

And I came up with this pithy little phrase weakness corrupts absolute weakness corrupts absolutely, which is obviously an inversion of the very popular phrase. Um and this started out I made you know, I think I typed up something on Reddit about this and then I published a medium article that got a very good reception. And so I decided today I'm gonna provide you with the audio form of that medium article. Uh weakness corrupt. uh an edited, a condensed form of the

full essay because it has kind of a superfluous introduction and a superfluous ending. Um, most of which is just sort of basic introductory statements to Nietzsche, which we've covered in other episodes, so um And then after reading the article, I will um give sort of a a little bit of an expansion on uh the concept that I did not cover in the medium article. Uh So without further ado, I give you Weakness Corrupts, by yours truly, read by the Author.

The popular saying goes, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Nietzschean inversion of this popular wisdom is thus weakness corrupts, and absolute weakness corrupts absolutely. This is the basic idea behind the concept of will to power. It is also a summary of Nietzsche's basic contribution to human psychology.

Nietzsche, who wrote that psychology was the route to the most fundamental human questions, is often considered a proto psychologist. He was heavily influential in the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. For the sake of clarity, I must stress that my formulation above is not a direct quote from the works or notes of Friedrich Nietzsche. It is my own coinage, a simple reversal of the popular moral idiom.

As such, we'll now make the case in Nietzsche's own words. In aphorism number three hundred forty eight of the Don, Nietzsche writes One should distinguish well Whoever still wants to gain the consciousness of power will use any means. He, however, who has it, has become very choosy and noble in his tastes. It is through the want of power, to want is to lack, that people commit evil deeds.

Only the impotent person, Nietzsche writes in the Don three hundred seventy one, quote, wishes to hurt and see signs of suffering, end quote. Oftentimes, people lash out and hurt others simply to gain a consciousness of their own power. In Nietzsche's view, true malevolence is actually rather rare. People hurt not for the aim of hurting, but to enjoy the power of hurting.

A person who is secure in himself and in his own character would not need to create suffering, because the truly powerful have no need to demonstrate their power. To the extent that a powerful person does hurt others, Nietzsche says that he does this quote without thinking of it, end quote. Power enobles the mind. Nietzsche thinks a person is actually improved when they are liberated from the trivial concerns and menial tasks.

Kaufmann gives an example of how a noble minded person might cause suffering without thinking of it in his book Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Page one hundred ninety three. A good illustration would be Goethe, whose loves Nietzsche probably had to learn by heart, like most other German students. Goethe, as German teachers like to point out, broke Friederica's heart by lavishing his love upon her and then not marrying her. Here is one of the seeds of the Gretchen tragedy.

Gerta, however, had no thought of seeing the poor girl suffer. Only the weak need to convince themselves and others of their might by inflicting hurt. The truly powerful are not concerned with others, but act out of a fullness and an overflow. End quote. Nietzsche correlated power with qualities like truthfulness, restraint, and discipline.

Power is first and foremost a form of self mastery, and it was the nobility of past ages who were first educated and brought up through a course of mental discipline. Thank you. He correlated weakness, meanwhile, with impulsive behavior, resentment, and self-hatred. We should take note that Nietzsche has therefore associated conventionally moral traits with strength and conventionally immoral traits with weakness.

There is an argument to be made that he's doing this intentionally, as an attack on the Christian morality. Christianity idealizes martyrdom, claims blessed are the poor in spirit, and the meek shall inherit the earth. One aspect of the Nietzschean critique of Christianity is that the Christian appraisal of weakness is backward. That said, Nietzsche is not out to define power as good because it leads to conventionally good traits of character.

On the contrary, Nietzsche is revealing to us that the conditions we think lead to our ideas of goodness are often flawed and tautological. While we think that suffering is good for the soul, or that humility brings character, Nietzsche writes, on the contrary, in the Don five seventy one, quote Medical kit of the soul. What is the strongest healing application? Victory. End quote.

Kaufman's commentary on this passage is as follows This is not a doctor's prescription, as it were, but an improvisation from a medical kit filled epotheck. It is a strong, the strongest medicine, and thus it is dangerous and not to be prescribed generally. End quote. This is because, as Nietzsche writes in Human Alto Human number four hundred and forty four, quote, war makes the vanquished malicious, end quote.

The danger Kaufman mentions is that war also makes the victor stupid, as Nietzsche says in that same passage. A discussion of Nietzsche's views on war would be beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, the relation of these observations to our central point should be clear.

When people are dominated and oppressed, they are not made better on this account, they are made worse. Nietzsche's principal work concerning this idea is on the genealogy of morality. The morality of weakness, or the slave morality, as Nietzsche here calls it, both cultivates resentment and is driven by resentment. Nietzsche uses the French term resentment, which has the same meaning as the English word resentment. In that work, resentment is identified as a psychological poison.

It is characterized by the desire for revenge, which sometimes takes the form of a mere imagination of vengeance, especially in religion. The resentful person does harm, causes suffering. Sometimes he does damage to society and culture. The tragic part is that this is all to no benefit. The resentful person destroys for an imagined benefit the idea of justice in the sense of quote getting even.

Accordingly, Nietzsche says that resentment-based morality is fundamentally outer directed. This type of morality is defined by the enemy, the other, the threat. This is in contrast to the morality of the powerful who are interdirected. Nietzsche writes in Genealogy of Morality The beginning of the slave's revolt in morality occurs when Resentement itself turns creative and gives birth to values.

The resentment of those beings who, denied the power the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying yes to itself, Slave morality says no, on principle, to everything that is outside, other, non self, and this no is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance, this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself, is a feature of Rhizontamum.

In order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing external world. It needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all. Its action is basically a reaction. The opposite is the case with the noble method of valuation. This acts and grows spontaneously, seeking out its opposite, only so that it can say yes to itself even more thankfully and exultantly. Its negative concept low, common, bad,

is only a pale contrast, created after the event, compared to its positive basic concept, saturated with life and passion. We the noble, the good, the beautiful and the happy. End quote.

What are the implications here? Well, first of all, that the ability to be concerned with yourself alone is a privilege of the powerful. Secondly, the desire to cause suffering in others cruelty arises as a condition of weakness. Nietzsche says that love of one's enemy, a Christian virtue, is really only possible among the powerful and or noble.

the meek shepherd does not really have access to the ability to love one's enemy. This is why such a concept becomes so mysterious, divine, and sacred to him, because it is so contrary to his nature. The true nature of the weak is to be vindictive and unproductive in Nietzsche's view. They experience self hatred and engage with the world on the basis of that hatred because they find their power is lacking.

We can therefore reject the characterization of Nietzsche's will to power as merely validating the actions of the powerful. There are definite signs of a nobly minded person. Nietzsche describes the virtues of such a person in one passage in Genealogy Book two Aphorism ten. Quote It is not unthinkable that a society might attain such a consciousness of power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury possible to it, letting those who harm it go unpunished.

What are my parasites to me, it might say? May they live and prosper. I am strong enough for that. This self-overcoming of justice, one knows the beautiful name it has given itself, mercy. End quote. While it is hardly a flattering view of the underclass, To designate them as parasites, Nietzsche believes that the parasitical relation between the great people and the masses is natural.

It is even a sign of how powerful someone actually is, as he reiterates in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book I, Chapter 19. Quote What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the lowest? The parasite is the lowest species. He, however, who is of the highest species, feedeth most parasites. For the soul which hath the longest ladder and can go deepest down, how could one there fail to be most parasites on it? End quote. Thank you.

This is not to say that the weak don't have their own ideas of compassion and mercy. Just as Nietzsche says, that the strong have a different type of justice from the weak, and that these two types of justice are two radically different concepts confounded under a single lip. in human all too human number four fifty one. Similarly, the strong have their own kind of compassion. In Nietzsche's view it is a more authentic compassion.

It is only the powerful person who has any choice in whether they act with mercy or cruelty, since the powerful are those who have the ability to requite. It is when someone hurts you and you find you are stifled or unable to repay them for it that you begin to feel resentment. Eventually such a person becomes cruel by nature, just like a beaten dog becomes mean by nature.

This is the real danger of the poison of resentment. The later acquisition of power doesn't necessarily undo the damage that has already been done to the psyche. Weakness has already corrupted them.

So that's it. That's Weakness Corrupts. And um I mentioned uh I wanted to expand on it a little bit. And mainly that expansion will take the form of clarifying what I mean by the second part of of of saying absolute weakness corrupts absolutely. So what does that mean? What does it mean? What is the absolute weakness corrupting absolutely? What would that look like? And I would argue Nietzsche sees that in Christianity.

And to explain this, we'll just look at a couple portions of the Antichrist where This is in part or section twenty nine. Where Nietzsche says of Jesus What does he say? before getting into the quote, Nietzsche Nietzsche is responding to a psychologist named uh Renan, who defined Jesus as the personality type or archetype of the hero. And Nietzsche

staunchly disagrees with this, and so this is what he says. He says, quote, If there is anything thoroughly unevangelical, surely it is the idea of the hero. It is precisely the reverse of all struggle, of all consciousness taking part in the fight that has become instinctive here. The inability to resist is here converted into a morality.

Resist not evil, the profoundest sentence in the whole of the gospels, their key in a certain sense, the blessedness of peace, of gentleness, of not being able to be an enemy. And so that's how he describes Jesus. The inability to resist is converted into a morality. Resist not evil. He says that's the key to understanding the whole gospels. I think that's incredibly profound. And so he goes on in Aphorism 30.

Uh quote The instinctive hatred of reality is the outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which can no longer endure to be touched at all because every sensation strikes too deep.

The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hostility, of all boundaries and all and distances in feeling, is the outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to pe and to irritation, which regards all resistance, All compulsory resistance as insufferable anguish, that is to say, as harmful, as deprecated by the self-preservative instinct.

And which knows blessedness, happiness, only when it is no longer obliged to offer resistance to anybody, either evil or detrimental. Love is the only possibility of life. End quote. So that's a very different interpretation of Jesus from what we normally hear.

I mean certainly from Christians, but even among a lot of how atheists interpret Jesus, it's definitely not the view of Jesus that, say, Jordan Peterson gives or claims that Nietzsche gives. I So this is what he's saying. He's saying Jesus is the the extreme example of somebody who has an intense aversion to all having to overcome resistance, which is will to power. That is life in Nietzsche's view, having to overcome resistance.

And that's with, you know, involves within yourself or in the spirit of competition or, you know, what have you. Jesus has an instinctive aversion to that. It's on it's on the level of his very being, and that's why he creates an ideology that denies the reality of the world. Um which because he says it's like the psychological type of Jesus is some a soul that just can't bear to even be touched. Everything every sensation strikes too deep. And so

Resist not evil. Um the thought of having to take up the fight against evil is such an insufferable thought. Um And so what is all of that if not weakness? Um Nietzsche did say that Jesus was a very extraordinary figure, that none of the later Christians really ever measured up to the type of Jesus. But we have to understand that what that entails is a weak the what Nietzsche is describing is a weakness so profound that it leads one to deny to fundamentally rewrite reality to fit that weakness.

And that is Nietzsche's fundamental criticism of Christianity. And I think that fits the bill. That's the a that's an example of how an absolute weakness, a figure who is nothing but weakness in their very essence can then corrupt. And that's arguably what happened. Uh that's certainly what Nietzsche belief happened, is Christianity then went and corrupted Europe. and instilled weakness everywhere.

out of this figure of Jesus. Um and so all of that barely scratches the surface of will to power and even the s all the many psychological implications of will to power. Um but Uh we'll certainly return to the topic in future episodes. So just reading that little article I wrote will be if for any of you aren't familiar with it, there's a little taste of Um, getting into Nietzsche as psychologist, um, which we haven't really gotten into yet in the podcast. So that's good.

Alright everybody. Um I will be cranking out new full length episodes when I get back, but hope you enjoyed this short episode. Signing off.