Violent Interpretations: Nietzsche’s Take on Environmentalism

According to “European” existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche “our whole attitude toward nature today is hubris, our raping of nature by means of machines and the unthinking resourcefulness of technicians and engineers” (Geneaology sec. 3.9). Despite this seemingly explicit call for a radical environmental ethic, his philosophy has continually been criticized as “elitist” and, in the eyes of the ecologically embraced Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche’s philosophizing represents the culmination of metaphysical thinking, one which is subjectivistic, anthropocentric and voluntaristic and that affirms technological domination of the natural world (Hallman 99). Against these contradictory claims about one of the world’s most influential philosophers it seems important to explore Nietzsche’s contributions to the human-nature debate and bring together both the use and abuse of Nietzsche for environmental ethics. This task will take place in three main sections – first, an exploration of Nietzsche’s rejection of metaphysics and “grounding” of the human being; second, by exploring the concept of the “will to power;” and, finally, through reexamining Nietzsche’s most controversial concept, the ubermensch.

Within the destructive works of Nietzsche, those which aimed to tear down the dominant philosophies of the past, there is one overall criticism of all metaphysical schemes. That criticism comes out best in his attack on Christianity, but exists for all metaphysical systems, for it is to both “translate man[sic] back into nature” and render humans “deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird catchers who have been piping at him all too long, ‘you are more, you are higher, you are of a different origin!’” (Beyond Good and Evil 161) More specifically, Nietzsche felt that the metaphysical systems of the past, those of the major Western religions as well as those of Kant or Descartes (which were influenced by Christianity), all put too much emphasis on the transcendent, either a Heaven to go to or something as simple as a soul that lived on even as the natural being (the body) died. It is from this position that those contemporary ecologists have tried to dub Nietzsche a kindred spirit (in the strictly non-transcendental way of course). According to these ecologists, “one of the principal thrusts of Nietzsche’s thinking is an attempt to overcome the kind of philosophizing that has traditionally provided a theoretical foundation for the technological control and exploitation of the natural world” (Hallman 100). This interpretation seems to fit pretty well with Nietzsche’s own observations of civilization’s view towards nature, but nonetheless provides only a small perspective on Nietzsche’s overall philosophy.

One of the largest criticisms of using Nietzsche for anything he didn’t explicitly advocate comes from the fact that throughout his career he changed his views dramatically, and that failure to take into account the entirety of his work results in a selective reading which demeans the original thinker’s philosophy. This is certainly one of the criticisms levied against Hallman by Acampora, who wholeheartedly objects to the use of Nietzsche for environmental ethics. Nonetheless, even Acampora agrees that Nietzsche’s criticisms of the dominant metaphysical systems supports an ethics, and even offers up a little advice: “the best advice for those ecophilosophers wishing to utilize Nietzsche’s thought is to rely merely on the latter’s ‘negative’ or deconstructive overcoming of Christian, homo-exclusive values” (Acampora 194). With that agreement in mind, and recognizing that Nietzsche does in fact maintain relative consistency with respect to this deconstruction throughout his life, it seems simple and uncontroversial to explore the deconstruction in depth.

First and foremost, it is important to explore the explicit rejection of that old “metaphysics of the hangman[sic]”1–Christianity. Nietzsche criticizes Christianity as being ‘other-worldly’ and ‘anti-natural’ (Hallman 103) and has always told human beings that “at bottom they are too good and too significant for the earth and are paying it only a passing visit” (Daybreak 182). It is because of this view on life, one which posits Heaven and a new life after death as the most important, that humans have neglected nature. This jives well with the deep ecologist line, which argues that so long as human beings continue to perceive the world only as instrumental to their personal goals we will continue to mistreat the earth. More than this, the Christian promotion of the human soul–a promotion it shares with the majority of metaphysical schemes–has been a root cause of the “de-naturalizing” of the human being and is a foundational cause of human self-promotion that has, invariably, led to disproportionate importance being given to the entirety of humanity (Hallman 105).2 Hallman offers up a parallel story in the mantra of some radical deep ecologists (as if there were any other kind) who say that so long as Christianity (and really Islam and Judaism, although some find solace in Hasidim) remains a part of civilization then an ecology that truly cares for the earth is impossible. Perhaps Nietzsche would agree with those ecologists here, for he certainly finds much to be rejected in Christianity and would certainly have no problem doing away with the whole institution. But Nietzsche was not blind to the fact that it wasn’t Christianity alone that has caused the problems, and that is why his deconstruction of metaphysics goes far beyond just one little (in the whole scheme of things) religion.

According to Nietzsche, “[m]an is absolutely not the crown of creation: every creature stands beside him at the same stage of perfection” (Anti-Christ 124), and moreover, it is not simply a matter of some metaphysical scheme devaluing the flesh that creates a problem. For “when[ever] a particular thing is what it is only thanks to the role assigned it under some overarching divine Providence, or the position occupied in some scientific projection of the world, it is not free to be itself” (Parkes 89, italics mine). As such, Nietzsche’s criticism extends well beyond even metaphysical schemes to any system which claims to hold some necessary truth about the world. As such, “Nietzsche not only criticizes the dominant anthropocentric attitude toward nature, but all appropriations of nature” (Drenthen 174), including those promoted by Hallman and others who wish to see in Nietzsche a forerunner to their beliefs.

There are two big conclusions being drawn by Nietzsche in his criticism of metaphysics: first, that transcendent philosophies (those which posit a world outside of the perceived) necessarily demean the natural world and the human being’s existence in that world; and second, and more important from the perspective of mistreatment of an author, that any philosophy which posits value upon the world necessarily oppresses the world. Nietzsche even explicitly tells us this, calling it the “hyperbolic naivete of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things” (Will to Power 14). This will become extremely important when exploring the concept of the will to power, but for now it will suffice to say that once this conclusion is taken into account, even if deep ecologists are right (which even detractors claim they are) that Nietzsche’s deconstruction of metaphysics holds out hope as a forerunner to a radical environmental ethics, we can conclude that Nietzsche does not believe in an environmental ethics of deep ecology or “intrinsic value” systems. In fact, Nietzsche may even oppose these systems to a greater extent, for they make the same error as all other metaphysical systems and go go even further. Specifically, they are still the creation of human beings and as such posit humans as the “meaning and measure of the value of things”, even while claiming there is an “intrinsic” value to nature absent human beings. But even worse, their claims of objectiveness – something Nietzsche says is impossible in matters of morality – justify the complete and utter exclusion of alternative views of nature, thereby violently restricting the ways in which nature can express itself (Drenthen 173). Therefore, in the end, two main things are understood: Nietzsche does reject the dominant metaphysics that has allowed human beings to belittle the earth and Nietzsche rejects all absolute ethical systems and therefore ought not be used as a tool in the deep ecologist’s ethical toolbox.

It is from this second conclusion that it becomes very important to explore the concept of the “will to power”, because it is exactly this exclusion of interpretations that Nietzsche is talking about when he talks about the will to power. For Hallman, who is certainly reading too much environmentalism into Nietzsche, the will to power ought be understood as emphasizing both the interrelatedness of all living things and also suggesting the importance of environmental factors in the determination of all life (Hallman 118-119). He gathers this from the language Nietzsche uses to describe nature, for he says that everywhere he looks he sees the will to power, and that all nature, in fact, is essentially the will to power-it is continually forming and reforming, creating and recreating, itself (Hallman 122). Nietzsche does certainly offer up claims like these, and is attempting to explain how the world works with his conceptualization of the will to power.3 But this doesn’t seem to wholly explain the will to power. And in fact, for Hallman’s biggest critic, it is just an utter failure to understand the concept. According to Acampora, the will to power is one of the clearest concepts to investigate to enable the rejection of Nietzsche as an environmental ethicist, because will to power is not about interrelatedness but rather about exploitation. Nietzsche, in fact, seems to agree with this interpretation too, for he says “life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation” (Beyond Good sec. 259), and of course even Hallman would agree with Acampora that Nietzsche posits life as the will to power, for he does say “Wherever I found the living, there I found will to power” (Zarathustra sec. 2.12). However, interpreting the will to power as exploitation misses the point.

Nietzsche is admittedly an elitist, and does invoke ideas such as “order of rank” and “pathos of distance”, but only in respect to human beings rather then nature. Moreover, Nietzsche actually writes that “’exploitation’… is a consequence of genuine will to power” (Beyond Good sec. 259), rather then being an example of it (Parkes 85). Therefore, Acampora’s criticisms of an elitist Nietzsche who would justify any actions against the environment so long as it promotes the stronger individual, fall flat when Nietzsche’s human/nature and human/human philosophies are separated as such. But even more than that, Hallman’s interpretation of the will to power as “interrelatedness” misses the point as well. While it isn’t technically incorrect to view the will to power as Hallman does, what he misses is the fact that since Nietzsche views human beings as fundamentally a part of nature – or at least ought to be a part of nature, the problem of course being that human beings have lost this naturalness – anything he says about nature applies to human beings as well.This synthesis, then, means that the natural interrelatedness occurs both in macrocosm and in microcosm – inside each individual human. For Nietzsche, then, the human being is a web of interrelated things and morality acts as the naturally occurring “organization” between different passions and impulses within ourselves (Drenthen 168).

It is from this understanding that we can derive the best definition of the will to power. Nietzsche explains that his personal favorite work, and implicitly the one he most holds to philosophically, is Thus Spoke Zarathustra, thus it seems best to use that work to define one of his most abstract conceptions. From this work we can gather a simple definition of the will to power as “interpretation”. This comes from a meeting between Zarathustra and “Life” in which the figure of Life tells Zarathustra that “I am that which must always overcome itself.” She explains that the will to power is a matter of “valuing”, of interpreting (Zarathustra sec. 1.15). This interpretation also coincides with a conclusion drawn earlier in the book by Zarathustra, when he says that valuing is essentially self-overcoming. What Nietzsche means by interpretation seems pretty clear – all living beings crave to hold the “power”, a power to develop the world along their wants and needs. This power, in fact, is much stronger then any brute force that may be garnered from the will to power as “exploitation”. For instance, while Acampora would argue that the will to power is best seen as justifying exploitation, including of the natural environment, this can best be explored only as one form of the will to power – as brute-force – and this form of the will to power disappears after the person who wields it dies (see the plethora of dictators who’s ideas lost ground after they died). The more important form of the will to power, that wielded by the likes of Socrates or Jesus Christ, is the power as interpretation, with philosophy being “the most spiritual will to power” (Parkes 84 and Beyond Good sec. 9). It is from this power that one shapes the world even after their death.

But more than that, the will to power as interpretation allows two main conclusions to be added to the environmental ethics debate. First, if life is necessarily will to power and the will to power is interpretation of the world, then the world must necessarily be interpreted. And in fact, Nietzsche isn’t trying to throw out morality completely – a claim many have leveled against him. His goal was to find a new way, between rejection of the old and nihilism, and his goal is best seen as attempting to deepen moral evaluation (Drenthen 169). His way of doing this was to embrace as many different interpretations of the world as possible, for he tells us: “The task: to see things as they are! The means: to be able to see with a hundred eyes, from many persons!” (Nietzsche as quoted in Parkes 87-88) Therefore, the will to power adds to the environmental debate by telling us that human beings are always going to interpret nature, and in fact must interpret nature, for the only possible alternative is sheer indifference – which the deep ecologists would certainly cringe at. But more then that, the will to power informs us that whatever interpretation we have of nature, it is our interpretation and should be treated as such. Therefore, objective calls to an “intrinsically valuable” nature remain violently oppressive to both nature and human beings (which are by definition part of nature) by positing themselves as objective and denouncing all alternatives as “merely” subjective.

This then leads to the ever popular and ever controversial ubermensch as, perhaps, the last remaining hope to either prove Nietzsche hates nature or can actually provide an ethic rather then just deconstruct those that exist. For Hallman, the overhuman was “superfluous” and didn’t require any attention, but for Acampora it was precisely the overhuman that provided a clear warrant for calling Nietzsche an aristocratic individualist rather then a biospheric egalitarian (Acampora 188). But both of these views are incorrect – the ubermensch is certainly central to any discussion of Nietzsche’s philosophy (contra Hallman) but it is by no means a clearly anti-ecology concept (contra Acampora). The idea of the overhuman – a radically new way of being for the human – is profoundly relevant for ecological thinking (Parkes 81). If we are to follow the Nietzschean path then we are to believe, up to this point, that current metaphysical schemes are wrong, that humans have this earth and nothing more, and that we are required to interpret the world yet in so doing we will necessarily oppress alternative interpretations. From that perspective then, it is within the ubermensch that we find Nietzsche’s ethical call – if it can be called that – for it is within the ubermensch that we escape the transcendent, escape the dominant metaphysical paradigm, and come as close as we can to understanding all possible interpretations of the world.4

Contained within the overhuman is the broadening of one’s moral horizons, a “broadening of the human world view to include an appreciation of the perspectives of the natural phenomena with which we share the world” (Parkes 81). While the exact definition of the ubermensch is never explicitly flushed out by Nietzsche, this is perhaps the best interpretation (and of course we must interpret, even if it is a violent act). To understand this interpretation of the overhuman it is important to recollect a few conclusions drawn earlier. First, Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed task is to “return” the human being to nature.5 Second, Nietzsche finds in nature the most fleshed out will to power, he respects nature, he adores nature and he wishes for human beings to emulate nature (Parkes 82). Therefore, the link between nature and the ubermensch should be pretty clear. But to make this even clearer one just needs to look to the imagery and language of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the overhuman is most fully developed. First, Zarathustra’s calls for preparations for the overhuman invoke a respect for nature, for he says: “I love him who works and invents to build a house for the Overhuman and prepare for it earth and animal and plant…” (Zarathustra prologue sec. 3 and 4)

Secondly, throughout Zarathustra is a process of maturation for the protagonist as a teacher that is presented in the images of human engagement with natural phenomena. Specific images evoked include preparing of soil and sowing of seed, transplanting of trees and pruning of vines (Parkes 82). Therefore, in developing a figure that may be elitist a la Acampora, Nietzsche intentionally makes use of a beautiful nature, a nature that embraces this ubermensch. This hearkens back to the conclusion earlier that Nietzsche separates his views of human relationships from human/nature relationships. He is an elitist, he does promote “order of rank”, but there is no evidence anywhere to support that this elitism applies to the ubermensch’s relation to the natural world, and in fact all the evidence shows an overhuman that embraces nature at all levels.

More than this, however, is the link between the will to power and the ubermensch. Certainly the two concepts are linked, and when it comes to the environment that link is perhaps best flushed out. Nietzsche’s task was to “see things as they are” with “a hundred eyes”, but more than that, he believed that the more one can “practice seeing apart from human relations,” the more one will be able to “experience cosmically” (Nietzsche as quoted in Parkes 87-88). Nietzsche felt much of the violence (not necessarily in the normal sense of the word) in the world flowed from interpretations (the will to power) that claimed objectivity and required the suppression of alternative interpretations, and moreover it was this will to power that suppressed human beings because of the dominant metaphysics of Christianity.

It is here that we come full circle, bringing our final aspect of Nietzsche into the discussion of our first. As such, the hope is that a greater, deeper and more synthesized understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy has been flushed out. Moreover, it should be understood that his solution to the problem of human/nature relations wasn’t a specific ethical system, but simply to embrace alternatives. He doesn’t give a specific environmental ethic, for to do so would be to violently repress any alternatives, but he does give a model by which to explore the moral issue and better understand it as a whole. It is with this in mind that it may become possible to find at least a framework for environmental ethics that doesn’t fall into the same pattern of oppression.

Bibliography

Acampora, Ralph R. “Using and Abusing Nietzsche for Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 16 (1994): 186-94.

Drenthen, Martin. “The Paradox of Environmental Ethics: Nietzsche’s View of Nature and the Wild.” Environmental Ethics 21 (1999): 163-175.

Hallman, Max O. “Nietzsche’s Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 13 (1991): 99-125.

Nietzsche, Freidrich. Daybreak. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Nietzsche, Freidrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1966.

Nietzsche, Freidrich. The Anti-Christ. Trans. H.L. Mencken. “Project Gutenberg E-Book.” http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19322.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Trans. Thomas Common. “Project Gutenberg E-Book.” http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1998.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Parkes, Graham. “Nietzsche’s Environmental Philosophy: A Trans-European Perspective.” Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 77-91.