An Essay on Morality

My professor recently asked me if I was "trained by Jesuits". I told him that I was not (unfortunately, I now add). At any rate, without further adu, this is my attempt to contort Nietzsche into Christianity. Having read 10 pages of Nietzsche for the class and not much else on my own time I think "contort" is the most proper word...

St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrated in his vast body of work that the pre-Christian philosophy of Aristotle and the philosophical and theological thinking of the Catholic Church can often be seamlessly integrated. However, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche seems to stand in stark contrast to these two beacons of Western thought. Yet, despite many fundamental differences in their philosophies, Nietzsche and Aristotle share a common understanding of virtue which is in harmony with the teachings of the Church.
A cursory study suggests that the three do not even agree on the nature of virtue. For Aristotle, virtue is defined in his Nichomachian Ethics as “a state of deliberate moral purpose consisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean being determined by reason”. His definition has three fundamental parts. Firstly, Aristotle’s virtue is determined by reason. Nietzsche acknowledges his belief in a reasoned morality by criticizing Christian morality saying, “after all, the first church, as is well known, fought against the ‘intelligent’ in favor of the ‘poor in spirit.’ How could one expect form it an intelligent war against passion”. Secondly, virtue is a relative mean. Nietzsche applies Aristotle’s principle in his critique: neither the destruction of the passions nor indulgence in them is appropriate. Nietzsche promotes moderation, which is the mean of the passions. Thirdly, virtue is described by Aristotle as a state of character. He goes so far as to claim that “none of man’s functions is so permanent as his virtuous activities”, and he reports that it is even believed by some to outlast knowledge. Virtue is in its first stages “deliberate” and “determined by reason”, but becomes habitual and thoughtless. Nietzsche even more fully agrees that virtue is a state of character claiming that the happy human being “must perform certain actions and shrinks instinctively from other actions”. Free will or not the outcome is little different: virtue is an abiding characteristic of man that operates almost thoughtlessly. The two philosophers agree on three major qualities of virtue, namely that it is determined by reason, that it consists in a mean, and that it is a state of character in virtuous men.
The Catholic Church is in agreement also. Jesus seemingly manipulatively proclaims, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments”. Yet, the Church does promulgate laws out of love. God is metaphorically referred to as ‘Father’, and the Church as a mother. Just as parents ask their children to follow their rules simply out of love when all logic fails, God asks his people to do the same. Neither wishes to replace moral inquiry, in fact rules serve as its foundation. Furthermore, the Christian God is the very perfection and essence of reason. His mandates cannot be anything but reasonable, though they may escape the human mind at times. The Church wishes to save Her children from the initial stupidity of the passions which arises from a lack of knowledge, and in so doing preserves their childhood purity. The Church has no desire to suffocate their adult life though, and expects its followers to go beyond the rules, never subverting them, but pursuing them to their essence. Virtuous actions then become true virtue as the individual makes them his own. In reality the Church’s rules serve as a foundation for true virtue.
Nietzsche further criticizes the promises traditional Western morality has made to its followers. He and Aristotle agree that the practice of virtue is fundamental to human life. Nietzsche condemns anti-natural morality as being the enemy of life - natural morality is then the fulfillment of life. He voices this saying, “life itself values through us when we posit values [virtues]”. While Nietzsche cannot say that virtue causes life, instead saying that life causes virtue, the inseparability of the two makes cause and effect secondary. Aristotle arrives at the same conclusion teaching that virtue causes happiness: “happiness is a certain activity of the soul in accordance with virtue”. For both, happiness is the highest good of man, and even the purpose of his life. Furthermore, both men claim that the virtuous man embraces his own humanity, while the vicious man stifles and chokes it. Nietzsche says that he and his followers, “make it a point of honor to be affirmers”, accepting of others. He does not mean that natural morality demands acceptance of non-virtuous actions, because he agrees that morality is a reasonable field, so internal contradiction cannot persist – a man acting one way and a man acting oppositely cannot both be virtuous. Rather, by ‘accepting’ Nietzsche means that virtue accepts who man really is, and not the illusions which vice embraces. Aristotle agrees, teaching that virtue is man’s proper and highest function. Lastly, both thinkers agree that virtue is of intrinsic worth, quite apart from material promises. Nietzsche wrote about morality without stock in Heaven. Rather, the virtuous man is preferable on those terms alone. Aristotle promised happiness as a result of virtue, but virtue is not simply a means to happiness, but the two are inseparable. For example, the student cannot regard learning as an inconsequential step to knowledge, but must pursue it of its own accord if true progress is to be made. Nietzsche and Aristotle agree that virtue is a good in and of itself which is by nature connected to happiness and life.

Jesus promised eternal happiness several times throughout the Gospel. The Church therefore extends the greatest promise man could conceive of in return for, as Nietzsche sees it, submitting to their tyranny. Yet Heaven is in line with the common understanding reached above, as both teach that virtue and happiness are one in the same. The only aspect of the doctrine of Heaven that Nietzsche could consistently disagree with, and he certainly did, is the existence of an eternal afterlife. Heaven for the Church is simply an eternal and perfect enjoyment of the rewards of virtue we get a glimpse of on Earth. Furthermore, the Christian God is Virtue itself, and it is certainly reasonable that the enacting of virtue leads to its source and perfection. It cannot go without saying that heaven being eternal happiness and hell eternal misery is a wildly revolutionary concept that is far more in line with the common understanding of the philosophers treated above than many other heavens. The Christian Heaven is not sought after for its material or sensual pleasures, in fact anybody searching for those pleasures would find a hell in Heaven. This is in stark contrast to heavens where virtue leads not to the happiness Aristotle describes in detail, but a happiness based on material possession. The Christian Heaven is radically philosophical. But do those who inherit heaven merit it? Is it not liable that non-virtuous men will simply act virtuously without allowing it to become their character, in the interests of ‘meriting’ college? In reality that is an attempt to ‘trick’ God, which cannot occur. Instead the Church teaches a God who judges the heart. It is clear that the Church’s Heaven is philosophically in line with Nietzsche and Aristotle’s common understanding.
The weight of Nietzsche’s argumentation relies on the fact that the Church and all of Western philosophy has preached a false morality. To equate his ideas with his adversaries seems to be in direct contradiction to what he actually says, yet, when one analyzes Nietzsche’s critiques of false morality, one realizes that traditional Aristotelian morality does not subscribe to Nietzsche’s doctrine of anti-life morality. Nietzsche says that false morality operates by, “destroying the passions and cravings”, and in turn this destruction of the passions destroys life. Aristotle retorts, “man’s good would seem to lie in the function of man”, and virtue is this function and consists in man embracing himself and his very nature. Aristotle’s virtue stems from a self-reflective man who understands himself, an idea he borrowed from ancient Greeks a hundred years before him who coined the aphorism, “know thyself”. Understanding this aspect of Aristotle’s virtue also puts to rest Nietzsche’s claim that the false morality promulgated by the West is a morality that forces man to change himself. For Aristotle, and those who posit a free will, a vicious man who chooses to act virtuously will certainly have to change his actions, but on a far more significant level he is not changing himself, rather he is becoming more fully who he is. In denying a free will Nietzsche doesn’t allow discussions of such a choice, but even then he can only fault moral promulgators for wasting their breath on those who are irreversibly not inclined to virtue. But perhaps Nietzsche’s most compelling critique of Western morality is that it is based on feelings. This strikes to the very core of morality, denying it the essential nature of rationality which was essential to commencing discussion of virtue to begin with. Yet we see that Aristotle’s virtue is final in nature, and is not subject to the ancient wheel of fortune. Rather, happiness is a quality of the soul which exists apart from the temporal world. Nietzsche’s critiques illustrate true problems with morality, though he reveals a misunderstanding of Western morality, and his critiques are not applicable to it. These critiques of false morality are understood and avoided by Aristotle.
To begin addressing the Church’s morality, one must consider its remarkably high opinion of mankind. First, it claims that Jesus was both truly God and truly man. Logistics aside, to claim that these two natures are compatible is revolutionary. Secondly, the Church teaches that the man himself goes to heaven; it is not his soul, or a perfectly recreated body, but the same body which inhabited earth. If the Church thought that something other than the man himself went to heaven, we would have reason to doubt if virtue was in fact a self-embracing, but everlasting virtue, that is heaven, is inhabited by men – the two are compatible. The Church does not preach a morality which seeks to deny men themselves, or to change his nature but rather it teaches that his nature is fit for God – to neglect or even misrepresent such a nature would be the most unfortunate heresy. And lastly, the Church teaches that God is eternal. It follows that embracing him is not something based on passing trends or feelings, since he is not properly found in those, but outside of them in a timeless eternity. Theology seeks to understand timeless truths with a time-bound intellect, and is therefore subject to errors. But the theological truths which the Church proclaims as true cannot, on account of their veracity, be time-bound, and certainly could not vacillate with the frequency of feelings. The Church’s morality free from Nietzsche’s critiques when one considers its exalted status of man and eternal God.
Nietzsche, Aristotle and The Catholic Church are in agreement concerning virtue, despite the very real differences in their understanding of the Universe. While Nietzsche explicitly attacks the other two, his attacks are improperly applied, despite being valid ideas in and of themselves. In reality neither’s understanding of morality falls victim to the falsities which Nietzsche condemns, in fact each embraces his teachings.