Is the last man becoming more prominent?
Nietzsche talks of the last man, a slave to his desires and one who uses technology for his pleasure. He never compels mankind forward and only fulfills his own needs. Nietzsche blames this on Christianity as it encourages one to devote their life to God and remain stagnant. In the west currently, it seems to me as though we are becoming more and more indulgent and less creative. Contrary to what Nietzsche believes, we should be on the path to less pleasure and more progress, since Christianity appears to be on the decline. I am young and probably misinformed and would like to know what is wrong with my logic or if it is wrong or if Nietzsche is wrong.
Posted Jul 12, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC
2516
Nietzsche doesn't really blame Christianity for the last man. That's overly reductive. Nietzsche sees an aspect of Christianity as a renunciation of Life, and he sees the morality built on this as something that inculcates itself into people via a process of weakening them. Basically, vigorous and life affirming people make bad christians, so Christianity seeks to domesticate out those attributes from people in order to "civilize" and "tame" them.
So, yes, this process has had the affect of getting people to turn their animal vivacity against themselves, to make themselves sick and hateful towards life, which, for those who don't relish that state of suffering and tension (which some Christians really do (e.g. Kierkegaard, Gerard Manly Hopkins, Dostoevsky)) , that does in turn make some yearn for distractions from the pitiful state they end up in -- and consumerism has made available many such distractions.
But the part of the story that you may be missing is that the inability to maintain the Christian faith is just as much of a peril to a life of vitality and striving as Christianity itself. For, while Christianity was an attempt to tame and break the human animal, it was ALSO an expression of the animal will of humanity. It was a fear of Life, but it was also a function of the living desire to conquer and control, an expression of the desire to transform and create something beautiful. It was a perverted and warped desire, but it was still a fervent and vivacious one. Even if the desire was to attack Life, it came from a place within us that was still lush with life.
But then you have the terrible moment when that process has finally killed the lush place within people that had faith in God. This is the moment where Nietzsche declares that God is dead and that we have killed him. But that doesn't mean we go back to the culture and psychology of before God. No, we are left in the aftermath of that process Christianity has and is still affecting. We are left with people trained and tamed to see the only basis for affirming Life as being faith in God, but these same people have had the part within them that is capable of such faith killed by the same process that made them dependent on that faith.
So, that becomes the moment. Can an individual create for themselves a new reason for striving. A new reason for mercilessly cutting into themselves to create something beautiful. Can they replace the domestication of the Christians with a process of cultivation -- or, at the very least, a new form of domestication.
And the solutions people are going towards abound.
There's the State -- what Nietzsche calls the New Idol. The idea of making the state and the nation one's new god. And Nietzsche was quite right, we saw people try that new form of domestication to give meaning in their lives in fascism and leninism during the early 20th century -- and we are seeing both make a comeback right now.
There's also the last man. The escape of consumerism, medicated happiness, over indulgence and self coddling. Where striving (even the moralistic striving of Christians and other new forms of domestication and duty) are looked down on with irony.
A great book I'd recommend on all the different ways people try to use to avoid autonomy is Walter Kaufmann's own book called Without Guilt & Justice – From Decidophobia to Autonomy. (that's a free link to an online version of the book btw).
So, in short, there's not a direct negative correlation between Christianity and the last man. There's a much more complex process going on, where the factors producing the conditions for the last man are actually also responsible in many ways for the decrease in Christianity.
Thanks so much for the in depth response. You cleared up my misconceptions and I thank you for that.
On average though, would you say most people in North America at least are last men, or are they just close?
I think it is more helpful to use the last man concept less as a tool of designation, and more as a tool for informing how one constructs oneself and how one chooses to build relations and partake in society.
Too often people will use Nietzsche's concepts as tools of designation and judgment in order to feel better about themselves, to feel superior. But, in truth, what matters is one's actions -- towards oneself, towards others, what one creates and overcomes.
Now, as far as North America goes, I'm not sure if the people themselves are any worse than people in general have been throughout civilization -- however, what I do think is unique is the degree to which we are ruled by mass minded people. Our whole society is driven by consumerism, is ruled by the people profiting off that consumerism -- their goal is to keep the issues of consumerism and mass society going so that they can keep their wealth and power, and to that end they make sure that our social and political leaders are people who will conform and help perpetuate mass consumerism.
This is definitely having a negative impact on the human material very much along the lines of Nietzsche's concept of the last man.
You know, I’ve heard the argument that society today is more herd like than in the past because of what you have mentioned and because of tools like social media but I don’t really agree. In previous society where god still ruled over our values, we had one law, one mode of living and that’s it. Any deviation from that path had brutal consequences like stoning apostates where as in the western world you can think and act with a degree of freedom unknown in any other time.
As for your first point, you’re definitely right. I am just wondering whether most people that lead these decadent lives are dull and shallow like the last man supposedly is but I don’t see it either. At least some who I would perhaps ignorantly label a last man still look like to be leading joyful lives, although far from a truly satisfying one.
I have to disagree with you about modern society having more freedom and individuality. People have more venues to express themselves, but they are also more connected to mass society than was ever before even imaginable. For instance, you go back to the 1700's, the degree of differentiation from community to community was crazy. In France for instance, there was so much differentiation in language and customs, that most people didn't even speak the same language as Paris, and people from one town might not be able to understand the town up the road. The authority of God and the crown was unquestioned, but the penetration of that authority into the daily lives of individuals and even communities was so much less than what states are capable of now.
Indeed, that's one of the things Nietzsche is responding to in his criticism of nationalism and the State in his writings -- the way these constructs would level that differentiation and spread the power of the masses deeper into the lives of people. And those were active measures on their parts, to make languages more homogeneous, to make central authority more penetrating.
And now, with mass media, even regional dialects are being eroded away. Localism and community is being replaced by a technology enabled consumerism that atomizes people to where they are dependent on the tools of mass society in order to maintain any sense of community and for all of the processes of life (food, creativity, dating, meaning making, etc).
So, while the allowances for individual differentiation are greater, almost all choices are incorporated into a system of consumerism that allows mass society to penetrate into the lives and minds of people and modulate every aspect of their existence.
Not simply North America, but Western culture.
This is a difficult question to determine, actually. And it is a great question.
It is difficult for any number of reasons, but one of the most prominent being that many people (probably most) have never heard of Nietzsche, and therefore the ideas of eternal recurrence, Ubermenschen, revaluation, etc etc, would be completely alien to them. So it stands to reason that, yeah, mostly people are going to resemble Nietzsche's characterization of the Last Man because they simply don't know any better.