History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [439]
There is another element in Nietzsche, which is closely akin to the objection urged by 'rugged individualists' against trade-unions. In a fight of all against all, the victor is likely to possess certain qualities which Nietzsche admires, such as courage, resourcefulness, and strength of will. But if the men who do not possess these aristocratic qualities (who are the vast majority) band themselves together, they may win in spite of their individual inferiority. In this fight of the collective canaille against the aristocrats, Christianity is the ideological front, as the French Revolution was the fighting front. We ought therefore to oppose every kind of union among the individually feeble, for fear lest their combined power should outweigh that of the individually strong; on the other hand, we ought to promote union among the tough and virile elements of the population. The first step towards the creation of such a union is the preaching of Nietzsche's philosophy. It will be seen that it is not easy to preserve the distinction between ethics and politics.
Suppose we wish—as I certainly do—to find arguments against Nietzsche's ethics and politics, what arguments can we find?
There are weighty practical arguments, showing that the attempt to secure his ends will in fact secure something quite different. Aristocracies of birth are nowadays discredited; the only practicable form of aristocracy is an organization like the Fascist or the Nazi party. Such an organization rouses opposition, and is likely to be defeated in war; but if it is not defeated it must, before long, become nothing but a police State, where the rulers live in terror of assassination, and the heroes are in concentration camps. In such a community faith and honour are sapped by delation, and the would-be aristocracy of supermen degenerates into a clique of trembling poltroons.
These, however, are arguments for our time; they would not have held good in past ages, when aristocracy was unquestioned. The Egyptian government was conducted on Nietzschean principles for several millennia. The governments of almost all large States were aristocratic until the American and the French Revolutions. We have therefore to ask ourselves whether there is any good reason for preferring democracy to a form of government which has had such a long and successful history—or rather, since we are concerned with philosophy, not politics, whether there are objective grounds for rejecting the ethic by which Nietzsche supports aristocracy.
The ethical, as opposed to the political, question is one as to sympathy. Sympathy, in the sense of being made unhappy by the suffering of others, is to some extent natural to human beings; young children are troubled when they hear other children crying. But the development of this feeling is very different in different people. Some find pleasure in the infliction of torture; others, like Buddha, feel that they cannot be completely happy so long as any living thing is suffering. Most people divide mankind emotionally into friends and enemies, feeling sympathy for the former, but not for the latter. An ethic such as that of Christianity or Buddhism has its emotional basis in universal sympathy; Nietzsche's, in a complete absence