Russell's Criticism of Nietzsche

This piece originally appeared on Quora.com as an answer to the question, “Why was Bertrand Russell so critical of Nietzsche?”

In preparation for writing this, I read the chapter on Nietzsche in Russell’s history of Western philosophy, and the thing that struck me immediately was how facile his critique was. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, I have to say a few words about the context in which Russell was writing.

We must recall that Russell wrote on Nietzsche during the final years of World War II, and Russell was English. Keep in mind that Nietzsche’s writings, partially through distorted editions of his work published by his sister, had been co-opted by the Third Reich, and Russell had spent the past few years in the UK, which was basically a fortress under siege for much of the war. He had watched thousands upon thousands of British soldiers die in the fight against the Germans. Russell’s experience of World War II was that of a big mustachioed German face sneering at him from across the Channel while it ate his countrymen alive, and given the (mis)use and appropriation of Nietzsche’s work by the Nazis, that mustache could have belonged to Hitler or Nietzsche. Given this backdrop for his writing, we can forgive Russell if he was a little hasty in his dismissal of Nietzsche.

But he was hasty, and that is a problem. I called Russell’s critique facile earlier, and it is, because he’s more concerned with beating the stuffing out of a Nazi strawman than with saying much of accuracy about Nietzsche, although the neutral tone of his writing may give the impression that Nietzsche was given the same even-handed consideration as most other topics that Russell addressed, Russell being a patient and reasonable man.

It’s difficult to summarize exactly where he gets Nietzsche wrong, because the whole picture is so distorted. For example, Russell says, “He [Nietzsche] holds that the happiness of common people is no part of the good per se. All that is good or bad in itself exists only in the superior few; what happens to the rest is of no account.” The problem is that this simply isn’t the case. A cursory look at Thus Spake Zarathustra shows that Nietzsche’s real view is quite the reverse:

When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,—and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus unto it:

Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!

The sun, in this little parable, is like Zarathustra himself, the great man who would have no happiness if he had nobody to shine for. The use of the sun as metaphor is important here: the sun is greater and higher than everything else, but would have no happiness if it couldn’t shine for those below. This is quite the opposite of the view that Russell imputes to Nietzsche.

I elected to use the above example because, as I said, it’s difficult to put a finger on one place where Russell’s critique is wrong because it is not really a proper critique of Nietzsche at all. It reads more like the rumination of a maimed British soldier about this philosopher he has heard is popular among the Germans who nearly killed him. Russell imputes “universal hatred and fear” to Nietzsche, but this is not so much a criticism of Nietzsche as a means of blaming World War II on him. Russell is self-admittedly not concerned with refuting anything Nietzsche says. His criticism of Nietzsche is not a critique, but a condemnation, as if given by a judge. “You, Friedrich Nietzsche, were one of those who caused all this mayhem, and for this I have sentenced you to the dustbins of history.” Thank goodness the philosophers after Russell had the good sense not to carry out his sentence.