Nietzsche and the Welfare State

"Whether I contemplate men with benevolence or with an evil eye, I always find them concerned with a single task …: to do what is good for the preservation of the human race. Not from any feeling of love for the race, but merely because nothing in them is older, stronger, more inexorable and unconquerable than this instinct—because this instinct constitutes the essence of our species, our herd."¹

With this grand assertion, the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche opens Book I of The Gay Science, a work encompassing most of his influential ideas on morality, religion, and man and society. But does the preservation of the species imply the need to ensure the preservation of every individual? Even if it did, does Nietzsche believe that this primal instinct has served man well? Is there a basic human dignity that demands that our herd take care of all of its members?

What does Nietzsche have to contribute to our understanding of the charity and benevolence of a political society? Specifically, would Nietzsche favor or oppose a generous, redistributive welfare state? I shall argue that in his writing Nietzsche makes it quite clear that he would oppose state redistribution of wealth, both from the point of view of those from whom wealth is taken and those to whom it is given.² While he does not in The Gay Science directly confront or discuss the merits of welfare politics, his views on pity, benevolence, dignity, morality, equality, pain, and happiness all contribute to a mosaic quite contemptuous of charity and its motives and consequences. Nietzsche would reject the welfare state as being, at the same time, both weak submission to self-negating morality and a projection of power of the strong over the weak.

Nietzsche's approach is individualistic. While he often speaks of the origins, development, and ails of society in general, his writing is nowhere intended to sway the designs or designers of the collective; he directs his attention always to the individual as an individual. Following this style, the evidence of his rejection of the welfare state shall be presented as the admonitions he dispenses to three kinds of people³: the Benefactor, who gives what he has to assist those in need; the Moralist, who demands that others do the same; and the Recipient, who accepts the charity of others or the manna of a compassionate state. The argument will conclude with a possible alternative Nietzsche offers to the welfare state.

The Benefactor is held up for contempt mainly because his acts originate from a contemptible feeling of pity. Throughout The Gay Science, Nietzsche makes clear that pity is an enervating emotion of the weak-willed. "What is needful is not pity for [the evil and unhappy]. We must learn to abandon this arrogant fancy."⁴ Further, he admires the absence of pity: "At times, our strengths propel us so far forward that we can no longer endure our weaknesses and perish from them … Thus we become hard against everything in us that desires consideration, and our greatness is also our lack of compassion."⁵ Pity is also tied directly to a notion of charity, as when he says, "Indeed, those who now preach the morality of pity even take the view that precisely this and only this is moral—to lose one's own way in order to come to the assistance of a neighbor."⁶ Those who give of themselves out of pity simply do not deserve our respect.

While Nietzsche often singles out pity as a deplorable affection, virtues of self-negation in general are held in low regard. "I do not like negative virtues—virtues whose very essence is to negate and deny oneself something."⁷ Also: "'Selflessness' has no value either in heaven or on earth."⁸ Benevolence is thoroughly linked in Nietzsche's mind to self-negation, as when he cries "No altruism!" and then describes people who desire to be a "function" of someone else and thus fail to live for themselves.⁹

Yet even as he pours derision on self-negation and pity, Nietzsche does not deny that these feelings have personal utility, even if they are misplaced. Pity moves us to take possession of the pitiful, to exert power over them. "When we see somebody suffer, we like to exploit this opportunity to take possession of him; those who become his benefactors and pity him … do this … and the pleasure they feel is comparable to that aroused by the prospect of a new conquest."¹⁰ This makes it less clear that selfless virtues such as pity do not hold some positive value for the individual.

When Nietzsche says, "Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one's power upon others; that is all one desires in such cases,"¹¹ he extends power as a motivation not just for those who are charitable, but also for those who would redistribute wealth from benefactors (willing or unwilling) to recipients. Hurting unwilling benefactors through taxation and benefiting poor recipients through public welfare spending ultimately serves the power instincts of those who may be neither. Here we are speaking of the Moralist.

For Nietzsche, there is no special place for humans in nature and no minimum acceptable human condition. He claims that we should "remove humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity.'"¹² Indeed, he sees the Moralist as too involved, too caring of others, too unconcerned for the self. "I do not want to wage war against what is ugly … Looking away shall be my only negation."¹³ Ultimately Nietzsche wants the Moralist to reserve judgment for others and instead look to oneself. In his criticism of the Kantian categorical imperative and 'universal laws,' he counters, "We, however, want to become those we are—human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves."¹⁴ He seeks a moral anarchy, which by extension appears to imply political anarchy. Indeed, he proclaims that the message of "'equal rights,' 'a free society,' 'no more masters and no servants'" has no allure. "We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth," since this would be the "realm of the deepest leveling."¹⁵ While this does not conclusively determine that Nietzsche believed in total anarchy, it does show that with specific regard to notions of equality he is strongly disposed to anarchy and opposed to all order and leveling.

Although Nietzsche has been shown to offer much disdain for benefactors and moralists, it is the Recipient who he believes is harmed most by charitable intentions. This arises out of a fundamental misunderstanding of human happiness. Discomfort and displeasure are necessary for us to experience and appreciate true pleasure and true happiness:

"To this day you have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief—and in the last analysis socialists and politicians of all parties have no right to promise their people more than that—or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth and abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet. If you decide for the former and desire to diminish and lower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and lower the level of their capacity for joy."¹⁶

Without their opposites, pleasure and happiness have no relative value for us and no vivacity. More importantly, pain and misfortune provoke personal growth and evolution; loss brings with it new and increased strength.¹⁷ Those who face great pain with pride and happiness are heroic; "pain itself gives them their greatest moments … They contribute immensely to the preservation of the species, even if it were only by opposing comfortableness and by not concealing how this sort of happiness nauseates them."¹⁸ Indeed, such "comfortableness" for Nietzsche is vegetative, a retreat from life. Further, "[o]ur 'benefactors' are, more than our enemies, people who make our worth and will smaller." In his concern for the Recipient, Nietzsche returns to an attack on pity: "It is the very essence of the emotion of pity that it strips away from the suffering of others whatever is distinctively personal."¹⁹ Ironically, this appears to be an appeal to a respect for human dignity—not the material dignity which Nietzsche disparages elsewhere (as shown), but a dignity of true individuality.

Lest Nietzsche himself show pity for the Recipient, he reserves much of the blame for the recipients themselves. In receiving charity, they are all too willing to submit to the stronger. "Hence, we should make a distinction in benevolence between the impulse to appropriate and the impulse to submit, and ask whether it is the stronger or the weaker that feels benevolent … joy and the wish to be desired appear together in the weaker that wants to become a function."²⁰

Yet there is an escape from this desire to submit. He asserts that "the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely—a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience." Here, Nietzsche's solution is to will one's own command: "Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty … Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence."²¹ In this way, the Recipient can acquire strength and overcome.

Whether one's point of view is that of the Benefactor, the Moralist, or the Recipient, it is quite evident that the redistributive welfare state is abhorrent to Nietzsche. It is natural and proper that man should attempt to increase his power to achieve happiness; it is distasteful and indecent that he should do this by appropriation of or submission to another's will. In his own words: "Is it not clear that with all this we are bound to feel ill at ease in an age that likes to claim the distinction of the most humane, the mildest, and the most righteous age the sun has ever seen?"²² Is our own age thus any less repugnant to Nietzsche?