Theory and Practice in Sociology by Ian Marsh

Author:Ian Marsh [Marsh, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138836082
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2015-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

However, his work has, according to Magee, had deeper cultural influences in Britain, in particular through the work of great literary figures such as George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats and D.H. Lawrence. In the works of all three writers we see a rejection of the moral constraints of contemporary society, and above all an engagement with the concept of power and authority.

As with both Simmel and Tönnies, Nietzsche can be said to have emerged out of the German idealist tradition. The role of Nietzsche in attacking modernity as it emerged from the Enlightenment is central to late nineteenth and early twentieth century thinking and Nietzsche can certainly be placed alongside the other social theorists examined in this chapter. Importantly, Nietzsche, along with Marx, was one of the first modern philosophers to openly challenge the idea of a supernatural realm of existence. If one phrase is associated with Nietzsche, it is ‘God is dead’ (quoted in Schacht 1983: 110). As with Marx’s notion of religion as the opium of the people, with its purpose to oppress and subjugate the masses, for Nietzsche religion and the supernatural realm provided an equally important and sinister, if somewhat different, role. Nietzsche argued that society creates a situation in which values are manmade, rather than god-given. Such morals and values are relative rather than absolute; social products rather than natural or spiritual in any real sense at all. While Marx justified the denial of god as breaking the chains of one part of capitalist ideology, for Nietzsche it was not so simple. At one level his denial of the spiritual, of God, is not so unusual, but at another level, it begs the question, what replaces God? For Marx a denial of God was a necessary condition for advancement towards a classless society. For Nietzsche, in modern society we are increasingly slaves to convention, to habit and routine, and God has become a central part of that routine and those conventions, so much so that a belief in the supernatural, in God, provides a central underpinning of western civilisation (Marx and Engels 1963).

To understand what Nietzsche is driving towards, we need to understand that his philosophy is an attack on what he defines as the four central traditions within western society and civilisation. These traditions have ancient roots, but since the Enlightenment period have become more firmly embedded in western society and the general western psyche. Firstly, he aimed to challenge Christian values and morality. At the core of modern Christianity is a basic concept of morality, a key component of which is compassion. For Nietzsche, compassion is the key weakness at the core of Christianity. As Solomon (1985) points out, Nietzsche wishes to personify Jewish ethics as a ‘slave morality’, something that he regards as structured on envy. The Christian ethics which emerged from the Judaic tradition and which made a virtue of meekness, poverty and humility were seen by Nietzsche as even worse. The instruction to turn the other cheek, to accept oppression

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