Content from 1908, E-Book

Summary: An intelligent review and summary of Nietzsche’s canon, by the autodidact, debunker, and newspaperman H. L. Mencken (1880-1956). Fredrick Nietzsche (1844-1900) is the father of the most popular form of nihilism. His adherents include the likes of Adolf Hitler and David Brookes, and he has influenced everyone from Heidegger to Leo Strauss. The book includes a dated but accessible biography and history of Nietzsche’s work. Mencken’s purpose in writing the book was not as an academic review but to offer nihilism as a way of life for his readers.

According to Mencken and Nietzsche (1844-1900), human beings are driven by the “ever-dominant and only inherent impulse in all living beings, including man, . . the will to remain alive—the will, that is to attain power over those forces which make life difficult or impossible” (Loc. 42-44).

There are essentially two strategies for remaining alive; the first is as a collective parasite on the powerful and the second is as the powerful. The parasites function as those who limit the powerful from enjoying all that their intrinsic powers will allow. The parasites must have social order, morality, and peace to live; but they maintain this peace by subjecting the great and the great’s impulse to obtain power.

Mencken and Nietzsche offer, “the the gospel of prudent and intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter individualism” (Loc. 1449-1450). The individual must stand up to the parasites because, “every time he lifts up some one else, he must, at the same time, decrease his own store, because his own store is the only stock from which he can draw” (Loc. 1874-1875).

The parasites subjugate the individual through social structures like religion, morality, and collective violence (i.e. policemen, army). Since the pressure to conform to society is mental, the key to mental health and a wholesome life comes through skepticism alone: “Therefore, argues Nietzsche, it is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better. It makes him lose his fear of hell and his consciousness of sin. It rids him of that most horrible instrument of senseless and costly torture—his conscience. ‘Atheism,’ says Nietzsche, ‘will make a man innocent” (Loc. 3078-3079).

Because the conscience and any sense of limits on human behavior is detrimental to human mental well being, it must be wiped away along with things like punishment for crimes since this only “augment fear, intensify prudence and subjugate the passions” (Loc. 2991-2994).

The only thing that should limit a human being is their ability to maximize pleasure and limit personal suffering. And so “the best possible system of government was that which least interfered with the desires and enterprises of the intelligent individual” (Loc. 2756-2759).

In contrast to the “intelligent individual,” the ignorant and inefficient exist essentially to maximize their small pleasures and serve the intelligent elite. Once they have exhausted their purpose, they are to be eliminated: “The earth has no room for cumberers and pensioners. For them the highest of duties is the payment of natural debt, that there may be more room for those still able to wield the sword and bear a burden in the heat of the day” (3152-3154). “The enlightened regulation and control of death belongs to the morality of the future. At the present religion makes it seem immoral, for religion presupposes that when the time for death comes, God gives the command” (3160-3164). The elite can be trusted to make such decisions because it “is now possible, not only to approach facts with an unbiased mind, but also to make critical examination of ideas” (3519-3520).

Mencken correctly points out that Nietzsche’s ideas dominated the background of public thought in his day and especially in ideas of the popular figure of Teddy Roosevelt: [Roosevelt] “has a quite uncanny factually of impressing [his followers], driving them and convincing them against their will. And among other things, he has made embryo Nietzscheans of them, for in all things fundamental the Rooseveltian philosophy and the Nietzschean philosophy are identical” (3703-3705).

Benefits/Detriments: Mencken’s reading of Nietzsche is a bit idealistic and his faith in “science” and an unbiased elite is staggering, yet he understands and teaches Nietzsche basic philosophy as a way of life in a popular format.

The book still serves as a helpful overview of Nietzsche’s work, and it helps us to understand Mencken’s conspiracy against Byran at the Scopes’ trial. Further it proves that America’s decline into moral relativism is long standing. Mencken was but one of the supporting cast that introduced nihilism to the public.

Recommended for college students and pastors, but please realize that Mencken and Nietzsche are teachers of evil. They call evil good; and God says this of them in Isaiah 5:20-21, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”