Assignment task:
From Cottingham, Western Philosophy: An Anthology (3rd ed)
INTRO: The utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, so earnestly discussed among the English moralists of the nineteenth century (see the two preceding extracts), was scornfully dismissed by the iconoclastic German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In his Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Nietzsche dubs utilitarianism the morality of the herd. Setting out a 'genealogy of morals' (to use the title of one of his later books) he sees his task not in terms of the rational justification of moral systems, but rather of a historically informed critique of how various moral principles came into being. The principle of general happiness, and many other elements in traditional moral systems (e.g. the Christian injunction to love one's neighbour) are seen by Nietzsche as attempts by the weak masses to protect themselves against dynamic and powerful individuals - against the 'highest and strongest drives, when they break out passionately and drive the individual far above the average and the flats of the herd conscience'. Nietzsche is no less scathing of the Kantian approach to morality (see extract 6 above) - the 'morality of intentions'. In a striking anticipation of Freud,1 Nietzsche proposes that 'the decisive value of an action lies precisely in what is unintentional in it, while everything about it that is intentional, that can been seen, known, conscious, still belongs to its surface and skin, which like every skin betrays something but conceals even more'. The complexity of human existence, the darkness and power of the unconscious forces of the human psyche, is a recurring theme in Nietzsche's work. And partly because of this he derides the 'stiff seriousness, inspiring laughter', of those philosophers who have sought a rational foundation for morality (this could apply, in different ways, to both Kantians and Utilitarians alike). What, then, does Nietzsche propose in place of what he dismisses? The title 'Beyond Good and Evil' suggests a complete overcoming of conventional morality, and for Nietzsche this is essentially a task 'for the very few, a privilege for the strong'. These 'new philosophers', as they are called in the closing paragraph of our extract below, are 'spirits strong and original enough to revalue and invert eternal values'. Strength is necessary because tidily rational systems of morality will have to be discarded, and the darker, more dangerous, more passionate and mysterious aspects of human existence plumbed to the depths.2 Perhaps because of the elusive character of the vision it offers, Nietzsche's approach to ethics has called forth very disparate reactions. Though some have seen his emphasis on the individual will to power as both sinister and arrogant, it is hard to deny the vividness and originality of his challenge to much of the Western tradition in moral philosophy.
Every choice human being strives instinctively for a citadel and a secrecy where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the great majority - where he may forget 'men who are the rule', being their exception - excepting only the one case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a seeker after knowledge in the great and exceptional sense. Anyone who, in intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the colours of distress, green and grey with disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess and loneliness, is certainly not a man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that he does not take all this burden and disgust upon himself voluntarily, that he persistently avoids it, and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is certain: he was not made, he was not predestined, for knowledge. If he were, he would one day have to say to himself: 'The devil take my good taste! but the rule is more interesting than the exception - than myself, the exception!' And he would go down and above all, he would go 'inside'. The long and serious study of the average man, and consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad contact (all contact is bad except with one's equals) - this constitutes a necessary part of the life history of every philosopher, perhaps the most disagreeable, odious and disappointing part ...
Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life brings with it in any case, not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing one like that comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize. And he cannot go back any longer. Nor can he go back to the pity of men...
During the longest part of human history - so-called prehistorical times - the value or disvalue of an action was derived from its consequences. The action itself was considered as little as its origin. It was rather the way a distinction or disgrace still reaches back today from a child to its parents, in China: it was the retroactive force of success or failure that led men to think well or ill of an action. Let us call this period the pre-moral period of mankind: the imperative 'Know thyself !' was as yet unknown.
In the last ten thousand years, however, one has reached the point, step by step, in a few large regions on the earth, where it is no longer the consequences but the origin of an action that one allows to decide its value. On the whole this is a great event which involves a considerable refinement of vision and standards; it is the unconscious after effect of the rule of aristocratic values and the faith in 'descent' - the sign of a period that one may call moral in the narrower sense. It involves the first attempt at self-knowledge. Instead of the consequences, the origin: indeed a reversal of perspective! Surely, a reversal achieved only after long struggles and vacillations. To be sure, a calamitous new superstition, an odd narrowness of interpretation, thus become dominant: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite sense as origin in an intention; one came to agree that the value of an action lay in the value of the intention. The intention as the whole origin and prehistory of an action - almost to the present day this prejudice dominated moral praise, blame, judgement, and philosophy on earth.
But today - shouldn't we have reached the necessity of once more resolving on a reversal and fundamental shift in values, owing to another self-examination of man, another growth in profundity? Don't we stand at the threshold of a period which should be designated negatively, to begin with, as extra-moral? After all, today at least we immoralists have the suspicion that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in what is unintentional in it, while everything about it that is intentional, everything about it that can be seen, known, 'conscious', still belongs to its surface and skin - which, like every skin, betrays something but conceals even more. In short, we believe that the intention is merely a sign and symptom that still requires interpretation - moreover, a sign that means too much and therefore, taken by itself alone, almost nothing. We believe that morality in the traditional sense, the morality of intentions, was a prejudice, precipitate and perhaps provisional - something on the order of astrology and alchemy - but in any case something that must be overcome. The overcoming of morality, in a certain sense even the self-overcoming of morality - let this be the name for that long secret work which has been saved up for the finest and most honest, also the most malicious, consciences of today, as living touchstones of the soul.
There is no other way: the feelings of devotion, self-sacrifice for one's neighbour, the whole morality of self-denial must be questioned mercilessly and taken to court - no less than the aesthetics of 'contemplation devoid of all interest' which is used today as a seductive guise for the emasculation of art, to give it a good conscience. There is too much charm and sugar in these feelings of 'for others', 'not for myself', for us not to need to become doubly suspicious at this point and to ask: 'are these not perhaps - seductions?' That they please - those who have them and those who enjoy their fruits, and also the mere spectator - this does not yet constitute an argument in their favour but rather invites caution. So let us be cautious ...
No one is very likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous - except perhaps the lovely 'idealists' who become effusive about the good, the true and the beautiful and allow all kinds of motley, clumsy, and benevolent desiderata to swim around in utter confusion in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. But people like to forget - even sober spirits - that making unhappy and evil are no counterarguments. Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure - or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.
But there is no doubt at all that the evil and unhappy are more favoured when it comes to the discovery of certain parts of truth, and that the probability of their success here is greater - not to speak of the evil who are happy, a species the moralists bury in silence. Perhaps hardness and cunning furnish more favourite conditions for the origin of the strong, independent spirit and philosopher than that gentle, fine, conciliatory good-naturedness and art of taking things lightly which people prize, and prize rightly, in a scholar. Assuming first of all that the concept 'philosopher' is not restricted to the philosopher who writes books - or makes books of his philosophy ...
The moral sentiment in Europe today is as refined, old, diverse, irritable and subtle, as the 'science of morals' that accompanies it is still young, raw, clumsy and butterfingered - an attractive contrast that occasionally becomes visible and incarnate in the person of a moralist. Even the term 'science of morals' is much too arrogant considering what it designates, and offends good taste - which always prefers more modest terms.
One should own up in all strictness to what is still necessary here for a long time to come, to what alone is justified so far: to collect material, to conceptualize and arrange a vast realm of subtle feelings of value and differences of value which are alive, grow, beget and perish - and perhaps attempts to present vividly some of the more frequent and recurring forms of such living crystallizations - all to prepare a typology of morals.
To be sure, so far one has not been so modest. With a stiff seriousness that inspires laughter, all our philosophers demanded something far more exalted, presumptuous, and solemn from themselves as soon as they approached the study of morality: they wanted to supply a rational foundation for morality - and every philosopher so far has believed that he has provided such a foundation. Morality itself, however, was accepted as 'given'. How remote from their clumsy pride was that task which they considered insignificant and left in dust and must - the task of description - although the subtlest fingers and senses can scarcely be enough for it.
Just because our moral philosophers knew the facts of morality only very approximately in arbitrary extracts or in accidental epitomes - for example as the morality of their environment, their class, their church, the spirit of their time, their climate and part of the world - just because they were poorly informed and not even very curious about different peoples, times and past ages - they never laid eyes on the real problems of morality; for these emerge only when we compare many moralities. In all 'science of morals' so far one thing was lacking, strange as it may sound: the problem of morality itself; what was lacking was any suspicion that there was something problematic here. What the philosophers called 'a rational foundation for morality' and tried to supply was, seen in the right light, merely a scholarly variation of the common faith in the prevalent morality; a new means of expression for this faith; and thus just another fact within a particular morality; indeed, in the last analysis a kind of denial that this morality might ever be considered problematic - certainly the very opposite of an examination, analysis, questioning, and vivisection of this very faith ...
As long as the utility reigning in moral value judgements is solely the utility of the herd, as long as one considers only the preservation of the community, and immorality is sought exactly and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the survival of the community - there can be no morality of 'neighbour-love'. Supposing that even then there was a constant little exercise of consideration, pity, fairness, mildness, reciprocity of assistance; supposing that even in that state of society all those drives are active that later receive the honorary designation of 'virtues' and eventually almost coincide with the concept of 'morality' - in that period they do not yet at all belong in the realm of moral valuations; they are still extra-moral. An act of pity, for example, was not considered either good or bad, moral or immoral, in the best period of the Romans; and even when it was praised, such praise was perfectly compatible with a kind of disgruntled disdain as soon as it was juxtaposed with an action that served the welfare of the whole, of the res publica [commonwealth].
In the last analysis, 'love of the neighbour' is always something secondary, partly conventional and arbitrary-illusory in relation to fear of the neighbour. After the structure of society is fixed on the whole and seems secure against external dangers, it is this fear of the neighbour that again creates new perspectives of moral valuation. Certain strong and dangerous drives, like an enterprising spirit, foolhardiness, vengefulness, craftiness, rapacity, and the lust to rule, which had so far not merely been honoured in so far as they were socially useful - under different names, to be sure, from those chosen here - but had to be trained and cultivated to make them great (because one constantly needed them in view of the dangers to the whole community, against the enemies of the community), are now experienced as doubly dangerous, since the channels to divert them are lacking, and, step upon step, they are branded as immoral and abandoned to slander.
Now the opposite drives and inclinations receive moral honours; step upon step, the herd instinct draws its conclusions. How much or how little is dangerous to the community, dangerous to equality, in an opinion, in a state or affect, in a will, in a talent - that now constitutes the moral perspective: here, too, fear is again the mother of morals.
The highest and strongest drives, when they break out passionately and drive the individual far above the average and the flats of the herd conscience, wreck the self-confidence of the community, its faith in itself, and it is as if its spine snapped. Hence just these drives are branded and slandered most. High and independent spirituality, the will to stand alone, even a powerful reason are experienced as dangers. Everything that elevates an individual above the herd and intimidates the neighbour is henceforth called evil; and the fair, modest, submissive, conforming mentality, the mediocrity of desires attains moral designations and honours. Eventually, under very peaceful conditions, the opportunity and necessity for educating one's feelings to severity and hardness is lacking more and more; and even severity, even injustice, begins to disturb the conscience; any high and hard nobility and self-reliance is almost felt to be an insult and arouses mistrust; the 'lamb', even more than the 'sheep', gains in respect.
There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining 'punishment' and 'being supposed to punish' hurts it, arouses fear in it. 'Is it not enough to render him undangerous? Why still punish? Punishing itself is terrible.' With this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its ultimate consequence. Supposing that one could altogether abolish danger, the reason for fear, this morality would thereby be abolished too: it would no longer be needed, it would no longer consider itself necessary.
Whoever examines the conscience of the European today will have to pull the same imperative out of a thousand moral folds and hideouts - the imperative of herd timidity: 'we want that some day there should be nothing any more to be afraid of!' Some day - throughout Europe, the will and way to this day is now called 'progress' ...
We have a different faith; to us the democratic movement is not only a form of the decay of political organization but a form of the decay, namely the diminution, of man, making him mediocre and lowering his value. Where, then, must we reach with our hopes?
Toward new philosophers; there is no choice; toward spirits strong and original enough to provide the stimuli for opposite valuations and to revalue and invert 'eternal values'; toward forerunners, toward men of the future who in the present tie the knot and constraint that forces the will of millennia upon new tracks. To teach man the future of man as his will, as dependent on a human will, and to prepare great ventures and overall attempts of discipline and cultivation by way of putting an end to that gruesome dominion of nonsense and accident that has so far been called 'history' - the nonsense of the 'greatest number' is merely its ultimate form: at some time new types of philosophers and commanders will be necessary for that, and whatever has existed on earth of concealed, terrible and benevolent spirits, will look pale and dwarfed by comparison. It is the image of such leaders that we envisage: may I say this out loud, you free spirits? The conditions that one would have partly to create and partly to exploit for their genesis; the probable ways and tests that would enable a soul to grow to such a height and force that it would feel the compulsion for such tasks; a revaluation of values under whose new pressure and hammer a conscience would be steeled, a heart turned to bronze, in order to endure the weight of such responsibility; on the other hand, the necessity of such leaders, the frightening danger that they might fail to appear or that they might turn out badly or degenerate - these are our real worries and gloom - do you know that, you free spirits? - these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms that pass over the sky of our life.
Problem 1.) Nietzsche argues that "In the last analysis, 'love of the neighbour' is always something secondary, partly conventional and arbitrary-illusory in relation to fear of the neighbour." Why does he believe this? Do you agree? Why or why not?
Problem 2.) Nietzsche argues that only "strong spirits" can overcome conventional or "herd" morality. What do you think he means by this?
Problem 3.) Do you find Nietzsche's critique of conventional morality convincing? Why or why not?