Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XI

by William Mackintire Salter

 

CHAPTER XI

ATTITUDE TO MORALS

In turning to Nietzsche's attitude to morals in this period, I find it convenient to distinguish between his views about morality and his own moral views. For morality may be taken as an historical phenomenon like any other, and studied and analyzed; and it is in fact the critical analysis of morality as an objective fact in history which now chiefly engages him. At the same time he puts forth ethical views of his own to a limited extent.

 

I

First, then, as to historical morality. Here too as in the theoretic realm he comes on elements of illusion. Man thinks he is free, and thereby distinguished from the animal world; notions of responsibility, of desert, of guilt, habits of praising and blaming, of rewarding and punishing, arise. But Nietzsche sees no way out of determinism. Causes lie behind human actions as behind all other events in nature. That in given circumstances a given individual might have acted otherwise than as he did is something he cannot admit; and it is only turning this around to say that the consciousness of freedom is illusory. Kant and Schopenhauer had saved themselves from this consequence by postulating a metaphysical being for man—saying that while as a phenomenon in time his actions are determined, his real being is timeless and not subject to the laws of phenomenal succession. But Nietzsche has now left metaphysical views behind (at least, they no longer count for him)—and this way of escape is not open. ^a

Seeing illusion in free-will is nothing novel, ^b and if there is any novelty in Nietzsche's procedure at this point, it is in the thoroughgoing way in which he follows up the consequences of the admission. I mention them simply as he states them—and he hardly more than states them, deeming extended argamentation superfluous. The consequences are far from agreeable in some cases. For example, responsibility goes, and he calls it a bitter drop—"the bitterest which one bent on knowing must swallow."^[1] Through feelings of responsibility man has lifted himself out of his animality; it was a necessary illusion ("Moral ist Nothlüge").^[2] Yet the conclusion is inevitable: without freedom, no responsibility. We are as responsible for our dreams as for our waking conduct—that is, we are responsible for neither. Cruel men are no more responsible for what they do, than granite is for being granite.^[3] Guilt also goes. Although judges of witches and witches themselves have been convinced of their guilt, there was no guilt, and it is so with guilt of every kind.^[4] Desert of praise or blame goes (which is not saying that either may not be dealt out for effect);^{[5] c} and so with praising and blaming ourselves. Bad conscience is like a dog biting against a stone—a stupidity.^[6] Giving way to remorse is to add to our first folly a second; if we have done harm, let us do good—this is the better way.^{[7] d} Indeed, things being necessarily what they are, "wrong" in any absolute sense disappears from the universe, and "ought," as contradictory to what is, becomes meaningless.^[8] All actions are innocent; even the emancipated individual who becomes "pious" again (a type Nietzsche particularly dislikes) only does what he has to do—though it may be a sign of degeneration going on within him.^[9] Revolutionary and more or less unwelcome as all this is, Nietzsche sees compensations, and in some ways has a sense of relief—for the dark shadow of sin vanishes and the world is clothed in innocence again.^[10] Later on he says along this same general line, though with a special shade of meaning [he has been speaking of the liberating effect of comparative studies], "We understand all, we experience all, we have no longer ` hostile feeling in us.… 'All is good'—it costs us effort to deny. We suffer, if we are ever so unintelligent as to become party against a thing"; he even suggests that in this way scholars best fulfil today the teaching of Christ.^[11] If we bid farewell to a passion, he would have us do it without hate—otherwise we learn a second passion; he thinks that the souls of Christians, which have freed themselves from sin, are usually ruined by the hatred of sin—"Look at the faces of great Christians! They are the faces of great haters."^[12]

Nietzsche becomes very warm against punishment—he would banish it out of the world.^[13] It is really anger and revenge, to which we give a good name so as to have good conscience in inflicting it. ^e The truth is that the evil-doer is not even the same person that he was when he committed the evil deed; we punish a scapegoat. In any case, the punishment does not purify him, is no expiation; on the contrary, it soils more than the transgression itself.^[14] The punishment here in mind is that which masks as justice (the wrong-doer receiving his deserts); viewed as a deterrent, however (whether for others or for the wrong-doer himself in the future), and wrought in that spirit, Nietzsche does not question but rather asserts its utility. The wrong-doer by suffering it benefits society, and a sense of this should determine his mood, which should not be remorse, but the feeling that having done evil, he is now doing good—he should be free to consider himself a benefactor of humanity.^[15] Nietzsche is also troubled about the way society has to proceed to protect itself against crime—about the tools it has to create and make use of, the policemen, jailors, executioners, not forgetting the public prosecutors and the lawyers; indeed, "let one ask whether the judge himself and the punishment and the whole course of judicial procedure are not in their effect on non-criminals depressing rather than elevating phenomena." As often, he says, as we turn men into means to the ends of society and sacrifice them, all our higher humanity grieves.^[16] He is aware that there is some danger to society in the doctrines of general human innocence and unresponsibility—they might throw courts and the course of civil justice out of gear; there was similar danger, he observes, in the teaching of Jesus to just the opposite effect, namely that since all are sinful, they should not judge one another.^[17] But Nietzsche is no revolutionary, and while he wished to see civil institutions purged of the spirit of revenge, he had no desire to abolish them. He did not even oppose capital punishment, and wished to allow an incurable criminal, who became a horror to himself, to end his own days. His concern was chiefly for a point of view, namely, that the criminal is one deranged or sick, and should be treated as such—not then with patronizing compassion, but with a physician's penetration, a physician's good will: he has subtle reflections to offer in this connection on the psychology of crime.^[18] One of his hopeful thoughts for the future is that there will be institutions where men can betake themselves for spiritual cures, according to their varying needs—in one place, anger would be fought, in another lust, and so on.^{[19] f} He can also imagine individuals and whole groups abstaining from recourse to the courts on their own account, after the primitive Christian fashion^[20] As for himself he says, "Better allow yourself to be robbed than have scarecrows about you to prevent it—such is my taste."^{[21] g}

 

II

Nietzsche also criticises certain ideas which come nearer the content of morality. He finds an element of illusion in the view that good impulses and evil impulses differ in kind. He thinks that in all man does, he acts for his preservation, his pleasure, his advantage. ^h Some actions are, however, more intelligent than others, and this fact gives rise to diverse judgments. It is a view not unlike that of Socrates and Plato, who held that man always does the good, i.e., what seems so to him, according to the grade of his intellect, the measure of his rationality. Acts called evil are really stupid. Good acts are sublimated evil ones; evil acts clumsy, unintelligent good ones. In accordance with such an understanding of things, Nietzsche raises the question whether humanity might not transform itself from a moral into a wise humanity.^{[22] i}

Especially is there illusion in the idea of unegoistic actions, by which Schopenhauer, and he himself at the outset, had set such store. He by no means denies the genuineness of the actions which go by that name; he throws no suspicion on the reality of benevolence, self-sacrifice, heroism—his reasoning is different from that of La Rochefoucauld; but he thinks that when we look for the ultimate source of such actions, we find the same desire for personal gratification leading to them which leads to all other actions.^[23] A mother, for instance, gives her child what she denies herself—sleep, the best food, on occasion sacrificing her health and her means. Is this to be treated as an exception to the rule of human conduct—a wonder in the world, something, as Schopenhauer said, "impossible and yet actual"? Or is the fact simply that the mother sacrifices certain impulses to other impulses, yielding to the strongest—that she nowise differs, so far as the psychology of the matter goes, from a stubborn person who would rather be shot than go a step out of his way to accommodate some one else?^[24] We do not and cannot cease to be egos seeking for personal gratification, no matter what we do. And yet Schopenhauer thought unegoistic motives the essential mark of a moral action—and the idea is not uncommon today.^{[25] j}

Again, morality tends to draw the line so sharply between good and evil that one cannot be supposed to come out of the other. Nietzsche, however, finds evil sometimes passing into good. The passions excited in war, the impersonal hate, the cold-blooded killing with good conscience, the proud indifference to great losses, may in time be translated into spiritual equivalents, and add to the sum of available energy in the workshops of the mind.^[26] Destruction and the destructive spirit may prepare the way for new things under the sun, new forms of life. As mighty glaciers hollow out valleys and in time leave meadows and woods and brooks in their track, so frightful human energies—what we commonly sum up as evil (das Böse)—may be cyclopean architects and road-builders of humanity.^[27] Even deception, violence, ruthless self-interest may play a part—and a genius of culture might employ them with so sure a hand that he would seem like an evil demon, and yet his aims, now and then shining through, be great and good, and he himself have angel wings.^[28] We cannot build good "on good alone," as Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior" does—at least on what is commonly called good. A spirit of contradiction may lie at the basis of one man's virtue; a readiness to agree at the basis of another's; a third may draw all his morality out of his lonely pride, and a fourth out of a social impulse. That is, what is called evil, as well as what is called good, may be the basis of good, and the most inept teacher of the four types of individuals mentioned would be the moral fanatic who failed to bear this in mind.^[29]

The very ideas of what is good or evil may vary. A lonely man may console himself by thinking that he is ahead of his time; but the world may not go his way.^[30] Even a good conscience does not necessarily attend a good man. Science is something good, and yet it has often come into the world stealthily, in roundabout ways, feeling like a criminal, or at least like a smuggler. Good conscience has as its first stage bad conscience—for everything good is sometime new, i.e., unusual, against use and custom, unmoral [in the primitive sense of that term—the German here is wider die Sitte, unsittlich], and gnaws at the heart of its discoverer.^[31] In other words, good conscience is a late fruit of bad conscience.

 

III

All this, however, does not mean that there is nothing constant in morality—that in a broad way it is not a tolerably distinct and recognizable phenomenon in history. What is most constant about it is its form; but within limits the content of it tends to be constant, too.

Historically speaking, that conduct is always moral, ethical (moralisch, sittlich, ethisch) which conforms to a long-established law or tradition. The fundamental antithesis is not between "unegoistic" and "egoistic," but between being bound and not being bound by traditional law. To practise revenge is moral, if revenge belongs to established custom—as it did among the older Greeks. A feeling of respect for what is authoritative is the fundamental note; and the older, i.e., the more authoritative the custom, the greater the respect, until at last the custom becomes holy and the respect turns into reverence. The morality of piety, Nietzsche remarks, is a much older morality than that which calls for unegoistic actions.^[32] For most of us even now the content of conscience is what was regularly required of us apart from any reason when we were young by those whom we revered or feared: when we ask "why?" we leave the realm of conscience proper.^[33] "Good," as more than "moral," is applied to those who obey the traditional law as if by nature, after long inheritance, hence easily and gladly.

How the customs of a community arise is another question—one which belongs rather to history or sociology than to ethics. Only after they exist do moral distinctions have a meaning. Nietzsche attributes them broadly at this time to the community's instinct for self-preservation. Such and such practices are seen [supposed] to be useful to the community, hence they are favored. They may be of the most varied character—some may not really be beneficial to the community, but being thought to be they become part of customary law.^[34] Moral action is thus at bottom adoption by the individual of the community's point of view. Utility is the standard, but public not private utility.^[35] The logic is: the community is worth more than the individual, and a lasting advantage is to be preferred to a fleeting one, hence the lasting advantage of the community is to be placed unconditionally before the advantage of the individual, particularly his momentary well-being, but also before his lasting advantage or even his continuance in life. If the individual suffers from an arrangement which benefits the whole, if he is stunted, goes to pieces on its account—the custom must none the less be maintained, the sacrifice made. This is from the community's point of view. The individual himself may think differently; he may invert the propositions and say in his own case that the individual is worth more than the many, and that present enjoyment—a moment in paradise—is to be rated higher than a dull continuance of indifferent states. But the community has the upper hand, and in it and under it the individual is trained—trained not as an individual, but as a member of a whole, one of a majority; and the normal outcome of the training is that he takes the side of the majority (der Einzelne sich selbst majorisirt): this indeed is what morality essentially means.^[36]

The training is a long historic (one might say, prehistoric) process. In subjecting individuals, checking their egoisms, binding them together, the community operates at first more or less by force; it struggles long perhaps with their selfishness and wilfulness. Only late does free obedience arise. But when this is reached and it becomes at last almost instinctive, pleasure coming to be associated with it, as with all things habitual and natural, it receives the name of virtue.^[37] Individuals now not merely submit willingly to the ordinary social restrictions, they are ready to sacrifice on occasion, not holding back their very life. And this, not in violation of the general psychological law already mentioned that every one seeks personal gratification, but because gratification is now found in doing whatever serves the common weal.^{[38] k}

In the course of this developmental process there is another result. As stated, morality has its basis in social utility. But in time actions come to be performed without thought or even knowledge of this—perhaps from fear or reverence for those who immediately require them, or from being accustomed from childhood up to see others perform them, or from benevolence, since the practice of them creates joy and approving faces everywhere about one, or from vanity because they are praised. In other words, the original reason for the action (or the custom to which it conforms) is lost out of mind: the custom stands as a thing by itself—actions that conform to it are good on their own account. Now such actions are called moral particularly—not of course because they are done from any of the special minor motives mentioned, but because they are not done from motives of conscious utility.^{[39] l} A late echo of such a view appears, I may add, in Kant's treating reverence for the law, irrespective of any utilitarian considerations, as the only properly moral motive. A second reason for the traditional contrast between morality and utility has been already hinted at. Communities had to struggle long with individuals seeking their own advantage or utility—so long and so hard, that every other motive came to be rated higher than utility. It appeared then as if morality had not grown out of utility, while in truth it grew out of social utility, which had great difficulty in putting itself through against all manner of private utilities.^[40]

Customs and customary norms widely vary—indeed, so widely that, since morality is simply conformity to them, there may seem to be nothing really constant about it. And yet Nietzsche notes that some actions are quite universally regarded as good and others as evil, inasmuch as they affect a community's welfare in such direct and obvious ways. Amid all the variations of norms, benevolence, pity, and the like are universally regarded as useful, and at the present time it is pre-eminently the kindly, helpful individual who is called "good." So to injure one's fellows has been felt in all the moral codes of different times to be harmful, and today when we use the word "evil," we have the willing injuring of a fellow particularly in mind.^[41]

"Good" and "evil" have been used thus far in quite general senses. But Nietzsche has a keen scent for shades of meaning, and he thinks that at times these words have particular significations. For instance, to a ruling tribe or class "good" has certain associations which are quite different from those that it has to a weak and subject population—associations of power, self-satisfaction, and pride. "Evil" (schlecht), the opposite of "good," they apply to those contrasted with themselves whom they look down upon, the weaker, incoherent mass whom they have subjected. To this extent "good" and "evil" are like high and low, master and slave. "Evil," so understood, does not apply to an enemy who is strong—in Homer, Trojan and Greek alike are good; "evil" is an epithet of contempt. On the other hand, among those who are subjected and powerless, and whose predominant sentiment is one of fear, practically every other being is evil (böse), i.e., capable of injuring them—they do not trust one another enough to form a community, or more than the rudest kind of one, and this is why they easily become subject, or else disappear. These contrasted meanings of good and evil are very imperfectly worked out now—we shall come on a fresh and much fuller statement in Nietzsche's succeeding period.^[42]

I pass over Nietzsche's analysis ("dissection" he sometimes calls it) of special moral conceptions, like justice, equality, rights, and duties; he goes on along the same lines in his later period and it will be convenient to treat the material together in dealing with that period. I also pass over his keen exposure of the part which vanity and self-interest play in much that passes as moral conduct, though every student of morality would do well to attend to it. ^m

 

IV

Turning now to his own moral views, we find him still with a sense of the greatness of a dominating idea or aim,^[43] and if he does not soar so high and has not so confident a tone as before, he is nearer to life and actuality, or, as we might say, more human. The eager thought and expectation of something great and almost superhuman to come, and of a new German (or European) culture which should look that way, have more or less abated, but he honors the philosopher as before and counts as the highest pleasures those of conceiving works of art and doing noble deeds—so that in effect the old trinity still lingers in his mind.^[44] With all his determinism, and perhaps quite consistently with it, he has a sense of human power. Not only can man know, he can do. Active natures, he says, not so much follow the saying, "Know thyself," as feel an inner command, "Will a self—and so become one."^[45] We can deal with our impulses more or less as a gardener does with his plants, encouraging now this one and now that: "Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener, but the soil for his plants!"^[46] We can strip from our passions their fearful character—it is by neglect that they become monsters; he who conquers them is like a colonist who has become master of forests and swamps and can now turn them to account.^[47] "Every day is ill-used and a danger for the next in which we have not at least once denied ourselves in some way: this gymnastics is indispensable, if we wish to keep the joy of being our own master."^[48] Nietzsche is sometimes compared to Callicles in Plato's "Gorgias"; he is at least not like him so far as Callicles says, "The temperate man is a fool; only in hungering and eating, in thirsting and drinking, in having all his desires about him and gratifying every possible desire does man live happily."

Nietzsche holds, indeed, that all men seek personal gratification, but he does not mean by this "self-indulgence," nor does he imply that men care for comfort, or luxury, or gain, or honor, or even continued existence more than anything else. The happinesses of different stages of human development [or of different kinds of men] are incomparable and peculiar.^[49] The Greeks preferred power which drew upon itself much evil to weakness that experienced only good: the sense of power was itself pleasurable to them—better than any utility or good name.^[50] And what Nietzsche's own ideal is, where gratification lay for him, is suggested in what he says, after remarking on the sordid political parties of his day, "Live as higher men, and do evermore the deeds of the higher culture."^[51]

While he does not recognize, any more than earlier, the practicability of making every one an end in himself, while he thinks that we may easily overdo pity, and speaks of the need of discrimination and judgment,^[52] his feelings of broad human sympathy and love are as strong as ever. The cold look which superior people have for their servants displeases him.^[53] He finds it something fearful for a man to have less than three hundred Thaler a year, or to have to beg like a child and to humble himself.^[54] He has even sentiment for the criminal, as we have seen—and speaks of our crime against him in that we treat him as a scamp (Schuft). At times a wondering sense of the worth of man as such comes over him: not only is nature too beautiful for us poor mortals, but man is, not merely one who is moral, but every man.^[55] Really Nietzsche wishes (now as earlier) to consider all, and, though in varying ways, to give a meaning to every life.^[56] This does not imply, however, that we must always be directly doing for others. One who makes a whole person out of himself, who developes all his peculiar individual being, may in the long run go further in contributing to the general advantage, than one who gives himself up to acts of benevolence and pity.^[57] If egoism be taken in this higher sense, it may be questioned whether the egoistic is not useful in a much higher degree, even to other men, than the unegoistic.^{[58] n} The individual is thus still regarded in the light of a public utility, and so far Nietzsche does not in his own view transcend the utilitarian standpoint which he accredits to morality in general.

At the same time we feel that a different standpoint is shaping itself in his mind, though at first tentatively and questioningly. Communities, as we have seen, are the raison d'être of morality—without them and their fixed norms (Sitten), it would never have arisen. The individual is looked at as existing for the community, as a function or functionary of it—apart from it he really means nothing, nothing of importance: such, in abstracto, is morality's standpoint. But just here Nietzsche finds himself questioning. Is this social [moral] significance all that a man has? Has he no properly individual being and value? May there not be acts of no advantage to society and still well worth while? He has a reflection like the following: There are certain things which we cannot do as members of society, though we may as private individuals, e.g., show mercy to a breaker of the law; it is something which endangers society—society as such cannot do it or sanction it, though it may leave certain favored individuals free to do it (the king or executive), and we may all be happy when the privilege is exercised, though glad in our private hearts rather than as citizens.^[59] The idea of a possible significance which is purely individual appears still more clearly in the following: "The active class of men lack ordinarily the higher type of activity; I mean the individual. They are active as officials, business men, scholars, i.e., as members of a species, but not as quite definite individuals and single men; in this respect they are lazy."^[60] The paragraph closes: "All men may be classed, now as in all times, as slave and free; for whoever does not have three-fourths of the day to himself is a slave, whatever else he may be—statesman, business man, official, or scholar." We have already observed his feeling about society's turning men into functionaries to defend it against crime; but if man's being is in his social functioning, why should our "higher humanity" be hurt, and what is the sense in speaking of "sacrifice"? There is the same implication in a distinction he makes, in speaking of factory slavery and organization, between a person and a screw—the underlying thought being that a screw is for others' uses, a person for his own.^[61]

Indeed Nietzsche once raises a strange question (strange that is, to us of today with our prevailing social estimates of everything): Grant that all men exist for social purposes and are functions of the social mechanism, what is the purpose of the mechanism itself? To quote his words, "Humanity uses up regardlessly each single person as fuel for its great machines: but for what purpose then are the machines, if all single persons are only of use in maintaining them? Machines that are ends in themselves—is that the umana commedia?"^[62] To us in these days society is an ultima ratio—if anything can be shown to be for the good of society, we are as completely satisfied as former ages were to have it shown that anything was for the glory of God. The import of Nietzsche's question will become clearer later on.

1. Human, etc., § 107.
2. Ibid., § 40.
3. Dawn of Day, § 128; Human, etc., § 43; cf. Will to Power, § 288.
4. Joyful Science, § 250; cf. Mixed Opinions etc., § 386.
5. Human, etc., § 105; cf. Will to Power, § 318.
6. The Wanderer etc., § 38; cf. Human, etc., § 133.
7. The Wanderer etc., § 323.
8. Human, etc., § 34.
9. Dawn of Day, §§ 148, 56. As to the innocence of becoming in general, see later utterances, Werke, XIII, 127, § 289; XIV, 308, § 141.
10. Human, etc., § 124.
11. Will to Power, § 218.
12. Dawn of Day, § 411.
13. The Wanderer etc., § 183; Dawn of Day §§ 13, 202.
14. Dawn of Day, §§ 252, 236.
15. Human, etc., § 105; The Wanderer etc.,
16. The Wanderer etc., § 186.
17. Ibid., § 81.
18. Dawn of Day, § 202.
19. Werke, XI, 377, § 573.
20. Ibid., XI, 377, § 573.
21. Joyful Science, § 184.
22. Human, etc., §§ 102, 107
23. Cf. The Wanderer etc., § 20; Dawn of Day, § 103.
24. Human, etc., § 57; cf. Werke, XI, 327, § 439.
25. Human, etc., § 133.
26. Ibid., § 277.
27. Ibid., § 246.
28. Ibid., § 241.
29. The Wanderer etc., § 70; cf. Mixed Opinions etc., § 91.
30. Human, etc., § 375.
31. Mixed Opinions etc., § 90.
32. Human, etc., § 96.
33. The Wanderer etc., § 52; cf. § 212. On fear as a moral motive, see Werke, XI, 208-11.
34. Human, etc., § 96.
35. The Wanderer etc., § 40.
36. Mixed Opinions etc., § 89.
37. Human, etc., §§ 99, 97; The Wanderer etc., § 40.
38. Cf. Human, etc., § 57, as to the soldier's sacrifice; also Werke, IX, 156, as to the state as perhaps the highest and most reverend object which the blind and egoistic mass in the ancient world knew.
39. The Wanderer etc., § 40.
40. Ibid., § 40; cf. Human, etc., § 39.
41. Human, etc., § 96; cf. The Wanderer etc., § 190. In Joyful Science, § 345, Nietzsche appears to question a moral consensus, but only in appearance, and in his closing period he reaffirms it.
42. See chap. xix. The above paragraph is based on Human, etc., § 45. The distinction between "böse" and "schlecht" is not at all clearly marked here.
43. The Wanderer etc., § 230.
44. Werke, X, 482.
45. Mixed Opinions etc., § 366.
46. Dawn of Day, § 382.
47. The Wanderer etc., §§ 37, 53; cf. § 65.
48. Ibid., § 305.
49. Dawn of Day, § 108; see also the conclusion of Human, etc., § 95.
50. Dawn of Day, § 360.
51. Human, etc., § 480.
52. The Wanderer etc., § 41.
53. Human, etc., § 64.
54. Ibid., § 479.
55. Mixed Opinions etc., § 342; cf . The Wanderer etc., § 49.
56. Dawn of Day, § 202.
57. Human, etc., § 95; cf. Dawn of Day, § 174.
58. Werke, XI, 39, § 77.
59. The Wanderer etc., § 34.
60. Human, etc., § 283.
61. Dawn of Day, § 206.
62. Human, etc., § 585.