the criticism will require several chapters, the present one being a kind of introduction to the general subject.
II
Nietzsche notes that modern Europe (really the Western world in general) is in a kind of chaos as to moral conceptions. The old morality was built on the God-idea, and this is passing away—indeed is already dead,[1] i.e., for the intellectual circles of which he takes account. It is naïve to think that the morality can long remain when the sanctioning God is lacking—the "beyond" being necessary, if belief in it is to be unimpaired.[2] We are in a "moral interregum"[3]—Nietzsche might have assented to Matthew Arnold's language, describing us as wanderers between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born. The dissolving of the old morality is leading to the atomistic individual as a practical consequence, and even further—to the breaking up of the individual himself, so that he becomes several things rather than one; a state of absolute flux.[4] Superficial critics think that this is a result in which Nietzsche found satisfaction, being opposed to "all ideals and all faith";[5] but he calls it "something fearful." The passage in which he says this is worth quoting: "I see something fearful ahead—chaos in the first instance, everything fluid. Nothing that has value in itself, nothing that commands "Thou oughtst." It is a condition of things not to be borne; to the spectacle of this destruction we must oppose creation; to these wandering aims we must oppose one aim—create it."[6] The passage paraphrased immediately before ends, "On this account an aim is now more needed than ever and love, a new love."
Nietzsche gives several illustrations of the existing chaos. Here is one man for whom a morality is proved by its utility,
- ↑ Joyful Science, § 343.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 253.
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 452.
- ↑ Werke, XII, 358, § 674.
- ↑ For example, Paul Elmer More, op. cit., p. 66. Cf. Nietzsche's language with regard to eternal recurrence, "I teach you redemption from the eternal flux" (Werke, XII, 369, § 723).
- ↑ Werke, XII, 358-9, § 675. Nietzsche had noted the mere fact of varying standards earlier (without urging a corrective as now), see e.g., ibid., XI. 193-8.
