III
First, however, and all the more because of this ultimate aim, he feels the need of moral criticism—a path on which, as we have seen, he started in his previous period. He turns morality, the whole circle of conceptions involved, into a problem. In taking this attitude he is unusual, if not unique. b The common view is that morality is something given, self-evident, at least easily made so, that the real difficulties are with practice; or that, if there are theoretic difficulties, these are simply in finding an adequate formula or adequate "basis" for something, the obligation of which is unquestionable. Kant and Schopenhauer take this view—Professor Simmel particularly notes Nietzsche's difference from them in that he does not limit himself to the task of codifying moral demands commonly recognized.[1] Dr. Dolson also comments on the striking difference between Nietzsche and most ethical writers in this respect.[2] Schopenhauer had cited neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva as if it were a rule which nobody questioned and about which all moral philosophers are agreed; Nietzsche regards him as naïve.[3] He regards Kant and Hegel also as uncritical. Kant wrote, indeed, the "Critique of Practical Reason," but it is not criticism in the sense in which Nietzsche feels that there is need of it—Kant took our ordinary morality, even Rousseau's extreme democratic formulation of it, for granted, he did not skeptically inquire into it. Hegel's criticism did not touch the moral ideal itself, but only asked whence comes the opposition to it, why it has not been attained or is not demonstrable in small and great.[4] Spinoza did question the finality of the moral valuations, but it was indirectly only and as a consequence of his theodicy.[5] English Utilitarianism looked critically into the origin of the moral valuations, but it none the less believed in them as implicitly as the Christian does.[6] Our latest moral investigators, says Nietzsche, are
