to its own creation. The group simply does what it must do to live, taking itself as a fact of nature.[1] To bring it somehow under the moral categories, we may say it has a right to exist, but even this language is inexact in Nietzsche's view, for, as has already been hinted and we shall see more clearly later, he finds rights arising by contract or under a general system of law, and it is not in this way that social groups arise or maintain themselves (save in exceptional circumstances)—they are spontaneous natural formations and are guided purely by instincts of self-preservation.[2] Instead of having a right to exist, we can only truthfully say that they will exist—this will being shown indeed in the imperatives they put on their members, the rules they require them to obey: it is their will to be and to rule that is the explanation of morality.[3] In other words, the group itself is outside morality, and the virtues serve an instinct which is fundamentally different in character from themselves. As imperative and binding as morality is upon individuals, as necessary to the very life of the community as it may be, so that the latter stands or falls with it, it is not good on its own account or as an end in itself, but as means to an end beyond it—an end that can only be described in non-moral terms.[4]
How true the last remark is to Nietzsche's thought, though the language is my own, is shown in what he says of the relation of social groups to one another. On occasion they feel and act in a way which is the exact opposite of what they require of their members in their conduct to one another. They may be mutually hostile, selfish, unmerciful, full of the desire to dominate—and all in good conscience.[5] The members of one group may deceive, rob, kill those of another group without the slightest self-reproach. In a famous passage ("infamous," some would say) Nietzsche describes a highly moralized race, its members self-restrained in their dealings with one another and showing all manner of mutual considerateness, delicacy of
