1994 clark on Nietzsche Flashcards
an immoralist does not simply ignore morality
or deny its right to our compliance, but claims that morality is a bad thing that should be rejected
immoralism seems to to be defensible only from the viewpoint of morality
which makes it appear to be as self refuting as another notoriousnieztschean claim, that truths are illusions
sympathetic interpreters have therefore usually tried another tack, suggesting that Nietzsche is an immoralist only in a very qualified sense:
namely, that he rejects particular kind of morality or a particular theory or conception of morality, but in morality itself
I will be concerned not with Nietzsche’s arguments against morality but only with the perplexing claim
to be against morality itself, given every possible understanding of “morality”
Nietzsche himself sometime uses the word ‘morality’ in such a way that he is not rejecting all morality and thus
cannot count himself as an immoralist, for instance, when he praises ‘noble morality’ or insists that ‘higher moralities’ should be possible
given his use of the word, I shall argue later, he counts the noble mode of valuation as a
non-moral mode of evaluating persons rather than as a morality
I suggest by Nietzsche’s belief that this sense of morality (the sense given that he counts himself an “immoralist”) corresponds
pretty much to how we primarily use the term “morality”
when he refers to the “overcoming of morality” this clearly means the overcoming of morality in the
narrower sense
but why does he call himself an immoralist (…) if he is only rejecting morality in this narrower sense?
because he makes clear in this passage precisely this is morality in the traditional sense, or more literally in the sense that, in the sense “morality” has had until now
using morality as “morality” in a nontraditional and wider sense, which makes it equivalent to
“codes for evaluating human beings and their conduct”
my question is how Nietzsche made it comprehensible and plausible to himself
that he was rejecting precisely what we have embraced as “morality”
to understand how Nietzsche could have considered himself an immoralist, we then need to know at least what he thinks moral values are
and why he did not take his own values to be moral values
my interpretation will seem rather idiosyncratic these days
after all the book consists of three separate essays, each one evidently devoted to different moral phenomenon
the problem for my interpretation is that Nietzsche makes no explicit attempt to connect
up these different essays
Within each essay, the situation is similar: each turns out to consist of several different
stories or pieces of stories, and Nietzsche does not seem concerned to patch them together to find a unified account
this has helped encourage the new common view (…) that Genealogy is a new
kind of moral inquiry, and exercise in perspectivism, one that is supposed to let in all sorts of different views without privileging one over the others
Danto: “to treat the Genealogy as though it were precocious analytic philosophy
is to have swallowed the bait without having yet felt the hook’
the application of the major point of historical method he has
been developing in the essay: namely that “the cause of origin of a thing and its eventual unity, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart”
I suggest that the “stable element” in punishment is the act of inflicting a harm or loss on a person based on a judgement that the person
deserves this loss owing to something he or she has done
He suggests in effect, that the stable element in punishment originated in the agreement
made by debtors that if unable to pay off debts, the would provide a substitute repayment in the form of some harm or physical suffering the creditor would be allowed to inflict on them
[debts] the purpose of inflicting suffering in this case seems to be not to punish the debtor but rather to extract
a substitute repayment
in thus drying that “punishment” can be defined, Nietzsche denies that
there is an essence of punishing, in the sense of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that distinguishes the punitive from the non punitive
what distinguishes the punitive from
the non punitive
Nietzsche’s point is that there is no single purpose that constitutes the
purpose of punishing. that our idea of punishing is an unstable synthesis of various purposes
Nietzsche suggests that concepts influenced by history are like ropes held together by the intervening of strands, rather than by a
single strand running through the whole thing
to analyse such concepts is not to find necessary and sufficient conditions for their use
but to disentangle the various strands that have become so tightly woven together by the process of of historical synthesis of strands that hides their separability from view
it is thus by going back a forth between historical and conceptual considerations that one can hope
to make progress in either the history or the conceptual analysis
we should expect Nietzsche’s view to be that a unified theory of the origins of morality would uncover
the origin and trace the development of different and originally independent strands of morality that this history has woven together. This, I believe is exactly what the Genealogy attempts
a self-conscious attempt to analyse a concept with a
complex history- to disentangle originally independent elements that we can no longer see as such
Nietzsche’s history of morality is a genealogy because
it is the history of couplings that already exists combined with something else that has its own history to give birth to a third thing, which then combines with something else that is also the product of such couplings
Genealogy is simply a
natural history
if there is something new in Nietzsche’s use of Genealogy, it is the suggestion in particular that
concepts are formed in the same way as other living things- and, in particular, that this is true of the concept of morality
Nietzsche begins by arguing on philological grounds that “good” originally
meant the same as “noble” or “of the ruling class” whereas “bad” meant “common”
Nietzsche explains the origin of regarding particular characteristics as “good”- the origin of judgements of virtue- along the same lines, claiming that the nobles called “good”
the characteristics they perceived as belonging to themselves and distinguishing them from the commoners. their self affirmation or happiness was such that they took any characteristic particular to themselves to be part of their good goodness that is, an aspect of their superiority to the common human being
[good and bad] at first they perceived the distinction in crude physical terms like wealth and power
as time went on their view of the distinction between themselves and commoners came to centre on traits of the soul or character, such as loyalty, truthfulness, and courage
[noble characteristics] they began to designate themselves as ‘the truthful” as
“distinct from the lying common man”
in this process, Nietzsche claims ‘good’ finally lost all connection to political class and became identical
with the superiority of the soul
goof/ bad here is not a moral distinction
in other words, calling commoners “bad” is certainly making a value judgement about them, but it is not judging them to be “morally bad” or “Immoral”
[goodness] it is merely the natural view point of a group of individuals well pleased with themselves when
comparing themselves to a group they would not be happy be part of
From within the good/ bad mode of valuation
the attitude toward the liar is not one of moral disapproval
good versus evil however is clearly supposed to be a moral
distinction like good versus bad, it distinguishes superior from inferior people
unlike bad, evil is equivalent to
immoral or morally bad
the main difference seems to be that the evil are blamed for
being bad are not blamed for being bad any more than the nobles consider themselves deserving of reward for being good
according to Nietzsche’s theory, this way of judging goodness originated in resentment
directed against the nobles and their easy sense of superiority
the resentful call the noble “evil” and themselves “good”. rather than reflecting the good’s natural
sense of their own superiority
as burning something in effigy acts out or plays- up resentment, calling someone
“evil” can satisfy the same kind of feelings by playing at depriving others of their self-proclaimed goodness or superiority
if they can be blamed for what they are
they can be thought deserving of punishment on that basis
since it will then seem natural to regard the good as deserving of reward
for being good, it will be much easier for the good to convince themselves that they really are superior and do not want to be like the nobles at all
The first essay does not compare two different moralities
instead it attempts to isolate from the historically conditioned synthesis we call ‘morality’ a particular strand- the idea of moral worth or goodness- and show how it developed from something that existed prior yo morality.
the revolt against the noble mode of valuation lies according to Nietzsche’s story
at the beginning of the specifically nonmoral mode of evaluating persons was transformed into a specifically moral mode, of how pagan virtue became moral virtue
but it would also be misleading to say that this account is supposed to explain the origin of morality
morality is a very complex affair on Nietzsche’s account and the moralisation of virtue could not have taken place without earlier developments that also contribute central strands our concept of morality
the idea of blaming people for what they are that transforms the noble mode of valuation
into a moral mode
but blaming too must have a history, and must already be present in some form to be used to transform
“bad’ to “evil”
blaming people only makes sense if there are
standards for acceptable behaviour
the third essay suggests that the oldest strand woven into the concept of morality is rules or codes if conduct
that set out standards of right, of socially permitted and forbidden behaviour
the task of the ‘morality of mores’ was to create
a memory and that this was done with the use of severe punishments
through the experience and threat of punishment
Nietzsche claims “one finally remembers five or six ‘I will not’s’ in regurd to which one had given one’s promise so as to participate in the advantages of society
the rules are ‘I will not’s’ rather tan I ‘ought not’s’ I presume, because they are kept in place as rules demanding obedience largely by the
threat of punishment, and therefore function as hypothetical- rather than as categorical or moral- imperatives
the big story of the second essay is the development of bad conscience, initially characterised as
“the consciousness of guilt’. this suggests that the on Nietzsche’s view the mores become moral rules when they are connected to guilt
being guilty originally was nothing more than owing debt
as is suggested already by the fact that the same German word (Schulz) is used to translate both “debt” and “guilt”
the person did something that breaks his pledge to the community, and therefore to some extent threatens its
stability, angering its members
this is what Nietzsche thinks guilt is in its origins: a debt or substitute payment owed to society for failure
to obey the communities rules
you now have an obligation to the community to obey the rules, and if you renege on it, you deserve punishment
that is “owe” it as a matter of fairness or justice
but then how can Nietzsche consider himself an immoralist?
the only plausible answer I can find for him is that he denies that regarding obedience to the rules as a matter of fairness id equivalent to granting them the status of moral rules
debt is moralised into guilt, and duty into moral duty, through the development of the bad conscience and of the
idea of having a debt to God
Nietzsche evidently believes therefore, that er can regard obedience to the rules necessary for communal existence as a matter of
fairness without the help of ideas of moral duty or guilt, and therefore without regarding them as moral rules
it may be thought that a system of rules involving an idea of fairness must have room for acting from conscience and that
conscience necessarily brings with it ideas of guilt
conscience obeys the rules that make community existence possible but
not out of fear of punishment
Nietzsche admits the role of conscience, but
explicitly distinguishes conscience form “bad conscience” the consciousness of guilt
[community rules] they are obeyed from an identification with the aims of the community, and from pride in being a person who
can be relied on to keep promises- which Nietzsche calls “the proud awareness of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility”
[material debt] once you have paid it off, no debt or guilt remains
in the case of moral guilt, however, it seems that we remain guilty or whatever wrongs we have done, even if we have suffered an appropriate punishment
material indebtedness, unlike guilt, does not automatically lower ones down on you because you don’t have what it takes to keep you word,
as it clearly is in the case of moral guilt. indebtedness and worth may be interconnected, but are two separable issues; whereas this is not the case which debt comes to guilt
the second essay of genealogy tries to show is the possibility- indeed the historical reality- of a nonmaterial version of social contract,
involving what we can recognise to be nonmoral version of social contract, involving what we can recognise to be nonmoral ideas of fairness, justice, obligation, and conscience
this suggests that Nietzsche’s objection is not to justice or the common good (…) nor social norms that apply to all (…) but rather
the moralisation of these ideas and norms
debt becomes guilt insofar as people start using the idea of being indebted
to inflict suffering on themselves
bad conscience develops when restrictions on the external expression of hostile impulses
becomes so severe that they can only be satisfied only through internalisation
the tribe exists only through the sacrifices and
accomplishments of ancestors. (…) eventually the ancestor grows into a god and finally into god, the god before whom all human beings are guilty
but why isn’t the debt we owe to God just debt?
[atheism does not kill guilt] guilt can remain without one someone to whom it is owed
bad conscience
internalising aggression
the formation of pagan gods who are merely human beings writ large and more powerful into a purely spiritual God was the need form a weapon against the
self- a standard of good we could never live up to
Nietzsche thus denies that owing a debt to a divine being is enough to make
this debt a matter of moral guilt
we owe god not a debt for what we do
but for who we are
the material concept of debt was transformed into the fully moral concept of guilt when the divine being to whom the debt was owed was
conceived non naturalistically or ascetically as repudiation of the value of natural human existence
what transforms debt into guilt- makes it un payable and a matter of our worth as persons is the ascetic idea and its attendant
ascetic conception of virtue, which Nietzsche discusses at length in the third genealogy
rules became moral rules when their violation was thought to incur guilt, and
ascetic ideal
the noble nonmoral conception of virtue or goodness becomes moral virtue precisely insofar as
people are blamed for what they are- that is, are considered guilty
I have tried to show that he thinks the ascetic ideal is tightly
intertwined with our idea of morality and I have argued elsewhere that he rejects the ascetic ideal
NIetzsches work on morality involves prying apart central components of our concept of morality
and showing how these strands came together in the course of human history
“morality” is not something that has always been with human beings
but is instead an extremely complex affair that developed the course of history through multiple coupling of originally separate strands that we can no longer see as independent
by separating them, I think Nietzsche tries to show us the possibility of gaining much of what morality gives us, indeed what
we cannot do without, in alternative ways, and specifically without a tie to the aesthetic ideal
as an immoralist, he claims that some such alternative is superior
to the present synthesis that we call “morality”
