Genealogy of morals

The Genealogy of morals. A writing polemizes ( Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift ) is a work of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche published in 1887. It is composed of three essays:

I. “Good and malicious”, “good and bad”
II. “The “fault”, “bad conscience” and what resembles to him
III. What means the ascetic ideals?

Situation

The author in his time

The end of the XIXe century, after the Franco-German War of 1870 in which Nietzsche takes part as voluntary male nurse, is the time of the construction of the great colonial empires: an unlimited field of prospects seems to open for the Commerce and the Industrie. The Idéologie of the Progrès, born with the Century of the lights can consequently supplant the Christian Pessimisme (the man is sinning, the world is a vale of tears, etc); the developments of the Science applied to industry and medicine let foresee the one era old opening of Bonheur for humanity. However, in same time, the anarchists and other nihilists shake, by their criticisms and their actions, “the peace of the herd”. Nietzsche tackles, in its writings, the idols and the mystifying beliefs of a Humanité domesticated: “There is freedom only for the warlike hearts… The man become free crowd with the feet this kind of good being méprisable of which grocers, Christians, cows, women, English and other democrats dream. ”.

Work in its philosophical context

Published in 1887, the Généalogie of morals carries, like first subtitle: “A polemical writing” and also: “To be used as ones complement a recent work: across the good and the evil .”

In this work Nietzsche hears:

to exceed the limits of the Criticisme of Kant which stopped “before the criticism of the religion and morals”.
to give the conceptual keys to decipher some of its aphorisms: it is one of the most systematic texts of Nietzsche.
to regulate its accounts with its former Master Schopenhauer ( the world like will and as representation ) which had stigmatized to want it to live like absurdity and which had defended a Morale resting on pity, being thus inserted in sad Christian pessimism.

The latter point stresses that it is initially against Christianity that is written the Généalogie of morals ; indeed, for Nietzsche, as a Christianisme depreciates the Vie (the true life is in beyond the life), it is a morals of slave expressing the impotence and the resentment. However Christian morals became (by the action of the priests) the Morale very short, and its ideals are now taken again by the democratic thinkers and socialist: the values of Altruism (service not involved in others), of abnegation (self-sacrifice), of humility (obliteration, devalorization of oneself) are those which are appropriate for the human herd equipped with gregarious instinct; they constitute of this fact even the ideology of the decline, of the refusal of the life (the illusion of a life in beyond: beyond the life i.e. it not life, nothing), of the Hatred turned over against oneself (“afflicting It refrain of the mea culpa” like ideology of the culpabilisation).

The Généalogie of morals is also a questioning of utilitarian morals or more exactly of a representation spread about it, namely that of a morals identifying the well with useful immediate and the egoistic and often caricatured by means of expressions such as: morals of grocers, notaries, “men of the benefit” all noncreators.

These morals lead the human race to the decline and the disappearance of the culture; one needs, according to Nietzsche, to oppose an ethical to them love of the life, self-control and creation of oneself, and risk; to oppose to the moraline reigning of weak, the slaves, an ethics of Master who will glorifiera the Will for power (assertion of oneself) that Ainsi spoke Zarathoustra had presented.

Impact and posterity of work

This description with vitriol of the “values” of our world like morals of slave, this assimilation of the democratic ideals and Socialists with a morals of impotent, this glorification of the life, body and force will cause violent reactions and various:

max Scheler: The Christian, designated as man of the resentment, will show (but the Généalogie of morals had shown that the charge is precisely a symptom of the resentment!) Nietzsche to falsify the Christian Doctrines; but Scheler is satisfied to repeat (to ruminate would say Nietzsche) a Catéchisme, it passes beside the philosophy of Nietzsche and does not produce a philosophical criticism.

Sigmund Freud will recognize its relationship with Nietzsche but denies, according to Jones, any influence. The man of the resentment condemned without respite to revive a frustrating past is close to the neurotic; the fear in front of the life, in front of the innovation, is the demonstration of an old wound which the man dissimulates in a ceaseless company of car-mystification. The Hypothèse topic of Freud has coincidences with the diagram nietzschéen. But among the close relations of Freud Nietzschéen authenticates Otto Rank ( will of happiness ) produced a criticism nietzschéenne of Freud:
too reactive design of the psychic life, i.e. ignorance of the active forces of the Unconscious .
the idea insipid and dull of sublimation shows a nihilist vision of the creative Volonté and artist: there is an impossibility to conceive and cause a transmutation .
Freud does not manage to be released from the bad conscience and the culpability.
scientistic eagerness of Freud like wanting sick of a news Religion, a fact that Nietzsche has, clearly perceived to him at many thinkers of the XIXe century.

The Nazis had, as Gilles Deleuze notices it, with the work of Nietzsche of the ambiguous reports/ratios: ambiguous because they liked to be claimed some, but could not do it without truncating quotations, falsifying editions, to prohibit principal texts (cf TOKEN ENTRY Nicolas De Nietzsche with Hitler , ED. Fasquelle, 1936). The use of Nietzsche for the Nazis concerns research a philosophical thought heralding the National Socialism. On the other hand Nietzsche itself did not have an ambiguous relationship with the mode bismarckien (“the German spirit: since eighteen years, contradictio in abjecto. ” the Twilight of the idols ), nor with Pan-Germanism (“… these people is deliberately abêti, since nearly one millenium: nowhere one misused forever more faultily of these two large drugs of Europe, alcohol and Christianity. ” Idem.), nor with the Antisémitisme (“do not attend anybody who either implied in this shameless stove setting of the races. ” Letters with Fritsch). Lastly, the judgment of any form of nationalism is permanent in the work of Nietzsche.

Nowadays, the tendency is to consider that Nietzsche is, with Marx and Freud, the philosopher which really knew best to bore up to date the genuine springs of the control of the men, that, under cover of intentions morals, those take care well not to look at opposite. The thought of Nietzsche is alive, today, in work of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.

This is a summary of the Généalogie of morals (1887), of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Summary runs

the moral ideals do not result from the Transcendance of a Good or a Truth in oneself, but of certain physiological, psychic and historical conditions (the moral conscience is the resultant of the play even instincts and impulses with work in psychism).

the moral ideals, resulting from the bad conscience and the resentment, morbid affects and slaves of the weakness négatrice of the life, have a value not higher, but negative and degrading, antivitale.

More precisely:

current Christian morals (contemporary of Nietzsche) was born from the revolt of the slaves against the aristocratic ones.

the hatred of weak is very strong with regard to themselves, of their fear of the existence and of the world such as it is. This psychological position is not bearable. The resentment is a psychological inversion which makes it possible to deviate this hatred towards something of other and thus to support oneself. This something is what recalls to weak the their own weakness: life of the forts. The slaves turn over the good/bad opposition created by the Masters in a good/malicious opposition where the “good” indicates the weak one.

the ascetic ideals are the symptom of a will, the will of nothing, negation of the life. They are the expression of the instinct of self-preservation of weak, which appears by a desire of “living differently”.

What is unbearable, it is not the suffering but the fact that it does not have a direction. The ascetic ideal comforts the suffering ones by giving a direction to the suffering.

the will of nothing, attested by the strength of the ascetic ideals, is due to the force of the will: the man still prefers to want nothing rather than anything to want.

Is " Fort" (or " maître" or " aristocrate") a person who accepts the existence in her entirety (the fact even as it exists without reason, her joys, her sorrows) and which, vis-a-vis its weaknesses, perceives the reflex of resentment like a weakness and a cowardice, and prefers work to him on oneself (instead of the charge of the others), the sculpture of oneself being a exalatation of her own force.

Long summary

Preface

1 We are the unknown ones for ourselves.

2 Essentially, the thoughts of these treaties are those of Humain, too human . The philosopher is like a tree which exempts its fruits - and which is essential if they displease.

3 - History of my reflections.

4 Desire for revealing them following the reading of the book of Paul Rée.

5 What held me with heart at the time was the value of morals, of the “not egoist”, the instincts of pity, negation of oneself and self-sacrifice that Schopenhauer had equipped with gold.

6 We need a criticism of the values morals, it is necessary to call good once in question the value of these values itself. And if the good were bad, regressive, dangerous, misleading; a poison, a opiate with the means of which the present would live at the expense of the future? So that it would be the fault of morals if one never reached a supreme power and a splendor, in oneself possible, man type?

7 There is no thing which more deserves to be taken with serious only the problems of morals. This merit will be perhaps rewarded a day by the authorization to take these problems with cheerfulness of spirit.

8 an aphorism should not only be read, but also interpreted. For that (to practice the reading as art) it is almost necessary to be cow: it is necessary to know to practice rumination.

First treaty: “Good and malicious”, “good and bad”

1 Pourquoi do the English psychologists seek to show the lowness of the man? I hope that they act with an only aim of the truth.

2 They miss historical spirit. Their thesis: in the beginning the nonegoistic acts were rented by those which they benefitted, then this origin was forgotten and the nonegoistic acts remained held for intrinsically good. Nietzsche refuses this idea: for him the moral judgment emanates from the goods (noble, powerful). Pathos of the distance = impulse of the aristocracy consisting in maintaining cleavages (is opposed to the gregarious instinct). It is this pathos of the distance which pushes them to create values (thesis of the 1st treaty). The feeling of a higher species is the origin of the good/bad opposition. Good step dependant from the start on nonegoist.

3 Other criticizes: how to forget the utility? The thesis of Spencer (according to which the good is the useful one) is quite as false, but coherent at least.

4 Etymology: there was a shift in meaning (towards the Thirty year old war): the words which meant simple, common, started to mean bad, low, while the words aristocratic and noble evolved of the designation of a social status to a axiologic value.

6 Cases of a sacerdotal aristocracy (relating to the priests): the remedy (asceticism) is worse than the evil (the depression caused by the morbid practices of the priests). It is in the priests that the human heart was done deep and malicious - thus interesting.

The 7 Jews, these people of priests, was avenged for the warriors by an inversion of their values, in a supremely spiritual act of revenge. Against the axiologic identity of the aristocrats (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = liked of God), the Jews risked the reversal with a terrifying coherence, making weak goods. With the Jews the rising of slaves in morals - rising begins which gained the victory today.

8 From Jewish hatred the new love emerged. Although the crucifixion was the fact of the Jews, it is under its sign that their values triumphed.

9 - Reaction of a Philistine.

10 the rising of slaves in morals starts with the fact that the resentment becomes creator and gives birth to values. Any noble morals said yes to oneself, the morals of the slaves says not to not self. It is this not which is its creative act. This morals needs a world opposite and external, it is basically reaction. Noble morals starts with the positive one, it is condescending, almost soft with the vulgar one. The action of the morals of slaves is basically reaction: it needs an outside. The man of the resentment hates his enemy, regards it as malicious, contrary to noble who respects it. The morals of slave is built initially on the concept of malicious; by opposition, the good is its enemy, i.e. the weak one.

11 In noble morals on the contrary it is the concept of " bon" who spontaneous, is created from oneself, and creates then the concept of " mauvais" , while concept of " méchant" is the original idea from which one will draw the new design from " bon". The instincts of reaction and resentment are the authentic instruments of culture. We suffer from the man, owing to the fact that the man became inoffensive, that the tamed and poor man feels as the goal, the top and the direction of the history.

12 what I do not support: that something of failure approaches me. There is no more man who gives the faith in the man, because there is no more man who still makes fear. It is the nihilism: we are tired of the man.

13 One makes weakness (or force) the result of a choice, of a freedom, by fallaciously dividing the will into two substances, the being and to act it, whereas they do only one.

The 14 morals of weak changes the weakness into virtue. Divine dimension of this morals.

15 the weak ones want to be strong; they enjoy in advance the spectacle of the punishment of damnés.

16 Combat between two systems of values: “good and bad” against “good and malicious”. This combat is symbolized by the fight between Rome and Judaea; other examples of forts: Italian rebirth, Napoleon; weak: originating Christianity, Reform, French revolution.

17 I want - it should be wanted - that the combat begins again between morals of the forts and morals of weak. It is necessary to make a history of the moral concepts. To consider in oneself, from the start, that the wellbeing of the greatest number has more value than the wellbeing of the more small number, it is what I leave with the naivety English philosophers. The task with a future of the philosopher is to determine the hierarchy of the values.

Second treaty: “Fault”, “bad conscience” and related phenomena

1 the lapse of memory is an active force. The memory comes after, like a against-faculty. It allows the promise. For that it was necessary to learn how to calculate, to anticipate the future; it was necessary that the man himself becomes calculable to be able to stand as guarantor of itself like future.

2 That constitutes the long story of the source of the responsibility. Thanks to morality of manners and with the social strait jacket, the man was made calculable. The fruit of the company shows that whose morals is the means: the sovereign, autonomous, on-moral individual; the gifted man of a will clean, independent, which has the right to promise. Superior with all that does not have the right to promise. It causes confidence, fear and respect. This domination of oneself confers to him the domination of the circumstances, the nature and all the creatures of shorter and less reliable will. The instinct dominating of such men, one calls it conscience.

3 Use of the punishment to inculcate the memory.

4 the fundamental moral concept of “fault” comes from the material concept of “debt”; the punishment developed as reprisals, without idea of freedom. One punished on the blow of anger. Idea of equivalence between damage and pain.

5 Compensation = feeling for wellbeing, pleasure to make the evil for the pleasure, pleasure to exert violences. Compensation = mandate authorizing cruelty.

6 That involves the association of the ideas of fault and suffering. The suffering can compensate for a debt because to make suffer gets a great pleasure. Spiritualization and deification of the cruelty which crosses the history of the higher culture and which, in a sense, constitutes it; cf BM, 229. See to suffer made good, to make still suffer more good. Without cruelty, not of festival. And in the punishment, there is such an amount of festival!

7 When humanity was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, the life on ground was merrier than today. The shame of the man with regard to the man increases pessimism. The pessimist grows in the douilletisation and not in the malicious ages. Perhaps at the time the suffering did not make as badly as today. This pleasure taken with cruelty persists perhaps today. What revolts it is not so much the suffering which the fact that it does not have of direction. Before one gave him direction, one justified it, one justified the “evil” by a juggling act. To reach that point today one would need other auxiliary inventions. Then invention of the god contemplating the moral fight; invention of freedom. A deterministic world would have been wearying for the gods.

8 the feeling of fault, of personal engagement found its origin in the relation original which is, that between salesman and purchaser, creditor and debtor. To measure, exchange, exchange. It is the first thought of the man. By generalization one said: any thing has its price. Justice is arrangement between two similar powers, and, with less powerful, the constraint with an arrangement.

9 Relation of the community to the members = relation of the creditor to the debtor. In the event of rupture of the contract, banishment.

10 With the increase in its power, the community becomes less severe. On the contrary, one defends the faulty one against those which it injured. Any transgression is regarded as likely to be discharged in a direction: one separates the criminal from his act. Idea of an enough strong company not to punish. Prospect for autosuppression of justice.

11 justice does not come from the reactive feeling (resentment); on the contrary, it is the ground which it conquers in the last. Justice tries to put a term at the resentment. The introduction of the law involves the eye victim to estimate the act in a way increasingly more impersonal. There is of Juste and unjust only starting from the introduction of the law. Sovereign and general justice is hostile with the life.

12 the “goal of the right” (dissuasion, revenge) is the last thing of which it is necessary to make use for the history of emergence of the right. The function does not say anything on emergence (biology, etc). The goals are only signs indicating that a will for power was made main of something of less powerful and from it the direction of a function printed to him. All progressus is done by sacrifices. Not chance or adaptation but will for power.

13 Punishment: act of unlimited validity, variable goal. Today the concept of punishment does not present only one direction but a whole synthesis of direction (to put out of state to harm; payment of the damage; insulation of a disorder to prevent its extension; dissuasive; compensation of the advantages from which the culprit had profited; elimination of an element which degenerates; celebrates; manufacture of memory…).

14 Nietzsche refuses the popular belief according to which the punishment would have the property to wake up in the culprit the feeling of fault. Actually true the remord is rare and the punishment cools and hardens, it sharpens the feelings of aversion and increases the force of resistance. It is precisely the punishment which delayed the development of the feeling of guilt the most and it is the aspect of the legal procedures and executive which prevents the culprit from condemning in oneself his misdeed because he sees making with the service of justice, then to approve the same species of actions. The actions thus are not condemned and are not rejected in oneself but only in certain circumstances and under certain conditions

16 bad conscience = deep disease in which the man sank when it was captive of envoûtement of the company and peace. The instincts which do not discharge towards outside turn towards the interior: interiorization of the man; inhibition. The company is protected from the old instincts by the punishment, which produces the reversal of the instincts of the wild man (hostility, pleasure taken with persecution, the aggression, the destruction) against itself: here is the origin of the bad conscience. Declaration of war to the old instincts. With the reversal of an animal heart against itself occurs something of so new, deep, amazing, enigmatic, full with future, etc, that the aspect of the ground changed in an essential way of it. A too subtle, marvellous, paradoxical spectacle to be unimportant. That wakes up an interest, a tension, a hope, almost a certainty, as so with him something was announced, as if the man were not a goal, but only one way, a bridge, a great promise.

17 the appearance of the bad conscience was a brutal jump, a rupture; and this in violence. No the contract.

18 It is the same active force which builds philosopher's stones and the bad conscience: instinct of freedom, i.e will for power. Only, it is directed against oneself and not against the others. This cruelty, center maternal of the ideal and imaginative events, created a profusion of new and strange beauty and consent, and perhaps the beauty. That which is denied tastes the pleasure of cruelty. The value of nonthe egoist pushed on this cruelty.

The 19 bad conscience is a disease like the pregnancy. Debt towards the ancestors in the primitive companies. The fear of the ancestor increases with the power of the group, and the ancestor ends up being transfigured in the shape of a god. Perhaps this is there the origin of the gods.

20 the feeling of guilt increases with the feeling of god. The god Christian, maximum, caused the maximum of feeling of guilt on ground. Today, with the decline of the faith, the feeling of fault declines too.

21 But impossibility of extinguishing the debt => idea of punishment eternal, original sin, nihilism. Then flash of genius of Christianity: god sacrificing itself for the fault of the man, God being made pay by itself, the creditor sacrificing themselves by love for its debtor, love for his debtor.

The 22 man interprets his animal instincts (asocial) like fault towards God, it makes not that it is addressed to itself, with nature, with the factuality, yes with God. Delirious madness of the will as regards mental cruelty: will to be guilty at a point inexpiable.

23 Greeks: contrary use of the gods: they take the weight of the faults. That which acts badly is not bad, it is stupid.

24 to set up a sanctuary, it is necessary to cut down one of them (I make both). To make amalgamate with the bad conscience the nonnatural inclinations (aspiration with beyond, etc). Project of a major diving within reality to bring back the redemption of it to the regard which the curse of the ideal made weigh on it. It will be necessary that comes one day this man from the future which delivers at the same time last ideal and nihilism that it was to cause.

25-

Third treaty: What means the ascetic ideals?

1 the ascetic ideal meant so much for the man because the human will detests the vacuum, it needs a goal, it still prefers to want nothing rather than not to want.

2 - On Wagner.

3 - On Wagner. Parsifal  God, redemption.

4 To separate work from the artist. The artist is the manure on whom grows work. The artist is not what he seeks to represent: Goethe is not Faust; unreality of its most intimate existence; it makes sometimes the attempt be really, which made Wagner in its old age.

5 In the case of an artist, the ascetic ideals do not mean anything, or as well from different things as that returns to nothing. The artists are not independent enough of the world so that one is interested in their evaluations: they are only the servants of a morals, a religion or an existing philosophy; they are never autonomous, to remain alone goes against their instinct. Thus Wagner is behind Schopenhauer. True question: what means the fact that true philosopher (man who can remain alone) pays homage to the ascetic ideal? Schopenhauer made music what speaks the language about the will itself, which involves an enormous increase in the value of the music, giving him a place privileged as an direct access with God, with the en-soi. What of astonishing whereas the musician ended up being expressed in ascetic ideals?

6 Schopenhauer made use of the Kantian version of the esthetic problem, but without including/understanding it of a Kantian eye. Kant: what likes without interest, against Stendhal (the beautiful one is a promise of happiness). Stendhal rightly (Pygmalion is not necessarily a nonesthetic man). Because Schopenhauer interpreted it “without interest” of Kant in a very personal way: for him esthetic contemplation exerts an effect which is opposed to the sexual “interest”, it releases from the will. Perhaps the fundamental thought of “the will and the representation” - there cannot be redemption with regard to the will that by the representation - originate in a generalization of this sexual experiment. Schopenhauer described a single effect of beautiful, the appeasing of the will. Stendhal: the beautiful one excites the will. In fact not Kantian, the beautiful one it is not likes Schopenhauer because of an interest, most extremely and personnel of the interests: that of the tortured being which escapes its torture. First answer: the philosopher pays homage to the ascetic ideal because he wants to escape a torture.

7 Schopenhauer needed enemies to remain of good mood, it was not pessimistic thanks to its enemies (without them, it would have become it). Its anger was its happiness. The philosopher has an irritation and a resentment towards the sensuality (Schopenhauer is the most eloquent explosion of this resentment) and an affection for all the ascetic ideal. This fact should be interpreted (because any thing in oneself is planted there, stupid forever). Any animal seeks the power, the optimum (and not happiness; the research of the power often leads to misfortune). Thus the philosopher detests the marriage, any philosopher married is a reason for comedy. The ascetic ideal indicates so many bridges leading to independence… With the sight of the ascetic ideal, the philosopher accommodates of a smile an optimum of conditions suitable for the highest spirituality and most daring; by doing this, he does not deny the existence, he yes says to his existence and only to her, free so that the world perishes - provided that the philosopher is, that me I would be.

The 8 philosophers are not impartial judges of the value of the ascetic ideal. They think of that which they need: freedom with regard to the constraint, of din; clear thinking; a healthy air; etc They think of the merry asceticism of an animal which planes above the life rather than it does not rest there. Three great words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, humility, chastity: one finds them at all the fertile and inventive spirits. These are not virtues (that the virtues for this species of men are essential) but of the conditions of their existence in what it has of better. “ui thinks in words thinks as a speaker and not as a thinker”. The philosopher flees glory, the princes and the women. Poverty, not by will méritoire to be satisfied little, but because their Master requires it. He does not play the martyrs, does not suffer for the truth (cf § 25 PDBM). “Any artist knows which harmful effect exert the sexual relationships in the states of great tension and great spiritual preparation”, because need for all their strength. Sublimation: the sensuality “penetrates in the conscience only transfigured and either in the form of sexual excitation. ”

9 a certain asceticism belongs to the favorable conditions to supreme spirituality; not astonishing that the philosophers treated the ascetic ideal with prevention. It is even held by this ideal that philosophy took its first steps. All the virtues of the philosopher were, during the longest, contrary period with the requirements first of morals and the conscience. Today, hubris with regard to nature, of God, ourselves. Before: suffering, cruelty, dissimulation, revenge, negation of the reason = virtues; wellbeing, desire of knowing, peace, pity = danger; to be object of pity, work = ignominies; insanity = divine thing; change = immoral dedicated to give rise to corruption.

10 Before: contempt, mistrust of the contemplators. Only means of being opposed to it: to make fear. The philosophical spirit always had to start by borrowing the disguise of the types fixed beforehand of contemplative (priest, magician, soothsayer, monk in general) to be simply possible; the ascetic ideal was used as form of demonstration, of presupposed a long time of existence to the philosopher, it was necessary for him to represent it to be able to be philosophical, it was necessary for him to believe in it to be able to represent it. The position of variation which almost succeeded in being made pass for the attitude of philosopher in oneself is before very contingent. It is the original cocoon of the philosopher. Does the current world allow the blossoming, the exit of the butterfly?

11 the right to the existence of the ascetic priest continues and crumbles with the ascetic ideal. Thus he is our enemy. But it will not be able to be well defended against us, therefore it will be necessary for us to help there. The question is the value which the ascetic priests lend to our life: they bring it back to an existence of a completely different kind with regard to which it is in relation of opposition and exclusion, unless it is not turned to some extent against itself, does not deny itself, in which case (case of the ascetic life) it is held for a driving bridge with the other existence. The ascetic priest thrives everywhere. There must be a need for very first order which makes grow and thrive this hostile species with the life, he is necessary that it is in the interest of the life even as this type of car contradiction does not die out. Resentment of the ascetic life: instinct and will for power which want to dominate something in the life not, but life itself. Very paradoxical form of life, car négatrice.

12 If such a will of contradiction comes from there to philosophize, on what will its arbitrary unchain? On what one believes true and real. Violence on the directions, and also on the reason. (One finds that at Kant, according to which one cannot know the things such as they are in themselves, but only such as they appear to us.) (“not involved Contemplation” = conceptual monster and misinterpretation) Gardons us to think the “self-knowledge”: that requires to think an eye without direction, a conceptual monster of eye. There is only one to see in prospect, that one to know in prospect. With more one considers from the points of view (of eyes, affects), with more one is objective. But to remove the will is not possible - would be to castrate intellect.

13 From a physiological point of view, the life against the life of the ascetic is a nonsense, it can be only apparent. The ascetic ideal results from an instinct of protection and hello suitable for a life in degeneration. The ascetic ideal is in fact an artifice of conservation of the life. The ascetic priest is the marked wish of being-otherwise, of a being-elsewhere. The man, the dissatisfied one, the unsatiated one, with whom his constraining force does not leave any more rest. The wounds which it inflicts then force it to live…

The 14 fear is good, the dislike and pity is bad, their junction produced the nihilism. The weak ones are a danger, they undermine our confidence in the life, the man, ourselves. Contempt of oneself = compost of the poison. One hates the aspect of the victorious one there. One does not acknowledge this hatred like hatred. The victory of the men of the resentment would be when the happy ones are said: “It is a shame to be happy! There is too much misery! ” That the patients do not return sick those which are in good health, it is what should be the supreme point of view on ground; what requires separation between healthy and sick. The healthy ones have another thing to make to look after the patients.

15 It can be the spot of those which are in good health to only deal with the patients, therefore one needs doctors who are themselves sick. It is the direction of the ascetic priest there, his formidable historical mission. Its kingdom is the domination of those which suffer. It must be sick and strong. It fights against the healthy ones and the desire towards them: it mistakes any health. To drive out the pain thanks to the affect. “I suffer: it is necessary well that it is the fault of somebody. ” The ascetic priest says to him: “It is your fault! ” The line of the resentment is inflected.

The 16 instinct healer of the life at the very least tried by means of the ascetic priest to put the patients out of state to harm. To separate the patients (joined together in the Church) from the healthy ones. Note between hooks ending in: “With such a design, one can remain (…) the most strict adversary of any materialism. ”

17 is But really a doctor? He fights only the suffering, not his cause. He comforts. (1) Deafening of the feeling of life. Current interpretations of “Buddhist hypnosis”. Buddhism, Christianity: one cannot reach the redemption by the virtue = their only realism. Cherish the absence of suffering like the supreme value.

18 (2) machinale Activity: to work to relieve the suffering. (3) Small joy. Joy of causing the joy: love of next = joy of the will for power: the superiority accompanies any good deed. => (4) Organization in the form of herd. The weak ones tend to an organization in herd. Encouraged by the priests. Aversion of oneself.

19 These means are innocent. Average culprits: discharge feeling.

20 the priest exploits with his profit the feeling of guilt. “Sinned” = more the great event of the history of the sick heart = most dangerous juggling act and most disastrous of religious interpretation. The suffering, avid man from reasons and remedies, will see the priest, who says to him to seek the cause of the evil in itself. He must include/understand his suffering as a punishment => the bad conscience is everywhere

The 21 ascetic ideal ruined health, worsened the disease.

The 22 ascetic ideal ruined the taste (critical of New Testament, praise of Old; the use of the tu of God = of bad taste, vulgar).

23 what means the ascetic ideal. Ultimate and supremely terrible aspect of this question for me. Which is the antagonistic force with the ascetic will? The truth? In fact science does not have faith in itself. It is the most recent form and noblest of the ascetic ideal. Science does not have a goal. Where it is not ideal ascetic, science is concern suitable for the absence of ideal. To prevent oneself from seeing something by science, science like means of engourdir itself. Good number of scientists fear only one thing: to become aware.

24 These deniers with the variation, anti-idealists, spirits hard, intellectual uprightness, heroic, last idealists of knowledge = rare heroes. Believe themselves freed from the ascetic ideal, but it is also their ideal. They are the most spiritualized creature, the most advanced battalion. They are far from being free spirits, because they still believe in the truth. Will to remain about it with the fact, the rough fact. General renunciation of interpretation (to rearrange, falsify). What constrained with the truth it is the belief in the ascetic ideal. Belief in a metaphysical value, with in oneself of the truth. A philosophy is always needed (a “belief”) so that science receives from it a direction, a direction. The veracious one affirms another world (fine cf GS § 344), therefore denies this world.  Plato. No philosophy with the least conscience of the degree to which the will of truth requires a justification. It is necessary to call in question the value of the truth (cf GS, § 344, and all the 5th book and the foreword of Dawn).

25 science does not depend enough on itself to be the natural antagonist of the ascetic ideal. It is not creative of value. She is opposed only to the preparing asceticism. Science and ascetic ideal rest both on the over-estimate of the truth, or more exactly on the belief in the statute inappreciable, beyond criticism of the truth. Can be fought and called in question only jointly. Art, in which the will of illusion has clear conscience and is opposed to the ascetic ideal. It is what Plato perceived. Plato vs. Homère. Constraint of the artist to the ascetic ideal = the worst corruption of the artist, but it is very current. When science dominates, the company is declining (cf prefaces NT). Science reduces the man, leads to nothing, i.e the old ideal. Any science aims at extirpating its head the respect which the man has of itself. The agnostics adore the question mark like God.

26 I still prefer the nihilist historians with the sensualists who make the soft eyes with the life and the ascetic ideal. All my respect with the ascetic ideal in so far as it is honest. Counterfeit of ideals in Europe.

27* the ascetic ideal has only one species of true enemies who carry damage to him: actors of this ideal, because they wake up mistrust. In any other place where the spirit is with work with rigor, it is exempted from now on of ideal whatever it is (one speaks about “atheism”) - except for its will of truth. This will of truth is this ideal even, in its most strict version, stripped: its core. Atheism inconditionné, honest, is thus not the antithesis of this ideal; it is only one of the ultimate phases of its development. It is the catastrophe of a raising bimillenary to the truth which ends up prohibiting the lie with the belief of God. Christian morals => intellectual uprightness at all costs. All the large things perish of their characteristic made, by an act of suppression of oneself: it is what the law of the life wants, the law of the going beyond of oneself. Thus Christianity as dogma perished of its own morals. Thus Christianity as moral must also perish him - we are with the threshold of this event. The Christian veracity will draw its most energetic conclusion, directed against itself, when she asks: “That any will of truth means? ” Problem: which direction would have all our being if not this that in us the will of truth comes from there to become aware of itself like problem? The will of truth thus taking conscience of itself will make perish morals. Most terrible, most problematic and perhaps most carrying hope of all the spectacles.

28* Without the ascetic ideal, the animal man did not have until now any direction. Its existence on ground did not recover any goal. What means the ascetic ideal: something was lacking, a formidable gap wrapped the man. He could not be justified, say himself yes, he suffered from the problem of his direction. He also suffered from another thing, it was primarily a morbid animal. But its problem was not the suffering, but the answer to the question: “Why suffer? ” The man does not say not to the suffering. He it wants, but equipped with direction. The ascetic ideal offered this direction, and brought a new suffering, major, more interior; it placed any suffering from the point of view of the fault. But the man was saved, it had a direction. All that was at the bottom will of nothing (will directed against the man, the material, happiness, aspiration to escape any change, to become, wish) - but that remains a will. The man still prefers to want nothing rather than not to want.

Comprehension

The subject

The value of the dominant Morale altruistic seems obvious and it seems that he would be scandalous (“Misfortune with that by which the scandal arrives. ”), sacrilege to question it. However how to agree to yield with transcendent values? Who says their transcendence? It would not know to have there of limit to philosophical criticism, it is thus necessary to carry out criticism values morals including, especially of the most crowned. To wonder about the value of the values, it is to question the value judgments which pose them like such, it is to cease regarding them as transcendantales, it is to say that if they were posed, one can also deposit them, in short is to seek the origin of the values and the value of this origin, it is to establish the Généalogie of it, i.e., “to know the conditions and the mediums which theirs gave birth, in which it developed and deformed”. The investigation, at the same time historical and philological will lead Nietzsche to discover:

that there exist two morals, that of the Masters, the creators and that of the slaves, the patients, weak, the impotent ones.
That the morals of the slaves ended up triumphing, that the weak ones triumphed over the forts while dividing by a fiction in the illusion of freedom, the culpability and the responsibility the power against itself.
that the real goal of this morals of weak become dominant is to deny the life, - that the modern misadventure of this morals of impotent originates in Socrate and Christianity (cf the Christian Platonisme of Plotin): Christianity is only one platonism for the people.

Work comprises three successive essays:

1° essay: “Good and malicious, good and bad. ”

“Good and malicious, good and bad”; i.e opposition of the evaluation of the forts and the paralogisms of the resentment.

In this first essay, Nietzsche presents the resentment like one “imaginary revenge” (G.M.I.7°, “a primarily spiritual vindication” (G.M.I.10). The constitution of the resentment implies a paralogism of the type:

The eagles are méchants
however we are the opposite of the aigles
thus we are good, known as the lamb logician.

Where is the Paralogisme? The lamb, the weak one would like to make believe that him retains itself to eat the eagle (fiction of a separate force of what it can) and which consequently it is good whereas the eagle is malicious because it is not retained. It is thus in any rigor that the eagle could answer: “I am not malicious, I like you you them lambs. Nothing is tastier than small lambs. ”

2° essay: “The fault and bad conscience and what gathers them”

“The fault and bad conscience and what gathers them”, i.e the discrepancy of the bad conscience.

The bad conscience, as reversal of the charge against oneself (“it is my fault, it is my fault, it is my very great fault” = act of contrition), as culpabilisation (the made feel guilty eagle recognizes itself guilty) is a reversal of the force against itself: it is thus, by paradoxical nature (“the discrepancy is expressed like opposition of morals and the life”). In this direction, it is at the origin of what Nietzsche will call “the reversed world”.

3° essay: “That mean the ascetic ideals? ”

The ascetic ideal returns to deepest mystification, that of the Idéal which includes/understands all the others, all the fictions of morals and knowledge: it is about the will of Néant.

This plan takes again on the ironic mode that of Kant in the dialectical transcendantale of the Critique of the pure reason (1. Paralogisms of the pure reason. 2. The discrepancy of the pure reason. 3. The ideal of the pure reason.). It is that it is a question of carrying out true criticism because at Kant criticism enlise in compromise: it is necessary to give criticism on its feet.

Intentions of Nietzsche

To study the origin of the concepts: “well and badly” and “good and bad”

The etymological investigation in Greek, Latin and German: the good indicates originally the distinction, the richness, which is of good quality, the nobility. The good, if one believes the Greek of it, is that which is fully. Consequently the bad one indicates the defect to be, the impotent one, the man of the commun run; the good is that which is noble. The opposition well and badly has very an other origin: they were forged by overcome, become humble by need, the weak ones which called badly what was harmful for them, therefore, in particular, the action of the goods. The starting point of the morals of weak is the paralogism: you are bad thus I am good . There is an inversion which, by the socratism and Christianity, will pass for truth first, absolute. It is thus necessary, according to Nietzsche, to reverse the values to give ethics on its feet.

To oppose two morals

the morals of the slaves who, driven by the resentment, issue that the values supreme are the Pitié, humility, forgiveness, the Altruisme. These values lead to a depreciation of oneself, with the negation of the life (will of nothing, negation of the life = Nihilisme). Jewish morals operates this inversion while being posed as people elected, liked of God, good; Christian morals produces this same inversion by issuing the culpability of the man, and while placing the superiority in the imaginary ideal of its followers (cf the sermon on the mountain in Évangile according to Matthieu is the culminating point of this mystification).
the morals of the Masters proceeds of a triumphal assertion of oneself, it consists in the glorification of the life under all its aspects. It is a question of creating, of acting and not of being acted.

Central concepts

Resentment

The resentment is a reaction, never an action, likely to fail because it relates to last events: “The resentment is the revenge on the will towards its time and its “there was”” (A.P.Z.). This revenge remains symbolic system (about the Discours), it cannot act. The sick man of the resentment, the man with large the memory, which does not manage to digest its memories, is an indicter: it is your fault if I suffer, if I am unhappy (imprécations of the Judaism). Since all is fault of the other, the bad one, the other owes him a compensation (I thus suffered I am right, therefore I deserve a reward! ). The man of the resentment is, consequently, the man of the benefit, it is a perpetual victim who wants to be paid.

For a deepening, one will refer to book II of Ainsi spoke Zarathoustra, chapter Of the redemption . Nietzsche develops the idea of the against-to want will , in which it enracine the idea of the eternal return. The resentment is not only one simple conservation of the last one: it is the present that the past corrodes continuously. To be able to substitute " I will want it for toujours" with a " that fût" : here the morals of Nietzsche lies described in the Chant (S) of dance (A.P.Z.): " Any joy wants, of any thing, eternity, deep, deep the éternité". The will which wants to be itself is the " large santé".

Bad conscience

The bad conscience is at the same time the prolongation of the resentment and its reversal against oneself: it is the interiorization of the pain. The bad conscience is expressed in the culpability, the mea culpa , the Désir of a punishment to be forgiven of its faults: it is the Christian Idéologie of the responsibility-culpability.

The ascetic ideal

The fear of the Vie is transmuted, on the philosophical level, in Volonté of truth: the Truth at all costs and especially at the price of the life. The truth is a nonnot involved value which has as a function to preserve at less expenses a weak existence. To this weak will and rabougrie of truth, Nietzsche opposes the will for power the purpose of which appears primarily in the creator as it is to affirm appearance, the illusion, even the forgery, i.e. the life. The good and gregarious man mistakes, denounces art like useless, or harmful and immoral; Nietzsche opposes to this opinion the word of Stendhal “the beautiful one is a promise of happiness”, i.e. the excitation of the will, the feeling which plenitude exists here and now. The artist gives us the example of the love of the life, it diverts morbid taste of the back moral and religious worlds, i.e of the Métaphysique.

Quotations and judgments

Quotations

“We need a criticism of the values morals, and the value of these values must initially be questioned” G.M.Introduction 6
“the revolt of the slaves in morals starts when the resentment itself becomes creator and gives birth to values: the resentment of these beings with which it true reaction, that of the action, is prohibited and which finds compensation only in one imaginary revenge.” G.M. 1° essay
“While any noble morals is even born from a triumphal assertion of it, the morals of the slaves “not” opposes as of the access with what does not form part of itself, to what is “different”… and this “not” is its creative act. ” G.M. 1° essay
“the sin remained until now the most harmful invention in the history of the sick heart. ” G.M. 2° essay
“This man of the future which will deliver us at the same time current ideal and what inevitably was to leave there, great dislike of the will of nothing and nihilism - this blow of bell of midday and great judgment, this large liberator of the will which will return in the world its goal and the man his hope, this Antichrist and antinihilist, this winner of God and nothing it is necessary that it comes one day” G.M. 2° essay
“Everywhere where there are herds, it is the instinct of weakness which wanted them, the skill of the priest who organized them. ” G.M. 3° essay
“See in the evolution of people the time when the scientist passes in the foreground, they are times of tiredness, often of twilight, decline.”. G.M. 3° essay
“the ascetic ideal was used to the philosopher a long time as external appearance, of condition of existence (...). This attitude particular to the philosopher who makes it move away from the world, this manner of being which disavows the world, is hostile with the life… is before a a whole consequence of the forced conditions, essential to the birth and the development of philosophy: because during very a long time, philosophy would not have been possible without a mask and an ascetic dressing-up, without ascetic misunderstanding. ” G.M. 3° essay

Judgments related to work

Chestov Leon: “For most horrible Nietzsche, most painful was to give up the world of Socrate. It seemed in Nietzsche that he was to give up Christianity, but it should be believed that it was not about that: it had to give up the elements hellenistic of Christianity…” Selected pages transl. Boris de Schloezer.

Laurent Daniel: ““Wisdom is used to harm the silly thing” said Nietzsche and for the man of today it is there an ideal more than ever valid. ” The thought of Nietzsche and the current man. ED Privat

Ledure Yves: “The philosophy of Nietzsche is resolutely and definitively beyond Christianity. It is included/understood as the dawn of a new civilization which would mark the end of the Christian era by inaugurating a new history of the Occident.” Nietzsche and the religion of the unbelief ED Desclée

Fink Eugen: “Frederic Nietzsche is one of the greatest figures of the destiny in the spiritual history of the occident, a fateful being which forces us to make final decisions, a terrible question mark on the way - determined by the heritage of Antiquity and two thousand years of Christianity - where the European man was engaged until now. Nietzsche conceives suspicion that this way would be way of error, that thought being mislaid flashback would be necessary, which would mean the rejection of all that until now was held for “saint”, for “good” and “truth”. ” The philosophy of Nietzsche ED of Midnight

Sojcher Jacques: “Thus Nietzsche, the teacher, modifies us, that its books carry “beyond all the books”, that all is still, starting from its disproportion, possible, opened, to come. ” The question and the direction ED Sapwood-Montaigne

Deleuze Gilles: “The philosophy of the values, such as Nietzsche founds it and conceives it, is the true realization of criticism, the only manner of carrying out total criticism, i.e. to make philosophy “with blows of hammer”. ” Nietzsche and philosophy ED. P.U.F.

Angele Kremer-Marietti: “The genealogy is the history of the filiation and the production of the values and the concepts that men worked out for " sélectionner" the man; what wants to say: either to exploit it with the service of some, or on the contrary " to promote humanity entière". This new knowledge gives again with the higher values their originating ground, while the practice is distinguished from the direction, and it direction added again to the practice is called in question and is erased in front of a new possible development of this " animal with the characters not définis" that is the man. ” Of philology to the genealogy, Contribution to the genealogy of morals ED Harmattan

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