UopGenealogyofMoralsExtract
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From Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Douglas Smith. Oxford University Press, (Oxford, New York, 1997). Full text: http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-283263-8.pdf
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[edit] 13
- - But let us return to our problem: for our discussion of the problem of the other origin of 'good', of good as conceived by the man of ressentiment, requires its conclusion. - That lambs bear ill-will towards large birds of prey is hardly strange: but is in itself no reason to blame large birds of prey for making of with little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: 'These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is a little of a bird of prey as possible, indeed, rather the opposite, a lamb - should he not be said to be good/', then there canbe no objection to setting up an ideal like this, even if the birds of prey might look down on it a little contemptuously and perhaps say to themselves: We bear them no ill-will at all, these good lambs - indeed, we love them: there is nothing tastier than a tender lamb.' To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a will to overcome, overthrow, dominate, a thirst for enemies and resistance and triumph, makes as little sense as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strengh. A quantum of force is also a quantum of drive, will, action - in fact, it is nothing more than this driving, willing, acting, and it is only through the seduction of language (and through the fundamental errors of reason petrified in it) - language which understandds and misunderstands all action as conditioned by an actor, buy a 'subject'1 - that it can appear otherwise. Just as the common people distinguish lightning from the flash of light and takes the latter as doing, as the effect of a subject which is called lightning, just so popular morality distinguishes strength from expressions of strength, as if behind the strong individual there were an indifferent substratum which was at liberty to express or not to express strength. But no such substratum exists; there is no 'being' behind doing, acting, becoming; 'the doer' is merely a fiction imposed on the doing - the doing itself is everything. Basically, the common people represent the doing twice over, when they make lightning flash - that is a doing doubled by another doing: it posits the same event once as a cause and then once again as effect. The natural scientists do not fare any better when they say: 'Force moves, force causes', and the like - in spite of all itse coldness ,itse freedom from emotion, our entire science is still subject to the seduction of language and has not shaken itself free of the monstrous changelings, the 'subjects', foisted upon it (the atom 2 is an example of such a changeling, as is the Kantian 'thing in itself'3). No wonder that the downtrodden and surreptitionsly smouldering emotions of revenge and hatred exploit this belief in their own interests and maintain no belief with greater intensity than that the strong may freely choose to be weak, and the bird of prey to be lamb - and so they win the right to blame the bird of prey for simply being a bird of prey... If, out of the vindictive cunning of impotence, the oppresed, downtrodden and violated tell themselves: 'Let us be different from the evil, that is, good! And the good man is the one who refrains from violation, who harms no one, who attacks no one, who fails to retaliate, who leaves revenge to God, who lives as we do in seclusion, who avoids all evil and above all asks little of life, as we do, the patient, the humble, the just.' When listened to coldly and without prejudice, this actually means nothing more than: 'We weak men are, after all, weak; it would be good if we refrained from doing anyhting for which we lack sufficient strengh. But this dry matter-of-factness, this cleverness of the lowest rank, which even insects possess (insects which, in situations of great danger, probably play dead in order no to do 'too much'), has, thanks to the forgery and self-deception of impotence, clothed itself in the magnificence of self-abnegating, calm, and patient virgue, exactly as if the weakness of the weak man itself - that is, his essence, his action, his whole, single, unavoidable, irredeemable reality - were a free acheivement, something willed, chosen, a deed, a merit. Bound to do so by his instinct of self-preservation and self-affirmation, an instinct which habitually sanctifies every lie, this kind of man discovered his faith in the indifferent, freely choosing 'subject'. The subject (or, to adopt a more popular idiom, the soul) has, therefore, been perhaps the best article of faith on earth so far, since it enables the majority of mortals, the weak and downtrodden of all sorts, to practice that sublime self-deception - the interpretation of weakness itself as freedom, of the way they simply are, as merit.
[edit] 14
- - Would anyone care to take a look into the secret depths of how ideals are fabricated on earth? Who is brave enough?... Very well! Here you have an unobstructed view into this dark workshop. Wait just another moment, my dear Mr Daredevil Curiosity: your eyes must first get used to this false shimmering light... There! All right! Now tell us! What is going on down there? Describe what you see, man of the most dangerous curiosity - now it is my turn to listen. -
- - 'I can see nothing, but hear all the more. There is a cautious, sly, soft mumbling and whispering coming from all corners. It seems to me that lies are being told; a sugary sweetness clings to every sound. Weakness is to be transformed into a merit through lies, there is no doubt - it is just as you said.' -
- - Go on!
- - 'And the impotent failure to retaliate is to be transformed into "goodness"'; craven fear into "humility"; submission to those one hates into "obedience" (obedience, that is, towards the authority who, so they claim, ordered this submission - they call him God). The inoffensice appearance of the weak man, even the cowardice which he possesses in abundance, his hesitation on the threshhold, the inevitability of his being made to wait - all assume a good name here, as "patience", that is, as virtue as such; the inability to take revenge is called the refusal to take revenge, prehaps even forgiveness ("for they know what what they do4 - we along know what they do!"). There is also talk of "loving one's enemies" - accompanied by much perspiration.'
- - Go on!
- - 'There is no doubt that they are miserable, all these mumbling forgers sitting in their corners, in spite of the fact that they huddle together for warmth - but they tell me that their misery is an election and a distinction conferred by God - one beats the dogs one loves the most; perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a test, a schooling, perhaps it is even more - something which will eventually be measured out and paid off at huge interest in gold, no! in happiness. This is what they call "salvation".'
- - Go on!
- - 'Now they give me to understand that they are not only better than the powerful, the masters of hte earth, whose spittle they are obliged to lick (not from fear, absolutely not! but because God commands respect for all authority) - that they are not only better, but also "have it better" or will "have it better" one day. But enough! enough! I can stand it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated - it seems to me to stink of nothing but lies.'
- - No! A moment longer! As yet you have said nothing about the masterpiece wrought by these experts in black magic who turn every dark shade into the white of milk and innocence - have you failed to notice their most perfect refinement, their boldest, finest, most intelligent, most duplicitous artistic stroke? Pay attention! These cellar-animals full of revenge and hatred - what exactly do they make out of revenge and hatred? Did you ever hear those particular words? Would you suspect, if you trusted to their words, that you were among men of ressentiment?...
- - 'I understand, i wil keep my ears open (oh! oh! oh! and my nose shut). Only now do I hear what they have already repeated so often: "We good men - we are the just." - They do not call what they demand retaliation, but "the triumph of justice"; they do not hate their enemy, no! they hate "injustice", "godlessness"; their belief and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication of sweet revenge (-"sweeter than honey" as Homer described it, already in his day), but the triumph of God, of the just God over the godless; what remains on earth for them to love is noth ther brothers in hatred, but ther "brothers in love", as they say, all the good and just men on earth.'
- - And what do they call the hope which serves to console them for all the suffering of life - their phantasmagoria of anticipated future salvation/
- - 'What? Am I hearing this right? They call it "the Last Judgement", the coming of their kingdom, the "Kingdom of God" - but meanwhile they live "in faith", "in love", "in hope".'
- - Enough! Enough!
[edit] Footnotes
1 subject: in grammar, the part of speech of which something is predicated; in epistemology, the ground of knowledge, the knowing subject.
2 atom: according to the physicist Ernst Mach (1836-1916), the atom was an ideal mental construct rather than something which really existed.
3 Kantian 'thing in itself': reference to Kant's distinction in the Critique of Pure Reason between phenomenal appearence (Erscheinung) and noumenal essence (Ding an sich). According to Kant, the essence or thing in itself is beyond human knowledge, which is limited to phenomenal appearance.
4 for they know not what they do: Luke 23: 34 - 'Then Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'
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