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A CRITICISM OF MORALITY.
1. The Origin of Moral Valuations.
253.
This is an attempt at investigating morality without being affected by its charm, and not without some mistrust in regard to the beguiling beauty of its attitudes and looks. A world which we can admire, which is in keeping with our capacity for worship—which is continually demonstrating itself—in small things or in large: this is the Christian standpoint which is common to us all.
But owing to an increase in our astuteness, in our mistrust, and in our scientific spirit (also through a more developed instinct for truth, which again is due to Christian influence), this interpretation has grown ever less and less tenable for us.
The craftiest of subterfuges: Kantian criticism. The intellect not only denies itself every right to interpret things in that way, but also to reject the interpretation once it has been made. People are satisfied with a greater demand upon their credulity and faith, with a renunciation of all [Pg 211]right to reason concerning the proof of their creed, with an intangible and superior "Ideal" (God) as a stop-gap.
The Hegelian subterfuge, a continuation of the Platonic, a piece of romanticism and reaction, and at the same time a symptom of the historical sense of a new power: "Spirit" itself is the "self-revealing and self-realising ideal": we believe that in the "process of, development" an ever greater proportion of this ideal is being manifested—thus the ideal is being realised, faith is vested in the future into which all its noble needs are projected and in which they are being worshipped.
In short:—
(1) God is unknowable to us and not to be demonstrated by us (the concealed meaning behind the whole of the epistemological movement);
(2) God may be demonstrated, but as something evolving, and we are part of it, as our pressing desire for an ideal proves (the concealed meaning behind the historical movement).
It should be observed that criticism is never levelled at the ideal itself, but only at the problem which gives rise to a controversy concerning the ideal—that is to say, why it has not yet been realised, or why it is not demonstrable in small things as in great.
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It makes all the difference: whether a man recognises this state of distress as such owing to [Pg 212]a passion or to a yearning in himself, or whether it comes home to him as a problem which he arrives at only by straining his thinking powers and his historical imagination to the utmost.
Away from the religious and philosophical points of view we find the same phenomena. Utilitarianism (socialism and democracy) criticises the origin of moral valuations, though it believes in them just as much as the Christian does. (What guilelessness! As if morality could remain when the sanctioning deity is no longer present! The belief in a "Beyond" is absolutely necessary, if the faith in morality is to be maintained.)
Fundamental problem: whence comes this almighty power of Faith? Whence this faith in morality? (It is betrayed by the fact that even the fundamental conditions of life are falsely interpreted in favour of it: despite our knowledge of plants and animals. "Self-preservation": the Darwinian prospect of a reconciliation of the altruistic and egotistic principles.)
254.
An inquiry into the origin of our moral valuations and tables of law has absolutely nothing to do with the criticism of them, though people persist in believing it has; the two matters lie quite apart, notwithstanding the fact that the knowledge of the pudenda origo of a valuation does diminish its prestige, and prepares the way to a critical attitude and spirit towards it.
[Pg 213] What is the actual worth of our valuations and tables of moral laws? What is the outcome of their dominion? For whom? In relation to what?—answer: for Life. But what is Life? A new and more definite concept of what "Life" is, becomes necessary here. My formula of this concept is: Life is Will to Power.
What is the meaning of the very act of valuing? Does it point back to another, metaphysical world, or does it point down? (As Kant believed, who lived in a period which preceded the great historical movement.) In short: what is its origin? Or had it no human "origin"?—Answer: moral valuations are a sort of explanation, they constitute a method of interpreting. Interpretation in itself is a symptom of definite physiological conditions, as also of a definite spiritual level of ruling judgments. What is it that interprets?—Our passions.
255.
All virtues should be looked upon as physiological conditions: the principal organic functions, more particularly, should be considered necessary and good. All virtues are really refined passions and elevated physiological conditions.
Pity and philanthropy may be regarded as the developments of sexual relations,—justice as the development of the passion for revenge,—virtue as the love of resistance, the will to power,—honour as an acknowledgment of an equal, or of an equally powerful, force.
256.
Under "Morality" I understand a system of valuations which is in relation with the conditions of a creature's life.
257.
Formerly it was said of every form of morality, "Ye shall know them by their fruits." I say of every form of morality: "It is a fruit, and from it I learn the Soil out of which it grew."
258.
I have tried to understand all moral judgments as symptoms and a language of signs in which the processes of physiological prosperity or the reverse, as also the consciousness of the conditions of preservation and growth, are betrayed—a mode of interpretation equal in worth to astrology, prejudices, created by instincts (peculiar to races, communities, and different stages of existence, as, for instance, youth or decay, etc.).
Applying this principle to the morality of Christian Europe more particularly, we find that our moral values are signs of decline, of a disbelief in Life, and of a preparation for pessimism.
My leading doctrine is this: there are no moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. The origin of this interpretation itself lies beyond the pale of morality.
What is the meaning of the fact that we have [Pg 215]imagined a contradiction in existence? This is of paramount importance: behind all other valuations those moral valuations stand commandingly. Supposing they disappear, according to what standard shall we then measure? And then of what value would knowledge be, etc. etc.???
259.
A point of view: in all valuations there is a definite purpose: the preservation of an individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a belief, or a culture.—Thanks to the fact that people forget that all valuing has a purpose, one and the same man may swarm with a host of contradictory valuations, and therefore with a host of contradictory impulses. This is the expression of disease in man as opposed to the health of animals, in which all the instincts answer certain definite purposes.
