On the History of Moral Sensations

There is much more to be said about “Of First and Last Things,” especially with regard to the ramifications Nietzsche thinks science will have on the future of mankind. However, Nietzsche tends to get ahead of himself so it would be best to develop a reasonably clear understanding of his theory of morality before considering the implications that it, along with the rest of science, will have on the course of human events. In the chapter “On the History of Moral Sensations,” he presents his theory by approaching it from several different angles.

I will attempt to discuss these angles in a 43 logical order so the reader can develop a clear conception of his theory and its relation to the theories of Schopenhauer and Rée. The first major aspect of Nietzsche’s theory is its denial of unegoistic motives and actions, as we saw briefly in the last section. He repeats this denial and provides various explanations throughout this chapter for why men have falsely believed the existence of selfless behavior. In an aphorism in which he lauds the use of psychological observation, he claims that older philosophies have founded “false ethics…on the basis of an erroneous analysis, for example that of so-called unegoistic actions” (HAH, 33). He certainly has Schopenhauer’s ethics in mind and probably Rée’s as well, although in neighboring aphorisms he calls Rée and La Rochefoucauld “skilful marksmen who again and again hit the bullseye…of human nature” and Rée in particular “the boldest and coldest of all thinkers” (HAH, 32, 33). Therefore, while Nietzsche derides the idea of unegoistic actions, he does not explicitly criticize Rée, whose moral theory must have been exceedingly familiar to him at the time. As we will see later, Nietzsche appears to appropriate a large part of Reé’s theory—a part quite separate from the notion of unegoism—which leads me to presume that Nietzsche was inclined to ignore the unegoistic foundation of Rée’s theory. Nietzsche also says that the word “unegoistic…is never to be taken in a strict sense but only as a simplified form of expression” (HAH, 37). This statement reinforces the idea that he denies unegoism but also suggests that he recognizes certain actions that, while not at base motivated by concern for the interests of others, at least appear to be motivated as such. Furthermore, he believes that there are motivations that appear even to 44 the actor to possess a kernel of unegoism while in actuality they do not. Thus, he acknowledges the practical use of calling certain actions unegoistic because he recognizes that people have been led to falsely believe in unegoistic motivation; but he denies unequivocally that these actions are motivated by anything but self-interest. Nietzsche appears to believe that two types of deception lead to the belief in unegoism: deception of others and deception of oneself. Furthermore, he suggests that the former tends to develop into the latter. This process is expressed in the closely related aphorisms “How appearance comes into being” and “The point of honesty in deception” (HAH, 39, 40). Nietzsche begins by claiming that “even when in the deepest distress, the actor ultimately cannot cease to think of the impression he and the whole scenic effect is making” (HAH, 39). Thus, Nietzsche believes that men are constantly concerned about the impression they make on others and adjust their behavior to make a certain effect on others that does not accurately represent their internal state. Nietzsche continues by asserting that “if someone obstinately and for a long time wants to appear something it is in the end hard for him to be anything else” (HAH, 39). Thus, the hypocrite in some fashion or another becomes that which he affects. As an example, he claims the man “who is always wearing a mask of a friendly countenance must finally acquire a power over benevolent moods without which the impression of friendliness cannot be obtained —and finally these acquire power over him, he is benevolent” (HAH, 39-40). This is quite a startling proposition and one that confuses the notions of egoism and unegoism. Nietzsche implies that the actor originally deceives others out of a desire to fulfill his own self-interest. Others are bound to call his behavior unegoistic because he 45 appears to them to act selflessly even though he knows full well what actually motivates him. Eventually, the actor himself becomes that which he postures. Nietzsche’s description might seem to suggest that the egoistic man evolves into an unegoistic man. This would create a glaring contradiction in his philosophy, as he has already denied the existence of unegoistic behavior. However, the second aphorism under consideration provides an alternative suggestion that actually provides cogency to his philosophy rather than introducing a contradiction. He claims that “all great deceivers…are overcome with belief in themselves” (HAH, 40). Furthermore, he asserts that “self-deception has to exist if a grand effect is produced” (HAH, 40). Thus, it seems evident that those who deceive do not actually become unegoistic but simply deceive themselves thoroughly as to the real motivation behind their actions. This deception is so great that consciously the actor may very well think he acts out of a concern for the interests of others, while ultimately he only acts to serve his own. This may seem like an isolated phenomenon, but it will become apparent that the process of deception—whether active or passive, outward or inward—is the main reason for the near universal belief in unegoistic actions.

Nietzsche points out the actual egoism behind seemingly unegoistic actions to reinforce the idea that all actions are inherently egoistic despite our beliefs. In a clever play on Schopenhauer’s notion of the principium individuationis, the feeling of individuality overcome by he who feels compassion, Nietzsche suggests that “man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum” (HAH, 42). He contends that, rather than feeling unified with others when compelled to act morally, man “loves something of himself, an idea, a desire, an offspring, more than something else of himself” (HAH, 42). 46 Consequently, a man “divides his nature and sacrifices one part of it to the other” (HAH, 42). Thus, Nietzsche realizes that seemingly unegoistic actions require sacrifices, but he asserts that they are for the benefit of the actor rather than the benefit of any other being with whom the actor might feel unified. It is important to keep in mind that Nietzsche does not only have great unegoistic acts in mind but actually considers smaller, more frequent unegoistic acts more significant. He expresses that “every virtue has its privileges” and considers the everyday virtues of benevolence, honesty, and justness as prime examples (HAH, 44). He claims that benevolence—described as “that comfortable manner with which almost all human action is as a rule encompassed…is the continual occupation of humanity” (HAH, 38). Yet benevolent dispositions such as “good-naturedness, friendliness, [and] politeness of heart [have] very little of the unegoistic in them” (HAH, 38). Similarly, “almost all people tell the truth in ordinary life” for one of two reasons: because “it is easier; for lying demands invention, dissimulation, and a good memory,” or because “it is advantageous,” as “the route of authority and compulsion is more certain than that of cunning” (HAH, 40).

Finally, Nietzsche challenges the notion that justice is a concept intended to protect the weak by contending that “justice (fairness) originates between parties of approximately equal power” (HAH, 49). According to this view, “the characteristic of exchange is the original characteristic of justice” and, therefore, “justice goes back naturally to the viewpoint of an enlightened self-preservation” (HAH, 49). Nietzsche 47 suggests that the act of deception can take place over the course of many generations when asserting the following:

Men have forgotten the original purpose of so-called just and fair actions, and especially because children have for millennia been trained to admire and imitate such actions, it has gradually come to appear that just action is an unegoistic one. (HAH, 49)

Men can come to view their actions as unegoistic not only through the process of deceiving themselves but also through inheriting a notion without inheriting a sense of that notion’s origin. Thus, when Nietzsche exclaims “How little moral would the world appear without forgetfulness!” he means the forgetfulness of mankind as a social unit (HAH, 49).

Before presenting Nietzsche’s definition of morality, having already established that he does not share Schopenhauer’s compassion-based definition, it will be helpful to draw a significant parallel between his philosophy and Rée’s. The notion that vanity plays a powerful, yet inconspicuous, role in human behavior exists in Nietzsche’s philosophy as it does in Rée’s; indeed, vanity provides a motive for the deception Nietzsche has already described. He claims that “the motives and intentions behind [an act] are seldom sufficiently clear and simple”; however, if they were made clear they would incite “revulsion, then suspicion” and gradually cause a man to be “altogether proscribed and declared an outlaw in society” (HAH, 44). He asserts that such “agitations of the soul are enveloped in vanity”; as such, vanity forms “the skin of the soul [that] makes the sight of 48 man endurable” (HAH, 48). Thus, while manifesting itself in deception, vanity regulates men’s behavior by appealing to their desire to look favorable in other men’s eyes.

Aside from vanity’s regulatory role, it also produces perverse effects on men’s behavior. Nietzsche argues that as a rule a man who acts out of vanity “wants to give pleasure to himself but at the expense of his fellow men, inasmuch as he either seduces them to a false opinion regarding himself or even aims at a degree of ‘good opinion’ that is bound to be painful to others” (HAH, 48). Thus, while vanity tempers men’s passions, it also makes others feel bad about themselves. Yet the wicked effects do not stop there— the vain individual’s need to be seen favorably by others leads that individual to “go so far as to neglect [his] own advantage” by arousing in his “fellow men ill-will, hostility and envy” (HAH, 49). Thus, vanity has both hurtful and beneficial effects for both the individual and society, and it can even induce individuals to inadvertently act against their own self-interest. Nietzsche certainly agrees with Rée that it is an important phenomenon to consider when attempting to understand human behavior. As we will see shortly, vanity also plays a similar role in Nietzsche’s theory of morality as it does in Rée’s. With these notions in mind—that man is fundamentally selfish and yet appears, to himself and to others, to be partly selfless, and he appears as such in part because of the deception he has produced out of his vanity—we finally come to Nietzsche’s definition of morality. He provides a succinct, and quite simple definition, when stating that “to be moral, to act in accordance with custom, to be ethical means to practice obedience towards a law of tradition established from of old” (HAH, 51). Thus, morality for 49 Nietzsche is a purely social phenomenon. A community of arbitrary size establishes standards of behavior of arbitrary kind and these standards become treated as moral imperatives. However, Nietzsche recognizes that the goal of morality is not arbitrary; rather, moral precepts are “above all directed at the preservation of a community” (HAH, 51). Therefore, standards of behavior are established for individuals not for their own particular well-being but for the well-being of society as a whole. Hence, individuals are “called good because [they are] good ‘for something’” or “useful” to the community rather than harmful to the community by acting in ways that threaten its preservation (HAH, 51).

With regard to motives, Nietzsche states that “whether one subjects oneself [to customs] with effort or gladly and willingly makes no difference, it is enough that one does it” (HAH, 51). However, he recognizes that “he is called ‘good’ who does what is customary as if by nature…that is to say easily and gladly” (HAH, 51). Thus, customs are ultimately concerned with a result—namely, the preservation of a community—rather than with whether men feel wholly devoted to the attainment of that result. Yet, the labels “good” and “bad” are attributed to those who seem devoted to customs, presumably because they contribute most consistently to the preservation of a community.

While Nietzsche believes that all morals are fundamentally intended to promote the well-being of a community, he explicitly denies the preeminence of any particular morality. In other words, he believes that customs can vary widely while all directing themselves toward the preservation of the community. Furthermore, he believes that there is no principle that must underlie all moralities. In reference to Kant, he states that “the 50 distinction between ‘in accordance with custom’ and ‘in defiance with custom’ [has] nothing to do…with any kind of immanent categorical imperative” (HAH, 51). Thus, rationality does not provide any duty that must be represented by all customs. Similarly, he asserts in clear reference to Schopenhauer that “‘egoistic’ and ‘unegoistic’ is not the fundamental antithesis…between good and evil” (HAH, 51). This denial that Schopenhauer’s moral principle forms the basis for morality results from Nietzsche’s disbelief in unegoism. Moreover, this last statement is also a rejection of Rée’s theory of morality on two levels. Rée maintains that evolution produced an unegoistic drive in man and the use of that drive was praised by society as “good” whereas the use of the egoistic drive was condemned as “bad.” On one level, Nietzsche rejects Rée’s presumption of the unegoistic drive just as he rejects Schopenhauer’s. Additionally, Rée recognizes the overwhelming strength of the egoistic drive and claims that society began to praise unegoistic behavior precisely to counteract the naturally dominant egoistic drive. The presumption here is that the egoistic drive poses a threat to the community and that the neutralization of this threat is the goal of morality. Despite his agreement with Rée that the egoistic drive naturally holds sway over men’s actions, Nietzsche does not agree with Rée that the purpose of morality must be to combat that egoism. Nietzsche is certainly aware that customs discouraging selfishness can form a type of morality and that the praise of selfless (or, more precisely, seemingly selfless) behavior may lead to the preservation of a community. However, he rejects the notion that moralities must rest, and have always rested, on this principle. Rather, he claims that the ancient Greeks even had a morality 51 that praised the exacting of revenge. Furthermore, he asserts that the morality of piety, in which individuals are expected to do whatever it takes to satisfy the gods, “is in any event a much older morality than that which demands unegoistic actions” (HAH, 53).

Throughout Human, All Too Human and Daybreak, Nietzsche describes a variety of ways in which custom has established the moral distinction between good and bad, or good and evil. Some of his descriptions appear to highlight different aspects of the origin of a particular morality, whereas other descriptions appear to portray the origins of altogether different moralities. It is often difficult to determine which type of description he is providing in a given aphorism. For example, in the aphorism entitled “Twofold prehistory of good and evil” he describes a morality that arose out of caste divisions. He claims that mankind or society can be conceptually divided into two parts: “the ruling tribes and castes” and “the subjected, the powerless” (HAH, 36, 37). The ruling class, he suggests, defined good as the powerful and the bad as the powerless. In other words, they viewed people like themselves as good and those not like themselves (i.e. those of the lower class) as bad. The point of this moral distinction appears to be to reinforce “a sense of belonging together” by praising the quality that all individuals of the ruling class share, “the capacity for requital” (HAH, 37).

Nietzsche claims that the powerless, on the other hand, possess an altogether different morality in which “evil is the characterizing expression for man” (HAH, 37). This morality holds that everything is evil and nothing is good, and appears to reflect the fact that the powerless have no cohesiveness and no quality that unites them. Neither of these moralities on first blush appears to correspond with that of modern Europe. 52 However, Nietzsche asserts at the end of the aphorism that “our present morality has grown up in the soil of the ruling tribes and castes” (HAH, 37). Yet, in On the Genealogy of Morals he seems to suggest the exact opposite—that modern European morality was shaped by the powerless. Addressing this confusion will be part of our task when we consider this book in Chapter 3.

Despite Nietzsche and Rée’s difference of opinion regarding the inevitability of the egoism-unegoism dichotomy as the foundation of morality, they do share the idea that moral designations are socially constructed. While Rée does not imagine that a morality could arise in which unegoism is not praised, he recognizes that unegoistic behavior is not inherently good but only good because society has gradually learned to consider it as such. Thus, in a way Nietzsche is just taking Rée’s theory that morality encourages socially beneficial behavior by attributing “good” and “evil” to things and purifying it of its Schopenhauerian assumptions. Seen in this way, their two theories are strikingly similar. Nietzsche and Rée also share a sense of how morality as custom developed, although Nietzsche emphasizes different aspects of, and adds a few elements to, the development. According to Nietzsche, “the original founder of states [is] a man of violence [who] subjugates the weaker…to secure his existence through…fear-inspiring tests of his power” (HAH, 53). Nietzsche considers this subjection necessary for the establishment of morality because it “draws [men] out of their isolation and orders them within a collective” (HAH, 53). Thus, “morality is preceded by compulsion, indeed it is for a time itself still compulsion, to which one accommodates oneself for the avoidance 53 of what one regards as unpleasurable” (HAH, 53). In other words, morality is originally the set of requirements imposed by a more powerful individual on his subjects with the use of punishment. Later, the “collective individuality, for example society, the state” replaces the “greater individual” as the subjugator (HAH, 53). Furthermore, compulsion “becomes custom, later still voluntary obedience, finally almost instinct; then, like all that has for a long time been habitual and natural, it is associated with pleasure—and is now called ‘virtue’” (HAH, 53). Therefore, morality evolves from something quite unfamiliar that must be actively and violently enforced to something quite agreeable that largely enforces itself. Rée likewise sees the need for punishment in the establishment of the state, although he does not envision the dominant individual as the first imposer of order. However, he sees vanity as the main driver of men’s acceptance of morality, as men desire to be praised rather than condemned for their behavior and consequently act quite willingly in ways that make them appear “good.” Nietzsche, on the other hand, sees habit as the main reason why customs “grow milder and more pleasant in course of time” (HAH, 52). Granted, he agrees with Rée that vanity does play an important role in this process, claiming that “insofar as punishment and reward, blame and praise, operate most effectively upon vanity, [mankind’s] utility also requires the continuance of vanity” (HAH, 57). However, he seems to think that the longer a society lives with a particular morality, the less they need the incentive provided by praise and blame to obey that morality because they become accustomed to obeying out of habit. Thus, Nietzsche 54 claims that “an important species of pleasure…originates in habit [and] even the strictest mode of life can become habitual and thus a source of pleasure” (HAH, 52). We have so far seen much of what constitutes the definition and origin of morality for Nietzsche and how his definition and origin relate to those of Schopenhauer and Rée. Nietzsche defines morality in even more detail in Daybreak and we will consider what more he has to say about the definition and origin of morality in that book when we come to it. However, the value of morality is also a crucial topic in his philosophy. In fact, he seems to establish the definition of morality primarily so he can then evaluate the value of morality. In this sense, he differs fundamentally from Schopenhauer and Rée who are satisfied to simply provide their definition of morality. They certainly each question the logic of judging men for their actions; however, neither of their philosophies constitutes a significant commendation of or objection to morality. Their failure to question the value of morality in their philosophies stems from their inability to perceive the existence of morality in more than one way and their disinclination to view a morality that hallows selflessness as problematic.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, not only conceives of different moralities, he conceives of the absence of morality as well. This allows him to pose two questions concerning the value of morality in contemporary Europe: “Is the morality we have one that we ought to desire to have?” and “Ought we to desire to have a morality at all?” He answers both of these questions with a decisive “no” and, accordingly, protests against morality in two distinguishable ways. First, he denounces the value of the prevailing morality by describing its harmfulness; and secondly, he denounces the value of morality 55 qua morality by describing its harmfulness apart from its current incarnation. His moral philosophy therefore seeks to overthrow the very thing it describes in detail by exhibiting its deficiencies on two fronts.

Nietzsche launches his two-pronged attack on morality in Human, All Too Human. In the second chapter, we see relatively implicit criticisms of morality that are made more explicit in Daybreak. The first set of these criticisms concern the prevailing morality in modern Europe. I will consider this set of criticisms and then the set he levels at the value of morality qua morality. Finally, I will ascertain which set of criticisms plays the dominant role in Human, All Too Human and discuss the prescriptions he makes.

Although he does not say so explicitly until Daybreak, Nietzsche believes that current-day morality corresponds closely to the type of morality conceived by

Schopenhauer and Rée. While Nietzsche does not agree with them that morality inherently depends on the egoistic-unegoistic dichotomy, he fully recognizes that the prevailing morality is fashioned after this dichotomy. This is not to say that he believes

Schopenhauer and Rée even analyze the prevailing morality accurately, for they erroneously believe in the existence of unegoistic behavior. Rather, Nietzsche understands the present morality as one that labels seemingly unegoistic motives and behavior “good” and egoistic motives and behavior “bad.” The entrenchment of this dichotomy helps to explain why Schopenhauer and Rée’s theories portray morality the way they do. In Nietzsche’s eyes, their fundamental mistake is to confuse the prevailing morality with morality itself by accepting this dichotomy as definitional. Having 56 corrected this mistake, Nietzsche’s task is to demonstrate why a morality based on this dichotomy is undesirable. The first way in which he does this is by refuting the value of praise for supposedly unegoistic behavior. The feeling that drives unegoistic behavior—Mitleid—is generally translated as “pity,” rather than “compassion,” in Nietzsche’s writings. Since this feeling resides at the core of present-day morality, I will henceforth refer to this breed of morality as the “morality of pity.” It will be important to keep in mind when I discuss Nietzsche’s descriptions of pity that he never means to suggest that pity is inherently unegoistic, as Schopenhauer claims for compassion. Rather, Nietzsche always means to suggest that in every instance of pity either the actor or the witness erroneously believe in an unegoistic motive, or at the very least the behavior under consideration has customarily been attributed to empathy. Nietzsche dissects the notion of pity and casts it in an unfavorable light in an aphorism entitled “The desire to excite pity.” He claims that both La Rochefoucauld and Plato believed that pity “enfeebles the soul” by encouraging the possessor of pity to aid others not out of reason but out of feeling (HAH, 38). This condemnation of pity highlights two basic ideas in Nietzsche’s thought. The first is that feelings are undesirable guides to action whereas one’s faculty of reason is a desirable guide. This notion is reflective of his adherence to a particular conception of science. The second is that customs can be so strong as to induce certain feelings in men that cause them to act differently than they would have otherwise. This second idea is only partially represented in this condemnation since Nietzsche does not explicitly pinpoint the origin of pity in 57 custom until later in Daybreak. However, he clearly believes that “one should…manifest pity but not possess it” because actions based on feelings should be left to “the unfortunate [who] are so stupid that the manifestation of pity constitutes for them the greatest good in the world” (HAH, 38). Nietzsche also attacks the notion of pity by arguing that the pitied are not so innocent and powerless as we assume. He claims that the pitied “fundamentally have the objective of hurting those who are with them” because they desire to exercise their “one power: the power to hurt” (HAH, 39). This idea hints at the more general idea of the “will to power” that Nietzsche develops over the course of his philosophical career. The idea of the will to power suggests that man’s need to gain and exert power over others is very strong. He makes no exception here for the seemingly powerless; they too desire to exert their last bit of power by causing others to partake in their suffering. Accordingly, Nietzsche says “the thirst for pity is thus a thirst for self-enjoyment” and “causing pain gives pleasure” (HAH, 39). Therefore, he undermines our ideal of pity by revealing how the pitier is duped and taken advantage of by the pitied. The third criticism of pity presented by Nietzsche concerns the harm and suffering that must be endured by those who pity. He suggests that the pitier’s well-being is substantially diminished as a result of pitying by claiming that “there are cases in which sympathy for suffering is more painful than actual suffering” (HAH, 37). This statement suggests that pity involves the active participation of the pitier in another’s suffering and, furthermore, that this act of participation can magnify the suffering of the pitied greatly. However, the effects of this magnification fall squarely on the shoulders of the pitier. The 58 pitied, as we have seen, actually gains satisfaction from the exchange. Thus, Nietzsche suggests that pity actually generates suffering in the pitier and this suffering causes the pitier harm regardless of the pitier’s intentions. This appears as an important yet ironic point to make when we recall the Nietzsche’s notion that a man acts only out of self- interest. According to this notion, the pitier must be egoistically motivated to pity his neighbor. Yet, the pitier ends up enduring a great amount of suffering because of his pity. Therefore, unless the pitier benefits in ways that outweigh his suffering (which Nietzsche does not seem to suggest), the pitier ultimately acts against his own interest despite his selfish intentions. This suggests that men do not always know how to satisfy their own interests effectively despite their egoism. We will come across this notion again when we discuss pity in Daybreak. Nietzsche criticizes the morality of pity in a second way: by attempting to redeem the notion of selfishness from its tarnished image. Consequently, his attack on the morality of pity consists of both demoting the highly esteemed notion of pity and promoting the disgraced notion of selfishness. He defends egoism by making three main points: first, the value of selfishness to the individual should be better appreciated; second, the value of selfishness to society should be better appreciated; and third, given the nature of the egoistic drive and the remoteness of other’s needs, we should be more accepting of those who act selfishly. Prompting all of these points is the belief that egoistic actions do not have any inherent value and, therefore, we should reexamine the negative value we attributed to such actions. 59 Nietzsche suggests that the morality of pity fails to appreciate the value of selfishness for the individual in an aphorism entitled “Revenge and the desire to revenge.” He claims that the “desire to revenge” can either be a “fever which…passes” if satisfied by an act of revenge; or it can be a “chronic illness, a poisoning of body and soul” if unsatisfied (HAH, 42). He chides those who do not recognize that temporarily suffering from a fever is better, at least for the individual, than suffering from a chronic illness. Furthermore, he seems to imply that those possessing such a chronic illness lack “the strength and courage to carry out revenge” because morality has denied them that strength and courage (HAH, 42). At the very least, it is evident that he believes the morality of pity fails to encourage acts of revenge because it considers them evil. In either case, Nietzsche suggests that the morality of pity fails to recognize the need of individuals to act in selfish ways and even goes so far as to actively deny them the ability to fulfill those needs. The phenomenon of revenge is here used simply to exhibit this deficiency of the morality of pity. Nietzsche extends this notion that we suffer from the morality of pity’s under- appreciation of selfishness by claiming that society suffers simultaneously with the individual. He admits that “it was on account of their general utility that impersonal actions were universally commended and accorded distinction” (HAH, 50). However, he claims that it is no longer socially optimal to praise impersonal actions; rather, “it is in precisely the most personal possible considerations that the degree of utility is at its greatest also for the generality” (HAH, 50). It is unclear whether the morality of pity did at one point serve the common good effectively or if it established itself merely by 60 claiming to promote the common good. Nor is it altogether clear how more selfishness will increase the general welfare. Nevertheless, Nietzsche implores us to resuscitate “the all-too-little regard paid to the personal in us [which] has been badly cultivated [and] work for our fellow men, but only to the extent that we discover our own highest advantage in this work” (HAH, 51). Thus, he believes that the morality of pity insufficiently achieves the goal of all moralities—the preservation of mankind—because it fails to appreciate selfishness.

Finally, Nietzsche redeems selfishness by attempting to distance the notion of selfishness from the notion of hurting others. He asserts that “all ‘evil’ acts are motivated by the drive to preservation [and] ‘procuring pain as such’ does not exist” (HAH, 53). Consequently, he insists that the selfish behavior condemned by morality does not fundamentally concern itself with causing others to suffer. He reinforces this idea by stating that “pity has the pleasure of the other as its objective just as little as wickedness has the pain of the others as such”—that is to say, neither has the interests of others as its objective (HAH, 55). Thus, he argues that the morality of pity misleadingly associates selfishness with the harming of others. Not only is selfishness not oriented toward the suffering of others but selfishness should seem understandable given the proximity of one’s own concerns compared to the proximity of another’s. Nietzsche claims that we ought to be forgiven for acting selfishly because “the idea of one’s ‘neighbor’…is very weak in us; and we feel almost as free of responsibility from him as we do for plants and stones” (HAH, 54). Similarly, he asks the rhetorical question: “But does one ever fully know how much pain an act causes 61 another?” (HAH, 56) These passages suggest that we should not only reject the idea of the unegoistic because of its irrationality but we should also appreciate how hard it would be for men to act selflessly even if they had an unegoistic drive. I have so far discussed the ways in which Nietzsche criticizes the morality of pity. As stated before this discussion, he also attacks morality qua morality apart from its present incarnation as the morality of pity. While his criticisms of the morality of pity 6 are not shared by Schopenhauer and Rée, his criticisms of morality qua morality (for the remainder of this discussion referred to simply as “morality”) are anticipated greatly by Schopenhauer and even more so by Rée. Both of these philosophers believe in strict determinism, from which it follows that they deny the freedom of the will. Their determinist stances were covered fully in the first chapter but it should be recalled that each of their stances had implications for guilt, remorse, and punishment. According to Schopenhauer, man has no freedom with regard to his actions because what he does follows directly from who he is. However, man does have freedom with regard to who he is because he possesses so-called intelligible freedom. Therefore, his guilt springs from his choice of character not his choice of actions. According to Rée, man does not have freedom with regard to his actions nor does he have freedom with regard to his character. Therefore, he should have no remorse and not be held guilty by others, nor should he be punished for any reason except deterrence. In Human, All Too Human, the following criticisms appear directed toward morality qua morality. 6 However, Nietzsche later identifies the notion of accountability with the morality of pity in On the Genealogy of Morals, which suggests that the following criticisms ultimately apply to the morality of pity in particular. His application of these criticisms to morality qua morality in Human, All Too Human reflects his general tendency to distinguish inconsistently between these two concepts of morality.

Nietzsche agrees with Schopenhauer and Rée that the world is completely determined in a strict sense by causal factors and that there exists no freedom of the will. In an elegant aphorism entitled “By the waterfall,” Nietzsche likens the progression of human events to the physics of a waterfall: At the sight of a waterfall we think we see in the countless curvings, twistings and breakings of the waves capriciousness and freedom of will; but everything here is necessary, every motion mathematically calculable. So it is too in the case of human actions; if one were all-knowing, one would be able to calculate every individual action, likewise every advance in knowledge, every error, every piece of wickedness. (HAH, 57)

While human actions often appear spontaneous and free from restraint, they are actually the necessary product of the current conditions and forces of the universe. Thus, Nietzsche describes the “illusion of free will” as a result of our inability to grasp the complex events that underlie human behavior (HAH, 57). If one grasps the total unaccountability of men with regard to their actions, one can no longer judge those actions by attributing them as morally good or bad, by praising or blaming them.

However, Nietzsche agrees with Rée in opposition to Schopenhauer that man does not possess freedom with regard to his character either. In an aphorism entitled “The fable of intelligible freedom,” Nietzsche discusses the reasoning behind Schopenhauer’s “fantastic concept of so-called intelligible freedom” (HAH, 35). To explain this reason,

Nietzsche finds it necessary to explain how men came to consider themselves praiseworthy or blameworthy in the first place. He traces the development of moral designations across four steps in which society “successively makes men accountable for 63 the effects they produce, then for their actions, then for their motives, and finally for their nature” (HAH, 34). This progression takes place through a process of forgetting and “taking for cause that which is effect” that is highly reminiscent of Rée’s envisioned evolution of moral designations (HAH, 34). Nietzsche looks at this progression and concludes that “the history of the moral sensations is a history of an error” in which society comes to consider men as good or evil even though “men can be held accountable for nothing” because their actions are completely predetermined (HAH, 34). According to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer could not bring himself to denounce moral designations as fallacious, presumably because he did not see morality as possessing a history at all. Instead, Schopenhauer attempted to justify the concept of moral accountability and the “consciousness of guilt” in particular while maintaining a deterministic view of the world (HAH, 35). To do so he drew the “erroneous conclusion” that man possessed freedom over his esse while not his operari (HAH, 35). Nietzsche counters this logic by asserting that “a feeling of displeasure after a deed is absolutely not obliged to be rational” (HAH, 35). Consequently, he not only denies Schopenhauer’s notion of intelligible freedom but also contends that the feeling of accountability is “something one can disaccustom oneself to” given its irrational origin (HAH, 35). Nietzsche actually portrays this concept that “no one is accountable for his deeds, no one for his nature…to judge is the same thing as to be unjust” as the most important idea of the chapter and therefore his entire discussion of morality in Human, All Too Human (HAH, 35). In the final aphorism, entitled “Unaccountability and innocence,” he draws conclusions from the complete unaccountability of man that go far beyond those 64 drawn by either Schopenhauer or Rée. He claims that “the complete unaccountability of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest draught the man of knowledge has yet to swallow” (HAH, 57). Yet, he foresees a future in which men gradually do swallow this draught and mankind attempts to “transform itself from a moral to a knowing mankind” (HAH, 58). This mankind is one in which man “may no longer praise, no longer censure” but must “stand before the actions of men and before his own…as he stands before the plants” (HAH, 57). He even suggests, despite firmly denying teleology elsewhere in his philosophy, that “everything is…flooding forward, and towards one goal”—“the wise, innocent (conscious of innocence) man” (HAH, 59). This flood, he suggests, is propelled by “the influence of increasing knowledge” and he speculates that a new, morality-less age will develop “in thousands of years’ time perhaps” (HAH, 59). Thus, while he is critical of both morality qua morality and the morality of pity for different reasons, he believes that mankind will move beyond both as it realizes the errors underlying all moral judgments. Daybreak Daybreak can in many ways be seen as a sequel to the chapter “On the History of Moral Sensations” in Human, All Too Human. In Daybreak, which is composed of 575 aphorisms divided into five untitled “books,” Nietzsche examines myriad aspects of morality. He treads much old ground covered in Human, All Too Human, but when he does so he usually presents familiar ideas in a more mature form. He also produces many new ideas, although these new ideas advance rather than contradict his theory of morality 65 as presented in Human, All Too Human. While it is far too daunting to analyze everything Nietzsche has to say about morality in Daybreak, I will attempt to explain those ideas most important to understanding the developments in Nietzsche’s thought that occur in this work. As with my analysis of Human, All Too Human, I will address three main areas of his theory: his detailed definition of morality, the value he places on morality qua morality, and the value he places on the morality of pity.

I will treat his valuation of the morality of pity more fully than his valuation of morality qua morality, because I believe the former is more central to this work than the latter. The concept of what constitutes morality for Nietzsche is very much the same in Daybreak as it is in Human, All Too Human. He declares the following as the “chief proposition: morality is nothing other (therefore no more!) than obedience to customs, of whatever kind they may be” (D, 10). Thus, we see that he still believes morality is strictly-speaking based on arbitrary tradition and not on any unegoistic-egoistic distinction. However, he develops the idea of custom, or tradition, and its power in Daybreak. He answers the question “What is tradition?” with: “A higher authority which one obeys, not because it commands what is useful to us, but because it commands” (D, 11). This definition of tradition ought not to sound unusual given his assertion in Human, All Too Human that morals are not meant for the individual’s well-being, but his emphasis on commandment is new. He suggests that the commands of custom manifest themselves in the individual as “fear in the presence of a higher intellect” (D, 11). This is a fear of “an incomprehensible, indefinite power, of something more than personal” (D, 11). Thus, one is compelled to act morally, not only out of habit and vanity, as suggested 66 in Human, All Too Human, but fear of an ominous power. Nietzsche seems to suggest that this power does not actually exist, at least in the way imagined by the fearful. Accordingly, he asserts that “there is superstition in this fear” (D, 11).

This idea of superstition as a reinforcement of moral behavior builds on

Nietzsche’s more fundamental idea that morality depends on irrationality for its existence, as opposed to Rée’s insistence that morality depends on rationality for the determination of what should be labeled “good.” Nietzsche’s emphasis on the irrationality of origins is reasserted in the first sentence of Daybreak, which states that “all things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their origin in unreason thereby becomes improbable” (D, 9). By calling such origins “improbable” he does not mean they were actually rational but rather the opposite, as our obsession with rational origins leads us to believe in them erroneously. Nietzsche suggests that morality is particularly prone to reinforcement through irrationality because its true nature is incomprehensible to almost everyone. He claims that customs increase in value as men, driven by “fear of the incomprehensible,” resort to “speculation over [the] usages” of customs (D, 28). In other words, men make up impressive explanations for customs because they do not understand the true explanation for customs; this irrational process, in turn, leads to even greater reverence for them. Furthermore, Nietzsche believes that morality confuses individuals into believing that misfortune must necessarily stem from moral deviance. He claims that when “an evil chance event strikes a community, the suspicion is aroused that custom has been offended in some way” (D, 24). Consequently, the community attempts to find a reason for the evil 67 event by partaking in “a direct avoidance of any investigation of the real natural causes of the phenomenon” (D, 24). The community’s insistence that bad fortune must constitute punishment for moral transgressions persists because “it is not easy to refute the validity of [a moral] prescription [because] some circumstances will always appear which seems to confirm the prescription” (D, 20). Thus, once a people form a disposition toward morality, their disposition is reinforced by both the irrational meanings they give to customs and the irrational causal explanations they give to the vicissitudes of life.

Yet, Nietzsche believes that science can and has gradually counteracted the irrationality that sustains morality. He states that “as the sense for causality increases, the extent of the domain of morality decreases” (D, 12). Understanding science to be the discipline in which true causal explanations are discovered by the use of reason, this statement suggests that science can debase morality by “destroy[ing] a countless number of imaginary causalities hitherto believed in as the foundation of customs” (D, 12). This process is apparently underway already as he compares the belief in moral designations to the belief in gender designations for all things. He claims that mankind’s laying “of ethical significance on the world’s back,” like “the [erstwhile] belief in the masculinity and femininity of the sun,” will one day be designated “an enormous error” (D, 9).

In Human, All Too Human, we saw how Nietzsche considered feelings untrustworthy because they do not readily provide rational reasons for believing or acting in particular ways. He takes this idea a step further in Daybreak by enlarging the potential for feelings to mislead. He claims that “moral feelings are transmitted in this way: children observe in adults inclinations for and aversions to certain actions and, as born 68 apes, imitate these inclinations and aversions” (D, 25). Thus, feelings are not only dangerous because they fail to provide rationales; they are also dangerous because we do not know exactly where they originated, and they probably originated a very long time ago under obscure conditions. For this reason, Nietzsche states: “To trust one’s feelings means to give more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience” (D, 25). Without evidence suggesting that our ancestors knew how to establish value judgments better than we do, he finds it unacceptable to act according to our feelings, which we probably received from them and which reflect their judgments. In addition to exploring the ways in which obedience to custom depends on irrationality, Nietzsche emphasizes the dominance customs originally had over society. He describes this dominance in two ways: first by explaining the comprehensiveness of early forms of morality, and second by explaining the higher level from which morality once commanded society. He claims that “originally all education and care of health, marriage, cure of sickness, agriculture, war, speech and silence, traffic with one another and with the gods belonged within the domain of morality” (D, 11). The comprehensiveness of a morality that covered all of these areas of life was meant to prevent the individual from “thinking of oneself as an individual” (D, 11). Accordingly, custom preserved mankind by demanding that an individual “sacrifice himself” through a process of “self-overcoming” that rendered him harmless to the security of the community somehow (D, 11). 69 This assimilation of the individual into the identity of the state is also represented by the sharing of guilt by the entire community. Nietzsche claims that originally “punishment for breaches of custom [fell] before all on the community” and the community felt “the individual’s guilt above all as its own guilty and [bore] punishment as its own punishment” (D, 12). Thus, morality, although acting on the individual by destroying that very individuality, ultimately acted on the community as a whole by making everyone feel guilty for the actions of any individual member.

However, Nietzsche claims that we no longer clearly see morality as a phenomenon that denies the individual and produces a shared sense of moral responsibility because “we men live in a very immoral age: the power of custom is astonishingly enfeebled and the moral sense so rarefied and lofty it may be described as having more or less evaporated” (D, 10). While here he certainly exaggerates the extent to which morality has grown weak (his philosophy constitutes an attack on morality, after all), this idea that present-day morality is a much more diluted form of morality than those of the past helps him make bold, unfamiliar claims about the fundamental characteristics of morality. Accordingly, he asserts that our familiarity with a weak form of morality “is why the fundamental insights into the origin of morality are so difficult for us latecomers” (D, 10). Morality has become weak presumably for the same reasons as suggested previously, namely that science has uncovered the irrationality behind morality. The role of science in this regard is captured by his assertion that “in the same measure as the sense for causality increases, the extent of the domain of morality 70 decreases,” as science is responsible for “destroy[ing] a countless number of imaginary causalities hitherto believed in as the foundations of customs” (D, 12). Despite Nietzsche’s insistence that morality has already lost much of its force, he is greatly concerned with the damage morality qua morality does to the individual. He asserts that “under the dominion of the morality of custom, originality of every kind has acquired a bad conscience, the sky above the best men is for this reason to this very moment gloomier than it need be” (D, 12). Thus, Nietzsche is not only concerned about the irrationality of morality qua morality as he was in Human, All Too Human; he also abhors the necessary tendency of morality to promote the good of the community at the expense of the individual. This belief in the anti-individualistic nature of morality tells us two things in particular: first, Nietzsche believes that the individual and society have incompatible needs, and the long-term dominance of morality has meant the attempted fulfillment of communal needs at the expense of those of the individual. Secondly, the morality of pity no longer looks as unique in its method of preserving the community by weakening the individual, in its peculiar case by valuing selflessness. According to what Nietzsche says in Daybreak, morality qua morality has the inherent method of preserving mankind by denying individuality; therefore, the morality of pity is just one type of morality that operates in this way, although perhaps it does so particularly well.

Nietzsche highlights this tendency of morality to oppress the individual by contrasting the morality of custom with an alternative type of morality. So far we have only seen him refer to one type of morality: custom that operates on a social level and demands obedience from the individual. However, he suggests that there is an alternative 71 to the morality of custom; this alternative is a morality of individualism and is much rarer than the morality of custom. Nietzsche describes the moralists of this alternative morality as those “who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness” (D, 11). Therefore, the morality of individualism, which is apparently embodied by Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, does the exact opposite of the morality of custom by actively promoting the well-being of the individual rather than the community. Consequently, those under the influence of the morality of custom find the morality of individualism offensive and dangerous. Nietzsche provides an example of this “highest disapprobation of all advocates of morality of custom” by claiming that “to a virtuous Roman of the old stamp every Christian who ‘considered first of all his own salvation’ appeared – evil” (D, 11). The issue of the extent to which Christianity should be considered a morality of individualism versus a morality of custom will be taken up later when I discuss the role Christianity plays in Nietzsche’s moral philosophy more extensively.

Nietzsche not only believes that moralities of custom hurt the individual by forcing the individual to sacrifice himself for society’s well-being through obedience to moral laws; he also believes they hurt the individual by confusing him with regard to where his self-interest actually lies and, even more significantly, with regard to whether or not he is acting selfishly or selflessly. In an aphorism entitled “Pseudo-egoism,” he claims that: 72

Whatever they may think and say about their “egoism”, the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them. (D, 61)

While he does not explicitly say so, these “phantoms of their ego” are effected by morality through the instillation of customary valuations. This passage is peculiar given Nietzsche’s prior insistence that all men act for the sake of their ego rather than for the sake of other men’s egos. One might be tempted to misinterpret Nietzsche as suggesting that morality can actually bend men into acting selflessly. However, interpreting him in this way would grossly betray the real meaning behind this passage. He means to suggest that men are still thoroughly egoistic; they are just also thoroughly confused by the effects of morality as to how they ought to go about fulfilling their egoism. In a way, morality blinds men from seeing their actual self-interest by engulfing them within a “fog of habits and opinions” that misleads and obstructs them in their pursuit of pleasure (D, 61). Therefore, morality ends up injuring individuals by impeding their ability to act selfishly in an effective manner. The ability of morality to confuse men with regard to whether they are acting selfishly or selflessly is explained by Nietzsche in the aphorism entitled “There are two kinds of deniers of morality.” He claims that there are men like La Rochefoucauld who “deny morality” by “deny[ing] that the moral motives which men claim have inspired their actions really have done so” (D, 60). These men essentially suggest that “morality consists of words and is among the coarser or more subtle deceptions (especially self- deceptions) which men practice” (D, 60). Implicit in this idea of deception is the notion 73 that what really motivates men is something other than the desire to obey a custom for the sake of obedience. However, men either convince others that they are motivated by such a desire to obey, or they somehow convince themselves (in addition to others, perhaps) that they are motivated in this way. Under a morality of pity, this means that men appear to others or themselves to be motivated by selflessness, or pure compassion, when in reality they are motivated by selfishness. Thus, this type of denial of morality refuses the notion that men act morally in the sense that their motivations are truly “good” according to a particular morality. Nietzsche endorses this type of denial by claiming that he “should be the last to deny that in very many cases there is some ground for suspicion that [this] point of view [may] be justified and in any event of great general application” (D, 60). However, there is a second type of denial of morality that Nietzsche considers even more central to his philosophy. This second denial means “to deny that moral judgments are based on truths. Here it is admitted that they really are motives of action, but that in this way it is errors which, as the basis of all moral judgment, impel men to their moral actions” (D, 60). This type of denial essentially posits a much more thorough form of deception than the first type, but here the actor himself does not deceive anyone; rather, the impersonal and gradual process in which a morality becomes thoroughly established in a community is to blame for the deception. Nowadays men are thoroughly convinced that their actions are motivated by the desire to obey custom for the sake of obedience, but they fail to see that their real motivation lies elsewhere. However, in the distant past when morality was first taking hold over their community, men did realize 74 what truly motivated them. The community somehow forgot over the span of numerous generations why its members obeyed particular customs. Consequently, its constituents ended up assuming that they obeyed customs for the sake of obedience. Under a morality of pity, men assume that they act selflessly because that is the underlying ideal of the prevailing customs; but in actuality they are unknowingly motivated by selfish reasons that were known only to their ancestors who first felt compelled (perhaps out of fear of punishment, for example) to act according to custom. Thus, this type of denial constitutes a denial of the very idea that men ever act morally at all (in the sense that their motivations are morally “good”) whereas the first allowed for the idea that men could act morally but claimed that many men did not.

Nietzsche stresses elsewhere in Daybreak the idea that the true motives behind our seemingly moral actions are not what they appear to be. The aphorism that opens Book II, entitled “To become moral is not in itself moral,” consists of the following sentence: “Subjection to morality can be slavish or vain or self-interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or an act of despair, like subjection to a prince: in itself it is nothing moral” (D, 59). Here he points out the variety of ways in which a man can become seemingly moral out of selfish motives. Because selfishness is never endorsed by morality, or at least by the morality of pity, men are never truly moral even though they might suppose they are. Elsewhere, Nietzsche speaks more generally about the mysteriousness of motives when claiming that “actions are never what they appear to be!” (D, 72). He calls it a “primeval delusion…that one knows, and knows quite precisely in every case, how human action is brought about” (D, 72). Accordingly, he asserts that “moral actions are in reality ‘something other than that’—more we cannot say,” by which he means that moral actions are not moral because they have immoral motives, and the precise type of immoral motive is unknown and largely unknowable (D, 72). The notion that men can lose track of the real motives behind their moral actions can be better understood by looking at what Nietzsche says about the virtue of humility. In an aphorism entitled “Refined cruelty as virtues,” he explains how men originally became humble out of a desire to feel the power derived from acting cruelly toward others. He claims that, generally speaking, “we want to make the sight of us painful to another and to awaken in him the feeling of envy and his own impotence and degradation” (D, 23). When customs regard humility as praiseworthy, men become humble so as to arouse such envy through their distinction as more humble than others. Accordingly, Nietzsche asserts that “the morality of distinction is in its ultimate foundation pleasure in refined cruelty” (D, 23). This idea concerning the competitive motives behind men’s original moral behavior resonates with Rée’s belief that men originally respond to moral designations by satisfying their vanity, a process which requires the relative diminution of others. Also, to refer back to the two ways to deny morality, these humble men would be seen by La Rochefoucauld to deceive others actively with regard to what actually motivates them. While the actor is relatively aware of his motives in this early development of humility, Nietzsche describes a process that takes place in which the original motives behind acting humble become obscured for everybody. Locating the foundation of humility as cruelty in humility’s “first generation,” he claims that the habit of acting 76 humbly gets inherited by subsequent generations (D, 23). How exactly this inheritance takes place is not entirely clear, as he could be referring to a biological process of inheritance in addition to a socialization process. In any case, he claims that as “thoughts are not hereditary, only feelings,” the men of subsequent generations act humbly in two ways that make them different from the men of the first generation: they no longer know that humility was originally effected out of the desire to act cruelly, and they are motivated by a new desire—the desire to feel “pleasure in the habit as such” (D, 23). As a replacement for the original rationale behind their actions, which has become lost, these men of subsequent generations create a false rationale for their actions that reflects the ideals of the prevailing morality. Nietzsche calls the pleasure of habit that develops “the first stage of the ‘good’” because only when this pleasure arises as the motive for acting humbly do men begin to truly deceive themselves by regarding their humility as motivated by the desire to act in ways deemed “good” for the sake of acting in those ways (D, 23). Thus, we see how a virtue arises over a long period of time in which the selfish motivations behind it become hidden and the original rationale is lost and replaced by an untruth. Since this process can readily apply to virtues other than humility, this theory provides an explanation for our misunderstanding of what underlies all moral behavior. With respect to the value of morality qua morality, I have mainly spoken of morality’s harmfulness to the individual, a harmfulness that results in large part from morality’s ability to confuse men with regard to their interests and motives. Nietzsche also challenges morality by questioning the effectiveness with which it achieves its goal. 77 He claims that “everywhere today the goal of morality is defined the following way: it is the preservation and advancement of mankind” (D, 61). He criticizes this goal by calling it merely “an expression of the desire for a formula,” because it does not specify “preservation of what” and “advancement to what” (D, 61). He suggests that there are numerous contradictory answers to these questions, such as “the longest possible existence of mankind,” “the greatest possible deanimalisation of mankind,” “the highest degree of rationality,” “the highest degree of happiness that individual men could gradually attain to,” and “the highest average-happiness which could finally be attained to by all” (D, 62). Because morality fails to provide a more specific goal, it fails to achieve any goal. Furthermore, Nietzsche suggests that something other than morality would be better at achieving these goals even if morality were more specific. If the goal were the greatest average happiness, for example, morality could be seen to have “opened up such an abundance of misery…that with every refinement of morals mankind has become more discontented with himself, his neighbor and the lot of his existence” (D, 62). Thus, immorality might very well achieve this goal better than morality, because morality actually tends to diminish individuals’ happiness. While morality fails to preserve and advance mankind in any way because its goal is ill-defined, Nietzsche supports the idea of creating a well-defined goal for mankind that could be enforced by quasi-moral laws. He asserts that “only if mankind possessed a universally recognized goal would it be possible to propose ‘thus and thus is the right course of action’” (D, 63). While “for the present time there exists no such goal” and consequently it is “irrational and trivial to impose the demands of morality upon 78 mankind,” he claims that “to recommend a goal to mankind is something quite different” (D, 63). This recommended goal, however, is fundamentally different than any goal of morality. Whereas morality’s goal is unquestioned and unquestionable, despite its ambiguousness, a recommended goal would be “something which lies in our own discretion” (D, 63). In the same spirit, mankind would “impose upon itself a moral law” (D, 63). Contrary to Nietzsche’s reputation as an elitist, this statement could be construed to suggest that mankind as a whole, not a select, non-representative few, should determine the goal and laws of mankind. Regardless of whether this is the case or not, it is clear that this new project of establishing a goal for mankind differs from that of morality, because its laws do not “stand above our own likes and dislikes” but are rather imposed “‘upon oneself’ willingly” (D, 63, 64).

Nietzsche also recognizes the difficulties that morality itself presents to the establishment of new goals and laws. He claims that “morality is a hindrance to the creation of new and better customs: it makes [men] stupid,” because morality considers extra-moral values evil (D, 18). Furthermore, he admits that “to suffer for the sake of morality and then to be told that this kind of suffering is founded on an error: this arouses indignation” (D, 24). Thus, men are reluctant to challenge morality for two reasons: such a challenge is blameworthy and thus discouraged by the community, and men find it more comfortable to deceive themselves with regard to morality’s value because they have invested so much in it. Yet, Nietzsche finds that challenges are nevertheless made to morality on a frequent basis, albeit quietly. He claims “there is a continual moiling and toiling going on in morality—the effect of successful crimes (among which, for example 79 are included all innovations in moral thinking)” (D, 59). While this moiling might lead to only alterations in a morality, his hope that such crimes can counteract the actual power of custom is apparent in the aphorism “The need for little deviant acts.” He implores those who are conscious of the failings of custom to defy custom daily, because he fears that their obedience to custom greatly strengthens that custom by providing the “sanction of rationality itself” (D, 97). Deviant acts, in contrast to obedient acts, would contribute to the loosening of morality’s grip on men’s minds by showing others that morality need not necessarily be obeyed. Despite his hope that men will be able to rid the world of morality gradually, he recognizes that the coming era of immoralism will be experimental and dangerous. He tentatively claims that “those who do not regard themselves as being bound by existing laws and customs are making the first attempts to organize themselves and therewith to create for themselves a right,” by which he means a “power” (D, 100). He suggests that this rising power will change things so “it shall not even be considered disgraceful to deviate from morality” (D, 101). However, once men free themselves from morality they will need to find a new way to organize society. Therefore, “novel experiments shall be made in ways of life and modes of society” (D, 101). Mankind will enter a “moral interregnum” in which men must “construct anew the laws of life and action” on top of “foundation-stones of new ideals” that will be determined by science (D, 191). This period will also be a dangerous one, however, and could “put everyone under the necessity of carrying a gun” (D, 100). Speaking generally about the attainment of knowledge, which correlates with the rise of immoralism, he suggests that the “drive to 80 knowledge could drive mankind to the point of dying with the light of an anticipatory wisdom in its eyes” (D, 31). He recognizes the tragic nature of this possible outcome but believes that it is worth risking this outcome because for “knowledge of truth…no sacrifice is too great” (D, 31). Thus, Nietzsche recognizes that a future infused with science and immorality will be unpredictably perilous, but he simultaneously believes that we ought to experiment with new ways of life to make the transition into that future, which may very well be inevitable anyway, as successful as possible.

So far I have restricted myself to Nietzsche’s thoughts regarding morality qua morality. However, he has much to say in Daybreak about the morality of pity as well. When we looked at the morality of pity in Human, All Too Human, we accepted it as the prevailing morality in Western civilization but without any explanation of its origins. In Daybreak, Nietzsche locates the origin of the morality of pity in Christianity. As such, he describes the ways in which Christian morality, as an explicitly religious, preliminary form of the morality of pity, has made life worse for all of mankind. Christian morality can be understood to have done this in two complementary ways: by stressing the goodness of selflessness and by stressing the evilness of selfishness. The morality of pity, in contrast to Christian morality, certainly stresses the goodness of selflessness but fails to stress the evilness of selfishness to the extent that Christian morality does. In Human, All Too Human, we saw how much Nietzsche reviled the morality of pity. We will see here that he reviles Christian morality even more in Daybreak because, as the forerunner of the morality of pity, it denies men their passions even more strongly. Our discussion about Nietzsche’s treatment of Christianity in Daybreak will provide us with the 81 foundation we will need to understand the emergence of the morality of pity out of Christianity as portrayed in On the Genealogy of Morals, which I will cover in the next chapter. Nietzsche locates the origin of the morality of pity in Christian teachings in an aphorism entitled “The echo of Christianity in morality.” He begins with a Latin phrase that means the following: “People are good only out of pity. Therefore, there must be some pity in all our sentiments” (D, 82). He claims that “thus says morality today” and asserts the following: “That men today feel the sympathetic, disinterested, generally useful social actions to be the moral actions—this is perhaps the most general effect and conversion which Christianity has produced in Europe” (D, 82). Thus, it is clear that he believes the morality of pity originated in Christianity. He claims that this effect resulted from not its primary teaching, which was actually the “strictly egoistic fundamental belief in…the absolute importance of eternal personal salvation,” but rather “the subsidiary belief in ‘love’, in ‘love of one’s neighbor’, in concert with the tremendous practical effect of ecclesiastical charity” (D, 82). Nevertheless, the ideal of selflessness pervaded European civilization and benefited from the endorsement of intellectuals such as “all [the] French freethinkers from V oltaire up to Auguste Comte,” Schopenhauer, and John

Stuart Mill (D, 82). Nietzsche suggests that while there is disagreement among intellectuals about how selflessness should be directed, “there is also a wonderful and fair-sounding unanimity in the demand that the ego has to deny itself” (D, 83). He claims that this demand seeks “nothing less than a fundamental remoulding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual” for the sake of managing “large bodies and their 82 members…more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, [and] more uniformly” (D, 83). Thus, the “moral undercurrent” of our age that seeks to preserve the community by sacrificing individuality can be traced back to Christian teachings centered on the idea of loving one’s neighbor (D, 83). In Chapter 3, we will see how this development of the morality of pity out of Christianity occurred. Nietzsche spends the rest of his discussion of Christianity in Daybreak criticizing its praise of pity and its denunciation of egoism. His criticisms of pity as the feeling associated with the “good” in Christian morality are more fully developed than his criticisms of pity in Human, All Too Human. He challenges the conventional belief that pity is an unegoistic process by asserting that when we pity “we are, to be sure, not consciously thinking of ourselves but are doing so very strongly unconsciously” (D, 83). He claims that “an accident which happens to another offends us” in any of three main ways: it can “make us aware of our impotence, and perhaps of our cowardice, if we did not go to assist him,” or it can “bring with it in itself a diminution of honour in the eyes of others or in our own eyes,” or it can “constitute a signpost to some danger to us” and therefore “have a painful effect upon us simply as a token of human vulnerability and fragility in general” (D, 84). Whatever the case, pity compels us to help another out of selfish intentions.

However, it necessitates that we suffer from the misfortune of another by attempting “to understand another person, that is, to imitate his feelings” (D, 89). Nietzsche makes a point to specify that this suffering we feel from pity “is our own” and not that of the pitied, despite the imitative nature of our own (D, 84). Consequently, it is 83 not the suffering of he who is pitied but “only [the] suffering of our own which we get rid of when we perform deeds of pity” (D, 84). While the suffering of another is certainly the main cause of pity, he who pities has only the selfish interest of stopping his own suffering when he helps the pitied. Pity can be considered a seductive feeling because it draws men into suffering alongside another and creates for them a need that they must fulfill to feel better again. In an aphorism entitled “To what extent one has to guard against pity,” Nietzsche describes pity as “a weakness” that “increases the amount of suffering in the world” (D, 85). Pity is customarily considered good because it induces men to help one another and, therefore, has a certain beneficial effect. However, Nietzsche claims that “if suffering is here and there indirectly reduced and removed as a consequence of pity, this occasional and on the whole insignificant consequence must not be employed to justify its essential nature, which is, as I have said, harmful” (D, 85). Not only does he not believe pity’s benefits outweigh its harmfulness, he believes that pity can actually inhibit the ability of men to help others by making men “sick and melancholic” (D, 86). Thus, he suggests that he “whose desire it is to serve mankind as a physician in any way whatsoever will have to be very much on his guard against that sensation—it will paralyze him at every decisive moment and apply a ligature to his knowledge and his subtle helpful hand” (D, 86). Therefore, Nietzsche believes that pity actually produces more suffering than otherwise by replicating the suffering of the pitied in the pitier and by making it more difficult for men to help each other. 84 Nietzsche suggests that there is another major downside to the selfless ideal. Under the morality of pity, the hurting of others in any way whatsoever is considered bad. Against this notion, he imagines the possibility in which it might be socially beneficial “to look beyond [the] immediate consequences of others and under certain circumstances to pursue more distant goals even at the cost of the suffering of others” (D, 92). The notion here is that we ought to be willing to make sacrifices of others as we make sacrifices of ourselves. He extends this idea by asking rhetorically: “why may a few individuals of the present generation not be sacrificed to coming generations?” (D, 92) He is confident that men are capable of making their neighbor “feel himself to be a sacrifice” and thus of “strengthen[ing] and rais[ing] higher the general feeling of human power” (D, 92). Thus, Nietzsche believes that mankind would be better off if pity did not discourage men from taking the first step toward sacrificing each other under the pretence of mutual understanding.

For all the reasons discussed above, Nietzsche criticizes the morality of pity, which is in turn based in Christian morality, for praising selflessness. However, he reserves special criticism for Christian morality that can only apply to the morality of pity indirectly and with less force. This criticism is directed at Christianity’s overwhelming tendency to treat selfishness as evil and blameworthy regardless of whether that selfishness hurts others. The result of making selfishness so thoroughly blameworthy is twofold: first, men, who are thoroughly egoistic creatures, are constantly plagued by guilt for satisfying their desires; and secondly, man, unable to ever live up to the ideals of Christianity, fear the likely prospect of eternal Hell after death. Thus, Nietzsche criticizes 85 Christian morality for making life torturous by denying men the satisfaction of their egoism and by punishing them so heavily for their moral transgressions.

Nietzsche discusses these two problems with Christianity in two particular aphorisms. In the first, entitled “To think a thing evil means to make it evil,” he claims that “the passions become evil and malicious if they are regarded as evil and malicious” (D, 45). This, he believes, is precisely what has become of man’s egoistic passions as a result of Christian teachings. He expresses his dismay of this result by considering sexual desires in particular. He proclaims: “Is it not dreadful to make necessary and regularly recurring sensations into a source of inner misery, and in this way to want to make inner misery a necessary and regularly recurring phenomenon in every human being!” (D, 45). This inner misery he speaks about is the feeling of remorse, or “bad conscience,” associated with not being able to act morally (D, 45). Thus, sexual passions provide an excellent example in which a very necessary form of egoism is considered evil and as a consequence man is made to suffer inevitably. For making men feel perpetually guilty for satisfying their natural drives, Nietzsche suggests “it may be that posterity will judge the whole inheritance of Christian culture to be marked by something crackbrained and petty” (D, 46). Men’s suffering as the result of Christianity’s attribution of selfishness as evil, however, does not stop there. In the second aphorism, entitled “On the torments of the soul,” Nietzsche discusses the agony men experience when facing the prospect of eternal Hell. Because the New Testament is a “canon of impossible virtue” that guarantees men’s moral efforts will remain “unsuccessful, miserable, melancholy effort,” men are 86 particularly prone to fearing Hell as they realize the futility of their attempts to be virtuous enough to avoid Hell without a “breakthrough of grace” (D, 51). Referring to this fear and agony, Nietzsche proclaims: “What a dreadful place Christianity had already made of the earth when it everywhere erected the crucifix and thereby designated the earth as the place ‘where the just man is tortured to death’!” (D, 46-47). Furthermore, he suggests that such widespread suffering turns the earth into a “vale of misery” (D, 47). Thus, Nietzsche considers the positing of Hell as punishment for immoral selfishness as a significant way in which Christianity makes life unavoidably miserable for the faithful. Along with his belief that mankind is moving way from morality qua morality, he sees reason to believe that we are gradually ridding ourselves of Christianity and ultimately the morality of pity as well. He claims in an aphorism entitled “At the deathbed of Christianity” that “really active people are now inwardly without Christianity” and the religion has “crossed over into a gentle moralism” in which “it is not so much ‘God, freedom and immorality’ that have remained, as benevolence and decency in disposition” (D, 53, 54).

With regard to the morality of pity, he discusses the possibility of taking back the higher value attributed to the unegoistic in an aphorism entitled “Distant prospect.” He suggests that the result of valuing unegoistic actions lower would be to “restore to men their goodwill towards the actions decried egoistic and restore to these actions their value—we shall deprive them of their bad conscience!” (D, 93). He believes this will have a tremendous effect on men’s outlook on life, because once the value of (ever-frequent) egoistic actions has been restored, we will have “remove[d] from the entire aspect of action and life its evil appearance” and man will “no longer regard himself as evil” (D, 94). Thus, Nietzsche desires to rid the world of Christianity and the morality of pity because he wishes to give men back their dignity and correct their view of life as an inherently blameworthy experience.