Humans are concerned with knowledge, how about experience?
we remain strange to ourselves out of necessity, we are not knowers when it comes to ourselves
2:
This polemic is about the descent of our moral prejudices
the same polemic occupied Nietzsche in Human, All Too Human
because these ideas have not faded but grown, Nietzsche is sure that they are stemming from a fundamental will to knowledge which excedes him. This is correct, because philosophers must not stand out individually in their quest for knowledge
3:
origin of terms good and evil, a curiosity that stems from skepticism
first hypothesis: the origin is God
but later the author ceased to search the origin of evil beyond the world
he then focused on the value judgments good and evil, and how was it that man came up with them, and what do they mean for humanity
Value of morality: necessary confrontation with Schopenhauer
values of unegoistic, compassion, self-denial, self-sacrifice held by Schopenhauer, mistrusted by Nietzsche
here Nietzsche sees the danger to mankind
a predilection for compassion in philosophers is something new, belonging to modern philosophers, until now, philosophers have deemed compassion worthless
6:
because of this modern emergence, a critique of moral values is also needed, the value of those values must be examined
how did these values grow, develop and change? the value of these values has been taken for grantes
Nietzsche wonders if placing the higher value on good has hindered humanity in some way we are unaware of
7:
focus on a history of morality
the problem of morality must be first taken seriously so that it can eventually be taken humorously
first essay:
I
the highest caste is the clerical caste: psychological and political superiority are taken as equal
pure and impure are taken too seriously
Nietzsche considers this dominancy unhealthy: customs
the priestly method split off from the chilvaric-aristocratic method and develop further into its opposite
priests are the most evil enemies: powerlessness
the Jews have been the ones to harm the noble, mighty, rulers, the most
the slaves’ revolt in morality begins with the Jews, and it was victorious
from this revenge, a love grew out: Jesus, perfect and dangerous bait
with this, the morality of the common people has triumphed
role of Church?
slaves’ revolt in morality originates when ressentiment turns creative and gives birth to values
noble morality grows out of affirmation of itself, but slave morality is the negation of everything that is outside. This means no creativity.
Change of focus from inside to outside is a feature of ressentiment. Ressentiment is a reaction to the outside
so does the man of ressentiment conceive the evil enemy, as a figure of which he is the counterpart
II
11
instead, a noble man conceives the idea of good by himself, and only then creates a notion of bad
the bad conceived by the noble and the evil conceived by the man of ressentiment are very different from each other
evil according to ressentiment is the good person from the nobility, re-interpreted through the filter of ressentiment
12
- the destinty of Europe seems in danger because we have lost fear of man, and with it our love and respect for him
- It seems that things will continue to declin
16
the battle between good and bad and good and evil has been going on for thousands of years, and there are places in which this battle is still going
Rome versus Judea: Rome, strong and noble, Judea, ressentiment and popular morality
of these models, Rome has been defeated
Judea: Church - Reformation - Restoration of the Church - French revolution and its annihilation of the last political nobility in Europe
17
need for an exchange between philosophy, phisiology and medicine
values must be reassessed, starting from a physiological standpoint. The rank order of values must be decided taking these other standpoints into account.
second essay
- 9
- community and its members have a relationship akin to that between the creditor and the debtor
- if you do not comply with the obligations that living in a community entails, you will be in debt and will be made to make up for it.
- the law breaker is deprived of the benefits of living in a community and also reminded of how important the benefits are
- punishment in this sense is a copy of the behavior towards a hated defeated enemy
- 10
- when a community grows in power the actions of a wrongdoer are no longer so destabilizing wo there is no need to punish them harshly, instead, they are shielded
- a compromise is sought: mercy
- 11
- recent attempts to seek the origin of justice in ressentiment (anarchists / anti-Semites)
- attempts to sanctify revenge with justice / legitimization of emotional reactions through revenge
- Nietzsche criticizes that other emotions that he calls "active"(such as lust for mastery or greed) are not considered so generously by these points of view
- in his view, justice represents not ressentiment, a reaction, but the battle against that kind of sentiment
- however, the setting up of a legal system starts the values of "just" and "unjust", which are not found "as such" in life, since life functions in a destructive and violent manner
- states of legality are exceptional states that seek to restrict the true will to life
- 12
- origin and purpose of punishment
- these matters should be considered separately
- punishment has not been evolved for punishing
- the development of something is not a progress towards a goal, instead a succession of processes of subjugation exacted on the thing
- progress can be measured according to how much had to be sacrificed for it
- the essence of life, its will to power, is often overlooked