(Originally written August 14, 2007 in Notebook 18)
Basic Writings of Nietzsche
Frederich Nietzsche
Trans. Walter Kaufmann
The Modern Library Classics: New York, NY 2000
Beyond Good & Evil
Part V: Natural History of Morals
(pts. I-IV in Book XVI)
186
Much work is needed to be done to prepare a typology of morals.
Philosophers have been arrogant in presuming they can find a rational foundation for morality.
Morality has been accepted as a given.
The real problems of morality emerge only when we compare many, many different moralities.
187
Moralities are pawns of the moralist. They are used how the author wishes them to be.
Moralities are a sign language of the affects.
188
Every morality is a bit of tyranny against nature and reason.
To understand a morality one must understand the context in which it achieved strength and freedom.
Morality is setting of limits; it is an anti-laisser allez" (letting go). It hates laisser-allez and narrows our perspective. Morality is a kind of stupidity.
189
Morality forces fasting of some sort. It is during these fasting periods that some drive is subjected and brutalized. But that drive, in times of fasting, purifies and sharpens itself.
190
Plato's morality is similar to utilitarian morality: that which is stupid is bad. Those who do bad do so unwittingly.
But Plato used this morality as a mask. He took Socrates and made it infinite and impossible, so it would become a mask.
191
The problem of faith and knowledge (aka of instinct and reason) is ancient and can be traced to Socrates.
Socrates spent his life mocking the Athenian nobility for acting on instinct without reason, but discover that he himself acted on instinct when he examined himself.
Socrates continued to operate on instinct but allowed his reason to aid it. That is to say, Socrates appeased his own conscience though self-trickery.
Plato however stated that the reason and the instinct both tend to a single goal: the good, "God".
All philosophers and theologians since Plato have followed him: they operate this way. Morals are instinct, Christian faith, or "the herd" have, therefore, triumphed.
192
We are, and have always been accustomed to lying. Rather than looking at the whole we lazily glance at something and form an approximation in our mind.
193
What happens to us in waking life and dreams, if they are often enough have the same affect on us.
194
People want to possess things always, even other people
195
The Jews are the first people to mark the beginning in the slave rebellion of morals.
196?
197
We, if we are moralists, misunderstand nature as long as we search for the pathological or hell in masters.
Morality is timidity.
198
All moralities that address themselves to individuals for the sake of his happiness are counsels for behavior in relation to the individual's dangerous lifestyle.
These moralities seek to control the individual's passions, good and bad inclinations and stop anything in him that has the will to power.
Morality is prudence mixed with stupidity.
199
As long as there has been man there have been herds of men and a (throngs) to bodiement?? of men to a leader or small group of leaders
Man has a need in him to unconditionally do something or unconditionally not do something.
This need is satisfied by being obedient to whoever commands.
The herd instinct of obedience is inherited at the expense of the art of commanding.
Europe is full of hypocritical leaders who feel ashamed of commanding. They heed to this herd instinct by calling themselves instruments of their ancestors, their constitution, of right, their laws, or even of God rather than having the independence to simply command.
The herd man sees himself as the only way men ought to be: submissive, useful and easy to get along with.
The replacement of single leaders by parliaments is the sacrifice of independent strength for a group or herd.
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