The Dawn

(Originally written July 17, 2006 in Book 25)

The Dawn (1881)

1. Rationality ex post facto

Whatever lives long is gradually saturated with reason that its irrational origins become improbable. Nearly every accurate history of some thing's origin is paradoxical.

18: The morality of voluntary suffering

The enjoyment of cruelty is the supreme enjoyment for men that live in societies with the strictest morals.

Voluntary suffering has crept into society as an idea that has value and makes sense.

These ideas have led to the mistrust of happiness and well-being.

The concept of the "most moral man" contains the virtue of frequent suffering, deprivation, a hard way of life and cruel self-mortification.

Men who seek to stir up the morals in men must possess madness and voluntary torture to engender faith.

Do not let us think that this idea has ceased in our own times. The very path to free thinking is paved with martyrs who chose to sacrifice themselves for their own god: intellectual freedom.

112: On the natural history of duty and right

"Our duties are the rights others have against us" (168).

We do our duty by justifying the idea of our power on the basis of which we have been treated: we give back in the same measure that has been given to us.

Pride demands us to do our duty, we regain personal sovereignty through completion of duty.

My rights are the power which others have conceded to me.

They concede rights to me out of prudence and fear and caution.

Rights originate as recognized and guaranteed degrees of power. When degrees of power shift, rights die and new ones are born.

"The right of others is the concession of our feeling of power to the feeling of power among these others" (169-70)

231: Of German Virtue

Pomp and splendor led people to evaluate the simple as the bad and the simple man as the bad man. This is moral arrogance.

232: From a disputation

"A: My friend you have talked yourself horse.
B: Then I stand refuted. Let us not discuss the matter any further" (170).

236: Punishment

Punishment, when it neither cleanses nor atones the criminal, pollutes worse than crime.