evil"[1] (here using the latter phrase broadly), or, as he puts it in paradoxical form, "I had to dissolve (aufheben) morality, in order to put my moral will through."[2]
Moreover, criticism had revealed to him the fact of varying types of morality, and the question arose, might there not be still other and perhaps higher types?[3] Of course, this presupposes a generic idea of morality, more or less separable from special instances. Nietzsche does not make a formal definition, but we gather from a variety of direct or incidental references what he thought was involved. In the generic sense, a morality is a set of valuations resting on supposed conditions of existence of some kind.[4] Further, it is something regulating, commanding, so that it introduces order into life: some things may be done, others may not be done—discipline, strictness hence arising.[5] On the subjective side, its root is reverence, the only properly moral motive.[6] As action, it is free (not in the indeterminist sense, but in the sense of voluntary, not forced).[7] Nietzsche sometimes criticises ideals, but when he does so, he has in mind mere abstract desirabilities, fancy pictures unrelated to reality.[8] A morality, as he understands the term, must be a really possible ideal of real beings—something then related to the earth and actual men.[9] Further, although he objects to praising and blaming with their ordinary implications of responsibility and free-will, he none the less recognizes things to honor and things to despise,[10] things to further and things to oppose[11]—so that a basis for moral discriminations
- ↑ Werke, XIV, 312, § 144.
- ↑ Ibid., XIII, 176, § 404; cf. XIV, 351-2, § 212; 308-9, § 141.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 202.
- ↑ Conditions for passing from one form of existence into another included (cf. Werke, XIV, 313, § 144; XIII, 139, § 322). As to the special conditions of existence of the philosopher, see Genealogy etc., III, § 8.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 216, § 510; Will to Power, § 966 (cf. the use of "extreme immorality" in § 246); ibid., §§ 914, 981; Werke, XI, 239, § 197.
- ↑ So only can I interpret Dawn of Day, § 97; cf. Joyful Science, § 335; Werke, XIII, 150, § 355; 190, § 421.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 124, § 280.
- ↑ Will to Power, §§ 330, 709; Twilight etc., ix, § 32.
- ↑ Cf. Zarathustra, I, iii; also IV, xviii, § 2 ("We have no desire to go into the kingdom of heaven, we are men and desire a kingdom of the earth").
- ↑ Numberless citations might be given; even praising and blaming are sometimes viewed from another angle and to this extent justified (see Werke, XIII, 197-8, § 435).
- ↑ Cf. Dawn of Day, § 103; Genealogy etc., I, § 17.
