Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XX

by William Mackintire Salter

 

CHAPTER XX

CRITICISM OF MORALITY (Cont.). RESPONSIBILITY, RIGHTS AND DUTIES, JUSTICE

I pass now to Nietzsche's views on certain details in morality, beginning with responsibility, rights and duties, and justice.

 

I

We saw, in dealing with the preceding period, that Nietzsche could make nothing of responsibility in the sense of accountability for one's actions—this idea resting on that of free will, which to him was illusory.^[1] The utility of the idea he did not question, but it had no standing in foro scientiae. In another sense of the word, however, he held that responsibility could really exist, and that training to it had been a high historic function of morality itself. One is responsible in this sense who will do as he has agreed to do, who responds to the expectations he has created, who can be trusted. Nietzsche regards this as far from a state of nature for men; it is a cultural result and implies a process of social training. "To train up (heranzüchten) an animal who can (darf) promise—is this not just the paradoxical task which nature has set in respect to man? is it not the real problem of man?"^[2] A preliminary requirement is memory. Psychologists and biologists have much to tell us of the meaning and physiological basis of memory; but how to get it or create it is another problem. Forgetfulness comes nearer being the natural state of man, and, what is more, forgetfulness has its uses. Nietzsche regards it as not merely a vis inertiae (perhaps the common view), but as an active power of inhibition, a form of health, by which the past is not forever kept in sight, and freedom is gained for fresh experience and the work of today. The person in whom this inhibitory apparatus is injured and prevented from acting, may be compared to a dyspeptic, who is never done with anything. Yet against this strong forgetfulness is now to be developed a contrary power by the help of which forgetfulness is suspended for certain cases—namely, those where promises have been made: not then a mere passive inability to forget, a kind of indigestion in regard to a pledged word, but a will not to forget, a continuous willing of what has been willed, a veritable memory of the will, so that between the original "I will," and the final discharge in act proper, there is no break, whatever new things, circumstances, or even volitions may have intervened. This presupposes much. In order so to dispose of the future, one must have learned to distinguish between the necessary and the accidental, to think causally, to see the future as if it were present and anticipate it, to fix firmly what is end and what means, to reckon and calculate in general. Above all, a man must have become calculable himself—that is regular, necessary, and this not merely to others, but to himself, so that he can answer for himself as a future quantity. How can a memory of this sort be given to the human animal—how stamp on this flighty creature of the moment, this bodily incarnation of forgetfulness, something which will remain ever present with him? How has it been done in the past?

The story is not agreeable reading—Nietzsche thinks that there is perhaps nothing more fearful and uncanny in the early history of mankind than the technique used for creating memory (Mnemotechnik). "We burn in something so that it may stay in mind; only what does not cease to give pain stays in the mind"—this he calls a leading proposition out of the oldest psychology on earth, and alas! the longest-lived. It might even be said that wherever there is still solemnity, earnestness, mystery, gloomy coloring in the life of men and peoples, there lingers something of the after-effect of the frightful conditions under which promises, pledges, vows were originally everywhere made—the breath of the oldest, deepest, hardest past is upon us and rises in us, when we are "earnest." The most horrible sacrifices and forfeits (to which the sacrifices of the first-born belong), the most repulsive mutilations (for example, castration), the cruellest ritual performances of religious cults—all had their origin in the instinct to look on pain as the most powerful expedient of mnemonics. The poorer the memory was, the more fearful the practices; the severity of penal codes in particular gives a measure of how difficult is was to get a victory over forgetfulness, and to keep present to slaves of passion and the moment a few primitive requirements of social life. Nietzsche refers in this connection to the Germans and their penal laws: "We Germans certainly do not consider ourselves a particularly cruel and hard-hearted people, still less as particularly light-headed or living merely for the day; but let one look into our old criminal codes, if one wants to get an inside view of the trouble that had to be taken to train up a 'people of thinkers.'" He instances stoning (according to legend a millstone fell on the head of an insolvent debtor), breaking on a wheel (the most characteristic invention and specialty of German genius in the realm of punishment), impaling, "quartering," seething the criminal in oil or wine (still done in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), flaying, cutting flesh from the breast, also smearing the evil-doer with honey and exposing him to flies under a burning sun. It was by the help of processes like these, or pictures of them, that men retained in their minds five or six "I will nots," in respect to which promise had been given in order to live under the benefits of society—and were brought at last "to reason"! "Ah, reason, earnestness, rule over the passions (Affecte), the whole gloomy thing we call reflection, all these privileges and ornaments of man—how deeply have they made themselves paid for, how much blood and horror are at the basis of all 'good things'"!

Measures of this character belong to the rudimentary, formative stages of society everywhere. It is by the steady pressure of social codes that man gets a "memory of the will," and is turned into an anywise regular, reckonable being. And the end justifies the means here, whatever of hardness, tyranny, stupidity, or idiocy attached to them. The Kamachatkans required that snow should never be scraped off with a knife, that a coal should never be pierced with a knife, that iron should never be put into the fire—death being the penalty for non-compliance. The rules seem absurd, but they were rules, and kept the perpetual nearness of social authority, the uninterrupted compulsion to respect it, in the consciousness; Nietzsche thinks that this was really their point rather than any utilitarian advantage, and he cites them to illustrate the view already mentioned that any rule is better than no rule, when the interests of civilization are at stake.^[3]

Let us attend for a moment to the result itself. It is a notable one. Men not only know now what to expect of one another and so far cease to be böse in one another's eyes, although the world outside the group still has this character,^[4] but they have a new feeling about themselves. They can promise, they may because they can—in other words, they have a sense of power. Brandes remarks that for Nietzsche a definition of man would be an animal able to make and keep vows (Gelübde).^[5] The animal world in general yields no such phenomenon—action is apparently from the feeling of the moment, no engagements being made for the future. I say "men," "man"—but it would be better to say "some men," for those who vow and keep their vows are marked off from the rest, and, naturally acquire a sense of their distinction. They are the ripe fruit of the social tree; the ages of tyrannous discipline receive at last a justification in them, and, as masters of themselves, masters of contrary inclinations within and of untoward circumstances without, how can they fail to be conscious of their superiority, and to inspire confidence, fear, reverence in others! "The 'free' man, the possessor of a long unbreakable will, has in this possession also his measure of worth: looking at others from his own standpoint, he honors or he despises; and just as necessarily as he honors those like him, men strong and dependable (who dare promise) … he has his kick ready for puny windbags who promise without having the right to, and his rod for the liar who breaks his word the moment it is in his mouth." It is an extraordinary privilege (privilegium, special and exclusive advantage or right), that of responsibility, and the proud knowledge of it, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over himself and over fate, sinks to the innermost depths of his being and becomes an instinct, a dominating instinct—he calls it his conscience [part of it].^[6] It is from those thus responsible that the type of "sovereign individual" or "person"^[7] (of whom we have heard something and shall hear more) arises, for he who can answer for himself becomes naturally a law unto himself.

 

II

In connection with responsibility Nietzsche treats of rights and duties. Buying and selling he regards as among the oldest phenomena of human society. Yet when one buys and does not at once pay, but makes a promise to pay, responsibility comes into play. The debtor naturally wishes to inspire his creditor with confidence, and may also wish to impress on his own conscience the seriousness and sacredness of his engagement; and so he agrees that in case he does not pay, the creditor may take over something that still belongs to him, parts of his body, for instance, or his wife, or his liberty, or even his life—or, where certain religious conceptions prevail (as in ancient Egypt), his soul's salvation or his rest in the grave.^[8] These things will make up to the creditor for his loss, if he sustains it—be an equivalent. Bartering, estimating values, fixing prices, devising equivalents—this preoccupied the earliest thinking of man to such an extent that it was in a sense thinking itself: here the oldest kind of acuteness was developed, here the first forms of human pride and sense of superiority over other animals arose—perhaps the word Mensch (manas) means at bottom one who measures.^[9] Yet when the measuring has been made and the equivalent fixed upon, the debtor and creditor stand in a peculiar relation: the former owes, has a duty, the latter has a claim, a right.^[10] Duties and rights were often grim things in early times—particularly rights. There seems to have been a special desire on the part of the creditor to exact equivalents involving pain or shame to the debtor. In no other way is it possible to account for the fact that instead of being satisfied with a natural equivalent for his loss, such as land, money, property of any kind, the creditor so often demanded the right to mistreat a debtor's body, to take away his wife, or to make him a slave. It was really a right to cruelty: only to one with cruel instincts does suffering yield a pleasure equal or superior to that of a material compensation—to such an one, indeed, suffering is the equivalent par excellence. The right to cruelty was graded very fine at times and was very exacting—one could, for example, cut from the debtor's body just so and so much (according to the amount of the debt), particular parts and members having their special valuation; and Nietzsche deems it progress and a proof of the freer, greater, more Roman spirit, when the Twelve Tables made it a matter of indifference whether more or whether less was cut off in a special case—"si plus minusve secuerunt, ne fraude esto." Whether the creditor inflicted the suffering in person or a functionary of the group did so for him, made no essential difference—at least he could witness the suffering and be satisfied.^[11] This idea that wrong may be compensated for by suffering has an important subsequent history, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Rights and duties were originally, as Nietzsche thinks, of this very matter-of-fact kind, and the grave, almost somber meaning which the words still have in our minds, take us back to the times when it was a serious thing to promise, when pain was an educator to responsibility, and suffering the common equivalent for wrong. And when rights and duties acquire a wider range and have a more spiritual character, their ground-meaning and perspective does not change.^a In time the group comes to be viewed as a creditor, and its members as debtors to it. The community gives advantages ("and what advantages! we underestimate them today," says Nietzsche), and the individual enjoys them—he lives protected, cared for, in peace and confidence, with no concern about injuries and hostilities to which one outside is exposed; and in return he obligates himself to the community not to commit injuries and hostilities against his fellow-members. If, however, he does commit them, what happens? The community, the deceived creditor, will make itself paid somehow—of that we may be sure. The immediate injury inflicted is the least thing: aside from this he has broken his word, his word and covenant with the whole, and all the goods and comforts of community life in which he has hitherto shared are now in question. The breaker (Brecher, Verbrecher) is a debtor who not only does not repay the advantages given him, but lays violent hands on his creditor; therefore from now on, as is reasonable, he not only loses all these advantages, but he is made to realize what their value is. The wrath of the injured creditor gives him back to the wild outlaw state from which he had been before protected; it thrusts him forth—and every kind of hostility may now be shown him. "Punishment" is at this stage of civilization a copy (Mimus) of the normal relation to a hated, disarmed, subjugated enemy.^[12]

The mores of a community may soften as time goes on and as the community becomes stronger, but the general, underlying idea and basis of rights and duties remains the same. Rights arise when men (individually or as a community) give something, and for this expect a return; duties arise when men receive something, and owe in return. There are then no rights or duties in the abstract, none existing per se—all are conditioned on facts of social relationship, on exchanges and contracts (explicit or implied).^[13] It is accordingly a misuse of words to speak of "rights," whether of defense or of aggression, as between independent social groups, or for that matter between individuals who are not socially related, for self-defense or aggression under such circumstances is not in accordance with a contract, but is the simple outcome of natural egoism, the fatality of life itself.^[14] With such a view Nietzsche can even say, "We have no right either to existence, or to labor, or even to 'happiness': there is no difference in this respect between the individual man and the lowest worm."^[15]

But while rights and duties rest thus immediately on contract their more ultimate basis is certain relations of power. The creditor has a surplus, can part with something—he has more power; but the debtor also has a certain amount of power—he can make a return, apart from which he is no better than a beggar, something which makes Nietzsche say once in a general way that it is our pride that commands the doing of our duty.^[16] In other words, powerless inactive entities with nothing to confer acquire no rights, and incapacitated people cannot rise to the dignity of duties. Rights and duties in concrete cases are a fine equation of powers—as power-quantities change, they do too. If our power materially diminishes, the feeling of those who have hitherto guaranteed our right changes, also; they see whether they can bring us again to full possession of our power—if it is impossible, they deny henceforth our "rights." Just so, when our power increases considerably, the feeling of those, who have hitherto recognized it and whose recognition we now no longer need, changes—they may try to hold us down to our former measure, they may be ready to interfere and appeal to their "duty" in this connection—but it is only useless talk. The history of peoples shows this waxing and waning of rights on a large scale.^[17] Indeed, Nietzsche goes so far in this direction that he may seem to abandon his view of the contractual origin of rights altogether. For instance, Zarathustra says to his disciples, "a right which thou canst seize, thou shalt not allow to be given thee."^[18] The idea of forcible conquest is carried into the innermost regions of one's personality. Whoever, we bear, has finally conquered himself [not then simply contracted with himself] regards it as his right to punish himself, to pardon himself, to pity himself—it is a right he does not need to concede to any one else, though he may of his free will give it to another (for instance, a friend), knowing that only "those can give rights who are in possession of power."^[19] Of similar tenor is the statement, "we do not believe in a right that does not rest on the power to put itself through: we feel all rights to be conquests";^[20] also the remark that in all political questions, in the relation of parties as well, even of commercial or labor or employer parties, the questions are those of power—what one can and then what one should do;^[21] and the hint to the socialists, earlier referred to, that if they would have rights, they must first get power.^[22] The reconciling thought may be that relations of power, which are the ultimate foundation of rights and duties ordinarily arising through the media of contract, sometimes give rise to rights and duties directly, i.e., claims and corresponding obligations which do not rest on voluntary consent at all, but none the less come to be recognized as claims and obligations, and are practically so treated.^b The view differs from the prevailing one and easily lends itself to abuse, and yet that Nietzsche does not mean to sanction any kind of self-assertion, is shown by his saying that "the worth of a man should prove what rights he may assume," and, still more strongly, that "the rights which a man assumes are in relation to the duties he sets himself, the tasks to which he feels he is grown."^[23] It is because we can effectually promise much, he says again, that we are given rights;^[24] and he holds that those who cannot promise (i.e., have not the right to, being slaves to appetite and the moment), should not have rights—an instance being the man with only cattle-like desires in his body, who "should not have the right to marry."^[25]

 

III

Our English word "justice" has jural connotations, so much so that Dewey and Tufts are led to say that "it is in the school of government and courts that man has learned to talk and think of right and law, of responsibility and justice."^[26] The German word, however, is "Gerechtigkeit," and Nietzsche thinks that the idea and accompanying sentiment are older than anything like organized civil society.^[27] His account of the matter is somewhat as follows:

That primitive form of social relation which we have already considered—bargaining or contracting—has for its presupposition a certain equality between the parties concerned. If there is decided difference in strength, one side is apt simply to take from the other. But where there is approximate equality, and struggle would only lead to reciprocal harm, a disposition naturally arises to come to an understanding, to treat or negotiate, the outcome being an exchange, in which each gets what under the circumstances he values most (a suum cuique in the material sense).^[28] This is the earliest form of justice, which is at bottom the good will to come to an agreement, to reach a mutually satisfactory settlement, something like what the Germans call, particularly in its finer expressions, "Billigkeit," the spirit of reasonableness and fairness.^[29] An exchange is just and honorable, when each party asks what he thinks his article is worth, taking into account the difficulty of procuring it, its rarity, the time spent in getting it, etc., along with the fancy value; if he fixes his price with an eye on the needs of the other, he is a refined robber and extortioner.^[30] That is, if there is to be exchange, not robbery, the spirit of exchange must be there—and it is with this in mind that Nietzsche makes the remark, already quoted, regarding the circumstances of today, that justice must become greater in all and the violent instinct weaker.^[31] Justice may even extend to the relations of the stronger to the weaker to a certain extent. Suppose, for example, that a beleaguered town finds itself forced to surrender. It is plainly the weaker party, but for all that it has something on its side, something that it would be of use for the conqueror to obtain. The inhabitants might burn the town and make way with themselves—then the conqueror would have little for his pains. There is then a certain advantage for both sides in not going to extremes—and on this basis of mutual advantage they may treat—each getting what under the actual circumstances he values most. In the same way there may be rights between masters and slaves—that is, to the extent the possession of the slave is useful and important to his master. Justice goes originally as far, as one side seems valuable, essential to the other. The weaker accordingly acquires rights, though they are more limited ones. Hence the well-known unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valet (or more exactly, Nietzsche says, quantum potentia valere creditur).^[32] The underlying motive of justice, Nietzsche points out, is individual advantage—in just exchange each one profits; although in time the original motive may be forgotten, and just actions may seem disinterested or unegoistic.^[33]

This of the beginnings of justice. Needless to say, it takes on finer forms as social life advances. It gives rise to settled mores; it comes under the protection of government and courts, though itself subtler than anything which government and courts can command; it passes into reasonableness, fairness (Billigkeit) in general.^[34] Justice is good will and intelligence combined—there cannot be justice without both. Plato held that justice could not be separated from wisdom, the true measure of all the relations of life,^[35] but Nietzache's view is that justice is measuring—the intellectual, objective attitude is part of its essence. In accordance with this view, he speaks of the high, clear, deep- as well as mild-glancing objectivity of the just man, when he is not only injured, but insulted, mocked, as a piece of perfection, a specimen of the highest mastery on earth.^[36]

And hereby is justice differentiated from revenge. Justice has sometimes been derived from revenge, being supposed to be a sublimated form of it—it was, I think, the view in substance of John Stuart Mill, and it was held by a German contemporary of Nietzache's, to whom he pays some attention, Eugen Dühring.^[37] And if revenge were simply return of some kind, Nietzsche would have no occasion to dissent; he sometimes speaks himself of gratitude as the good revenge, of magnanimity as a sublimated revenge.^[38] But ordinarily—and practically always in discussing the relation of revenge to justice—he means by revenge what most of us mean, namely, an instinctive tendency, half of the blood and liable to all manner of excess, to strike back when we are injured or affronted. He construes it as one of the expressions of the instinct for power, which, having been temporarily thwarted, seeks to assert itself and feel itself again.^[39] Now justice, too, calls for a return for injuries; for, to revert to its earliest and simplest form, when a debtor does not pay his debt, the creditor may exact a substitute for it; the substitute or equivalent has been agreed upon beforehand, and the creditor has a strict right to it—the debtor's property or wife or person may become forfeit. And when injuries become offenses against the community, compensation of some sort comes to be the right of every injured person—that is, under justice also, a second injury follows the first. Revenge and justice may thus seem to come to much the same thing. And yet they are distinct from one another. For under justice, the compensating injury which the injured person inflicts (or has inflicted for him) is in accordance with an understanding in advance, either directly between the parties, or as a matter of general custom and law; measuring eyes have been at work fixing it, there is definition and limitation—there can be then no varying or excess. In other words, justice is an intellectual matter, and hence directly antithetical to the blind rage with which rage does its work. Revenge is for injury simply and is dictated by the sense of injury; just requital is for a wrong (violation of contract or agreement) and is determined by an antecedent idea of what is fair and reasonable. Revenge is personal, justice borders on impersonality. In the one, the blood rushes to our eyes so that we do not see, justice is seeing (or remembering what we saw). So different are they in origin and principle, that revenge may overthrow justice, and justice may set limits to revenge.^[40] It becomes a leading function of the state (when such a thing arises) to put an end to the blind raging of revenge, and either to rescue the victims or else to proceed against them itself for the injuries they have committed, persuading or compelling the injured party to accept compensations, equivalents, in lieu of revenge.^[41] Here lies the reason why those in the habit of practising revenge—those who keep up "blood-feuds," for instance—are reluctant to come under the control of the state, and have to have justice forced upon them.^[42] The state makes private injuries offenses against it, and the treatment of them is so far taken out of the jurisdiction of personal feeling; it virtually adopts what Nietzsche calls the oldest, simplest canon of justice, "everything has its price, all can be paid for," and trains its subjects in this objective, impersonal way of looking at things—even influencing, though perhaps least and last of all, the injured person himself.^[43] I need not say that so far as men take the law into their own hands, as in parts of our own country, there is reversion to primitive pre-political conditions. As I might put it briefly, under the state justice becomes law (which is far from saying, I need not add, that law is ipso facto justice).

The state, viewing injuries as offenses against itself, punishes them. But Nietzsche notes that as political communities become stronger, they take offenses less seriously, and mitigate their penal codes. A private creditor naturally becomes more humane, as his wealth increases—it may even be a measure of his wealth how much he can lose without appreciably suffering. And a consciousness of power on the part of a political society is not unthinkable, in which it might indulge itself in a luxury than which there could be no greater—that of letting offenders go unpunished. With easy sense of its superiority it might say, "What are these parasites to me?—let them live and thrive. I can stand it." And so the justice that began with the dictum, "Everything is payable, everything must be paid for," would end by looking through its fingers at those who are insolvent and letting them go free—end as all good things on earth do, by abrogating itself (sich selbst aufhebend). There is a beautiful name for this self-abrogation of justice—grace. It is a prerogative of what is mightiest—its beyond law (sein Jenseits des Rechts).^[44]

1. See pp. 115 ff.
2. Genealogy etc., II, § 1. This section is based on §§ 1, 2, 3 of Genealogy etc., II, except when otherwise stated.
3. Dawn of Day, § 16.
4. Cf. Werke, XI, 211, § 132.
5. "Aristokratischer Radikalmus," Deutsche Rundschau, April, 1890, p. 74. Cf. Nietzsche's own language, Werke, XII, 411.
6. Nietzsche was aware (Genealogy etc., II, § 3) that the concept conscience "has a long history and has passed through many forms," this being simply one of them.
7. Cf. Will to Power, §§ 813, 1009.
8. Genealogy etc., II, § 5.
9. Ibid., II, § 8; cf. The Wanderer etc., § 22; Zarathustra, I, xv.
10. Rights may of course be guaranteed by others than the parties immediately concerned (cf. Dawn of Day, § 112), but this does not appear to be Nietzsche's view of their origin.
11. Genealogy etc., II, § 5.
12. Ibid., II, § 9; cf. The Wanderer etc., § 22.
13. A right "arises," "happens," much as "truth" does according to the Pragmatist view—justice also (cf. Werke, XI, 143). "There is neither a right by nature, nor a wrong by nature" (The Wanderer etc., § 31).
14. Will to Power, § 728.
15. Ibid., § 759.
16. Dawn of Day, § 112.
17. Ibid., § 112; cf. The Wanderer etc., § 26.
18. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 4.
19. Dawn of Day, § 437.
20. Will to Power, § 120.
21. Ibid., § 124.
22. Human, etc., § 446.
23. Werke, XIV, 119; Will to Power, § 872.
24. Werke, XIII, 193, § 425.
25. Ibid., XIV, 62, § 119.
26. Op. cit., p. 182.
27. Cf. Genealogy etc., II, § 8.
28. Human, etc., § 92 (cf. the reference to "Jedem das Seine," as the principle of Gerechtigkeit, in § 105), The Wanderer etc., §§ 22, 26.
29. Cf. Genealogy etc., II, § 8.
30. The Wanderer etc., § 25.
31. Human, etc., § 452.
32. Ibid., § 93. In relation to the weaker among themselves, who might not come to agreements voluntarily, justice consists in forcing them to an agreement (Genealogy etc., II, § 8; cf. § 11).
33. Human, etc., § 92.
34. Cf. The Wanderer etc., § 32.
35. So Dewey and Tufts, op. cit., p. 116.
36. Genealogy etc., II, § 11.
37. Nietzsche mentions particularly Dühring's Werth des Lebens, and Curaus der Philosophie (Genealogy etc., II, § 11).
38. Will to Power, § 775; Werke, XIII, 190, § 420.
39. Cf. Werke, XIII, 188-92 (§§ 418, 419, 424).
40. Ibid., XIII, 193, § 429.
41. Genealogy etc., II, § 11.
42. Ibid., II, § 11; cf. also Werke, XIII, 194, § 430, where the point of view of those forced is given.
43. Genealogy etc., II, § 11. I need not say that so far as men take the law into their own hands, as in parts of our own country, there is reversion to primitive pre-politieal conditions.
44. Ibid., II, 10.