a special morality and have no idea how limited their vision is. Their good and bad they regard as good and bad itself. Socrates indeed was skeptical and modest, but his disciples did not imitate him.[1] And this morality, which is so commonly accepted, is simply the morality of the common man, the social-creature man, who lives in and with and for his herd or community as the animal does in, with, and for its. Morality, the prevailing morality, is Heerdenthier morality; and it thinks that it is morality itself, and that there is no other! But history shows that there are other types of morality, and the genuine thinker has to ask, Why this and not that?[2]
It is only putting this into other language to say that philosophical reflection has been at its poorest in dealing with good and evil. Predominant social forces have always been against thoroughgoing criticism here. Morality has been invested with authority, even visible authority—and authorities are not to be questioned, but obeyed! Indeed to question morality—was it not immoral? Yes, Nietzsche asks, is it not immoral?—does not a similar feeling exist today? There is also something seductive about morality; it throws a kind of spell over us—in face of it the critical will is lamed; he calls it the "Circe of philosophers," citing as instances Kant, with his desire above everything else to clear the way for "majestic moral structures," and Schopenhauer, who was seduced so far that in the name of morality he was ready to turn against life itself.[3] A result of the unquestioning attitude to morality is to make discourse about it trite—it becomes a twice-told tale. Talking about it, Nietzsche somewhat mockingly remarks, is a good preparation for sleep.[4] This may be part reason, I may add on my own account, why keen thinkers, who wish to accomplish something with their thinking, sometimes feel no particular attraction to ethics—they want to face problems, and ethics hardly seems to offer any. e As I understand Nietzsche, he by no means questions the utility of this matter-of-course
- ↑ Joyful Science, § 345; Werke, XIII, 96.
- ↑ Cf. Werke, XIV, 67-8, § 134; Will to Power, § 458.
- ↑ Dawn of Day, preface, § 3; Werke, XIII, 117; Genealogy etc., preface, §§ 5, 6; Will to Power, §§ 461, 401. Cf., on Christian morality and its seductive influence on thinkers, Ecce Homo, IV, § 6.
- ↑ Zarathustra, III, xii, § 2; cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 228.
