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).[1] 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.[2]
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.[3] 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,[4] 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.[5]
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.[6] 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 mag-
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ Human, etc., § 92.
- ↑ Cf. The Wanderer etc., § 32.
- ↑ So Dewey and Tufts, op. cit., p. 116.
- ↑ Genealogy etc., II, § 11.
- ↑ Nietzsche mentions particularly Dühring's Werth des Lebens, and Curaus der Philosophie (Genealogy etc., II, § 11).
