The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All...

Proposition two.——The whole differentiation, "moral" and "immoral," arises from the assumption that both moral and immoral actions are the result of a spontaneous will—in short, that such a will exists; or in other words, that moral judgments can only hold good with regard to intuitions and actions that are free. But this whole order of actions and intentions is purely imaginary: the only world to which the moral standard could be applied does not exist at all: there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral action.

A false dogmatism also clustered around the concept "ego"; it was regarded as atomic, and falsely opposed to a non-ego; it was also liberated from Becoming, and declared to belong to the sphere of Being. The false materialisation of the ego: this (owing to the belief in individual immortality) was made an article of faith under the pressure of religio-moral discipline. According to this artificial liberation of the ego and its transference to the realm of the absolute, people thought that they had arrived at an antithesis in values which seemed quite irrefutable—the single ego and the vast non-ego. It seemed obvious that the value of the individual ego could only exist in conjunction with the vast non-ego, more particularly in the sense of being subject to it and existing only for its sake. Here, of course, the gregarious instinct determined the direction of thought: nothing is more opposed to this instinct than the sovereignty of the individual. Supposing, however, that the ego be absolute, then its value must lie in self-negation.

(5) It was asked, in what sort of actions does man most strongly assert himself? Around these (sexuality, covetousness, lust for power, cruelty, etc. etc.) hate, contempt, and anathemas were heaped: it was believed that there could be such things as selfless impulses. Everything selfish was condemned, everything unselfish was in demand.

(6) And the result was: what had been done? A ban had been placed on the strongest, the most natural, yea, the only genuine impulses, henceforward, in order that an action might be praiseworthy, there must be no trace in it of any of those genuine impulses—monstrous fraud in psychology. Every kind of "self-satisfaction" had to be remodelled and made possible by means of misunderstanding and adjusting one's self sub specie boni. Conversely: that species which found its advantage in depriving mankind of its self-satisfaction, the representatives of the gregarious instincts, e.g. the priests and the philosophers, were sufficiently crafty and psychologically astute to show how selfishness ruled everywhere. The Christian conclusion from this was: "Everything is sin, even our virtues. Man is utterly undesirable. Selfless actions are impossible." Original sin. In short, once man had opposed his instincts to a purely imaginary world of the good, he concluded by despising himself as incapable of performing "good" actions.

N.B. In this way Christianity represents a step forward in the sharpening of psychological insight: La Rochefoucauld and Pascal. It perceived the essential equality of human actions, and the equality of their values as a whole (all immoral).

The psychology of the saint and of the priest and of the "good" man, must naturally have seemed purely phantasmagorical. The real motive of all action had been declared bad: therefore, in order to make action still possible, deeds had to be prescribed which, though not possible, had to be declared possible and sanctified. They now honoured and idealised things with as much falsity as they had previously slandered them.

Inveighing against the instincts of life came to be regarded as holy and estimable. The priestly ideal was: absolute chastity, absolute obedience, absolute poverty! The lay ideal: alms, pity, self-sacrifice, renunciation of the beautiful, of reason, and of sensuality, and a dark frown for all the strong qualities that existed.

People go further: they see greater utility in placing the egoistic rights before the altruistic—greater utility in the sense of more happiness for the majority, or of the elevation of mankind, etc. etc. Thus the rights of egoism begin to preponderate, but under the cloak of an extremely altruistic standpoint—the collective utility of humanity.

At last it is seen that altruistic actions are merely a species of the egoistic—and that the degree to which one loves and spends one's self is a proof of the extent of one's individual power and personality. In short, that the more evil man can be made, the better he is, and that one cannot be the one without the other. At this point the curtain rises which concealed the monstrous fraud of the psychology that has prevailed hitherto.

Results.—There are only immoral intentions and actions; the so-called moral actions must be shown to be immoral. All emotions are traced to a single will, the will to power, and are called essentially equal. The concept of life: in the apparent antithesis good and evil, degrees of power in the instincts alone are expressed. A temporary order of rank is established according to which certain instincts are either controlled or enlisted in our service. Morality is justified: economically, etc.

Determinism is only a manner of allowing ourselves to conjure our valuations away, once they have lost their place in a world interpreted mechanistically. Determinism must therefore be attacked and undermined at all costs: just as our right to distinguish between an absolute and phenomenal world should be disputed.

It is absolutely necessary to emancipate ourselves from motives: otherwise we should not be allowed to attempt to sacrifice ourselves or to neglect ourselves! Only the innocence of Becoming gives us the highest courage and the highest freedom.

Our new "freedom." What a feeling of relief there is in the thought that we emancipated spirits do not feel ourselves harnessed to any system of teleological aims. Likewise that the concepts reward and punishment have no roots in the essence of existence! Likewise that good and evil actions are not good or evil in themselves, but only from the point of view of the self-preservative tendencies of certain species of humanity! Likewise that our speculations concerning pleasure and pain are not of cosmic, far less then of metaphysical, importance! (That form of pessimism associated with the name of Hartmann, which pledges itself to put even the pain and pleasure of existence into the balance, with its arbitrary confinement in the prison and within the bounds of pre-Copernican thought, would be something not only retrogressive, but degenerate, unless it be merely a bad joke on the part of a "Berliner."[8])

It is already even a sign of disbelief in the wherefore and in the purpose and sense of life—in fact, it is a sign of a lack of will—when the value of pleasure and pain step into the foreground, and hedonistic and pessimistic teaching becomes prevalent; and self-abnegation, resignation, virtue, "objectivity," may, at the very least, be signs that the most important factor is beginning to make its absence felt.

Hitherto there has been no German culture. It is no refutation of this assertion to say that there have been great anchorites in Germany (Goethe, for instance); for these had their own culture. But it was precisely around them, as though around mighty, defiant, and isolated rocks, that the remaining spirit of Germany, as their antithesis, lay that is to say, as a soft, swampy, slippery soil, upon which every step and every footprint of the rest of Europe made an impression and created forms. German culture was a thing devoid of character and of almost unlimited yielding power.