Nietzsche and Morality

Raymond Geuss

I Although he occasionally referred to himself as an immoralist (EH Warum ich ein Schicksal bin), in one important sense Nietzsche was not one, if only because he didnt in fact think that there was a single, distinct phenomenon morality which it would make much sense to be universally in favour of or opposed to. Nietzsche was a conscious anti-essentialist in that he didnt think that terms like morality always and everywhere referred to items that shared the same defining traits. Rather he had a view like that which Wittgenstein was to develop fifty or sixty years later: There isnt any essence of morality (or of religion or of truth or what-not), that is any set of important properties that all instances of what can correctly be called morality must exhibit. Morality encompasses a wide variety of different sorts of things that are at best connected to each other by family resemblances, and there are no antecendently specifiable limits to what can count as sufficient resemblance to make the term morality correctly applicable. Thus I take the point of the third essay in JGB, entitled Das religise Wesen to be precisely that there isnt any such thing as the essence of religion. There are just different constellations of practices, beliefs, and institutions that have very different origins, internal structures, motivational properties, and social functions, each constellation having sufficient similarity to some other constellations to allow the same word (religion) to be used of all of them, but what counts as sufficient similarity is antecedently indeterminate, and no two religions will necessarily be at all similar in any given significant respect. Another way of putting this is that for Nietzsche there is no absolutely clear and sharp distinction between literal and metaphorical usage or between the proper and an extended sense of a term (cf. WL). Anti-essentialism, properly understood, need not imply that one can say nothing general and true about all the instances that happen to be taken to fall under a certain term. That the members of a family resemble each other not by virtue of all having the same essential feature (e.g. the same kind of nose or lip) but by virtue of different similarities individuals have in different features, does not mean that there is nothing true that can be said about all members of the family, for instance that they all are human beings, or all have noses (of one sort or another, if that is true of them). That, in turn, neednt imply that we couldnt call a cat or horse an important member of the family, or for that matter that we
European Journal of Philosophy 5:1 ISSN 09668373 pp. 120. Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Raymond Geuss

couldnt in some contexts properly call an old violin, a portrait, or a glass a member of the family. There are, then, an indefinite number of different (possible and actual) kinds of things that could be called morality without impropriety (JGB 186). Some of these different moralities exist at different times and places, but some may overlap. Modern people (i.e. late 19th century middle-class Central Europeans) are best understood not as bearers of a single unitary Sittlichkeit1 but rather as standing under the influence of a variety of diverse forms of morality (JGB 215). In fact, Nietzsche holds that it is a sign of an especially elevated spiritual life to experience in oneself the unresolved struggle of incompatible moral points of view and forms of evaluation (GM I. 16). Just because there are so many different types of morality, it makes sense, Nietzsche thinks, to begin the study of morality with a natural history of the phenomenon, a typology of the existing forms of morality, and an investigation of their origins, functions, relative strengths, and characteristic weaknesses (JGB 186ff.) Despite the wide variability of what could legitimately be called morality, in 19th century Europe morality had come to be used most commonly to designate one particular form of morality, important parts of which were ultimately derived from Christianity. The claim that there was a dominant morality in 19th century Europe which developed out of Christianity is not incompatible with the claim made at JGB 215 and cited above that modern people characteristically live according to a variety of different moralities. First of all the specifically Christian morality may have been predominant in the recent past (i.e. up to the beginning of the 19th century) and may have just recently (as of the middle of the 19th century) begun to be displaced by other forms of morality, but this process may be incomplete. Second, Christian morality may have been and to some extent may still be dominant in the sense that it governs wide areas of life (although perhaps not all areas), has a kind of public and quasi-official standing and defines the terms in which people think and speak about morality when they are thinking most reflectively or speaking in a public context. This might be true even though in other areas of life people also use other standards of evaluation, have other forms of sensibility, etc. which are incompatible with the Christian ones. They may fail to be aware that their sensibility and their reactions are not fully and exclusively Christian, they may assess actions by standards that diverge from those of Christianity and have a slightly guilty conscience about this, they may explicitly assess individual actions in concrete cases by non-Christian standards, but remain under the influence of Christianity when it comes to giving general theoretical form to their reflections on morality, etc. Given Nietzsches location in history and his anti-essentialism, it is not odd for him sometimes to follow widespread usage and use morality to refer to the specifically Christian (or immediately post-Christian) morality of the European 19th century. In reading Nietzsche it is thus very important to try to determine in each particular case whether he is using morality in the narrow sense to mean (19th century Christian) morality or in a more general sense. Nietzsche specifically states that the fact that there are many different
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moralities should not be interpreted to mean that no form of morality is at all binding (verbindlich FW 345). Given his general position, one would also expect him to think that there are very different kinds of bindingness. The Christian conscience and the Kantian specifically moral ought are not universal phenomena, but the historical products of particular circumstances. They dont have the universal, unconditional validity claimed for them by Kantians and Christians, but it doesnt follow from that that they dont have some other kind of Verbindlichkeit at least for some people in some circumstances. Furthermore, Nietzsche repeatedly stresses that valuation, giving preference to one thing over another, discrimination is a central part of the way we live as human beings (GM II. 8); he sometimes even calls it a fundamental property of life itself (JGB 9).2

II These preliminary remarks suggest that although Nietzsche is against the dominant 19th century form of morality, he isnt necessarily against morality tout court. To place oneself beyond good and evil need not mean to place oneself beyond good and bad or to become indifferent to discriminations between good and less good (GM I. 17). If one thinks of a morality, for instance, just as a non-random way of discriminating good from less good, it isnt clear how it could make much sense to be against that. If one takes the passage at FW 345 seriously, Nietzsche seems to be claiming that there could be systematic forms of evaluation or discrimination that did have a hold on us, one or another kind of Verbindlichkeit for us (although not, of course, a Verbindlichkeit of the kind claimed by traditional Christian morality). Such binding forms of valuation might be thought to be potentially the kernel of the higher form of morality which Nietzsche sometimes suggests is possible (JGB 202) and which, whatever other properties it might have, would not be subject to the kinds of criticism Nietzsche levels against Christian morality. Whether or not the above is a plausible line of thought may become clearer if one first examines the exact nature of Nietzsches objections to Christian morality and its derivatives. Nietzsche holds that the traditional European morality derived from Christianity is structured by six characteristic theses: (1) This morality claims of itself that it is unconditional in the obligations it imposes. (JGB 199) (2) It claims a kind of universality, i.e. to apply equally to all human beings. (JGB 198, 221) (3) It claims that only free human actions have moral value. (JGB 32; GM I. 13) (4) It claims that the moral worth of a free action depends on the quality of the human choice that leads the agent to perform it. (JGB 32)
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Raymond Geuss (5) It claims that human beings and their actions are to be evaluated (positively) as good or (negatively) as evil depending on the kind of human choice involved. (JGB 260) (6) It claims that we are responsible for our choices and should feel guilt or remorse for evil choices, etc. (GM I. 13, III.15, 20)3

Nietzsche wishes to claim (contra (1) above) that the taste for the unconditional is the worst of all tastes (JGB 31). Slaves are the kind of people who need and keenly desire the unconditional or absolute because they really understand only tyranny (JGB 46, cf. 198, 199, 221). I take Nietzsches argument here to be something like the following: The plausibility of (1) results from a kind of fascination with the idea of unconditional obligations, but the most plausible explanation for this fascination is that it arises out of an extreme need for order and predictability which is a frequently encountered trait of weak and helpless people who face a potentially dangerous and unstable environment, and who are understandably ready to grasp at virtually any means to introduce regularity into their world. An unconditional obligation is one that could be counted on no matter what and hence one that would introduce a high degree of predictability into at least some portion of the world. People who are especially strong or competent in a particular domain or respect, Nietzsche thinks, dont need to fear the lack of absolute, unconditional predictability in that domain if they are truly strong and competent, they will expect to be able to deal with whatever comes up, even with the unpredictable and unexpected. If one adds to this account that slaves in addition to being weak (as Nietzsche assumes) will also be likely to have as their basic direct experience of the social order the absolute commands given to them by their masters, it wouldnt be surprising if slaves developed the bad taste of a fascination with unconditional obligation. So Nietzsche wishes to reverse what he takes to have been the traditional prejudice: To keep looking for the absolute, the unconditional, the essential (which is just the set of properties a thing can absolutely reliably be expected to have) is not a sign of special superiority or profundity, but of a servile disposition too weak to tolerate disorder, complexity, ambiguity, and the unpredictable (cf. JGB 59 and FW 5). The above isnt, of course, an argument against the existence of unconditional obligations, but then Nietzsche thinks it is as much of an argument against them as any argument that has been given for them. Given the kind of thesis this is, psychological considerations about the type of person who is most likely to find this approach to morality plausible are, Nietzsche believes, perfectly appropriate. It is no argument against Nietzsches view here to claim that it is in some sense necessary or highly desirable for us to introduce order and predictability into our social world by assigning unconditional obligations to one another because otherwise things would be too chaotic for human life to continue. Whether or not this is true, it is not incompatible with the Nietzschean view I have just described. All humans may just be so weak that we need this kind of order. In the first instance Nietzsche merely wishes to claim a connection between the need for order (which lies, he thinks, behind the ascription of absolute obligations) and the relative level
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of strength and weakness of those who feel the need to ascribe such obligations. It is a completely separate issue whether or not some person or people might be so strong as to be able to dispense with the very idea of an unconditional obligation altogether. Nietzsche goes so far in rejecting the universality of morality as to assert at one point that it is immoral (unmoralisch) to hold that the same moral code should apply to all (JGB 221, cf. JGB 43, 46, 198, 199, 228, 284). To the extent to which he gives reasons for this rejection which go beyond appeals to taste (JGB 43)4 these reasons seem to depend on his doctrines of rank-ordering and of the pathos of distance. Nietzsche believes that in general5 the creation of positive values, the elevation of the human type (JGB 257), can result only from what he calls the pathos of distance (JGB 257, GM I. 2). The pathos of distance is the long-lasting feeling on the part of a higher ruling order of its total superiority in relation to a lower order, and although this feeling may eventually take a more sublimated form, its origin will be in crude relations of physical domination of one group over another, that is, in some form of slavery (GS). Only such a distance between rank-orders generates the requisite tension, as it were, to allow new values to be created. So originally slavery is not just instrumentally necessary in order to provide (for instance) leisure for members of the upper classes to produce and appreciate various cultural artefacts, but rather slaves were a kind of social-psychological necessity because only if the members of a group have others to look down on and despise as wholly inferior will they be able to create positive values.6 Valuing, Nietzsche thinks, is an inherently discriminatory activity; it is a positing of one thing as better than something else, and if this discrimination is to be active and positive it must arise out of the positive sense of self that can exist only in a society of rank-orders, i.e. where this kind of distance exists.7 Nietzsches main objection to universal forms of morality is that they tend to break down the rank-ordering in society. In a rank-ordered society there will be different codes governing behaviour among members of the same rank and behaviour of the members of one rank to those of another (JGB 260). If the rank-ordering of a society is undermined, the pathos of distance will be in danger of disappearing and the society will run the risk of losing the ability to produce new positive values (JGB 202). A society unable to produce new positive values is decadent, and Nietzsche seems to think such decadence is self-evidently the worst thing that can happen to a society. This line of argument presupposes that one can give a relatively clear sense to the distinction between active, positive valuation and negative, reactive valuation, and that the health which consists in the continued ability to produce new positive values is the most appropriate final framework for discussing forms of morality. So theses (1) and (2) are to be rejected. Notoriously Nietzsche denies that there is any such thing as free will (JGB 21; GD Die vier groen Irrtmer 7). His denial that the will is free doesnt imply that he thinks the will is unfree, enslaved, or in bondage. Rather he holds that the whole conceptual pair free/unfree is a fiction having no real application to the will.8 Free will was an invention of weak people (slaves) who appropriated a
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certain contingently existing grammatical distinction to be found in IndoEuropean languages, the distinction between the grammatical subject of a sentence and its predicate, and transposed this distinction into the realm of metaphysics. (JGB 17; GM I. 13; GD Die Vernunft in der Philosophie 5). Just as the grammatical subject can be distinguished from the grammatical predicate, so also, they claimed, there stands an entity (the subject, agent, self, ego) behind every activity. Just as one can affirm or deny that the predicate applies to the subject, the subject remaining the while the same (ambulat Caius/non ambulat Caius), so similarly the I or self or ego stands separate from and indifferent to possible actions, so that it is a genuinely open question whether it will perform a certain action or not. That it is purportedly such an open question means, for the slave, that the agent has free will. The slaves then proceed to connect forms of moral evaluation with the correct or incorrect use of free will. Nietzsche thinks it is a mistake to believe that there is a separate agent standing apart from and behind action. All there is is the activity itself. There isnt any it that rains or thunders, just raining and thundering. An activity can be more or less forceful, a human being more or less powerful, even (to stretch language a bit) a will stronger or weaker (JGB 21), but none of this implies that people have free choice to be or not be what and who they are and to act accordingly. With the invention of free will the slaves pursue two related goals at once. First of all the fiction of free will allows them to aggrandize themselves falsely by turning their real weakness into grounds for self-congratulation. In fact they are not aggressive or successful because they are weak, but they now have the resources to give an account of this deficiency as morally meritorious. Instead of feeling weak realizing that they cant do certain things they feel morally superior (and thus in some sense strong) because they falsely believe that they could have done various things which they actually didnt do, but never did because they meritoriously chose never to do them. The second goal is that of confounding and debilitating the strong as much as possible. If the slaves can succeed in lodging their fictitious notion of free will (with some of its associated baggage) in the minds of those who are stronger, they will have improved the conditions of their life considerably. To the extent to which the strong come to think of themselves as having free will they will in fact begin to have a tendency to separate themselves from their actions and this will tend to make them less powerfully and spontaneously active than before, a situation advantageous to the slaves (GM I. 13). Given this account of free will Nietzsche believes he can reject theses (3) and (4) out of hand, and, since the distinction between good and evil depends on the slaves notion of free will (GM I. 10, 11, 13), thesis (5) too. Guilt, remorse, (the sense of) sin etc. are, Nietzsche believes, moralizing misinterpretations of underlying physiological conditions (GD Die Verbesserer der Menschheit 1). Guilt arises originally as the expectation that I will suffer pain because of failure to discharge my debts (GM II. 48). Since cruelty, the pleasure of inflicting suffering on others, is, Nietzsche thinks, natural to humans (cf. JGB 229), and since justice requires that in commercial transactions equivalents
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be exchanged for equivalents,9 it is also natural for a creditor whose debtor has defaulted to demand this in the form of a warrant to inflict that amount of pain on the debtor which will give the creditor pleasure equivalent to the pain the creditor incurred by the default. A strong empirical association of ideas thus gets established between failure to discharge obligations and the expectation of suffering pain. Furthermore, as Nietzsche believes, with urbanization people are forced to live in ever closer proximity to each other, and natural forms of aggression which primitive nomads could easily discharge outward without too much harm to themselves and which in nomadic conditions might even be thought to be socially useful and thus rewarded become inhibited (GM II. 16). In the narrow confines of the early cities more self-restraint becomes necessary. However the aggression which is denied discharge outward doesnt just disappear. Rather people come to turn it against themselves in a variety of increasingly subtle ways (GM II. 16). They develop a need to vent their aggression on themselves, to make themselves suffer. It is also the case that in many societies at a certain point the relation between the individual and society as a whole comes to be reinterpreted as one of debt. As an individual I am thought to receive certain valuable benefits from society (e.g. protection) and what I owe in return is conformity to the customary morality (GM II. 9). The need-to-suffer described above can then appropriate this notion of a debt to society. I can learn to impose suffering on myself (in the form of bad conscience)10 if I violate the customary morality. The idea that a sense of guilt or remorse is a result of awareness that I am evil (because I have acted in an evil way) is a late, moralizing misinterpretation of this underlying physiological (or perhaps physio-psychological) condition which is really just a combination of fear and the need to direct aggression toward myself. Similarly in GM III. 1620 Nietzsche has a lengthy and subtle account of the way in which sin is a moralizing misinterpretation of various states of physical or psychological debility. That takes care of thesis (6).

III There seem, then, to be two related kinds of objection Nietzsche has to the morality derived from Christianity: 1. It is based on a series of particular mistakes and errors, especially on series of moralizing misinterpretations of natural or physiological facts. 2. It in general claims for itself the wrong kind of status, posits itself as absolute and universal. At this point I would like to add a qualification to the previous discussion. At the start I spoke in a rather undifferentiated way about Nietzsches rejection of traditional morality, but it is actually part of Nietzsches project to undercut as much as possible what he takes to be forms of naivet that characterized traditional discussion in ethics, namely the assumption that a given view or form of
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morality had to be absolutely accepted (or rejected) once and for all for all times and places and for all people. Acceptance or rejection are for him much more context-dependent. The question in ethics is not: Is this the right way to act, live, feel, etc. for everyone, everywhere at all times? but: What are the particular strengths and weaknesses of this form of morality for this person or this group of people at this time?11 Nietzsche doesnt wish to blame the proponents of the traditional Christian morality for being what they are, and developing the views, beliefs, habits, and attitudes they needed to make their way in the world (cf. GM III. 13). He points out, though, that many of these views are false and makes two predictions: a) it will become increasingly difficult for people in the modern world to avoid realizing that these beliefs are false, and b) that the dissolution of these beliefs will cause serious social and cultural dislocation. Supporters of traditional forms of morality may see in falsehood per se grounds for rejecting Christian morality wholesale, but that is an internal difficulty for traditional Christianity, committed as it is to a peculiar absolutist conception of Truth. Nietzsche states repeatedly and with all requisite explicitness that he has no objections to lies or illusions in themselves. Illusion, Schein, is necessary for life, and there would be no point in being against it simpliciter. That Christian morality attempts to set itself absolutely against such Schein is another one of its limitations. Similarly it is a mistake for traditional morality to consider itself the only, exclusive, and universal morality, but sometimes a narrowing of horizons may be one of the conditions of human growth and flourishing (JGB 188). Even if Nietzsche does reject the traditional morality for himself, it doesnt follow that he thinks its proponents must ncessarily all reject it, too, or even that it would be a good idea for them all to give it up. Nietzsche may not think that he is himself bound by the canons of Christian morality, but whether or not it is a good idea for some others to hold themselves bound depends on what particular needs Christianity might serve for them, a topic about which much could be said in individual cases. Of course, Nietzsche by his writing has made it more difficult for a proponent of the traditional morality to hold fast to it (and to hold others to it), because he has focused attention on aspects of it that it will be difficult for traditional morality to acknowledge and deal with (for instance, the errors on which it is based), but that is a separate issue. If Nietzsche does not, then, object to Christian morality because it is based on particular false beliefs or because it erroneously claims absolute status for itself, perhaps he objects to it because it is coercive, repressive, or tyrannical. He might have nothing against lying but have a rooted dislike of lies invented for the sake of justifying coercion. This would be a third possible line of objection. Unfortunately Nietzsche also clearly has nothing against coercion or tyranny per se. They, too, can be conditions of growth (JGB 188). If Nietzsches remarks about breeding can be given any weight at all, they seem to indicate that under certain circumstances significant forms of coercion might even be highly desirable (cf. GM II. 12; JGB 262; GD Die Verbesserer der Menschheit). Finally there is Nietzsches obvious admiration for the Platonic
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Lie, the resolute, honest lie told for the sake of imposing forms of social coercion (GM III. 19). The passage at GM III. 19 in which Nietzsche contrasts the honest lie of Plato with the dishonest lying of Christianity suggests that perhaps honesty is the crucial dimension. I take it that an honest lie is a lie told by someone who knows clearly that it is an untruth and tells it (resolutely) nonetheless. I tell a dishonest lie when I am half deceiving myself while telling an untruth to another. A fourth possible version of Nietzsches objection to Christian morality would then run: 4. Traditional morality is based on dishonest lies (perhaps invented to justify repression and coercion). Perhaps there is something especially disreputable about dishonest lying, although it is hard to see how there can be anything especially wrong in halfdeceiving myself, if there is nothing inherently wrong in (completely) deceiving others. Perhaps Nietzsche is opposed to dishonest lying because he thinks it both a result of weakness and an obstacle to strength. I gain no obvious advantage from lying to myself of the kind I may gain from lying to others. So if I lie to myself I must have some reason. One plausible reason, Nietzshe thinks, is that I am too weak to face the truth (cf. JGB 39). One can also imagine various ways in which half-deceiving oneself might be thought to sap ones strength or make one less effective in dealing with others. This line of objection would then reduce to the claim that Christianity sapped human strength or vitality. Another possible approach might start from the fact that Nietzsche describes Christian morality as a form of counter-nature (Widernatur, cf. GD Moral als Widernatur). This might be connected with passages in which Nietzsche speaks of humanity as a plant which must be made to grow and flourish. Some moralities (at some times and under some circumstances) contribute to the flourishing of this plant, while others stunt its growth (JGB 44, 257f.). Nietzsche clearly has the hot-house rather than the lawn in mind when he uses this botanical imagery. The flourishing of the plant humanity does not consist in the survival of the maximal number of more or less homogeneous healthy blades, but in the production of a few individual human orchids, highest specimens (cf. NNH 9; GM I. 16). These highest individual specimens are what arouse our admiration and their existence can even be said to justify (rechtfertigen) humanity as a whole (GM I. 12). So the fifth possible Nietzschean objection would run: 5. Traditional morality is contrary to nature in that it renders more difficult the emergence of the individual highest specimens of humanity. The operative part of this claim in the second part (i.e. what follows in that above) because the term nature is highly ambiguous and in at least some important senses of the term it is, for Nietzsche, no objection to say that something is
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contrary to nature. Thus he writes (JGB 188): Every morality, in contrast to the policy of laisser aller, is a piece of tyranny against nature, also against reason: That, however, is no objection to the morality, unless one were to decree on the basis of some morality that all forms of tyranny and unreason were not allowed. If nature doesnt provide a standard against which we can measure moralities, perhaps Life does. In the new preface to the second edition of GT (Versuch einer Selbstkritik 4) Nietzsche claims that one of the major questions the work raises is: What is the significance of morality, viewed from the perspective of life (unter der Optik des Lebens)? Perhaps the highest specimens are highest because they exhibit a special vitality or represent Life at its most intense. There is little doubt that Life (and the self-affirmation of Life) in Nietzsche does seem to function as a criterion for evaluating moralities (GD Moral als Widernatur 5). Sometimes Nietzsche even speaks in a way that suggests that the course of human history is the story of life affirming itself in whatever way is possible under the given circumstances, for instance in his discussion of the priestly revaluation of values which leads to the ascendency of a set of life-denying forms of valuation (GM III. 13). Paradoxically Nietzsche suggests here that this event can itself be seen as a way in which life is affirming itself. If Life really does affirm itself in one way or the other, as best it can, under the given circumstances, and if those circumstances are in the given case those of a wholly debilitated population which is in danger of giving up on existence altogether committing the kind of mass suicide Nietzsche thinks will be a very tempting option for such a population the most vital form of willing possible might be willing to negate life in a focused structured way. This may be a very astute psychological observation about how best to deal with certain forms of social malaise. That isnt the issue here; rather the question is whether one can speak of Life as an underlying form of metaphysical agency which does things. Prima facie this kind of appeal to Life would seem to be incompatible with Nietzsches general strictures on positing agents that stand behind activities and also with one of the most interesting features of the discussion of history in Nietzsches mature works, namely the denial that there is an underlying logic of history. History, for Nietzsche, is just a sequence of contingent conjunctions, accidental encounters, and fortuitous collisions (GM II. 1213), not the story of the unitary development or self-expression of some single underlying, non-empirical agency. Contingency is such a striking property of much of history that it is perhaps not easy for us to see in what sense Nietzsche is not just stating the obvious. One well-known way of thinking about history in 19th century Germany, however, saw the superficial contingency of individual events in history as fully compatible with the existence of an underlying logic of history. Thus for Hegel history is really the story of spirit progressively realizing itself in time, but spirit, a nonnatural agency, does this by using available, contingent human passions, interests, etc. This means that the first and superficial (but by no means false) explanation of why Caesar crossed the Rubicon, to use Hegels own example,12 would refer to accidental properties of his personality and psychology, for instance his ambition. A deeper explanation would have to appeal to a number of
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interconnected metaphysical notions and the ways in which it was teleologically necessary that these notions be instantiated in time. The crossing of the Rubicon would be finally explained by showing why an act like that was a necessary part of the way in which self-conscious reason and spirit realized itself in history. The two explanations of the same action are for Hegel not merely compatible, but complementary. One might think that Nietzsches account of the slave-revolt of morality (as given in GM) had this kind of two-tiered structure: The first and superficial account of the origin of the dominant form of modern morality refers to a specific contingent historical event, the slave-revolt (JGB 195, GM I. 7, 9) as a result of which a set of life-negating values gets established. The actual course of this set of events, and even, to some extent, the fact that they took place at all, is a matter of accident.13 As Nietzsche describes it (GM I. 6f.) the slave-revolt depends on the contingent fact that a certain ruling group divides itself internally into a military faction and a priestly faction. The priestly sub-caste begins to use terms referring specifically to forms of ritual purity to differentiate itself and eventually loses out in a struggle for power with the military sub-caste. The priests decide to make common cause with the slaves, who happen to speak a language which has the grammatical distinction between subject and predicate, etc. There is nothing necessary about any of this. The actual course of events and the particular form the resulting system of valuations will take will depend on such contigent conjunctions. There could, however, be (one might think, if one wanted to pursue this line of thought) a second and deeper level of analysis. At this deeper level what was really happening in such seemingly accidental conjunctions was that Life was maximally affirming itself, even though the superficial form this selfaffirmation took was the creation of a system of life-negating values. Much more, of course, would have to be said about this, but in principle there need be nothing inconsistent in such a two-tiered theory; it would be structurally similar to Hegels view. If Nietzsches own views really had this structure he would just have relapsed into the kind of German metaphysics of a real, deep structure partially hidden behind an apparently different surface which it was one of his major achievements to have rejected. Perhaps he does occasionally relapse, or rather he seems clearly to be relapsing all the time, but it is a not uncommon characteristic of theoretical innovators not to have full control of their own most original insights. In any case the philosophically most interesting parts of his work are those in which he undercuts two-tiered philosophies of history of the Hegelian sort. He would have been well advised to have set his face even more relentlessly than he did both against speculative philosophies of history and against the metaphysics of life he inherited from Schopenhauer. Whatever difficulties there might be about construing some of Nietzsches pronouncements on Life as compatible with his general criticism of metaphysics are compounded when one considers his doctrine of the will-to-power. Life, it turns out, isnt, after all, the final standard. Life is constantly trying to overcome itself, is in fact always sacrificing itself for the sake of power (Z Von der Selbstberwindung). Life is then at best a first approximation of a standard for
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measuring and evaluating moralities. Life itself is essentially will-to-power (JGB 13, 259). Whether or not it is a metaphysical doctrine, isnt this in fact Nietzsches final view: Certain human specimens are higher than others to the extent to which they represent higher concentrations of the will-to-power? The final view would be a teleological one: The goal is the increased concentration of will-to-power. That is good which furthers this goal; that is bad which hinders it. If coercion, deception, etc. are in certain circumstances efficacious in increasing the concentration of the will-to-power, then they are to that extent good. Traditional morality is to be rejected because it now in general hinders the accumulation of will-to-power, although perhaps in the past and even in the present in some unusual circumstances it might be or might have been conducive to the growth of will-to-power.

IV One cant miss this strand of thought in Nietzsche, that Christianity is to be rejected because it opposes the will-to-power, the vital human desire to be lordand-master, to subordinate others to our commands and appropriate their energies, even if this requires the sacrifice of our biological existence. It is the very last part of this claim that causes difficulties. If will-to-power were very closely connected with more or less empirical biological urges, we might have a chance to determine what its content would be, what it would require in any given circumstances (e.g. self-preservation of the relevant biological entity). It seems, however, that it is just as likely, or rather even more likely, that the concentration of will-to-power will require thwarting and opposing anything we could understand as biological impulses or urges in any straightforward sense. Perhaps the situation isnt so desperate. If will-to-power doesnt have very determinate biological content, surely it has a sufficiently clear political content. Surely people sometimes do risk various aspects of their biological well-being in order to be the ones who command, and surely this thought is sufficiently determinate to be enlightening. Unfortunately it seems that just as the will-to-power can oppose what biology demands, so, too, can it find itself in direct opposition to the usual forms of political Herrschaft. The founding of the Second Empire in 1871 actually thwarted the will-to-power of German Geist which had been about to claim hegemony (Herrschaft and Fhrung) in Europe (GT Versuch einer Selbstkritik 6; cf. GD Was den Deutschen abgeht). The highest specimens may be commanding figures, but the sense in which they are commanding doesnt seem to have much to do with the concentration of political power in anything like the usual sense. Goethe isnt exemplary by virtue of anything having to do with his position or activity at the Court in Weimar. What seems more important in the case of many of the instances Nietzche cites and discusses when he speaks of highest specimens is that they are in some way
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admirable. Goethe is an instance of an especially high degree of human flourishing not because he is (politically) powerful, but because his life and works arouse admiration. Of course the fact that he arouses admiration may in fact increase his power in that others may follow his lead, do as he suggests (or commands) etc. but to look at Goethe from the perspective of human flourishing is to look at what in him and his work inspires admiration, not at his political power. Sometimes, to be sure, what inspires admiration may be the way military or political power is acquired or wielded, as in the case of Napoleon (whom Nietzsche seems to have admired), but military and political power alone wont necessarily be high on the scale of concentration of will-to-power. The Second Empire has political and military power in abundance, but isnt admirable, and Nietzsche is as opposed to it as he is to Christianity. This position may seem counterintuitive because the strong impression many readers have is that one of Nietzsches basic claims is that finally only power (in something like our everyday sense of that term) is truly admirable. Im suggesting that when Nietzsche is at his most interesting he doesnt think that admiration is locked onto power (in the usual sense) as its object, and admiration is what is finally important for him (cf. GM I. 12). Will-to-power is an empty, metaphysical concept. Being vital, flourishing, being a higher specimen means being able to inspire admiration. There seems also to be no single substantive trait which all higher specimens have in common by virtue of which they succeed in getting themselves admired; they are admired in different ways for different traits. Admiration (Bewunderung) and its opposite, disgust (Ekel), are for Nietzsche two of the most powerful internal forces that move human beings (JGB 26; GM I. 11, II. 24, III. 14 etc.).14 Both admiration and disgust in the first instance are elicited by and directed at concrete, individual objects, persons, or situations, and what will be an object of admiration or of disgust varies from person to person and from time to time. In a sense the most important fact about a given person for Nietzsche is which particular objects (or people) that person finds admirable (at what time), and which disgusting, and why. There are no naturally or antecedently fixed criteria of what is worthy of admiration. It doesnt follow from this that no generalizations whatever are possible about what sorts of things a given person or group of people tends to admire, but such generalizations can at best be only first approximations or crude rules of thumb. Extreme uniformity, consistency, and predictability of admiration may occur, but if it does, it doesnt indicate convergence to correct perception of some objective properties, but rather is more likely to signify that some extraneous social pressure is operating usually this means that some dominant group is enforcing uniformity in order to maintain its own position (cf. WL) or that one is looking at an especially unperceptive group of particularly boring people, deadbeats unable to respond to anything novel or to reevaluate what they already know. Although there are no objective properties of people, actions, and things by virtue of which they are inherently worthy of being admired, it is also not the case that I (or, we) can simply decide (in the usual sense of decide) what things we will
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now admire. To say that a higher specimen is something that succeeds in getting itself admired is to say that I (or, you, or we) really do admire it, not just that we say we do, or even that we try assiduously to admire it, although it is also the case that sometimes (but not always) trying hard enough will eventually enable me to admire something I may originally have been indifferent to, or only pretended to admire. Just as one cant really live the life of a Bronze Age chief, a samurai, or a Teutonic Knight in 1990s Western Europe15 (although perhaps one can admire some of the traits such people exhibited), so equally whether or not one can really admire certain people or acts will depend on a variety of factors, some having to do with external circumstances and some with my own existing habits, reactions, personality traits, projects, etc. My own reactions of admiration or disgust wont either be a simple deterministic product of natural and social forces because I can influence them to some extent nor will they be something I can simply turn on and off ad libitum. Again the Christian sharp dichotomy determined/free is, Nietzsche thinks, useless or rather counterproductive in trying to allow us to get a firm conceptual grasp on this topic. The extent to which an individual person will be able to reform, control, or redirect his or her admiration or disgust will itself vary; people of strong character (will) will in general be more able to do this than others will (JGB 284; GM III. 12). One way, then, to think about what we commonly call a morality is as a set of forms of admiration and disgust congealed into socially established catalogues of oughts and ought nots. Nietzsches account of the ought in question here proceeds in successive stages, like the gradual unpeeling of an onion and it is important not to confuse the stages. For purposes of simplicity of exposition I will distinguish three such stages. First, for most people in 19th century Europe Christianity or one of its derivatives is a central element in their morality; for such Christians and post-Christians the important oughts form a catalogue of the appropriate virtues and vices for the members of a universal mutual-aid society of slaves. We ought to admire those who would be good members of such a society and feel disgust at those who would not. Nietzsche subjects this moralizing Christian ought to a number of criticisms, some of which have been canvassed earlier in this essay. In the second place there are free spirits who have distanced themselves in varying degrees from the Christian insistencies of morality but who may still feel the bite of some elements originally derived from the Christian synthesis (cf. FW 344). Thus in the Vorrede to M Nietzsche describes himself as still standing under the domination of the (originally Christian) virtue of truthfulness and its associated oughts; he still thinks that one ought to strive to find out the final truth about the world and face up to it. Something like a morality with its own kind of Verbindlichkeit is possible here among free spirits, although a highly individualistic one in which the virtues of social cooperation will have perhaps a fragile and uncertain standing. Truthful admiration (or disgust) could give rise to various oughts such as that I ought to emulate what I truthfully admire (i.e. what I find I really admire when I have found out the truth about it). Finally, however, and this is the third of the stages of Nietzsches discussion, if
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one takes truthfulness to its limit, one will gradually lose ones hold on what ought could conceivably mean at all, what non-illusory sense it might have for anyone to think that something ought to be the case which in fact is not. Seen from a sufficiently non-anthropocentric perspective from the view-point of the most radical truthfulness the world is just what it is, a huge, historically and spatially extended brute fact. In fact, up there where the air is clear it might start to become increasingly difficult to think that there was any real point in being truthful at all (GD Moral als Widernatur 6; WM 15, 36, 598, 602 etc). This position, which Nietzsche sometimes calls nihilism (WM 598) isnt comfortably inhabitable by an individual human being in the long run. Nietzsche thinks, however, that such nihilism may be the fate of contemporary society. Since human cognitive capacities are social developments of biological phenomena, not sparks of the Divine Fire, there isnt any reason to assume apriori that the concepts and theories we are capable of coming up with will be coherent, consistent, and fully determinate, or that they will have clear application at all far beyond what is needed for our direct survival and our normal social life (WM 494, 602). Beyond these limits we should rather expect our thinking and valuing to lose their determinacy. It isnt at all clear whether or not this last thought is consoling or further demoralizing, and that in itself is probably for Nietzsche a further sign of our weakness.

V This would seem, then, to leave one with a very anarchic doctrine. Many varieties of human types and individuals exist. Some are admirable (i.e. admired by some people at some times); other disgusting. If you are the kind of person with a refined capacity for admiration and disgust you will probably find yourself drawn by your admiration for certain paradigmatic exemplars of particular properties to act in certain ways which may make you in turn an object of admiration. To be admirable is always to be admired by someone, whether that be God, the gods, other people, or oneself. Although the doctrine is anarchic, the world it describes need not be completely chaotic. In this world of shifting forms of admiration and disgust a better and worse can be distinguished in that I can succeed in my projects and enterprises and that is more admirable to those who endorse those projects than failure would be. Of course, what I call success others may call failure because they define the project differently. What for the Romans is failure (e.g. the crucifixion and death of Jesus) can be success for Christians. There is no set of projects that has automatic standing for all humans, and contains within itself its own irrefutable answer to the question: Why try to do that? That does not imply, of course, that certain forms of this question might not have irrefutable answers for particular people. Luther, perhaps, really could do no other. Not even selfpreservation is a project that is automatically self-validating for all; martyrdom is not an inherently incoherent project.16
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In the final analysis there is just the mass of human individuals and groups exercising power or being dominated, succeeding or failing at various projects, and, at a slightly eccentric angle to this world of direct action, a flux of admiration of various things by various people and of disgust at various things by various people who have or have not tried and have or have not succeeded in influencing their own reactions of admiration and disgust. This gives rise to a wide variety of different oughts of different forces and imports. There is no neutral external point from which any one of these oughts could be incontrovertibly grounded. In one sense this is a very important fact indeed one is tempted to say that it is the most important fact there is for the servile philosopher in search of the unconditioned but it is also in another sense of little real significance practically. We live in a world in which we are abundantly supplied with oughts and we have, and are in fact to some extent in the grip of, our own reactions of disgust and admiration. These wont disappear. Just thinking about them differently wont change them. To modify them would require a long and complex process with an uncertain outcome. I may try to learn to admire what people I admire value; I may or may not succeed. My (and, our) reactions of admiration and disgust may motivate us to try to ensure that certain objects of admiration (including perhaps certain admirable ways of being) attain a more stable existence, or that the conditions for the emergence of such objects and ways of being are made as propitious as possible. We may also be motivated to try to prevent disgusting forms of life and action. Part of the way in which we might go about doing this is by enforcing through public, institutionalized sanctions certain ways of behaving; we might even hope eventually to succeed in causing those around us to internalize certain ways of feeling, reacting, evaluating, and thinking. Especially in cases in which a certain group of people succeeds in imposing such a set of predictable ways of acting and evaluating (oriented toward the production of admired objects and the suppression of disgusting objects and forms of behaviour) not just on others but also on themselves, we will be likely to speak of a paradigmatic case of a morality. These more or less systematized forms of feeling and judging possess Verbindlichkeit to the extent to which they are socially enforced, or to the extent to which they arise out of a complex history in which physiological facts, forms of social pressure, and individual efforts have interacted to produce a state in which they actually have a hold on people, or to the extent to which they really are necessary or highly useful for the generation and preservation of particular kinds of admired human types or individuals (JGB 188, 262). If Venice (i.e. Venice as a social and cultural enterprise, matrix for the production of admired human individuals and works of art, perhaps itself an object of identification and esteem) is not to fall into decadence, the waters in the canals must be controlled, but also this set of customs, this form of evaluating, feeling, and willing may be necessary and thus verbindlich. If the demands of controlling the level of water in the canals and of admired forms of living conflict, it isnt obvious, or, Nietzsche thinks, obviously good that the demands of sanitation win out. Any morality will represent only one choice among a potentially infinite
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plurality of possible objects of admiration, although it wont be a choice any individual human being makes ad libitum; as such it will always float over a lagoon of anarchic, partially unstructured acts of individual admiration and disgust. A morality is one way of regimenting the multiplicitous florescence of human growth among others (GD Moral als Widernatur 6; JGB 188, 199, 262) and has no ground beyond historical inertia and the fact that it is (or can effectively claim to be) necessary (or overwhelmingly beneficial) for the survival and production of certain admired human types. Realizing this with complete clarity wont in itself necessarily undermine the Verbindlichkeit of the morality in question. If, of course, one turns away from a historically given admired type with disgust or indifference, or if the morality for whatever reason ceases to be necessary for the production of the admired type, then the morality will lose its Verbindlichkeit. Philosophers, Nietzsche thinks, are to be law-givers and commanders (Befehlende und Gesetzgeber JGB 211). Their task will be to create new values, new forms and objects of admiration, and to help elaborate the kinds of socially anchored feelings, beliefs, and forms of living and evaluating which will form the horizon within which such new values are most likely to be realized. This will require coercion because few admirable things arise completely spontaneously (JGB 188, 199). The philosopher will realize that the resulting morality is a human invention, a Schein, a dream, if you will, resting ultimately only on the highly variable forms of human admiration, nevertheless the appropriate attitude toward the new morality will be the one described by Nietzsche in GT when speaking of Apollonian art: Es ist ein Traum; ich will ihn weiter trumen. (GT 1)17 Raymond Geuss University of Cambridge, England NOTES
I dont mean Sittlichkeit in Hegels technical sense, but just in the ordinary everyday sense of the word in German. 2 Strictly speaking, Nietzsche says that people have in the past understood themselves as essentially valuating animals (GM II. 8), and he asks whether this isnt the case (Ist Leben nicht Abschtzen . . .? JGB 9) so it isnt completely unproblematic to attribute to Nietzsche the view that all human life involves valuation. This need not be incompatible with anti-essentialism. If one really does think that there is no firm and strict distinction between literal and metaphorical speech, one can allow oneself to use forms of speech that might look at first glance very much like those found in traditional, essentialist metaphysics, while treating the claims in question as mere Annahmen bis auf weiteres (WM 497). Valuation or discrimination is also only one component of what Christians and postChristians in the 19th century would call a morality because they will wish to distinguish (purportedly) specifically moral forms of valuation from other kinds. 3 There is a seventh thesis which is an exceedingly important constituent of Christianity according to Nietzsche, but which doesnt play much of a direct role in the forms of morality that derive from Christianity in the 19th century, namely:
1

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(7*) Suffering results from sin (M 78; GM III. 15). There are, of course, forms of morality, even 19th century ones that dont fit at all well into this schema, e.g. utilitarianism (if one considers that a form of morality). Most utilitarians would have rejected at least thesis 4 above. 4 Nietzsche rejects both the view that the prescriptions of morality should apply equally to all, and that proper moral evaluations should be such that anyone could in principle agree to them. 5 The slave revolt of morality (JGB 195; GM I. 7) was a historically unique event, and did not succeed in creating new positive values, but only reactive ones (GM I. 10). 6 Nietzsche uses the phrase create values both in the sense of inventing new kinds of values or conceptions of value and in the sense of creating new objects of value. 7 Unfortunately Nietzsche never discusses in detail the relation between his doctrine of the pathos of distance (as the origin of value) and the distinction between active and reactive forms of willing (discussed in GM I. 10). Obviously Nietzsche must think that aristocratic valuations that arise from this pathos of distance are active not reactive (although they in some sense require the existence of the slaves as objects of contempt), but how exactly this is to be understood is not completely clear. Deleuze (1962) sees the problem and suggests that active/reactive and yea-saying/nay-saying are two separate distinctions. That seems right, but I fail to see how it solves the difficulty. 8 Since this point is often misunderstood, let me repeat it in a slightly different form. When Nietzsche denies that the will is free, this is not best understood as like the denial: The tomato is not poisonous (because it is edible, i.e. non-poisonous), but rather as like the denial I would express if I were to say in a society which divides all days of the week into lucky and unlucky days: Friday is not an unlucky day (because the whole contrast lucky/unlucky has no useful application to days of the week). 9 Oddly enough Nietzsche thinks that this notion of exchange of equivalents in commercial transactions is older than even the most rudimentary forms of social organization (GM II. 8). 10 Nietzsche distinguishes two stages in the genesis of bad conscience. First there is a process of internalization (GM II. 16): Instead of fear that I will suffer at the hands of another because I have failed to repay an external debt, I begin to make myself suffer because of failure to repay some internal debt i.e. failure to obey the dictates of the morality traditional in my society. Then this need to punish can be moralized (GM II. 21; III. 20) by being supplied with the categories of evil, sin, etc. When my bad conscience has been moralized I wont just try to punish myself for non-traditional behaviour, but I will feel myself to be evil, sinful, guilty etc. 11 At WM 4 Nietzsche analyses some of the strengths and advantages of Christian morality. 12 Hegel (1970), p. 45ff. 13 Nietzsches view here is like the one I ascribe to him about free will/determinism. It isnt so much that he thinks historical events are contingent in some positive sense, but that the distinction contingent/necessary is useless in the study of history. Since 19th century philosophers of history stress necessity it is convenient in exposition to emphasize contingency but actually I think Nietzsche would prefer to avoid the distinction altogether. 14 Actually admiration seems to have a second opposite, contempt (Verachtung). I cant here pursue the analysis of admiration, contempt, and disgust in Nietzsche, but I think this would in principle be well worth doing. 15 cf. Williams (1985), pp. 160ff.

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16 Although there are some striking similarities between Nietzsches views and those of Hobbes, there are also two important differences. First, Nietzsche denies that self-preservation should be central to our thinking about human life. Biological self-preservation is not an overriding concern for humans. Rather, Nietzsche holds, significant numbers of humans are willing to put their lives at risk for the sake of leading what they would think to be a worthwhile life (JGB 13; cf. GM III. 1, 28). Nowadays we associate this kind of view with Hegel (cf. Siep (1974)), but it was common enough in Germany in the 19th century. Nietzsche had notoriously little interest in or knowledge of Hegel, so it is unlikely that there is any direct influence here. Second, Nietzsche would have no truck with anything like Hobbes conception of a law of nature. As a Precept, or general Rule, found out by Reason (Hobbes (1996), chapter XIV) a law of nature would fall afoul of Nietzsches general criticism of conceptions of reason. 17 I have benefitted from comments on a previous draft of this essay by Michael Forster (University of Chicago), Michael Hardimon (University of California at San Diego), Susan James (Girton College, Cambridge), Pierre Keller (University of California at Riverside), Susanna Mitchell (Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge), Fred Neuhouser (University of California at San Diego), Onora ONeill (Newnham College, Cambridge), and Quentin Skinner (Christs College, Cambridge).

REFERENCES
Works by Nietzsche are cited according to the Colli-Montinari edition (Nietzsche 1980) except for WM which is cited according to the sections of the old Gast edition (Nietzsche 1901). The following abbreviations are used for works by Nietzsche (with volume and page references to the Colli-Montinari edition in round brackets): EH FW GD GM GS GT JGB M NNH WL WM Z = = = = = = = = = = = = Ecce Homo (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 6, pp. 257ff.) The Gay Science (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 3, pp. 345ff.) The Twilight of Idols (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 6, pp. 57ff.) The Genealogy of Morality (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 5, pp. 247ff.) The Greek State (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 1, pp. 764ff.) The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 1, pp. 11ff.) Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 5, pp. 11ff.) Daybreak (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 3, pp. 11ff.) The Use and Abuse of History for Life (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 1, pp. 245ff.) On Truth and Lie in an Extra-moral Sense (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 1, pp. 875ff.) The Will to Power (cited according to Nietzsche 1901) Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche 1980, vol. 4, pp. 11ff.)

Deleuze, G. (1962), Nietzsche et la philosophie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Hegel, G.W.F. (1970), Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Geschichte in Werke in zwanzig Bnden, Moldenhauer and Michel (eds.) Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, vol. 12. Hobbes, T. (1996), Leviathan, Richard Tuck (ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siep, L. (1974), Der Kampf um Anerkennung: Zu Hegels Auseinandersetzung mit Hobbes in den Jenaer Schriften in Hegel-Studien 9. Nietzsche, F. (1901), Der Wille zur Macht: Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte, ausgewhlt

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und geordnet von Peter Gast unter Mitwirkung von Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, Stuttgart: Krner. Nietzsche, F. (1980), Smtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bnden, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Williams, B. (1985), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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