Nietzsche's Understanding of the Bad Conscience

Nietzsche’s Understanding of the Bad Conscience

            Nietzsche regularly uses nature imagery to convey his arguments, playing on the natural genealogy of his work. In his second essay, Nietzsche uses such natural metaphors to introduce the concept of the “bad conscience,” (65). He argues that the original “half-animals”, which he also calls the noble class, forcibly adapted to a changing society. The “half-animal” analogy emphasizes the way in which nobility represent the original, natural man. However, overtime, society constricted their natural instinct of power and thus their animalistic nature. Nietzsche compares this transformation to “the creatures of the sea when they were forced either to adapt to life on land or to perish- in a single stroke, all their instincts were devalued and ‘suspended,’” (64).  This passage portrays the manner in which the nobility lost their way of life due to the confines of a new society. Nietzsche argues that those who attempted to maintain their ways failed, and all others were forced to adapt. Nietzsche suggests that this adaptation diminishes the “half animals’’” sense of natural instinct as society suppresses their freedom in the form of the “bad conscience,” (65). Nietzsche defines the bad conscience as the essential problem with priest morality.

            Nietzsche continues his nature imagery in the development of the bad conscience. He accuses it to cause “all the instincts of the wild, free, nomadic man to turn backwards against man himself,” (65). This passage emphasizes the suppression of the nobility’s natural instincts. The introduction of a conscience tames the independent and free nature of the nobility. This produces a man far detached from his natural instincts. As depicted by this metaphor, the bad conscience also confines the freedom of the noble morality, which operates under instinct only.

In addressing the dichotomy between subject and action, Nietzsche clarifies his distaste for the bad conscience. Nietzsche values the active way in which instincts drive the actions of noble morality. However, the bad conscience of priest morality emphasizes the subject rather than the actions. Nietzsche explains this in his argument of the internalization of man; that is, that “every instinct which does not vent itself externally turns inwards,” (65). Instead of focusing on the actions, priest morality turns attention inwards to the subject itself. Using more natural imagery, Nietzsche accuses the internal conscience as the “most meager and unreliable organ,” (64-5). This metaphor dictates Nietzsche’s belief that the subject itself provides no sufficient guideline for morality. Instead, Nietzsche argues that focus on the subject rather than the action entraps the natural freedom of instinct. Just as Nietzsche values genealogy and the origin of all things, so too does he value the instinctual nature of noble morality.

Discussion question: According to Nietzsche, would someone be able to restore their noble morality after adapting to the priest morality and acquiring such “bad conscience”?

The Deceptive Nature of Asceticism

               In the third essay of The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche poses the question, “What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?” and answers it by identifying humanity’s desire to escape nothingness (77). As he puts it, humans deprive their senses as a way to occupy the soul, to “will nothingness rather than not will at all” (77). In explaining this, he often discusses the body, incorporating it into various analogies and imagery sequences. Nearly all of them are negative, which allows him to highlight the physical degradation that occurs through asceticism. In this way, he points out that people who subscribe to this practice end up deteriorating part of their own reality and coming closer to nothingness than ever. This contrariness is at the heart of the phenomenon he calls “ascetic self-misunderstanding” (91).

                From the start, Nietzsche connects humanity’s  horror vacui to its moralistic notions of physical deprivation (77). Because people “must have a goal,” they often turn to asceticism, for it provides an area of focus by crafting meaning out of nothingness. All one needs is a body and some spiritual dedication; thus, the process occupies both body and mind. However, as Nietzsche shows through his copious physical references, it is truly just a physical process. In his words, “We derive pleasure from our curious dissection of the soul of a living body” (92). Here, by evoking the soul as something like a floppy piece of liver to be picked apart, he suggests the baseness of the system, which ends up being much more physical than mental. Moreover, he suggests how damaging it can be. Asceticism, like an overly curious scientist, ends up cutting and snipping apart one’s flesh and spirit.

                This “hatred of the senses” causes sickness and injury (90). People who subscribe to it have “mouths [that] continually secrete the word ‘justice’ like poisonous saliva, with lips always pursed, ready to spit at anything which looks content” (102). They “tear open the oldest wounds, they bleed from scars long healed” (107). Again, Nietzsche employs negative physical imagery to emphasize that asceticism is truly a bodily ordeal, and a destructive one at that. The grotesque vividness of his analogies strips the practice of its lofty reputation and reveals its hidden, injurious baseness.

                Because adherents to asceticism destroy their bodies, they destroy themselves. In chasing away emptiness through systematic self-denial, they end up “reduc[ing] the physical world to an illusion” (97). Sick and broken, they “cease believing in [their] own self” and “deny [their] own reality” (97). In this way, they end up losing their grip on something that is not nothingness—their physical presence. Ultimately, they are further away from their goal of escaping nothingness than they were to begin with. This reality serves as the foundation of Nietzsche’s identification of asceticism as self-misunderstanding.

Discussion question: Does the degradation of the body really constitute a loss of one’s own reality? Can one deprive their physical self while still maintaining a spiritual understanding of themselves?

The Origins of Conscience: Defining Bad Conscience

            In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche explains how morality is used to, “to breed a tame and civilized animal…from the predatory man” (27). In order to understand the self-sustaining system that Nietzsche presents, it is important that we first understand his terminology because Nietzsche’s argument hinges on redefining our moral vocabulary. It is clear, in the second essay, that Nietzsche understands “guilt” and “conscience” as interconnected just as slave morality does. That is, guilt stems from the assumed presence of a conscience.  However, Nietzsche often refers to conscience, in this context, as “bad conscience”. I will argue that Nietzsche differentiates between bad conscience and a better conscience based on their origins.  

            In several different instances, Nietzsche asserts that humans, when following their natural tendencies, are aggressive. However, slave morality deemed these types of behavior as “bad”, and as a result, these “instincts were devalued and ‘suspended’” (64). When human are unable to externalize their aggression in a socially acceptable manner, these tendencies are turned internally. Nietzsche explains that this “internalization” acts a way to cope with the constrictions of society (65).  Bad conscience originates from desire to conform to society’s idea of good and the resulting aggression toward one’s own instincts. Therefore, guilt is derived from the innate desire to act in a way that society has deemed as bad.  While it is an internal process, the standards that drive bad conscience are external.

            Although mentioned only briefly, Nietzsche describes a better conscious. Contrary to bad conscience, this conscience originates internally. This idea concerns what Nietzsche refers to as the “sovereign man” who is free from the influence of society’s moral systems (41).  The person who is free from the influence of morality and of ressentiment has the “freer eye”, implying that he or she is able to make judgments based purely off of personally developed beliefs. It is clear that both types of conscience serve the purpose of evaluating situations, but it is their origin that determines the validity of their judgments.

Discussion Question: Based on this evaluation of the two types of conscience, what can we conclude about Nietzsche’s opinion about morality in general? How does the need to redefine our moral language influence the way we interpret Nietzsche’s argument?

The Development of Law and its Effect on People

The Development of Law and its effect on people

            In Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, we are shown a how trade has fueled the human development, specifically with the development of rudimentary laws. These laws are impartial, and keep a balance in all things except create inequality for people.

First we are shown how early man comes to develop rudimentary law. “Buying and selling together… are older than even the beginnings of any social form of organization.” Buying and selling represent a trade of which an object is traded for something of equal value. As humans engaged in buying and selling, the human necessarily became the “’measuring animal’” in order to measure the values of objects to make fair deals for themselves when buying and selling. The idea that “everything has its price” is the “earliest canon of moral justice” (52). The development of putting a price on everything is a sense of “moral justice” because it sets a balance by equating two things – an object and a price. Laws are eventually set in place to protect this idea so that buying and selling remain fair, so that everyone has an equal chance to benefit.

            Humans then continued “…the habit of comparing, measuring, and calculating power in relation to power” (51). This idea works well with the concepts of crime and punishment, because it restored the balance offset by crime. However, the laws protecting the ideas of setting prices to objects or concepts creates inequality for people. When people started comparing themselves to others, they created, imbalance, and inequality between humans, creating classes. Just as humans felt superior over other animals, they now felt superior over each other. While these rudimentary laws that keep trade fair by keeping values set for objects were beneficial to people for trade, these laws do not protect the values of people in any way, and because of this, there is inequality.

Discussion Question: How does Friedrich Nietzsche justify this inequality between people? How would noble and slave moralities view this inequality?

The Sovereign and the Subordinate

Nietzsche spends much of this reading explicating the origins of conscience and guilt through the analysis of historical culture.  Yet he rapidly moves away from his presentation of the "man-animal" as memory quickly complicates him and as Nietzsche describes it "by means of the morality of custom and the social strait-jacket" (40).  I waited until section ten to find a correlation between the nature images of the first essay and the ideal human function Nietzsche would use to undermine the society of suffering he was explicating and was disappointed.  In the beginning of this essay Nietzsche presents a society and more importantly a culture that is non-conducive to the existence of the noble "man-animal"and uses this to further his attack on our society of suffering and presents it as a control of the "aggressive men" which most closely describe his noble man-animal of action in our society (55).

Nietzsche begins his argument by presenting the correlation between the origin of punishment and then the purpose of suffering.  He clearly identifies these two states as different because he specifically analyzes this two concepts in terms of their cause and effect in relation to each other.  According to Nietzsche punishment developed out of a need to establish specific memories within the "man-animal", "with the aim of hypnotizing the whole nervous system and intellect by means of these 'fixed ideas'; in essence to scare the "man-animal" straight.  This is the beginning of the societal interference that Nietzsche sees as a control of the "man-animal" literally interfering with the natural order becoming a "means against struggle itself" to uphold norms rather than uphold justice.

In terms of our society Nietzsche clearly attributes "bad conscience" to the ressentiment which by definition of dichotomy establishes a "good conscience" in our society as well (55).  The "bad conscience" is a derivative of the debtor-creditor relationship, in which an expected return on injury is expected and demanded rather than taken.  Thus the relationship of injury and compensation becomes a means of upholding the norm rather than settling the struggle between the two parties. Nietzsche believes that the law instead of acting as a "means against struggle itself"should rather mediate "in the struggle between power-complexes".  In this sense Nietzsche gives "good conscience" to the individual  who readily moves to empower himself and take action; here I believe Nietzsche becomes less clear whether he actually condones a sort of vigilante justice but is clear in that he doesn't support settlement declaring that "the law represents rather the struggle against reactive feelings, the war against the these feelings in the active and aggressive forces" (55).  In Nietzsche's mind the law aims to establish an "impartial eye" to dictate reaction and recompense but Nietzsche sees the man in "good conscience", the noble man, as having had and always will have the "the freer eye, the better conscience on his side".  To Nietzsche justice is justified most clearly in the action of "the strong, the spontaneous, the aggressive man" (55).

Discussion questions:
-Nietzsche almost vaguely leaves the concept of justice to the "aggresive man" as open-ended, did you see an appropriation of the 'lawful' extent the agressor could take his justice?

Nietzsche shortly addresses the concept of a society based in the "consciousness of power" on the bottom of page 53 where the creditor is the individual who can most completely sustain harm "without suffering".
-The quote on the following page "of what concern are these parasites to me...I am strong enough to allow that" is the most clear comparison to the nature images we saw in the previous essay.  What correlation do you see between the bird/sheep metaphor and the man with the power of consciousness.  -Also who does this 'man of consciousness' most clearly resemble in our culture (I find it ironic).

Power to the Creditors: Crime, debt, and transfer of power according to Nietzsche

When reading Nietzsche, I have found myself frequently frustrated by the text’s relapses into moralistic judgements. One of these instances occurs in today’s reading when Nietzsche refers to a criminal as an “evil-doer” (53). In an attempt to understand why a text which began as a rebuttal of traditional morals started using the word “evil” to refer to criminals, I delved into Nietzsche’s understanding of criminality.

To Nietzsche, crime is the result of individuals failing to pay their debt to society. He believes that “the community stands in the same important fundamental relationship to its members as the creditor does to his debtors” (52). The primary benefit which members of society gain from their debt is protection from the hostility of others. Those who fail to repay this debt of protection by obeying society’s laws find themselves expelled from society and that “every level of hostility may be vented on him” (53). Society is therefore an interconnected system of debt, where each participant agrees to obey laws in return for being protected by them. Unfortunately, this does not explain why those who break laws are seen as “evil”--rather, it changes the question of evil from criminals to disobedient debtors.

Nietzsche views economic and societal debt as interrelated, and goes so far as to claim “the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the concept of ‘legal subjects’ itself and which points back in turn to the fundamental forms of buying, selling, exchange, wheeling and dealing” (45). As demonstrated above, legal subjects are a type of debtor. All debtors must serve creditors, and as such both economics and government are based upon debt owed to an outside force. Nietzsche argus that this debt may be paid in monetary funds or corporal punishment, so that “instead of a direct compensation for the damage done (i.e. instead of money, land, possessions of whatever sort), a sort of pleasure is conceded to the creditor as a form of recompense” (46). This payment involves a transfer of strength, as the debtor is giving the creditor “something over which he still has power--for example, his body or his wife or his freedom or his life” (45). This transaction gives the creditor more power, and therefore strength; because creditors gain physical power over other humans, Nietzsche claims they partake in a “privilege of the masters” (46). By gaining strength through the debt of others, individuals and societies can become more powerful and, under the views of noble morality, more “good” (14).

In this way, debtors (and legal subjects) grow less powerful and strong through their debt, while creditors grow more powerful and more strong. Therefore, under Nietzsche’s understanding of naturalism, debt transforms society so that the noble dominate not through physical strength but through debt owed to individuals and the government, in other words, their position in the political economy. Thus, criminals violate Nietzsche’s laws of nature when they rebel against their creditors, who are stronger and therefore better than them. This would make the criminals bad, if one is drawing from the vocabulary of noble morality. The use of the word evil is likely an exaggeration of the criminals being bad, employed to give emphasis to Nietzsche’s sarcastic commentary.

Question: Does Nietzsche view the natural order as being “good”? If so, why? Is there another reason he may have referred to criminals as “evil-doers” on page 53?

The Slave Morality: Bad or Good?

Sections 10-12 of Nietzsche’s first essay deal with the idea of the slave morality. This “slave revolt,” he explains, begins with “ressentiment,” and is a purely reactive move, stating “in order to exist at all, slave morality from the outset always needs an opposing outer world…its action is fundamentally reaction”(22). The slave morality therefore requires some sort of opposition within the world, which allows them to develop contrary beliefs. Nietzsche does not, however, champion this idea of the slave morality. In contrast, he says, “there is, in fact, too much nonchalance, too much levity, too much distraction…mixed up with this aristocratic contempt for it to be capable of transforming its object into a real caricature and monster” (23). The slave morality takes those who descend from nobility and make them the ‘bad’ within society. Unlike the nobility, which exist largely in a position of contentment, Nietzsche makes it clear that those in the lower classes with ressentiment have developed from the Greek words for ‘unhappy’ (23).

From this festering hatred come the differences between ‘bad’ and ‘evil.’ Because the perspectives of the parties involved shift, there are in fact two different examinations of ‘good’ at play, and We see that the nobleman’s ‘good’ is the ‘evil’ of the man filled with ressentiment. The nobleman, which Nietzsche refers to as a “blonde beast,” is the “hidden core [that] needs to be discharged from time to time, the animal…must return to the wilderness” (26). Inciting nature imagery, Nietzsche illuminates the difference between the slave morality and the nobleman; while the nobleman is dangerous and sometimes violent, the man filled with ressentiment is purely unexceptional. Every action of the man with ressentiment is in reaction to the nobleman. This slave morality, which seeks to define what is bad against the actions of the nobleman is innately mediocre. Nietzsche states, “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, acting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction imposed on the doing—the doing itself is everything” (29). Therefore, because the actions of those with the slave morality are reactionary, they are peripheral, boring, and unmotivated.

Discussion Question: Nietzsche says that, “a race of such men of ressentiment is bound in the end to become cleverer than any noble race” (24). Why do you think Nietzsche believes that the nature of the slave morality is worse than the ‘barbarian’ nature of the nobleman?

Predator and Prey: How Nietzsche Invalidates the Weak Man's World

One thing that was significant in today’s reading, which we also touched on in class of Friday, was the nature imagery that Nietzsche employs. I found the imagery regarding animals especially interesting. In all the examples, the animal uses its natural instincts in order to survive, which is opposite to the reasoning that weak men use to justify slave morality. In slave morality, men in a position of power decide that characteristics of those with less power are evil, and thus, they themselves are good. Nietzsche uses animal imagery to invalidate the world of weak men.

The major example of animal imagery was in section 13, where Nietzsche compares weak man to a lamb being preyed upon by a bird of prey. He writes:

“That lambs bear ill-will towards large birds of pretty is hardly strange: but is in itself no reason to blame large birds of prey for making off with little lambs” (29). The weak man resents its predator (which, in this metaphor, is a man who is good because he does not hide nor feel ashamed of his strength). However, objectively, the birds of prey are not being vindictive in their appetite, but rather following their natural instincts. Those natural instincts are to do whatever they have to in order to provide for their immediate needs. The weak man, however, does not follow his nature. Nietzsche then goes on to assert that the weak man maintains “no belief with greater intensity than that the strong may freely choose to be weak, and the bird of prey to be lamb—and so they win the right to blame the bird of prey for simply being a bird of prey” (30). In this quotation it is even clearer that the weak man is turning away from his nature and creates a world that is not based on intrinsic human characteristics. In this way, Nietzsche is showing that the weak man’s world is not valid.

            Nietzsche uses predator-prey animal images to assert that the world that weak men have created for themselves is invalid. He compares natural man to a predator, and contrasts that with the weak man who actively chooses to be the prey so he can blame the predator. By showing that weak men turn away from their natural state, Nietzsche invalidates the world of weak men.

Discussion Question: Although Nietzsche implies that the natural state is the one to which all men should belong, he also writes that in the wilderness, men “regress to the innocence of the predator’s conscience…capable of high spirits as they walk away without qualms from a horrific succession of murder, arson, violence, and torture” (26). How can you reconcile this quotation with the lamb-bird of prey imagery?