The Genealogy of Morals (book)

🔗Connect

🔼Topic:: Ethics (MOC)

✒️ Note-Making

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. Envy is a useful tool, resentment is not - Don't resent the powerful, it is the same as blaming a lion for being a predator. Rather, envy them, mimic there behavior, overcome your weakness and fulfill your will to power.
2. The slave morality causes self punishment - nowadays, the tables have turned against the strong. The power of numbers with the help of religion and the state have turned compassion and weakness to virtues, while strength and tenacity are vices. We learned to view ourselves, and specifically our animalistic nature which is the source of our transcendence as a vice, something that deserves to be punished for for eternity. While on the contrary, vice can often be a force for transcendence, usually by removing that which doesn't work or belongs to this world, and make room for something better

🗒️Relate

⛓ Life lessons, action items

🔍Critique

✅ by following this method, what will happen?

1. Free from bounds of slave morality - you will no longer bow down to ideologies that tries to hold you back and punish you endlessly for your sins
2. reevaluate good and bad - things that are considered "bad" can also be useful tools for your transcendence, your fulfillment of your will to power. You will outgrow these problematic binary concepts of good and bad and will become something bigger than that.

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are... What might be true at the individual level is very hard to implement at the societal level. How would we operate without the concept of punishment, and utility as a way to measure hard done? What would remain if we throw away the slave morality, what would guide us away from nihilism?

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... In contrast with previous versions, this is an actual "textbook", which much less of his prose/ prophet style of writings, which enables to understand much better his concepts and ideas.

📒 Notes

Preface

we have never stopped to question morality itself. Why certain traits, like pity, are considered "good". We took it for granted. a "good" person was judged as of a higher quality than a "bad" person, without considering what negative effects those judgements can have on human development, unity and prosperity. Judgment

Preface

• Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, for of us holds good to all eternity the motto, “Each one is the farthest away from himself”—as far as ourselves are concerned we are not “knowers.” (Location 118)
• with the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our thoughts, our values, our Yes’s and No’s and If ’s and Whether’s, grow connected and interrelated, mutual witnesses of one will, (Location 131)
• Under what conditions did Man invent for himself those judgments of values, “Good” and “Evil”? And what intrinsic value do they possess in themselves? Have they up to the present hindered or advanced human well-being? Are they a symptom of the distress, impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? (Location 146)
• realised that the morality of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our modern European civilisation; (Location 182)
• we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values is for the first time to be called into question—and for this purpose a knowledge is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution and their distortion (Location 192)
• The value of these “values” was taken for granted as an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in judging the “good man” to be of a higher value than the “evil man,” of a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, and prosperity (Location 196)

Essay 1 - Good and Evil, Bad and Good

A common misconception is that "good", aka altruistic acts have an objective "goodness" in them. Naturalism However, the "good" is a social construct, created by the elites, which wanted to associate themselves with the good, the useful Soft power. It is with the power of language and hierarchy that the "goodness" of "good" act was imbued within them, rather than existing inherently, and as with any class conflict, by creating the good we have also created and defined it's opposite, the "bad".

With time, we saw the rise of the "slave moral", the values which have revolted against the ruling class. This moral is not positively defined, as the aristocrats who tied their values to "good", the slaves only rejected any other moral, defining themselves through the negation. Binary Thinking

Our downfall was when we called this movement of resisting the strong as "tools of civilization", of progress, when we actually accepted and justified mediocrity, our urge to resist the strong is in fact the abandonment a tool for overcoming, the Will to Power, of building a strong, resilient personality. This resentment against the strong is misguided, because it is in the nature (the essence) of the strong (and should be in all of us) to pursue the expansion of it's power, to evolve, like a lion pursuing it's pray. By resenting strength we support weakness, we define it as "good", we deceive ourselves.. Instead we should use this emotion of Jealousy as an engine to drive ourselves to become more Emotional Aikido.

“GOOD AND EVIL,” “GOOD AND BAD”

• “Man had originally,” so speaks their decree, “praised and called ‘good’ altruistic acts from the standpoint of those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were useful; subsequently the origin of this praise was forgotten, and altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were praised as good, came also to be felt as good—as though they contained in themselves some intrinsic goodness.” (Location 260)
• Much rather has it been the good themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that their actions were good, (Location 268)
• It was out of this pathos of distance that they first arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to coin the names of such values: (Location 270)
• The pathos of nobility and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic esprit de corps and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into association with a meaner race, an “under race,” this is the origin of the antithesis of good and bad. (Location 275)
• it is permissible to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the masters: they say “this is that, and that,” they seal finally every object and every event with a sound, and thereby at the same time take possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word “good” is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, (Location 277)
• According to this theory, “good” is the attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so is able to claim to be considered “valuable in the highest degree,” “valuable in itself.” This method of explanation is also, as I have said, wrong, (Location 295)
• Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, (Location 346)
• While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says “no” from the very outset to what is “outside itself,” “different from itself,” and “not itself”: and this “no” is its creative deed. This volte-face of the valuing standpoint—this (Location 433)
• These “tools of civilisation” are a disgrace to humanity, and constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation, more of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. (Location 528)
• it is that the “tame man,” the wretched mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a “higher man”; (Location 533)
• in the dwarfing and levelling of the European man lurks our greatest peril, for it is this outlook which fatigues—we see to-day nothing which wishes to be greater, (Location 546)
• To require of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require of weakness that it should express itself as strength. (Location 557)
• The subject (or, to use popular language, the soul) has perhaps proved itself the best dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as freedom, of being this, or being that, as merit. (Location 582)

Essay 2 - Guilt and Bad Conscience

Only the strong can make promises, because only the strong has the will to do as he promised despite all difficulties that might arise, to be confident in his future self to uphold his word. Self-control. That's why the strong man should be wary to make promises, because they limit himself and his ability to change and grow should he desire to do so. In this context, we should value "forgetfulness", which is our ability to discard the old to make room for the new, the better. Creative Destruction

The concept of punishment was never about responsibility of the wrong doer, but rather just the desire for revenge by the hurt party. It is the law system which combined together in an unnatural way the concepts of "evil" or "crime" to responsibility and morality.

The origin of this transformation was the perception of live as something that can be quantified, assed, as if "Utility" is an integral part of the world. This lead to three things:

1. Everything has a price - every action, every crime, can now be weighted and quantified the level of damage done, which means we can describe a fitting punishment that would repay that amount. Commodification
2. Humans as "econs" - people can be perceived as "creditors" and "debtors", all human interaction has an "economical" aspect to it. For example, a person who harms someone is a "debtor", he has to "repay" for his actions, while a good person is he who "gives" to others, where the highest level is that of compassion, of philanthropy, where one gives without expecting return, a "debt free giving". Giving homo economicus
3. Equality - if all life, all utility, is something that can be quantified and exchanged, then there is no difference between people, we are all bearers of that utility in an equal way, and therefore should be treated equally.

This has caused the justice system to detach itself from the personal conflict between people, and see it as a "contract violation". The hurt party can no longer express his revenge, he is no longer entitled to act freely, but rather it is now the state who is hurt, and it is responsible for measuring and executing the punishment. We have converted Anger and Justice, into resentment and commodification, which means converting "man" into a lesser form.

Punishment is an act against a case where a negative utility occurred, someone has been damaged. However, not all cases of damage are "bad". As with evolutionary systems, things have to be destroyed in order to make place for the "better". Protecting the individuals can come at a cost of damaging the whole, preventing it's ability to grow and fulfill it's will to power.

Punishment has so many different purposes, this is a social construct which continues to develop and change over time, but one thing is certain is that it doesn't make the "wrong doer" better, only tame him to not error again.

This process of taming is the cause of the "bad conscience", aka the slave morality. It is through the brutal actions of large organizations like state and religion that man is no longer free, his animal nature subdued, and it has been tamed for the "betterment" of the state, but not of himself. He lost his freedom and his will to power. Only through taming values such as altruism can be coerced to be perceived as "good". Social Contract

In this process of taming, the individual has "learned" to view himself, and all his natural instincts as bad, as sinful, and that he deserves punishment. While the one who needs to punish him, god, has risen to the level of purity, of transcendence, of the ultimate good, which means that the person would never be free of his debt, forever will he have to punish himself, to continue to limit and surrender himself to god, to turn him into an object, a simple low-life tool. Objectivity

“GUILT,” “BAD CONSCIENCE,” AND THE LIKE

• there can exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real present, without forgetfulness. (Location 724)
• every one who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, (Location 754)
• Throughout the longest period of human history punishment was never based on the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action, and was consequently not based on the hypothesis that only the guilty should be punished;—on the contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days for the same reason that parents punish their children even nowadays, out of anger at an injury that they have suffered, (Location 809)
• “everything has its price, all can be paid for,” the oldest and most naïve moral canon of justice, the beginning of all “kindness,” of all “equity,” of all “goodwill,” of all “objectivity” in the world. Justice in this initial phase is the goodwill among people of about equal power to come to terms with each other, to come to an understanding again by means of a settlement, and with regard to the less powerful, to compel them to agree among themselves to a settlement. (Location 930)
• The criminal is an “ower” who not only fails to repay the advances and advantages that have been given to him, but even sets out to attack his creditor: consequently he is in the future not only, as is fair, deprived of all these advantages and amenities—he is in addition reminded of the importance of those advantages. (Location 943)
• A legal organisation, conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a weapon in a fight of complexes of power, but as a weapon against fighting, generally something after the style of Dühring’s communistic model of treating every will as equal with every other will, would be a principle hostile to life, a destroyer and dissolver of man, an outrage on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a secret cut to Nothingness.— (Location 1015)
• all ends and all utilities are only signs that a Will to Power has mastered a less powerful force, has impressed thereon out of its own self the meaning of a function; and the whole history of a “Thing,” an organ, a custom, can on the same principle be regarded as a continuous “sign-chain” of perpetually new interpretations and adjustments, (Location 1034)
• even partial loss of utility, decay, and degeneration, loss of function and purpose, in a word, death, appertain to the conditions of the genuine progressus; which always appears in the shape of a will and way to greater power, and is always realised at the expense of innumerable smaller powers. (Location 1044)
• The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires: so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him “better”—it (Location 1131)
• this is the origin of the “bad conscience.” It was man, who, lacking external enemies and obstacles, and imprisoned as he was in the oppressive narrowness and monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted, gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; (Location 1153)
• it is only the bad conscience, only the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the existence of altruism as a value. (Location 1203)
• This is a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty which is absolutely unparalleled:—man’s will to find himself guilty and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, (Location 1279)