Genealogy of Morals by the Great Moustache Guy - Some Help Needed

[Hubot]

I've been reading Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals lately and in order to understand it better I thought this might be the right place to start the discussion. This is my understanding of the first two parts of the book (part three will follow soonish). Here we go!

 

Part I

In the beginning, the ruling elite (i.e. slave masters) define good and bad. Originally they only refer to qualitative differences. Good is nothing more than someone / something better, higher, stronger than the average. In a similar way bad only means something low, weak and ugly – the plebs and the products of their work. No morality has been invented yet, might makes right – the nobility takes what they think naturally belongs to them in a similar way as wolves hunt elks. It is hardly a coincidence that most heraldic signs of the nobility have lions, eagles and bears in them.

Morality gets invented by the slave class as a survival mechanism for themselves: whatever the slaves must do in order to survive becomes a virtue. Since the slaves cannot openly be rebellious and keep the product of their own labour they define weakness, lack of courage and even obedience as virtues. In the slave morality 'good' means someone not like the slave masters, it defines good purely by negation of the 'noble' good. To describe slave masters in these new terms it uses the word 'bad'.

At the bottom of this morality is the feeling of resentment hiding in plain sight – instead of avenging masters in the real world, what the slave morality offers as medicine is the idea of the spiritual world after death, where a rightful judge will punish the slave masters for their sins and reward the slaves for their virtues. To propagate these ideas, you'll need a new class, the priests.

Part II – conscience and bad conscience

If I understood correctly Nietzsche thinks that the origin of conscience follows roughly this causal chain: Active forgetting → Active remembering → Being able to give and keep promises → Seeing every human transaction through the lenses of validity of promises to others and/or to yourself == conscience. Remembering with regard to promises is a manifestation of your own strong will to power (yearning for freedom) – you can only give promises if you believe you're strong enough to be able to keep them even in the face of accidents etc. Older societies needed to 'remind' people of the necessity of remembering with different forms of torture.

In order to understand bad conscience we need to grasp the origin of guilt. The most primitive form of agreement (promise) is the contract between the debtor and the creditor. Nietzsche claims that in the ancient world people enjoyed causing each other pain – usually this privilege was reserved for the masters, but even the plebs had sometimes this luxury. If your debtor was unable to pay you, you could demand your payment in pound of flesh – either as some organ of your debtor or as your debtors freedom all together (i.e. your debtor would become your slave).

In a similar way, tribes we're thought to be indebted to their ancestors (gods). Amount of debt would be directly proportional to success of the tribe. Therefore, to please the gods they would sacrifice cattle and even humans to their ancestors. Original sin ('Schuld' means both guilt and debt!!) is precisely this feeling of indebtedness to your forefathers. This is also the bad conscience people feel and religions – such as environmentalism and multiculturalism - utilize in order to keep the slaves in check; “polluting the Earth by existing” and “white guilt”. Christianity claims to solve this problem by sacrificing the God himself on a cross for the unpayable debts of mankind.

Bad conscience is formed once the human animal recognizes he cannot escape the society – his natural aggression and cruelty now turn inwards. Original sin would be one form in which this phenomenon manifests itself.

 

So what do you think? Did I miss something crucial here? Should I read 'Beyond Good and Evil' before I even start to tackle this book? One of the most important parts was the link between guilt and credit. Could this ancient moral link be the real cause why nobody has succeeded reinventing the money and making it popular - instead of it (credit money system that is) having been the monopoly of the governments for so long? Anyway, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

[RichardY]

@Hubot Yeah looks pretty accurate to what the Mustache guy said, thought I'd listen to an audiobook version. Sounded so comedic in nature, could have thought it was the other German Mustache guy at one point.

Do you agree with what Nietzsche said? Seemed to have a collective ego vibe going about the book. What use is morality if it is ultimately used to enforce social norms for the sake of the collective, even if the sum of those norms is destructive and life destroying. In opposition to a Schoppemhauer negation of the will.

[Hubot]

Part III – Ascetic Ideals

Practically speaking, ascetic ideals / virtues we're necessary conditions for the philosophers to exist in ancient societies. Firstly, they hid the philosophers' will to power by masking them as modest monks. Secondly, they forced the philosopher to concentrate on their affects to serve the “greater good”, i.e. truth in this case. Following these ideals – humility, poverty and purity – trains your will itself to be stronger (more cruel) even if the victim here will be yourself; your drifts to 'drink and dance'. In essence, following ascetic ideals means sublimating your natural drifts.

This estrangement from life's more primal drifts and wants is also necessary to keep the slaves in check. Slaves are weak individuals who cannot stomach their own shadow self – as a natural result of this sickness of theirs, they feel a lot of anger and resentment towards their masters. The priestly class rechannels this affect towards the individual himself (original sin etc.) - birth of masochism?

The belief in truth and especially the belief in the self-worth of truth is the latest and the most powerful manifestation of these ideals so far – the scientist separated the God from the truth in what the older generations would have considered as one entity. In doing so they think they are Christianity's greatest opponents even though they only follow the same exact virtues as earlier generations with the exception that now they don't have a justification for their search for truth and all the sacrifices they have to make during the process.

According to Nietzsche, there are only 'truths' with a perspective. The more perspectives we take into account, the more useful 'truth' we end up with. This is some of the weakest points of the book in my opinion. Does Nietzsche believe in this even himself when looking at his own actions? Is it even possible to act as a non-schizophrenic person without making these 'Christian assumptions' about the truth? I don't really know any objectivism apart from Galt's speech so I may not have the best weaponry against relativism – any help is greatly appreciated. 'To read Nietzsche as the devil reads the Bible' – the relativists only took this part of the book and made it their Trojan horse to feed us feminism, Marxism and other nonsense. The nihilists - which Nietzsche despised - might have made this chapter their own too.

One central thing I'm unable to grasp about the book is Nietzsche's view on free will or perhaps the existence of individual itself. On the one hand, he claims that the idea of a necessary subject is a result of human confusion about the reality which we still suffer from in our language (e.g. 'the force propagates') but on the other hand, he claims that we never truly lose our ability to will – rather that not to want anything we still want nothing. Our will to power is the essence of being a human.

 

@RichardY

Do I agree with Nietzsche then? When it comes to his explanation of the origins of the morality in part I and II: yes. I guess I don't even disagree with his point in part III about the belief in truth as the remanifestation of Christian, monk-like virtues in the service of science. Irrefutably I recognize myself as a masochistic (atheist) monk - albeit a lazy one at times. What I do disagree with is the assumption (?) that morality would be simply a matter of taste, pure aesthetics. Is there a book where F.N. tries to revalue the values or was he just planning to do that before he went insane?

[RichardY]

7 hours ago, Hubot said:

According to Nietzsche, there are only 'truths' with a perspective. The more perspectives we take into account, the more useful 'truth' we end up with. This is some of the weakest points of the book in my opinion. Does Nietzsche believe in this even himself when looking at his own actions? Is it even possible to act as a non-schizophrenic person without making these 'Christian assumptions' about the truth? I don't really know any objectivism apart from Galt's speech so I may not have the best weaponry against relativism – any help is greatly appreciated. 'To read Nietzsche as the devil reads the Bible' – the relativists only took this part of the book and made it their Trojan horse to feed us feminism, Marxism and other nonsense. The nihilists - which Nietzsche despised - might have made this chapter their own too.

I noticed the plural truths. I mean you can not logically say there is no such thing as (absolute) truth. The problem I see with objectivism is it emphasise an ideal objective self, that only exists as an intellectual idea. So while say a perfect circle exists as an absolute truth in the mind due to uncertainty, in phyisical reality it would perhaps be like altering a bitmap image in MS Paint.

7 hours ago, Hubot said:

One central thing I'm unable to grasp about the book is Nietzsche's view on free will or perhaps the existence of individual itself. On the one hand, he claims that the idea of a necessary subject is a result of human confusion about the reality which we still suffer from in our language (e.g. 'the force propagates') but on the other hand, he claims that we never truly lose our ability to will – rather that not to want anything we still want nothing. Our will to power is the essence of being a human.

I think his view on freewill is similar to mine, that freewill exists as a potentiality and not an actuality. There is a quote by Schopenhauer "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." The best therefore man can do is then either to cultivate his "Will" with "potential" future foresight or say no to the intial impulse to action as it develops. For Nietzsche the man with freewill, is one who dares to promise and means it.

The priest is someone who has lost his faith in humanity and instead turns his faith to God, his will to nothingness or Nihlism. Which Nietzsche thinks, is ultimately a lie. The main reason Nietzsche thinks Christianity is doomed as instead of God being the affirmation of a singular unitary Good, God is instead closer to Hinduism or Buddhism and the negation of everything. However if God did exist being a singular unitary being would have positive aspects for a freewill in so far as man is a conflicted being. The affirmation of the universal Good and the setting of limits having some benefits to civilization.

7 hours ago, Hubot said:

 

@RichardYDo I agree with Nietzsche then? When it comes to his explanation of the origins of the morality in part I and II: yes. I guess I don't even disagree with his point in part III about the belief in truth as the remanifestation of Christian, monk-like virtues in the service of science. Irrefutably I recognize myself as a masochistic (atheist) monk - albeit a lazy one at times. What I do disagree with is the assumption (?) that morality would be simply a matter of taste, pure aesthetics. Is there a book where F.N. tries to revalue the values or was he just planning to do that before he went insane?

Nietzsche's "transvaluation" of values, so something like patience, is a vice according to Nietszche, one could be doing something productive in society. So turn the other cheek, is a reflection of weakness rather then strength. Although if a person could truly forgive people, that would be a reflection of strength according to Nietzsche as you would no longer resent them or resist some aspect of the personality. 

I don't think Nietszche's point was morality is a matter of aesthetics, more  a herd instinct, a way of constructing a collective consciousness functioning together for the betterment of the immediate collective, as opposed to the advancement of the species or development of the individual as part of society. 

Jermiah 13
23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
24 Therefore will I scatter them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness.

"In the Birth of Trajedy" Nietzsche talks about two fundamental concepts to him. The Apollonian(Rationality) & The Dioynsian (Arationality). Nietzsche, unlike Schopenhauer does not see the Will as irrational. Instead he see the Dioynsian as the fundamental expression of truth. Saying a clap of thunder, is merely an abstract repetition of an event, not the event itself. So although events maybe recorded, the direct spontaneous experience is a greater expression of truth, due to "the Dioynsian". The point I think is for an individual to advance himself or others he has to be more than rational.

For instance I remember Stefan talking about Socrates as a concern troll that "He knows that they have nothing under the kimono, but he's still asking them for underwear." Socrates, someone who was rational, but whose motives are opaque and according to Nietzsche destructive. Nietzsche does not agree with the Reason= Virtue = Happiness. Equation.