Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume SixNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume Six
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Human beings
instance society or the State, subdues the single individuals,.draws
them out of their singleness, and forms them into an association..
_Compulsion_ precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion
for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain. Later on
it becomes custom,--later still, free obedience, and finally almost
instinct,--then, like everything long accustomed and natural, it is
connected with pleasure--and is henceforth called _virtue_.
100.
SHAME.--Shame exists everywhere where there is a "mystery"; this,
however, is a religious idea, which was widely extended in the older
times of human civilisation. Everywhere were found bounded domains
to which access was forbidden by divine right, except under certain
conditions ; at first locally, as, for example, certain spots that
ought not to be trodden by the feet of the uninitiated, in the
neighbourhood of which these latter experienced horror and fear.
This feeling was a good deal carried over into other relations, for
instance, the sex relations, which, as a privilege and _ἃδoυτον_ of
riper years, had to be withheld from the knowledge of the young for
their advantage, relations for the protection and sanctification of
which many gods were invented and were set up as guardians in the
nuptial chamber. (In Turkish this room is on this account called harem,
"sanctuary," and is distinguished with the same name, therefore, that
is used for the entrance courts of the mosques.) Thus the kingdom is as
a centre from which radiate power and glory, to the subjects a mystery
full of secrecy and shame, of which many after-effects may still be
felt among nations which otherwise do not by any means belong to the
bashful type. Similarly, the whole world of inner conditions, the
so-called "soul," is still a mystery for all who are not philosophers,
after it has been looked upon for endless ages as of divine origin and
as worthy of divine intercourse; according to this it is an _ἃδoυτον_
and arouses shame.
101.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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