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
pleasure of emotion, which is the kind of pity that exists in tragedy,
and then, when it impels to action, as the pleasure of satisfaction
in the exercise of power. If, besides this, a suffering person is
very dear to us, we lift a sorrow from ourselves by the exercise of
sympathetic actions. Except by a few philosophers, pity has always been
placed very low in the scale of moral feelings, and rightly so.
104.
SELF-DEFENCE.--If self-defence is allowed to pass as moral, then almost
all manifestations of the so-called immoral egoism must also stand;
men injure, rob, or kill in order to preserve or defend themselves,
to prevent personal injury; they lie where cunning and dissimulation
are the right means of self-preservation. _Intentional injury,_ when
our existence or safety (preservation of our comfort) is concerned, is
conceded to be moral; the State itself injures, according to this point
of view, when it punishes. In unintentional injury, of course, there
can be nothing immoral, that is ruled by chance. Is there, then, a kind
of intentional injury where our existence or the preservation of our
comfort is _not_ concerned? Is there an injuring out of pure _malice,_
for instance in cruelty? If one does not know how much an action hurts,
it is no deed of malice; thus the child is not malicious towards the
animal, not evil; he examines and destroys it like a toy. But _do_ we
ever know entirely how an action hurts another? As far as our nervous
system extends we protect ourselves from pain; if it extended farther,
to our fellow-men, namely, we should do no one an injury (except in
such cases as we injure ourselves, where we cut ourselves for the
sake of cure, tire and exert ourselves for the sake of health). We
_conclude_ by analogy that something hurts somebody, and through memory
and the strength of imagination we may suffer from it ourselves. But
still what a difference there is between toothache and the pain (pity)
that the sight of toothache calls forth! Therefore, in injury out of
so-called malice the _degree_ of pain produced is always unknown to
us; but inasmuch as there is _pleasure_ in the action (the feeling of
one's own power, one's own strong excitement), the action is committed,
in order to preserve the comfort of the individual, and is regarded,
therefore, from a similar point of view as defence and falsehood in
necessity. No life without pleasure; the struggle for pleasure is the
struggle for life. Whether the individual so fights this fight that
men call him good, or so that they call him evil, is determined by the
measure and the constitution of his _intellect._
105.
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