Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
It must suffice, however, from among the many leaders of this
revolt, to quote that clever but unbalanced German iconoclast,
Nietzsche. Typical of his doctrine is the following: [Footnote:
Genealogy of Morals (ed. Alex. Tille), Foreword, p. 9.] "Never until
now was there the least doubt or hesitation to set down the 'good'
man as of higher value than the 'evil' man-of higher value in the
sense of furtherance, utility, prosperity, as regards MAN in general
(the future of man included). What if the reverse were true? What if
in, the 'good' one also a symptom of decline were contained, and a
danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic by which the present might
live AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FUTURE? Perhaps more comfortably, less
dangerously, but also in humbler style- more meanly? So that just
morality were to blame, if a HIGHEST MIGHTINESS AND SPLENDOR of type
of man-possible in itself were never attained? And that, therefore,
morality itself would be the danger of dangers?"
The point of this tirade is that morality puts a wet blanket over
human powers; it is a bourgeois ideal, saving men, indeed, from
pain, but also robbing life of its picturesqueness and glory. Many
people frankly prefer "interesting" to "good" people; Nietzsche
generalizes this feeling. Morality is to him uninteresting, dull, a
code for slaves, for the clash of combat, the tang of cruelty and
lust, the tingle of unrestrained power. Every man for himself then,
and the Devil take the hindmost. Shocked as we are by this brutal
platform, there is something in it that appeals to the red blood and
adventurous spirit in us; after all, we are not far removed from the
savage, and the thought of a psalm-singing, tea-drinking, tamely
good world is abhorrent to the marrow of us. Stevenson, with his
delightfully irresponsible audacity, sighs for an occasional
"furlough from the moral law"; and there are times for most of us
when it seems as if we should choke and smother under the
everlasting "Thou shalt not!" But the daring rebel, the defiant
Titan, comes creeping back to the shelter of morality with a
headache or something worse, and discovers that his Promethean
boldness was but childish petulance; that it is futile and foolish
to try to escape the inexorable laws of human life. There are, in
fact, two adequate answers that can be made to the despiser of
morality:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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