The Genealogy of Morals: The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Genealogy of Morals: The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Ethics
heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in
the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and
meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable
of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a
shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is
only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing,
of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real
"_love_ of one's enemies." What respect for his enemies is found,
forsooth, in an aristocratic man--and such a reverence is already
a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his
distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character
there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand,
imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him--and it is here
exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the
evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from
which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good
one," himself--his very self!
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The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic
man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight
away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then
creates for himself a concept of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic
origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred--the
former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter,
on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in
the conception of a slave-morality--these two words "bad" and "evil,"
how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they
have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea "good" is
not the same: much rather let the question be asked, "Who is really
evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In
all sternness let it be answered thus:--_just_ the good man of the
other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who
rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness,
into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This
particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to
know those "good" ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not
to know them only as "_evil enemies_" and the same men who _inter
pares_ were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect,
custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance
and jealousy _inter pares_, these men who in their relations with
each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration,
self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men
are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign
element, a _foreign_ country, begins), not much better than beasts
of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from
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