The Genealogy of Morals: The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Genealogy of Morals: The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Nietzsche · en
and recognises nothing but the standpoint of the injured party. From
henceforth the eye becomes trained to a more and more _impersonal_
valuation of the deed, even the eye of the injured party himself
(though this is in the final stage of all, as has been previously
remarked)--on this principle "right" and "wrong" first manifest
themselves after the foundation of law (and not, as Dühring maintains,
only after the act of violation). To talk of intrinsic right and
intrinsic wrong is absolutely non-sensical; intrinsically, an injury,
an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong,
inasmuch as life is _essentially_ (that is, in its cardinal functions)
something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and
annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character.
It is necessary to make an even more serious confession:--viewed from
the most advanced biological standpoint, conditions of legality can be
only _exceptional conditions_, in that they are partial restrictions
of the real life-will, which makes for power, and in that they are
subordinated to the life-will's general end as particular means,
that is, as means to create _larger_ units of strength. A legal
organisation, conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a weapon
in a fight of complexes of power, but as a weapon _against_ fighting,
generally something after the style of Dühring's communistic model
of treating every will as equal with every other will, would be a
principle _hostile to life_, a destroyer and dissolver of man, an
outrage on the future of man, a symptom of fatigue, a secret cut to
Nothingness.--
12.