Chapter 2 Chapter 01 "Good and Evil", "Good and Bad" (2)

Hats off, then, to the good folk who want to dominate these moral historians!It is a pity that the spirit of history itself must have turned its back on these moral historians, and it is precisely all the good people in history who have themselves abandoned them to their hardships!There can be no doubt that they all follow the old custom of philosophers and think largely without the historical method.Their genealogy of morality reveals its clumsiness right from the moment it sets out to investigate the origins of "good" ideas and judgments.They declare, "In the beginning, unselfish actions were approved of and called good by those to whom they were directed, that is, by those who benefited from them; later the origin of this approval was forgotten, and unselfish actions Since they are habitually praised as good, they are simply felt as good—as if they were something good in themselves.” We immediately see that in this first quotation already contains All the typical features of the specificity of the British psychologist.We have seen "beneficial," "forgetting," "habit," and finally error, all of which have been taken as grounds for respectability, and even pride of the hitherto nobler people.Like taking pride in a human artistic privilege.This pride should be humiliated, this respect should be devalued: has the purpose been achieved? ... I now see clearly that this theory is looking for and identifying the origin of the concept of "good" in the wrong place: the judgment of "good" does not come from those who benefit from "good deeds"!Actually it originates from the "good people" themselves, that is to say those who are noble, powerful, upper class, noble people judge themselves and their actions to be good, that is to say they feel and are sure of themselves and their actions It is superior, and it is used against all low, base, mediocre and vulgar.From this fanaticism of keeping a distance, they have obtained the right to create value and give value a name: what does this have to do with utility!The utilitarian point of view is just so alien and so inappropriate for the expression of passion for the maintenance of the highest hierarchical order, for the passionate expression of value-judgments that stand out from the hierarchy: just now there arises the antithetical feeling of that humble passion, which owes everything to Calculus presupposes every utilitarian calculation—and more than once, not in special cases, but permanently.Noble and distanced fanaticism, that persistent, dominating whole and basic feeling of what we have said is the superior, ruling art, in relation to a lower art, a "lower man"—that is " The origin of the opposition between good and bad. (Masters have the right to give names, which means that people can understand the source of language as an expression of the ruler's authority: they say, "What is this, what is that"; they brand everything and everything with their voice , and in this way appropriate it immediately.) From this origin - the word "good" was not at all necessary in the first place to be associated with "unselfish" behavior: it is the moral genealogists prejudice.In fact, this general opposition of "selfishness" and "unselfishness" was more and more imposed on the conscience of men only when the value judgments of the aristocracy were on the wane—the instinct of crowds, to use my words, finally found its way in words ( And in the words of the majority) was articulated.It will take a long time afterwards before this instinct becomes master among the masses, forms a judgment of moral worth, and falls into the above-mentioned antithesis (this is the present situation in Europe: today the dominant Prejudice, prejudice is being regarded as a concept equivalent to "morality", "selfishness" and "fairness", and it already has a "fixed idea" and the unique power of brain disease).