Chapter 4 04 Morality as anti-nature

1 All passions have a phase when they are mere deadly forces, when they overwhelm their victims with the burden of ignorance—and then, much later, they marry the spirit and "sublime" themselves.Once upon a time men declared war on passion, and swore to exterminate it, because of its folly—all the old moral monsters asserted "il faut tuer les passions." The most famous formula for this is to be found in the New Testament's hilltop. The training, by the way, is there to look at things not at all from the heights. For example, there it says when applied to sexual matters: "If your eyes tease you maliciously, pluck them out. "Fortunately no Christian has ever acted like this. The annihilation of passions and desires merely to prevent their folly, and the unpleasant consequences of that folly, seems to us today to be nothing but an extreme folly. We no longer admire that Dentist who cured a toothache by pulling it out... On the other hand, it is clear that the idea of ​​a "sublimation of the passions" could not have been formed on the basis on which Christianity grew. It is well known that the earliest churches objected to "Intelligence" in defense of "spiritual poverty": how can it be expected to fight a war of reason against the passions? --The Church overcomes the passions with uncompromising excision: its strategies, its "cures" " is castration. It never asks: "How to sublimate, beautify, sanctify desire?" ”—which puts the focus of discipline on eradication in any age (eradicating sensibility, pride, dominance, possessiveness, revenge.)—but to destroy the passions at the root means to destroy life at the root: ecclesiastical practice It is the enemy of life...

-------- ①French: Passion must be killed. 2 The same means, excision, extirpation, are chosen by those who struggle with desire, whose will is too weak, too decayed, to measure itself; not necessarily a metaphor), some kind of ultimatum is needed, a gap between oneself and passion is required.Excessive means are necessary only for the decaying; weakness of will, or rather inability to respond to a stimulus, is itself but another form of decay.Fierce, mortal hostility to sensibility is always a thought-provoking symptom, from which one can surmise about the general state of the extreme man. —Besides, this animosity and hatred are at their height when such instincts are no longer strong enough to withstand the drastic treatment to drive out the "devil" in them.Let us recall the whole history of priests, philosophers, and artists: the worst words against the senses come not from the lips of the impotent, nor of the ascetic, but of the impotent, the obligatory. . . .

-------- ①French: penance. 3 The sublimation of sensibility is called love, and it is a great victory over Christianity.Another kind of victory is the sublimation of our enmity.This is a deep appreciation of the value of having an enemy, in short, actions and inferences against previous actions and inferences.The church in all ages has wanted to destroy its enemies; we amoralists and anti-Christians think that our interest lies in the existence of the church... Now, too, political hostility has been raised,--much wiser, Much more prudent, much more tolerant.Almost every political party understands that in order to preserve itself the opposition should have considerable strength; this applies to big politics.In particular a new creation, say a new state, needs enemies more than friends: in opposition it feels itself necessary, in opposition it becomes necessary... We treat the "enemy within" and No different, here too we sublimate enmity, here we realize its value.Only when a person is full of contradictions can he be productive; only when his soul is not tired and not greedy for ease can he be young forever... Nothing is more relevant to us than the previous desire for "soul tranquility", that Christian desire Out of place; nothing makes us less envious than a moral cow and a fat blessing of peace of conscience.Whoever gives up the fight has given up the great life... "Peace of soul" is doubtless a misconception on many occasions—something else which would not honestly name itself.To put it bluntly and without prejudice, there are instances where, for example, "peace of soul" can be a tender release of a rich animality into the moral (or religious) realm.Or it could be the beginning of weariness, the first shadows of evening, evening of all shades.It can also be a sign of humid air and warm south wind.It can also be unconscious gratitude (sometimes euphemistically called "fraternity") for good digestion.Or it could be the serenity of the convalescent, who relishes everything, anticipating... Or it could be the state that follows a violent gratification of our dominant passions, a rare satiety of comfort.It can also be the aging of our will, our appetites, our sins.It can also be laziness clothed in moral trappings, lured by vanity.Or it can be a definite state, even a terrible definite state, after the long tension and torment of a vague state, or it can be the expression of maturity and mastery of action, creation, labor, will, and calm breathing , is the "freedom of the will" that has been achieved... The Twilight of the Idol: Who Knows?Perhaps it is also just a kind of "peace of soul"...

4 - I make a principle.Every kind of naturalism in morality, that is, every kind of healthy morality, is governed by the instinct of life—any requirement of life is implemented with certain norms of "should" and "should not", the way of life Any obstacles and hostile things on the road are cleared by this.On the contrary, anti-natural morality, that is, almost every kind of morality that has been advocated, advocated, and advocated so far, is against the life instinct. They are covert or open and unscrupulous condemnation of the life instinct.Moreover, they claim that "God reads the heart", they deny life's deepest and highest desires, and make God its enemy... The saint who amuses God is a true eunuch... Where does "God's territory" begin, life begins where does it end...

5 If a man grasps the blasphemousness of such an opposition to life which has become almost sacrosanct in Christian morality, then, fortunately, he thus understands something else, namely I realized the futility, falseness, absurdity, and deceitfulness of such an objection.The condemnation of life by the living is in the last analysis only a symptom of a certain type of life, and the question of whether it is justified is not at all raised by it.One must have a foothold outside of life, and understand life in different ways, like one person, many people, and all people who have lived, in order to truly touch on the value of life.There are good reasons to suggest that this problem is beyond our reach.When we talk about value, we speak under the inspiration of life, under the optics of life; life itself compels us to establish value; The opposite concept of life and the moral anti-naturalness of condemning life are also a value judgment of life—what life?What kind of life? —I have already answered: a decay, a weak, weary, condemned life.Morality, as it has hitherto been understood, as it has recently been defined by Schopenhauer as "the negation of the will to life," is the decadent instinct itself which makes itself a categorical imperative, which says: "Destroy!"— It is the judgment of the condemned...

6 Finally, let us consider again how naive it is to say that people should be like this.Reality shows us a delightful abundance of types, extravagant play of forms and variations of form, while some poor narrow-minded moralist says: "No! Men ought to be otherwise."  … He even Knowing what man should be, the poor wretch and hypocrite, he painted a self-portrait on the wall and said: "ec-ce homo1... However, even if the moralist just says to someone: "You should be of! He also still makes himself ridiculous. The individual is a fragment of fatum, a link between the past and the future, a law, a necessity for all that has come and will be. To say to him "change yourself" means to demand that everything be To change, even backwards.... Yet there are some radical moralists who want man to be something else, that is, to be moral, who want him to follow their example, that is, to be a hypocrite, for which they deny This world! No petty insanity! No modest insolence!... Morality, which condemns not in the interest of life, but in itself, is a peculiar fallacy for which no sympathy is required, it is a a degenerate quality, which has wrought untold mischief! . . . We other beings, we amoralists, have instead opened our hearts to all kinds of understanding, apprehension, permission. We do not easily deny, we draw from Proud to be affirmative. We appreciate more and more that economics, which needs and makes good use of all that is abandoned by the holy ignorance and morbid rationality of the priests, and appreciates that economics in the law of life, which starts from hypocrites. , clergymen, virtuous men, etc., to gain their benefits from the ugliness—what benefits?—but we ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer here...  

-------- ①Latin: Look at this man! ② Latin: destiny