Nietzsche lays out the questions he is going to address in the preface. In the first treatise, he describes the genealogy, or historical evolution, of the moral concepts of “good” and “evil” out of their pre-moral predecessors, “good” and “bad.”
In the Preface, Nietzsche does a pretty good job of setting out the questions that he is going to address and giving us an idea of what his answers will be.
He says that his question is:
under what conditions did man invent those value judgments good and evil? and what value do they themselves have? Have they inhibited or furthered human flourishing up to now? Are they a sign of distress, of impoverishment, of the degeneration of life? Or, conversely, do they betray the fullness, the power, the will of life, its courage, its confidence, its future?” (Nietzsche 1998, Preface, §3, pp. 2-3)
He describes two intellectual foils, that is, thinkers whose works influenced his because he developed his opinions in opposition to theirs. There is the English psychologist Paul Rée (§4) and the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer seems to be particularly important. He “deified” and “made unworldly” the unegoistic values such as compassion and self-denial, leading him to say “no to life” (§5). Nietzsche clearly thinks of himself as taking the opposite position: he is dismissive of compassion and, implicitly, says “yes” to life.
He suggests where his inquiry will lead in §6. He says that “we need a critique of moral values, for once the value of these values must itself be called into question – and for this we need a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances out of which they have grown, under which they have developed and shifted” (§6, 5).
In other words, he believes we need a historical inquiry into the origin of our values in order to decide whether they are good for us or not. Needless to say, it is not obvious why. Isn’t it more direct to look at how they work now?
He also suggests that the answer will be “no.” But it is not clear if he means that moral values are bad for us now or for the future. At the end of §6, he suggests that it is easier for us to keep morality and its associated values than it is to get rid of them. But, he strongly suggests, this involves the present “living at the expense of the future,” because it prevents “a highest power and splendor of the human type” from coming into existence (§6, p. 5).
Obviously, we will have to see what he has in mind as the highest power and splendor of humanity and also why morality inhibits it. It also seems fair to wonder whether this is an argument that we, now, would find persuasive. If the idea is that our comfort comes at the expense of something else in the future that will be better than us, then, speaking for myself, I would probably prefer comfort to my own replacement. You would have to have a pretty good argument to talk me out of it.
We will have to see how it plays out. I am just flagging that as a question to keep in mind.
This is where notes on the first treatise should go. Alas, I did not have time to complete them before class.
One of Nietzsche’s themes is that morality, as we know it, is a historical novelty. Here is an illustration of his theme. This is from Thucydides, a fifth century BC Athenian whose history of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta is widely regarded as one of the first works of history.
Thucydides begins by with a history of Greece. It includes this celebrated observation about earlier societies whose members lived by piracy. Think of the world of Odysseus and the other characters from the Homeric epics. The italicized parts are the most important.
Minos was the earliest known figure we hear about to acquire a navy and he made himself master over most of what is now called the Hellenic Sea; he ruled over the Cyclades and was in most cases the first to found colonies in them, driving out the Carians and installing his own sons as governors. He probably also cleared piracy from the seas as far as he was able, to enable his revenues to get through to him more easily. For in earlier times the Greeks and those of the barbarians who lived on the coast of the mainland or on the islands turned to piracy as soon as the passage of ships between them built up. They were led in this by their most powerful men, who acted both for their own gain and to provide for the needy. They directed their attacks at cities that were unwalled and consisted of village settlements and raided these, making most of their living from this activity, which was not yet regarded as anything to be ashamed of but had a certain prestige. The same attitude is illustrated by some people on the mainland even today who glory in such exploits, and by the early poets who invariably ask the same question of those arriving anywhere by sea – whether they are pirates, the assumption being that neither would those questioned disavow the practice nor would those concerned to know the answer blame them for it. On the mainland too men raided each other, and even up to the present day many parts of Greece live by the old ways: the Ozolian Locrians, the Aeotolians, the Acarnanians and that part of the mainland generally. The habit of bearing arms in these mainland communities is a survival from the old practice of piracy. Indeed in the whole of Greece men used to go around armed, since their settlements were unprotected and travel between them was unsafe, and so they got used to carrying weapons in their everyday life, just as barbarians do. The parts of Greece that still live this way are an indication of practices once universal everywhere. (Thucydides 2013, bk. 1, pp. 5-6. Emphasis added.)
Piracy, on this telling, was ethically neutral; it was an occupation, like running a dry cleaning business. But the pirates also had a code of honor that they used to demarcate some things as good and others as bad. Here is what Thomas Hobbes made of Thucydides’s example.1
if there be no power erected, or not great enough for our security; every man will, and may lawfully rely on his own strength and art, for caution against all other men. And in all places, where men have lived by small families, to rob and spoil one another, has been a trade, and so far from being reputed against the law of nature, that the greater spoils they gained, the greater was their honour; and men observed no other laws therein, but the laws of honour; that is, to abstain from cruelty, leaving to men their lives, and instruments of husbandry. And as small families did then; so now do cities and kingdoms which are but greater families (for their own security) enlarge their dominions, upon all pretences of danger, and fear of invasion, or assistance that may be given to invaders, endeavour as much as they can, to subdue, or weaken their neighbours, by open force, and secret arts, for want of other caution, justly; and are remembered for it in after ages with honour. (Hobbes [1651] 1993, ch. 17)
As Hobbes notes, the codes of honor forbade cruelty; someone who had observed the Thirty Year’s War, as he had, might reasonably think that, in this respect, the archaic Greeks were ethically superior to modern Europeans. And the value placed on winning, that is, conquering others, is still held in high esteem, especially in the conduct of war and diplomacy.
Nietzsche styles himself as an immoralist. While it is not obvious exactly what he means, it is worth bearing in mind that he did not mean to deny that we should do many of the things that morality requires, and avoid many of the things that it forbids. Here are two passages from other works that make this point.
There are two kinds of deniers of morality. - ‘To deny morality’ – this can mean, first: to deny that the moral motives which men claim have inspired their actions really have done so – it is thus the assertion that morality consists in words and is among the coarser or more subtle deceptions (especially self-deceptions) which men practice, and is perhaps so especially in precisely the case of those most famed for virtue. Then it can mean: to deny that moral judgments are based on truths. Here it is admitted that they really are motives of action, but that in this way it is errors which, as the basis of all moral judgment impel men to their moral actions. This is my point of view: though I should be the last to deny that in very many cases there is some ground for suspicion that the other point of view … may also be justified and in any event of great general application. – Thus I deny morality as I deny alchemy, that is, I deny their premises: but I do not deny that there have been alchemists who believed in these premises and acted in accordance with them. – I also deny immorality: not that countless people feel themselves to be immoral, but there is any true reason so to feel. It goes without saying that I do not deny – unless I am a fool – that many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted, or that many called moral ought to be done and encouraged – but I think the one should be encouraged and the other avoided for other reasons than hitherto. We have to learn to think differently – in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently. (Nietzsche 1982, sec. 103, p. 103)
Here is my understanding of the previous paragraph. One way of “denying morality” is to accuse people of being hypocrites; they say they care about morality when really they do not. That is not Nietzsche’s project. Rather, he means to deny that there are any moral truths. Morality is like alchemy; people sincerely try to turn other metals into gold but they cannot succeed because the underlying theory is false. In the last third of the paragraph, he says that this does not mean he thinks there are no reasons for behaving morally. What it means is that he thinks the reasons for doing so are different from the ones given by morality. This would be a lot more compelling if he said what those reasons are; still, the point remains that he is not saying anything goes.
We immoralists! – This world that concerns us, in which we fear and love, this almost invisible and inaudible world of subtle commanding and subtle obeying, in every way a world of the “almost,” involved, captious, peaked, and tender – indeed, it is defended well against clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity. We have been spun into a severe yarn and shirt of duties and cannot get out of that – and in this we are “men of duty,” we too. Occasionally, that is true, we dance in our “chains” and between our “swords”; more often, that is no less true, we gnash our teeth and feel impatient with all the secret hardness of our destiny. But we can do what we like – the dolts and appearances speaks against us, saying “These are men without duty.” We always have the dolts and appearances against us. (Nietzsche 1966, sec. 226, pp. 154-155)
I do not understand most of this. But the bottom line is pretty clear. The people who accuse immoralists such as himself of rejecting all duties are dolts.