Nietzsche Genealogy Analysis
1. Discuss the emergence of guilt in light of Nietzsche's analysis in the genealogy. You are expected to trace the sequence Nietzsche presents in describing the descent towards guilt.
Creditor and debtor relationship
"I have already let it out: in the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the very conception of a legal subject' and itself refers back to the basic forms of buying, selling, bartering, trade and traffic." (p.43 2nd essay) see pg 49 for more quotes
"Through punishment of the debtor, the creditor takes part in the rights of the masters: at least he, too, shares the elevated feeling of despising and maltreating someone as an inferior' or at least, when the actual power of punishment, …show more content…
of exacting punishment, is already transferred to the authorities', of seeing the debtor despised and maltreated." (p. 44-45 2nd essay)
We are being watched and judged constantly, we watch ourselves to make sure we are acting properly
Our absence of joy is because we feel guilt from wrong doings and if plagues us
In ancient times, they would concede to punishment and it would be over
These Germans made a memory for themselves with dreadful methods, in order to master their basic plebeian instincts and the brutal crudeness of the same: think of old German punishments such as stoning (- even the legend drops the millstone on a guilty person's head) ..With the aid of such images and procedures, man was eventually able to retain five or six I-don't-want-to's' in his memory, in connection with which a promise has been made, in order to enjoy the advantages of society and there you are!" (p. 42 2nd essay)
They weren't tormented mentally
"In the same way, it was here that the uncanny and perhaps inextricable link-up between the ideas of guilt and suffering' was first crouched together." (p.45 2nd essay)
Association with guilt and debt
" the main moral concept Schuld' (guilt') descends from the very material concept of Schulden' (debts')? Or that punishment, as retribution, evolved quite independently of any assumption about freedom or lack freedom of the will? (p. 43 2nd essay)
If a promise was made, you are in debt, you must pay it off one way or another
"will to power" it feels good to inflict pain on someone because you are dominating them.
" -the pleasure of having the right to exercise power over the powerless without a thought .the enjoyment of violating even a foretaste of higher rank Through punishment of the debtor, the creditor takes part in the rights of the masters: at least he, too, shares the elevated feeling of despising and maltreating someone as an inferior' or at least, when the actual power of punishment, of exacting punishment, is already transferred to the authorities', of seeing the debtor despised and maltreated." (p. 44-45 2nd essay)
"(meaning modern man, meaning us) revolts against a truly forceful realization of the degree to which cruelty is part of the festive joy of the ancient " (p.45 2nd essay)
Everyone wants power
"To see somebody suffer is nice, to make somebody suffer is even nicer that is a hard proposition, but an ancient, powerful, human-all-to-human proposition to which, by the way, even the apes might subscribe:" (p.46 2nd essay)
If I do you a favor, I have power over you which infers a debt.
Animal or man denies its instincts.
"by means of which the animal man' is finally taught to be ashamed of all his instincts." (p.47 2nd essay)
Nietzsche show that the words "good," "conscience," "guilt," and "justice," have changed through time.
Man's "Free will."
"Might it not be the case that the extremely foolhardy and fateful philosophical invention, first devised for Europe, of the free will', of man's absolute freedom to do good or evil, was chiefly thought up to justify the idea that the interest of the gods in man, in man's virtue, could never be exhausted?" (p.49 2nd essay)
2. Is guilt, as described in the second essay, similar to the notion of guilt described in the third essay? Are his arguments convincing? Yes? Why? No? Why?
2nd essay quotes
"In the same way, it was here that the uncanny and perhaps inextricable link-up between the ideas of guilt and suffering' was first crouched together." (p.45 2nd essay)
"The creditor' always becomes more humane as his wealth increases; finally, the amount of his wealth determines how much injury he can sustain without suffering from it. It is not impossible to imagine society so conscious of its power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury available to it that of letting its malefactors go unpunished." (p. 51 ch. 10 2nd essay)
"Punishment is supposed to have the value of arousing the feeling of guilt in the guilty party; in it, people look for the actual instrumentum of the mental reflex which we call bad conscience' or pang of conscience'. But by doing this, people are violating reality and psychology even as it is today:" (p. 58 ch. 14 2nd essay)
"If we just think about those centuries before the history of mankind, we can safely conclude that the evolution of a feeling of guilt was most strongly impeded through punishment." (p. 59 ch. 14 2nd essay)
"I look on bad conscience as a serious illness to which man was forced to succumb by the pressure of the most fundamental of all changes which he experienced, - that change whereby he finally found himself imprisoned within the confines of society and peace." (p.61 ch. 16 2nd essay)
"All instincts which are not discharged outwardly turn inwards this is what I call the internalization of man: with it there now evolves in man what will later be called his soul'." (p. 61 ch. 16 2nd essay)
See page 67, important
"We have here a sort of madness of the will showing itself in mental cruelty which is absolutely unparalleled: man's will to find himself guilty and condemned without hope of reprieve, his will to think of himself as punished, without the punishment ever measuring up to the crime, his will to infect and poison the fundamentals of things with the problem of punishment and guilt in order to cut himself off, once and for all, from the way out of this labyrinth of fixed ideas', this will to set up an ideal that of a holy God' -, in order to be palpably convinced of his own absolute worthlessness in the face of this ideal." (p.68 ch 22 2nd essay)
"For too long, man has viewed his natural inclinations with an evil eye', so that they finally cam to be intertwined with bad conscience' in him." (p. 70 ch 24 2nd essay)
Punishment quotes, see page 58
3rd essay quotes
3.
4. What is the role nature plays in Nietzsche's analysis of bad conscience? Does nature strengthen Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal? Yes? Why? No? Why?
"mercy; it remains, of course, the prerogative of the most powerful man" (p.52 ch. 10 2nd essay)
Quote page 59 2nd quote
"Bad conscience is a sickness, there is no point in denying it." (p. 64 ch. 19 2nd essay)
"Animosity, cruelty, the pleasure of pursuing, raiding, changing and destroying all this was pitted against the person who had such instincts: that is the origin of bad conscience'." (p. 61 ch. 16 2nd essay)
5. Does Nature undermine Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal? Yes? Why? No? Why?
"The proud realization of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the awareness of this rare freedom and power over himself and his destiny, has penetrated him to the depths and become an instinct, his dominant instinct: - what will he call his dominant instinct, assuming that he needs a word for it?
No doubt about the answer: this sovereign man calls it his conscience " (p. 40 2nd essay)
Modern view of morality brings us to bad conscience.'
"will nothingness rather than not will" "That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it need an aim - , and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will."
"Bad conscience" come to us as something bad, shameful.
" Every thing has its price: everything can be compensated for' the oldest, most naive canon of morals relating to justice, the beginning of all good naturedness', equity', all good will', all objectivity' on earth." (p. 50 ch. 8)
"That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it needs an aim -, and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will." (p.73 ch 1 3rd …show more content…
essay)
"We know what the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal are: poverty, humility, chastity: let us now look at the life of all great, productive, inventive spirits close up, for once all three will be found in them, to a certain degree, every time." (p.82 ch 8 3rd essay)
" for we experiment on ourselves in a way which we would never allow on animals, we merrily vivisect our souls out of curiosity: that is how much we care about the salvation' of the soul! Afterwards we heal ourselves: being ill is instructive, we do not doubt, more instructive than being well, - people who make us ill seem even more necessary for us today than any medicine men and saviours'." (p. 87 ch 9 3rd essay)
"All good things used to be bad things at one time; every original sin has turned into an original virtue." (p. 87 ch 9 3rd essay)
"For a long time, law' was a vetitum, a crime, a novelty; introduced with force, as a force to which man submitted, ashamed of himself." (p. 87 ch 9 3rd essay)
"Without a doubt: contemplation first appeared in the world in disguise, with an ambiguous appearance, an evil heart and often with an anxiety-filled head. All that was inactive, brooding and unwarlike in the instincts of contemplative men surrounded them with a deep mistrust for a long time: against which they had no other remedy than to arouse a pronounced fear of themselves." (p. 88 ch. 10 3rd essay)
" the ascetic ideal served the philosopher for a long time as outward appearance, an a pre-condition of existence." (p.
89 ch. 10 3rd essay)
"For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here an unparalleled ressentiment rules, that of an unfulfilled instinct and power-will which wants to be master, not over something in life, but over life itself and its deepest, strongest, most profound conditions." (p. 91 ch 11 3rd essay)
"Allow me to present the real state of affairs in contrast to this: the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life which uses every means to maintain itself and struggles for its existence; it indicates a partial physiological inhibition and exhaustion against which the deepest instincts of life, which have remained intact, continually struggle with new methods and inventions." (p. 93 ch 13 3rd essay)
"For man is more ill, uncertain, changeable and unstable than any other animal, without a doubt, - he is the sick animal." (p. 94 ch. 13 3rd
essay)
"Doubtless if they succeeded in shoving their own misery, in fact all misery, on to the conscience of the happy: so that the latter eventually start to be ashamed of their happiness and perhaps say to one another: It's a disgrace to be happy! There is too much misery!' .But there could be no greater or more disastrous misunderstanding than for the happy, the successful, those powerful in body and soul to begin to doubt their right to happiness in this way." (p. 96-97 ch. 14 3rd essay)
"He(the ascetic priest) brings ointments and balms with him, of course; but first he has to wound so that he can be the doctor; and whilst he soothes the pain caused by the wound, he poisons the wound at the same time for that is what he is best trained to do, this magician and tamer of predators, whose mere presence necessarily makes everything healthy, sick and everything sick, tame." (p. 98 ch. 15 3rd essay)
"we would immediately say: the priest is the direction-changer of ressentiment." (p. 99 ch. 15 3rd essay)
" I suffer: someone or other must be guilty' and every sick sheep thinks the same. But his Shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him, Quite right, my sheep! Somebody must be to blame: but you yourself are this somebody, you yourself alone are to blame for it, you yourself alone are to blame for yourself' " (p. 100 ch. 15 3rd essay)
" Guilt', sin', sinfulness', corruption', damnation' ..to give ressentiment a backwards direction .and in this way to exploit the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of self-discipline, self-surveillance and self-overcoming." (p. 100 ch. 16 3rd essay)
Creditor and debtor relationship
"I have already let it out: in the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the very conception of a legal subject' and itself refers back to the basic forms of buying, selling, bartering, trade and traffic." (p.43 2nd essay) see pg 49 for more quotes
"Through punishment of the debtor, the creditor takes part in the rights of the masters: at least he, too, shares the elevated feeling of despising and maltreating someone as an inferior' or at least, when the actual power of punishment, …show more content…
of exacting punishment, is already transferred to the authorities', of seeing the debtor despised and maltreated." (p. 44-45 2nd essay)
We are being watched and judged constantly, we watch ourselves to make sure we are acting properly
Our absence of joy is because we feel guilt from wrong doings and if plagues us
In ancient times, they would concede to punishment and it would be over
These Germans made a memory for themselves with dreadful methods, in order to master their basic plebeian instincts and the brutal crudeness of the same: think of old German punishments such as stoning (- even the legend drops the millstone on a guilty person's head) ..With the aid of such images and procedures, man was eventually able to retain five or six I-don't-want-to's' in his memory, in connection with which a promise has been made, in order to enjoy the advantages of society and there you are!" (p. 42 2nd essay)
They weren't tormented mentally
"In the same way, it was here that the uncanny and perhaps inextricable link-up between the ideas of guilt and suffering' was first crouched together." (p.45 2nd essay)
Association with guilt and debt
" the main moral concept Schuld' (guilt') descends from the very material concept of Schulden' (debts')? Or that punishment, as retribution, evolved quite independently of any assumption about freedom or lack freedom of the will? (p. 43 2nd essay)
If a promise was made, you are in debt, you must pay it off one way or another
"will to power" it feels good to inflict pain on someone because you are dominating them.
" -the pleasure of having the right to exercise power over the powerless without a thought .the enjoyment of violating even a foretaste of higher rank Through punishment of the debtor, the creditor takes part in the rights of the masters: at least he, too, shares the elevated feeling of despising and maltreating someone as an inferior' or at least, when the actual power of punishment, of exacting punishment, is already transferred to the authorities', of seeing the debtor despised and maltreated." (p. 44-45 2nd essay)
"(meaning modern man, meaning us) revolts against a truly forceful realization of the degree to which cruelty is part of the festive joy of the ancient " (p.45 2nd essay)
Everyone wants power
"To see somebody suffer is nice, to make somebody suffer is even nicer that is a hard proposition, but an ancient, powerful, human-all-to-human proposition to which, by the way, even the apes might subscribe:" (p.46 2nd essay)
If I do you a favor, I have power over you which infers a debt.
Animal or man denies its instincts.
"by means of which the animal man' is finally taught to be ashamed of all his instincts." (p.47 2nd essay)
Nietzsche show that the words "good," "conscience," "guilt," and "justice," have changed through time.
Man's "Free will."
"Might it not be the case that the extremely foolhardy and fateful philosophical invention, first devised for Europe, of the free will', of man's absolute freedom to do good or evil, was chiefly thought up to justify the idea that the interest of the gods in man, in man's virtue, could never be exhausted?" (p.49 2nd essay)
2. Is guilt, as described in the second essay, similar to the notion of guilt described in the third essay? Are his arguments convincing? Yes? Why? No? Why?
2nd essay quotes
"In the same way, it was here that the uncanny and perhaps inextricable link-up between the ideas of guilt and suffering' was first crouched together." (p.45 2nd essay)
"The creditor' always becomes more humane as his wealth increases; finally, the amount of his wealth determines how much injury he can sustain without suffering from it. It is not impossible to imagine society so conscious of its power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury available to it that of letting its malefactors go unpunished." (p. 51 ch. 10 2nd essay)
"Punishment is supposed to have the value of arousing the feeling of guilt in the guilty party; in it, people look for the actual instrumentum of the mental reflex which we call bad conscience' or pang of conscience'. But by doing this, people are violating reality and psychology even as it is today:" (p. 58 ch. 14 2nd essay)
"If we just think about those centuries before the history of mankind, we can safely conclude that the evolution of a feeling of guilt was most strongly impeded through punishment." (p. 59 ch. 14 2nd essay)
"I look on bad conscience as a serious illness to which man was forced to succumb by the pressure of the most fundamental of all changes which he experienced, - that change whereby he finally found himself imprisoned within the confines of society and peace." (p.61 ch. 16 2nd essay)
"All instincts which are not discharged outwardly turn inwards this is what I call the internalization of man: with it there now evolves in man what will later be called his soul'." (p. 61 ch. 16 2nd essay)
See page 67, important
"We have here a sort of madness of the will showing itself in mental cruelty which is absolutely unparalleled: man's will to find himself guilty and condemned without hope of reprieve, his will to think of himself as punished, without the punishment ever measuring up to the crime, his will to infect and poison the fundamentals of things with the problem of punishment and guilt in order to cut himself off, once and for all, from the way out of this labyrinth of fixed ideas', this will to set up an ideal that of a holy God' -, in order to be palpably convinced of his own absolute worthlessness in the face of this ideal." (p.68 ch 22 2nd essay)
"For too long, man has viewed his natural inclinations with an evil eye', so that they finally cam to be intertwined with bad conscience' in him." (p. 70 ch 24 2nd essay)
Punishment quotes, see page 58
3rd essay quotes
3.
4. What is the role nature plays in Nietzsche's analysis of bad conscience? Does nature strengthen Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal? Yes? Why? No? Why?
"mercy; it remains, of course, the prerogative of the most powerful man" (p.52 ch. 10 2nd essay)
Quote page 59 2nd quote
"Bad conscience is a sickness, there is no point in denying it." (p. 64 ch. 19 2nd essay)
"Animosity, cruelty, the pleasure of pursuing, raiding, changing and destroying all this was pitted against the person who had such instincts: that is the origin of bad conscience'." (p. 61 ch. 16 2nd essay)
5. Does Nature undermine Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal? Yes? Why? No? Why?
"The proud realization of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the awareness of this rare freedom and power over himself and his destiny, has penetrated him to the depths and become an instinct, his dominant instinct: - what will he call his dominant instinct, assuming that he needs a word for it?
No doubt about the answer: this sovereign man calls it his conscience " (p. 40 2nd essay)
Modern view of morality brings us to bad conscience.'
"will nothingness rather than not will" "That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it need an aim - , and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will."
"Bad conscience" come to us as something bad, shameful.
" Every thing has its price: everything can be compensated for' the oldest, most naive canon of morals relating to justice, the beginning of all good naturedness', equity', all good will', all objectivity' on earth." (p. 50 ch. 8)
"That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it needs an aim -, and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will." (p.73 ch 1 3rd …show more content…
essay)
"We know what the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal are: poverty, humility, chastity: let us now look at the life of all great, productive, inventive spirits close up, for once all three will be found in them, to a certain degree, every time." (p.82 ch 8 3rd essay)
" for we experiment on ourselves in a way which we would never allow on animals, we merrily vivisect our souls out of curiosity: that is how much we care about the salvation' of the soul! Afterwards we heal ourselves: being ill is instructive, we do not doubt, more instructive than being well, - people who make us ill seem even more necessary for us today than any medicine men and saviours'." (p. 87 ch 9 3rd essay)
"All good things used to be bad things at one time; every original sin has turned into an original virtue." (p. 87 ch 9 3rd essay)
"For a long time, law' was a vetitum, a crime, a novelty; introduced with force, as a force to which man submitted, ashamed of himself." (p. 87 ch 9 3rd essay)
"Without a doubt: contemplation first appeared in the world in disguise, with an ambiguous appearance, an evil heart and often with an anxiety-filled head. All that was inactive, brooding and unwarlike in the instincts of contemplative men surrounded them with a deep mistrust for a long time: against which they had no other remedy than to arouse a pronounced fear of themselves." (p. 88 ch. 10 3rd essay)
" the ascetic ideal served the philosopher for a long time as outward appearance, an a pre-condition of existence." (p.
89 ch. 10 3rd essay)
"For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here an unparalleled ressentiment rules, that of an unfulfilled instinct and power-will which wants to be master, not over something in life, but over life itself and its deepest, strongest, most profound conditions." (p. 91 ch 11 3rd essay)
"Allow me to present the real state of affairs in contrast to this: the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life which uses every means to maintain itself and struggles for its existence; it indicates a partial physiological inhibition and exhaustion against which the deepest instincts of life, which have remained intact, continually struggle with new methods and inventions." (p. 93 ch 13 3rd essay)
"For man is more ill, uncertain, changeable and unstable than any other animal, without a doubt, - he is the sick animal." (p. 94 ch. 13 3rd
essay)
"Doubtless if they succeeded in shoving their own misery, in fact all misery, on to the conscience of the happy: so that the latter eventually start to be ashamed of their happiness and perhaps say to one another: It's a disgrace to be happy! There is too much misery!' .But there could be no greater or more disastrous misunderstanding than for the happy, the successful, those powerful in body and soul to begin to doubt their right to happiness in this way." (p. 96-97 ch. 14 3rd essay)
"He(the ascetic priest) brings ointments and balms with him, of course; but first he has to wound so that he can be the doctor; and whilst he soothes the pain caused by the wound, he poisons the wound at the same time for that is what he is best trained to do, this magician and tamer of predators, whose mere presence necessarily makes everything healthy, sick and everything sick, tame." (p. 98 ch. 15 3rd essay)
"we would immediately say: the priest is the direction-changer of ressentiment." (p. 99 ch. 15 3rd essay)
" I suffer: someone or other must be guilty' and every sick sheep thinks the same. But his Shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him, Quite right, my sheep! Somebody must be to blame: but you yourself are this somebody, you yourself alone are to blame for it, you yourself alone are to blame for yourself' " (p. 100 ch. 15 3rd essay)
" Guilt', sin', sinfulness', corruption', damnation' ..to give ressentiment a backwards direction .and in this way to exploit the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of self-discipline, self-surveillance and self-overcoming." (p. 100 ch. 16 3rd essay)