Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: The Moral Ideal§353 A criticism of the good man. Honesty, dignity, dutifulness, justice, humanity, loyalty, uprightness, clean conscience … is it really supposed that, by means of these fine-sounding words, the qualities they stand for are approved and affirmed for their own sake? Or is it this, that qualities and states indifferent in themselves have merely been looked at in a light which lends them some value? Does the worth of these qualities lie in themselves, or in the use and advantages to which they lead (or to which they seem to lead, to which they are expected to lead)?
I naturally do not wish to imply that there is any opposition between the ego and its alter in the judgment: the question is, whether it is the results of these qualities, either in regard to him who possesses them or in regard to environment, society, “humanity”, which lend them their value; or whether they have a value in themselves —
In other words: is it utility which bids men condemn, combat and deny the opposite qualities (duplicity, falseness, perversity, lack of self-confidence, inhumanity)? Is the essence of such qualities condemned, or only their consequences? In other words: were it desirable that there should exist no men at all possessed of such qualities? In any case, this is believed –. But here lies the error, the shortsightedness, the monocularity of narrow egoism.
Expressed otherwise: would it be desirable to create circumstances in which the whole advantage would be on the side of the just so that all those with opposite natures and instincts would be discouraged and would slowly become extinct?
At bottom, this is a question of taste and of aesthetics: should we desire the most honourable types of men, that is to say, the greatest bores alone, to survive? the squares, the virtuous, the upright, the good-natured, the straightforward and the “blockheads”?
If one can imagine the total suppression of the huge number constituting the “others,” even the just man himself ceases from having a right to exist, he is, in fact, no longer necessary and in this way it is seen that coarse utility alone could have elevated such an insufferable virtue to a place of honour.
Desirability may lie precisely on the other side. It might be better to create conditions in which the “just man” would be reduced to the humble position of a “useful instrument” an “ideal herd animal”, or at best a herdsman: in short, conditions in which he would no longer stand in the highest sphere, which requires other qualities.