Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
Concluding remarks concerning the criticism of morality§401 Which values have been most valued hitherto. Morality as the leading value in all phases of philosophy (even with the Sceptics). Result: this world is no good, a “true world” must exist somewhere.
What is it that here determines the highest value? What, in sooth, is morality? The instinct of decadence; it is the exhausted and the disinherited who take their revenge in this way and play the masters —
Historical proof: philosophers have always been decadents and always in the pay of Nihilistic religions. The instinct of decadence appears as the will to power. The introduction of its system of means: its means arc absolutely immoral.
General aspect: the values that have been highest hitherto have been a special instance of the will to power; morality itself is a particular instance of immorality.
* * * Why the Antagonistic Values always succumbed.
How was this actually possible? Question: why did life and physiological well-constitution succumb everywhere? Why was there no affirmative philosophy, no affirmative religion?
The historical signs of such movements: the pagan religion. Dionysos versus the Christ. The Renaissance. Art.
The strong and the weak: the healthy and the sick; the exception and the rule. There is no doubt as to who is the stronger —
General view of history; Is man an exception in the history of life on this account? An objection to Darwinism. The means wherewith the weak succeed in ruling have become: instincts, “humanity”, “institutions”—.
The proof of this rule on the part of the weak is to be found in our political instincts, in our social values, in our arts and in our science.
* * * The instincts of decadence have become master of the instincts of ascending life –. The will to nonentity has prevailed over the will to life.
— Is this true? Is there not perhaps a stronger guarantee of life and of the species in this victory of the weak and the mediocre? Is it not perhaps only a means in the collective movement of life, a mere slackening of the pace, a protective measure against something even more dangerous?
— Suppose the strong were masters in all respects, even in valuing: let us try and think what their attitude would be towards illness, suffering and sacrifice! Self-contempt on the part of the weak would be the result: they would do their utmost to disappear and to extinguish their kind. And would this be desirable? Should we really like a world in which the subtlety, the consideration, the intellectuality, the plasticity in fact, the whole influence of the weak was lacking?
* * * We have seen two “wills to power” at war (in this special case we had a principle: that of agreeing with the one that has hitherto succumbed and of disagreeing with the one that has hitherto triumphed): we have recognised the “real world” as a “world of lies” and morality as a form of immorality. We do not say “the stronger is wrong”.
We have understood what it is that has determined the highest values hitherto and why the latter should have prevailed over the opposite value: it was numerically the stronger.
If we now purify the opposite value of the infection, the half-heartedness and the degeneration with which we identify it.
We restore Nature to the throne, free from moralic acid.