Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
III: General Remarks on Morality§289 Play-acting regarded as the result of “Free Will” morality. It is a step in the development of the feeling of power itself, to believe one’s self to be the author of one’s exalted moments (of one’s perfection) and to have willed them —
(Criticism: all perfect action is unconscious and no longer subject to will; consciousness is often the expression of an imperfect and often morbid constitution. Personal perfection regarded as determined by will, as an act of consciousness, as reasoning with dialectics, is a caricature, a sort of self-contradiction –. Any degree of consciousness renders perfection impossible — A form of play-acting).