Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
III: General Remarks on Morality§297 The vestiges of the depreciation of Nature through moral transcendence: The value of disinterestedness, the cult of altruism; the belief in a reward in the play of natural consequences; the belief in “goodness” and in genius itself, as if the one, like the other, were the result of disinterestedness, the continuation of the Church’s sanction of the life of the citizen; the absolutely deliberate misunderstanding of history (education as a means towards moralisation) or pessimism in the attitude taken up towards history (the latter is just as much a result of the depreciation of Nature, as is that pseudo-justification of history, that refusal to see history as the pessimist sees it).