Civil Commotion

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
Concluding remarks concerning the criticism of morality

§400   The three assertions:

• All that is ignoble is the higher (the protest of the “vulgar man”).

• All that is contrary to Nature is higher (the protest of the physiologically malformed).

• All that is of average worth is higher (the protest of the herd, of the “mediocre”).

Thus in the history of morality a will to power finds expression, by means of which, either the slaves, the oppressed, the bungled and the malformed, those that suffer from themselves, or the mediocre, attempt to make those valuations prevail which favour their existence.

From a biological standpoint, therefore, the phenomenon Morality is highly suspicious. Up to the present, morality has developed at the cost of: the ruling classes and their specific instincts, the well constituted and beautiful natures, the independent and privileged classes in all respects.

Morality, then, is a sort of counter-movement opposing Nature’s endeavours to arrive at a higher type. Its effects are: mistrust of life in general (in so far as its tendencies are felt to be immoral), hostility towards the senses (inasmuch as the highest values are felt to be opposed to the higher instincts), Degeneration and self-destruction of “higher natures”, because it is precisely in them that the conflict becomes conscious.

Uhhh — what does this even mean? Or, more precisely, how is it possible that Piper could mean what he seems to mean?

After all, he is a Calvinist, and he teaches that to be born human is to be born guilty, radically depraved, utterly unfit to exist, and deserving of eternal torment. How is a lower view of humanity even possible?

Humanism, the chief rival to theism, generally denies the existence of supernatural beings, teaches that man is born tabula rasa — and capable of building a better world for all of us by the application of reason. That’s a lower view of humanity than Piper’s? Seriously?

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
Concluding remarks concerning the criticism of morality

§399   These are the things I demand of you however badly they may sound to your ears: that you subject moral valuations themselves to criticism. That you should put a stop to your instinctive moral impulse which in this case demands submission and not criticism with the question: “why precisely submission”? That this yearning for a “why” for a criticism of morality should not only be your present form of morality, but the sublimest of all moralities and an honour to yourselves and to the age you live in. That your honesty, your will, may give an account of itself and not deceive you: “why not”? Before what tribunal? The will not to let oneself be deceived is of different origin: a caution against being overpowered, exploited — one of life’s instincts of self-defence.

When cheap hucksters game each other you get … this.