Part 21

To what extent psychologists have been corrupted by the moral idiosyncrasy!--Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage to advance the theory of the non-free will (that is to say, the theory that denies morality);--not one had the courage to identify the typical feature of happiness, of every kind of happiness "pleasure"), with the will to power: for the pleasure of power was considered immoral;--not one had the courage to regard virtue as a _result of immorality_ (as a result of a will to power) in the service of a species (or of a race, or of a _polis_); for the will to power was considered immoral.

In the whole of moral evolution, there is no sign of truth: all the conceptual elements which come into play are fictions; all the psychological tenets are false; all the forms of logic employed in this department of prevarication are sophisms. The chief feature of all moral philosophers is their total lack of intellectual cleanliness and self-control: they regard "fine feelings" as arguments: their heaving breasts seem to them the bellows of godliness.... Moral philosophy is the most suspicious period in the history of the human intellect.

The first great example: in the name of morality and under its patronage, a great wrong was committed, which as a matter of fact was in every respect an act of decadence. Sufficient stress cannot be laid upon this fact, that the great Greek philosophers not only represented the decadence of _every kind of Greek ability_, but also made it _contagious_.... This "virtue" made wholly abstract was the highest form of seduction; to make oneself abstract means to turn one's back on the world.

The moment is a very remarkable one: the Sophists are within sight of the first _criticism of morality,_ the first _knowledge_ of morality:--they classify the majority of moral valuations (in view of their dependence upon local conditions) together;--they lead one to understand that every form of morality is capable of being upheld dialectically: that is to say, they guessed that all the fundamental principles of a morality must be _sophistical_--a proposition which was afterwards proved in the grandest possible style by the ancient philosophers from Plato onwards (up to Kant);--they postulate the primary truth that there is no such thing as a "moral _per se_," a "good _per se_," and that it is madness to talk of "truth" in this respect.

Wherever was _intellectual uprightness_ to be found in those days?

The Greek culture of the Sophists had grown out of all the Greek instincts; it belongs to the culture of the age of Pericles as necessarily as Plato does not: it has its predecessors in Heraclitus, Democritus, and in the scientific types of the old philosophy; it finds expression in the elevated culture of Thucydides, for instance. And--it has ultimately shown itself to be right: every step in the science of epistemology and morality has _confirmed the attitude_ of the Sophists.... Our modern attitude of mind is, to a great extent, Heraclitean, Democritean, and Protagorean ... to say that it is _Protagorean_ is even sufficient: because Protagoras was in himself a synthesis of the two men Heraclitus and Democritus.

(_Plato_: a _great Cagliostro,_--let us think of how Epicurus judged him; how Timon, Pyrrho's friend, judged him----Is Plato's integrity by any chance beyond question?... But we at least know what he wished to have _taught_ as absolute truth--namely, things which were to him not even relative truths: the separate and immortal life of "souls.")

429.

The _Sophists_ are nothing more, nor less than realists: they elevate all the values and practices which are common property to the rank of values--they have the courage, peculiar to all strong intellects, which consists in _knowing_ their immorality....

Is it to be supposed that these small Greek independent republics, so filled with rage and envy that they would fain have devoured each other, were led by principles of humanity and honesty? Is Thucydides by any chance reproached with the words he puts into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when they were treating with the Melii anent the question of destruction or submission? Only the most perfect Tartuffes could have been able to speak of virtue in the midst of that dreadful strain--or if not Tartuffes, at least _detached philosophers,_ anchorites, exiles, and fleers from reality.... All of them, people who denied things in order to be able to exist.

The Sophists were Greeks: when Socrates and Plato adopted the cause of virtue and justice, they were _Jews_ or I know not what. _Grote's_ tactics in the defence of the Sophists are false: he would like to raise them to the rank of men of honour and moralisers--but it was their honour not to indulge in any humbug with grand words and virtues.

430.

The great reasonableness underlying all moral education lay in the fact that it always attempted to attain to _the certainty of an instinct_: so that neither good intentions nor good means, as such, first required to enter consciousness. Just as the soldier learns his exercises, so should man learn how to act in life. In truth this unconsciousness belongs to every kind of perfection: even the mathematician carries out his calculations unconsciously....

What, then, does Socrates' _reaction_ mean, which recommended dialectics as the way to virtue, and which was charmed when morality was unable to justify itself logically? But this is precisely what proves its _superiority_--without unconsciousness _it is worth nothing_!

In reality it means _the dissolution of Greek instincts,_ when _demonstrability_ is posited as the first condition of personal excellence in virtue. All these great "men of virtue" and of words are themselves types of dissolution.

In practice, it means that moral judgments have been torn from the conditions among which they grew and in which alone they had some sense, from their Greek and Græco-political soil, in order to be _denaturalised_ under the cover of being _made sublime._ The great concepts "good" and "just" are divorced from the first principles of which they form a part, and, as "ideas" _become free,_ degenerate into subjects for discussion. A certain truth is sought behind them; they are regarded as entities or as symbols of entities: a world is _invented_ where they are "at home," and from which they are supposed to hail.

_In short_: the scandal reaches its apotheosis in Plato.... And then it was necessary to invent the _perfectly abstract_ man also:--good, just, wise, and a dialectician to boot--in short, the _scarecrow_ of the ancient philosopher: a plant without any soil whatsoever; a human race devoid of all definite ruling instincts; a virtue which "justifies" itself with reasons. The perfectly absurd "individual" _per se_! the highest form of _Artificiality...._

Briefly, the denaturalisation of moral values resulted in the creation of a degenerate _type of man_--"the good man," "the happy man," "the wise man."--Socrates represents a moment of the most _profound perversity_ in the history of values.

431.

_Socrates._--This veering round of Greek taste in favour of dialectics is a great question. What really happened then? Socrates, the _roturier_ who was responsible for it, was thus able to triumph over a more noble taste, the taste of _the noble_:--the mob gets the upper hand along with dialectics. Previous to Socrates dialectic manners were repudiated in good society; they were regarded as indecent; the youths were Warned against them. What was the purpose of this display of reasons? Why demonstrate? Against others one could use authority. One commanded, and that sufficed. Among friends, _inter pares,_ there was tradition--_also_ a form of authority: and last but not least, one understood each other. There was no room found for dialectics. Besides, all such modes of presenting reasons were distrusted. All honest things do not carry their reasons in their hands in such fashion. It is indecent to show all the five fingers at the same time. That which can be "demonstrated" is little worth. The instinct of every party-speaker tells him that dialectics excites mistrust and carries little conviction. Nothing is more easily wiped away than the effect of a dialectician. It can only be a _last defence._ One must be in an extremity; it is necessary to have to _extort_ one's rights; otherwise one makes no use of dialectics. That is why the Jews were dialecticians, Reynard the Fox was a dialectician, and so was Socrates. As a dialectician a person has a merciless instrument in his hand: he can play the tyrant with it; he compromises when he conquers. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to demonstrate that he is not an idiot; he is made furious and helpless, while the dialectician himself remains calm and still possessed of his triumphant reasoning powers--he _paralyses_ his opponent's intellect.--The dialectician's irony is a form of mob-revenge: the ferocity of the oppressed lies in the cold knife-cuts of the syllogism....

In Plato, as in all men of excessive sensuality and wild fancies, the charm of concepts was so great, that he involuntarily honoured and deified the concept as a form of ideal. _Dialectical intoxication_: as the consciousness of being able to exercise control over one's self by means of it--as an instrument of the Will to Power.

432.

_The problem of Socrates._--The two antitheses: the _tragic_ and the _Socratic_ spirits--measured according to the law of Life.

To what extent is the Socratic spirit a decadent phenomenon? to what extent are robust health and power still revealed by the whole attitude of the scientific man, his dialectics, his ability, and his severity? (the health of the _plebeian_; whose malice, _esprit frondeur,_ whose astuteness, whose rascally depths, are held in check by his _cleverness_; the whole type is "ugly").

_Uglification_: self-derision, dialectical dryness, intelligence in the form of a _tyrant_ against the "tyrant" (instinct). Everything in Socrates is exaggeration, eccentricity, caricature; he is a buffoon with the blood of Voltaire in his veins.

He discovers a new form of _agon_; he is the first fencing-master in the superior classed of Athens; he stands for nothing else than the _highest form of cleverness_: he calls it "virtue" (he regarded it as a means of _salvation_; he did not choose to be _clever,_ cleverness was _de rigueur_); the proper thing is to control one's self in suchwise that one enters into a struggle _not_ with passions but with reasons as one's weapons (Spinoza's stratagem--the unravelment of the errors of passion);--it is desirable to discover how every one may be caught once he is goaded into a passion, and to know how illogically passion proceeds; self-mockery is practised in order to injure the very roots of the _feelings of resentment._

It is my wish to understand which idiosyncratic states form a part of the Socratic problem: its association of reason, virtue, and happiness. With this absurd doctrine of the identity of these things it succeeded _in charming_ the world: ancient philosophy could not rid itself of this doctrine....

Absolute lack of objective interest: hatred of science: the idiosyncrasy of considering one's self a problem. Acoustic hallucinations in Socrates: morbid element. When the intellect is rich and independent, it most strongly resists preoccupying itself with morality. How is it that Socrates is a _moral-maniac_?--Every "practical" philosophy immediately steps into the foreground in times of distress. When morality and religion become the chief interests of a community, they are signs of a state of distress.

433.

Intelligence, clearness, hardness, and logic as weapons against the_ wildness of the instincts_. The latter must be dangerous and must threaten ruin, otherwise no purpose can be served by developing _intelligence_ to this degree of tyranny. In order to make a _tyrant_ of intelligence the instincts must first have proved themselves tyrants. This is the problem. It was a very timely one in those days. Reason became virtue--virtue equalled happiness.

_Solution_: Greek philosophers stand upon the same fundamental fact of their inner experiences as Socrates does; five feet from excess, from anarchy and from dissolution--all decadent men. They regard him as a doctor: Logic as will to power, as will to control self, as will to "happiness." The wildness and anarchy of Socrates' instincts is a _sign of decadence_, as is also the superfœtation of logic and clear reasoning in him. Both are abnormities, each belongs to the other. Criticism. Decadence reveals itself in this concern about "happiness" (_i.e._ about the "salvation of the soul"; _i.e. to feel that one's condition is a danger_). Its fanatical interest in "happiness" shows the pathological condition of the subconscious self: it was a vital interest. The _alternative_ which faced them all was: to be reasonable or to perish. The morality of Greek philosophers shows that they felt they were in danger.

434.

_Why everything resolved itself into mummery.--_Rudimentary psychology, which only considered the _conscious_ lapses of men (as causes), which regarded "consciousness" as an attribute of the soul, and which sought a will behind every action (_i.e._ an intention), could only answer "_Happiness_" to the question: "_What does man desire?_" (it was impossible to answer "Power," because that would have been _immoral)_;--consequently behind all men's actions there is the intention of attaining to happiness by means of them. Secondly: if man as a matter of fact does not attain to happiness, why is it? Because he mistakes the means thereto.--_What is the unfailing means of acquiring happiness?_ Answer: _virtue._--Why virtue? Because virtue is supreme rationalness, and rationalness makes mistakes in the choice of means impossible: virtue in the form of _reason_ is the way to happiness. Dialectics is the constant occupation of virtue, because it does away with passion and intellectual cloudiness.

As a matter of fact, man does _not_ desire "happiness." Pleasure is a sensation of power: if the passions are excluded, those states of the mind are also excluded which afford the greatest sensation of power and therefore of pleasure. The highest rationalism is a state of cool clearness, which is very far from being able to bring about that feeling of power which every kind of _exaltation_ involves....

The ancient philosophers combat everything that intoxicates and exalts--everything that impairs the perfect coolness and impartiality of the mind.... They were consistent with their first false principle: that consciousness was the _highest,_ the _supreme_ state of mind, the prerequisite of perfection--whereas the reverse is true....

Any kind of action is imperfect in proportion as it has been willed or conscious. The philosophers of antiquity _were the greatest duffers_ in practice, "because they condemned themselves" theoretically to _dufferdom,_.... In practice everything resolved itself into theatricalness: and he who saw through it, as Pyrrho did, for instance, thought as everybody did--that is to say, that in goodness and uprightness "paltry people" were far superior to philosophers.

All the deeper natures of antiquity were disgusted at the _philosophers of virtue_; all people saw in them was brawlers and actors. (This was the judgment passed on _Plato_ by _Epicurus_ and _Pyrrho_.)

_Result_: In practical life, in patience, goodness, and mutual assistance, paltry people were above them:--this is something like the judgment Dostoiewsky or Tolstoy claims for his muzhiks: they are more philosophical in practice, they are more courageous in their way of dealing with the exigencies of life....

435.

_A criticism of the philosopher._--Philosophers and moralists merely deceive themselves when they imagine that they escape from decadence by _opposing_ it. That lies beyond their wills: and however little they may be aware of the fact, it is generally discovered, subsequently that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.

Let us examine the philosophers of Greece--Plato, for instance. He it was who separated the instincts from the polis, from the love of contest, from military efficiency, from art, beauty, the mysteries, and the belief in tradition and in ancestors.... He was the seducer of the nobles: he himself seduces through the _roturier_ Socrates.... He denied all the first principles of the "noble Greek" of sterling worth; he made dialectics an everyday practice, conspired with the tyrants, dabbled in politics for the future, and was the example of a man whose _instincts_ were the example of a man whose _instincts_ were most perfectly separated from _tradition._ He is profound and passionate in everything that is _anti-Hellenic_....

One after the other, these great philosophers represent the _typical_ forms of decadence: the moral and religious idiosyncrasy, anarchy, nihilism, (ἀδιαφορία), cynicism, hardening principles, hedonism, and reaction.

The question of "happiness," of "virtue," and of the "salvation of the soul," is the expression of _physiological contradictoriness_ in these declining natures: their instincts lack all _balance_ and _purpose._

436.

To what extent do dialectics and the faith in reason rest upon _moral_ prejudices? With Plato we are as the temporary inhabitants of an intelligible world of goodness, still in possession of a bequest from former times: divine dialectics taking its root in goodness leads to everything good (it follows, therefore, that it must lead "backwards"). Even Descartes had a notion of the fact that, according to a thoroughly Christian and moral attitude of mind, which includes a belief in a _good_ God as the Creator of all things, the truthfulness of God _guarantees_ the judgments of our senses for us. But for this religious sanction and warrant of our senses and our reason, whence should we obtain our right to trust in existence? That thinking must be a measure of reality,--that what cannot be the subject of thought, cannot _exist,_--is a coarse _non plus ultra_ of a moral blind confidence (in the essential principle of truth at the root of all things); this in itself is a mad assumption which our experience contradicts every minute. We cannot think of anything precisely as it is....

437.

The real _philosophers of Greece_ are those which came before Socrates (with Socrates something changes). They are all distinguished men, they take their stand away from the people and from usage; they have travelled; they are earnest to the point of sombreness, their eyes are calm, and they are not unacquainted with the business of state and diplomacy. They anticipated all the great concepts which coming sages were to have concerning things in general: they themselves represented these concepts, they made systems out of themselves. Nothing run give a higher idea of Greek intellect than this sudden fruitfulness in types, than this involuntary completeness in the drawing up of all the great possibilities of the philosophical ideal. I can see only one original figure in those that came afterwards: a late arrival but necessarily the last--_Pyrrho_ the nihilist. His instincts were opposed to the influences which had become ascendant in the mean-time the Socratic school, Plato, and the artistic optimism of Heraclitus. (Pyrrho goes back to Democritus _via_ Protagoras....)

***

Wise weariness: Pyrrho. To live humbly among the humble. Devoid of pride. To live in the vulgar way; to honour and believe what every one believes. To be on one's guard against science and intellect, and against everything that _puffs one out._ ... To be simply patient in the extreme, careless and mild;--_ὰπάθεια_ or, better still, πραῢτης. A Buddhist for Greece, bred amid the tumult of the Schools; born alter his time; weary; an example of the protest of weariness against the eagerness of dialecticians; the incredulity of the tired man in regard to the importance of everything. He had seen _Alexander_; he had seen the _Indian penitents._ To such late-arrivals and creatures of great subtlety, everything lowly, poor, and idiotic, is seductive. It narcoticises: it gives them relaxation (Pascal). On the other hand, they mix with the crowd, and get confounded with the rest. These weary creatures need warmth.... To overcome contradiction; to do away with contests; to have no will to excel in any way; to deny the _Greek_ instincts (Pyrrho lived with his sister, who was a midwife.) To rig out wisdom in such a way that it no longer distinguishes; to give it the ragged mantle of poverty; to perform the lowest offices, and to go to market and sell sucking-pigs.... Sweetness, clearness, indifference; no need of virtues that require attitudes; to be equal to all even in virtue: final conquest of one's self, final indifference.

Pyrrho and Epicurus;--two forms of Greek decadence; they are related in their hatred of dialectics and all _theatrical_ virtues. These two things together were then called philosophy; Pyrrho and Epicurus intentionally held that which they loved in low esteem; they chose common and even contemptible names for it, and they represented a state in which one is neither ill, healthy, lively, nor dead.... Epicurus was more _naïf,_ more idyllic, more grateful; Pyrrho had more experience of the world, had travelled more, and was more nihilistic. His life was a protest against the great _doctrine of Identity_ (Happiness = Virtue = Knowledge). The proper way of living is not promoted by science: wisdom does not make "wise." ... The proper way of living does not desire happiness, it turns away from happiness....

438.

The war against the "old faith," as Epicurus waged it, was, strictly speaking, a struggle against _pre-existing_ Christianity--the struggle against a world then already gloomy, moralised, acidified throughout with feelings of guilt, and grown old and sick.

Not the "moral corruption" of antiquity, but precisely its _moral infectedness_ was the prerequisite which enabled Christianity to become its master. Moral fanaticism (in short: Plato) destroyed paganism by transvaluing its values and poisoning its innocence. We ought at last to understand that what was then destroyed was _higher_ than what prevailed! Christianity grew on the soil of psychological corruption, and could only take root in rotten ground.

439.

Science: as a disciplinary measure or as an instinct--I see a decline of the instincts in Greek philosophers: otherwise they could not have been guilty of the profound error of regarding the conscious state as the more valuable state. The intensity of consciousness stands in the inverse ratio to the ease and speed of cerebral transmission. Greek philosophy upheld the opposite view, which is always the sign of weakened instincts.

We must, in sooth, seek _perfect life_ there where it is least conscious (that is to say, there where it is least aware of its logic, its reasons, its means, its intentions, and its _utility)._ The return to the facts of _common sense,_ the facts of the common man and of "paltry people." _Honesty and intelligence_ stored up for generations of people who are quite unconscious of their principles, and who even have some fear of principles. It is not reasonable to desire a _reasoning virtue._ ... A philosopher is compromised by such a desire.

440.