Second Essay: Guilt, Bad Conscience, and related matters
Pgs. 76-108
(1) Nietzsche says that forgetfulness is the opposite of keeping promises. It is the ability to immediately surpress or forget certain experiences or things in our life.
He compares it to our inawareness of our digestive processes, and how we're completely unaware of the thousand things we encounter everyday
Only the most important functions of our mind are at play; the rest are suppressed - like an oligarchy
Forgetfulness can seize to exist when memory is in use.
Memory is the desire to not let go of or forget certain things previously desired, and constant recollection of that desire. - The Will's memory
Despite new situations or circumstances between when a person vows to do something and when a person actually does it, his original promise will be unaffected.
(2) To create or have someone capable of making promises, he must be like everyone else around him - be uniform and predictable
The sovereign or self-contained, independent individual is the purest person of the morality of custom?
He is free and independent of the morality of custom/social norms; it doesn't control or affect him.
Morality of custom makes man predictable, as he very closely follows it to fit in.
The morality of custom and society eventually lead to a sovereign individual as its product.
Morality of Custom - a process through which people are conditioned and forced to abide by certain norms and behaviors, even if it infringes on their personal freedom.
The sovereign man has the right to promise and follow up on it because he is self-disciplined and strong willed, to where he isn't easily persuaded by external forces like people or fleeting desires.
Most other people are influenced by others, situations, fleeting desires, or harsh norms that dictate behavior.
Conscience - the awareness one has of his duties and responsibilities, whatever they may be.
(3) Nietzsche states that conscience has a long and complicated history behind it
He poses the question of "How do you make people remember something so that it will stick?"
He explains that the use of fear and pain especially made people abide by and follow through on promises/norms.
He explains how Germans didn't consider themselves cruel people, even though they used several cruel tactics to preserve certain things in memory - impaling, burning people in oil, being trampled by horses, etc.
He almost mockingly brings to attention the amount of violence and cruely lies behind all 'good things'
(4) Nietzsche questions how the awareness of 'guilt' came into the world, or 'bad conscience'
He claims that the genealogists of morality are useless, and that they base the evolution of morals on their own experience.
Claims how words such as 'Schuld' (guilt) evolved from the word 'Schulden' (debts).