Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals

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).

 

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