“Have a nice ride.” These words from Professor Kelly could not have done a better job to frame the aphorisms at hand. They very well could have been spoken by Nietzsche in regard to our ride on the road to the origin of moral thought. Where is mile one of the road? What is the source of something that perpetuates itself? Nietzsche does not give us directions to the interstate on ramp but instead to the campus roundabout.
No stranger to mock his predecessors and jump into gray waters, Nietzsche crafts what could be considered a Zen Buddhist like dichotomy between moral judgement and moral feeling. Juxtaposing Hume’s sentiment and Kant’s rationality to show that neither is the answer while both may have truth. He leaves us pondering an issue of degrees, not causes. Nietzsche in aphorisms thirty-four and thirty-five presents two compelling origin stories of moral thought. Both contradictory. Too what degree did one influence more than the other? As this pertains to a timeline of events, both could not have occurred simultaneously. In a mixed morality cocktail, which flavor do you taste first? To know we first need to explore why Nietzsche cares about this. Then we can explore what he says about each source of moral thought.
Why does this matter at all? Of what consequence is knowing the primacy of judgement or feeling? It comes down to this and this alone… Do you wish to merely understand morality or to transform it? Is this philosophical exercise to appreciate the historical monument of morality? As grandiose, lofty and worthy of adoration our current morality is; there are those who see its faults and thus look to the horizon. To Nietzsche, understanding the instigator of morality is key to transforming it. This expedition to the genesis of moral thought is his way of finding a “step one” of sorts. How can we hope to transform something when we still don’t fully know how it started? Choosing wrong between the instigators of judgement and feeling could cause Nietzsche’s aspirations to stall in their infancy; to never take flight. It is nestled within this framework that Nietzsche dedicates so much effort to answer.
Not to belabor the difference between aphorism thirty-four and thirty-five, a topic that would indeed fill all four pages alone, I will briefly surmise them. Aphorism thirty-four starts with children observing inclinations and aversions of adults. They imitate these like the primates. Being rational individuals, we seek as we age to justify the feelings towards the aforementioned actions. In this accounting we pronounce judgements of moral superiority and inferiority on our preexisting feelings. This is in contrast to aphorism thirty-five where those very aversions and inclinations are inherited in the form of feelings towards judgements. These judgments not being of our own results in our subordination to our “grandparents” over our rationality.
Aphorism Thirty-eight seeks to back up the assumptions of aphorism thirty five with a plea to the history of particular moral thoughts. Moral judgement rooted in the custom of the time, whether that be Greek, Christian or Jewish; affected the moral pronouncement of particular drives. Anger, Envy, Hope were all interpreted within opposing notions of morality. Why did one custom feel anger to be righteous and the other wrong? Because those feelings are nestled in moral judgements which in turn are nestled on the proclivities of prior generations. How then did this change in moral perception occur if Christian morality has its origins in Jewish thought? Or to take a second example; how did deceitful Greek hope become venerated hope in the Christian custom when the latter rests in the tradition of the prior? The very argument used by Nietzsche to tie drives to moral judgements cheapens his assertion of its primacy to the cycle of moral thought. How could our moral pronouncements change if it is predicated on the judgments of our “grandparents”. I would assert this lends credence to moral feeling as the instigator in such that it preserves a level of agency that preceding judgement denies. This agency is critical in transforming morality instead of merely preserving it.
Lies! There is no freedom, no agency in feeling. It forces us to betray our rationality as we cling to conclusions of judgements we know to be false. Aphorism ninety-nine frames our feelings as an irrational slave master, making us do against what we know better! How then could a moral feeling be the cause we seek? In aphorism thirty five Nietzche just told us, “The inspiration born of a feeling is the grandchild of a judgment, and often of false judgement”. How then do we precede when everything is a landmine? When nothing is suitable to continue with?
In traditional Nietzschean fashion we come to the end of Daybreak with no answer. Aphorism 453 dares to tell us we will never be able to know. No one has the capacity to describe what will do away with moral feeling and moral judgement, not even Nietzsche himself. What are we to do then? Rely on the sciences Nietzsche urges us… when the sciences develop the capacity to deal with this issue. How then could we use the sciences to answer a question that appears to lie only in the realm of philosophy and religion? How can “physiology, medicine, sociology and solitude” give us the roadmap to start new morality? Through consequence based experimentation. Nietzsche calls us to be the kings of the time between the kings. To found little experimental states where competing moralities are trialed as if drugs in a lab. Under modern notions of statehood, this seems impossible. What state would be progressive enough to risk a total ripping of the social fabric to usher in a hypothetical future with no guarantee it will be any different than the existing? Could each individual trial their own morality then? Judge themselves against themselves? Unlikely given the social nature of humanity. A cohesive, commonly accepted morality allows for the perpetuation of society. Divorced of a shared morality, interpersonal relations become near impossible.
In the end, our ride with Nietzsche did not end in a roundabout, but a dead end. In that place we are given an invitation to build a new road. A new road into the dark. Some of the roads will fail, others will go far. We are the experiment after all, lets embrace it.